by Bei Dao
Next to mathematics in affliction came Russian. China and the Soviet Union had flip-flopped and become enemies, but the majority of middle school students still learned Russian as before. Retroflex sibilants proved to be a primary impediment; fortunately, these sounds were also present in the hawking cries of northern cart drivers, and so it would seem better to first learn how to drive a cart, then learn Russian. I wrote words and phrases on little slips of paper, Russian on one side, Chinese on the other; from early dawn till reaching Houhai, I’d rote memorize each syllable to death, some by way of Chinese homophones that I’ll remember forever: “Saturday” (суббота) — shu bao da (“book bag’s big”); “Sunday” (воскресенье) — wazi ge zai xie limian (“sock placed inside a shoe”); “home” (домой) — da maoyi (“hit the sweater”). When the Cultural Revolution blew up, the trend shifted to English. There were no classes at the time, though using the homophonic method I can still recall one sentence: “Love live Chairman Mao!” — Lang laile qianmian pao! (“The wolf has come, run on ahead!”)
Chinese class, too, was losing more and more of its appeal, as politics started to make inroads into our writing assignments. In order to answer the call to “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng,” one not only had to practice good deeds but also had to learn from Uncle Lei Feng in keeping a daily diary of them.
It was around then when I waited in ambush that afternoon at the Changqiao intersection — Deshengmen Inner Street running north up a steep incline for three or four hundred meters. A flatbed tricycle piled high with goods slowly headed up the slope, the bare-backed boss struggling with all his might to pedal; I dashed over, assumed the bow stance behind him and pushed, pace for pace following his pedaling, the old boss glancing back every so often, nodding his head at me. I pushed him all the way to the top of the slope. Then noticing we had just passed a little eatery, I asked the old boss to wait a moment, rushed inside, paid two mao for four pieces of huoshao flatbread, and stuffed them into his hands as he stared at me wide-eyed and tongue-tied.
Back home I wrote about the incident in my daily diary, then copied it out in my composition book, handing it in to the teacher the very next day. During our Chinese lesson, the teacher asked me to stand up in front of the whole class and read it aloud. As I began, I still felt puffed with pride. Reading on, this feeling turned to shame, until in the end, I couldn’t find a hole to crawl into to hide my face, the wretchedness I felt worse than committing a bad deed and being caught on the spot. From that day on, I never wrote another diary entry.
4
The second year of Middle No. 13 wound down, final exams imminent. The teachers’ cafeteria simmered with a variety of small dishes, while the students’ cafeteria boiled large cauldrons of grub; fortunately, though, the grub rotated three times a week, keeping faint glimmers of hope alive. One Wednesday lunch hour, the student cafeteria served vegetable steamed buns plus egg drop soup — everyone lined up as one beaming ocean of happiness.
I returned to the classroom with my veggie bun and egg drop soup, half eating half chatting. Suddenly, I bit into some alien matter in my bun. I spit it out and before my eyes lay a dead cockroach. I slapped the table and leaped up; surrounded by a swarm of students, I charged into the cafeteria. The head boss was ladling out the soup, nearing the end of his shift. He replied evasively, saying that the cafeteria manager should deal with this matter. Like Danko in Gorky’s tale, lifting up his flaming heart, I raised my vegetable steamed bun and led the masses to the cafeteria office.
Old Li Baixi the manager — pointy mouth, monkey cheeks, triangular eyes — supervised the cafeteria and purchased the food; all day long he leisurely cycled through the campus with basketfuls of chicken, duck, fish, meat, none of it going to the student cafeteria. After listening to my vehement speech, he said, “I know what can be done, just ask the head boss to exchange your veggie bun.”
“What?!” I was livid, and raised my voice. “Just exchange a bun and everything’s fine?”
“Then you tell me what should be done?” he asked serenely.
For a moment I was at a loss for words, gazing at him blankly, then with bold conviction and righteous indignation, I asserted, “From now on there must be a regular health inspection and the quality of the meals must be improved, and furthermore a public apology must be made to the entire student body.”
