by Zoë S. Roy
On the third evening, we reached a five-road intersection at the centre of Circle Town. Then we were given some time off for supper. After the arduous workout, we were like famished wanderers. In threes and fives, we rushed into the several small restaurants the town offered. Cao and two other girls followed our group into a diner for supper. Flower Geek joined us, too.
I was so hungry that I stumbled to the counter. The aroma of the food made my mouth water more. I bought eight steamed stuffed buns and two bowls of soup. Relaxing in a chair, I gulped down all the buns, although they didn’t taste that great. My hunger disappeared, and I forgot the fatigue I had gone through, as well as the purpose. Stuffed like a packed sack, I found it difficult to move my body.
I noticed that Cao was looking at me disapprovingly, and whispering something to the girls who were with her. I felt ashamed that I had wolfed down my food so quickly. I tried to make a joke of it. I told my companions the story of Dame Sun in the ancient Chinese novel, Water Margin. In this novel, Dame Sun and her husband ran an underground hostel in the woods. The couple killed several guests in their lodge where Dame Sun sold steamed buns stuffed with the flesh of the dead. “Maybe that’s what we’ve just eaten,” I said, smiling broadly, finally managing to get a few laughs.
When we finally returned to the town’s school where we would sleep overnight, Flower Geek ordered us to attend a political studies session in the hall. He looked around the audience and then started his speech, “Comrades! Chairman Mao teaches us to ‘fight against selfishness and criticize revisionism.’ Now, let’s do self-criticism one by one.”
When my turn came, I criticized my selfishness: “Today, I used up my money and food coupons forgetting that two-thirds of the people in the world are short of food.” Upon hearing a few snickers from the audience, I added, “I’ve made up my mind to correct my blunder, because I want to become a real working-class member who liberates the suffering people of the world.”
Flower Geek watched me with his observant eyes, as if I were one of the women he had ogled. His gaze made my arms break out in goosebumps.
We returned to the workshop the following weekend.
On Monday morning, as I arrived at the workshop, a person from the security sector entered the room and asked me to report to the office.
I wondered what the reason might be. A dark cloud descended on me as I dragged my feet to the office.
“Tea Ma,” the sector leader cleared his throat as soon as I entered the office and stood in front of him. “What did you do during the workout drill? Time for you to confess honestly without any tricks!”
“What?” I blundered. I wasn’t entirely sure what he was referring to. Remembering the eight buns I had eaten during the trip, I made my confession: “I consumed too much food; a sort of waste of food.”
“Don’t try my patience!” After mashing a cigarette butt in an ashtray, the leader questioned again, “What did you say when you ate the buns in the restaurant?” He banged the desk and roared, “Get pardoned if you confess and get punished if you don’t!”
The sudden shout gave me a startle. The scene in the restaurant flashed back into my mind. Yes, I had made a remark about the buns. I finally understood what this was about.
I said, “I made a joke.”
“A joke? What did you joke about?”
“I said the buns tasted sour, a bit like human flesh.”
“You’ve blackened our socialistic society.” His eyebrows raised, and he continued to bawl, “You bastard! Don’t you know that cannibalism was only practiced in the old society?”
“I goofed up,” I said, lowering my voice and head at the same time. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
He pointed at me and yelled, “Don’t make my blood boil! We’d have put you behind bars if you were not from a worker’s family!”
My hair stood on end when I heard these words, and I couldn’t think straight. I blamed Circle Town and the diner, and the ugly waitress, and the sour buns.
“We’ve decided to suspend you from work for three days,” he said. I was stunned and did not respond. The leader added, “Go back to your dorm and write a self-criticism report. Thursday morning you must read your report in front of everybody.”
My head was throbbing when I staggered to the dorm. I entered the room I shared with three others and plopped into a chair. I realized that I was trembling. Staring at the only table, I saw nothing interesting but a couple of chipped mugs. Thankfully, my roommates weren’t around to see me. It was the first time I was ever in the room alone. I lay down on my bed wondering why Chairman Mao hadn’t banned Lu Xun’s works. I remembered that in Lu Xun’s novel, A Madman’s Diary, the protagonist was a madman who discovered that his elder brother liked the taste of human flesh. The madman came to believe that he, too, would be eaten by his brother and other cannibals. Eventually I fell asleep and had a strange dream. I saw Lu Xun behind bars, his eyes opened wide. Dame Sun was carrying a plate of steamed buns stuffed with human flesh. Laughing eerily, she picked one up and offered it to Lu Xun. “Why don’t you try one?” At that moment, I saw the skinny face of Flower Geek pressing against my dusty window, his nose white and squashed flat on the glass.
“Help!” I opened my mouth but couldn’t make any sound. Suddenly I heard a young woman’s voice. “Tea, wake up! I’ve brought you some tea.”
I opened my eyes. My foreman was standing next to my bed, his face sweaty. Beside him was Cao, a sweet smile on her face. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I want to make sure you don’t hang yourself,” the foreman said with a chuckle. “Listen, nobody in the workshop wants to speak to Flower Geek. Cao heard what happened and asked me to bring her here.”
I sat up and looked at my watch. It was almost 2:00 p.m., and my stomach was growling.
