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CONTENTS
Vol. 16, No. 3: JulySeptember 1984
Michael S. Duke - Chinese Literature in the Post-Mao Era: The
Return of Critical Realism
Wan Zhi (Chen Maiping) - Open Ground / Translation by Bonnie
S. McDougall
Shi Mo (Zhao Zhenkai) - The Homecoming Stranger / Translation
by Susette Cook
Shi Tiesheng - Blacky / Translation by Michael S. Duke
Dai Houying - Fathers Milk is also Blood Transformed /
Translation by Jeanette L. Faurot
Bei Dao (Zhao Zhenkai) - Poems / Translated by Bonnie S.
McDougall
Gu Cheng - Poems / Translated by Shiao-ling Yu
Shu Ting - Poems / Translated by Shiao-ling Yu
Zhang Xian - The Widow / Translated by Howard Goldblatt and
Ellen L. Yeung
Zhang Kangkang and Mei Jin - The Tolling of a Distant Bell /
Translation by Daniel Bryant
Dai Qing - No! / Translation by Dale R. Johnson
Qiao Shi - Providing a Meal / Translation by Wendy Larson
Shi Tiesheng - One Winters Evening / Translation by Alison
Bailey
Shi Tiesheng - Lunch Break / Translation by Alison Bailey
BCAS/Critical AsianStudies
www.bcasnet.org
CCAS Statement of Purpose
Critical Asian Studies continues to be inspired by the statement of purpose
formulated in 1969 by its parent organization, the Committee of Concerned
Asian Scholars (CCAS). CCAS ceased to exist as an organization in 1979,
but the BCAS board decided in 1993 that the CCAS Statement of Purpose
should be published in our journal at least once a year.
We first came together in opposition to the brutal aggression of
the United States in Vietnam and to the complicity or silence of
our profession with regard to that policy. Those in the field of
Asian studies bear responsibility for the consequences of their
research and the political posture of their profession. We are
concerned about the present unwillingness of specialists to speak
out against the implications of an Asian policy committed to en-
suring American domination of much of Asia. We reject the le-
gitimacy of this aim, and attempt to change this policy. We
recognize that the present structure of the profession has often
perverted scholarship and alienated many people in the field.
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars seeks to develop a
humane and knowledgeable understanding of Asian societies
and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confront
such problems as poverty, oppression, and imperialism. We real-
ize that to be students of other peoples, we must first understand
our relations to them.
CCAS wishes to create alternatives to the prevailing trends in
scholarship on Asia, which too often spring from a parochial
cultural perspective and serve selfish interests and expansion-
ism. Our organization is designed to function as a catalyst, a
communications network for both Asian and Western scholars, a
provider of central resources for local chapters, and a commu-
nity for the development of anti-imperialist research.
Passed, 2830 March 1969
Boston, Massachusetts
1
I
j
j
Vol. 16, No. 3/July.Sep., 1984
i
Contents
Michael S. Duke 2 Chinese Literature in the Post-Mao Era:
The Return of "Critical Realism"
5 Ruins
Wan Zhi (Chen Maiping)
Shi Mo (Zhao Zhenkai)
6
8
"Open Ground"/translated by Bonnie S. McDougall
"The Homecoming Stranger"/translated by
Susette Cook
Shi Tiesheng
Dai Houying
14
15
21
History
"Blacky"/translated by Michael S. Duke
"Father's Milk Is Also Blood Transformed"/
translated by Jeannette L. Faurot
26 A World of Their Own
Bei Dao (ZhaoZhenkai)
GuCheng
Shu Ting
27
31
34
Poems/translated by Bonnie S. McDougall
Poems/translated by Shiao-ling Yu
Poems/translated by Shiao-ling Yu
37 Women Then and Now
ZhangXian
Zhang Kangkang and Mei Jin
38
44
"The Widow"/translated by Howard Goldblatt
and Ellen L. Yeung
"The Tolling of a Distant BeIl"/translated
by Daniel Bryant
DaiQing
QiaoShi
52
53
59
The System
"No!"/translated by Dale R. Johnson
"Providing a Meal"/translated by Wendy Larson
Shi Tiesheng
Shi Tiesheng
64
65
70
Marginal Lives
"One Winter's Evening"/translated by Alison Bailey
"Lunch Break"/translated by Alison Bailey
Contributors
Alison Bailey: Graduate student, Asian Studies, University of Dale R. Johnson: Department of East Asian Studies, Oberlin
British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia College, Oberlin, Ohio
Daniel Bryant: Centre for Pacific and Oriental Studies, Wendy Larson: Department of Foreign Languages, Portland
University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia State University, Portland, Oregon
Susette Cooke: Postgraduate student, Chinese Literature, Bonnie S. McDougall: Department of Foreign Languages,
University of Sydney, Sydney, N.S.W. College of Foreign Affairs, Beijing, China
Michael S. Duke: Asian Centre, Department of Asian Studies,
Saundra Sturdevant: Worked as Editor at The Foreign
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia
Languages Press, Beijing, People's Republic of China,
1981-1982. The photos in this issue were taken in 1982 and
Jeannette Faurot: Oriental and African Language and Litera
are part of a larger photographic project.
ture, University of Texas, Austin, Texas
Ellen L. Yeung: Chinese/Humanities Department, San Fran
Howard Goldblatt: Chinese/Humanities Department, San
cisco State University, San Francisco, California
Francisco State University, San Francisco, California
Shiao-ling Yu: Visiting Assistant Professor 1983-84, Ohio
State University, Columbus, Ohio
Editors' Note
Hunger, family, death (but significantly, not rebirth),
and justice are the themes that emerge from a reading of
the stories and poems in this issue of the Bulletin. Like
the essays in our special issues on China after Mao (vol.
13, nos. 2 and 3, 1981), these stories help fill out the
picture of China today by bringing to our analysis the
ways in which Chinese writers depict their own reality.
The cumulative impact is powerful.
This anthology was organized by Michael Duke,
who provides both a general introduction and introduces
each piece. Those who translated the stories and poems
are identified at the end of each work. We want to thank
all of them.
Because there were many more stories and poems
than could fit into one issue of the Bulletin, we will be
coming out with a book that includes them all. To be
published by M.E. Sharpe, the anthology will be out in
early 1985. Watch for it.
Chinese Literature in the Post-Mao Era:
The Return of "Critical Realism"
by Michael S. Duke
To my mind. however. though all literature is
propaganda. not all propaganda is literature. . . . In
addition to slogans. posters. proclamations. telegrams.
textbooks and so forth, the revolution needs literature-just
because it is literature.
-Lu Xun, 1928
1
The mainstream of modern Chinese literature during the
pre-communist era was a form of realism that fits very well
Rene Wellek's definition of realism as a regulative idea in
European literature;2 namely, it aims at
. . . "the objective representation of contemporary social reality."
It claims to be all-inclusive in subject matter and aims to be
objective in method, even though this objectivity is hardly ever
achieved in practice. Realism is didactic, moralistic, reformist.
Without realizing the difference between description and prescrip
tion it tries to reconcile the two in the concept of "type." In some
I. Lu Xun. "Literature and Revolution," written 4 April 1928, in Selected
Works, 3rd. edition (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1980), Vol. III . p. 27.
2. Rene Wellek, Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1963), pp. 252-253.
writers, but not all, realism becomes historistic: it grasps social
reality as dynamic evolution.
Such a tradition of realist fiction-didactic, moralistic,
reformist-grew up in China through a combination of serious
concern for society and principled demand for social justice
that was characteristic of the finest products of traditional
Chinese literature and the more individualistic humanitarianism
of predominantly nineteenth-century European literature. It
flourished during the period from the May Fourth Movement
(1919) to the end of the Civil War between the Communist
Party and the Kuomintang and the establishmentofthe People's
Republic (1949). Under the influence of a narrow-minded
Maoist interpretation of the function of literature in society, it
lost its critical edge and humanistic thrust and became the
handmaiden of the Party.
The works presented in this anthology are ample proof
that the tradition of critical realism did not die. Chinese writers
consider themselves to be intellectuals and are so regarded by
society in general. As intellectuals they feel a serious
responsibility to comment on and influence society. Accord
ingly, the majority of Chinese writers in the immediate
post-Mao era, like their May Fourth predecessors, endeavored
to use "critical realism" once more to ameliorate social ills by
2
probing and criticizing injustices in the immediate past as well
as the present. After a decade of nearly complete suppression
of literature in any meaningful sense of the term, a decade
during which scores of writers and other intellectuals were
hounded to death, the serious moral purpose of the bulk of
Chinese literature in the immediate post-Mao era was to analyze
and expose the systematic injustices created or exacerbated by
the increasingly dictatorial and disastrous policies of the Maoist
regime, from the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) and the Great
Leap Forward (1958) through the Cultural Revolution (1966
1976). These writers were determined to "tell the truth" about
society as they saw it and never again to lie to themselves and
to others. Tang Dacheng put their credo most forecefully at a
literary conference sponsored by the Anhui branch of the
Chinese Writers Association in July 1980.
3
For a long time now it has been forbidden to write the truth,
forbidden to truthfully reflect the people's lives, the people's loves
and hates, forbidden for writers to base their works on their own
observations and feelings about life and to express their own
opinions. We could only write campaign literature or footnote
literature. As a result we've been unable to produce true
works. . . . This has been a tragic and shameful page in our
nation's literary history. We must not under any circumstances
ever again write lying or vainglorious literature.
In order to understand contemporary Chinese 'literature
and its relationship to contemporary Chinese society, then, we
should keep the following two points in mind:
Chinese literature of the immediate post-Mao era is an
outgrowth of May Fourth literature and is related to
contemporary Chinese society in ways that parallel the
relationship ofMay Fourth literature to the society of that era.
Post-Mao literature reflects the changes that have
occurred in Chinese society since 1949, the changing attitudes
toward those events since the death of Chairman Mao, and the
new regime's increasing emphasis on economic modernization
as the overriding goal of the Chinese revolution.
During the decade of the Cultural Revolution, an ever
more narrow application of the literary principles laid down in
Mao's Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art' had
created a situation in which "critical realism" had been
completely replaced by "Revolutionary Romanticism, "5 an
abject servant of each and every minor twist and turn of Party
Central's day-to-day political policies. Nearly everything that
had characterized May Fourth literature and even the previously
acceptable "revolutionary" literature of the first seventeen years
of the People's Republic was then forbidden. Gone were
objective truth or common sense factuality, having been
denounced as "naturalism" or "critical realism." Psychological
exploration of character, one of the key elements that made
modern Chinese literature modern, was denounced as a
3. "Bujian baodao de yici wenyi zuotanhui-ji Huangshan bihui" (An
Unreported Literature and Art Discussion Meeting-Report on the Huangshan
Writers' Conference), Qishi niandai (The Seventies, January 198\), p. 102.
4. Bonnie S. McDougall, Mao Zedong's "Talks at the fan' an Conference on
Literature and Art" : A Translation of the 1943 Text with Commentary (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1980).
5. This tenn was created for Mao by Zhou Yang in 1958 to replace "Socialist
Realism" after the Sino-Soviet split, and was greatly elaborated by Jiang Qing
and Yao Wenyuan during the Cultural Revolution.
"bourgeois" indulgence. Universally applicable humanistic
concern was forbidden because it detracted attention from the
"essential class relations" (however prescriptive these had
become since the elimination of the landlord gentry and
bourgeois classes) said to determine all human behavior.
Romantic love unrelated to interests of state or class solidarity
was an unacceptable theme, as was the depiction of so-called
middle characters as yet uncertain of their ideological
commitment to the communist revolution. Finally, no spontane
ous resistance to social injustice not led by the Communist
Party, even in a historical context, could be presented in fiction.
This situation changed dramatically from late 1977 until
the middle of 1981, as a result of liberalized literary policies
pursued by the Deng Xiao-ping reform faction during its power
struggle with a faction predominantly composed of Maoist
diehards, or "leftists," the former advocates of Jiang Qing's
literary line. The relaxation culminated in Deng and Zhou
Yant extending personal promises, at the Fourth Congress of
Writers and Artists in late 1979, that the Party would continue
to let literature be free from "the issuing of executive orders."
Although Deng and Zhou both outlined an agenda for writers
to follow, their basic premise, proclaimed by Deng, was that
"the sole criterion for deciding the correctness of all work
should be whether that work is helpful or harmful to the
accomplishment of the Four Modernizations." As a result of
this open invitation from the highest Party leadership, the years
1979 and 1980 witnessed an unprecedented outpuring ofcritical
realism that went far beyond anything written during the brief
Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956-57 or the previous two
post-Mao years.
These works, harsh, satirical, or ironic, exposed such dark
sides of contemporary Chinese life as rural poverty and the
often cruel treatment of the peasantry by rural cadres; the
venality and special privileges of older "revolutionary cadres"
who had been attacked during the Cultural Revolution but were
now getting even at the expense of society; corruption and
degeneracy in the officer corps of the once sacrosanct People's
Liberation Army; endemic bureaucratic corruption among
economic cadres so bad that nothing can be produced without
going through an incredible extra-legal network of bribery and
gift-giving; embezzlement by high level officials; moral
corruption and nihilism among a segment of the younger
generation, often the children of high cadres; and the physical
exhaustion of middle-aged intellectuals and professional
cadres. These works also contained a number of technical
"innovations," reintroductions, or rediscoveries from the
pre-communist era of modern Chinese literature as well as from
western fiction. Among the more notable of these were
structural irony combined with allegory, ironic undercutting of
accepted Party interpretations of reality through the playful
manipulation of socialist rhetoric, the presentation of morally
flawed characters as protagonists, settings involving high-rank
ing cadres in compromising positions, and the use of
"stream-of-consciousness" and "internal monologue" aimed at
revealing or even confessing a character's inner thoughts,
feelings, and motivations.
As Deng's reform faction became increasingly secure
6. Former Minister of Culture who was purged by Mao and rehabilitated by
Deng as Vice-Chairman of the Chinese Writers Association.
3
politically throughout 1980 and 1981, they began to narrow
the scope of what was artistically permissible. At a Drama
Forum held in Peking in January and February of 1980, Hu
Yaobang delivered a six-hour speech outlining precisely how
the Party leadership wanted writers to treat nearly every
conceivable literary topic. The immediate result of this speech
was that the satiric drama What If I Really Were? (Jiaru wo
shi zhende, 1979) was refused permission for open performance
unless objectionable passages were revised. The leadership was
particularly unhappy with the play's implication that the Party
is a bastion of privilege that lords it over the general population.
This was said to be an inaccurate presentation of the true
relationship between the Party and the masses. Also unaccept
able was the great sympathy shown to a young man who
impersonates the son of a high cadre in order to wangle a
transfer from the countryside back to the city where he can
marry his already pregnant girlfriend. The authors refused to
revise the play, but they did go on subsequently to tone down
their criticisms and write safer, less objectionable, and less
interesting plays.
The speech had a chilling effect on both writers and editors
who had always been confused about the limits of the new
freedoms and were afraid of overstepping those limits. There
were some exceptions. Zhao Dan, a sixty-five-year old film
star, denounced Hu's speech from his deathbed as another
instance of the kind of "wanton interference" with literature
that had always led to its stagnation in the PRC. Although his
speech was printed in the People's Daily, Party policies towards
literature grew continually more repressive.
From April to November 1981, the playwright Bai Hua
was criticized for his supposedly anti-Party, anti-socialist film
script Bitter Love (Kulian). It had been written in 1979, was
then well received by critics, and hence made into a film in
1980-81 , one destined never to be released. It was Hu Yaobang
who took over the anti-Bai Hua campaign. It had been initiated
by Deng's "leftist" opponents, but he made it the prototype
for a late 1981 media blitz against "bourgeois liberalization,"
which Deng Xiaoping said was in essence "opposition to Party
leadership." In late November Bai Hua finally submitted a
letter of self-criticism. He confessed to having been ideologi
cally confused when he wrote Bitter Love and reaffirmed his
faith in the Party and the literary principles of Mao's fan'an
Talks. He went on the following year to write another historical
play that appeared to be critical of Mao Zedong's last ten years.
It was very popular with theatre audiences, and was also
criticized in the press; but not to anything like the same degree
that Biller Love had been. This was probably because the later
play adhered very closely to the dominant party faction's view
of Mao and "ultra-leftism" as the main problem in recent
Chinese history while Bitter Love implied an overall criticism
of Communist Party policies since at least 1957.
Throughout 1982 the CCP conducted a campaign in favor
of the building of a "socialist spiritual civilization" the most
important aspect of which was said to be the education of the
populace in communist ideology. By 1982 the great wave of
critical realism with its open attacks on contemporary social
problems had subsided. Many fiction writers continued to
examine personal problems and employ modernist narrative
techniql,les. Their works touched on the. overall social situation,
but were less obviously critical of the current regime.
Meanwhile many young poets, despite being attacked as
"obscure" and "nihilistic" by their elders, continued to
4
experiment with the use of private symbolism. They advocated
writing as a means of self-expression as much as social
commentary. Indeed, many writers both young and old went
on trying to produce works that emphasized technical artistry
at least as much as, if never more than, theme.
Further insecurities were to affect Chinese literature late
in 1983, after Zhou Yang himself tentatively suggested,
following the young Marx of the Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts then in favor among some Chinese Communist
Party theoreticians, that there could be Marxist-style "aliena
tion" from labor, from political power, and from self and
society in contemporary China. This opening quickly closed,
though, when a shakeup took place in inner Party propaganda
offices. A short-lived media campaign was carried on against
these and other ideas grouped together as "spiritual pollution,"
meaning the pollution of China's revolutionary communist
ideology by the importation of Western ideas and practices.
The latter now included "bourgeois individualism," views of
writing as self-expression, modernist literary techniques,
"bourgeois humanism," alienation, the profit motive, sexual
promiscuity, and others. A number of writers were publicly
criticized and continued to be under a cloud into 1984, but
many of those who were criticized by name refused to write
self-criticisms. The Deng-Hu-Zhao Ziyang leadership, anxious
not to alienate the intellectuals and professionals whose labors
they took to be the key to modernization, did not vigorously
pursue the campaign.
The literary situation in 1984 was one of general stability
under a paternalistic system of literary control. Over thirty
official journals churned out a vast amount of generally
unremarkable material, but a few gifted writers consistently
continued to tum out readable works. Now and again a
particularly bright gem would be spotted by alert readers,
receive national attention (perhaps official government condem
nation, possibly the surest way to increased public notice and
popularity), and be eagerly sought out by readers and scholars
of Chinese literature abroad.
The present anthology was collected and translated with
the readers of English language literature in mind. It is intended
to introduce them to some artistically excellent examples of
the genre of "critical realism" from the immediate post-Mao
era in China. Most of the writers and all of the selections appear
here for the first time in English. I do not maintain that these
particular works are either the most popular inside the PRC or
the most representative of the literally thousands of works
published there from 1979 through 1982. What I do affirm is
that each of the stories and all of the poetry in this volume was
chosen for its intrinsic literary merit; not merely for its
readability, but for its re-readability. There is no doubt much
to be learned about the problematic areas of contemporary
Chinese society from these works, but they are presented here
as technically successful works of literary art worth reading
and studying, in Lu Xun's words, as "literature-just because
it is literature."7 *
7. I would like to thank Jeffrey Kinkley of St. John's University for his "labor
of love" as both an outside reader and a strong supporter of this entire
manuscript before it went to press. The poetic epigrams that precede each
thematic section below were translated by Bonnie S. McDougall (Bei Dao)
and Shiao-ling Yu (Gu Cheng and Shu Ting).
Ruins
1
I
!
I
I
Everywhere are ruined walls and broken ramparts
how can the road extend beneath our feet
-Bei Dao
1
]
The most important of the unofficial literary magazines
that sprang up during the "Peking Spring" of December 1978
to March 1979 was Jintian (Today). First appearing as a
big-character poster on the walls of the Peking Ministry of
Culture, Jint;an published some 29 short stories, 87 poems,
and other miscellaneous items before being closed down by
the Public Security Bureau in August 1980. Its best known
young writers included in this volume are Zhao Zhenkai (pseud.
Shi Mo and Bei Dao), Chen Maiping (pseud. Wan Zhi), and
Shu Ting. The writers in Jintian attempted to avoid blatantly
tendentious literature because they believed "that literature
should reflect the uniqueness of the individual human being;
should present the author's individual vision of life; should
express genuine emotions through the beauty and artistry of
skillfully employed imagery, metaphors, and symbols; and,
above all, should be autonomous and free from the direct
restraints of politics. "*
The "literature of the ruins" (jeixu wenxue) is a term
applied by Hong Kong critics to a group of stories like Shi
Mo's "On the Ruins" (Za; feixu shang, Jintian, no. I) that
bear witness to the personal and cultural ruination caused by
the Cultural Revolution years. The writer's intention, which is
* Michael S. Duke. Blooming and Contending: Chinese Literature in the
PostMao Era (Bloomington; Indiana Univ. Press, forthcoming).
5
Photo by Saundra Sturdevant
often compared to that of post-war German literature, is to
provoke thought about the deeper significance of a terrible
decade.
Wan Zhi's "Open Ground" (Kaikuo di) is one of those very
short "ruins" stories dealing with the tragic irony of
twentieth-century Chinese history, symbolized in a battleground
where "ignorant armies," impelled perhaps by Fate, "clashed
by night." Ironically, history comes full circle when the same
Americans who once fought against the communist led PLA
forces are now invited back to assist the present communist
government in building a modern economy for China. Through
his inner musings a nameless old ex-Kuomintang army officer
asks but cannot answer the ultimate question-what was it all
for?
Zhao Zhenkai is primarily a poet (pseud. Bei Dao) but
his story "The Homecoming Stranger" (Guilaide moshengren)
evokes the pathos of the many lives and families ruined by
Maoist policies, from the Anti-Rightist Campaign to the
Cultural Revolution. The most poignant and fearful line in the
story is that spoken by the young woman Lanlan, who has
been deprived of her father's care by the state and betrayed by
her 'mother for political reasons. Her mother says she will
understand "a mother's suffering" when she marries and has
children, but she replies, "We don't want children if we can't
be responsible for their future." The "literature of the ruins"
digs up the ruins of the past in order to prepare for a future
that must never again suffer a holocaust like the Cultural
* Revolution.
Open Ground
by Wan Zhi (Chen Maiping)
The open ground lay ahead. Night still lingered there, no
moon, but the sky was light and the stars were shining, so the
ground looked vaster, darker. The murky shapes of several
blockhouses loomed up in the twilight.
He walked over. There was no road, but he walked straight
toward the dark shapes of the blockhouses, his feet from time
to time tumbling over a stone. Once he even fell, skinning his
palms, but he kept pressing forward in great haste.
He did not really want to go there at all. He felt afraid,
and the hand that gripped the iron shovel was trembling
involuntarily. It seemed as if someone was pursuing him from
behind, and he often stopped still in alarm, turned and looked
back, but apart from the lights at the small station there was
not a soul in sight. As he had crossed the river, he had startled
a pair of young lovers who had crossed the small bridge and
were heading for the small slope over there, into the pine forest
below the memorial. They had certainly not bothered
speculating about what the old man with the shovel was up to.
What lay ahead? He did not know what the answer was
either. It seemed there was a voice calling him, which seemed
to come both from outside and from within himself. The voice
was indistinct, and he could not make out the words which
rose and fell, receded and returned in his mind, in rhythm with
his pounding heart and coursing blood. It seemed like an
invisible wind sobbing low. Driven on by the voice, he finally
arrived.
Now he stood in front of the blockhouses. Constructed
out of reinforced concrete, they had weathered the storms of
thirty years, and were overgrown with wild artemisia. It was
a grave, in which were buried a battle, a crime and worthless
lives. The blockhouses stood in a row; the open ground had
become a graveyard. He stood facing them: they were the past,
the past was death, and death was what he remembered.
Yes, he had fought here. He had stood guard in this
blockhouse, with American-style carbines and machine-guns,
and with a brain that an American drill sergeant had given
him . . . He had fought very well, and the open ground had
helped him, until the last batch of people retreating south had
moved out from the station. But here he had also become a
prisoner.
The machinery of his memory had long since ceased
revolving and was covered with a thick layer of dust. He had
forgotten the past, he had even forgotten his memories. Now
he had two rough hands, a wooden face, two lackluster eyes,
seven false teeth and a heart that beat sixty times a minute.
This machine, however, could suddenly be set in motion
again. If someone pressed the button, the motor would start
throbbing. He did not know who had pressed the button, but
now he began to recall the past. He could still count the growth
rings on the tree of his life, remembering his childhood, his
time at high school, his life at the military academy, his wife,
their honeymoon, and the scented oak in front of the old
cottage. He also remembered the prison camp, and the
certificate of release when he had served his term . . .
It was not a dream, nor a story, but his memories had
become so elusive, so confused.
Perhaps "it" was what had pressed the button. "It" was
fate, "it" was the low voice that drove him on! Life was like
a circle that "it" had drawn, starting out at a certain point and
coming to an end at the same point. He had come here earlier
in an American truck to build the blockhouses, but although
he hadn't come in an American truck this time he had come
to build an American-equipped factory and to demolish the
blockhouses.
The blockhouse embrasures were staring at him. He felt
afraid. The night air was cold and he was shivering from head
to foot. The open ground was silent, full of the smell of death.
A piercing whistle. He looked toward the station, where a train
was just pulling in. The bright white gleam of the headlamps
breached the darkness, stinging his eyes and casting his huge
shadow over the open ground.
He withdrew in alarm into the shadow of the blockhouses.
