City Gate, Open Up

by Bei Dao

  From a very young age, Zhenkai and Zhenxian had very different temperaments. If you gave them each a mooncake, the two utilized entirely disparate eating methods — Zhenkai first ate the filling and then the outer crust; Zhenxian does the opposite, first nibbling the outer crust away before wrapping the filling back up and putting it in his pocket to savor slowly, making one mooncake last for many days. (From my father’s notebook)

  My father was normally quite patient with us as children; he’d often play with me, tell me stories. On a little notepad he would draw a small figure on different pages, each in a slightly different position, and upon flipping the pad from beginning to end, the figure would move about, as if in an animated film. My younger brother and sister gradually replaced me; I felt a slight sense of loss, tasted the slight vinegar tinge of jealousy, though I felt a little proud, too — I had grown up.

  From Fuwai Street we moved to the single-family apartment in Three Never Old Hutong No. 1. Ordinarily, Mother and Father would leave early and return late, and under Qian Ayi’s supervision, we’d go to sleep, get out of bed, do homework according to our routine schedule — Sunday the only exception. On those days, Mama would rise early to help Qian Ayi prepare breakfast; we’d linger on our parents’ bed and play with Father. For a spell we became enraptured with language games, like the one based on colors where we named father “Red Baba,” “Blue Baba,” “Green Baba” at whim, rolling with laughter.

  3

  Father really did display a range of colors.

  Our earliest clash occurred when I was around seven. At the time, we resided in the Fuwai Insurance Company Apartments, living with Uncle Yu Biaowen’s family in a four-room unit, two rooms for each household, shared kitchen and bathroom. That was the summer when Uncle Yu Biaowen was labeled a “rightist,” then leaped to his death, leaving his wife and two sons alone and heartbroken.

  The storm swiftly picked up and squeezed through the cracks of our house — my parents started to argue more, as if it were the only way they could release the strain that had reached capacity overload within them. In an instant, Father assumed the nature of the storm, sick with madness, a malevolent expression spreading across his face, his actions frenzied, unhinged, his person totally changed. I stood firmly at Mother’s side, as she was defenseless against him.

  The causes were chicken-feather-and-garlic-peel trivial matters, nor, it must be noted, did the fault always lie entirely with Father. For instance, he took pleasure in buying books, and once purchased a huge brick of a Russian-Chinese dictionary — nothing wholly inexcusable as he was teaching himself Russian at the time. I still remember its twenty-nine kuai nine price tag to this day, it being the most expensive book I had ever seen. To the lady of the house with five mouths to feed, however, it was a little hard to accept. This turned into the darkest stretch of domestic politics in our household.

  Another scene: Father gripped the bedroom door with a huge roar and a shout; Mother, enraged, grabbed a flower vase on the dresser and hurled it at him; he dodged it, the vase sailing past him, shattering to the ground. I happened to be present, sole eyewitness who observed everything; my whole body trembled, and yet I managed to bolt over and stand between them, while glaring at my father with intense hostility. He didn’t anticipate this, and raised his palm with a halt in midair.

  Mother’s illnesses always seemed to coincide with their quarrels; whenever she lay in bed, too sick to rise, I’d go to a bakery nearby and buy her a fluffy piece of egg-and-cream cake roll, as if it could be the elixir of immortality. On the way back I’d open the paper bag, see how much extra snowy-white cream had spilled out, drool dribbling down my mouth, though not once did I dip a finger in.

  One evening, Father convinced himself that I had pilfered snacks from the cabinet. Though I had before, this time I was innocent, his accusations totally unjust. I refused to own up to his allegation, saying that I would die first, and so he forced me to kneel on the floor and endure his palm-of-the-hand blows. What wounded me most was the shock of seeing Mother standing by Father’s side, although she secretly had protected me, preventing his violent lashes with the feather duster.

  Red Baba Blue Baba Green Baba transformed into Black Monster Baba.

  By the time we moved to Sanbulao Hutong No. 1, my parents fought almost continuously. I resembled an injured animal, nerves taut, senses acute, waiting for disaster to drop each second. My premonitions often came true. I hated myself, hated my small, weak, powerless self, unable to do anything to protect my mother.

