Under Red Skies

by Karoline Kan

  I told them about Children’s Day, when we had a big ceremony for the students from my class who had become Communist Young Pioneers. The teachers put red scarves around our shoulders, and we vowed to be prepared to sacrifice ourselves for the mission of Communism.

  Chunting looked especially envious when I told that story. She was a Young Pioneer, too, but her school did nothing to mark the big day.

  I told them how on the days before the officials from the Tianjin Education Bureau came to our school for inspection, we were busy cleaning our classrooms and campus, and students whose uniforms were not clean on inspection day were sent home until the officials left.

  Listening to these stories, my village friends always giggled and begged for more. Their favorite one was about how we were forced to cry together while watching the funeral of Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader.

  On that day Dean Li, the school administrator, arrived with three tall boys from the upper grades, carrying a television. My classmates became excited and started cheering. A girl followed them in, carrying a picture of an old man that she hung on the blackboard. Dean Li whispered something to Xiangju. They looked stern, not sharing a smile as they usually did.

  “Dear students.” Xiangju turned to address us while Dean Li walked to the back of the classroom. “Did you know, our dear grandpa Deng Xiaoping has passed away?” She paused, screwing up her face into a grimace.

  “I know you are so sad, as am I,” she continued. “Thanks to our headmaster’s support, we can all watch the funeral and pay our respects to Grandpa Deng together. You can cry.”

  Cry? I could not believe what I was hearing. Since our first day, we had always been scolded for crying in school. Now we could cry together? For this old man?

  “Stand up and pay silent tribute to Grandpa Deng!” Xiangju ordered.

  I stood up, stifling a laugh. I didn’t even know who Deng Xiaoping was. The old man in the photo was smiling. I looked around at my classmates, wondering if any of them knew. They looked just as confused.

  “I know you want to weep for our dearest grandpa Deng,” Xiangju said.

  “Who’s Grandpa Deng?” I asked.

  Xiangju threw me a razor-sharp look.

  “Deng Xiaoping is known as the architect of China’s Reform and Opening Up,” Dean Li said. “He is much admired for his determination in the negotiations with the UK to return Hong Kong to us. It is so sad he couldn’t live to see the handover ceremony.” China and the UK had planned to hold the ceremony that coming July, a few months after Deng died.

  We all wanted to be good students and please Xiangju, who obviously wanted us to weep. I saw some of my classmates trying, but clearly struggling.

  Xiangju and Li walked around, peering attentively at our faces, and though a few good students managed to squeeze out a tear, a couple of others burst out laughing and were immediately sent out of the room.

  I didn’t understand how I could cry for somebody I didn’t know.

  Mom told me the story of how hard she and her friends cried when the death of Chairman Mao was announced in 1976, and how it felt like the end of the world. Did they want us to cry like that? Her generation worshipped Mao when they were young, but my generation no longer fanatically admired any politician, not even Deng Xiaoping.

  * * *

  Most Chinese people might not be politically active, but many are politically chatty. A Beijing cabbie could analyze happenings in government more vividly than any political science professor.

  “A US fighter jet bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade!” Wang Jianli shouted between swigs of his baijiu, the popular rice liquor. “Damn the Americans!”

  His voice, together with the sounds of bottles clanking to the ground, startled me out of my nap. I stuck my head out the window. He had one hand on his hip, and his eyes were red with anger. Glass fragments from broken beer bottles were scattered on the ground around him. He was talking about the bombing in Yugoslavia, which happened early that morning. It wasn’t until 7 p.m. that most people learned about it. Xinwen Lianbo, China Central Television (CCTV) network’s most popular daily news broadcast, covered it.