6
The shovel struck against the reinforced concrete of the
blockhouses and the sharp sound made him tremble with fear,
his legs and feet numbed. He did not know why he was so
afraid. Perhaps it was just instinct. The last few decades had
worn away the luster of courage in his life, leaving behind a
dingy color, the color of rust, the color of ice.
Nevertheless he set to work again. The shovel struck into
the loose, soft mound of earth they had dug out during the day
with a thud that spread out over the open ground. Startled by
the noise, he stopped and turned around. Everything was
terribly still, but the very stillness frightened him. He felt as
if there was someone peering at him from inside the
blockhouse. Staring at the pitch-black embrasures, he involun
tarily crouched down, shrinking into himself, feeling safer in
this position.
He decided not to use the shovel, and began digging up
the earth with both hands. Grabbing a handful of moist earth,
he felt the chill of the mud on his palms. This was earth that
had been stained with blood. Perhaps there were still some
molecules of blood, or had they already disappeared? They
had evaporated in the sunlight and then been scattered in the
wind, cast to the far comers and then to the open country
beyond. Life comes and goes, but its material components
always remain.
He continued groping, digging through the loose, soft
earth, searching in the darkness. He felt himself touching
something long and thin and pulled it out of the earth. Soon
afterwards, a long piece, two long pieces, a short piece, two
short pieces. He piled up the things from the mud under the
blockhouse wall.
It was an accumulation of death, because these insubstan
tial objects were the bones of dead men-thigh bones, ribs,
vertebrae, long and short, thick and thin. Perhaps they were
one man's; more likely, two or three men's ...
During the day, he and the workmen had been digging
the foundations of a future factory here, and the white bones
were dug up then. In the beginning, when they had dug up the
first bone, no one had minded very much; anything can be dug
up on a worksite. The young men threw the bone up into the
air, their way of mocking him, an old KMT officer. Like him,
they were former convicts who had stayed on after their release.
They had committed all kinds of major and minor crimes, theft,
robbery and rape, but they still had the right to mock him,
since his crime was war and defeat. It was then that he had
begun to recall his memories.
He did not tell the others that he had fought here; the past
was over and gone. He had looked at the white bones, blankly
shaking his head. When the bones increased in number as they
dug, however, even these young men who boasted that blood
and death held no terrors for them, felt the dry, lackluster bones
gradually seizing their hearts; this accumulation of white bones
was a concrete representation of death. The skulls and teeth,
having experienced the taste of life in this world, now revealed
the hideous smile of Death.
Now he started piling the bones up again. There was no
doubt it was them, the people who had stubbornly held out in
these blockhouses with him. When the gunfire had abated, the
bodies of the victors were carried away and the victors buried
over there-under the memorial, where glory stood guard over
them, and they stood guard over peace, tranquility and
happiness! But the bodies of the defeated were buried here,
beside the blockhouses, crime stood guard over them, and they
stood for death, disgrace and disaster!
Of course, there was still him, he was not buried here,
not one of these bones was his; he had been taken prisoner,
he was still alive. And yet he touched them as if touching
himself, his own decaying teeth and empty eyesockets ... He
could well have been buried here too.
Human forms which would never return again to their
original shapes were once attached to these bones. In his blurred
memories he still seemed able to tell whose bones they were.
This one with two big incisors was the machine-gunner's, he
gnawed on other bones with these teeth, getting a box on the
ear from him; this big thigh-bone, he could tell from its length
who it had belonged to, a man who had liked to drink, and
who cried at night thinking of his wife ... None of them could
be brought back into existence. Why had they died? When had
their lives lost their value? No, he had no answer. He had
ordered them about and told them off; why had he done that?
Didn't he still not understand even today?
He had committed a crime, but why? Through trusting
too readily in the Americans? Or was it fate? Or his own
ignorance?
He knelt on the open ground, as if praying, but there were
no words of prayer in his breast, no desires for the future; it
was still the voice that drove him on sounding close by.
He had a sack with him. He put the bones into the sack,
slung it over his shoulder and started on his way back. The
sack was not at all heavy, but his legs felt very weak. A wind
blew across the small river, a cold wind, a desolate autumn
wind. The moon was rising, its silver light rippling over the
river. He stopped by the side of the river and stood there in
silence for a while. Then he took down the sack and with great
care threw it into the water. The water splashed up, startling
a pair of birds in the reeds opposite. They flew up abruptly,
over his head, over the wide stretch of open ground, and
disappeared behind the dark shadow of the blockhouses.
The moon cast a solemn shadow from the memorial on
the hillside opposite. It looked very much like a sentry on night
watch, staring at the open ground. Very soon, a modernized
factory would be built on this piece of ground.
*
Originally published in Jintian (Today), no. 5, 1979.
Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall
7
The Homecoming Stranger
by Shi Mo (Zhao Zhenkai)
1
Papa was back.
After exactly twenty years of refonn through labor, which
took him from the North-East to Shanxi, and then from Shanxi
to Gansu, he was just like a sailor who, swept overboard by
a wave, struggles blindly against the undertow until miraculous
ly another wave tosses him back onto the same deck.
The verdict was: it was entirely a misjudgment, and he
has been granted complete rehabilitation. That day, when the
leaders of the Theater Association honored our humble home
to announce the decision, I almost jumped up: when did you
become so smart? Didn't the announcement that he was an
offender against the people come out of your mouths too? It
was Mama's eyes, those caIrn yet suffering eyes, that stopped
me.
Next came the dress rehearsal for the celebration: we
moved from a tiny pigeon-loft into a three-bedroom flat in a
big building; sofas, bookcases, desks and chrome folding chairs
appeared as if by magic (I kept saying half-jokingly to Mama
that these were the troupe's props); relatives and friends came
running in and out all day, until the lacquer doorknob was
rubbed shiny by their hands, and even those uncles and aunts
who hadn't shown up all those years rushed to offer
congratulations ... all right, cheer, sing, but what does all
this have to do with me? My papa died a long time ago, he
died twenty years ago, just when a little four or five year old
girl needed a father's love-that's what Mama, the school,
some kind-hearted souls and my whole social upbringing,
starting from birth, told me. Not only this, you even wanted
me to hate him, curse him, it's even possible you'd have given
me a whip so I could lash him viciously! Now it's the other
way round, you're wearing a different face. What do you want
me to do? Cry, or laugh?
Yesterday at dinner time, Mama was even more
considerate than usual, endlessly filling my bowl with food.
After the meal, she drew a telegram from the drawer and handed
it to me, showing not the slightest sign of emotion.
"Him?"
"He arrives tomorrow, at 4:50 in the afternoon."
I crumpled the telegram, staring numbly into Mama's eyes.
"Go and meet him, Lanlan." She avoided my gaze.
"I have a class tomorrow afternoon."
"Get someone to take it for you."
I turned towards my room. "I won't go."
"Lanlan." Mama raised her voice. "He is your father,
after all!"
"Father?" 1 muttered, turning away fiercely, as if
overcome with fear at the meaning of this word. From an
irregular spasm in my heart, 1 realized that stitches from the
old wound were splitting open one by one.
1 closed the composition book spread in front of me: Zhang
Xiaoxia, 2nd Class, 5th Year. A spirited girl, her head always
slightly to one side in a challenging way, just like me as a
child. Oh yes, childhood. For all of us life begins with those
pale blue copybooks, with those words, sentences and
punctuation marks smudged by erasures; or, to put it more
precisely, it begins with a certain degree of deception. The
teachers delineated life with halos, but which of them does not
tum into a smoke ring or an iron hoop?
Shadows flowed in from the long old-fashioned windows,
brightly illuminating the opaque glass desk-top. The entire
staff-room was steeped in drowsy tranqUility. 1 sighed, tidied
my things, locked the door and, crossing the deserted school
grounds, walked towards home.
The apartment block with its glittering lights was like a
huge television screen, the unlit windows composing an elusive
image. After a little while some of the windows lit up, and
some went dark again. But the three windows on the seventh
floor remained as they were: one bright, two dark. 1 paced up
8
and down for a long time in the vacant lot piled with white
lime and fir-tree poles. On a crooked, broken signboard were
the words: "Safety First."
Strange, why is it that in all the world's languages, this
particular word comes out sounding the same: papa. Fathers
of different colors, temperaments and status all derive the same
satisfaction from this sound. Yet I stilI can't say it. What do
I know about him? Except for a few surviving old photographs
retaining a childhood dream (perhaps every little girl has such
dreams), ... him, sitting on an elephant like an Arab sheik,
a white cloth wound round his head, a resplendent mat on the
elephant's back, golden tassels dangling to the ground ...
there were only some plays that once created a sensation and
a thick book on dramatic theory which I happened to see at
the waste-paper salvage station. What else was there? Yes, add
those unlucky letters, as punctual and drab as a clock; stuck
in those brown-paper envelopes with their red frames, they
were just like death notices, suffocating me. I never wrote
back, and afterwards, I threw them into the fire without even
looking at them. Once, a dear little duckling was printed on
the snow-white envelope, but when I tore it open and looked,
I was utterly crushed. I was so upset I cursed all ugly ducklings,
counting up their vices one by one: greed, pettiness,
slovenliness ... because they hadn't brought me good luck.
But what luck did I deserve?
The elevator was already shut down for the day, and I
had to climb all the way up. I stopped outside the door to our
place and listened, holding my breath. From inside came the
sounds of the television humming, and the cliches of aI1 old
film. God, give me courage!
As soon as I opened the door, I heard my younger brother's
gruff voice: "Sis's back." He rushed up as if making an assault
on the enemy, helping me to take off my coat. He was almost
twenty, but still full of childish attachment to me, probably
because I had given him the maternal love which had seemed
too heavy a burden for Mama in those years.
The corridor was very dark and the light from the kitchen
split the darkness into two. He was standing in the doorway
of the room opposite, standing in the other half of the darkness,
and next to him was Mama. The reflection from the television
screen flickered behind their shoulders.
A moment of dead silence.
Finally, he walked over, across the river of light. The
light, the deathly-white light, slipped swiftly over his wrinkled
and mottled neck and face. I was struck dumb: was he this
shriveled little old man? Father. I leaned weakly against the
door.
He hesitated a moment and put out his hand. My little
hand disappeared in his stiff, big-jointed one. These hands
didn't match his body at all.
"Lanlan." His voice was very low, and trembled a little.
Silence.
"Lanlan," he said again, his voice becoming a little more
positive, as if he were waiting eagerly for something.
But what could I say?
"You're back very late. Have you had dinner?" said Mama.
"Mm." My voice was so weak.
"Why is everyone standing? Come inside," said Mama.
He took me by the hand. I followed obediently. Mama
turned on the light and switched off the television with a click.
We sat down on the sofa. He was still clutching my hand
tightly, staring at me intently. I evaded his eyes, and let my
gaze fall on the blown-up plastic doll on the window-sill.
An unbearable silence.
"Lanlan," he called once again.
I was really afraid the doll might explode, sending
brightly-colored fragments flying allover the room.
"Have you had your dinner?"
I nodded vigorously.
"Is it cold outside?"
"No." Everything was so normal, the doll wouldn't burst.
Perhaps it would flyaway suddenly like a hydrogen balloon,
out the window, above the houses full of voices, light and
warmth, and go off to search for the stars and moon.
"Lanlan." His voice was full ofcompassion and pleading.
All of a sudden, my just-established confidence swiftly
collapsed. I felt a spasm of alarm. Blood pounded at my
temples. Fiercely I pulled back my hand, rushed out the door
into my own room and flung myself head-first onto the bed. I
really felt like bursting into tears.
The door opened softly; it was Mama. She came up to
the bed, sat down in the darkness and stroked my head, neck
and shoulders. Involuntarily my whole body began to tremble
as if with cold.
"Don't cry, Lanlan."
Cry? Mama, if I could stilI cry the tears would surely be
red, they'd be blood.
She patted me on the back. "Go to sleep, Lanlan,
everything will pass."
Mama left.
Everything will pass. Huh, it's so easily said, but can
twenty years be written off at one stroke? People are not reeds,
or leeches, but oysters, and the sands of memory will flow
with time changing into a part of the body itself, teardrops that
will never run dry.
. . . a basement. Mosquitoes thudded against the searing
light bulb. An old man covered with cuts and bruises was tied
up on the pommell horse, his head bowed, moaning hoarsely.
I lay in the corner sobbing. My knees were cut to ribbons by
the broken glass; blood and mud mixed together ...
I was then only about twelve years old. One night, when
Mama couldn't sleep, she suddenly hugged me and told me
that Papa was a good man who had been wrongly accused. At
these words hope flared up in the child's heart: for the first
time she might be able to enjoy the same rights as other
children. So I ran all around, to the school, the Theater
Association, the neighborhood committee and the Red Guard
headquarters, to prove Papa's innocence to them. Disaster was
upon us, and those louts savagely took me home for
investigation. I didn't know what was wrong with Mama, but
she repudiated all her words in front of her daughter. All the
blame fell on my small shoulders. Mama repented, begged,
wished herself dead, but what was the use? I was struggled
against, given heavy labor and punished by being made to
kneel on broken glass.
. . . the old man raised his bloody face. "Give me some
water, water, water!" Staring with frightened eyes, I forgot the
pain, as I huddled tightly in the corner. When dawn came and
the old man breathed his last, I fainted with fright too. The
blood congealed on my knees . . .
Can I blame Mama for this?
2
The sky was so blue it dazzled the eyes, its intense
9
reflections shining on the ground. I was clutching a butterfly
net, holding a small empty bamboo basket and standing amidst
the dense waist-high grass. Suddenly, from the jungle opposite
appeared an elephant. The tassels of the mat on its back were
dangling to the ground; Papa sat proudly on top, a white turban
on his head. The elephant's trunk waved to and fro, and with
a snort it curled round me and placed me up in front of Papa.
We marched forward, across the coconut grove streaked with
leaping sunlight, across the hills and gullies gurgling with
springs. I suddenly turned my head and cried out in alarm. A
little old man was sitting behind me, his face blurred with
blood; he was wearing convict clothes and on his chest were
printed the words "Reform Through Labor." He was moaning
hoarsely, "Give me some water, water, water ..."
I woke up in fright.
It was five o'clock, and outside it was still dark. I stretched
out my hand and pul\ed out the drawer of the bedside cupboard,
fumbled for cigarettes and lit one. I drew back fiercely and felt
more relaxed. The white cloud of smoke spread through the
darkness and finally floated out through the small open-shut
tered window. The glow from the cigarette alternately
brightened and dimmed as I strained to see clearly into the
depths of my heart, but other than the ubiquitous silence, the
relaxation induced by the cigarette, and the vague emptiness
left by the nightmare, there was nothing.
I switched on the desk lamp, put on my clothes and opened
the door quietly. There was a light on in the kitchen and a
rustling noise. Who was up so early? Who?
Under the light, wearing a black cotton-padded vest, he
was crouching over the waste-paper basket with his back
towards me, meticulously picking through everything; spread
out beside him were such spoils as vegetable leaves, trimmings
and fish heads.
I coughed.
He jumped and looked round in alarm, his face
deathly-white, gazing in panic towards me.
The fluorescent light hummed.
He stood up slowly, one hand behind his back, making
an effort to smile. "Lanlan, I woke you up."
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing." He was flustered, and kept wiping
his trousers with his free hand.
I put out my hand. "Let me see."
After some hesitation he handed the thing over. It was
just an ordinary cigarette packet, with nothing odd about it
except that it was soiled in one comer.
I lifted my head, staring at him in bewilderment.
"Oh, Lanlan," beads of sweat started from his balding
head, "yesterday I forgot to examine this cigarette packet when
I threw it away, just in case I wrote something on it; it would
be terrible if the Team Leader saw it."
"Team Leader?" I was even more baffled. "Who's the
Team Leader?"
"The people who oversee us prisoners are called Team
Leaders." He fished out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat
away. "Of course, I know, it's beyond their reach, but better
to fi nd it just in case . . . "
My head began to buzz. "Al\ right, that's enough."
He closed his mouth tightly, as if he had bitten out his
tongue. I real\y hadn't expected our conversation would begin
like this. For the first time I looked carefully at him. He seemed
even older and paler than yesterday, with a short greyish stubble
over his sunken cheeks, wrinkles around his lackluster eyes
that seemed to have been carved by a knife, and an ugly sarcoma
on the tip of his right ear. I could not help feeling some
compassion for him.
"Was it very hard there?"
"It was all right, you get used to it."
Get used to it! A cold shiver passed through me. Dignity.
Wire netting. Guns. Hurried footsteps. Dejected ranks. Death.
I crumpled up the cigarette packet and tossed it into the
waste-paper basket. "Go back to sleep, it's still early."
"I've had enough sleep, reveille's at 5:30." He turned to
tidy up the scattered rubbish.
Back in my room, I pressed my face against the ice-cold
wall. It was quite unbearable, to begin like this, what should
I do next? Wasn't he a man of great integrity before? Ah, Hand
of Time, you're so cruel and indifferent, to knead a man like
putty; you destroyed a father before his daughter could
remember his real face clearly ... eventually I calmed down,
packed my things into my bag and put on my overcoat.
Passing through the kitchen, I came to a standstill. He
was at the sink, scrubbing his big hands with a small brush,
the green soap froth dripping down like sap.
"I'm going to work."
"So early?" He was so absorbed he did not even raise his
head.
"I'm used to it."
I did not tum on the light as I went down along the
darkness, along each flight of stairs.
3
For several days in a row I came home very late. When
Mama asked why, I always offered the excuse that I was busy
at school. As soon as I got home, I would dodge into the
kitchen and hurriedly rake up a few leftovers, then bore straight
into my own little nest. I seldom ran into him, and even when
we did meet I would hardly say a word. Yet it seemed his
silence contained enormous compunction, as if to apologize
for that morning, for his unexpected arrival, for my unhappy
childhood, these twenty years and my whole life.
My brother was always running in like a spy to report on
the situation, saying things like, "He's planted a pot of peculiar
dried-up herbs," "All afternoon he stared at the fish in the
tank," "He's burned a note again .... "I would listen without
any reaction. As far as I was concerned, it was all just a
continuation of that morning, not worth making a fuss about.
It was my brother who was strange, talking about such things
so flatly, not tinged by any emotion at all, not feeling any
heavy burden on his mind. It was no wonder; since the day he
was born Papa had already flown far away, and besides, in
those years he was brought up in his Grandma's home, and
with Mama's wings and mine in tum hovering over Grandma's
little window as well, he never saw the ominous sky.
One evening, as I lay on the bed smoking, someone
knocked at the door. I hurriedly stuffed the cigarette butt into
a small tin box, as Mama came in.
"Smoking again, LanlanT
As if nothing had happened I turned over the pages of a
novel beside my pillow.
"The place smells of smoke, open a window."
Thank heavens, she hadn't come to nag. But then I realized
that there was something strange in her manner. She sat down
10
beside the small desk, absently picked up the ceramic camel
pen-rack and examined it for a moment before returning it to
its original place. How would one put it in diplomatic language?
Talks, yes, formal talks ..
"Lanlan, you're not a child anymore." Mama was
weighing her words.
It had started; I listened with respectful attention.
"I know you've resented me since you were little, and
you've also resented him and resented everyone else in the
world, because you've had enough suffering ... but Lanlan,
it isn't only you who's suffered."
"Yes, Mama."
"When you marry Jianping, and have children, you'll
understand a mother's suffering ..."
"We don't want children if we can't be responsible for
their future."
"You're blaming us, Lanlan," Mama said painfully.
"No, not blaming. I'm grateful to you, Mama, it wasn't
easy for you in those years . . ."
"Do you think it was easy for him?"
"Him?" I paused. "I don't know, and I don't want to know
either. As a person, I respect his past ... "
"Don't you respect his present? You should realize,
Lanlan, he showed great courage in staying alive!"
"That's not the problem, Mama. You say this because
you lived together for many years, but I, I can't make a false
display of affection . . . "
"What are you saying!" Mama grew angry and raised her
voice. "At least one should fulfill ones own duties and
obligations!"
"Duties? Obligations?" I started to laugh, but it was more
painful than crying. "I heard a lot about them during those
years. I don't want to lose any more, Mama."
"But what have you gained?"
"The truth."
"It's a cold and unfeeling truth!"
"I can't help it," I spread out my hands, "that's how life is."
"You're too selfish!" Mama struck the desk with her hand
and got up, the loose flesh on her face trembling. She stared
furiously at me for a moment, then left, shutting the door
heavily.
Selfish, I admit it. In those years, selfishness was a kind
of instinct, a means of self-defense. What could I rely on except
this? Perhaps I shouldn't have provoked Mama's anger,
perhaps I should really be a good girl and love Papa, Mama,
my brother, life, and myself.
4
During the break between classes, I went into the reception
office and rang Jianping.
"Hello, Jianping, come over this evening."
"What's up? Lanlan?" He was shouting over the clatter
of the machines. His voice sounded hoarse and weary.
"He's back."
"Who? Your father?"
"Clever one, come over and help; it's an absolutely awful
situation. "
He started to laugh.
"Huh, if you laugh, just watch out!" I clenched my fists
and slammed down the receiver.
It's true, Jianping has the ability to head off disaster. The
year when the production brigade chief withheld the grain ration
from us educated youth, it was he who led the whole bunch
of us to snatch it all back. Although I normally appear quite
sharp-witted, I always have to hide behind his broad shoulders
whenever there's a crisis.
That afternoon I had no classes and hurried home early.
Mama had left a note on the table, saying that she and Papa
had gone to call on some old friends and that they would eat
when they returned. I kneaded some dough, minced the meat
filling, and got everything ready to wrap the dumplings.
Jianping arrived. He brought with him a breath of
freshness and cold, his cheeks flushed red, brimming with
healthy vitality. I snuggled up against him at once, my forehead
pressed against the cold buttons on his chest, like a child who
feels wronged but has nowhere to pour out her woes. I didn't
say anything. What could I say?
We kissed and hugged for a while, then sat down and
wrapped dumplings, talking and joking as we worked. I was
almost on the verge of tears from the gratitude, relaxation and
the vast sleepiness that follows affection.
When my brother returned, he threw off his work clothes,
drank a mouthful of water, and flew off like a whirlwind.
It was nearly eight when they got home. As they came
in, it gave them quite a shock to see us. Mama could not then
conceal a conciliatory and motherly smile of victory; Papa's
expression was much more complicated. Apart from the
apologetic look of the last few days, he also seemd to feel an
irrepressible pleasure at this surprise, as well as a precautionary
fear.
"This is Jianping, this is ... " My face was suffocated
with red.
"This is Lanlan's father," Mama filled in.
Jianping held out his hand and boomed, "How do you do,
Uncle!"
Papa grasped Jianping's hand, his lips trembling for a
long time. "So you're, so you're Jianping, fine, fine ... "
Delivering the appropriate courtesies, Jianping gave the
old man such happiness he was at a loss for what to do. It was
quite clear to me that his happiness had nothing to do with
these remarks, but came from feeling that at last he'd found a
bridge between him and me, a strong and reliable bridge.
At dinner, everyone seemed to be on very friendly terms,
or at least that's how it appeared on the surface. Several
awkward silences were covered over by Jianping's jokes. His
conversation was so witty and lively that it even took me by
surprise. After dinner, Papa took some Zhonghua cigarettes
from his tin cigarette case and offered them to Jianping. This
set them talking about the English method of drying tobacco
and then on to things like soil salinization, the insect pests of
peanuts and vine-grafting. I sat bolt upright beside them,
smiling like a mannequin in a shop window.
Suddenly, my smile began to vanish. Surely this was a
scene from a play? Jianping was the protagonist-a clever
son-in-law, while I, I was the meek and mild new bride. For
reasons only the devil could tell, everyone was acting to the
hilt, striving to forget something in this scene. Acting out
happiness, acting calmness, acting out glossed-over suffering.
I suddenly felt that Jianping was an outsider to the fragmented,
shattered suffering of this family.
I began to consider Jianping in a different light. His tone,
his gestures, even his appearance, all had an unfamiliar flavor.
This wasn't real, this wasn't his old self. Could strangeness
11
be contagious? How frightening.
Jianping hastily threw me an enqutnng glance, as if
expecting me to repay the role he was playing with a
commending smile. This made me feel even more disgusted.
I was disgusted with him, and with myself, disgusted with
everything the world was made of, happiness and sorrow,
reality and sham, good and evil.
Guessing this, he wound up the conversation. He looked
at his watch, said a few thoroughly polite bits of nonsense,
and got to his feet.
As usual, I accompanied him to the bus-stop. But I said
not a single word along the way, and kept a fair distance from
him. He dejectedly thrust his hands in his pockets and kicked
at stones.
An apartment block ahead hid the night. 1 felt alone. I
longed to know how human beings survived behind these
countless containers of suffering and broken families. Yet in
these containers, memory is too frightening. It can only deepen
the suffering and divide every family until everything turns to
powder.
When we reached the bus-stop, he stood with his back to
me, gazing at the distant lights. "Lan Ian , do I still need to
explain?"
"There's no need."
He leaped onto the bus. Its red tail-lights flickering, it
disappeared round the comer.
5
Today there was a sports meet at the school, but I didn't
feel like it at all. Yesterday afternoon, Zhang Xiaoxia kept
pestering me to come and watch her in the 100 meters dash.
I just smiled, without promising anything. She pursed her little
mouth and, fanning her sweaty forehead with a handkerchief,
stared out the window in a huff. 1 put my hands on her shoulders
and turned her around, "I'll go then, all right?" Her face
broadening into dimples, she struggled free of me in
embarrassment and ran off. How easy it is to deceive a child.
1 stretched, and started to get dressed. The winter sunlight
seeped through the fogged-up window, making everything
seem dim and quiet, like an extension of sleep and dreams.