  Father’s authoritarian behavior spread beyond our household. Preparing to go to bed one night, I found him in one of his dark moods, pacing back and forth as he smoked. I pretended to read, taking note of his each and every movement. He hurried out and rapped loudly on Uncle Zheng Fanglong’s door next to ours. I couldn’t make out their conversation, but my father’s voice grew louder and louder, interspersed with slaps on the table. I covered my head with my quilt, listening to the dong-dong dongdong of my heart beating faster and faster. I felt ashamed. Father didn’t return until the middle of the night; he whispered privately with Mother in their bedroom. A nightmare engulfed me.

  I bumped into Uncle Zheng in the corridor the next day; he retracted his neck and chuckled weirdly; gazing up at him, it was as if the real meaning of life had revealed itself. I pieced together as much as I could from snippets between my parents I overheard: Uncle Zheng had made a serious mistake of some sort, and on behalf of the Central Committee, Father had spoken to him. Many years later Father told me that if the situation had taken place a few months earlier, he would have stumbled first and fate would have switched their situations.

  Zhenkai only wants to have fun, his school grades very mediocre, though his compositions for Chinese class frequently earn the praise of his teacher. Zhenkai’s faults raised in parent-teacher conferences are always “not paying attention in class,” “loves to play little tricks,” and so on. Once, checking over his grade book, a mark for what looked like a midterm mathematics test was noted as 4.5. I thought this very strange, how could a score like this exist? I asked Zhenkai about it, and he said: “5 is a perfect mark; I made one mistake and so got a 4.5.” His explanation seemed somewhat reasonable, but I still wasn’t convinced. I visited the school to ask the teacher and learned that Zhenkai had actually received a 45 percent on the test. He had added the decimal point himself to make it 4.5. I reprimanded him for his behavior and he expressed his remorse. (From my father’s notebook)

  With time my parents gradually reconciled. In their later years, they never ran out of conversation, causing one to ponder deeply the full import of that name for a spouse, lao ban (“old other half”). Three years after my father passed away, my mother told the interviewer working on an oral history project on women in China:

  Our whole life living together as a married couple was harmonious, comforting, even when the winds raged and the rains poured down. . . .

  4

  At the start of the summer in 1960, my father temporarily transferred from the CAPD to the Central Institute of Socialism, working in the office of academic affairs. The institution was part of the CPC’s United Front Work Department initiative, and all the students there belonged to families connected to the upper echelon of the democratic parties.

  Every weekend I took my younger siblings out to play. The Central Institute of Socialism lay just north of Purple Bamboo Park — we rode the No. 11 trolleybus to the last stop, crossed the White Stone Bridge five or six hundred meters northward to deserted wilderness, trickling water, the chattering of frogs and insects. The institute consisted of a white cluster of six-story buildings, the fountain in front perennially dry. Army soldiers guarded the front gate, and upon entering, one needed to register at the reception desk, though we quickly became familiar faces and could skip this formality.

  Father borrowed a room for us next to his interim living quarters. We basked in the b
eneficial rays of the United Front, the meals there decent, movies shown on weekends, and the facilities top-notch, like the Ping-Pong room. Father had received certification to be a level-three Ping-Pong referee, the lowest level of national officiating for amateur competitions, though these matches maintained the intense atmosphere of a professional tournament. He sat upright and rigid, like a stiff robot, lenses gleaming, each word and numeral of the score announced with emphatic enunciation, “Three to four, switch serve,” and crossing his arms when declaring a change of sides.

  At the institute, Father was so busy he usually only appeared in the cafeteria for meals. I liked to wander around alone, lost in the crowded maze of the buildings. I got to know the elevator operator, Uncle Wang, and would help him run it. When he told me that he used to be a soldier in the military, my esteem for him ballooned; I pestered him about the kinds of guns he used. Much later I would learn that he killed himself during the Cultural Revolution.

  One day, Father told me that a student’s dorm room had been broken into, everything cleaned out, the loss totaling more than one hundred thousand yuan, an astronomical figure indeed. But then my father furtively added, “It wasn’t a problem; the student flew back to Shanghai the same day and repurchased a whole new set of household items. He’s the country’s famous ‘little red master’. . . .” Father whispered the wealthy son’s name as if it were a state secret.