  In the spring of 1999, the US-led NATO troops decided to attack Yugoslavia to stop its president, Slobodan Milošević, from encouraging marginalized Serbs to attack the Kosovar Albanians, who had formed a separatist movement. On the morning of May 8, 1999 (Beijing time), NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Serbia (a republic of Yugoslavia before it broke up into various countries including Bosnia, Croatia, Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Slovenia), killing three Chinese journalists. American officials insisted it was a mistake, but Chinese officials accused the US of a deliberate attack, and so did Chinese citizens, who also believed the bombing was an intentional assault on our country.

  “It’s a message!” Wang shouted. “Americans are telling the Chinese, ‘From now on, don’t make a fuss about what we do, otherwise we’ll teach you a lesson.’”

  They all spat out curses against the Americans.

  “Officials today don’t have guts like Mao Zedong did!” another old man said. “They’re cowards! If Mao were alive today, we wouldn’t have to be afraid of stupid American threats!”

  A younger man who worked in our local government office also joined in. “We’re still too weak. Americans have aircraft carriers and can send people to space; what can we do? ‘Weak countries don’t have diplomacy,’ as the saying goes. We should keep quiet and focus on industry.”

  I was fascinated, because I had never heard people criticize our government and the Communist Party in this way! When I told my mom what they were saying, she said such talk would have landed them in prison during her time. I was afraid, but to hear this conversation was like eating vanilla ice cream all my life and then tasting chocolate for the first time. I couldn’t resist listening.

  That week was pure chaos. My school ordered the students to write an essay about the incident. The news anchors condemned the violence led by NATO and the US, and the village of one of the journalists killed was renamed in his honor as “Xinghu” Village. Angry students wearing T-shirts and holding flags with anti-American slogans gathered at the US embassy. In Lutai, anti-American posters were plastered outside schools, shopping malls, post offices, and hospitals, with messages like “CHINESE PEOPLE ARE ANGRY THIS TIME.” Police and protestors seemed to be everywhere.

  In third grade, my classmates and I were too young to go to any protest, but on the first Monday after the bombing, my school organized all the students to assemble outside in the playground in front of the national flag, which was at half-mast. Headmaster Zhang read out a script he had prepared, denouncing the US as evil. “Dear students, remember this day. Work hard and be strong. Only when we are strong enough will the outlaw countries respect us.”

  It felt like a sacred moment. I looked at the red neckerchief I was wearing and thought about what he had said. Chinese officials and my parents and teachers seemed to always talk as if China was bullied and had to protect itself. The American government is bad, and we should trust that the Communist Party will make China strong. Why were they bad? Was it just because of one bombing? But the teachers had been saying that about Americans since I was in kindergarten. We had been taught this our entire lives. Nobody bothered to explain why. Maybe because we were too young. But then, why were we old enough to hate foreign countries and their people?

  I didn’t know what to write about the bombing. The news and events left me confused. Should my essay be full of hatred? I had only just learned how to say bad things about Japan, which had been the forever enemy in our grandparents’ and parents’ conversations, and the anti-Japan narrative had dominated our curriculum. Of course, I had read essays about the bad behavior of the US, but it was hard for me to sit down and write of my own contempt for a country I knew little about and had never visited.

  My friends and I actually liked American things. I dreamed of one day going to Disneyland to meet Mickey Mouse.
Yunxiang was crazy about Nike shoes. Li Chun loved Superman so much that he covered everything he used at school—his pencil box, books, and rulers—with the images of the strong white American hero. Even Headmaster Zhang proudly bragged about a watch he wore that was purchased in America. He was the only person I knew who had been to the US, and I overheard that he liked it. However, Headmaster Zhang would say things like the American government was evil but the American people were good. That was even more confusing.

  What happened to the good people once they started jobs in the government? I thought.

  But it did not matter whether things made sense to me or not—in the classroom, we had to say bad things about America.

  I spent all evening sitting at my desk writing—then crossing out sentences. It won’t end well for the ugly American politicians with their evil policy toward China, I wrote. But I thought Americans were not so ugly looking, and besides, I had no idea what “politicians” were and what “policy” really meant.