When I came out of my room, it was quiet and still; evidently
everyone had gone out. 1 washed my hair and put my washing
in to soak, dashing busily to and fro. When everything was
done, 1 sat down to eat breakfast. Suddenly I sensed that
someone was standing behind me, and when I looked round it
was Papa, standing stiffly in the kitchen doorway and staring
at me blankly.
"Didn't you go out?" I asked.
"Oh, no, no, I was on the balcony. You're not going to
school today?"
"No. What is itT'
"I thought," he hesitated, "we might go for a walk in the
park, what do you think?" There was an imploring note in his
voice.
"All right." Although 1 didn't tum round, 1 could feel that
his eyes had brightened.
It was a warm day, but the morning mist had still not
faded altogether. It lingered around the eaves and treetops.
Along the way, we said almost nothing. But when we entered
the park, he pointed at the tall white poplars by the side of the
road. "The last time I brought you here, they'd just been
planted." But I didn't remember it at all.
After walking along the avenue for a while, we sat down
on a bench beside the lake. On the cement platform in front
of us, several old wooden boats, corroded by wind and rain,
were lying upside down, dirt and dry leaves forming a layer
over them. The ice melting in the water crackled from time to
time.
He lit a cigarette.
''Those same boats," he said pensively.
"Oh?"
"There're still the same boats. You used to like sitting in
the stern, splashing with your bare feet and shouting,
"Motor-boat! Motor-boat!" The shred of a smile of memory
appeared on his face. "Everyone said you were like a boy ... "
"Really?"
"You liked swords and guns; whenever you went into a
toyshop you'd always want to come out with a whole array of
weapons."
"Because 1 didn't know what they were used for."
All at once, a shadow covered his face and his eyes
darkened. "You were still a child then . . . "
Silence, a long silence. The boats lying on the bank were
turned upside down here. They were covering a little girl's
silly cries, a father's carefree smile, softdrink bottle-tops, blue
hairclips, children's books and toy guns, the taste of earth in
the four seasons, the passage of twenty years . . .
"Lanlan," he said suddenly, his voice very low and
trembling, "I, I beg you to forgive me."
My whole body began to quiver.
"When your mother spoke of your life in these years, it
was as if my heart was cut with a knife. What is a child guilty
of?" His hand clutched at the air and came to rest against his
chest.
"Don't talk about these things," I said quietly.
"To tell you the truth, it was for you that I lived in those
years. I thought if 1 paid for my crime myself, perhaps life
would be a bit better for my child, but. .. ," he choked with
sobs, "you can blame me, Lanlan, 1 didn't have the ability to
protect you, I'm not worthy to be your father. ..."
"No, don't, don't ...." I was trembling, my whole body
went weak, all I could do was shake my hands. How selfish I
was! I thought only of myself, immersed myself only in my
own sufferings, even making suffering a kind of pleasure and
a wall of defense against others. But how did he live? For you,
for your selfishness, for your heartlessness! Can the call of
blood be so feeble? Can what is called human nature have
completely died out in my heart?
" ... twenty years ago, the day I left the house, it was
a Sunday. I took an afternoon train, but I left at dawn; 1 didn't
want you to remember that scene. Standing by your little bed,
the tears streaming down, I thought to myself: "Little Lanlan,
shall we ever meet again?" You were sleeping so soundly and
sweetly, with your little round dimples, . . . the evening
before, as you were going to bed, you hugged me by the neck
and said in a soft voice, 'Papa, will you take me out tomorrow?'
. Papa's busy tomorrow.' You went into a sulk and pouted
unhappily. I had to promise. Then you asked again, 'Can we
go rowing?' 'Yes, we'll go rowing.' And so you went to sleep
quite satisfied. But I deceived you, Lanlan. When you woke
up the next day, what could you think ...."
"Papa!" I blurted out, flinging myself on his shoulder and
crying bitterly.
12
With trembling hands he stroke my head. "Lanlan, my
child."
"Forgive me, Papa," I said, choked with sobs. ''I'm still
your little Lanlan, always ... "
"My little Lanlan, always."
A bird whose name I don't know hovered over the lake,
crying strangely, adding an even deeper layer of desolation to
this bleak winter scene.
I lay crying against Papa's shoulder for a long time. My
tears seeped drop by drop into the coarse wool of his overcoat.
I seemed to smell the pungent scent of tobacco mingling with
the smell of mud and sweat. I seemed to see him during the
breaks between heavy labor, leaning wearily against the pile
of dirt and rolling a cigarette, staring into the distance through
the fork between the guard's legs. He was pulling a cart,
struggling forward on the miry road, the cart wheels screeching.
churning up black clods of mud. The guard's legs. He was
digging the earth shovelful after shovelful, straining himself
to fling it towards the pit side. The guard's legs. He is carrying
his bowl, greedily draining the last mouthful of vegetable soup.
The guard's legs ... I dared not think any more, I dared not.
My power to imagine suffering was limited after all. But he
actually lived in a place beyond the powers of human
imagination. Minute after minute, day after day, oh God, a
full twenty years ... No, amidst suffering, people should be
in communication with one another, for suffering can link
people's souls even more than happiness, even if the soul is
already numb, already exhausted ...
"Lanlan, look," he drew a beautiful green necklace from
his pocket, "I made this from old toothbrush handles just before
I left there. I wanted to give you a kind of present, but then I
was afraid you wouldn't want this crude toy ..."
"No, I like it." I took the necklace, moving the beads
lightly to and fro with my finger, each of these wounded hearts
On the way back, Papa suddenly bent over and picked up
a piece of paper, turning it over and over in his hand.
Impulsively I pulled up his arm and laid my head on his
shoulder. In my heart I understood that this was because of a
new strangeness, and an attempt to resist this strangeness.
Here on the avenue, I seemed to see a scene from twenty
years earlier. A little girl with blue hairclips, both fists
outstretched, totters along the edge of the muddy road. Beside
her walks a middle-aged man relaxed and at ease. A row of
little newly-planted poplars separates them. And these little
trees, as they swiftly swell and spread, change into a row of
huge insurmountable bars. Symbolizing this are twenty years
of irregular growth rings.
"Papa, let's go."
He tossed away the piece of paper and wiped his hand
carefully on his handkerchief. We walked on again.
Suddenly I thought of Zhang Xiaoxia. At this moment,
she'll actually be in the race. Behind rises a puff of white
smoke from the starting gun and amid countless faces and shrill
cries falling away behind her, she dashed against the white
finishing tape. *
Originally published in Jintian (Today), no. I, 1979.
Translated by Susette Cooke
'The Homecoming Str.mger" is printed here with the kind permission of the
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History
I 11'11.1 obliged 10 do bllllle Il'ilh hi.\IOrl (///(1 III kllije-Jloilll
./iml1ed (/ ./l/l/lil." al/io/1ce with idols.
-Bei DliO
In the immediate post-Mao era many writers attempted to
come to grips with the enormity of the events of the past decade
as well to probe more than ever before into all of the problematic
areas of the stormy. tirst thirty years of the People's Republic.
Without being outspokenly political, "Blacky" (Heihei), by the
talented young Peking writer Shi Tiesheng. combines realism
and allegory in its moving presentation of rural poverty "in
that age now past." The "good dog" Blacky may be seen as a
powerful symbol for the trusting and long-suffering Chinese
peasants during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
Revolution. They were a people who "joyfully" followed their
master's orders. But before they "had time to realize what had
happened." as Gunter Grass would say, their master turned out
to be the hangman.
Dai Houying's 1980 novel Ren a, ren! is the most
ambitious attempt yet to fathom the existential meaning of the
Maoist era from 1957 to the 1970s. It is a plotless work in the
conventional sense of plot as story line. In it the author employs
the western, modernist technique of multiple first-person
narration combined with internal monologues and non-linear
time sequences to explore the problematic areas of individual
responsibility, the relation of the individual to history, and the
fate of individual human nature in a mass state. The novel
immediately gained great popularity and became the subject
of ideological controversy, a controversy that was renewed in
the 1983-84 campaign against "spiritual pollution."
The autobiographical female protagonist, Sun Yue, was
Photo by Saundra Sturdevam
man when he was branded as a "Rightist" in 1957. She "gave
her heart to the Party" at that time and turned away from her
natural inclination to seek personal happiness. Her husband
betrayed her during the Cultural Revolution and entered into
a liaison with a "rebel faction" woman of dubious moral
character. Sun and her husband have a daughter Hanhan who
is greatly troubled by her parents' separation and who wants
very much to understand the father she has never known. Sun
Yue is torn between her daughter's desire to meet her father,
He Jingfu's renewed courtship and the possibility of happiness
it holds, her former husband's attempts at reconciliation, and
her fear of what the Party and society in general would think
of her if she agrees to marry He Jingfu. The working out of
her problems. never fully resolved, amounts to a confession
of political and moral failure and an affirmation of faith in a
future wherein the individual will not be sacrificed on the altar
of social necessity or political expediency.
The male protagonist, He Jingfu, whose internal
monologue is presented here, embodies the most insistent
theme of the novel-the possibility of reconciling Marxism
and humanism. He sees a unity between the two in their respect
for the dignity and worth of the individual human personality,
and their defense of independent ideas and opinions. Theory
aside, much of his humanism is actually derived from the
example of his father's simple goodness and dignity in the face
of oppression, starvation, and death. This chapter represents
the finest writing in the novel as well as one of the most
* once in love with He Jingfu, but abandoned him for another poignant scenes in all of post-Mao literature.
14
Blacky
by Shi Tieshang
It is necessary to explain at the outset that this is something
that happened in that age now past.
1
At that time I really was prepared to kill myself, but then
I thought why not go and take a look at the old home I had
been parted from for so long and then die? I was being sent
back any way and didn't need to arrange anything.
I wrote a last letter to my ex-wife and boarded the train
west all alone. The letter was quite simple: "At a time when
everyone is competing to sing bright songs, anyone who reveals
the darkness will come face to face with an endless darkness-I
don't know if this in itself is good or evil." At any rate I had
decided upon suicide and wasn't afraid of having another line
added to my dossier: "utterly incorrigible." No, I was no hero.
Aren't heroes all courageous and far sighted, full of unbounded
confidence, with never the slightest feeling of pessimism,
depression, or sadness? And me? To tell you the truth all I
could feel was pessimism, depression, and sadness. My bedroll
bounced from side to side on the overhead luggage rack; tied
around it was a good strong rope .
2
The hills and streams of myoId home were the same, but
all of the people there were strangers. There were a few older
people that I could still recognize, but they could not for the
life of them remember me. All I could do was smile at them
and recall a line from an ancient poem: "I left home as a youth
and return an old man ... ,'" but I still felt pretty silly. Only
the yellow earth of myoid home gave me some comfort; it
would probably be quite satisfiyng to be buried underneath it.
A young Brigade Leader led me up the hill. The broad
clear river flowed by in front of the village sounding just like
the blind storyteller's zither I remembered from my childhood;
but I recalled He Jingzhi's folksongs:
2
the lambs they were
nursing and eyeing their mother, millet gruel nourished me as
I grew up .... As I entered the village I saw a child picking
weeds and chewing on a dumpling made from chaff.
The young Brigade Leader kept looking me up and down.
His attitude wasn't really very stern, in fact he was so kind he
was almost humble. That was probably because I was wearing
a uniform and, although my shoes were worn, they were leather
shoes nevertheless. On the road from the commune to the
village, we ran into an old man herding sheep and the Brigade
Leader struck up an animated conversation with him. "Huh?
He didn't think it was good enough to be a cadre in Peking?
He must've done something wrong!" That was the old man's
sadly commiserative voice. Perhaps a wanderer's greatest
sadness is to be misunderstood by his loving mother.
At the top of the hill there were two dilapidated cave
dwellings surrounded by a courtyard wall made of piled up
rocks. My heart skipped a beat. Mother will never again stand
by the millstone in the front yard and call me home for dinner.
Right there was where my cradle used to sit.
"It's this one on the right," the Brigade Leader said.
I never imagined this would also be my grave, I thought.
"When your Pa died, this dwelling was given to Zhang
Shan's family. You know Zhang Shan? You don't know him,
Zhang Shiyou's son?"
2. He Jingzhi (1924- ) is a famous poet, author of many popular ballads
I. This is the first line of a famous quatrain by the Tang dynasty poet He employing the Northern Chinese folk song style shun-lion-you ("follow the
Zhizhang (Ho Chih-chang, 659-744). drift of the singer") as well as co-author of the opera White Haired Girl (1945).
15
"Cre-e-e-ek," the courtyard gate swang open and suddenly
a dog barked. I stepped back instinctively.
"Don't be afraid," said the Brigade Leader, "Blacky
doesn't have the strength to bite anybody."
Blacky!? I thought I was seeing a ghost: a dog was lying
in front of that cave dwelling on the left. I had a black dog
when I was little. I even hated that black dog once when I
heard the blind man tell the story of "Creating Great Havoc in
the Heavenly Palace. "3 But one time when I was tending the
sheep and ran into a wolf, if it hadn't have been for that strong,
healthy black dog, never mind about the sheep, even I wouldn't
be here today. It may sound funny, but from that time on I
always believed that Erlang's dog was brown. Children have
their own kind of logic for solving problems; they can't think
of any better way to explain undeniable contradictions, but
they're very anxious to arrange things according to their own
imagination in order to achieve psychological harmony.
This was not a ghost. There really was a black dog lying
in front of that cave dwelling on the left. Her lusterless black
fur could no longer hide her rib bones; her two thigh bones
stuck out sharply on either side of her shriveled up stomach,
and the ends of the bones looked like they might pierce through
the skin at any time. She stared at me with eyes full of enmity,
but she didn't move; she just kept on barking every once in a
while. That was when I finally realized that her bark was so
weak it resembled nothing more than the last gasps of someone
who was wasting away in isolation.
That dog at least aroused my interest, stirred up my
feelings for myoid home. I walked over towards Blacky.
Blacky struggled to her feet, gnashed her teeth together,
and emitted a hoarse growl from her throat.
"Don't tease her, Blacky's not long for this world." The
Brigade Leader's voice was full of empathy and pity.
I broke off a piece of leftover mantou and threw it to
Blacky, but she remained on her guard, staring at me without
even looking at it. Now that's a good dog! My childhood
experience taught me that. I even felt that she must be that
very same black dog that saved my life, or else its offspring.
That black dog of mine died a long time ago; it had finally
been killed by a wolf. My father had its skin made into a rug
and sent it to me; I brought it back with me.
"Eat it Blacky! That's good steamed bread, stupid
Blacky!" A boy of eleven or twelve stood on the roof of the
cave dwelling and yelled at Blacky.
"Come on down and let her eat," I shouted at the boy.
The boy came down to the front of the cave and hugged
Blacky's head. Although Blacky's eyes still looked fierce, she
just lay there in the boy's arms and barked in a most peculiar
manner, like a freezing hen emitting a long drawn out cry. I
understood that sound; she was complaining about the insult
she had just suffered. From the looks of it, that boy was the
one person she trusted most.
Suddenly I had a malicious thought: what would happen
if at this moment that boy were to give Blacky a terrible beating
3. "Creating Havoc in the Heavenly Palace" is a popular storyteller'S account
of episodes from chapters 5 and 6 of the novel Journey to the West. In it the
Monkey King Sun Wukong has a terrible fight with several emissaries of the
Jade Emperor and is finally subdued by the Immortal Master Erlang with the
aid of a small black hound. See pages 134-165 of Anthony C. Yu's translation,
volume I, University of Chicago Press, 1977.
3
I lived in the eastern cave dwelling while Blacky guarded
the western cave dwelling. Ever since Zhang Shan disappeared,
a big brass lock hung on the door to that western cave dwelling
and the yellowing window paper was completely splattered
with muddy rain drops. Blacky was on guard against me for
fear that I would invade her territory, and I was on guard
against other people; no telling when they might drag me out
for a criticism session. Blacky could hardly pay me any mind:
she was hungry. And I was in no state to think about her: I
wanted to die. We both kept to our thoughts and left each other
in peace. Occasionally, when the boy came by and gave Blacky
half a ladle of pig slop or a handful of sweet potato peelings,
Blacky would wolf them down in a hurry, lick the boy's hand
a couple of times, sprawl out in front of the cave like before,
and continue guarding her territory. Many villagers would often
stand at the courtyard entrance on their way by and look in,
mostly to get a look at the man from Peking; but they would
always compliment Blacky before they moved on. "Ai, his
young wife took the kids and left! But Zhang Shan raised such
a good dog ... ," they all said.
There were two reasons why I had not yet used that rope:
one was because the cave dwelling didn't have any roof beams,
and the other was because I had not yet seen enough of the
mountains and rivers of myoid home. But then again, perhaps
neither of these was the true reason. It could be counted my
good fortune that the people had no time to pay me any mind.
They were in bondage to famine and thus I gained my freedom.
I wandered around on the little paths between the paddyfields,
watching the dewy buckwheat flowers bursting into bloom and
listening to swarms of bees working noisily away. I walked
slowly and quietly into the depths of the jujube groves. I was
moved at the sight of new shoots springing up from the roots
of the old trees and sighed at the birds' busy pursuit of life.
Evenings I watched the moon from the threshing ground and
was touched by the old cow nursing her calf. Late nights when
my nightmares kept me from sleep, I was awakened by the
calls of wild animals in the fields ... All of nature's myriad
creatures instinctively resist death, and how much more should
man! But only man sometimes thinks of suicide. Where, then,
is man's superiority?
In July a thunderstorm brought on a mountain flood. That
tame little river in front of the village suddenly grew angry;
with thunderous waves and rolling white waters leaping up to
the sky, it roared as it uprooted the old trees on the hillside
and swept them along on the crests of its waves or tossed the
slow moving herds of sheep down into its swift flowing valley
... I ran down the hill to the river bank. Usually the waters,
which barely deserved to be called a river, just managed to
cover my knees, but at that time the river was several meters
wide. The hills on the other side were lost in the rain and mist,
just as if this yellow water made a solid mass with the sky;
the heavens too were a yellowish-brown color, brightened
every so often by a fiery flash of lightning, after which the
thunder rumbled on for some time. I thought of a picture I'd
seen once, of force-nine waves. That was on the ocean, but I
still imagined that if I had an old sailboat, this water would
be strong enough to lift it off; of course it would be strong
enough to capsize it too . . . I was stupefied by the mighty
rush of this distant offspring of the Yellow River, I could not
recall a similar situation, probably because at that time the hills
16
I
\.
I
had not yet been as thoroughly cultivated or as completely
denuded of trees as they were today. .
"Look! Blacky is over there going crazy again!" Someone
was yelling.
I looked up at the top of the cliff. It was Blacky. She was
standing on the edge of the cliff, stretching out her neck and
barking wildly as if she were just about to jump down into the
roiling torrent. Every bit of her fur was matted down strand
by strand on her emaciated body. The sound of the thunder
and the water was too loud, but just from Blacky's appearance
I could tell that her bark was angry and hoarse, full of fear
and resentment.
"That Zhang Shan certainly raised a good dog!" everyone
said once more.
I walked up to the top of the ridge. The boy was leaning
against the courtyard wall with an empty gunnysack thrown
over his shoulders,
"What's the matter with Blacky," I asked him.
"She's feeling bad."
"Why?"
"On account of her conscience."
"Conscience?"
"Look at how sadly she's barking."
Blacky crouched down at the edge of the cliff, then she
lay down, put her head to the ground and held her nose between
her front paws. Rather than say she was panting it would be
better to say she was trembling. I walked up close to her, but
she didn't seem to notice; her bark was now only a whimper.
Blacky was certainly acting strange.
"She's crying," said the boy.
"Crying? Why?"
"For Zhang Shan. When Zhang Shan was dragged away
that day, Blacky wasn't at home. If she had been, she would
have been able to follow them; but a mountain flood came
down just as she was returning home and cut off her road.
Every time there's a big rain storm, Blacky starts to cry, she's
so sorry. . . ." .
"Zhang Shan was taken away? What for?"
The boy stared straight ahead; I asked him again, but he
said nothing.
Blacky ran down to the front of the western cave dwelling
as if she had suddenly awakened from slumber. She walked
back and forth inspecting her territory, looking over the cave
door with the brass lock, the rain soaked window paper, and
the cobweb covered door lintel before she lay down, seemingly
relieved, in front of the door. Her bark changed again to a
steady "woo woo woo ... ," as though she had converted her
grief into strength.
Zhang Shan was a mystery.
While hoeing in the fields I employed every sort of verbal
stratagem and circumlocution I could think of to try to learn
something about Zhang Shan from the local villagers, but
everyone's lips were sealed up like a wine jug. Or else they'd
just say, "You'll understand by and by." From the way they
sighed, shook their heads, and looked away lost in thought, I
could gather that they all felt great sympathy for Zhang Shan
and also seemed to have a gUilty conscience on his account.
Sometimes I even felt that the villagers had great respect for
Zhang Shan. When they were quietly lost in thought, puffing
away on their long stemmed pipes, they were probably p r a y i n ~
to Heaven for Zhang Shan's sake.
4
I made a sincere effort to make friends with Blacky. Those
who are alone and helpless should be drawn together by mutual
concern for their common fate, I thought.
I put a piece of sweet potato on the ground and called out
for Blacky.
Blacky didn't even pay any attention to it. I picked up
the sweet potato and edged over closer to her. She struggled
to stand up and let out a weak "woo-loo woo-loo" sort ofbark.
"You like Blacky too?" The bOy appeared once again on
top of the cave dwelling.
I tried to explain myself with a laugh, "But she's even
less sympathetic than I am."
The boy didn't understand my remark. He replied,
"Blacky understands people and she's loyal too! But she's
afraid of your leather shoes."
"She can recognize leather shoes?"
"Of course she can; those men wore them too!"
"Who?"
The boy realized he'd said too much already and didn't
answer.
I changed into a pair of sneakers and once more kicked
that piece of sweet potato over toward Blacky in an effort to
express my desire for friendship.
Blacky still paid no attention.
"You hide first," the boy motioned me away.
Oh, right, I had to Iet Blacky know that my offering was
completely good intentioned and didn't harbor even the least
bit of hidden danger. I walked nonchalantly into my cave
dwelling, shut the door, and watched Blacky through a crack
in the door.
Blacky was really sharp. She put on an air of nonchalance
too, kept on barking to make it clear that her anger had not
yet dissipated, and seemed to be saying, "Don't try to pull
anything on me!" But she was very hungry after all. After
looking to the left and the right, she let down her guard, stopped
barking, and hurriedly gulped down the sweet potato. She
wolfed it down fast and furiously, all the while casting anxious
glances over at my cave door. Ai, that pitiful look in her eyes
was very nearly human. I threw out another piece of sweet
potato from behind the door; Blacky hesitated a moment, but
having had a taste of something good her reason had become
a prisoner of her appetite and she started right in eating again.
It was quite amazing! From then on whenever Blacky saw
me again, although her ears twitched constantly to express her
lingering fear, still she didn't bark anymore, she only stared
imploringly at me, and when I threw her a morsel of food she
ate it right up in full acceptance of her abject status.
Nevertheless she absolutely refused to allow me anywhere near
the door to her cave dwelling.
One time I \lsed some vegetables that had been sauted in
oil to lure her aside, and then quietly approached the door of
that cave dwelling. When Blacky noticed she rushed at me,
roaring like a lion. We were friends, but that guaranteed only
that she wouldn't bite me; she roared at me insistently, both
as a reprimand and a warning to stay away. I suddenly had a
mystical feeling about that cave dwelling-perhaps it was the
dog's sacred altar? Perhaps Blacky's idol was inside?
That summer's tempest of rain and hail and the consequent
flooding brought on a great calamity. The wheat, for which
17
there was no time to harvest, simply rotted in the fields; the
com and sorghum that were just putting forth buds and tassels
were crushed and scattered around the hillside. The purple
color of the roots and stems all exposed to view predicted the
harshness of life in the fall and winter to come. Every family
started to eat only chaff and husks; the children went up the
hills with little baskets to look for edible wild grasses; and
everyone stored away what little good grain still remained,
more carefully than ever, in order to prepare for next spring's
famine conditions-they could not be without food in the
spring, that's the season when they need their strength.
Who could pay any mind to Blacky? Although she was a
dog with almost human feelings, still the chaff and husks were
eaten by the people and the sweet potato peelings, slops, and
so forth were just enough to feed the hogs. When the little boy
was scolded by his family, he ran over empty-handed to hug
Blacky as well as to console himself. What about me?Every
night I dreamed of visiting famous restaurants like the House
of Virtue, Eastern Ease, and Prosperity Gardens, and every
day I woke up to ravenously wolf down sourdough pancakes
made from chaff and bitter yams left over from last year.
Blacky continued stubbornly guarding her cave dwelling, not
searching for food and not stealing anything. When she felt
that her territory was absolutely secure, she would nose around
quietly and find some human excrement to consume and
redigest.
I was somewhat disgusted with Blacky. I felt that her
actions embodied a sort ofdisgraceful practice that was contrary
to nature. I don't mean simply because she ate excrement, but
rather because she insisted on guarding her sacred altar.
"A good dog, she's really a good dog," the passers-by
always said.
"If my place was threatened by wolves, I'd just take
Blacky home with me," someone else affirmed.
"Blacky wouldn't go home with you. A good dog doesn't
care if his home is poor; a good dog can't be lead away!" still
another passer-by insisted.
"Oh Blacky! It's really hard; seems like only a willingness
to suffer repeated hardships can make you a good dog."
