by Anchee Min
The Shanghai Film Studio changed hands within a week. A new production was ready to go on location. We heard that the director was searching for a “fresh image” to star in the film. The new face would represent a stark contrast to Madame Mao’s taste. It would be the face of classic Chinese beauty with a touch of modernism. The production had already started, and the director had become a drugged fly bouncing aimlessly about in a desperate search for his leading lady.
The director and his men came to our shabby dorm and noticed Chong. They gathered around to analyze the girl’s features. The chief cinematographer remarked that the girl’s face had the possibility of going both ways—proletarian and traditional classic beauty, depending on camera angle and makeup. “A girl that we can work with,” they concluded.
Little Chen Chong was taken away for test shots. After she returned to the dorm, she showed me a stack of black-and-white photos. I asked how she felt about the photos. She shook her head. “They make me look like a child.”
The photos were stunningly beautiful. The light, the shadow, and the perspective made her look like a young goddess. There was no doubt in my mind that she was to be a star.
“Sorry to disturb you.” Chen Chong whispered as she stood outside my mosquito net. She explained that she had climbed down to go to the washroom and was now having difficulty climbing back. She was afraid that she would get tangled in the ropes. She didn’t want to wake everyone by turning on the bare-bulb light. Without the light, she couldn’t get back into her bed.
“Are you cold?” I asked, sitting up.
Shivering, the girl nodded.
I opened the curtain of my mosquito net. “Share my bed if you like.”
Thrilled, she jumped in.
The bed was narrow. I let her sleep against the wall so she didn’t have to worry about falling out of bed. I pulled my blankets up to cover her after she was settled. Within minutes, she was sound asleep.
My thoughts went back to the labor camp and Yan. I missed her. In her last letters, she mentioned no misery, hardship, or hopelessness. She was always good at smiling through bruises. Yet I knew she was reaching the limit of her strength. The labor camp was a beast’s den. She let me know that she felt better when she suffered alone. I was ashamed for not being able to rescue her. I felt as if I had betrayed her.
The girl’s body was heating up. In her sleep, Chen Chong kicked off her thick sweatpants and her head slid off the pillow. She tossed, seeking the comfort of a pillow. I attempted to lift her head so that I could slide my pillow under her. But she grabbed my arm like a drowning person. I tried to pull my arm away, but she wouldn’t let go.
With her eyes shut, she pressed her head against my arm as if it were a pillow. I could do nothing but listen to the rhythmic sound of her breathing. What a child, I thought.
The sky began to break. The sound of the city’s traffic came through the window. My right arm was numb. Chong’s weight grew heavy. I attempted to free my arm, but she held on. I pushed her gently. She was an unmoving rock.
The light showed Chong’s profile in silhouette. She turned again, revealing her swanlike neck. She wore a tight bra. I wondered how she could breathe—the bra was like foot-binding cloth. In a few months, she would soar to superstardom and become the object of adoration and obsession. Chen Chong would go on to star in American movies. She would play the empress in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, which would win nine Oscars, including Best Picture.
The girl on my arm had velvety-black, beautiful eyelashes. She was blossoming in her sleep. I wondered if she would remember me in the future. We were on two different tracks and headed in opposite directions. It was odd that we should share this moment.
The first sunlight came through the mosquito net. Chong cracked open her eyes and smiled. Her eyelashes fluttered like the wings of a butterfly. It took her a moment to remember where she was. After realizing she had been using my arm as a pillow, she apologized. She followed me into the backyard, where we brushed our teeth. It seemed that she had something to say to me.
I spit out the water and asked, “What is it?”
“Would you like to come to my home with me?” she said timidly.
I hesitated because I didn’t know if she was aware of my status.
“I’ll treat you with a tomato.” She made a hand motion to describe the size of the tomato. “And sugar-sprinkled sticky rice!”
I warned her about my status. She said that she already knew about my disgrace.
I looked at her. “Why are you still inviting me?”