  The Chinese Communist Party and the people won’t let troublemaking America realize their conspiracy. No, again. What was the conspiracy? I could not find the right words. What did the party have to do with my feelings? Of course I was angry at the US soldiers who had killed the Chinese journalists, but I could not make myself hate them. I had never even met an American!

  Desperate, I turned to my parents. My father had acquired a rich collection of quotes, thanks to his involvement in political movements during his youth. He let me sit on his lap and recited funny sentences for me to write down. From his suggestions, I chose: Imperialism will never abandon its intention to destroy us! and All reactionaries are just paper tigers! They sounded like something Xiangju wanted to hear, but they did not mean anything to me. Baba said they were famous quotes by Chairman Mao, and that Mao had been good at making up sentences that sounded weird or didn’t make sense. There was even a little red book of his strange quotes. In this way, I managed to finish my task.

  Soon after, the street banners were gone, and Xinwen Lianbo reported less and less on the bombing until one day their anchors were allowed to smile. And Wang and his friends started to complain about CCTV, wondering when they would start broadcasting NBA games again.

  Chapter Six

  The Gods vs.

  the Ghosts

  China’s qigong (pronounced chi-gong) boom began in the 1980s, a time when people were beginning to explore different forms of exercise, meditation, and spirituality. And soon after Falun Gong was founded in 1992, it became the most popular one. Within months, about a hundred villagers in Caiyuan, one-tenth of the population, had begun to follow Falun Gong, including my grandfather Laoye.

  “It’s nonsense!” Uncle Shoukui complained over the phone to Mom. “Dad is practicing that? He’s a party member and should believe in Marxism—not God, heaven, or ghosts.” Uncle Shoukui had recently been appointed senior attorney in the Lutai Town Judicial Bureau. He firmly believed in party ideology and could hardly believe that his father, who had been the first party member in the village and so an atheist by default, had “succumbed.”

  My mother knew he would be upset, but understood that Laoye was not the only one who was practicing the “superstition,” as it was called.

  Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa), founded by Li Hongzhi, is a form of Buddhist qigong—the practice of cultivating life force, or qi, through a set of physical movements, breathing exercises, and meditation techniques. It is based on a philosophy of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. It also claims to incorporate elements of Taoism, a religious and philosophical tradition that emphasizes living in harmony with everything. The villagers believed that with good morals and regular meditation, they could free themselves of attachments to the physical world and ultimately achieve spiritual enlightenment. And perhaps more importantly, it made villagers of my grandfather’s generation feel as if they belonged to a movement again, for the first time in a long while.

  “Li Hongzhi is a messenger sent by Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism,” Laoye told me when I was visiting him one weekend. “He created Falun Gong to save the people and take them to heaven when the world ends, which will happen soon.” His eyes sparkled as he spoke. He pointed to a portrait hanging on his bedroom wall of Li Hongzhi next to the portrait of Chairman Mao.

  Our science teachers had told us that all religions were superstitions. At the age of ten, I had no clue what religion really was. I didn’t believe in any god, angels, fairies, spirits, or ghosts. At school, we were taught to be atheists, no exception. If a student said they believed in God, the other students would isolate him and label him a lunatic. We had no discussion about what spiritual beliefs were and what they could bring to people. As was the case with many other topics, as students, we were told to conclude only that religion pollutes people’s minds by making them care less about their current life. That was that.

  I was convinced that only uncivilized people, who probably never went to school, believed in such things.

  But Laoye has read a lot of books. How could he fall for it? I also wondered.

  As I listened to Mom on the phone with Uncle, I went into Laoye’s room to examine the portrait of Li Hongzhi. Master Li, as practitioners called him, was sitting cross-legged on a lotus-shaped cushion. His eyes were closed and his hands rested in front of him, his upturned palms resting on top of each other. He looked calm. Golden halos crowned his head, just as they crowned Buddha’s in the books and movies I saw. They symbolized Master Li’s magnificent energy and power. The villagers had never seen a computer or heard of Photoshop, so it looked real to them.