From Blacky's case I went on to think about myself: why
hadn't I committed suicide yet? Was this earth simply the
sacred altar that I was stubbornly guarding? Was the
humiliation and repression my spirit had suffered any more
savory than excrement? Who knows whether or not when our
souls leave their flesh and blood outer shells, they are able to
find truth, freedom, and happiness in another realm?
All that night I heard Blacky barking in the courtyard.
That time the sound of her bark was of a sort I'd never heard
before: first it was long and drawn out like a sigh, then it was
a deep moan, as if she were suffering from some sort of inner
turmoil. Did Blacky feel empty too? I wondered as I laughed
bitterly to myself and began to fiddle with that long untouched
luggage rope of mine. Maybe hanging it on the lintel of the
door would accomplish my purpose . . . I unconsciously
pushed the door open and hung the rope up over the door. . .
Suddenly I realized that I couldn't hear Blacky's bark any
longer. Huh!? Blacky had disappeared. This seemed like a
most interesting development. I sat down on the doorstep and
stared at that empty patch of Blacky's territory; I only hoped
she had not gone to eat excrement again. Then I suddenly felt
like a miracle was about to take place. I looked forward to the
appearance of some sort of miracle. When a person reaches
the nadir of emptiness, any small, slightly out of the ordinary
occurrence in his life is sufficient to arouse great interest. Thus
I sat there on the doorstep until dawn. Hurray! She'd gone
AWOL! Blacky, too, had come to her senses. She hadn't come
home all night. I tossed my luggage rope into the comer again.
That morning the boy stood on top of the cave dwelling
again.
"Oh! Blacky went looking for a mate!" he told me.
He laughed out loud. "Blacky wants to start a family!"
Suddenly it dawned on me. After so many years I'd
actually forgotten such things. Blacky's bark last night was
just like the complaints of a love-sick fool, but that sound also
contained a kind of beautiful desire-Blacky had gone
courting! Emotional needs and survival needs can cause any
living thing to break out of the prison house of habit. This,
then, is creativity; this is the reason for and the force behind
creativity. No matter how ruthlessly the outside world ties one
down, no matter how rigid the concepts of one's inner world,
they are no match for the elemental forces of life itself.
Once more I forgot about dying. I was constantly picturing
Blacky's happiness to myself. Where are you at this moment?
Are you frolicking through the mountains and fields with your
sweetheart, laughing in gay abandon? Rolling around in the
tall grass, pouting and acting spoiled in the embrace of your
sweetheart? Chasing and capturing your prey, experiencing the
joy of creativity? Savoring raw flesh and blood as you joyfully
devour your prey together? Caressing each other's fur,
nuzzling, and enjoying the sweetness of love? Howling in the
wilderness, giving vent to your primeval emotions? You sleep
peacefully under the starlight with a completely reliable friend
at your side to keep guard and ward off trouble for you. You
murmur in your sleep, dreaming beautiful dreams. You bite
him because he's not tender enough. You bark fiercely in a fit
of temper because he doesn't understand you. You two keep
your distance for a while in anger and then you make up again.
You weep on each other's shoulders and then comfort each
other's wounded heart. You tell each other everything without
suspicion or defense . . . In the morning when the sun shines
down on your den, the two of you sing to the sky, lift up your
spirits, nm forth into that boundless wild with your hearts full
of new hopes and expectations ... My heart followed Blacky,
ran on in freedom, immersed in some sort of obscure hope.
5
Not long after that, however, Blacky returned from her
"honeymoon. "
She came back very quietly. At noontime, just as I was
walking back and forth on Blacky's territory chewing on a
piece of coarse-grain bread, she lightly pushed open the
courtyard gate and came in. She didn't actually bark or demand
that I get out of her territory immediately; she just sort of loped
over to her "guard station" and lay down. The embarrassed
expression on her face seemed to say: "This is not your fault,
it's mine. It's a good thing it's only you and not some outsider."
Blacky did not seem the least bit interested in anything;
she just lay there rolling her eyes and worrying about her
situation. Was she exhausted from her travels? Was she longing
for her "sweetheart"? Was she still wrapped up in her recent
happiness? With your beautiful dreams in the tall grass, your
words of love under the bright moon, and with a friend and
equal to worry about you and treat you tenderly, what did you
18
want to come home for? Lying there in front of this lonely
cave dwelling . . . Oh, the wind in the mountains is very cold;
but who's going to show you the least bit of warmth here?
While Blacky was on her "honeymoon," I had poked open
the paper windows of that western cave dwelling: there was
the musty smell of mildew; a discolored mat coverlet was
draped over the adobe kang;4 in the back of the room there
were two empty rice bins; a long bench nearby was covered
with dust and imprinted all over with rat tracks. That was all,
just that much was all that Blacky had been guarding. My God!
Habit is truly frightening! A dog really is a dog after all and
a dog's nature is hard to change. I actually felt like beating
her then; but as soon as I saw that sincere expression on
Blacky's face, of one who is willing to bear gladly the work
and the calumny of office, I could no longer bear to scold her.
All the more so, given the state I myself was in, what right
did I have to be overly critical of a dog?
An obvious change in Blacky since she returned this time
was that she'd become extremely taciturn. For days on end she
just lay there quietly, worrying, in front of the cavedweIling.
One day the little boy found a dead crow somewhere.
"Blacky, here's a reward for you!" he called out; and then he
stroked Blacky's stomach and yelled out with a laugh,
"Blacky's going to be a Mama!"
Oh, so that's what she was worrying about. Of course,
living alone is difficult enough-what would happen if she
tried to raise a family? Would her future life be beautiful or
hard and bitter? A man's inability to understand a dog is just
like a dog's inability to understand a man-who could have
known what Blacky was planning?
The boy brought over a willow basket which he had lined
with a gunnysack and some straw. Blacky rubbed herself back
and forth against the boy's pantleg to express her gratitude.
"My pups will never forget your kindness." If she could speak,
that is certainly what she would say. Mothers are completely
unselfish and motherhood is most readily respected by others,
most capable of arousing other people's sense of compassion.
I brought that dog skin rug of mine over and wrapped it around
the willow basket. Then I suddenly grew frightened, but Blacky
just kept on rubbing back and forth all around me to express
her gratitude-she was incapable of understanding where that
pelt came from. At that same moment I felt once again the
pride of being a human being; we are able to sum up the lessons
of history. In my own case, for example, I spoke out about
the reality of the darkness and corruption-and what a
similarity there is between the beginnings of this darkness and
so many other tragedies in history!-even though I was
banished and lost my wife and children on that account . . .
Blacky's abdomen was growing bigger and bigger. As
her time grew near she actually became very active. Was it
her hopes of motherhood spurring her on? She stretched out
regularly in the willow basket, inspecting to see if the straw
and gunnysack were arranged properly, or else she'd jump in
and try it out, straightening up here and there, all the while
barking away softly. Perhaps she was practicing a lullaby. Ai,
no matter what you say, the little lives forming in her belly
knew nothing of the heat or cold of the outside world; as a
mother she had to think out everything very carefully for their
sake.
4. A kang is a Nonhem Chinese bed made of adobe bricks under which a
Blacky began to go wrong. She regularly abandoned her
post and she began to forage for food, began to wag her tail
everywhere in an effort to gain sympathy. She began to fight
with other hungry dogs, scrambling for a piece of sweet potato
skin or a small amount of slop left behind in the hog trough.
Later on Blacky actually began to steal. The first couple
of times she still felt ashamed. When I cursed her up and down
after discovering that some rice soup left in my bowl had been
licked clean, Blacky hid behind the willow basket, held her
breath and didn't even dare to raise her head. When I kicked
her a couple of times, she neither yelped nor ran away, but
was perfectly willing to accept punishment. She did not,
however, reform; she kept on stealing time after time. I was
getting ready to teach her a lesson with a stick when the boy
stopped me.
"Blacky's very worried!"
"You trying to defend her?"
"Haven't you noticed Blacky's teats? They're not swollen
at all, but she's just about to give birth!"
I forgave that pitiful mother.
For her part Blacky became less and less able to gauge
the seriousness of her crimes, and I had people coming to my
door every day to settle a score with Blacky. She had stolen
some provisions from this house; she had eaten up the pig slops
at that house; she had broken down and chewed up the com
stalks on someone's private plot; she had dug up someone
else's sweet potato field ... The people angrily cursed her,
"You rotten mut! You steal again and we'll skin you alive!"
Some people pelted her with rocks and some people went after
her brandishing their hoes while she tried to appease them and
begged for help with her high pitched yelp. Fortunately the
boy was Blacky's staunch protector.
"Keep your gate closed and don't let Blacky get out!" the
Brigade Leader said. I was hoping, though, that her maternal
nature might bring about some sudden change in Blacky, and
so I left the gate open a crack.
On the very night that she gave birth Blacky came home
dragging a badly battered leg behind her. She moaned and
cried softly, "woo woo," while the boy tried to console her.
"Can you blame them? They don't have anything to eat either;
their kids don't have any milk either . . ."
That night Blacky dropped a big litter of pups.
As soon as her pups were born, her maternal heart was
comforted; they squealed as they scrambled for her teats and
as her milk dripped into their little mouths her own humiliations
no longer counted for much. Blacky licked this one's head and
kissed that one's eyes and sang a soft song while her own eyes
were full of maternal love and satisfaction. Her place in front
of that desolate cave dwelling was bursting with life.
Passers by stopped once again in front of the yard,
crowded around the willow basket to watch for a while, praising
her once more as if they had forgotten Blacky's temporary
lapse into bad behavior and remembered that she was a good
dog.
"Hey, if you want to raise a dog, just take one of these
pups home; they're guaranteed to keep good watch on your
house, guaranteed!"
"Let Blacky nurse 'em a little longer, then the pups will
grow a little big stronger."
"Blacky even caught a badger once."
"Those badger skins of Zhang Shan' s were worth money!"
"One time a wolf forced open the Zhangs' pig pen, and
lire can be built.
19 Blacky fought for dear life . . ."
6
Blacky and her pups just rested there in the willow basket
for a few days.
The little pups ate more every day, Blacky's teats were
dry again, and once again she dragged her emaciated body
around everywhere seeking food.
It was a famine year. The summer floods had destroyed
the wheat, the autumn grain yield was practically nil, and every
family was boiling thin rice gruel and steaming coarse
dumplings. BJacky found absolutely nothing.
Having licked the trough until it shone brightly, the old
sow could only grunt with hunger.
Human excrement was hard to find . . .
The little pups were barking and crying. They were not
yet able to forage for themselves.
Blacky dragged her tired body out every day only to return
with a feeling of defeat. When she thrust her dried up teats
into her pups' waiting little mouths, they cried out again as if
they had been cheated ... Blacky had a glazed look in her
eyes. Now she probably regretted her days of happiness in the
wilds. Life was so much more difficult than she had imagined
then.
For another month of dark and windy nights, Blacky once
more ran around everywhere like before, with her stomach
growling loudly. Every single family locked their outer gate.
Blacky did not dare to come home and face her pups' reproach
nor did she have the heart to try to fool them with those dried
up teats of hers. She chased after a wild hare, but couldn't
catch it. Then she went after a fox that was vainly attempting
to steal some chickens, but was once again left behind, panting
for breath and sore all over. A little later she spotted a hungry
wolf that was greedily eying the sheepfold. She was too
exhausted to be any match for it and the best she could do was
to bark loudly; a dog derives power from association with
human beings, however, so the wolf ran away as Blacky
approached the sheepfold. I don't know if it was due to the
urging of her lofty maternal nature or the rebirth of her primitive
animal instincts, but she was so attracted by the prospect of
eating flesh and blood that she momentarily forgot her proper
role as a domestic dog. She was even surprised at herself for
not discovering that sumptuous flavor sooner. That's probably
what she felt. At any rate, although I don't know how she
managed to become so clever, she finally forced open the
tightly closed wattle gate and carried off a young lamb. If she
had eaten the lamb right there on the spot and then licked the
blood clean from her mouth, probably no one would have
suspected that it was not the work of a wolf; but Blacky, overly
proud of her own cleverness, closed the gate neatly behind her
and carried the lamb home to make her pups happy. Perhaps
she was already mentally prepared to be given a good beating,
but didn't understand that this particular crime went far beyond
the limits that human beings would tolerate.
The boy and I were both thrown into a panic as we
hurriedly helped BJacky to cover up her crime-wiping the
blood spots off the willow basket and tossing the leftover skin
and bones into the river. After that I kicked her several times
without mercy. Strangely enough Blacky then grew very
peaceful, believing that since people understood her difficulties
from chasing that hungry wolf, he immediately discovered he
been tricked by Blacky. The people very quickly
discovered the real criminal.
The moment of Blacky's punishment had arrived, but she
not the least bit prepared as she continued to frolic happily
With her pups.
The people gathered around her willow basket. Blacky
had absolutely no inkling of the disaster to come. She thought
since she had already been beaten and granted clemency,
thiS crowd of people could not possibly harbor evil intentions
but it was still necessary to ingratiate herself with them, so
wagged her tail at their approach.
"She used to be such a good dog," the people said.
Blacky did not understand the implication of the words
to be," but, owing to its frequent use in the past, she
did seem to understand the title "good dog." Thus she stretched
out her front paws to greet the people.
When someone she knew well slapped her and sent her
reeling she thought he was playing and romped back and forth
all the more animatedly at his feet. And when someone else
kicked her and sent her rolling she imagined that turning tricks
that way was an even better way of expressing her sincere
loyalty.
"Once she's eaten a lamb she'll always remember the taste
of lamb meat and soon she'll be back for another one" the
people said. '
. The little pups yelped shrilly, Blacky jumped into the
wIllow basket, licking this one and that one. "There's nothing
to be afraid of; after a while you will all go out with human
beings and you must be good dogs." The look in Blacky's eyes
was so calm and good-natured.
When the people slipped the rope around her neck, Blacky
her neck .out joyfully. She thought it was a special
prIze; an extra special honor for being a good dog-didn't that
fat city dog who could jump through rings of fire have a
beautiful chain collar around his neck?
But the. rope was pulled tight. As Blacky ran along with
the man pulhng the rope, she seemed to be somewhat surprised:
why was the rope becoming tighter and tighter?
Blacky gradually felt that something was amiss: so many
strangers were loitering by the door to her cave dwelling and
sitting on the windowsill of her "sacred altar." She let out a
shrill warning yelp.
The man pulling the rope threw the free end over a tree
an? pulled it hard. Blacky thought this joke was really
bemg carried too far and she let out another shrill yelp of protest.
But the people didn't stop pulling; several of them pulled
all at once. Blacky began to feel choked; but before she had
time to realize what had happened, her body was already
hanging in the air.
. look in Blacky's eyes in that last second left a deep
ImpressIOn on me-she looked so perplexed, so terrified, and
so unjustly wronged.
The reason that I can tell you this story today with no fear
of anyone pinning a bad label on me is precisely because
humanity has triumphed over that dark age. But if we want to
defeat it, we must first recognize it . . . *
and were being lenient about her mistake, she could once again
resume her role as a good dog.
Originally published in the Peking University student magazine
The old shepherd's dog, however, had always been more
Chouxiaoya (The Ugly Duckling).
intelligent than most dogs. That night as soon as he returned Translated by Michael S. Duke
20
Father's Milk Is also Blood Transformed
by Dai Houying
Sensing that Hanhan wanted him to leave, Xiwang turned
to me and said, "I've got to go now. Hanhan, why don't you
stay here a little longer?" Then he stood up and left, and Hanhan
quickly went over and locked the door behind him.
I had her sit right next to me, and waited for her to speak,
but for a long time she didn't say a word. I couldn't help
asking, "Hanhan, was there something you wanted to talk to
me about?"
"No," she said quickly, shaking her head. But her eyes
told me she did have something on her mind. Her eyes were
exactly like Sun Yue's, fine and bright. Usually they were
gentle and mild, but when she had something on her mind they
became agitated. She glanced for a moment at the letter in her
hand, and then at me.
"Hanhan, can't you tell your Uncle what it is?" I made
an effort to help her relax and say what was on her mind. A
child's worries shouldn't be too serious.
She bit her lip, as though she were trying to decide
something.
"I feel sorry for Papa," she said, looking at the letter in
her hand.
"Yes, I sympathize with him too, in his present situation,"
I replied.
"Uncle He, do you think that after Mama has finished the
road history has laid out for her, maybe ... ?"
She stopped in mid sentence, looked at me hesitantly, and
did not go on.
"You hope Papa and Mama will get back together again,
is that it?" I forced a smile as I asked this, suppressing the
agitation in my own heart.
She glanced at me, but then quickly shook her head and
said, "That'll never happen. He has that other woman now.
Uncle He, do you think they will get a divorce? They'll never
be able to get back together!"
"They might," I replied.
"What about little Huanhuan?" she asked.
21
"She will go with her Papa or Mama."
"I wish I had a little brother or sister. It's no fun being
all alone," she said.
I understand the way children feel, and her wish was quite
natural. If this family of three could get back together, and if
someone like little Huanhuan were added too, maybe they
could have a happy home once again. But what about me?
What would my position be? Should I be out of the picture,
or painted in? I felt as if someone had plucked out my heart.
I wanted to go look at the long-stemmed pipe, but I made an
effort to control myself. Hanhan was a sensitive child.
"Uncle He!" Suddenly Hanhan called out my name, and
I gave a start, as if taken by surprise. I didn't want the child
to know what was on my mind.
"Did Mama give you back that pipe herself, or did you
ask her for it back?"
She was still on this topic. How should I answer? How
did she hope I would answer? Sometimes it is hard to grasp a
child's thinking. I didn't want my reply to hurt her, so I decided
to try to find out exactly what was going through her mind. I
deliberately smiled and said, "What would you guess?"
Her gaze swept back and forth across my face twice, and
she asked hesitantly, "Mama gave it back to you, right? Mama
said she would give it back when you got out ofthe hospital."
I nodded. I knew now what she hoped, and I did not want
to disappoint her. I felt worse.
"Uncle He, don't feel bad." She pulled the stool closer
to me, and leaned up next to me.
"Why should I feel bad?" I asked. My heart was suddenly
thrown into a turmoil by this young girl. Did my voice sound
a little strange? I didn't dare look directly at her, for fear I
would begin to cry.
"I know you feel bad. Xiwang told me you loved my
Mama. Is that true, Uncle He?" The sound of her voice was
very faint, as if she were afraid someone else would hear. But
to me, every word weighed heavily. And her eyes? Concerned,
anxious, unsettled, sympathetic. How could such a young girl
have such complex emotions?
"Is it true, Uncle He?" Why must you ask me this,
Hanhan? If you already have a dim understanding of what love
is, you probably detected the truth. Didn't you always take
great pleasure in reporting all of your Mama's activities to me?
The fact is, you have been trying all along to get me and your
Mama together. But today you have to ask me, "Is it true,
Uncle He?" I know that if I answer "No," you will be hurt,
you will doubt me, you will think I have been deceiving you.
But if I answer "Yes," what will you think? All right, Hanhan,
in your presence I can only be a child too.
"Yes, Hanhan, it is true," I replied, looking at her, and
my voice too was faint.
She crumpled the letter into a ball, and suddenly slumped
down over the table and began to cry.
Child, child! What are you crying for? I have tied a cord
to your little heart, and have pulled it so your heart aches, is
that it? I understand, child! You love me, almost as much as
you love your mother. You hope I will be happy. But now
something has come up that blocks the happiness between the
people you love . . .
Child, child! Don't cry! This is what it is like to be human.
Life is always like this. Each person's heart is pulled in many
different ways, and nothing can be done about it. You are still
young. The net you live in-the network of social relationships
-still has only a few threads, all clearly visible. Later on this
network will become denser and more complex. Perhaps then
you will stop crying, the way I have.
I lifted up Hanhan's head, wanting to wipe away her tears,
but I could not wipe them dry.
"Hanhan! Uncle He doesn't like to see people cry." I
wiped her tears again, urging her to stop crying.
"Uncle He, will we still be friends later on?" she asked,
grasping my hand.
"Of course, Hanhan. We are best friends. Come on,
'Fingers hooked together, we'll be friends forever.' " I tried
to get her to hook fingers with me, and she stopped crying and
started to smile.
"You are so good, Uncle He! I'll keep on coming to see
you."
'That's tine. Hanhan, you will always be welcome here."
Her mood was a little better. She started thumbing through
the books on the table.
"Hanhan, it's time to go home. Your Mama will be
worried about you," I reminded her. I thought Sun Yue might
not know Hanhan had come over here.
Hanhan pulled my arm over and took a look at my
wristwatch, then stuck out her tongue and said, "Oh, it's time
to eat! I've got to go!"
"I have to go to the cafeteria too, so let's go together!" I
picked up my ricebowl and went out with her.
"Should I let Mama read the letter?" she asked.
"Might as well let her read it. Hanhan, from now on you
must be more understanding of your Mama, and gradually let
her know how much you feel. She will listen to you. She loves
you very much!" As I said this, I had an uncomfortable tight
feeling in my throat. Fortunately we were almost to the
cafeteria. I said to Hanhan, ''I'm going to eat now, so you go
on alone." She said goodbye to me, gave me a tender glance,
and left.
When she had gone a certain distance I quickly turned
and went back toward my room. I needed to rest. The past
couple of days had really been tiring.
I bolted the door securely. No one must come! I wanted
to lie down quietly by myself.
The case which had lasted more than twenty years has
thus closed. It started from "nothing" and has ended in
"nothing." A young fellow has turned into a middle-aged man.
When he lies down, he is still the same length, and when he
stands up he is just as tall as before. He comes and goes with
no strings attached.
A tear fell from the comer of my eye, but I did not want
to wipe it away. I have never enjoyed the pleasures of love;
might I not at least express its pains? I did not want to wipe
away the tears. From "nothing" to "nothing"? My hand once
again touched the long-stemmed pipe under my pillow. There
was a different tobacco pouch, This change meant "something."
This was the only trace my long and unfulfilled love had left
in my life. The tobacco pouch was hand sewn, stitch by stitch,
exquisitely done. Each time the needle penetrated, Sun Yue,
what were you thinking? Is it possible that you did not want
the secrets of your heart to be revealed in these stitches? Is it
possible you did not hope the seeds long buried in the earth
would sprout, blossom, and bear fruit?
"My self-respect will not permit it." Is that really true,
Sun Yue? Last night I thought about it all night and never came
to a clear conclusion. Zhao Zhenhuan was tossing and turning.
How I wanted to ask him about how he met you! How I wanted
to know what impressions you have of each other! But I didn't
say a word. That tattered photograph that Hanhan let me see
is still suspended before my eyes. I see the tom places made
whole, the images of three people once again distinct,
complete, and tender.
"If there is a world to come ... ," Sun Yue, would you
still like to be united with me? If it really is a matter of your
self-respect not permitting it, I still have some hope. Because
someday you will come to understand that respecting one's
own feelings is the only true self-respect. So then, Sun Yue,
when you say that, are you hinting that I should wait? Not
wait for a world to come, but wait for the future ...
"Did Mama give you back that pipe herself, or did you
ask for it back?" Let me think about that carefully. It seems
like I asked for it back. Yes, I was the one who asked for it.
"Let me have a smoke!" I had stretched out my hand toward
her, and she gave it to me. When I left I didn't ask whether
she wanted to keep it for me any longer, I just took it back
with me, this token of love! How could I be so insensitive?
Even Hanhan saw that this point was very important, but I
didn't think about it at all. What a numbskull!
I ought to go to her and say: "My feelings have not
changed. I am willing to wait, wait forever." I want to give
her back the pipe and say, "Please keep this for me forever."
I got up. Went into the courtyard. The sky was full of
stars. I walked forward. I could already see the window where
she lived, the light glowing, brighter than any star in the sky.
I stood still, facing this star.
Sun Yue, if you are standing at the window, can you see
me walking toward you? Sun Yue, if you are a star, can you
come out the window and fly into my embrace? "Uncle He,
you are so good." I seem to hear Hanhan's voice again. The
words "so good" carried a lot of meaning: when she said "I
feel sorry for Papa," I sympathized with her; and when she
22
said, "I hope Papa and Mama will get together again," I agreed
with her. "I know you feel very bad" -this shows she approved
of the sacrifice I would make for the sake of her family's unity.
Today Hanhan judged me not only emotionally but also
morally.
Is there a moral question here?
"If a person lives only for himself, he is not even as good
as a barnyard animal. Even pigs and dogs know how to love
their young!"
Father, my father, you are speaking to me. I should not
continue on this path any longer. I will turn back, no matter
how painful it may be. Sun Yue, will you suddenly discover
me, fly after me in pursuit, and snatch away my pipe? I lengthen
my stride and hurry back to my room. Close the door, lock it,
lie down. Sun Yue didn't pursue me. She didn't see me. Or,
she didn't want to come after me. That's all right too.
The case which had lasted more than twenty years has
thus closed. It started from "nothing" and has ended in
"nothing." No, it left me one trace, one memento-this tobacco
pouch.
The two people I have loved most in my life-my father
and Sun Yue-both left me the same memento, this pipe with
the tobacco pouch hanging from it. Is that a coincidence?
From now on the pipe will become even dearer to me.
Through it I can see two hearts: a father's and a lover's; a
peasant's and a scholar's. How different these two hearts are!
But both are equally filled with love. Both have trembled and
moaned with pain, both have given rise to noble sentiments
and sacrifices.
"My brother. you and I lost our parents when we were
small. We grew up begging for food, hand in hand. That winter
we could not get enough to eat, we could not bear the hunger,
so we went hand in hand to throw ourselves into the river. We
slowly made our way toward the middle of the river, I in front
and you behind. The water was up to my stomach, up to your
chest. You stood still and would not go on, you cried to me,
'Elder Brother, let's not die! The water is too cold!' ... Then
we made our way out again, hand in hand, you in front and I
behind. We sold ourselves, sold ourselves to two families to
be 'sons'; you became my 'uncle' and I your 'nephew'. After
liberation we became brothers again. You even got to be a
cadre. But then you ended up throwing yourself into the river
after all. Oh my brother, weren't you afraid the water would
be cold? Why didn't you say something to me?"