She cracked a naughty smile.
I didn’t think that it was a good idea to go with her.
“We can sneak out together,” she said in a small voice. “Nobody will notice.”
“Why don’t you invite someone else? Someone who would be a good influence.”
“I like you.”
“What if they catch you? You’ll get in trouble.”
“I’ll pretend innocence if they catch me. I’ll mock. I don’t see why I shouldn’t take advantage of everybody’s belief that I am too young to know better.”
I followed her home. Her grandmother received me warmly. Chen Chong offered me big, sweet tomatoes and sugar-sprinkled sticky rice. I discovered that my young friend loved to laugh, and it was contagious. She made me temporarily forget my troubles. When she told me she was a big reader, I asked about her favorite books. To my surprise, her books were not in Chinese. She told me that she had been studying English. I was immensely impressed. She said that she had just finished an American novel entitled Love Story. I told her that I had read the Chinese translation.
“I have known people like the lovers in the novel,” Chong said. “The couple is my downstairs neighbor. We share the kitchen. The girl was in love with a boy dying of a disease. Her only wish was to carry his child, and she got her wish! But the baby was born sickly and cross-eyed. The girl raised the child alone after her lover died. I hear the child screaming and the mother yelling and cursing. I don’t know what to make of the love story, you?”
I rode a tricycle loaded with two giant ice-water containers to the studio. It was the summer of 1978. After returning to the dorm, I found that the upper bunk bed had been cleared—Chong had left Shanghai for Beijing. In just a few months, she became a household name in China and was awarded China’s prize for best movie actress.
I stood by the Huangpu River bund. I stared at the water below. On past weekends, I had biked alone to the Dragon Crematorium. Watching the smoke come out of its giant chimney, I felt swallowed by eternal darkness.
One day after I finished cleaning the backstage, I discovered six leaf-wrapped sticky rice cakes in my drawer. People told me that Chen Chong had stopped by with the rice cakes. She had arrived from Beijing for a film shoot near Shanghai. “Chen Chong has grown so arrogant that she didn’t bother to say hello to us—her teachers,” the old actresses criticized.
I did everything I could to avoid being sent back to the labor camp. With crews that hired me temporarily, I fought to demonstrate my value as a set laborer. As a script girl, I memorized every shot of the film and every line in the script. I drafted the daily call sheet for the assistant producers and assistant directors. For the camera crews, I provided detailed shooting maps that outlined complicated camera angles. For the lighting crew, costume crew, prop crew, sound engineers, and editors, I offered hand-printed copies of shooting schedules. Out on location, I worked until midnight while everyone else slept. Many times I helped save the day for the producers, who would otherwise be over budget. I impressed my bosses and colleagues. Word of mouth spread. Film crews began to “borrow” me. I was cheap, and I could do the work of five people.
The crew heads spoke for me in front of the studio’s Party boss. They explained my usefulness and efficiency. Finally, I was hired as a full-time employee of the studio with two conditions. One, the studio reserved the right to “return” me to the labor camp at any time; two, I would rem
ain in my current status as a set laborer for the rest of my working life.
Though I never complained about being overworked, I knew I was sick. For the next five years, I worked the jobs no one else wanted. By the time Deng Xiaoping became China’s leader and the country started to transform itself, shadows were found on my lungs and liver. I came down with an intestinal infection while on location. Instead of allowing me to see a doctor, the crew leader threatened to fire me if I dared to leave.
I became skeleton thin and collapsed on the set. After I was released from the hospital’s emergency room, I was ordered to depart for Tibet for another job. I was so weak that I couldn’t leave my bed. The Party boss came to my home. It was a midsummer day, and the heat had hit 107 degrees. I shivered uncontrollably under thick layers of blankets. The windows were shut because I felt cold.
“You have a stained dossier,” the boss reminded me. “You were Madame Mao’s trash.”