“But how you can you even prove it was really a cockroach and not a dried shrimp?” Old Li countered.
I turned around to mobilize the masses: “Everyone, speak out now! Has our cafeteria ever put dried shrimp into the veggie steamed buns?”
“No way!” A rush toward Old Li with a great yelp and a roar, “I protest the cafeteria!” “Protest! Protest!” The incitement spread, everyone shouting the slogan over and over, and for a moment it got a little out of control.
“You dare to rebel?!” Old Li howled, his face a ghastly white. “Zhao Zhenkai, you’re always up to no good, stirring up trouble. Let me tell you, if you cause any more needless problems, first your mess hall privileges will be revoked, then I’ll take you to the headmaster’s office and you’ll be punished with demerits until you get expelled! Any other students who want to follow his example, the same ending awaits you!”
His threats were quite effective. Most dispersed, only myself and two or three classmates remained. I thought about being expelled, my parents’ reaction, and also started to waver. Then those two or three others vanished and only the lone stalemate between me and Old Li remained, mutual rage focused in our gaze. The class bell rang; I furiously chucked the veggie bun onto the floor and stomped away in a cloud of wrath and resentment.
That was my first time leading a rebellion, and it ended in failure. I realized there was no arguing with authoritarian power — a cockroach is but a dried shrimp. I also realized that to truly rebel, your heart must be strong enough to bear any consequences whatsoever.
5
Middle-school students in Beijing used to parrot this adage: “Middle 8’s assemblies, Middle 3’s fees, Middle 4’s poor eyes, Middle 13’s marching band.” The marching band, indeed, was the pride of our school. A number of brass instruments had been inherited from Fu Ren’s affiliated secondary school, pockmarked and scarred, the French horns in particular covered with patch-ups. Nevertheless, at Beijing secondary school sports competitions and large-scale rallies and assemblies of every kind, Middle 13’s band proved to be the most impressive.
During summer break in 1963, Yifan and I both went to the Little Eighth Route Army Camp, open to any junior-high student in the city. Yifan, a squad leader, marched at the front of squad two’s line formation; I was but an empty-headed idiot, a commoner, and also short, and so drifted toward the back of squad four’s formation. Setting off from the school’s playing field, the marching band led the way, the rays of the sun glinting crow-bright off the brass instruments. Suddenly, the drums let out a rolling salvo, shaking the earth. As the line formations shifted, Yifan and I crisscrossed and passed each other, exchanging a triumphant glance.
Beijing Middle No. 4
1
In the summer of 1965, I received a notice that I had tested into Beijing Middle No. 4.
Middle No. 4 was considered the best secondary school not only in Beijing but in the whole country — its existence had been as remote to me as the Heavenly Halls. After elementary school, I had originally aspired to test into first, Middle No. 4; second, Middle No. 13; third, Middle No. 14 — this basically the same ideal for all of us comrades with above-average grades. Because I didn’t see through the ji ji (極積) deception in the language section of the exam, I was ensnared by a word-reversal trap and, midway on my journey to the Heavenly Halls, I took a turn into Middle No. 13.
That scene played over and over in my mind — Teacher Dong on proctor duty, halting beside my desk, sighing deeply, reminding the whole room to carefully check things over again before turning the test i
n. How I skimmed it one more time, saw nothing amiss, confident of a 100 percent mark, handed it in early. But then, as the old saying goes, my name fell behind Sun Shan’s (Sun Shan of the Song dynasty, whose name appeared last on a list to pass the imperial exam), and my father chewed me out, and that summer vacation passed in a gloom-glum, my face felt filthy, my head hung low, impossible to lift.
In my third year of secondary school, the swaying of the grand pagoda tree outside the classroom quietly died away. By the middle of the first term, Father pressured me to rise early, study late, and step by step from the shallows to the depths “actively” ji ji (積極) hasten on my journey.