This halting lament made by my father as he stood before
my uncle's corpse was probably the longest speech he ever
made in his life. Each phrase, each word, is clear in my
memory. Because from then on I saw something through my
father that I had never seen before.
My uncle had "committed suicide to avoid punishment."
He was accused of "wildly opposing the Three Red Banners."
People were already starving in the countryside, but the papers
were still urging everyone to "continue to leap forward," and
the people on top were still "encouraging" the peasants to sell
"surplus grain" to the state. My uncle, who was Deputy
Director of the commune, could not understand how such a
situation could come about under the leadership of the
Communist Party.
"A lot of the leaders in the Central Committee come from
peasant backgrounds. Could they really believe that one mu of
land could produce ten thousand catties of grain? Why do they
let the newspaper reporters print such outrageous exaggera
tions? If they keep on exaggerating, everyone will starve to
death!" He wrote a letter to the Central Committee exposing
the fact that the production reports for the commune and county
were unfounded, describing the sufferings of the people, and
asking the Central Committee to send someone to investigate
the matter. His letter was intercepted on route.
One day the commune suddenly called a mass meeting to
"struggle against active counterrevolutionary elements." The
county Chief of Security was in charge of the proceedings. My
father and I both went. The last thing we expected was that
the target of the struggle would be my uncle, bound up hand
and foot. ...
After the struggle meeting, they were going to take him
to the county seat to be held there in custody. But on the way
my uncle by a sudden frenzied effort was able to throw off his
escorts and hurl himself headlong into the river. He could not
even move his hands, which were tied behind his back, and
he had no strength left to struggle....
The corpse of this "active counterrevolutionary" who had
"committed suicide to avoid punishment" was pulled out of
the river and made the object of criticism at a meeting held
there at the scene. Death, you have cheated him! What if his
"cohorts" want to find a place to give him a peaceful burial?
It is not permitted! Just dig a trench on the spot, and furthermore
you can't use a coffin!
That is the way it happened. My aunt was pregnant at the
time, and with some difficulty she made her way over to the
corpse and put a clean suit of clothing on him there in front
of everyone. Then shovel after shovelful of yellow earth fell
onto his clean clothing. He was buried. My uncle was not yet
40 years old ...
"Even if I go to jail for it I am going to find a way to
bring your uncle's corpse back home and nail together a few
boards to make him a coffin." After my father came back from
the river he spent all night smoking his pipe, one bowl after
another. "Is it a crime to say something truthful to help out
the peasants?" He kept muttering things like this to himself.
The next evening he took some planks from the bed, and he
and I secretly made a crate-like coffin. We groped our way
down to the riverside in the dark, dug up my uncle's body,
put it into the coffin and buried it in our private plot behind
the house.
The people in the village may have known, or they may
not have. In any case, no one ever told our secret.
"From now on our two families will live together as one.
When we have plenty to eat, you will have plenty too; when
we have less you will have less too, just like when my brother
was alive."
My father's thoughts and feelings had never been
influenced by the theory or practice of "class struggle." It had
never occurred to him to turn himself into a "tool of class
struggle." This was probably because he was too ordinary and
insignificant. No one tried to use him, and he had nothing he
was afraid of losing in the "class struggle." Every year, every
month, every day, every hour, and every place, the wind blew
and rain fell, and any work unit or any family could be hurled
into a different class. Even a single individual could find
himself in different classes yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Lots of people learned the art of adjusting their emotional
center of gravity and changing their banners and insignia from
time to time according to the "requirements of class struggle."
They learned how to test the wind, recognize the current party
23
line, join the ranks, draw lines, form factions, create cliques
... But my father never went in for that sort of thing. In fact,
he was too ordinary, too insignificant, what effect could he
have on any "class struggle"?
But "class struggle" had an enormous effect on him. It
expropriated him. At the same time, it gave him an opportunity
to reveal the simplicity, dignity, and beauty of his soul. This
soul gave me precious nourishment. I drank my father's milk
After this, the two families joined to form one. My aunt
and her son came to live at our house. We had mouths to feed
but no grain or livestock. We ate everything we had, and sold
everything we could sell. The adults could endure this without
crying or complaining, but what about the children? My little
brother was only seven or eight, and my uncle's son even
younger, only six years old. And didn't the child in my aunt's
belly need nourishment even more?
My father and I, two big strong fellows, spent every day
dredging in ditches and in the river, and digging around in
uncultivated spots. Mother, who had bound feet, took my little
sister with her to the fields to look for sweet potatoes that the
harvesters had missed. In order not to "smear mud on the face
of the people's commune," my mother and sister had sewn
little pockets in their clothing, into which they could fit slices
of potatoes. How much could they carry this way? They dug
a hole in the ground to make a stove, cooked some of the
potatoes, and stuffed them into their own bellies . . .
Mother gave one cooked sweet potato to my father, and
he pressed it into his nephew's hand. My brother started to
cry, and Mother wiped his eyes and led him away.
Days seemed like years! My brother could not endure
such hardships, and was the first to "depart." My mother
became ill and never recovered . . .
"Kowtow to your uncle!" My aunt pulled my cousin over
to my father. "Uncle, I can't bear watching your family suffer
and die because of us. I will take my child with me and try to
get away from this famine-stricken area. After a few years we
will come back."
For a long time my father kept puffing on his pipe. The
tobacco pouch was filled with dried acacia leaves. Finally,
holding back his tears, he waved his hand and said, "If you
can get away, you might as well try it! I have let my brother
down ..."
Not long after this, my mother followed in my brother's
footsteps and "departed" too. Only three of us were left in the
family; my father, my sister, and me. By then neither my father
nor sister could get out of bed. I was the only one who could
move about and make the daily search for food. And my whole
body was already bloated. Like my mother, I sewed pockets
all over my clothing and went to the fields to look for sweet
potatoes that had not been harvested. There weren't any more
close by, so I had to go farther away. I would bring home
fibrous tubers no bigger than my finger, as if they were precious
jewels.
But my father did not improve. Day by day he wasted
away. Every evening I sat by his bed and filled his pipe for
him. As I watched the dried leaves burning in the pipe bowl,
my heart was suffering even more than if it had been held over
the fire! If my heart, my blood, my love, could be transformed
into tobacco . . .
"Pa, please don't smoke this anymore," I pleaded as I
filled the pipe. "No, son, all his life your pa has only had this
one indulgence. Why not let me keep on smoking in myoid
age ... "
Where did Sun Yue manage to get such good tobacco?
She would not know that you can smoke acacia leaves, and
that you can fill your stomach with the smoke.
One day my father called me over to his bed and I filled
his pipe for him. He took the pipe, but was already too weak
to smoke it. I couldn't keep from crying. The comer of my
father's mouth moved slightly-was he trying to smile at me?
The motion released a flood of tears. As I wiped away his
tears, he clasped my hand. He kept looking at me, and the
tears flowed down the deep gullies of his cheeks. "There are
still a few sweet potatoes left in the hamper. I saved them up
before. It is all right for me to die, but you cannot die. If you
die, who would be able to know what kind of a man you are?
And there's your uncle ... You must find your aunt ... your
sister is growing up . . . "
He did not finish speaking. He did not smoke his
"tobacco. "
I knelt by my father's bed, and for a long time did not
get up.
I picked up the pipe, which had fallen to the ground. My
first puff of "tobacco" was the smoke of burning acacia leaves
that my father had left for me . . .
My uncle and I have both been exonerated. My aunt
brought home her son and the daughter who was born during
the troubles. "If your father were still alive ... " My aunt
would bring him up every now and then. I always replied, "He
is undoubtedly at peace." I believed that my father's soul in
heaven would certainly feel gratified, because he never thought
of himself. But, Father, how can I not keep you in my heart?
Whenever I pick up the pipe I think of you. Through the
pipe I drink your milk, a father's milk. "Mothers' milk is blood
transformed"; fathers' milk is also blood transformed. Mothers'
milk is stored in the breast, but fathers' milk is stored in the
heart.
My father did not leave me any mementos except for the
pipe. And no one else thought of remembering him, or having
a funeral service. He was too ordinary, too insignificant. What
did his great sacrifice have to do with history? History only
records the lives and activities of great figures. People like my
father can only be lumped together under the term "the masses
of the people." Lots of people admit that history was created
by "the people," but when they leaf through history books, or
write about history, how many individual living, feeling,
ordinary people do they see?
I remember my father, and mourn him. My eulogy is the
manuscript I wrote-Marxism and Humanism. To carry on
class struggle in order to eliminate class oppression and
exploitation is necessary, high-minded, and proper; to artifi
cially create class distinctions and tear apart people and families
in order to carry on "class struggle" is cruel and unconscionable.
The former liberates the people, while the latter harms the
people. The former truly treats people as human beings, while
the latter treats people as tools that can talk.
Sun Yue has not read this manuscript. Several times I
have thought of letting her see it, but her attitude held me back.
The day before yesterday I ran into the editor of the press, and
he told me it would soon be coming out . . .
I will send Sun Yue a copy, and write on it, "Offering
my thoughts and aspirations of more than twenty years. . . "
No, that would not be appropriate. That would lead to
24
misunderstanding. I should write, "To Comrade Sun Vue, for
comments and criticism."
"Comrade!" "Comrade!" We used to sing, "Our proudest
name is Comrade, More glorious than any other name." But
today, when we use this term to address someone, it often
creates a feeling of coldness and distance. Why is that?
"Comrade Sun Yue!" Are the thoughts and aspirations of
over twenty years summed up in this name? It makes me shiver.
But this is the way it is, and the only way it can be. Those
diaries will accompany me forever, along with a little yellow
blossom made of paper.
The case which had lasted more than twenty years has
thus closed. It started from "nothing" and has ended in
"nothing." A young fellow has turned into a middle aged man.
When he lies down he is still the same length, and when he
stands up he is still as tall as before. He comes and goes with
no strings attached.
"There is only one road before me, to live my life alone."
No, Sun Vue, I don't wantthat for you. Give this road to me!
I will always treasure this pipe. The pipe was my father's.
The tobacco pouch was Sun Yue's ... such fine stitches ...*
Chapter 20 of the novel Ren a, ren!. Guangzhou: Guangdong
renmin chubanshe, 1980.
Translated by Jeannette L. Faurot
SIMULTANEOUSCl.OTH AND PAPER
SAMIRAMIN
THE FUTURE OFMAOlSM
trana'ated by Nonnan Fin"e"tein
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opment under Mao.
A third and final part compares the Maoist to the revisionist approach to
deIIeIopment. particularly regarding r8IIOIulionary class alHanoes. ~ n k i n g
the future 01 Maoism to the nature 01 worldwide r8IIOIution.
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25
A World of Their Own
Poets should establish through their works a world of
their own, a genuine and independent world, an upright
world, a world of justice and humanity.
-Bei Dao
Bei Dao, Gu Cheng, and Shu Ting-in that order-are
the three finest young poets in China. Although their supporters
have hailed their poetry as the new style most expressive of
the spirit of the post-Mao era, their conservative detractors
have attacked it as "obscure poetry" (menglong shi), sparking
a continuing debate that has run to hundreds of articles from
1979 to date.
Bei Dao ("Northern Island") is the best-known pen name
of Zhao Zhenkai, a young man from Peking who began
publishing poetry in 1972. He wrote his remarkable protest
poem, "The Answer," while participating in the Tiananmen
demonstrations of 5 April 1976. It was not included in the
standard anthologies because it had already transcended the
conventional political rhetoric of the poems inspired by that
occasion. Bei Dao writes free verse forms, and his diction,
whether colloquial or bookish, conforms to the standard
language of educated Peking citizens. His powerful imagery
chiefly takes that busy city as its background, but reaches out
to nature, especially the sea, in search of the tranquility Chinese
poets have always sought there. His striking symbolism
sometimes involves private associations, but for the most part
his verse is readily comprehensible to the educated urbanites
who have always been the only real audience for modem
Chinese poetry. *
* The poem. "The Answer."' lirst appeared in English translation in Notesfrom
the City of the Sun: Poems by Bei Doo, edited and translated by Bonnie S.
McDougall (Cornell East Asian Papers. no. 34, Ithaca. N.Y.: Cornell
China-Japan Program, 1983). It is reprinted here at Ms. McDougall's
suggestion and with the kind permission of the Cornell University China-Japan
Program. The other poems by Bei Dao have been supplied to us from Ms.
McDougall's private collection and cannot all be given specific journal
references.
Gu Cheng is the youngest of the three poets. Son of the
poet Gu Gong, he began writing poetry in his teens while living
in the atmosphere of a "cultural desert" (his father's phrase)
on an army farm during the Cultural Revolution. Gu Cheng's
poetry represents his sensitivt\ reaction to the world around him
as well as a world of his own imagination where he has sought
refuge from the unreality of the "real" world of China in the
1970s. For example, when philistine moralists criticized him
for a line in "All Is Finished" that compares the Jialing River
near Chongqing to a wet shroud, a line that horrified even his
father, his reply was what we in the English-speaking world
would expect from a poet: "In the realm of art, the world of
my perception is more real than the appearance of things." Gu
Cheng is a master of color images: his preoccupation with
darkness is often overshadowed by his intense search for light,
but his is a light more illuminating than the stale references to
the "dawn of a new era" so popular among older "revolutionary"
poetasters.
Shu Ting is the daughter of an intellectual family that
suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution when her
relatives were imprisoned and her mother died. Her poetry is
decidedly more romantic, both personally and politically, than
Bei Dao's or Gu Cheng's. She quite often expresses a
melancholy sense of personal disappointment from unsuccess
ful quests for love and friendship which might well be
interpreted allegorically. The other side of her melancholy is
a romantic avowal of a mission, as in "Perhaps," and a heroic
demand for truth, as in "Voice of a Generation. "** *
** My thanks to Bonnie S. McDougall and Shiao-ling Yu for their assistance
on these introductory notes.
26
Poems by Dei Dao
The Answer
Baseness is the password of the base,
Honor is the epitaph of the honorable.
Look how the gilded sky is covered
With the drifting, crooked shadows of the dead.
The Ice Age is over now,
Why is there still ice everywhere?
The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered,
Why do a thousand sails contest the Dead Sea?
I come into this world
Bringing only paper, rope, a shadow,
To proclaim before the judgment
The voices of the judged:
Let me tell you, world,
I-do-not-believe!
If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet,
Count me as number one thousand and one.
I don't believe the sky is blue;
I don't believe in the sound of thunder;
I don't believe that dreams are false;
I don't believe that death has no revenge.
If the sea is destined to breach the dikes,
Let the brackish water pour into my heart;
If the land is destined to rise,
Let humanity choose anew a peak for our existence.
A new juncture and glimmering stars
Adorn the unobstructed sky,
They are five thousand year old pictographs,
The staring eyes of future generations.
Resume
I once goosestepped across the square
my head shaved bare
the better to seek the sun
but in that season of madness
I changed direction, meeting
the expressionless goats on the other side of the fence
until I saw my ideals
on blank paper that seemed from a saline-alkaline soil
I curved my spine
believing I had found the only
way to express the truth, like
a baked fish dreaming of the sea
Long live ... ! I shouted the blasted cry once only
and then sprouted a beard
tangled like countless centuries
I was obliged to do battle with history
and at knife-point formed a family
alliance with idols, not indeed to cope with
the world that is fragmented in a fly's eye
among piles of endlessly bickering books
we calmly divided into equal parts
the few coins we made from selling off the stars
in a single night I gambled away
my belt, and returned naked again to the world
lighting a noiseless cigarette
a gun bringing death to that midnight
when heaven and earth changed places
I hung upside down
in an old tree that looked like a mop
gazing into the distance
27
Accomplices
many years have passed, mica
gleams in the mud
with a bright and evil light
like the sun in a viper's eyes
in a jungle of hands, roads branch off and disappear
where is the young deer
perhaps only a graveyard can change
this wilderness and assemble a town
freedom is nothing but
the distance between the hunter and the hunted
when we tum and look back
the arc drawn by bats
against the vast background of our fathers' portraits
fades with the dusk
we are not guiltless
long ago we became accomplices
of the history in the mirror, waiting for the day
to be deposited in lava
and tum into a cold spring
to meet the darkness once again
Portrait of a Young Poet
the inspiration drawn from your sleeve
is never-ending; you
pass day and night through strung-out lines and
lanes; you
were old when you were born
even though ambition grows as ever
around the edges of your baldness
taking out your false teeth, you
look even more childish
as soon as one's back is turned you scribble your name
on a public lavatory wall
thanks to a poor constitution, you
have to swallow several hormone pills a day
making your voice as tender
as the cat next door in heat
nine sneezes in a row
drop on paper, you
don't mind repetition
saying again that money isn't clean
but everyone is pretty keen on it
a fire engine wails insanely
reminding you to praise
the moon which has paid its insurance premium
or the axe, which hasn't paid
ponderously heavy
it weighs more than thought
the weather is mortally cold; blood
darkens, numb
is the night
like a frost-bitten toe, you
limp
in and out of the brake beside the road
meeting louts wreathed with laurel
every tree
with its own owl
running into people you know is a pain
the past, yes, you and me
skunks, all of us
The Echo
you can't get out of this valley
in the funeral procession
you can't let go of the coffin by yourself
make peace with death, or let the autumn
continue to stay at home
stay in the tin can beside the stove
and bear infertile buds
the avalanche has started-
the echo seeks the mental connections
between you and others: good fortune
lasts, good fortune lasts until tomorrow
but joins tomorrow's
sunbeam, coming from
a jewel hidden in your breast
an evil jewel
you can't get out of this valley, because
the funeral is yours
Strangers
on the museum's
marble floor, you
took a bad fall, a shoe
slid over the ice-locked river
into the distance, I sat on the table
feeling seasick
endlessly dialing
not knowing whom I was calling
the stop-work bell rang three times
following the silent crowd
you gazed hopelessly at the red light
sunset in a tropical rain forest
is enthralling, I turned inside out
the banana-skin like glove
shaking out sand and loose tobacco
then I shaved off my lonely beard
together with the soap foam
spattered the dull
mirror, you stepped across the puddle
seeing the unfamiliar figure
behind was the sky of a billboard
a glass dove
fell on the floor, I
crawled under the bed in search
my hand was scratched by the gleaming stars
sucking on a lollypop
in the dim cinema
you wept over the sad
tale, I switched on the light
and laughed, leaning against the door
with so many chances to get to know you
it would seem that we are not
strangers, the door knob
has turned a little
"Strangers" is printed here with the kind permission of the Chinese University
how they do like to bring up the past 28 Press. Hong Kong.
Without Title
a perpetual stranger
am I to the world
I don't understand its language
my silence it can't comprehend
all we have to exchange
is a touch of disdain
as if we meet in a mirror
a perpetual stranger
am I to myself
I fear the dark
but use my body to block
the only lamp
my shadow is my beloved
my heart the enemy
Orphans
we are two orphans
who have formed a family
we will leave behind another orphan
in the lengthy
file of orphans trailing pale shadows
all the strident flowers
will bear fruit
the world will know no peace
it is the true father
of all orphans
A Blank
poverty is a blank
freedom is a blank
in the sockets of a marble statue:
victory is a blank
black birds pouring from the horizon
reveal tomorrow's age spots:
despair is a blank
at the bottom of a friend's cup:
betrayal is a blank
on the lover's photograph:
disgust is a blank
in the long-awaited letter:
time is a blank
a swarm of ominous flies
settle on the hospital ceiling:
history is a blank
a running genealogy
where only the dead are recognized
Underground Station
the cement electricity poles
were once logs of wood
drifting downriver
do you believe that?
eagles never fly here
though rabbitskin hats of every size and shape
are on show in the street
do you believe that?
only at night when all is still
flocks of goats pour into town
and are dyed bright colors by neon lights
do you believe that?
Another Legend
dead heroes are forgotten
they are silent, they
pass through a sea of faces
their anger can only light
the cigarette in a man's hand
even with the help of a ladder
they can no longer predict anything:
each weather vane goes its own way
only when each huddles
at the foot of his hollow statue
does he realize the depth of despair
they always come and go at night
suddenly illuminated by the solitary lamp
but difficult to distinguish nonetheless
like faces
pressed against frosted glass
finally, they slip through the narrow gate
covered all over with dust
taking charge of the solitary key
Temptation
from time immemorial
it has been a temptation
luring sailors to surrender their lives
an embankment preventing
the tilted land from slipping to the bottom of the sea
a dolphin leaps over the stars
and falls back, the white beach
disappears in generous moonlight
water covers the embankment
and the empty, deserted square
jellyfish cling stranded to every lamppost
water mounts the steps
and pours booming through the doors and windows
chasing the man who is dreaming of the sea
29
Without Title
it has always been so
that fire is the center of winter
when the woods are ablaze
only stones that don't want to come closer
keep up their furious howl
the bell hanging on the deer's antler has stopped ringing
life is one opportunity
a single one only
whoever checks the time
will suddenly find himself old
One Step
the shadow of the pagoda moves across the grass, pointing at you
or at me, at different moments:
we are only one step away
parting or meeting again
is an ever-repeating
theme: hate only one step away
the sky sways, on its foundation of fear
the buildings open windows in every direction
we live inside them
or outside: death only one step away
the child has learned to talk to walls
the history of the city is sealed by old men
in their hearts: dotage only one step away
Boddhisattva
the flowing folds of your robe
are your faint respiration
on each palm of your thousand arms
stares an unblinking eye
they caress the static silence
making all things perpetually intermingle
as in a dream
you sit cross-legged on lotus
joy has its source in mud
enduring centuries of hunger and thirst
the pearl set in your forehead
stands for the sea's matchless power
that renders a pebble as transparent
as the water
you face the day soberly
though still sound asleep
your sexless
half-naked bosom swells
it is only an urge for motherhood
to feed the sufferings of this mortal world
making them grow
*
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Translations by Bonnie S. McDougall
30
Poems by Gu Cheng
Nameless Little Flowers
As I was returning home from cutting grass, a light rain
was falling. I saw flowers by the roadside glistening with
dewdrops and wrote this poem.
Wild flowers
Hither and thither
Like lost buttons
Scattered by the roadside.
They do not have Chrysanthemums'
Gold curls
Nor peonies'
Dazzling looks
They have only small flowers
And thin weak leaves,
Yet their faint fragrance
Is dissolved into the beautiful spring day.
My poems
Are like these nameless little flowers,
Following the wind and rain of the season
Quietly blooming
In this lonely world.
1971, Shandong
From the collection Nameless Little Flowers
31
Photo by Saundra Sturdevant
My Curriculum Vitae
I'm a child of sorrow;
I've never grown up.
From the grassy banks of the northland
I came, along a
White road,* and walked into
A city full of gears and wheels;
Walked into a narrow lane,
A wooden shed, and to every downcast heart,
In the midst of hazy smoke
I continue to tell my green-colored story.
I trust my audience-
The sky, and
The water droplets splashing from the sea;
They'll cover up all of me,
Cover up that never-to-be found
Grave. I know
At that time, all the grass and little flowers
Will crowd around me, at
An instant of dim lamplight
Gently kiss my sorrow.
Wenxue-bao, 10 March, 1983
* The road is white from the alkali that covers it.
Fantasia of Life
(excerpts)
Without any aim,
I float in the blue sky,
Letting the waterfaIl of sunlight
Wash my skin black.
The sun tows my boat,
Pulling me along with ropes of powerful light.
Step by step,
I thus traveled the distance of twelve-hours.
The wind pushes me
To the east and to the west.
The sun disappears in the twilight.
Night comes,
I sail into the harbor of the Milky Way.
Thousands of stars stare at me,
And I cast down
The crescent moon-my golden anchor.
The sun bakes the earth,
As if toasting a piece of bread.
I walk on
In my bare feet.
My footprints, like seal impressions
Cover the great earth.
And the world also melts into
My life.
I want to sing
A song about the human race:
Thousands of years later,
It still reverberates in the universe.
1971, returning from Weihe (in Shandong
Province) in the heat of summer. From the
coIlection Nameless Little Flowers
Night in the Countryside
The thick, dark night
Glues together heaven and earth.
Stars are mixed with candlelights,
The Milky Way joins the irrigation ditch.
Our little thatched hut
Becomes a neighbor to the moon palace.
Let's go in to drink a cup of cassia tea!*
We might also inquire about the problem of residence.
1970 Shandong
* According to Chinese legend, a cassia tree grows in the moon palace. The
sweet -scented cassia flowers are often used to flavor tea.
The Origins of Stars and the Moon
Tree branches wanted to pierce through the sky,
But only managed to poke a few smaIl holes.
Lights from outer space filtered in,
And people called them the moon and the stars.
Quoted in Qishi niandai (The Seventies,
Hong Kong), no. 12 (1982)
The Red Guards' Graves
In Chongqing (Chunking), in the Shapingpa Park there
lies a stretch of Red Guards' graves amongst overgrown weeds
and shrubs, facing the Tombs of Revolutionary Martyrs on
Gele Mountain in the distance.
There is no trace of human presence.
I and my poetry happen to pass by, but what can we say. . .
A Dim Little Path Led Me Into Your Midst
(one of six poems)
A dim little path
Led me
Into your midst.
Like a strand of forgotten sunlight,
Standing together
With the tall grasses
And the short trees,
I do not represent history,
Do not represent the voice
Emitted from the highest place.
