by Anchee Min
{ Chapter 11 }
The city felt like a big freezer as the snow on the ground turned to ice. Under leafless trees with their crooked branches going in all directions, a naked male student exhibited himself in front of the school entrance. He lay in a swing strung between two tree trunks. I could see the fog of his breath. I wondered how long he had been on the swing. Should I report him to the authorities or call for help? I looked around. It surprised me that the people who walked by paid him no attention.
I went to consult a security guard. “The man will catch cold,” I said. The guard let me know that there was nothing to worry about—the naked man was in the midst of a performance. “This happens all the time,” he said. What kind of performance? I remembered the acute pain I experienced in China when I stood in icy water planting rice.
Another crowd gathered in the school hallway in front of a portrait of Chicago’s mayor Washington. In the painting he was wearing a bra. I had seen the black mayor on TV. I had no idea what he had done to deserve the insult. In my opinion, the portrait was mean-spirited. A TV news crew was interviewing the artist. The naked man outside the entrance must be disappointed, I thought. He had been trying to attract attention, but no one seemed interested.
The head of the student union came in. In excitement he reported that a group of Vietnam veterans was marching outside. They were protesting over a student who had burned a US flag. “The veterans are threatening to shoot the artist and burn down our school! We must unite and fight for our freedom!”
The students held meetings to discuss the “essence of freedom” while the president of the school defended the “constitutional rights of the artist” before the media. The students were disappointed, because nothing happened in the end. The naked man put on his clothes after exhibiting himself without an audience.
I received an invitation to join the Communist Club. I was excited to meet American Communists for the first time. The gathering took place in the lounge of the school auditorium. The members were a bunch of young people dressed in sloppy clothes with tattoos and long hair. The head of the group spoke in sloganlike sentences. He told me how he grew up worshipping Mao. He and the other members believed that Communism was America’s solution. “Countless crimes committed by the American government,” I heard him say. “We must destroy the system.”
I didn’t know what they expected me to say. “Tell us about Red China!” they encouraged. “Tell us your firsthand experience!”
“It didn’t work,” was all I could say.
The club members didn’t believe that I was a real Communist. They doubted that I was from Mao’s China. I said that I could prove it. They said that it was time to play a movie made in China about the Cultural Revolution. The title was The Breakup.
I opened my mouth and sang along with the movie’s soundtrack:
There are green pines all over the hill
There are fat crops to be harvested
It is great to destroy the old system and replace it with a new one
It is great that peasants are becoming the masters of the university
I told the club that the movie was one of Madame Mao’s projects. The story featured a Chinese peasant girl who took over the university leadership. She tore apart the system to guarantee the right of every poor person in China to attend the university.
“But it was propaganda!” I said to my American comrades. “It never happened in real life.”
Nobody was interested in what I had to say. The club’s mind was set on China being the model to replace America’s “evil system.”
I realized that while I had the right to say what I wanted, others had the same right to ignore me. The school existed to make everyone feel heard and supported. Most of the time one would hear one’s own voice. Most of the professors gave favorable critiques. Their job was to encourage “self-expression.” Every student was respected as a “mature artist.” As long as you paid the tuition, you could be lousy at what you did but still be told, “You are wonderful!”
To give myself time to earn a living outside of school, I signed up for independent studies. I met with professors once a week for twenty minutes. We discussed semiotics: “the signifier” and “the signified.” I did my best to pretend that I was serious about art, but inside I was consumed by frustration and anxiety.
At the art gallery, I guarded a student exhibition in which an American flag was spread on the floor. About three feet above the flag, mounted on the wall, was a notebook-size diary. The viewers had to step on the flag in order to view the diary. The footprints on the flag looked like blotches of mold.
The growing number of footprints on the flag made me feel that I was neglecting my duty. Every time after a viewer left, I took off my jacket and used it to wipe the footprints off the flag. I became tired of doing that. When the next viewer came, I said politely, “Please do not step on the flag.”