The Party boss was not an unkind man. He had once said good words about me. He also started the process of getting me out of “borrowed worker” status. “You have to produce a doctor’s slip confirming illness or go to Tibet. Otherwise, I’ll have to fire you.”
After examining me, the doctor at the clinic said, “Why do you bother to come? You think I am a magician? What could be prescribed has already been prescribed.”
“I’ll do anything you say, doctor.”
“Prepare to die,” he said bluntly, turning away from me. “Diarrhea and severe dehydration at such an advanced stage has no cure. Even the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi died from it.”
“I have been ordered to work in the mountains of Tibet, doctor. Please help.”
“Be a martyr!”
On the way home, I crashed into a street post and fell off my bicycle. My once-wounded spinal cord was reinjured. I had to stop and take deep breaths while climbing the stairs. I started having blackouts. I knew that I was heading for another collapse. Normally, doctors were reluctant to issue a “proof of illness” slip, but I received one quickly this time. The Party boss dropped me from the Tibet list.
The Communist Party issued a new policy declaring that all middle school diplomas issued during the Cultural Revolution were “invalid.” In order to hold a job, every worker was required to take and pass a middle school basic-subject examination. While working fourteen-hour day shifts, I attended night school. I barely made the passing score to graduate. I scored 66 out of 100 on Chinese and 64 on mathematics.
In the winter of 1984, I received a letter with fancy foreign postage stamps. It was from my friend Chen Chong, who had gone to college in America after becoming a star in China. Enclosed with the letter was a balloon with the image of Mickey Mouse. She told me that her new name in English was Joan Chen. I felt grateful that she remembered me. I wished that I had something interesting to report. I couldn’t tell her that I had been thinking about ending my life. I was twenty-six years old.
Before I wrote back to Joan Chen, I borrowed a camera. I asked my sister to take a photo of me blowing up the Mickey Mouse balloon. I wanted to show Joan that I enjoyed her gift. As I blew, Mickey’s dark colored ears started to grow. Because my blowing was so weak, the ears looked like two budding breasts. My sisters collapsed laughing to the floor. The photo I sent to Joan Chen appeared that I was having great fun inflating the balloon.
In her next letter, Joan Chen explained that she didn’t live the life of a royal princess, nor was she treated the way she had been in China. She had to work as a waitress to support herself and pay her college tuition. When Joan Chen described that this was the case with most Chinese students studying in America, a light came on inside my head.
{ Chapter 4 }
I wanted to write to Joan Chen. I hesitated because I felt that I was asking too much. I wanted to tell her that I was finding it difficult to go on living in China and that I was at the end of my rope. Finally, I decided to send her a letter. My question was: “Is there any possibility for a person like me to become a student in America?”
I let Joan Chen know that I was willing to work twenty-four hours a day every day to pay off my debts. It took me many drafts to complete the letter. I knew I could count on my friend for an honest reply. I understood that my chance was slim, because to study abroad one had to first graduate from a Chinese university. I had barely earned a middle school diploma, and I didn’t speak English.
Joan Chen wrote back. She told me that she didn’t know the answer, but that she was willing to ask around for me. In our next correspondence, she let me know that no college in America was willing to accept a student without proof of English proficiency. The standard test for international students was called TOEFL—Test of English as a Foreign Language. A score of 500 or above was required.
I located schools in Shanghai that offered beginning English classes. I biked and visited every school to see if I could enroll. But I was rejected every place I tried. I learned that there was no such thing as a “beginning level.” People accepted in the beginning-level classes were advanced compared to me.
As I waited at a local bus stop one day, I saw a palm-size ad on an electric pole. It was for a beginning-level English class offered by a private tutor. The underlined characters read, YOU DON’T HAVE TO KNOW ABCD TO REGISTER. Although the fee would cost me a month’s salary, I decided to try. To locate the address on the ad, I traveled through dark alleys and climbed four stories through pitch-black staircases. My tutor’s classroom was in an attic. The space was about four by five feet. The students had to sit on the teacher’s bed.
