The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China

by Yuan-Tsung Chen

  “So you went to visit him and became his friend.” To hurry him up Ma Li finished the sentence for him. “Did he throw a dinner party for you?”

  “No. We only drank tea.”

  “Tea?” exclaimed Dai Shi, as quick to fire as ever. “You call it tea! Who drinks tea here? It was blood. He sucked blood from the peasants and you sucked with him.” She still could not resist the opportunity to show off her super-revolutionary spirit.

  “Excuse me. I don’t want to defend him, but a sip of tea does not make him a bloodsucker,” interjected the soprano with mild reproof.

  “There is no need to exaggerate. But that was a deplorable mistake to make,” said Ma Li sternly. “Here we are trying to deflate the arrogance of the landlords and you go out of your way to boost their prestige. Many peasants are still hanging back, waiting to see how we will handle the landlords, and this is the way you handle them. No wonder some of the peasants are still afraid to speak out against the landlords!”

  We all chimed in at this and gave him such a tongue-lashing that he hung his head with remorse and finally promised never again to forget his class stand.

  Now, who were the other two culprits? They must have made worse mistakes. The worst culprit always speaks last at a criticism meeting. I looked over at Wang Sha. He was gazing out of the window at the clouds scudding by.

  Without any introduction, the pretty dancer Chu Hua cried, “I said, ‘No, no, no,’ but he said it was all right.” Her voice quavered to a stop. She was on the verge of tears.

  It did not take much guessing to know that the “he” was the agile folk dancer Liao who sat next to her. He sat with his long legs stretched out in a half-reclining posture, his arms crossed defiantly over his chest. He tried to put on a devil-may-care expression but it lacked conviction.

  “Why did you seduce her?” Ma Li upbraided him indignantly.

  “Now come,” protested one of our young actors. He was good at acting proletarian parts. “Now it’s you exaggerating. It was mutual seduction, that’s clear.”

  “No, we didn’t seduce each other.” The folk dancer Liao mumbled something else that was unintelligible. We did not understand what he was trying to say. He was probably glad that his speech puzzled us; it gave him time to reconsider. “We were talking about work.”

  “Work!” exploded Dai Shi.

  “We cannot blame you for being engrossed in your work,” the amateur archaeologist Hu smiled benevolently. His ordeal now happily over, he could use his experience to point out loopholes in other people’s stories.

  The folk dancer felt he had to explain himself. “While we were talking, we were walking through the woods,” the young lover went on, ignoring the archaeologist’s remark.

  “In the woods?” the soprano exclaimed involuntarily. She raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of surprise, or maybe sympathy.

  “May I ask what is the difference between forgetting yourself in the woods or in the house? A mistake is a mistake,” said Ma Li irritably.

  “In the woods, one can become intoxicated with the beauty of nature. They might have forgotten themselves completely, thrown away all discretion, forgotten all precautions. You are a dancer. If you became pregnant what would you do?” the soprano spoke gently to Chu Hua.

  The gasp of fright in the dancer’s throat strangled another bout of sobs.

  “But we plan to get married as soon as we get back to Shanghai,” Liao asserted in defense.

  But Dai Shi was unmoved.

  “I think it’s disgusting the way they’ve behaved! Send them back to Shanghai immediately,” she demanded.

  “Oh, no! That’s too much of a disgrace!” cried several voices, mine included. We deplored the young couple’s lack of discipline, but we were also repelled by Dai Shi’s lack of understanding, her self-righteous arrogance. We made it clear that we would resist any such harsh treatment of the two lovers.

  “Do the peasants know about this?” Cheng asked.

  “No, it’s not yet public knowledge,” answered Wang Sha.

  “Then why don’t we keep it quiet, ‘in the family,’ as it were.”

  “No,” retorted Ma Li. She turned to Liao and addressed him directly with great severity. “You know the peasants abhor the idea of young people falling in love and choosing their own marriage partners. To their minds, free choice in love is the same as adultery. If they find out what you’ve done they’ll distrust all of us. Then how can we go on working as before?”