I've come
Only because of my age.
One by one, you
Fell to the ground
With happy tears in your eyes,
With imaginary guns in your hands.
Your fingers
Are still clean,
They've opened only school books
And heroes' stories.
Perhaps out of
A common habit
On the last page
You painted your own self-portraits.
On the page in my heart
There's no picture of any kind.
It's getting damp,
Moistened by the blue dewdrops
On the tips of leaves.
When I open it
I cannot use the fountain pen
Nor the writing brush;
32
I can only use the gentlest breath
Of my life
To trace some
Marks for people to speculate.
October, 1980. From the collection
The Hanging Green Apple
All Is Finished
In a twinkling-
The landslide ceased,
The riverside was piled high with skulls of giants.
The junk in mourning,
Slowly passes by,
And unfolds the dull-yellow shroud.
So many beautiful trees,
Their trunks gnarled from pain,
Weepingly comfort the fallen heroes.
The moon, hacked into a sliver,
Is hidden in the dense fog by God.
All is finished.
The heavy shadows of the mountain,
Representing blurred history,
Continue to record everything in silence.
Chang'an, July, 1980
To My Honored Teacher Andersen
Andersen and this writer had both worked as amateur
carpenters.
You push your carpenter's plane
As if paddling a canoe,
Letting it drift slowly
On the smooth sea . . .
Wood shavings scatter like waves,
Disappearing at the end of the horizon;
Water ripples resemble undulating verses,
Bringing season's greetings.
You have no flag,
No gold or silver, or multi-colored silk,
Yet all the kings in the world
Cannot match your wealth.
You transport a heavenly kingdom,
Transport the balloons of flowers and dreams.
All the pure childlike hearts
Are your ports of call.
Shi kan, No.4, 1980
Impressions
The sky is gray,
The road is gray,
The buildings are gray,
The rain is gray.
In this dead grayness
Two children walk by;
One is bright red,
The other light green.
Shi kan, No. 10, 1980.
English translation first published in
Renditions, No. 16 (Autumn, 1981)
*
Translations by Shiao-ling Yu
The Australian Journal
of Chinese Affairs
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contemporary topics, comment on current iuues, up-to-date reports, a
summary and interpretation of the past six months' events, and reviews
of recent works in the field. Researchers from a wide range of disciplines
are encouraged to contribute.
luue number 11, January 1984, includes articles on the ALP's
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industrial policy and the marketing of culture. Contributors include Bill
Hayden, Geoffrey Blainey, Penny Kane, Colin Mackerras, Don Fletcher
and John Fitzgerald.
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33
Poems by Shu Ting
Oh Mother
Your pale fingers smoothing my hair,
I hold fast to the lapel of your clothes
As if I were stilI a child,
Oh Mother,
To cling to your vanishing shadow,
I dare not open my eyes,
Even though the morning rays have shattered my dream.
I stilI keep that red scarf,
Afraid washing will make it
Lose your lingering fragrance.
Oh Mother,
How unfeelingly time flows.
I dare not open my memory's manifold screen,
For fear it, too, will fade.
Because of a little splinter, I used to come crying to you,
Now I'm wearing a crown of thorns,
But I don't dare,
Don't dare to let out a single moan.
Oh Mother,
I often gaze at your photo with sorrow,
Even if my calls can penetrate the earth,
Dare I disturb you from your rest?
I still dare not display my love,
Although I've written many songs
To flowers, sea and the dawn.
Oh Mother,
My sweet remembrance of you
Is not a torrent, not a waterfall,
But a voiceless old well hidden amongst flowers and trees.
Xinge ji, pp. 238-39
34
Photo by Saundra Sturdevant
Giving
I was full of regret for you
Beside the gunwales flooded by the moonlight.
On the roads dampened by light rain
You arched your shoulders, tucked your hands in your sleeves
As if afraid of the cold.
Lost in your own thoughts,
You did not notice
My footsteps beside you
And how slowly they followed.
If you were fire,
I would be the charcoal;
I want to comfort you thus
But I don't dare to.
I was overjoyed for you,
For the lights flickering on your window,
For your bending silhouette in front of your bookcase.
When you bared your awakening to me,
Saying that spring tide had once more overflowed
Your banks,
You did not ask
How I felt night after night
When I passed by your window.
If you were a tree,
I would be the soil;
I want to remind you of this
But I don't dare to.
Xinge ji, pp. 243-44
When You Pass By My Window
When you pass by my window,
Bless me, please,
For the light is still on.
The light is on-
In the gloomy night,
Like a floating fisherman's lamp.
You can imagine my little cabin,
Like a little boat tossing in a windstorm
But I did not sink,
For the light is still on.
The light is on-
My shadow on the curtain
Is that of a stooped old man,
No vigorous gestures,
My back bent even more than before.
But my heart has not grown old,
For the light is still on.
The light is on
With a burning love,
It acknowledges greetings from all sides.
The light is on-
With dignity and pride,
It looks down at oppressions of all kinds.
Ah, when did it take on a distinct character?
Since you began to understand me.
For the light is still on
Bless me, please,
When you pass by my window.
Xinge ji, pp. 245-46
Perhaps
-In response to a writer's loneliness
Perhaps our thoughts
Will never have readers
Perhaps our road was wrong in the beginning
And is still wrong in the end;
Perhaps we can light up one lantern after another
Only to have them blown out by a fierce wind one by one;
Perhaps we can bum out our lives to illuminate darkness,
But we have no fire to warm ourselves.
Perhaps after we shed all our tears
The soil will become more fertile;
Perhaps when we praise the sun
We'll be praised in return;
Perhaps the heavier our burdens become
The loftier our faith will grow;
Perhaps we can protest against all sufferings
But remain silent over our own misfortunes.
Perhaps
Because of some irresistible call
We do not have any choice.
Xinge ji, p. 271
Assembly Line
In the assembly line of time
Night closely follows night;
We come off the assembly line in the factory,
Again in assembly line formation we march home.
Above our heads
The assembly line of stars stretches across the sky,
Beside us
Little trees stand dazed in the assembly line.
The stars must be tired,
Thousands of years have passed,
Their journey never changed.
The little trees have all fallen sick,
Smoke and monotony caused them
To lose their contours and colors;
All these I've sensed
Through a feeling of common rhythm.
But how strange
The only thing that I cannot sense
Is my own existence;
As if like the trees and stars,
Perhaps out of habit,
Perhaps out of sorrow,
I'm powerless to show any concern
For my own inevitable fate.
Xinge ji, pp. 277-78
Voice of a Generation
I'll never complain
Of what I went through.
Wasted youth,
Distorted conscience,
Painful memories
From many a sleepless night.
I've overthrown one doctrine after another.
I've smashed one shackle after another;
What's left in my heart
Is a vast expanse of wasteland . .
But I've stood up,
On the vast horizon I stand,
No one, by whatever means,
Can push me down again.
3S
If it were I who lay inside a "martyr's" tomb,
Moss covering the inscriptions on my tombstone;
If it were I who was locked behind iron bars,
Arguing my case with fetters and chains;
If it were I, haggard and worn,
Toiling endlessly to redeem my sins;
If it were I, if it were only
My personal tragedy-
Perhaps I'd have already forgiven,
My tears and indignation
Can also calm down.
But, for the sake of the children's fathers
For the sake of the fathers' children;
So that we no longer tremble before the silent reproaches
Coming from under the monuments everywhere;
So that we no longer dodge
The sight of the homeless on the streets;
So that innocent children a hundred years from now
Won't have to guess the meaning of the history we left behind;
For this blot on our motherland,
For this tortuous experience of our nation,
For the purity of the sky
And the honesty of our road
I demand truth!
Xinge ji, pp. 273-74
Translation of the first stanza first published
in Renditions, No. 16 (Autumn, 1981)
*
Translations by Shiao-ling Yu
CIHIllNIESIE STIJIDllIES
llN IPIHIllILOSOIPIHIY
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Editor: Chungying Cheng, University of Hawaii
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the ideological tendencies in Mainland China and the development of
recent Chinese thought. . the ideas are dynamic and the writing
lively. The journal is highly recommended."-Wingtsit Chan,
Dartmouth College
probably the best Engl ish source for a good understanding of sub
jects discussed by Chinese Marxist philosophers today."
-Charles Weihsun Fu, Temple University
Sample Issue Contents
Reevaluating "One Divides into Two" and "Two Combine into One"
On the Difference between "One Divides into Two" and "Two Com
bine into One"
"One Divides into Two" Reveals Struggle; "Two Combine into One"
Reveals Unity
"One Divides into Two" Cannot Fully Describe the Theory of the
Unity of Opposites
On the Problem of the Debate over "One Divides into Two" and "Two
Combine into One"
How to Interpret Correctly "One Divides into Two"
The Place and Function of the Identity of Contradiction in the
Development of Things-A Draft Discussion
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36
Women Then and Now
Of course it is necessary to give them legal equality to
begin with. But from there on everything still remains to be
done.
-Mao Zedong
Like most post-Mao critical realism, Zhang Xian's "The
Widow" (Weiwangren) raises a problem that it does not attempt
to solve: What is a widow supposed to do with the rest of her
life? In the People's Republic of the 1980s, especially among
the "revolutionary" Party hierarchy, the answer to this question
seems to be the age old one of traditional "feudal" China; be
a good mother by helping your children make suitable upwardly
mobile marriages, be a faithful widow by venerating your
husband's memory and continuing to live in his shadow, and
give up any claims to love and individual happiness or even
status in your own right. In the course of her long letter to her
dead husband, Zhou Lianghui also introduces us to the rigid
class distinctions that exist in the PRC as in the USSR. She
shows us another segment of Chinese youth-cadre kids whose
desire for social success makes them callous and unsympathetic
toward workers like "that guy" the postman. The saddest case
of all is the postman's mother who. after a life of suffering as
a widow herself, does not want her son to marry a widow. In
this story, Zhang Xian demonstrates that not all men are
insensitive to the problems women face in China.
Photo by Saundra Sturdevant
Zhang Kangkang, who comes from Harbin, is one of China's
finest young writers. In "The Tolling of a Distant Bell"
(Youyuan de zhongsheng), she and her co-auther Mei Jin
construct a deja vu story that reveals the social class distinctions
in Chinese society through an ironic meeting between a former
Ya 'nan cadre who is now a high ranking member of "the party
in power" (Hu Yaobang's phrase) and the woman he once
loved. As is typical of Zhang Kangkang's narrative style, the
authors cleverly highlight their message concerning the
insidious persistence of "feudal" values in the new society by
means of tangible symbols of time and personal connections
between then and now. Among the latter are the tolling of
the "distant" bell that abolishes the distance between memories
of the past and experiences of the present and the gold watch
that leads to the female protagonist's icy meeting with her
former lover now turned bureaucrat. This meeting in tum leads
to her decision to help her son marry the woman he loves in
spite of parental refusal of consent due to upper-class
(high-cadre) snobbery. This affirmation of the individual's right
to happiness is also characteristic ofZhang Kangkang's fiction.
37
The Widow
by Zhang Xian
Dear Weiming:
It's been twelve whole years since we parted. Twelve
years today. During those twelve years I've written a steady
stream of letters, and even though I've known that you'll never
read any of them, I still can't help myself. For a lonely person
who is thinking of someone else, writing letters is a comfort,
a sort of sustenance, a way to ease the heart. As I sat before
a sheet of clean white paper, trying to make some sense out
of my confused thoughts and moods with my pen, you would
appear before me and be by my side. I would embrace you
and whisper into your ear intimate expressions that can be
revealed only to a husband. Ah, dear Weiming! Only you know
what a vulnerable woman I am!
Tonight the moonlight is hazier than usual, the subtle
fragrance of orchids floats in the air. It's just as it was twelve
years ago. I remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday: how
you unhurriedly straightened your collar, slowly picked up
your traveling bag, and walked over to the doorway, where
you stopped for a moment, as though you had forgotten
something. Yes, you had forgotten to kiss Lanlan and
Wangwang goodbye. Maybe you had wanted to avoid waking
them, or to keep them from realizing that Daddy was leaving,
going away in humiliation with two shady characters. I
remained completely composed and silent as I walked with
you downstairs and across the courtyard, then watched the
Peking Jeep disappear into the hazy moonlight. But as I turned
back and saw those two little faces distorted by looks of sheer
panic, plastered up against the window, I could no longer hold
back my tears . . .
Lanlan is now a skilled auto mechanic. Last year she fell
deeply in love with someone, although she kept it a secret from
me. Her boyfriend, the second son of your old comrade-in
arms, Lao Shi, is a promising young actor with the Municipal
Drama Troupe. The two of them are now busily making plans
to start their own family. Wangwang left two days ago. He
was admitted into Qinghua University-his entrance-exam
score was the third highest in the city. I'm sure you can still
remember the look of self-satisfaction that sometimes appeared
on his upturned face. He spent the last few days busily running
back and forth on errands: spreading the good news to relatives,
hurriedly finishing a self portrait to leave with his elder sister
as a memento, consoling a girl who had failed the exams-a
classmate of his with large, shining eyes-and giving her every
single book he had used to prepare for the exams. Yes, our
children are no longer fledglings, and now they want to leave
their confining little nest to soar into the bright blue sky that
awaits them. They cannot be bothered with the aging and lonely
mother bird that has stayed behind to watch over the old nest,
or maybe the thought never even occurred to them. When
Lanlan heartily announced that her "personal matter" had been
"resolved," and Wangwang, playing the part of an experienced
traveler, placed his canvas bag onto the luggage rock of the
train, neither ofthem could figure out why Mommy was crying.
How could they ever understand what was in their mother's
heart!
Only you ever understood that, dear Weiming, only you.
But now there is someone else who understands me, and that
is he.
Oh, I should tell you who he is, since he's the reason I'm
writing you this letter!
Your photograph is in front of me at this very moment.
You are smiling from behind the glass, gazing warmly at me.
I always thought that there was a trace of mockery in that smile
of yours, which made me feel indescribably guilty. Dear
Weiming, am I wrong? Shouldn't I have felt that way? Please
tell me, and not as a Municipal Party Secretary would tell his
subordinate or a husband would tell his wife. Weiming, tell
me as you would a friend or a comrade, tell me how you feel,
tell me what your thoughts are, give me your opinions ...
You never met him. He played no role in our lives
together. You were always busy in the service of the
250,OOO-later on 400,OOO-residents of the city: industry,
agriculture, commerce; meetings, decision-making, grass-roots
work . . . you never seemed to have any time for your own
family, for your young wife. A common citizen like him had
no place in your thoughts. And if he had, it would only have
been as one out of 250,000 or one out of 400,000, which is
next to nothing!
Weiming, do you still remember how we met? Do you
still recall that day in 1954 when we were seeing in the new
year, and Hospital Director Li dragged me, a nineteen-year-old
girl fresh out of nursing school, over to meet you? Do you
remember the shy look on my face? Do you remember how
my hand trembled in yours as you clumsily danced across the
38
floor?
My first meeting with him, however, was under totally
different circumstances. In fact, I was barely aware of his
arrival.
"Comrade Zhou Lianghui, a letter for you." He must have
knocked at the door and I must have responded, but I have no
recollection of it, since at the time I was so worried about you.
He spoke very softly, only once, not wanting to disturb me,
then placed the letter on the table beside the door and walked
away noiselessly. I turned in time to see the retreating back of
a man dressed in green.
It was your letter that he had brought over, your first letter
after having been taken away, and the last letter you ever wrote
in your life. In that letter you said many things that seem so
funny to me now. Things like, "We must test our mettle in the
blazing fires of the Cultural Revolution," and "The road taken
by the rebels has always been the correct one." Then you copied
out passages from Mao's "Quotations," word for word. But it
was the last sentence you wrote that moved me and has been
indelibly etched upon my heart; you said: "You must be strong!"
Yes, I needed to be strong. Lanlan, who was twelve, and
eight-year-old Wangwang needed a strong mother. The family
needed a strong homemaker. You, with your future so
unpredictable, needed a strong wife who could come to your
aid like someone traveling in the same boat. The Party, which
was temporarily in a state of disarray and low morale, needed
a strong member ... I needed to be strong, that was for sure!
It was then that my tears dried, and I steeled myself to meet
the hard times ahead. Dear Weiming, it has been like that for
twelve years, right up to this very day.
I waited impatiently for your letters and I waited
impatiently for his visits. For the first time in my life I
understood the loftiness and greatness of the poetic expression
"man in green." But this particular "man in green," our
postman, also brought me disappointment. He came at 10:30
sharp every day, knocked softly at my door and, without
stepping inside, placed the day's newspaper, with its huge
photograph and red-lettered headlines, on the table beside the
door. When he saw the expectant look on my face he lowered
his head remorsefully, as though it were his fault that there
was no letter.
But the day finally came when he showed up before ten
o'clock; he rushed in, his face flushed with excitement. I, too,
was overcome with excitement as I took the letter from him,
but I saw at once that it was Yang LiIi's handwriting on the
envelope-you remember her, don't you, my best friend at
nursing school? She was the beautiful, slim girl who followed
her heart, asking to be transferred from the provincial capital
to a mountain region to be with the man she loved. She sent
me her warmest regards and cautioned me not to be too anxious,
saying that the "liberation of the Party Secretary" was just
around the comer. She also invited me to visit her "peaceful
little county town," where I could forget my cares. I'm sure I
must have smiled when I read that. He was still standing in
the doorway, unwilling to leave, looking greatly relieved; his
buckteeth gave him an engaging smile.
''Thank you. Won't you come in and sit for a moment?"
I asked him.
He just shook his head and walked off.
But his smile lingered long after he had left.
Ah, that smile! During that red reign of terror, throughout
those many months when everyone seemed to have donned
masks, when the Party Secretary's wife became "the stinking
old lady of a traitor" overnight, how precious and dear that
sincere, friendly smile was!
Even to this very day, a sincere, friendly smile has not
reappeared on the faces of all our friends. Recently, in fact,
the smile on the face of our future in-law, Lao Shi, has had a
stifling effect on me . . .
Dear Weiming! I still remember your smile during those
early days. It was filled with such self confidence and charisma.
When Director Li told me that you were the youngest and most
promising Deputy Secretary in the municipal committee-only
35 years old-that your wife had recently died, and that you
were living a bachelor's life, I immediately sensed the emotions
hidden in that smile of yours. But I didn't have the time to
mull it over, or look closely, or, for that matter, even to hesitate,
for you won me over, deftly and with ease. You were like a
mischievous child who wins out over a weak little kitten. Our
courtship-if it can be called that-lasted only three months
before the wedding arrangements were made. And you,
afterwards you laughed at me and said, "What's wrong, don't
you think three months was long enough?"
Ah, but the feelings between him and me developed over
a period of agonizingly long months!
Lanlan was sent down to the countryside the year after
you died. She's a bright, mature girl who grew up fast during
those chaotic years. But she's really only a girl, barely sixteen!
I almost wept aloud when I read her first letter from the farming
village.
"How is Lanlan? Is she homesick? Does she need
anything? If not, why not scribble an answer to her right now?
Or send a parcel. I'll take it with me, and it'll get out in today's
mail ... "
He was watching me with a look of deep concern on his
face. He stood off to one side wringing his hands, not knowing
what he could do to help me.
Weiming, you never once had a look like that on your
face. All the help you ever gave me was of a totally different
kind. My application for Party membership was approved a
month before we were married. When I was pregnant with
Lanlan I was transferred from the hospital ward and assigned
clerical duties at the Secretariat Division. Later on I was sent
to the Propaganda Section, where I was promoted from a
clerical worker to a Deputy Division Head. After the first round
of the "Four Cleanups" campaign came to an end, I was
appointed Assistant Director of the Municipal Party Secretariat
Office. From start to finish I fought to be strong and to perform
my duties conscientiously, so that I would never bring shame
upon you. Naively I thought that all my promotions came as
a result of my own efforts. It wasn't until I entered the hospital
in 1965, where I met my classmate Xiao Zhang-she was still
a duty nurse, and she deferentially called me "Director
Zhou"-that it hit me like a bolt out of the blue: my steady
advancement up the ladder was a perfect example of that ancient
saying, "The husband's nobility brings glory to the wife"!
"Don't talk nonsense!" I can almost hear that annoyed
drawl of yours. "I was just helping you get ahead!" That's
right, where politics were concerned, you were very demanding
with me. You often talked to me of the spirit and intentions
of your superiors and instructed me in how to avoid making
mistakes. "That's all I did for you?" you might ask. No, that's
not all. You were also a good husband: you knew I loved
flowers, so you had the gardener bring me some orchids; you
39
knew I loved books, so you had the people at the bookstore
bring the new arrivals over for me to select the ones I wanted;
you knew I liked to look nice, so you allowed me to buy a
few pretty outfits that were selected only after long, careful
thought; and you knew I loved you, so you frequently took the
time to be affectionate with me, showing me the attentiveness
and tenderness that only a husband can offer-all of this you
called love. But love like this is anything but equal! Those are
only the sorts of kindnesses bestowed upon someone by a
superior!
The minor spat we had the first time I accompanied you
to a dinner party is something I won't forget for as long as I
live. Being in the presence of that senior official who was the
city's representative on the Provincial Party Committee and
his wife so terrified me that I didn't know what to do. When
it was my tum to offer a toast, not knowing the proper flattering
remarks made me look like an awkward fool. The wives were
twittering about my being a "little nurse," and their condescend
ing looks put me on pins and needles the entire night. I would
have given anything to sprout a pair of wings that would allow
me to fly right out of that splendid dining hall. But when I
looked at you for help, you pointedly turned your face away,
a sure sign of your displeasure at my lack of social graces.
That night I cried into my pillow. I hated myself for
bringing you shame! After that 1 made every effort to learn
how to socialize like the rest of those smug wives with their
superior attitudes, even though I loathed them with all my
heart. And you rewarded my efforts by praising me: "You're
learning." That, of course, was a result of your "help"!
But he-a lowly "man in green"-what help could he
give me? He delivered and picked up my mail; occasionally
he delivered parcels and money orders; he took the children to
the doctor on his bicycle; on his days off he made repairs to
the roof;... and that's about it. Everything was so
commonplace, as commonplace as water. But isn't there a
difference between the water that rushes out through an open
faucet and that which bubbles up from a spring in an endless
stretch of desert?
Was it only sympathy? Was it only friendship? No, for
glowing in the depths of that sympathy and friendship were
sincere, kindhearted, magnificent embers. Admittedly they
were weak, but they were strong enough to illuminate a faith
in life. Look: sincerity exists, kindheartedness and ideals exist,
which must mean that truth exists as well. And not behind us,
either, but directly in front of us . . .
Dear Weiming, last autumn, after you had lain in the
ground for years, your case was finally "cleared up." As a
result, my days of "standing off to the side," my long period
of enforced idleness, also came to an end. When I told him
that I would be going back to work, he let out a sigh of relief
and his face lit up with that toothy smile of his. He broke
precedent by staying over to eat that day. "A toast to your new
life!" He drained his glass of wine. Just before he left he gazed
out at the orchids in front of the window, and his eyes suddenl y
grew sad.
Oh, those orchids. Wasn't that the pot you had the
gardener bring over to me? It died long ago, the same year
you left us. I couldn't bear to throw the dead branches away,
and I often stared at the yellow, waxen leaves until I was nearly
spellbound, almost as though I was expecting the arrival of the
spring that would breathe life back into them. He was aware
of all this. Actually, he understood my heart better than I
myself. One night toward the end of spring he brought over a
pot of fresh orchids, which he placed on the table beside the
door. "I planted it myself. ..." He smiled shyly, then looked
at me searchingly. "You ... won't refuse it, will you?" 1 was
so touched that I didn't dare look at him, for fear that tears
would flow against my will. My eyes remained fixed on those
tender green leaves so full of life ...
I returned to my job at the Municipal Party Headquarters.
Everything there was both familiar and strange to me. Problems
and difficulties had accumulated: there were three times as
many complaints, much more idle talk, laziness and irresponsi
bility.
I returned home every day, my heart weighted down with
worries, which included an anguish that I was unable to face:
1 wouldn't be able to see him every day anymore.
On that first Sunday I was up bright and early to await
his arrival. I wanted to talk to him for ten or fifteen minutes,
when it wouldn't interfere with his work, of my feelings about
the previous week. Finally I heard the familiar sound of a
bicycle bell. "Newspaper!" The crisp voice carrying across the
courtyard belonged to a young woman. "What's wrong? Where
is he? Is he sick?" 1 asked as I rushed downstairs.
"You mean the regular postman? He swapped mail routes
with me. He's working in North City ... "
Ah, Weiming! When I had sunk to the level of an
"untouchable" and had to struggle against the lashing storms,
without any fanfare he brought me news of my family, and he
brought me warmth, brightness, and fragrance. Now that I had
regained my position as Assistant Director, the Housing Section
Chief enthusiastically offered to assign me to new housing; the
manager of the hardware outlet stubbornly insisted on sending
me a hard-to-get Honeybee sewing machine; the head of the
aquatic products retail department brought freshly caught fish
"on his way by"; the Director of the Women's Federation, as
"representative of all the women in the city," nominated me
for Deputy Director ... As all of this was happening he quietly
removed himself from the scene.
Ah, when the water faucet has been reconnected, so that
for twenty cents a cubic meter you can use filtered water to
your heart's content, the spring water in the desert flows back
into the earth! ...
I recall asking him once why he never got married. "My
family background is no good," he had said with a forced smile.
"That doesn't make any difference these days."
"But who could ever take a fancy to a 38-year-old postman
who earns thirty-eight yuan a month?"