  Bored to the stars with nothing to do, I lay on the bed with my brother and sister singing “We Are the Heirs of Communism,” the two of them deliberately veering off-key at the end, infuriating me — this wasn’t just a matter of respect for the eldest sibling but respect for our reputable surroundings. I lodged a complaint to Father, who rubbed my head and said, “They’re smaller than you, you should be more patient with them.”

  During those difficult times, the children came to the institute where they could eat much better. We felt so bad for them we sometimes bought them a few pieces of Gaoji candy. Seeing the kids so happy as they sucked on those sweets gave us some measure of consolation. Having to endure such straitened circumstances for so long, we tried hard to think of ways to improve our children’s diets, afraid the undernourishment would affect their normal growth development. The institute allocated a plot of land on campus for a collective farm, dividing up the land between the staff. I planted mung beans and white yams on the third of a mu of land given to me; I had little time to tend it, though come autumn, lo and behold, the harvest wasn’t meager. Zhenkai and I loaded the mung beans and white yams into burlap bags and brought our bounty home, adding to our rations. (From my father’s notebook)

  That was my first run-in with physical labor. Under the cruel sun, I used a spade to dig up the yams, then shook out the lumps of earth and bundled them into the burlap bags. Father pedaled the flatbed tricycle; I sat on the lumpy burlap, swelling with pride at the fruits of our toil, prouder still for rising to an equal footing with my father.

  The white yams stored in a heap on the balcony through the winter started to rot; I sat on a little stool gnawing on a mushy tuber. Father had just bought his Peony radio–record player. The radio broadcast the “Spring Festival Overture” over and over, soaking into memory’s abyss, along with the taste of mushy white yam.

  5

  In the summer of 1974, my father bought Zhonghua Book Company’s newly published forty-eight volume Draft History of the Qing; the whole set wouldn’t fit on our bookshelf so a tall stack formed on the floor beside his bed. I noticed that he always flipped through the same volume. Evidently, many accounts of our ancestors filled the pages in that one tome.

  Our family genealogy could only be traced as far back as the period of Kangxi, the second Qing emperor, our ancestral home in Huizhou, Xiuning County, Anhui Province; in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, Zhao Chengheng moved to An County in Zhejiang Province, today’s Huzhou. Our ancestors’ residence, Qing Lan (“Surging Waters of the Qing”) Hall, used to be located on Huzhou’s Zhu An Lane, its earliest master, Zhao Bingyan, held the position of provincial governor of Hunan, deputy minister of justice. From a young age, his third son, Zhao Jingxian, studied under Yu Hongjian, the father of the prominent Qing dynasty scholar Yu Yue; and with Yu Yue, he successfully passed the triennial provincial imperial exam. Yu Yue observed, “As a child, unrestrained, though with the graces of a feudal son, as well as chivalric airs, Zhao gambled and reveled in drink, his spirit one of abundant integrity.” Later, Zhao Jingxian donated vast sums to acquire the title of prefectural magistrate, but he never took office.

  The Taiping Army sprang into being; Zhao Jingxian organized the training of a local militia in Huzhou and plated the west city gate in bronze (the names Bronze Gate and Bronze Bridge are still used in Huzhou to this day). In February 1860, Li Xiucheng’s mighty army descended on Huzhou. Zhao Jingxian and the militia forces tenaciously guarded their city for more than two years. In the annals of Qing history, this is known as the Battle to Defend Huzhou. The Qing government wanted to save this talented commanding officer and appointed him to a different post as the leader of a “lightly armed division,” but Zhao Jingxian was determined to defend the city to his death, remaining there as the food supplies emptied and the ammunition ran out; in May 1862, the city walls fell and he was taken prisoner.