  The dancer hung his head. All his earlier bravado had disappeared.

  Ma Li stood up. Now we knew that she would certainly give us a long harangue, full of moral admonitions and sententious remarks. The young actor, who could himself make such speeches admirably on the stage, helplessly rolled his eyes at the ceiling. The soprano adjusted herself more comfortably in her armchair, the only one in the room, and shielded her eyes with her hand. She would doze away the coming session. Those like me who had not yet spoken now felt obliged to prepare speeches that would match Ma Li’s. I regretted that I had not spoken earlier.

  But my reluctance to criticize hardly surprised me. I knew only too well that I could have made the same mistake myself if circumstances had conspired against me. Now I would have to pretend by implication that my own thoughts and conduct were wholly above reproach. The thought crossed my mind: Should I make a self-criticism instead of criticizing them? Waves of anxiety and indecision rose in me.

  I remembered one afternoon in Longxiang when I had gone to Wang Sha’s room. He wasn’t there. I went in and touched the places on his mattress burnt by his careless cigarettes and roughly patched over. I trembled with longing for him. I stood by his kang. I felt his kisses and embraces. An idea took shape in my mind: Only once, just once, let passion sweep me off my feet. Let them punish me afterwards, I wouldn’t care. The confession was on the tip of my tongue. I swallowed hard, trying to swallow it back down my throat. No, I couldn’t bring myself to bare my soul in public, especially in front of Dai Shi. She would screw up her face in scorn of me. No, I would not give her the satisfaction of humiliating me. But then, perhaps in criticizing them I would be criticizing and exhorting myself, giving myself strength to resist a similar temptation.

  I felt Ma Li’s eyes were on my face, questioning my silence. When I looked back at her and caught her eye, a shadow had come over her face. I had to say something.

  “At the beginning of this session, when Comrade Wang Sha was talking, I recalled a scene in my childhood.” I halted and made an effort to fight down the memory of that other scene that would have exposed the impropriety of my conduct. I spoke falteringly. “I was a little girl then, a first-grader on her first day of school—” I stopped again. My thoughts were still in a turmoil, so that I hardly knew what I was going to say next. Even if only Wang Sha and Ma Li had some idea of what I was really thinking, I knew I must go on rambling until I could articulate thoughts more relevant to the present situation. So I began again. “I stood at the school gate, watching my aunt getting back into her car. The car moved off and I felt as if my world was coming to an end. ‘Ling-ling, let’s take a look at our garden,’ a quiet voice addressed me. I turned around. Here stood my first teacher, an American nun. While walking around the garden, she said to me that some day I might forget many things about the school, but I would remember the beautiful garden. She was wrong. I remember many things I learned there. I still can quote Patrick Henry’s words, ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ I still can quote Lincoln’s speech about ‘government of, by, and for the people’ and the American Civil War to liberate the black slaves. I still observe our school’s motto, ‘To serve,’ to serve the poor as Jesus Christ had done. Those words inspired me. This is one of the reasons why I’m here. Maybe you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this?”

  The hint of drama in my tone implied that I was about to confess something important. I felt Dai Shi’s eyes fixed on my face. I calmed myself by telling myself that it was always
safer to confess a past mistake than a current sin. “You see, because I was raised in American missionary schools and heard these things, I trusted the Americans too much. I never believed that the Americans could do to China what they are doing now: to thwart our revolution to liberate the peasants from slavery and try to tell us what government we should have. I can see now that everything is linked together. We really are in one big battle, and everything that interferes with our fighting that battle successfully must be severely criticized.”

  I paused to steal a glance at Wang Sha. From the way he gazed out the window I knew that he was paying careful attention to all that was being said. Reassured, I spoke out even more vehemently.

