On the table by the window was a large square of glass used to display photographs, which Jingqiu knew was considered decadent. The photos lay on a dark green cloth. Curious, Jingqiu walked across the room to take a look. Auntie pointed to each photo in turn, explaining who everyone was. Sen, the eldest son, was a towering young man who looked completely unlike his parents. Maybe he’s the odd one out, she thought. He worked at Yanjia River post office, and only came home once a week. His wife was called Yumin, and she taught at the village primary school. She had delicate, refined features and was tall and thin – a good match for Sen.
Fen was the eldest daughter. She was pretty, and Auntie told Jingqiu that after graduating from middle school Fen went to work in the village. The second daughter was called Fang. She looked very different from her sister, her mouth protruding, and her eyes smaller. Fang was still studying at Yanjia River Middle School, and only came home once or twice a week.
While they were talking Mr Zhang’s second son, Lin, came home. He was there to fetch some water and to start preparing the food for the city guests. Jingqiu saw that he didn’t resemble Sen, his older brother, but looked more like Mr Zhang. She was surprised. How could two brothers and two sisters look so different? It was as if when making the first son and daughter, the parents used up all the best possible ingredients so that by the time they came round to the next two, they’d just put them together any old how.
Jingqiu, feeling awkward, said, ‘I’ll help you collect water.’
‘Can you manage?’ Lin said quietly.
‘Of course I can. I often come to the countryside to work on the land.’
Auntie Zhang said, ‘You want to help him? I’ll just cut some greens, and you can wash them in the river.’ She picked up a bamboo basket and left the room.
Lin, left alone with Jingqiu, turned and scuttled off to the back of the house to get the water buckets. Auntie returned with two bundles of vegetables and gave them to Jingqiu.
Back with the buckets, eyes cast down to avoid her gaze, Lin said, ‘Let’s go.’ Jingqiu picked up the basket and followed him, tracing the small road towards the river. Halfway, they bumped into a few young boys from the village who teased Lin. ‘Your dad’s got you a little bride, has he?’ ‘Oooh, she’s from the city.’ ‘Things are looking up!’
Lin dropped the buckets and chased after the boys. Jingqiu called, ‘Don’t listen to them!’ Lin returned, picked up the buckets, and flew off down the road. Jingqiu was confused, what did the boys mean? Why did they make a joke like that?
At the river Lin decided the water was too cold for Jingqiu, it would freeze her hands solid, he said. Jingqiu couldn’t convince him otherwise, and so stood waiting and watching from the riverbank. Once he had finished washing the greens, he filled up the two buckets.
Jingqiu insisted that she should carry them. ‘You didn’t let me wash the vegetables, at least let me carry the water.’ But Lin wouldn’t let her, he picked up the buckets himself, and darted off towards home. And not long after they got back to the house, Lin quickly left.
Jingqiu tried to help Auntie cook but, again, wasn’t given the opportunity. By now Lin’s little nephew, Huan Huan, who had been sleeping next door, had woken up, and Auntie instructed him, ‘Take your Aunt Jingqiu to fetch Uncle Old Third for dinner.’
Jingqiu didn’t know that there was yet another son in the family. She asked Huan Huan, ‘Do you know where Uncle Old Third is?’
‘Yes, he’s at the geobology camp.’
‘The geobology camp?’
‘He means the geological unit’s camp,’ Auntie explained smiling. The boy doesn’t speak very clearly.’
Huan Huan pulled at Jingqiu’s hand. ‘Let’s go, let’s go, Old Third has sweets . . .’
Jingqiu followed Huan Huan only to find that after a very short while Huan Huan refused to walk. Opening his arms he said, ‘Feet hurt. Can’t move.’
Jingqiu started laughing and lifted him up. He might have looked small, but he was heavy. She’d already spent the best part of a day walking and carrying her bags, but if Huan Huan would not walk, she had no choice but to carry him a little way, put him down to rest, then lift him up and carry on, asking constantly, ‘Are we nearly there yet? Have you forgotten the way?’
They had walked a long stretch of road and Jingqiu was just about to take another rest when she heard from far off the sounds of an accordion. Her instrument! She stopped and listened.
It was indeed an accordion, playing ‘The Song of the Cavalryman’, a tune that Jingqiu had played before, though she could really only play the right-hand part. This musician, however, played both parts very well. When they got to the rousing sections it sounded just like ten thousand horses galloping, winds howling, and clouds swirling. The music was coming from a building that looked like a worker’s shed. Unlike the rest of the houses in the village, which were all detached, this building consisted of a long strip of huts joined together. It had to be the camp.
Huan Huan now found new, heroic, strength. His legs no longer hurt, and he wanted to throw off Jingqiu and run on ahead.
Keeping a firm hold of his hand, Jingqiu was dragged to where she could hear the music clearly. And now there was a new song. ‘The Hawthorn Tree’, this time joined by a chorus of male voices. She hadn’t expected people in this little corner of the world to know ‘The Hawthorn Tree’! She wondered if the villagers didn’t know that it was a Soviet song, so freely were the men singing . . . They sang along in Chinese, and she could hear that they were slightly distracted, as if also busy with their hands. But it was this distracted quality, the starting and stopping, the low humming, that made the song particularly beautiful.