“I brought you some biscuits.” Cao placed a paper box on the table next to a cup of hot tea. “Chairman Mao teaches us, ‘We must see our achievements and brightness in times of difficulty.’ You should look at the good side of the matter. Don’t get too depressed.”
“But I am depressed,” I said to Cao. “I’m having a hard time seeing the good side of all this.”
“Remember the Chinese fable of the old man who lost his horse? He lost one horse, but gained two things later.”
Sure. I remembered the fable. The old man’s missing horse came back with another horse. Then his son fell off the new horse, and because he broke his leg in the fall, he didn’t have to go to war and risk dying in battle like most of the other young men from the village.
“Okay, okay…Thanks a bunch. Take a seat,” I said, grabbing a chair for Cao from a corner of the room while I tried to fathom how Mao’s “good side” theory could apply to my situation.
“No, thanks. I’ve got to go back to work,” said Cao. “But I’ll see you later, okay?” Her smile was warm and beautiful.
My spirits lifted. I smiled back at her, my eyes following her out of the room, and when she turned to look back at me, her hand on the door frame, her eyes sparkling, my heart skipped a beat. A loser doesn’t always lose. I can be marked or eaten by Flower Geek. But I’ve gained the heart of Cao.
Suddenly Flower Geek rushed past her, stumbling into the room. “How are you, Cao?” Without waiting for her to respond, he turned to me and said, “It’s not my fault, you know. It was a matter of business, and I had to tell them the truth.”
“Oh, go to hell!” the foreman growled and left, taking Cao with him.
I turned away from Flower Geek, opened up the paper box of biscuits, and munched away. “Leave me alone,” I said to him, brushing the crumbs from my lips.
Later, I read the self-criticism report I had been asked to write at an assembly of all the workers in the factory. I didn’t feel too bad. Many of them looked at me with sympathy in their eyes.
My expectation of becoming
a second-level worker became a pipe dream. I got ten yuan less per month than my peers for a whole year. That was worth twenty-four pointy-toed shoes! Flower Geek became a genuine Party whip, and was promoted to work in the security office.
For a long time, my stomach churned with butterflies each time I saw steamed buns. But, to this day, I never tire of Cao’s fried rice.
Balloons
THE COOL JULY BREEZE blew lightly along the rocky seaside in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The sunshine slipped through the green branches of the poplar trees and flickered on a red-roofed house. A white arched gate rose over a path that connected the front court to a dark green lawn. Bright balloons had been strung from tree to tree across the lawn toward the house, like cheerful smiling faces bobbing up and down over the guests at Patricia’s wedding reception.
Among the crowd, Suyun sipped the scarlet wine as she gazed at the balloons. Red, blue, green, white, yellow, orange, and pink – colours formed many rainbows as they danced with the sun. Their twinkling colours reminded her of her childhood, and eventually wound their way into a black hole in her memory – the summer of 1969.
***
In an endless field near the border between China and Russia, several combines, partly filled with unthreshed wheat, lay still under the skin-scorching sun.
“Give up your balloon! I’m ordering you!” shouted a boy of about eight. With one hand scratching his dirty hair and the other brandishing a red willow branch, he pointed at a five-year-old girl sitting on the ground.
“Wh …why?” asked the girl, trying to hold back her tears with a firm voice. “This is my balloon. My brother made it for me. I won’t give it to you!”
“My father is a leader. He gives orders to your father so I get to give you orders. Obey!” shouted the boy. He whipped the branch in the air. Whoosh! The dust swirled.
“Give the balloon to Longbin! Give it!” screamed several other children who had come closer.
The little girl gripped her red balloon, which was just a beach ball, dyed with red ink, and bound with a plastic strip to a metal wire.
“No. I won’t!”
The boy pulled the ball with a ferocious yank that tore the wire away. He pulled so hard that he lost his balance and almost fell back on his behind. The children burst out laughing and the boy’s cheeks flushed with anger. In a rage, he hit the girl’s hands with his fist and shouted, “I’ll beat you up! You are nothing but the brat of a landowner!”
The girl slackened her hands and let go of her red balloon. She prostrated her body on the ground. With her hands covering her eyes, she cried.
“A Kazakh’s coming!” screamed the children as they scattered. “Kazakhs” were the native people their parents referred to as kidnappers or killers.
A hand patted her shoulder. “Why are you crying?”
Looking up through the cracks between her fingers, the girl saw the suntanned face of a Kazakh lad.
He spoke gently. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. Here, take this,” he said, passing her a tomato from a large basket he carried on his arm.
The girl hesitated at first, and then accepted the tomato, biting into it eagerly. She swallowed the cool, sweet juice, and her hot throat felt better.
“I’m Suyun. Longbin’s robbed me of my balloon!”
Suyun pointed to her slashed and deflated red ball lying on the ground. The ball’s red ink reflected a strange golden hue from the sun.
“You can’t do anything about it and should go home now,” said the boy. “Your parents may be looking for you.”
Suyun nodded and hurriedly stood up. The sun had dropped behind the mountain range that rose from the edge of the quiet fields. “Thank you for your tomato,” she said, smiling weakly.