The comprehensive exam loomed; I became more and more superstitious, particularly toward the numeral 4. One day walking home from school along Da Xiang Feng (“Big Soaring Phoenix”) Hutong Alley, I closed my eyes for four steps then opened them, closed my eyes for four steps then opened them. Walking and walking like this I soon reached Liulin (“Willow Shade”) Street and, flipping my eyes open, stood before an old lady with a look of awe on her face. She giggled and giggled with glee: “I said to myself, why does this pathetic little blind boy have no stick to guide him?”
You can even ask Heaven how I, a little blind boy, finally groped his way to the Gates of the Heavenly Halls.
In the summer of that year, my social status clearly improved: Father saw me through new eyes and treated me with deference, relatives and neighbors offered effusive compliments, saying there was no higher school badge to bear — it seemed I had become the darling of humanity. What made me even happier was that Yifan downstairs had also been accepted to Middle No. 4, and moreover, the two of us had placed into the same class.
2
Beijing Middle No. 4 was established in 1907 and originally called Following the Mandate of Heaven Secondary School Halls; its name changed to Public Secondary School of the Capital No. 4 in 1912, and to Beijing Middle No. 4 in 1949. It was about the same distance from our apartment as Middle No. 13, taking about twenty minutes to walk there.
The day school started on September 1, I got up early, restless, mind wandering, dillydallied and puttered around, opened my book bag and closed it, then set off for school with Yifan. The school’s gated entrance, built in an arch out of gray brick and stone, reflected the style of the late Qing and early Republic era; the poet Guo Moruo had carved the red-painted inscription 北京四中 (Beijing Sizhong, “Beijing Middle No. 4”) onto the stone lintel of the gate. The gray walls combined with the wrought-iron gate evoked something sinister, and even appeared once in a feature film as the headquarters for the Japanese military.
The first day of school mostly consisted of meeting the teachers and students. I belonged to Upper 1, Class 5, and save for Yifan, all the faces were new to me. I felt slightly uneasy, the uneasiness of being out in public with your clothes buttoned up wrong, knowing it’s too late to fix and there’s no hiding it.
The school day had barely begun when, lightly flicking the beads of an abacus, I suddenly realized the seriousness of my problem: The dominance of the language arts was over, its halcyon days past; mathematics, physics, chemistry held the keys; the nightmare smothered me until I couldn’t breathe, especially thinking about math, one glance at an integer and a thick fog swallowed me, east confused with west, north with south. All my peers were in you-leap-and-I’ll-leap-farther math-mode, some already using the Junior 3 calculus textbook. I moaned bitterly to myself, regretting that I had ever wormed my way into this Heavenly Hall of Numbers.
Truthfully, the mood of the whole school felt oppressive, though the reasons why were very difficult to discern, like trying to trace dragon veins in a mountain — something always seemed off. The clothes students wore, for instance, looked plain and simple to the point of suspiciousness: sweat-stained tank tops, perfectly new pants with patches on them, military sneakers with holes that exposed bare toes. As everyone knew, Middle No. 4 possessed the highest concentration of children of high-ranking officials of any secondary school. Obviously, anything could be covered up, like an infectious disease in an incubation period, ready to break out at the critical moment.
Our head teacher Tian Yong, eight or nine years our senior, doubled as the math teacher. White-rimmed glasses, face ruddy, energy boundless — every day he’d join us for a jog, or play basketball with us, dribbling and jumping as if he were the King of the Children. A recent graduate of Beijing Normal University, salary fifty-six yuan a month, not married, and able to stay in Beijing while teaching at a prestigious school — he exemplified fate’s good faith.
Tian Yong accompanied us on our toils in the fields; besides leading the class into the countryside, he looked after our labor force’s daily cares and meals. With a rope belt tied around his waist, he personally tended the cooking fires and handled the wok, while another student and I acted as his assistants. Pour out the pork fat, dice up the white yams, sizzle the pieces in oil and add a plash of soy sauce, the mouthwatering fragrance wafting into the air. When it was time to eat, Tian Yong, ladle to ladle, served each of us.