  As recorded in the Draft History of the Qing: “Jingxian, wearing the imperial crest, spoke to the traitors, ‘Kill me swiftly, do not hurt the people.’ The chief traitor Tan Shaoguang spoke: ‘No, you won’t be killed.’ As Jingxian drew a blade to cut his own throat, Shaoguang seized him and took him to Suzhou, pleading with him a hundred times to join him, but Jingxian remained unbending. Half a year passed, Li Xiucheng surrendered, sent a letter of exhortation. . . . Xiucheng went on to Jiangbei north of the river, warned Shaoguang not to kill Jingxian, although Jingxian had been waiting for a chance to stab Xiucheng, Xiucheng had already gone, not knowing the danger he was in, spent the days resting, imbibing wine. In the third month of the following year, Shaoguang heard from the traitors in Taicang that Jingxian had corresponded with the imperial army and planned to attack Suzhou; Shaoguang confronted Jingxian with these accusations; Jingxian grew incensed, unleashed a string of curses, and so perished by a gunshot.”

  After the walls fell in Huzhou, the members of the Zhao clan either fled if they could flee, or died an early death. Jingxian’s firstborn son, Zhao Shenyan, was in Hunan when he heard the calamitous news; he immediately drank some poisoned wine and killed himself, age twelve. When the Xianfeng (“United Prosperity”) emperor was informed of Zhao Jingxian’s death, he issued an imperial edict calling him “Loyal Upright Solitary Stalwart, Most Exemplary and Most Exalted” and, according the highest honors of reparations to the grieving family, established an ancestral hall in Huzhou, their deeds recorded in the Official Archive of National History.

  Many years later, Yu Yue became a generation’s Great Master of the Classics. One day, while sitting silently in Zigzag Garden at his home in Suzhou, someone came looking for him — the visitor none other than Zhao Jingxian’s grandson, Zhao Hong. He brought with him some of the calligraphy and writings his grandfather had left behind, including some confidential letters that were smuggled out of Huzhou during the siege. Yu Yue spread out some of Zhao Xingjian’s five-character regulated verse to read, sighing endlessly with admiration; among his calligraphy were these quoted lines of the Qing army general Li Hongzhang’s celebrated memorial to the emperor: “Where disorder reigns swords cross and wave, solitary the crown sits when in danger.”

  Xingjian’s second son, Zhao Binyan, my paternal great-grandfather, was given an official appointment because his father had died in battle; Zhang Zhidong, the viceroy of Huguang (now Hubei and Hunan Provinces) had the deepest confidence in him and made him the director of the Guangdong Manufacturing Bureau; Zhang Zhidong eventually became the viceroy of the Liangjiang territories and appointed Binyan as the head of the Shanghai Manufacturing Burea
u, and later moved on to become the salt commissioner for the Lianghuai district and the judicial commissioner for Guangdong, among other posts. Because of troubles arising out of the nation’s turmoil, he fell out of favor with his superiors and resigned for reasons of old age and recurrent illness, settling in Suzhou. Several months passed and the Wuchang Uprising broke out — among the revolutionary heroes who abetted the overthrow of the Great Empire of the Qing was my maternal grandfather, Sun Haixia.

  The Zhao family, once worth a fortune, with wives and concubines in abundance, branched out wildly. But as the saying goes, Prosperity never lasts more than three generations; by my grandfather Zhao Zhiliu’s lifetime, the family had declined, and he eked out his days selling scrolls of calligraphy and paintings, and other antique curios.

  Turning now to my father, I fear he never experienced a shadow of his ancestors’ former splendor. His mother died of an illness when he was four or five; by the time he was twelve, his father departed this world, too, and a maternal uncle took him in. He had no choice but to break off his studies, and from age fifteen helped his new family scrape by as a copyist of official documents, while also taking care of his little brother and sister. Father brushed Chinese characters with a natural grace. A former colleague who worked under him at the insurance company, Mr. Xu Fulin, recalled that when Father saw his awful penmanship, he made him copy, over and over again, a stone-inscription rubbing of Song Lian’s Yuan dynasty composition “Parting Words for Ma Sheng on His Return to Dongyang.”

  Swallowed by the galloping turmoil of war, my father joined the growing stream of refugees ceaselessly moving across southern China. In Guilin, a Japanese fighter plane once swooped down with machine-gun fire and, in his confusion, my father opened up his umbrella to block the bullets. In those days a life wasn’t worth so much; people around him fell, one after another, yet by some miracle he survived. He took up various temporary jobs while continuing to study on his own, and eventually passed the test to work at the Chongqing Central Trust Bureau. Then came his fated encounter with my mother in early 1946, at Chongqing’s Coral Dam Airport.