Jingqiu was mesmerised; she felt that she had been transported into a fairy tale. Dusk enveloped them, kitchen smoke curled up to the sky, and village smells drifted through the air. Her ears were filled with the sounds of the accordion and the low rumbles of the men’s voices. This strange mountain village was at once familiar; its flavour had to be savoured, she thought, as she struggled to express it in words. Her senses were steeped in what she could only think to describe as a petty capitalist atmosphere.
Huan Huan escaped Jingqiu’s grip, and ran into the building. Jingqiu guessed that the accordion player must be Huan Huan’s uncle Old Third, Mr Zhang’s third son. She was curious. Would this third son look more like the eldest, Sen, or the second son, Lin? She secretly hoped that he would look more like Sen. Such lovely music couldn’t possibly come from the hands of a man like Lin. She knew that she was being unfair to Lin, but still . . .
Chapter Two
A young man appeared carrying Huan Huan. He was wearing a dark blue, knee-length cotton coat, which must have been the geological unit’s uniform. Huan Huan’s little body obscured most of his face and it was not until he was almost in front of her and had put the little boy down that she saw his face properly.
Her rational eye told her, he’s not the picture of a typical worker. His face isn’t blackish-red, it’s white; his figure is not robust ‘like an iron tower’, but is slender. And his eyebrows are bushy but not like those on the propaganda posters which slant upwards like two drawn daggers.
He made Jingqiu think of a film, made on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, called The Young Generation . In it, there was a character who had what was called at the time a ‘backwards way of thinking’. Old Third didn’t look a bit like a revolutionary or a brave soldier – he looked much more like a petty capitalist – and Jingqiu found herself admiring the non-revolutionary things about him.
She could feel her heart racing and she grew flustered, suddenly becoming aware of her appearance and clothes. She was wearing an old padded cotton outfit
her brother used to wear, which looked a bit like a Mao suit except that the jacket only had one pocket. The standing collars on these suits were short, and Jingqiu’s neck was particularly long. She was convinced she must look like a giraffe. Because her father had been sent to a labour reform camp in the countryside when she was young, the family had had to survive on their mother’s salary. They were always short of money, so Jingqiu wore her brother’s old clothes.
She couldn’t remember ever before being so aware of what she was wearing; it was a first for her to worry about making a bad impression in this regard. She hadn’t felt so self-conscious for a long time. When she was at primary and secondary school the other students bullied her, but once she got to senior high school none of them dared look her straight in the eye. The boys in her class seemed scared of her and turned red when she spoke to them so she had never given any thought as to whether they liked the way she looked or dressed. They were silly, just a bunch of little monsters.
But the well-dressed man before her made her so nervous her heart hurt. His brilliant white shirt sleeves peeped from under his unbuttoned blue overcoat. His shirt, so white, so neat and smooth, must have been made from polyester, which Jingqiu definitely couldn’t afford. His rice-grey top looked homemade, and Jingqiu, who was good at knitting, could see that the pattern was difficult. On his feet he wore a pair of leather shoes. She looked down at her own faded ‘Liberation shoes’ and thought, he’s rich, I’m poor, it’s like we’re from different worlds.
He also wore a slight smile, asking Huan Huan, ‘Is this Auntie Jingqiu?’ Addressing her, he said, ‘Did you arrive today?’
He spoke Mandarin Chinese, not the local county dialect, nor her city dialect. Jingqiu wondered who he would speak Mandarin to around here. Her own Mandarin was excellent, and as a result she did the broadcasts at her school and was often picked to read out loud at gatherings and sports events. But she felt embarrassed to speak it as, apart from when speaking with people from outside the county, it wasn’t used in everyday life. Jingqiu didn’t understand why he was speaking Mandarin with her. She gave a short ‘mmm’ in reply.
He asked, ‘Did my writer comrade come via Yiling or Yanjia River?’ His Mandarin was melodic.
‘I’m not a writer,’ Jingqiu replied, embarrassed. ‘Don’t call me that. I came via Yiling.’
‘Then you must be exhausted, as from the town you have to walk, you can’t even push a manual tractor up there.’ As he spoke he held his hand towards her. ‘Have a sweet.’
Jingqiu saw that he had two sweets wrapped in paper in his hand. They didn’t look like the ones you could buy in the market at home. Shyly, she shook her head. ‘I won’t, thanks. Give them to the little one.’
‘And you’re too old for them?’ He was certainly looking at her as if she were a child.
‘Me? Didn’t you hear Huan Huan call me Auntie?’
He started laughing. Jingqiu liked this laugh a lot. Some people only move their facial muscles when they laugh, their mouths appear happy while their eyes are not, the expression in them cold and detached. But as he laughed small lines appeared at either side of his nose and his eyes squinted faintly. It was a laugh from deep within him, not at all mocking. It was heartfelt.
‘You don’t have to be a child to eat sweets,’ he said, holding his hand out again. ‘Take one, no need to be embarrassed.’