Those were the days of the Four Cleanups Movement, the reinnervation of class struggle. Mother was transferred to Guiyang for a year, to participate in the Four Cleanups of the local banking system there. In the countryside, the first problem hit us immediately: When greeting the peasants, what should we say if we happened to run into a well-off, landowning farmer? Discussing it among ourselves, we agreed they must be loitering in the shadows like ghosts. We asked the village cadre official only to discover the doubtful status of this social stratum — better not to greet anyone.
One day while on break from our labors, K., a fellow classmate, wrapped his arm around my body and put a knife up to the small of my back, first as a joke, then in earnest: I refused to beg for mercy; he furtively increased the knife’s pressure ever so slowly, the point piercing deeper. Our faces nearly touched, stares deadlocked for at least a few minutes. All at once, unable to endure the pain any longer, I pushed him away. He laughed, saying that he was only putting my revolutionary willpower to the test. From then on, I kept my distance from K. Combative aggression had been awakened along with class consciousness.
In the spring of 1966, a violent thunderstorm threatened to make landfall, signs of it could be seen everywhere, putting all of us on alert like small animals. Between lessons, students chatted about revolutionary ideals and life-or-death situations; everyone seemed to be facing the last judgment. I secretly thought up a slogan to shout before the sacrificial act, rehearsing it over and over to myself, imagining myself encircled by pine trees. I put my fingers in the crack of a door, slowly closing it, tighter and tighter, until the pain caused me to drip with sweat. I relented, as if punishment had been served — the possibility of me turning traitor to the cause seemed almost assured.
I didn’t belong to the Communist Youth League, and worried about being excluded, though I had no idea how to infiltrate the organization. Yifan acted as my sponsor, which is to say he represented the league. This gave me hope — we were brothers after all. I prodded and probed him; he kept his mouth corked like a bottle.
3
The Cultural Revolution launched with a bang. June 1, 1966, the People’s Daily published an editorial with the headline “Sweep Away All Ox Ghosts and Snake Demons,” and Middle No. 4 officially terminated classes. Hearing the news in the classroom, I whooped jubilantly along with the rest of the students, knowing my motives weren’t pure: The announcement coincided precisely with my mathematics state of emergency, the final exam around the corner. Old Man Heaven took note, whisking me into the Heavenly Halls that year, once more saving me from the watery abyss and scorching flames. Waking up each morning, I felt unsteady, anxious that Chairman Mao would change his mind again and alter his plan. Finally, the grand statesman decided to close the school gates forever.
A couple of weeks earlier, in mid-May, my comrades and I had set out early each day and retu
rned late. We went to the western outskirts, and in front of the immense red gate of the Beijing Food Industry School, tried to fan sparks into fire, inciting the students to strike and carry out revolution. We spread the slogan “Don’t bake cakes for the bourgeoisie!” though the instant “cakes” issued forth from my mouth, having gone through the famine years, I couldn’t help salivating, starry bits of spit spraying out as I gave my speeches. Most of the students at the Food Industry School were from the poorest classes of society, and however persuasive the arguments, they didn’t understand the need to strike, what good would it do, and why to not bake cakes. In the middle of a heated debate, a female student asked me, “Okay, then, you explain it: What does cake have to do with the bourgeoisie?” Their animosity couldn’t be tempered, their hostility was resilient, invincible; we eventually had no choice but to retreat.
When Middle No. 4’s party committee suffered a paralysis of action, each Youth League branch for Upper 3 joined forces and assumed control. I transcribed big-character posters at school — I didn’t sleep for three days and two nights. On the third night, my comrades and I went to Qinghua University’s affiliated secondary school to show our solidarity with the downtrodden Red Guards there. In a trance, half delirious, footsteps feeble like walking on cotton padding, stage lights dazzling our eyes, raucous clamor near and far. The carnival of the revolution caused the blood to surge and boil with righteous anger.