  It was Cripple Feng who brought Falun Gong to the village and sold the doctored pictures of Li for five yuan a piece.

  Cripple Feng had polio as a child and was left with a lame left leg, which earned her the nickname. In her fifties, she learned of Falun Gong during a trip to see her cousin in a neighboring village. Her cousin, who had been practicing for years, told Feng how believers never became ill, thanks to their devotion to Master Li and his teachings. If Cripple Feng followed Master Li, even her leg would one day be healed, her cousin said. It sounded ridiculous to me, like something from science fiction. But at the same time, I wished the miracle would really happen so I could see it. If Cripple Feng were no longer crippled, I wondered, then what would we call her?

  Cripple Feng was converted when she attended a gathering her cousin had organized at home. Feng was touched by the scene of dozens of people sitting in the same room, chanting: “Falun Dafa is good.” It reminded her of the time during the Cultural Revolution when all the Red Guards chanted, “Long live Chairman Mao!” Feng had been a Red Guard, too, and liked the feeling of unity. By the third night, she was no longer just Cripple Feng; she was a believer.

  When she returned to Caiyuan the next day, she announced her new identity and told the story of her conversion. It was the first time anyone in the village had openly admitted to spiritual belief since the Cultural Revolution, over thirty years before.

  As a devout believer, Feng turned the largest room of her farmhouse into the Falun Gong Practicing Center. Lotus-shaped cushions, Falun Gong books, and DVDs featuring Li giving speeches arrived by the van load outside her front door. Feng resold everything to the villagers, making a tidy profit. Some questioned her motives, whispering that her devotion to Master Li was just a scam. But the doubt disappeared when Feng began hosting free DVD screenings and discussion groups every evening.

  Perplexed by Laoye’s devotion, Uncle Shoukui quizzed my grandfather on his belief, but Laoye argued that it was a good thing, teaching people to be kind and helping those in pain to suffer less, which was in sync with his beliefs, not separate from them.

  “Then what about Chairman Mao? Are you still an atheist?” Uncle Shoukui asked. “Both your idols will be furious, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m almost eighty,” Laoye replied patiently. “At my age, such things do not matter as much as they used to. It’s not all black and white.�
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  To me, Laoye’s response made sense; it went along with how I felt about Chinese politics and Disneyland.

  Reading Li Hongzhi’s books and practicing tai chi–style exercises became an important part of Laoye’s daily life. Chunting and I would imitate Laoye’s movements, sending ourselves into fits of giggles while he moved his arms and legs gracefully to the music coming from his tapes. He moved slowly and gently, and he remained expressionless. He knew we were behind him, of course, but he never got angry. If we were especially noisy, he would open his eyes and look back at us, giving us a tolerant smile as we made faces at him before running out into the yard. He’d just close his eyes again and return to his exercise.

  If Falun Gong is superstition, then superstition is not all bad, I thought.

  Laoye’s temper had cooled down and he became much nicer. He no longer chased the street cats with a bamboo stick when they stole his salted fish hanging behind the house. Now he felt all lives were equal and that he didn’t have the right to punish others, even the naughty cats. I began to like how superstition had softened his heart. Of course, I dared not tell my parents or uncle that!

  Laoye might have been a firm believer, but he drew the line at attending gatherings. Acutely aware of his party membership, he didn’t want people talking.

  How should a party member behave? The question perplexed both Laoye and me.

  Laoye had been among the first to get up and plow the fields of the People’s Commune. When villagers began to starve during the three years of the Great Famine, he worked in the public kitchen, making sure everyone was fed before ladling out his own meager portion. He and his family suffered, but he never doubted the revolution. He was a member of the Communist Party, he’d tell my grandmother, who was often pale from malnutrition. She felt her health should be his first priority, but he would not betray Chairman Mao, believing that a good party member sacrifices for others.