Jingqiu had no choice but to take a sweet, but she said, ‘I’ll take it for Huan Huan.’ Huan Huan rushed over to her, begging to be carried. Jingqiu didn’t know what she had done to secure his affection so easily and was a bit surprised. She lifted him up and said to Old Third, ‘Auntie Zhang wants you to come home and eat dinner, we’d better go.’
‘Let Uncle take you,’ Old Third said. ’Your auntie has had a long day of walking, she must be very tired.’ He scooped Huan Huan out of Jingqiu’s arms, signalling to Jingqiu to start walking ahead. Jingqiu refused, for fear that he would watch her from behind and think her gait unattractive, or see that her clothes didn’t fit. She said, ‘You walk first. I . . . don’t know the way.’
He didn’t press her, and carrying Huan Huan went in front allowing Jingqiu to follow him. She watched, thinking that he walked like a well-trained soldier, marching with long rod-straight legs. He didn’t look like either of his brothers, but as if he was from a different family altogether.
She asked, ‘Just now, was that you playing the accordion?’
‘Mmm-hmm, did you hear me? You must’ve heard all my mistakes.’
Jingqiu couldn’t see his face, but she could sense that he was smiling. She stuttered, ‘I . . . No, what mistakes? I don’t really play, anyway.’
‘Such modesty can only mean one thing: you must be an expert despite your young age.’ He stopped and turned back. ‘But lying is not good behaviour in children . . . So you can play. Did you bring one with you?’ When Jingqiu shook her head he said, ‘Then let’s get mine, you can play a couple of tunes for me.’
Startled, Jingqiu waved her hands violently. ‘No, no, I’m not good at it, you play . . . really well. I don’t want to play.’
‘Okay, another day then,’ he said, and started walking again.
Jingqiu asked, ‘How come people from around here know “The Hawthorn Tree”?’
‘It’s a famous song. It was popular around five or ten years ago, lots of people know it. Do you know the words?’
Her thoughts had jumped from the song to the hawthorn tree up on the mountain. ‘In the song, it says that hawthorn trees have white flowers, but today Mr Zhang said that the hawthorn tree up on the mountain has red flowers.’
‘Yeah, some hawthorn trees have red flowers.’
‘But with that tree, isn’t it because the blood of those brave soldiers watered the tree’s roots, turning the flowers red?’ She felt a bit stupid. She thought he was laughing, so she asked, ‘You think that question was stupid, don’t you? I just wanted to be clear, you know, because I’m writing this textbook and I don’t want to include any lies.’
‘You don’t need to lie. Whatever people tell you, you should write. Whether or not it’s true, well, that’s not your problem.’
‘Do you believe that the flowers were coloured by the blood of those soldiers?’
‘I don’t believe so, no. From a scientific point of view it’d be impossible, they must’ve always been red. But it’s what the people around here say, and of course it makes a nice story.’
‘So you think everyone around here is telling lies?’
He laughed. ‘Not telling lies exactly, they’re just being poetic. The world exists objectively, but every person’s experience of the world is different, and if you use a poet’s eyes to look at the world, you see a different world.’
Jingqiu thought he could be quite ‘literary’, or as the king of spelling mistakes in her class would have said, ‘aerodite’. ‘Have you ever seen this hawthorn tree in bloom?’
‘Uh-huh, it flowers every May.’
‘Oh, I’m leaving at the end of April so I won’t get to see it.’
‘You can always come back to visit. This year, when it flowers, I’ll let you know and you can come and see.’
‘How will you let me know?’
He laughed again. ‘There’s always a way.’ He was just making empty promises. Telephones were rare. No. 8 Middle School only had one, and if you wanted to make a long-distance call you had to trudge all the way to the telecommunications bureau on the other side of the city. A place like West Village probably didn’t even have a phone.
He seemed to be thinking over the same problem. ‘There’s no phone in this village, but of course I could write
you a letter.’
If he wrote a letter to her her mother would definitely get it first, and it’d no doubt scare her to death. Ever since she was small her mother had told her, one slip leads down a road of hardship. Even though her mother had never actually explained what ‘one slip’ meant, Jingqiu guessed that just having contact with a boy was probably enough. ‘Don’t write a letter, don’t write,’ she said. ‘If my mother sees, what would she think?’
He turned round. ‘Don’t worry, if you don’t want me to write, I won’t write. Hawthorn trees don’t just flower for one night and then die. The tree will be in bloom for a while. Just pick a Sunday in May, come back and take a look.’
Once they got to Mr Zhang’s house he put Huan Huan down and went in with Jingqiu. Everyone in the family was back. Fen first introduced herself, and then introduced everyone else, this is my youngest brother, this is my sister-in-law. Jingqiu echoed, brother, sister-in-law, and everyone smiled, happy to have her with them.
Fen pointed to Old Third last and said, ‘This is my third brother, say hello.’
Jingqiu was obedient, and greeted him, ‘third brother’, at which everyone laughed.
Jingqiu didn’t understand what was so funny and blushed.
Old Third explained, ‘I’m not really one of the family, I stayed here before like you are now, but they like to call me that. You don’t need to. My name is Sun Jianxin, you can call me by my real name, or what everyone else calls me, Old Third.’
Under the Hawthorn Tree Page 2