After she flapped the dirt off her top and pants, she rushed toward home. As she approached the farm compound, she heard Chairman Mao’s words set to music booming from a high-volume loudspeaker, “A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”*
***
“Suyun, do you like balloons?” A pleasant female voice drew her back to the present. Suyun turned toward Patricia’s smiling face. She was wearing an elegant, pink silk dress. Her light red hair shone in the sunshine, and her hand held a wineglass.
“Oh yes. I’ve loved balloons since I was a child.”
“Me, too. I even tried to fly with a huge balloon when I was a first grader…” At that moment, Patricia spied more guests streaming through the gate. “Sorry, I’ve got to greet them. Enjoy yourself.”
“All right,” Suyun grinned. “I’ll see you later.”
As she watched Patricia walk away, she recalled the first time she attended Patricia’s class. The course was on journalism and truth, and Patricia had flipped opened a copy of the university journal and raised it to the class. “Look,” she had said, pointing to the article she wanted the class to read. “This article, entitled ‘Special Treat,’ is woven with gender discrimination.”
Suyun carefully read the article but could not identify its gender discrimination. After class, she went to Patricia’s office to ask her for some help.
Patricia had underlined one sentence in the article: “According to feminism, the existing social roles between genders start with socialization during children’s growth.” Then she explained to Suyun, “This sentence implies that functions in women’s brains are different from those in men’s brains so that women’s abilities are different from men’s.”
Suyun remembered Patricia asking her earlier in class, “In ancient China, there is a saying, ‘Look after your husband when he is studying,’ right?”
Suyun had recognized the expression. It meant that the wife respected her husband and tried to help him when he studied.
“Yes,” she had nodded.
“If you think that taking care of your husband is your ‘duty,’” Patricia had said, looking at Suyun carefully. “Would you pursue a graduate degree for yourself?”
“As a child I was always told that ‘women hold up half of the sky.’” Looking at Pat’s surprised face, Suyun then added, “I also learned ‘the enemy without guns still exists.’”
“The enemy without guns still exists? What is that?” Patricia had been puzzled.
“It refers to the enemy of the revolution,” Suyun had explained. “My father is from a type of ‘enemy’ family. My elder brother was not allowed to attend high school as a result. That made me extremely eager to go to college.”
Patricia had seemed to weigh these words carefully. Then she took several books from her bookshelf. “If you are interested in exploring some feminist theory, you can read these.”
***
After the wedding reception, Suyun returned to her room in residence. In her mailbox, she was pleased to find a letter from her father. Once inside her apartment, she smoothed out the paper and began reading.
May 11, 1996
Suyun,
I used to think I’d better not breathe a word about my past. As you’ve asked me again and again about my family, I’m going to show my scars this time. My father was Shenyu Ren. Before 1949, he was a landowner and an administrator for the local nationalist government. After the Communist Party took power, he was jailed because he didn’t want to surrender.
He had been labelled an obstinate landowner and was executed. My mother hanged herself after suffering from many humiliating denunciation meetings. My elder brother, Xianlin, a journalist for the nationalists’ Central Daily, disappeared in 1950, before my father was put behind bars, and his house and properties were taken from him. Some people said he was in hiding somewhere. If so, why after all this time, has he never reappeared? Maybe he died during the chaotic period when the nationalists withdrew from Chongqing before the Communists’ takeover.
Disaster fell on my family when I turned fifteen. I was
a boarding-school student in Chongqing. One day, a friend risked his life to tell me that the militia in my hometown had decided to lock me up and put me into a denunciation meeting. Afraid of being unable to survive the struggle, I left the school right away. With a small bag, I fled to the remote northwest area of China. That was how I ended up in Xinjiang Province.
Several decades later, my family was pardoned, and I was declared a wronged victim. But it hasn’t made a great difference. My parents are gone; my brother has vanished. I myself suffered from discrimination for so many years. I only wish for you and your brother to have decent and peaceful lives.
Your mother and I are fine. Your brother, along with his wife and daughter, spend every weekend with us.
My best wishes for your studies.
Your father, Xianpu
After reading her father’s letter, Suyun felt tears fill her eyes. An afternoon in September 1976 appeared in her mind.
***
On a dusty school playground, the elementary students used hoes to mix soil with finely cut dry hay and water. They hummed some lyrics from the 1940s – lyrics that described the miserable life of brick makers: “We are making bricks today and we will make bricks tomorrow. From morning ’til evening we produce mud blocks.” The melody sounded cheerful when the students sang it with laughter. This was a labour class for sixth graders. Everybody practiced making bricks by moulding the well-mixed mud. Among them was Suyun who bent over and carefully removed a mould from a brick. The day was hot and her face was red from the sun; some strands of her hair were wet and clinging to her forehead. She pointed her finger at the bricks as she counted them. I’ve got my twentieth done. She exhaled, and joined in the singing: “Our backs hurt, and waists ache. Making bricks to earn our –.” Suddenly, several large clumps of mud slammed into her bricks, turning them into a shapeless mass. When she turned her head around to see who had thrown the mud, another wet lump splattered on her shoulder and muddy water streamed down her face.
“Stop!” she shouted.