There was no qualification test. As soon as I paid the cash, I was told to sit down. Six other tired-looking people were crammed around me. We sat with our shoulders touching. The tutor was a toothless old man. He told us that he was brought up by Western missionaries and had worked for an American oil company in Shanghai before the liberation. The old man offered no textbook or practice sheets. He was slow and sleepy in his teaching. After weeks of studying, I was still spelling “Hello,” “Good morning,” and “I am from Shanghai, China.”
I heard about a place called the English Corner at the People’s Park. It was a place where interested people practiced their English conversational skills. What excited me was that it was free. On a winter morning, I wrapped two scarves around my neck and biked to the People’s Park. There was a crowd, but few participated. Most people observed in silence. There were two men trying to have a conversation in English. I listened hard but couldn’t understand anything. After an hour, I gave up.
I began to follow a beginning-level English program on the radio. Because of my job, I missed lessons. Soon I fell behind and was unable to follow. I bought a book titled English 900 Sentences. I was determined to teach myself. After lesson ten, I was stuck. I was unable to figure out the grammar, especially the proper use of tenses. The more I tried to learn English, the less confidence I had. When I told my father about my correspondence with Joan Chen, he told me I was crazy. “It’s a false hope you’re building! You’ll only end up crushing yourself!”
“I’ll continue kicking until my last breath,” I replied. Yet the hopelessness began to drown me. It was hard not to give in. I felt weak and sick, but I still forced myself to get up every dawn and sit on a wooden stool in the neighborhood lawn. I tried to memorize English vocabularies from a dictionary. “A-p-p-l-e … apple; a-d-j-e-c-t-i-v-e … adjective; a-b-a-n-d-o-n … abandon.”
“Do you have any talent? For example, art?” Joan Chen wrote. “You may try your luck in art school if you do.”
“I grew up painting Mao murals for propaganda purposes,” I wrote back. “My Chinese calligraphy was average.”
Joan Chen put me in touch with a friend of hers who explained to me the admission process of an American art school. A “portfolio” was what I needed. I wondered what was expected. I had no training at all. I could copy neither the masterpieces of Chinese traditional brush paintings nor the Western masters. The only great Western artist I
knew was Michelangelo. It would be impossible for an amateur like me to copy him. I had heard about a new Western art exhibition in Shanghai titled Impressionism and Cubism. I decided to check it out.
At the Shanghai art exhibition, I found myself confused and thrilled at the same time. Confused that Western society had abandoned Michelangelo for childlike paintings, thrilled that so-called modern art would be easy for me to copy. It was the first time I learned the names of Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Andy Warhol. I stared at the paintings and was not sure if I liked them. The strokes were clumsy and the subjects unclear and unrecognizable. The only thought that started to excite me was: If Americans preferred childlike paintings like these, I stood a chance to fool them.
After coming home, I set out canvases, brushes, and colored inks. I painted throughout the night. I found myself having a good time. There was no master’s work in front of me. I was guided by my own nature.
I felt like a child who had been given a magical brush. I painted earth, trees, bushes, and water in abstract shapes. I painted my deepest fear in the form of dark and broken strokes mixed with tearlike ink drops. I splashed my emotions on the canvases. My mother said she saw madness and death in my paintings.
Three months later, I received a thick envelope with a catalog and an application. It was from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The glossy catalog scared me, for I knew that I wouldn’t be able to afford it. I didn’t let myself be discouraged, though, because I remembered what Joan Chen had told me: Most Chinese students managed to work to pay their tuition and counted on future earnings to pay off their debts.
I attempted to fill out the application form but got stuck in the first line. I was supposed to fill in my name, but I didn’t have an English name. Do I spell “An-Qi” from the Pinyin system? Could Americans recognize that? For advice, I knocked on the door of the wise man in the neighborhood. He suggested I spell my name as “Angel,” for it was an American name. I carefully copied the characters of “Angel” onto the application form, only I didn’t realize that I had spelled it as “Angle.”