I quickly learned that it was the artist’s intention to have footprints on the flag. My cleaning was ruining the desired effect. The American flag seemed to symbolize evil for the student artist. I reacted the same as I did with the Communist Club. Although I embraced the concept of freedom, I couldn’t embrace the artist’s self-expression. I was grateful to America. If this country hadn’t taken me in, I would not have lived. I loved China, but I couldn’t lie and say that I had been anything but a piece of trash there.
I was taught to hate America. As children we were shown films of American soldiers murdering Vietnamese Communists, girls of my own age. When I was in fourth grade, I had denounced my beloved teacher as an American spy. As a teen, I was given a wooden stick to practice fighting the enemy—a dummy made of straw with a US helmet on its head.
I remembered dreaming of being shipped to Vietnam. I was jealous of the boys who were drafted. I envied them even when some of them didn’t return. I loved the propaganda movie in which a hero lit an explosive and jumped into a group of American soldiers. As he jumped, grand orchestra music came on and the screen was filled with smoke. Every child in the theater wept and swore revenge. We vowed to follow in the heroes’ footsteps to destroy America. I imagined my ashes being returned from Vietnam, wrapped in the red Communist flag made of silk. My memorial stone would show the number of American soldiers I had killed with a single phrase: “She who tore down the American flag.”
I didn’t know God, but I began to sense his grace in America. Even with some unpleasant experiences, I had been treated with dignity. For example, the painted-fabrics lady, Mrs. Lueng, bothered to negotiate with me. She didn’t pinch me or destroy me as if I were a bug. The churchwoman at the bus stop showed me that freedom was given to anyone in this country. She was allowed to act crazy in pursuing her own beliefs. The homeless, alcoholics, and drug users were allowed to roam the streets. The campus Communist club was allowed to exist. The art students were free to burn the American flag and free to paint the mayor with a bra.
I began to write to my parents signing off “With love.” It was the beginning of my transformation. Chinese children of my generation said, “I love you, Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China,” but never “I love you, Mama,” or “I love you, Papa.”
I compared the “men-eat-men capitalism” to Mao’s “Serve the people with heart and soul.” Mao claimed to have owned no personal property himself, to possess no money, but he purged and robbed millions at will. China’s railroad system would grind to a halt anytime Mao’s personal train needed to pass. Mao’s private plane would fly whenever he wanted and would land anytime and anywhere at a minute’s notice. Mao owned China and its citizens.
When my professor in my twentieth-century American art class showed slides of Andy Warhol’s Mao series, I was surprised. I couldn’t understand why Mao portraits were up in American museums and our classroom when a billion Chinese tried to take them down. We finally took the Mao buttons off our jackets, the Mao portraits off our walls, and Mao’s quotations out of our conversations. I asked the pro
fessor, “Why Mao?”
He shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”
The professors spent entire courses analyzing the sketches, notebooks, diaries, and journals of famous artists. My classmates also carried sketches, notebooks, diaries, and journals as if they anticipated becoming famous themselves. They sketched in the cafeteria and in the hallways. Each one believed that one day their “stuff” would be discovered, studied, and admired. They dreamed that their names would one day be associated with the history of art.
I wished that I could share my thoughts: for example, how much I envied the homeless. I envied the fact that they spoke English and had the right to work. I couldn’t tell people that I craved a meal at McDonald’s. If I didn’t feel obliged to save my “Chinese face,” I would have eaten people’s leftover burgers and french fries. I was disappointed one day when a classmate invited me to meet with her parents for lunch. When my friend’s father suggested that we eat at McDonald’s, I was thrilled. Unfortunately, my friend declined: “I hate McDonald’s! I hate junk food!”
I had been in America for almost two years. I was still not where I wanted to be in terms of my immigration status. I had already ruined my sister’s and brother’s chances to follow in my footsteps. Both of them had applied as students and both were denied US visas. Reason? Because I was here, which revealed an “immigrant tendency.” Their passports were stamped “B-14.” What could I possibly do to make it up to my siblings?