I tried to comfort him by saying that a person's worth
can't be measured by his family background, his position, or
his salary. There will always be some nice young woman who
could love a decent man like him (I said this with all sincerity,
but I was stopped by the mocking expression on his face).
Then one day I discovered that the person who had fallen in
love with him was not just any nice young woman, but me!
Dear Weiming, I was terrified and I was bewildered. I
denied my feelings vehemently, and I berated myself for having
them. No, no! It's not possible! It's not practical! It's not
normal! It's not right! I'm already 43 years old! My children
are already grown! I'm a Party member! I'm the widow of the
Municipal Party Secretary! 1 must treasure my good name and
that of my departed husband! 1 stood in front of your
photograph, silently begging your forgiveness.
You were looking at me with smiling eyes. "You must
40
be strong!" you were saying.
Yes, I had to be strong. I had to overcome these improper
feelings of mine. I had to throw all my energy into my work.
I voluntarily took on the job of reassessing the office of
Assistant Director, which any number of cadres had avoided
like poison. And so my life was filled with receptions,
explanations, examinations, discussions, disputes, sympathy,
anger, anxieties, urgings, and reproaches. I offended many of
my superiors, many of our closest friends-yours and mine.
I used this as a burden to weigh myself down so hard that I
could barely breathe.
As I ran into one obstacle after another in my reassessment
work, Lao Shi was my staunchest supporter. He was still the
Deputy Secretary in charge of organizational work. He
frequently praised me in various situations as being a strong
woman. But he couldn't keep from linking me with you. "She
has proved herself worthy of her position as wife of Comrade
Weiming, our old Party Secretary!" This heartfelt praise made
me feel guilty, because every time I had a moment's peace,
the image that floated into my mind was that of his smile, with
those prominent buckteeth of his, the smile that had given me
courage during those trying days. I was powerless to drive it
away.
Dear Weiming! When I was young I once heard a tale of
the agony of widowhood: in order to overcome her feelings of
emptiness and loneliness, a widow tossed a hundred coins onto
the floor every night, then turned out the light and groped
around on the floor picking them up one by one. By the time
they were all back in her purse she was finally tired enough to
go to bed and fall asleep. And that's how she spent her nights
right up till the day she died, letting a hundred coins, shiny
from being rubbed countless times, stand as proof of her bitterly
attained virtue. She died with a clear conscience and a sense
of pride.
Now that our children have left their mother's embrace,
the moonlight shines dimly onto the head of my bed, the subtle
fragrance of orchids gathers at the window, loneliness and
solitude gnaw away at my heart, and I am reminded of that
ancient tale. Am I, too, expected to turn out the light and grope
around on the floor for the "coins of chastity" stained by blood
and tears? No! Let those widows die with their clear
consciences and their pride. I need love, I need a husband, not
a fading photograph, but a living, breathing man! I ask myself
angrily: Why is that impossible? Why is it impractical? Why
is it abnormal? Why shouldn't I? After all, I'm only 43 years
old. Why should a Party member take pride in scrupulously
abiding by feudal moral standards instead of doing away with
them? Why must my happiness be locked up in a casket in
order to gain the respect of others?
The pains of love filled me with courage. On day, as I
was investigating a misjudged case at the Post and Telecom
munications Office, I asked for and easily obtained his address.
Then when the weekend arrived, I washed my hair and changed
my clothes in the late afternoon, giving myself a once-over in
the mirror. Yes, I was still young. There was even a youthful
blush to my cheeks. Just as I was leaving I slyly splashed on
a few drops of our daughter's cologne-ah! Please forgive me,
dear Weiming! Look how shameless I've become!
I located the crude and simple room that he shared with
his aging mother. Not having the nerve to even glance at the
look of pleasant surprise on his face, I forced myself to tell
neighborhood and dropped by to say hello. I casually asked
him why he no longer came by to pass the time of day and
why he still hadn't resolved his "personal matter." All in all,
I conducted myself rather foolishly and could feel my cheeks
begin to burn. I knew that he was watching me attentively and
could see right through my deception, not that it was all that
clever in the first place. Beginning to feel extremely restless,
I hastily said I had to be going.
He walked me out onto the secluded narrow street. My
heart was refreshed by the early-summer evening breeze,
making it feel younger, happier, and more sensitive than ever.
I was waiting for him to speak, knowing that I'd be moved by
anything he said. But his mood seemed gloomy, and he didn't
say a word, seemingly lost in thought.
Suddenly, he let out a short, bitter laugh and said:
"I can't figure out why you're paying me this call. You're
now the Director ... if it's kindness you're giving, I don't
need it."
I was stunned. Kindness! The word was like a dagger!
Could it be that the change in my professional status
automatically brought with it a change in the nature of my
emotions? I was powerless to defend myself, and could only
stare dumbly at him, as I began to feel cold all over. In that
brief moment I felt that the ground between us had suddenly
opened up and we were quickly being driven apart, separated
by a fathomless chasm.
Had he misunderstood my actions? Had I been wronged?
Was I disappointed? ... No, Weiming! For someone deeply
in love, this meant very little. In fact, his masculine reticence
and personal self-esteem hit me like a bolt of lightning. He
was even more worthy of respect than I had imagined, more
precious and more admirable. Oh, I knew I had to break down
his misconceptions about me, even if I had to abandon my
most fundamental self-respect in the process. Had we been
separated by a real chasm, I still wouldn't have hesitated to
cross over.
Early the next morning I showed up again on his doorstep.
No one was home, so he must have already left for work. I
turned around dejectedly to leave. Suddenly I was stopped by
a familiar and friendly subtle aroma. Oh, it was orchids. The
delicate, dew-laden petals and green leaves were smiling at
me! The aroma's silent explanation was so detailed, so moving!
Weiming! He and I fell quietly in love. But our love was
beset by so many hardships! We didn't dare to be seen taking
walks together, or going to a movie together, or being alone
behind closed doors; we didn't even dare to take the slightest
liberties when we talked. It goes without saying that we didn't
have the nerve to squeeze one another's hand when we were
in darkened corner of a stairwell where the lightbulb had been
stolen. We had none of the freedoms to express our love that
young people have, nor did we dare to strive to get them. All
we could do was exchange ardent looks and listen to the happy
beating of our hearts.
And even that was to be denied us!
Two weeks later, Lao Shi gave me a warning during a
casual chat. First he expressed concern over my predicament,
then praised me for being a model wife and mother, telling me
how much I was respected by all the office cadres for
safeguarding the reputation of "Secretary Weiming." He even
used phrases like "upholding one's integrity in one's later
years," which he intended as a clever pun. Finally he smiled
him matter-of-factly that I just happened to be in the and said, "There's talk about a postman who is five years
41
1
I
I
younger than you ... of course, it's just a rumor, and I trust
you ... "
That phony, sanctimonious grin of his nearly suffocated
me.
Weiming, do you remember how sincere his smile was
at our wedding, when the widowed Deputy Secretary of the
Municipal Party Committee took as his wife a young nurse
who was fifteen years his junior? For that matter, who didn't
feel that ours was a marriage made in Heaven?
I didn't try to mask my irritation. Before he had even
finished, I got to my feet and walked off. After work that day
1 made my way home very slowly, trying to figure out how to
deal with them. I was surprised to find someone waiting for
me at home-it was myoid classmate, Yang Lili.
She had hardly changed at all. She was still slim and
pretty and straightforward. Her warm embrace drove the
unhappiness right out of my heart. How 1 had longed for a
close friend to whom I could pour out my innermost feelings!
"What, you're still a widow? Are you trying to earn a
memorial arch to commemorate your Confucian chastity, or is
your heart really as dead as an ancient wel1, never again to be
stirred by love?" She looked me over very affectionately.
"You're not old," she said, " not old at all. That sort of
foolishness is a waste of time, Lianghui! Weren't you the
cleverest one among us back then? Back in the fifties we were
mired in all those traditional concepts, dreaming about pure,
true love, while you sneaked off and married a Party Secretary!
Boy, in those days you were the topic of conversation! But
afterwards we realized that you were the clever one, that yours
had been the right way."
"No, Lili, no!" I hastily disputed her. "I believed then
and 1 still believe today that pure, true love does exist!"
Sure it does!" she said with a mocking laugh. "I've seen
right through al1 that 'I pledge my eternal love, till death do
us part' stuff!"
"What? You and that doctor you fell head-over-heels in
love with aren't having troubles, are you?"
"We're divorced! He has the kids. And since I'm stil1
young, I've found myself another one."
This took me completely by surprise. Just then 1 heard
the sound of a car pul1ing up outside, followed by the deferential
shout of a dri ver: "Comrade Yang! . . . "
"Coming, coming!" She glanced at her wristwatch. "I
have to run. The old guy can't get along without me for a
minute. Remember, if you feel like talking, you can call me
long distance-just ask for Deputy Political Commissar
Wang's home at the Provincial Military District switchboard.
Lianghui, use your head. You don't have to coop yourself up
here all the time. Take a trip over to the provincial capital and
leave your cares at home. Your municipal guesthouse isn't as
comfortable as my place!" She picked up her fancy purse,
turned, and strode briskly out the door, the sound of her milky
white high-heeled shoes tapping out a sense of contentment. 1
accompanied her down the stairs. "He's twenty years older
than I," she said as she put her arm around my shoulder, "and
his eldest daughter is just my age. But he's still physically fit.
Why, he . . . " She fixed her eyes on me and whispered in
my ear a couple of anatomical terms in Latin, then laughed
raucously.
My face flamed with embarrassment, and 1 couldn't laugh
at all-I wanted to cry. I had genuine doubts as to whether
the silhouette of the woman slipping so easily into the backseat
of the car real1y belonged to Yang Lili, myoid classmate.
Weiming, 1 want you to know that the day after Lao Shi
came by to talk to me, my romance was the topic of the day
all over the Municipal Party Headquarters. News of it quickly
spread in the halls, in the cafeteria, in the bathrooms, in the
offices, even in conference rooms where they were discussing
"practical standards." It traveled from ears to lips and back to
ears, and even in that short distance the plot thickened and
grew in true creative fashion. Legitimate love was thus
transformed into an obscene scandal. That very day, as I was
walking past the office of the Women's Federation, 1 overheard
them loudly discussing "that loose woman," and the Director,
the "representative of all the women in the city," was laughing
louder than any of the others.
The Organization Bureau's reaction to this incident was
swift. They asked me in for a talk, saying that in light of the
citywide prestige enjoyed by the late Party Secretary, they were
transferring me to the Municipal Political Consultative
Conference as its eleventh Deputy Director (I don't know if
this was Lao Shi's idea or not, but I'm sure he approved). It
was obvious that they felt that the dignity of the entire
Municipal Party Headquarters would suffer if I continued
working there. Their sensitivity, concern, and decisiveness in
this matter was at least thirty-times greater than one of their
official responses to an obviously misjudged case.
But I had not suffered through. the ten-year calamity in
vain. If I was able to endure being labeled the "stinking old
lady of a traitor," why should 1 worry myself over the
slanderous gossip everyone was spreading behind my back! In
fact, it had the opposite effect on our love: the rumors, the
reproaches, and the pressures brought to bear on us had the
same effect as trying to douse a fire with alcohol. Before I had
a chance to finish expressing my outrage to him, he rushed
over to me, hugged me tightly, and said in a trembling voice:
"Let's get married! ... "
"The sooner the better!" My voice was also trembling.
We kissed passionately, our hot tears running down our
tightly pressed cheeks and mingling together.
Was this then the second time I had fal1en in love? No,
Weiming, it was the first! This is what love was supposed to
be. Nothing else could be called love! AIl this "office director,"
"eleventh Deputy Director," department rankings, new houses
and all the other fringe benefits, including, of course, that most
glorious title of all-Communist Party member (which people
these days have laughingly taken to calling a "Party
mealticket"!)-aIl of these things that 1 reaIly have no right to
claim, things that were bestowed upon me because of your
position when you were alive or your posthumous influence
please take it all back! AIlow me to return to my humble
situation as a nurse. That's the only thing that will free me
once and all from the humiliating fetters of "The husband's
nobility brings glory to the wife!" and aIlow me to recapture
my independence, my self-respect as a woman, and the right
to love!
I wanted to shout this out boldly. In the Organization
Bureau. In Lao Shi's face!
But, Weiming, when my prospective mother-in-law came
over with a tear-streaked face and talked to me about something
that was very painful to her, what did 1 have to shout about?
"Director ... Zhou, you and 1 are both ill-fated women!
I come from a poor, simple family, and when I was studying
at a girls' trade school, I caught the eye of a military officer
42
who took me as his mistress. He died on the eve of Liberation,
leaving me and my only son. I don't have to tell you what our
lives were like after that, you know perfectly well . . . Just
knowing that you think highly of us, that you have shown us
your kindness, is a debt of gratitude we-mother and son-can
never repay. You've been a widow for many years, and as
someone who has had the same experience, I know only too
well how hard it's been for you. But the worst is over now,
since your children are grown, and you should enjoy the years
you have left to you. That child of mine has no sense. He can't
have what he wants, but he won't settle for less-he's almost
forty, yet he still acts like a little boy! How could he ever
aspire to Director Zhou's heights? Ai! He's not really worthy
"
I looked at her silver strands and listened without saying
a word. I understood only too well. She didn't want her son
to marry a widow with children of her own. A widow was
impure. A widow was unlucky. There was no honor in marrying
a widow. And that, even though she herself had suffered
through thirty years of widowhood!
I bit my lip, for my heart was screaming out, "No, no, I
am pure! I can bring good luck! I want to fight for, create,
and enjoy love and happiness, without a shred of shame! I'll
have nothing to do with the widows' 'chastity coins' of your
generation, venerable old mother!"
The moral codes of her generation had to die away. I was
unafraid!
What does frighten me is the younger generation.
Weiming, I am truly frightened by my own dear children!
Lanlan, with her young lady's sensitivity, was the first to
detect it. Many times she looked searchingly at me with doubt
in her eyes. One evening, as he and I were in the room sitting
across from each other at the round table and listening to
Schubert's "Serenade," Lanlan rushed in through the open door.
"It's already nine o'clock!" She snapped the radio off.
"Mama, you need your rest."
Her face was deathly pale and her eyes sparkled with a
cold, threatening light.
She had rudely chased off this "uncle" whom she had
once affectionately snuggled up against. She had forgotten that
it was this "uncle" who had ridden her over to the hospital on
his bicycle when she had an acute lung infection, and had spent
the entire night beside the makeshift bed they had set up for
her in the corridor, until her condition had improved slightly;
that it was this "uncle" who had mailed every parcel that was
sent to her when she was working in the rural production team,
and who had always included an expression of good wishes of
the kind only a family member would send; that he had
delivered every one of her letters to me with his own sweaty
hand, bringing with them his heartfelt concern ...
Now neither she nor Wangwang calls him "uncle." They
refer to him as "that guy."
Unavoidably, the rumors eventually reached the children's
ears. When I returned home from work one day, I heard
Wangwang shout emotionally, "I refuse to believe it! Mama
couldn't possibly be that shameless!"
Lanlan was sobbing loudly.
"If ... ifthat really happened," Wangwang said, cracking
a reproachful back to me. Either that or she'd avoid me by
staying in her room and keeping the door tightly shut. As for
Wangwang, he claimed that since he had to prepare for exams,
he might as well stay at the home of a classmate.
I suffered the children's ostracism in silence. I wanted to
take them aside so many times and have a heart-to-heart talk
with them. I wanted them to understand and forgive their
mother. Your mother doesn't want to stand in the way of your
happiness, but she's a living, breathing human being who, like
you, wants to find her own happiness! I went over and over
what I wanted to tell them, but when I was face-to-face with
them, the words wouldn't come. I couldn't muster up the
courage. I was so afraid! ... Oh, Weiming! A single child's
tear is enough to extinguish a mother's ardent love, the lone
sigh of a son or daughter is enough to dissipate a mother's
resolve to fight for happiness!
Late last night Lanlan came into my bedroom, barefoot
and with mussed hair, threw herself down beside me like a
girl possessed, and sobbed, "Mama, why are you doing this?
Why, Mama?" Her red and swollen eyes bored into me. "Are
you afraid there'll be no one to take care of you? No one to
be with you? No one to look after you? You have us! We'll
take care of you, and be with you, and look after you. Dear
Mama, please reconsider. Your own daughter is about to be
married, so how can you remarry now? How could you stand
all the talk? How could your daughter, your son-in-law, your
own son face society? Mama, won't you even think about us'?
Dear Mama, your Lanlan is begging you, I'm begging you!
Please do as I ask! ... Mama, this is the last time I'll ask. If
you really go through with . . . " Her choking sobs tore at my
heart.
Oh God, dear God! Why are you so brutal, so cruel to
an unfortunate widow, to a vulnerable, middle-aged woman,
to a devout seeker of love, to an innocent child who has just
barely become conscious of the dignity of human life!
I don't have the strength to go on. I've been bent over
my desk writing since dusk-an entire night-shedding bitter
tears and looking at your photograph. To whom can I pour out
these feelings of mine? No one but you, Weiming! And you
are beyond knowing, beyond feeling, and cannot answer me.
Who knows, maybe I'm able to bare my soul to you without
holding back precisely because you are beyond knowing,
beyond feeling, and, except for smiling warmly, cannot answer
me!
Dawn is about to break, for I can see the darkness begin
to give way. The orchids are eagerly sending me their
fragrance. Not to console me, but because it is their nature to
greet the sun's rays. And me, how am I to greet my tomorrows?
I hope that another world exists there in the regions of
darkness, and that somehow you will see this confusing letter
of mine. In that world there should be no prestige associated
with the Municipal Party Secretary and no charity bestowed to
the low by those on high. In that case, answer me as an equal,
as a friend; I'll be waiting here for you to enlighten me in my
dreams!
Lianghui
* his tender knuckles loudly, "I'll kill that guy!"
My heart froze. I supported myself on the doorframe with
Originally published in Wenhui yuekan, no. I, 1981.
trembling hands, unable to find the courage to enter the room.
From that day on, whenever Lanlan saw me, she turned
Translated by Howard Goldblatt and Ellen L. Yeung
43
The Tolling of a Distant Bell
by Zhang Kangkang and Mei Jin
Twelve O'Clock
The great clock on the customs house struck. Its
oppressive tolling collided with the cold winter night and
resounded over the broad avenues.
"One, two, three, ... ten, eleven." In the darkness, Ji
Yuan opened her eyes and counted. The sound was vague and
yet distinct. Once the ringing stopped, there was utter stillness
again in all directions.
Yes, it was eleven, and her son Ji Dongping was still not
home.
She reached out and turned on the little lamp at the head
of the bed. Sitting up, she pulled a wrap over her shoulders
and rested her back against the wall as she gazed out the
window, as though this might make her wait seem shorter. She
picked up the first book that came to hand and began to read,
but after a few pages she still had no idea what it was about.
Was it only because she was waiting for her son that she didn't
feel like sleeping, weary as she was after teaching for a full
day? She smiled wryly. Perhaps it was just habit. How many
times had she waited like this a few years back, bitterly longing
through the lonely nights for her son to suddenly come home
from the Farm in Heilongjiang and never leave her. And yet
that had been a blind and pitiful fantasy. For ten whole years,
her son had left after every visit. During those years, other
people's children managed to move back for all sorts of reasons ,
whether by special permission or because of some hardship.
But Dongping had not. He had almost no qualification for
returning to the city, only the fact that twenty-seven years ago
his mother had divorced his father, an officer in the old army.
Of course this didn't elicit sympathy from anyone-who asked
him to be born the son of an officer in the old army? But she
had gone on hoping, hoping in her dreams deep in the night,
to the point that she often mistook the striking of the great
clock on the customs house by the riverside not far away for
the sound of her son knocking at the door. And yet, the great
clock had finally been the bringer of good news. Not long ago,
in the early winter of the second year after the fall of the "Gang
of Four," her son had finally managed to come back, though
only on sick leave, not to take over a job. But he wasn't sick
at all, thank the stars, and even luckier, he hadn't been back
in the city for a month when he got a job in a factory. The
whole process took place with such amazing speed that people
didn't dare believe it. It seemed as though some god were
secretly helping this orphan boy and his widowed mother, who
had been through every sort of hardship. Ji Yuan summed the
whole thing up as "wise government." The times were different;
government policy had changed, that was all. What was there
to be suspicious about? She hoped that henceforth she would
not hear the great clock ring again in the midst of her sound
and peaceful sleep.
"Dong ..." The sonorous stroke of the clock came
through the night air.
It was eleven thirty, and her son had still not come home.
But really, why did she have to go on waiting in such
anxiety that her stomach churned, she asked herself. That a
young fellow in his late twenties should go out to meet his
girlfriend in the evening was a perfectly normal thing; why
should his mother be so concerned? But no, life was not as
simple as that. For the whole point of her son's meeting tonight
was to break up with his girl friend, to completely break off
relations with her. Her son had almost wept when he agreed
to do so. Ever since Ji Yuan had learned that the girl's cadre
father was dead set against their engagement she had been
forcing this decision on her son. She was a woman no less
proud for her unfortunate station, and she had never gone with
bowed head to beg from anyone.
She turned away from the darkened window lattice,
shifting her attention to the room. Perhaps a dozen square yards
in area, the little room was dark and cramped, and gave off a
damp and moldy smell. The entire family property consisted
of two beds, a square table, a dresser, and a few stools. She
44
could hear the regular breathing of her daughter, sound asleep
beside her. But who knew the bitter course over which she had
dragged and carried her children these past few years? It seemed
that Fate had decreed that she should always be waiting for
something with deep longing.
She was vaguely aware that the clock had begun to strike
again, twelve times. But no, it was the sound of rubber soles
on the uneven planks in the hallway, those footsteps that she
knew so well.
"Mother!" her son called out happily as he rushed in,
bringing with him a blast of cold night air. His face was red
from the cold, but his eyes sparkled with happiness.
"Mother, haven't you gone to sleep yet? Were you waiting
for me? I've kept you up so late!" He threw off his
cotton-padded overcoat in a rush and tossed his hat and muffler
wherever they might land, at the same time saying emotionally,
"I shouldn't have done it; several times I thought of saying to
her, 'I'd better be going; I've got to go home!' But I couldn't
get the words out of my mouth. We walked and walked along
the river, until it seemed that we would walk until dawn and
still not finish with all we had to talk about ... Oh, Mother!
Why are you looking at me like that?" He stopped suddenly,
and stood there blankly.
Ji Yuan had prepared some words of consolation for her
son in advance, and had them already formed in her throat,
but not a word could she use. Her son was in such a joyful
mood, not at all sad and depressed as she had imagined. She
guessed why, and at once her heart shrank within her.
"Did you discuss it?" she asked coldly.
"What? Did we ..." Her son stole a glance at her.
"You know very well what I mean."
There was nothing in the room but the ticking of the alarm
clock.
Dongping stood in the center of the floor, one hand toying
with the comer of his jacket, his face suffused with red, looking
as though he had done something bad. His other hand he kept
in his pocket, as though there were something precious inside.
He lowered his head and stared at the tip of his shoe without
saying a word.
"Dongping, raise your head and take a look at this house
of ours," Ji Yuan said, speaking as tactfully as she could,
though feeling her heart on fire. "Surely then you will
understand why I want you and her . . ."
"No, Mother," Dongping said in sudden apprehension,
"Mother, you can't be like this, you mustn't talk this way
again. Ye Meng and I talked everything over tonight,
everything, and she doesn't agree. She loves me; she loves
me! Why do you want to force us apart? Why ...?"
For a moment Ji Yuan felt herself tum ice-cold inside.
Now she understood-her son had repudiated their agreement.
The promise that his mother's love and power had forced from
him a few hours ago had come to nothing, submerged by the
limitless tenderness of the person he loved. And in fact Ji Yuan
had anticipated that this might happen. Didn't she understand
the fiery love and snow-pure friendship that existed between
these two young people? Why did she want to stand in their
way after all? Why play an inglorious part so contrary to her
own desires? But the situation was clear; if she didn't manage
to work it all out as a mother truly should, the consequences
would not bear thinking about. Ye Meng's father had been
transferred back from a cadre school only last year, but in view
of all the injustices he had suffered during the "Gang of Four"
period, he had been made Chief of the Intermediate People's
Court in one jump. Ye Meng's elder sister was married to the
son of a Vice Secretary of a Provincial Party Committee; her
elder brother had wed the darling daughter of a Vice Minister.
This was Ye Meng's family. From their standpoint, wasn't the
son of an officer in the old army, an unskilled worker without
even a rating, really too humble? It was difficult to imagine
how she, an impoverished elementary school teacher, was to
walk into that luxurious parlor and sit down with them. No,
she was absolutely unwilling. But of course what compelled
her opposition was not her own self-respect, but the son whose
very survival was bound up with hers. Was she really willing
to look on at all the cares and frustrations he'd have to bear
as a result of this unequal marriage? Once she had heard the
attitude of Ye Meng's parents, she told her son in the most
definite terms that Ye Meng would no longer be welcome in
their home. Yes, she had taken the initiative in breaking off
relations ...
"You've made me wait for you for nothing," she said,
heaving a deep sigh.
This remark actually made Ji Dongping, who had been
standing aside for a long time, feel a sharp pang in his heart.
He loved his mother and felt a twinge of remorse at having
hurt her. His nose twitched, he bit hard on his lip and squatted
down by the head of his mother's bed. Her hair had turned
white at the temples, and wrinkles had spread like a spider's
web over her forehead. And it was all from worrying too much
for the sake of her two children. All the burdens that would
be borne by the father in other families had been placed on
her shoulders.
"Mother," he spoke softly, wanting to appear as
considerate and gentle as possible, "Don't get angry now; let
me finish what I have to say. Ye Meng isn't that kind of person,
she's not like other cadres' daughters. We have suffered so
many years together, I understand her . . ."