  “As for Chu Hua and Liao, I think they deserve severe punishment. What they have done was indeed thoughtless because it has happened at this particular moment, in this particular place. Individual happiness has to be sacrificed to the demands of the revolution. We all of us are living under the same voluntary constraint. Each one’s failure to live up to our undertakings weakens us all.”

  When I had finished my speech, Chu Hua shot me a flabbergasted “You too, Brutus” look. I felt uneasy about myself; I didn’t like myself for what I had done. I had used the same strategy that every participant in a criticism meeting was familiar with: Focus the attack on others in order to escape it yourself.

  “What shall we do about this affair?” Wang Sha asked. I wondered if anyone besides myself noticed that he spoke with a touch of sad helplessness. For a moment he looked with compassion on these two erring lovers. Then he collected himself and said in a firmer voice, “You two cannot go on working in the same village.”

  “Send them back to Shanghai. They are no better than traitors,” Dai Shi persisted stubbornly.

  “Keep them together and see that they behave in the future,” said another voice.

  “Oh, God, what a punishment,” Malvolio Cheng muttered under his breath. He was sitting just behind me. Aloud, he said, “I suggest that one of them be transferred to another village.”

  “I second that motion,” I added quickly, trying to make amends for my harshness of a few minutes before.

  “Why don’t you exchange your place with her?” Dai Shi asked me in an insinuating voice.

  Wang Sha’s lowered eyelids blinked almost imperceptibly. He darted a glance out of the corner of his eye in my direction, but not at me.

  “I don’t mind exchanging places with her,” said Ma Li in a more conciliatory mood.

  This was a reasonable solution and the whole group accepted it. But in the meantime I realized that while I might have voted for a good solution to their problem, I was now facing a new problem of my own.

  At this meeting we had been learning to run affairs, to dispense justice in a fair way, but I was worried by the way in which even-handed consideration of a problem had been mixed with flagrant self-serving, and by myself as much as any.

  11

  The Search

  It was an unusually mild winter night. Moonlight softened every line of house and tree. Stars twinkled in the dark-blue sky. The air was scented by the breath of still-distant spring. On such a night at another time I would have lain down on my bed, content to gaze peacefully through the window at the heavens. But tonight I was too troubled to go to bed and sleep. Tomorrow we would start searching the landlords’ houses. Wang Sha, Malvolio Cheng, Shen, Tu, and I had discussed and planned everything—or so we thought—but, as my aunt used to say, I’m a “worrywart.” This head-on confrontation could lead to violence, and while I had no fear of a verbal battle I knew my ninety-five pounds stood no chance in a real fight. I had heard that the peasants could get so aroused that they threw discipline to the winds. I knew that the landlords could get so desperate that they resorted to murder. I doubted if we could control events completely, but I put my hopes in Shen and Tu and Cheng. Any mishap would be our responsibility. We had plenty to worry about all right.

  I had come to rely more and more on Malvolio Cheng. For all his eccentricities, I found that, when needed, he was a mine of information and level headed, too. Twenty years of activism put him that many years ahead of me in experience and judgment. That evening I asked him, “Cheng, tell me truly. Do you think the landlords in Longxiang are hiding arms?”

  “They’re guilty until they prove they’re innocent, if you get what I mean.” He was frowning with concentration as he considered how best to explain this to me. Finally he said, “Look at it this way. The landlords’ houses are fortresses, real fortresses, spiritual strongholds. We have to break into those forts. Right now, I can bet that some landlord is drinking wine with some peasants, perhaps with a few of our own people. The antique furniture, the old paintings on the walls, family heirlooms, shelves of books, solid walls of brick … all these things create a feeling of stability, of something unchanging and imperishable.”

  Cheng spoke with an unaccustomed seriousness that gave depth to his voice. He knew what he was talking about. He came from a landlord family himself; I knew little more about it than that. But while I had seen the world from a high-rise apartment building or a villa in the middle of modern and almost wholly bourgeois Shanghai, Cheng had lived in and grown up in that old world of village feudalism. Intellectually he shared the progressive beliefs of our time, but at the same time he seemed unable to shake off a lingering memory of life in his landlord father’s home. Bits of this conflict had come out in conversation as we got to know each other better during our time in Longxiang, and now I posed a direct question about it.