I tried to concentrate on the lecture. It was a film seminar held from six to nine in the evening. I signed up for the class because I hoped to kill two birds with one stone. Bird one was to practice English listening comprehension. As much as I adored Dr. Guenther, I didn’t feel that I was improving fast enough in her class. I couldn’t afford to take my time. I needed to earn my degree as soon as possible.
Bird two was to learn a skill that would help me get a foot in a business door. I wanted to learn the mechanics of camera operating.
I sat in the front row of the class facing the instructor, a man in his mid-thirties—a filmmaker from Los Angeles named Albert. He had tanned skin and curly dark-brown hair. Mr. Albert’s lecture was not about experimental filmmaking, but about his payment.
Sitting in his chair, Mr. Albert asserted his right to charge the school for the films he showed the class. He explained that he made the films. They took him years. He said he would play fair. He would charge 50 percent less than what the National Museum of Films charged. “I am only asking to be paid at the rate of $2.50 per minute,” he said. “A real bargain,” he pointed out. He reminded me of a carpet seller on TV saying, “It’s only $2.50 per square foot!”
Two hours passed, and Mr. Albert continued on. The students sat in silence. Mr. Albert asked the students for support.
My mind wandered. The image of an old man with a stooped back surfaced in my memory. It was Mr. Cheng, a teacher from my middle school who taught agriculture. He passed by me every Saturday afternoon as I worked on a propaganda wall newspaper for my class. Watching me struggle with drawing, Mr. Cheng offered to give me free art lessons. He wanted to help, he told me, because he saw frostbite on my hands. “You don’t quit and I like that,” he said.
Mr. Cheng told me to ask my mother for permission and modest supplies. “Two brush pens, one medium, which will cost you seven cents, and a few small ones, for about three cents,” he said. “Ten cents will be all your mother has to provide.”
I became Mr. Cheng’s student for two years. Sitting in the American classroom, I realized that I had taken Mr. Cheng for granted. Perhaps I was wrong to expect Mr. Albert to be as selfless as Mr. Cheng or Dr. Guenther. If I was to become a teacher, I would model myself after Mr. Cheng and Dr. Guenther. I wouldn’t hold students responsible for my issues with the school administration.
Mr. Albert forced me to change my perspective on the teacher-student relationship. All of the sudden, a monster called money showed its face in front of me. I realized that my relationship with my American teacher was based on money. The thought repelled me. It chased after me. I couldn’t get away from it. I looked at my watch and felt as if Mr. Albert was wasting my time.
The booth was lit, the projection was on, and the film was ready to roll. But without getting proper payment, Mr. Albert was determined not to show his film.
Another hour passed. Mr. Albert sat in his chair. The room was windowless and the air stiff. Mr. Albert suggested that the students conduct their own discussion. The students chatted among themselves. They didn’t have any trouble with their immigration status. Time and money were not issues for them, but they were life-or-death issues to me. The monster inside me screamed.
The title of the course was 4-D. When it was Jerome’s turn to present his project, he requested that we empty the room. I don’t know why I peeked through the door, but I was the one who discovered what Jerome was doing to himself. I hadn’t detected anything wrong at the beginning of the class. Jerome was a graduate student and a nice guy. My favorite exercise was called Trust. I had to climb onto a crane about two stories high. Below, my classmates were instructed to open their arms and catch me when I jumped. I was instructed to free-fall backwards. I was forced to trust. It felt good to be able to trust.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Jerome hanging from a rope tied to the crane. His feet were in the air, about six feet above the ground. When his face began to turn purple, I realized that this was not art. No one was beside him. I didn’t see how he could untie the rope and release himself.
I broke into the room. At the top of my voice, I yelled, “Jerome! I once wished to die too! The night I lay in the rice paddy. But Jerome, you are not in a Communist labor camp. You can turn your life around!”
Jerome jerked his body and kicked his feet. The rope tightened around his neck.
“Get out!” he cried, choking.
I knew I ought to honor his wish, but I couldn’t leave him.
“Get … out!”
I struggled to find words. “Switch places with you” was what came out of my mouth. I couldn’t decide which was the correct word to use, switch or trade. “I will switch trade places with you!” I yelled. “Switch trade!”
He didn’t respond. His body continued its jerky movement.
Did I mispronounce the words? Did “switch trade” fail to make sense to him? How about “trade switch”?
“I will trade switch you!” I shouted. “Labor camp! Backbreaking! You, in America. You make happy! No good, hanging. Trade switch. You smile. I smile. Make happy together. Trade switch!”
I don’t remember how I left the room. I was hysterical. The department chair came and took care of the matter. Many years later, a former classmate told me that Jerome had lived. He never revealed what was on his mind that day. Rumor said that an Asian woman performed Chinese voodoo involving trading sandwiches.
The memory of Jerome’s bulging eyes and blue veins stuck with me. I tried hard to understand his pain. I knew that he wasn’t faking. But a pain that drove a young American to suicide regardless of his freedom and protected human rights was incomprehensible to me. I didn’t have a better phrase to describe how I felt—American youth suffered a different form of deprivation, which might include the lack of suffering itself.
{ Chapter 12 }
In the summer of 1986 I sent home a photo of myself. It was an image my family expected—I was successful in America. I wore a red sleeveless top and a matching short skirt. The outfit was Joan Chen’s. I had visited her the previous Christmas in Los Angeles. She was kind enough to pay for my airfare and let me stay with her for two weeks. I also wanted to look for any work opportunities and any connections that might lead to work.
Joan Chen had matured into a young woman since leaving China years before. Now twenty-four, she had been trying to make a name for herself in America. Many roles came her way, but few inspired her passion. She craved a substantial acting part, not merely playing a delicate China doll. She was having a hard ti
me avoiding being typecast.
Joan Chen gave me a makeover one evening. She applied what she had learned from her makeup artists. She believed any woman could be transformed into a cover girl. She dressed me with clothes from her closet.
I enjoyed looking in the mirror wearing Joan Chen’s red summer outfit. I even looked sexy, I thought. She said I could have the outfit, and I was thrilled. I would have stayed in Los Angeles if my English had not regressed in the short time I visited Joan. As much as I loved my friend and the California weather, I returned to Chicago taking with me her red sleeveless top and matching skirt.
I sat on the shore of Lake Michigan in Chicago dressed in Joan Chen’s clothes. I asked a stranger to help take a picture of me. I smiled at the camera leaning toward the shore. Right before the shot, the sound of an engine rumbled from the lake. I turned around and saw a giant sailboat approaching. There were handsome, suntanned men drinking beer on the boat’s deck. I asked the kind stranger to please include the men in the background. I put on my biggest smile as the shutter clicked.
In the photo, I looked confident and attractive. The sailboat behind me and the handsome men on it enhanced the effect. I might have been one of their party. I mailed home the picture, the fake me. The real me was depressed, lonely, and homesick. I craved affection, and I dreamed of love. It had been too long since I had shared intimacy with another human being. I wasn’t looking forward to turning thirty. I wished that I had called out to the sailboat, “Hey, I am here! I have been waiting!”
Discount food stores were the only places I shopped. I looked for deals like two dozen eggs for a dollar and a loaf of bread for fifty cents. I made dishes out of rotten vegetables. I never missed the discounted milk and meat that were on or beyond their expiration dates. Sometimes the milk had a funny taste and the meat smelled. I boiled the milk and thoroughly cooked the food. To get rid of the smell, I marinated the meat in dark brown soy sauce and then stir-fried it with ginger and garlic. I was able to live on a thirty-dollar-a-month budget.