  “Cheng, are you talking about things you’ve felt yourself?”

  He started, surprised at the bluntness of the question. Then he looked at me frankly, full in the face, for a long while.

  “Yes. But I long ago rejected that life.” His face and voice showed that he had no regrets on that score. He shrugged his shoulders and continued:

  “After a few cups of wine the slightly tipsy guests will be feeling cozy and safe inside the impregnable fortress. With a confidential air their host will show them the deeds to his land embossed with imposing vermilion seals. He will tell them that to his certain knowledge Chiang Kaishek is by no means finished, that he has gathered a huge army on Taiwan and one fine day will be coming back. Other peasants, not favored to enter these halls, finer than any they have ever seen in their lives, will believe that these fortresses are protected by the spirits of the landlords’ ancestors and the gods who have always served the rich.

  “Those myths must be destroyed. The only way is for the peasants to invade those fortresses and see for themselves that they are not impregnable, that there is nothing sacred about them.” From that we went on to review the details of our next day’s activities, reading through our notes from the recent conference and racking our brains to uncover possible flaws in our plans.

  Finally Cheng yawned and stood up to stretch his arms and back. “Let’s call it a day. No matter how we plan and calculate, something will always crop up to take us by surprise.”

  Next morning at daybreak we found an encouraging number of activists, including Xiu-ying, gathered in the courtyard of the office. But we waited in vain for Shen and Tu. Finally a ragged urchin rushed up with a message that they would both be late because they had been called to another village on “urgent business.” At this late moment we could not delay or postpone action. Left to ourselves, Cheng and I gathered the group around us and gave them some last encouraging words of exhortation. We told them to observe the discipline and laws of the laboring people; incriminating evidence or ill-gotten gains found in the search were to be turned in to two older peasants who would record it all in a notebook. At this point nothing else should be removed from the landlord’s home.

  As we moved off, a busily chattering group of more than a dozen, I was surprised to see several old women with their children edge their way into our ranks. A few other men and women straggled along behind us, far enough away so that they could still turn back but near enough t
o see what was going on or even join in the action. Most of the villagers went about their business as usual or timidly looked out of their doorways.

  Our first target was the nearest landlord, a man named Bai. His house, surrounded by a stout brick wall with a single gate, stood a little apart from the cluster of buildings, farm houses, and hovels that made up the central village of the township area. We marched without order and without ceremony straight across the stubbled fields that made up his estate. In the lead was Little Tian, one of our young activists, carrying a small red flag on a pole.

  We had sent ahead no word of our coming, but when we reached the gate of Bai’s walled compound, he already stood there waiting to receive us like guests. He was dressed in a worn but warm padded gown with a small black skullcap on his head. His black trousers were caught up at the ankles with black bands. On his feet were white socks and black cotton slippers with thick white soles. He had everything ready that we demanded: land deeds, account books, contracts, receipts for sales and loans. He said he had decided to cooperate and do everything according to the law, and so it seemed, but the smile on his sallow face was forced, and his eye pouches were baggy from lack of sleep. He led us politely inside the courtyard murmuring, “Please, please.”

  As soon as we stepped into the courtyard, the hubbub died down and the villagers became very quiet. They craned their necks looking around, inspecting everything, touching nothing. These decorated courtyards and rooms, which seemed almost dowdy to me, filled them with awe. Many had seen such opulence before when they worked in the landlords’ households, but then they had been only servants. Here for the first time in their lives they were being treated like honored guests by the “master” himself. It threw them off balance, as it was intended to, and they followed him sheepishly. It was like a lugubrious housewarming. Nothing was going according to plan. Something had to be done to rouse our docile troops.