Ji Yuan looked tenderly at her son, and nodded without
realizing it.
"We talked about so many things tonight, about when we
first met, about the years we spent on the Farm, and also about
our families. Everything is so much better now; the worst is
over; why should we separate now, of all times? Why should
we create unhappiness for ourselves? We've decided," he
paused for a moment, as though making up his mind, and then
said decisively, "we've decided to go ahead with it, to get
married!"
Ji Yuan trembled once, like the echoing stroke of a deep
bell, and said nothing for a long time. In her confusion she
hardly knew what to do, and only got out a question, "And
the attitude of her family, has it changed at all?"
"Changed?" His lip curled in a look of disdain. "How
could it change? Her brother and sister have already begun
introducing her to suitable partners. A Secretary's son here,
the scion of a Chairman there, a whole string of them, all
waiting to get on the scales to be weighed. Whichever one can
raise her up, that's the one they want!" He muttered angrily,
and then suddenly threw has arms sadly around Ji Yuan's neck,
pressing his cold forehead against her chest, and murmured,
"Mother, won't you let us get married!"
Ji Yuan said nothing. There was something thick and bitter
trickling down her throat into her heart.
"Mother, dearest Mother, won't you agree!" He half knelt
beside her bed, as he had when he was a little boy, begging
45
her to let him go for a winter swim in the river. "If you don't
agree, who will stand behind us? I love Ye Meng, I love her!"
Ji Yuan covered her eyes with one arm.
"Mother . . ." He shook her shoulder.
Ji Yuan bent over and covered her ears with the comers
of the qUilt.
"Mother!" He seemed to flare up a little, and blurted out,
"You, you have forgotten the reason for your own unhappi
ness!"
Ji Yuan whirled around and sat up, her face deathly pale.
She bit her lips and gave her son a deeply accusing look.
Dongping knew that he was in for it and ducked his head
in embarrassment, saying, "I ..."
"Don't say anything more, I understand perfectly ..." Ji
Yuan stroked his hair sadly, slightly shaking her head.
"Look!" As though to lessen the tension and make his
mother forget her sadness of a moment past, he reached into
the pocket of his padded jacket, fished something out, and put
it in front of her. "Ye Meng just gave this to me. She said that
it represents her heart. It's that gold watch I told you about
before, the one that I helped her hide ten years ago when her
house was being searched at the beginning of the Movement.
She says that she is leaving the watch here as a token of our
friendship, which began then."
Dongping put the watch gently into his mother's hands,
probably so that she could see it a little more clearly. Ji Yuan
lowered her gaze and glanced at it, without much wanting to.
Suddenly the loose flesh on her face twitched, and she stared
intently at the delicate gleaming golden watch chain. She
shivered a while, and then reached out with two fingers to turn
the watch over. Her hands trembled violently.
"Dongping, the lamp, bring it ... bring it a little closer!"
She was so agitated that her voice shook.
Her son bent the hand-made table lamp a little lower,
wondering at the sudden change in his mother.
Ji Yuan had found a tiny letter "J" on the back of the
watch; her heart pounded, and she almost fainted away. She
pressed hard against the pit of her stomach, gasping for breath,
leaned against the bed-post, and said faintly, "Where did this
watch actually come from?"
"Ye Meng gave it to me. It's the thing that her father is
most fond of, and he didn't give it to her until she was leaving
for Heilongjiang."
"Ye Meng's father? What ... what is his name?"
"Ye Heng, I think; yes, his name is Ye Heng, the 'Heng'
written with the 'jade' radical and hang."
The gold watch slipped from Ji Yuan's hand and would
have fallen to the floor but for a lucky quick catch by Dongping.
When he looked up and discovered the look of misery on his
mother's deathly pale face, he began to feel frightened in spite
of himself.
"Mother, what's the matter?"
"Nothing. Go to bed, you should get some sleep. You
still have to go to work tomorrow . . ." She spoke with great
effort, and then reached out a trembling hand and switched off
the light.
From outside came the tolling of the ancient bell; it was
midnight.
Five-thirty
"Have you forgotten the reason for your own unhappi
ness?"
In the darkness, her son's large flashing eyes, still a little
childish in appearance, stared at her with anger and resentment.
The angry words that he had blurted out seemed to stab at her
heart like a needle.
How could she forget? Perhaps happiness could be
forgotten; but the enormous hurt that she had suffered, her
whole crushed and ruined life, these were carved on her bones
and heart, were part of her very existence, wounds that would
not close until that eternal night that was so slow in coming.
There was just such a gold watch among her painful and
humiliating memories, one whose gleaming yellow case and
brilliant golden chain anyone would have admired. It was a
present that her father, the owner of a jewelry shop, had given
to her in the year of her eighteenth birthday. But it had never
occurred to her then that all the pain she would suffer later
would seem to flow out of its perpetual ticking. It was now
fully thirty-two years since she had lost it, but it had left her
more nostalgic longings and bitter memories than she could
tell. It seemed that it was always grief that was wound up with
its spring. In thirty-two years her pain had never ceased; indeed,
it had grown heavier with each passing day. She had thought
that she would never see the watch again in this life, but like
a substance endowed with intelligence it had suddenly
reappeared before her, shedding its light in all directions,
dazzling and confusing. How had it made its way back to her?
Her son turned over, snorted, and mumbled something,
and then sank back deep into his dreams.
After thirty-two years, the bitter dream that she had
reviewed almost daily during her still sleepless hours late at
night seemed to be as clear as though it were yesterday.
She had met him in her last semester of high school. It
was the second year after the end of the War of Resistance, *
and at last it was possible to study in school without worrying.
One day in late autumn, when the scent of bay trees floated
on the air, she had gone to a pond behind the school to memorize
classical poems. As she chanted them, she caught sight of a
boy student concealed behind a rock, studying, his tattered
cloth shoes exposed to view. He was so absorbed in what he
was doing he hadn't even noticed that a crimson centipede was
crawling up his back toward his neck. Ji Yuan saw it clearly,
shouted in alarm, and brushed it off onto the ground with her
own handkerchief. He looked at her, nodded gratefully, and
then buried himself in his book again. Ji Yuan was thoroughly
surprised. She wondered what book could be so absorbing,
and when she snuck a look, she discovered that it was
Serafimovich's The Iron Flood. **
"Is it interesting? What's it about?" she couldn't help
asking.
His face reddened slightly. "Of course it's interesting. Do
you want to read it?"
"Would you lend it to me?"
"Why shouldn't I? But take good care of it."
* It was 1947-ed.
** A. S. Serafimovich (\863-1949)'s principal work, The Iron Flood, was
first published in 1924 and became a classic of Soviet literature. It is a novel
of unstinting optimism that portrays the masses as the heroes of history. See
Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature Since the Revolution (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 122-125.
46
And so they got to know each other with a book as a
go-between. Later, the bank of the pond on campus became
their usual meeting place. As time went on, she learned that
he was in the next class, and that his name was Zhao Yeheng.
He was three years older than she; his father was a stevedore.
He had had to drop out of school twice because of difficulties
at home, but he had read quite a few books, mostly recently
translated Soviet literary works. These he introduced to Ji
Yuan, and henceforth a new world opened up before her. She
had grown up in a feudal home in which money came before
all else. It was probably in order to get a better price for her
that her jeweler father had sent her to school. He hadn't foreseen
that it would be books and school that would lead her to
understand the inequalities of the world and make her wish to
break free of her feudal family. Zhao Yeheng's friendship
lent her greater courage to struggle with Fate. The callousness
of her family increasingly pushed her into his arms. But their
contacts were somehow disclosed to her father, and she
received a vicious beating at home. Afterwards she snuck out
to see the boy and told him what had happened as she wept
on his shoulder. He embraced her tightly and said, "Yuan,
let's go together to the liberated area in northern Jiangsu!" She
was so deliriously happy that she wept, feeling that there really
was hope for her life. Although she was not very politically
aware at the time, and didn't know that Zhao Yeheng had
long since become an underground Party member, her whole
heart still longed for the equality and freedom of the Liberated
Area. Their love could not be contained in a kingdom of
darkness, but tended necessarily toward the world of light.
They decided to leave and agreed to meet on a certain day
beneath the clock tower of the customs house, at seven in the
evening. She was so excited by the prospect of the two of them
spreading their wings and flying off together that she couldn't
sleep for several days running.
But she never dreamed that just as she was packing her
little suitcase and set to leave within a few hours, her father
would lock her in her room and shout abuse from outside the
door. "Cheap little trash! Giving things away while you live
off us! Just see if you can get away from me!" Nor did he pay
any attention to her, no matter how desperate her pleading.
Only then did she realize that the whole family had been spying
on her all along. The agreed-upon time had almost come, but
her room was upstairs, with only a narrow window on the high
wall facing the courtyard; how could a weak young girl escape
from such a cage? The clock on the customs house struck
seven, eight, nine. She collapsed on her bed, almost faint from
weeping. As the sky began to grow light the next day, she was
startled awake by the sound of terrible shouting in the
courtyard. She could just hear her father saying, "What makes
you think you're a fit match? In marriage the parties must be
of equal status; that has always been the rule!"
Ji Yuan knew that he had come, that in the end he couldn't
bear not to force his way into the courtyard. Perhaps he had
waited for her all night under the clock tower. She heard his
voice arguing and shouting, that voice so dear to her. But what
use was it? Young people's happiness was worth no money in
the eyes of the jeweler. She wanted to shout, but couldn't make
a sound; her legs grew weak and her hands numb. Her heart
was about to break in pieces . . .
Her father's voice came again, "Here, take this money
for your traveling expenses. We won't pay any attention to
where you go. Just don't bother her any more ..."
She could hear only a single furious word from Zhao Ye
heng, "Shameless!" The thick red lacquer door shut heavily.
She called his name out once as though her very heart would
shatter, and collapsed on the floor in a faint.
Only half conscious, she felt someone gently picking her
up. When she opened her eyes, she saw it was Mu, the maid
servant who brought her meals upstairs. In her desperation,
she fumbled for the gold watch that hung on her chest and said
to Mu, "Quickly, quickly, follow him, and give this to him;
it is my heart. Wish him, farewell ..."
She had already given up hope for her own struggle, and
only longed for him to get away quickly, to escape to the land
of freedom. She was sure then that her father was planniqg to
marry her to an army officer. When she heard Mu tell her;that
the watch was in his hands, a smile played across her wretched
face.
She spent a full two months closed up in that gloomy little
attic, and in the end submitted to her father's will. It was not
that she wanted to go on living at any cost, but that among the
countless times she had wished for death, there had been born
a faint hope that she would again meet Zhao Yeheng. In a
way, a wish that simple had actually sustained her through all
the rest of her life.
On the night before her wedding, she stole out of the
house and ran to the customs house clock tower. She knew
that she would not find him there, but it seemed as though the
deep tolling of the bell sustained the love buried in her heart
and poured out all her longing for him. It was in the depth of
winter, and a heavy snow filled the air; the clock tower loomed
up in the dark lowering sky, groaning painfully. She seemed
like a kite with a broken string, floating away one knew not
where. He, someone who had once led her toward the light,
had in the end abandoned her to this boundless black night,
while he went away into the sunshine. Did this mean that she
blamed him? No, she cherished her eternal love and longing
for him all the same. Then did she blame herself? After careful
thought, she felt that to do so would be unfair. Of course it
was her merchant family and her heartless father that were to
blame. But not entirely, for wasn't "equal status" the real
principle behind this society? Parents who wanted to maintain
appearances in this society naturally had to respect the
unwritten law followed for thousands of years.
The great clock sounded, a distant tolling, as though
sobbing or complaining. She went back home. The happiness
that she had once dreamed of seemed like the fallen leaves
swept up by the north wind and blown away into the muddy
river.
Less than three years after her marriage to the army officer,
the whole country was liberated. In response to the new age,
her once dead soul began slowly to revive. Perhaps because
of the single pitiful hope still cherished in her heart, she
resolutely divorced her husband after two years, and began to
raise her son and daughter on just the meager salary she earned
as an elementary school teacher. She invested all her hopes in
her children. She toiled for the sake of their future happiness.
For her, the whole significance of this happiness would lie in
equality and respect between people and in not repeating the
tragedy of her era. At times, she herself felt that her narrow
understanding of happiness was a little ridiculous. But she
couldn't help it. The brand that suffering had left on her heart
was too deep. Once lost, love is a thing not easily found again.
Ji Yuan gently brushed a few tear-drops from her cheeks.
47
She heard the customs house clock sound, but didn't know
what time it was. Perhaps it was getting towards daybreak;
with her frail nerves, the slightest occasion was enough to bring
before her eyes each and every old score accumulated over the
years.
But what had raked up these painful memories tonight
was really no slight occasion. The gold watch that had once
carried away all the happiness she had known in life had now
reappeared as though by a miracle. It brought with it the hopes
of her lost thirty-two years.
Was it really her watch? She did not dare believe it. And
yet the letter engraved on it was real.
Then was Ye Meng really his daughter? Was Ye Heng
really him, Zhao, Yeheng? She pondered and speculated,
turning over in bed unable to fall asleep.
She suddenly remembered how, in the first year of the
Cultural Revolution, after the disturbances over the "Four
Olds"* had passed and the attack had been turned towards the
"Capitalist Roaders," she had come home from school one day
and noticed that the battered trunk in the attic had been moved.
Full of concern, she questioned her son about it. Most mothers
were concerned in those days. Although the dangerous period
of suspicion that her family had incurred because of the
"reactionary army officer" was already past, she still lived each
day with her heart in her mouth.
"Nothing important, Mother. I ... just hid something,"
her son replied calmly. He was already grown up, grown into
a handsome young fellow with a pair of penetrating eyes that
flashed beneath his thick black hair. He had shown intelligence
from early childhood, and his marks in school were always
outstanding. At the time he had just turned sixteen.
"Hid something? What was it?"
"Just ... a watch. It belongs to one of my fellow students.
She was afraid that it might be confiscated in a house search,
and the only thing she could do was leave it with me."
She didn't blame her son; he was honest and sincere, and
after all, had she herself ever failed to sympathize with people
in difficulty? She sat down quietly, then suddenly asked, as
though just remembering something that had been on her mind,
"A fellow student? Is she a good friend of yours?"
"No, not really. Her whole family moved here from the
North at the beginning of eighth grade. She was really stuck
up and looked down on every one. We shared a desk, but she
didn't say a word to me for a whole semester." He went on
talking enthusiastically, always eager and earnest in telling his
mother about things in his class. "One time she got sick and
didn't come to school for quite a few days. When she got
better, a car brought her to school, and that's how we found
out that her father was actually some kind of big official.
Whew! She was just like a little lady. She was awfully upset
about having fallen behind, and it was only after I helped her
catch up that she started talking to me. But you know what
some students said? They said that I was making up to her."
"Dongping!" Ji Yuan cried out. She felt as though her
heart had been injured. She had heard those words before,
twenty years ago, when her fellow students abused Zhao
Yeheng. At first she had thought that the wounds suffered by
her generation could no longer exist in the new society, and
yet during the past ten years there had never been a moment
when she was not aware of a kind of new pressure, as she
perceived ever more clearly the gulf in status that stretched
between her children and those of other people. Her heart
ached. She asked, with a frown, "Then, why, why are you
still helping her?"
"Well, Mother, afterwards the situation changed. After
her father fell from power, no one in class would pay any more
attention to her. The class held a meeting to criticize her, and
I was the only one who didn't speak. What could I say? She
hadn't done anything wrong herself."
Ji Yuan didn't hear what he said after that. Her thoughts
wandered off far, far away. Women are prone to feel sympathy
in cases similar to their own, even if the similarity is only
slight and uncertain. Could she say that her son had done the
wrong thing? When his fellow student ran into bad luck, he
had extended a friendly hand to her. Well, after all, wasn't he
just taking after his mother?
After the storm had passed, Dongping brought his fellow
student home to visit. She was a delicate young girl wearing
a blue corduroy jacket and black cloth shoes, looking very
simple and tasteful. Her eyes were full of wonder as she walked
into the room; she was extremely interested in the little attic,
chuckling as she scrambled up into it. Ji Yuan had taken a
great liking to her from the first time she saw her, but she
found an excuse to leave. She was afraid that a mother's
inappropriate warmth of interest might arouse needless
complications in the children's pure friendship. She was also
very much aware of the distinction in status and circumstances
between her son and a cadre family. This kind of distinction
was almost as rigid and unchangeable as twenty years before.
If she had only known that the watch her son had hidden
was linked to her in a matter of life and death! Why hadn't
she taken a look at it? She couldn't have dreamed that a thing
that she yearned for day and night, something she couldn't
have found by searching even if she had worn through a pair
of iron shoes, was actually slipping away under her very nose.
That mistake alone had cost twelve years. Her son had grown
up, and she had become an old woman.
The great clock sounded again, "Dong ... dong ... ,"
seeming to break up the heavy darkness and let a little light
in. Ah, it was five o'clock. The window had turned faintly
grey, and the noise of the first tram could be heard as it rolled
past on the street, with the faint sound of talk and laughter
from the early shift of street cleaners.
As for what had happened later, she couldn't explain it
very clearly. Her son had never talked about how he and Ye
Meng had become close during those twelve years. At the
least, they had gone off to Heilongjiang together, and had often
come back together to visit their families. Ye Meng sometimes
came to their little room to help her with a few chores. She
had become very proficient. Ye Meng spoke very little about
her father; Ji Yuan knew only that he was still at cadre school.
This could hardly fail to make her feel a measure of sympathetic
affection for the girl. One time she couldn't help asking Ye
Meng, "Is Dongping really so good?" The girl opened her eyes
wide and said very seriously, "Of course he is. He is
good-hearted, happy to help other people, and never indulges
in idle talk. On the Farm he drives an 'East is Red' and fixes
it himself whenever it breaks down." Her face suddenly
* The "Four Olds"-old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits-were
reddened and she gave a little snort through her nose, "Mrs.
among the principal targets of the Cultural Revolution.
48
Ji, do you think I could like one of those little gentlemen from
our circle? I saw right through them a long time ago." Ji Yuan
walked away, her eyes brimming with tears. The girl had a
mind of her own, but then the two of them were still in
Heilongjiang. At the beginning of 1977, everything changed.
Ye Meng's father returned to the city and took up his old post
again, and Ye Meng was transferred back soon after. But they
remained in love. As proof of her unchanged feeling for
Dongping, Ye Meng often came to visit Ji Yuan, but Ji Yuan
seemed to have already recognized the latent peril, and the
change that was about to take place. She forced herself to treat
the girl with an attitude that would keep her at a distance.
Finally Ye Ming stopped coming. But her heart remained
unchanged. Her letters reported to Dongping the wrong she
suffered and the prejudice his eccentric mother had against her.
Ji Yuan knew all this.
But, what really had linked the fates of these two young
people? In fact they should not have been brought together. Ji
Yuan kept asking herself this in the midst of her sharp mental
conflicts. Had she not been thrown from her cosy little nest by
that great upheaval, the young lady might never have had
occasion to come into their humble little room. Once her father
came on hard times, she fell into difficulties after him. She
had gotten to know Dongping in the midst of her troubles, and
had seen his pure heart. She hadn't been able to see it at first,
and hadn't needed to.
That glowing golden watch once more appeared before
her, and suddenly she felt as though she were suffocating. Was
it possible that they, the young people of different status joined
thirty-two years before by no more than a copy of The Iron
Flood could only bridge the gulf between them in the sixties,
through a great revolution soaked in bloodshed and ten years
of upheaval and hardship? And yet, once the disaster was over,
high walls rose again where there had been level ground, and
the Heavenly River in the human world went on flowing as
before, just like the one that divides the Herd Boy and Weaving
Maid stars in the sky.* Didn't Ye Meng's father, her family,
the stories of what had happened to the children of various
cadres, didn't they all make that plain?
"No!" Ji Yuan cried out, "It isn't him, it can't be!"
Her son rolled over; had she awakened him? She calmed
down.
"No, Ye Meng's father absolutely could not be Zhao
Yeheng. The golden watch absolutely could not be his. Perhaps
it had come into someone else's hands during the war years,"
Ji Yuan comforted herself. It wasn't that she didn't believe
that such a coincidence could occur, but that she was positive
of this much; the Zhao Yeheng who had personally suffered
persecution from the feudal concepts of power and family
influence could never under any circumstances come to
embrace the concept of "equal status" as some cadres did. She
would die rather than believe that.
She seemed to be feeling a little better and lay down for
a while. But eventually she couldn't restrain herself and got
up quietly, walked to her son's bed, and nudged him gently,
"Dongping, Dongping . . . "
* The Herd Boy and the Weaving Maid are Chinese constellations that
symbolize both love and longing; they are only seen together around the seventh
day of the seventh lunar month.
Her son grunted several times and opened his eyes, still
heavy with sleep.
"Get up and write a letter, a letter to Ye Meng." She
spoke urgently, unable to control her agitation. "Arrange for
her to come out this evening, and ask about her family in detail,
ask about her father's background, whether he evef used a
different name . . . "
Her son opened his mouth in puzzlement.
"Be a good boy; write quickly and send it by the morning
mail truck. You know, I was too hasty before; if you inquire
carefully, perhaps, perhaps I may reconsider your problem."
"Really?" Her son jumped up at once.
"Dong . . . " the great clock struck; five-thirty. Dawn
would be breaking soon.
Seven O'clock
11 Yuan passed the entire day in a state of restless
impatience. When she read the text out loud in her language
class, she actually read several words incorrectly, something
that had never ever happened in the past. Never had she so
greedily longed to hear the sound of the customs house bell.
The north wind was blowing through the sparse bare
branches of the tall phoenix trees, whipping the last snow into
her face head-on. It was already midwinter, and where winter
plum blossoms thrust themselves up from behind a high
courtyard wall, they seemed like frozen stars on a curtain of
night.
From far away, Ji Yuan caught sight of the lamp burning
in the window of her home. Her daughter was on the middle
shift today and couldn't be home yet. Her son's factory was
far away; he never came home before it was pitch dark. He
must have come back quite early today because he had his
meeting with Ye Meng on his mind. She hastened her steps,
and hurried up the stairway. As soon as she pushed open the
door, she saw Dongping washing his face.
"What time are you meeting?" she asked anxiously.
"Seven o'clock, sharp."
"Oh, OK," she said, in a monotone, "You don't need to
go."
"What?"
''I'll go. There are a few things that you wouldn't be able
to get clear answers about."
She had been planning to do this for some time already;
why not go and question the girl on her own? Everything could
be settled very quickly. Seeing her son standing there blankly,
his face a picture of doubt, she smiled and said soothingly,
"Don't worry. I won't give her any trouble. Where are you to
meet?"
"Under the bell tower of the customs house clock."
Ji Yuan's face went white. She turned quickly away.
Always, without meaning to, life touches the sore spot in a
person's heart.
She looked up and saw the little alarm clock read five
after six. She hurried to get some dinner together for her son,
but couldn't swallow a bite herself. Her heart pounded
continuously, and her hands trembled uncontrollably. "What's
wrong with me?" she asked herself. Why did she want to go
meet Ye Meng in her son's place after all? Just because it was
beneath the customs house clock tower, a secret and remote
place deeply hidden in her heart?
She put on her overcoat and made up her mind to take a
49
look at herself in the little old cracked mirror. She had certainly
grown old; her hair was white and her face haggard and
colorless. Those eyes that had once been clear as an autumn
stream were now tired and lifeless. The passage of time is so
pitiless to people.
She shook her head slightly, but just as she reached the
door, suddenly stood still.
"Dongping, give it to me," she said softly.
"What?"
"That watch."
He got the watch from beneath his pillow and put it gently
in his mother's hand. The icy feeling of the metal made her
shiver suddenly, as though in premonition of something
unfortunate. She put the watch quickly into an inner pocket
and left without saying anything. Why did she want to take it
with her? What was it she wanted to ask Ye Meng? She herself
didn't know.
The customs house clock tower was not too far from her
house, two bus stops at most. She walked very quickly, with
her head lowered, looking as though her heart were filled with
some pain that so weighed her down she could not straighten
her back. She suddenly began to regret that she had come. The
cold wind on a winter night, the clock tower, seven o'clock
sharp. . . All aroused the recollection of so many bitter bygone
things. But what grieved her most was that thirty-two years
before it was from here that she had not been able to flyaway
with her lover; and thirty-two years later, she was taking this
road to accept the same sort of pain for her son.
The looming black shape of the clock tower rose up under
the dark sky, gloomy and silent. The grey river showed pale
blue shimmers of ripples as it flowed murmuring to the east.
In the strong wind under a dark sky, the avenue so bustling in
daylight was now silent and deserted. She rushed toward the
tower, having already seen the shape of someone pacing back
and forth below it. She crossed the road and called out, for
the sake of courtesy, "Ye Meng, I've kept you waiting!"
The shape stopped moving. But it didn't come happily
forward in welcome as she had imagined. He turned slowly,
and only after the street lamp shone directly on his dark blue
embossed woolen greatcoat, gleaming leather shoes, and
well-preserved face wrapped in a thick, woolen muffler did Ji
Yuan realize that she had mistaken him for someone else. This
was a man of middle age, no, perhaps a little more than middle
age. He was probably a senior cadre; there was a car parked
not far away ... oh no, no ...
In a panic, Ji Yuan clutched a telephone pole beside her
and rubbed her eyes. For a moment it seemed that her mind
had played a trick on her; what had she seen? No, no this was
something that couldn't possibly be true.
"You are . . . " The man stepped forward graciously with
a charming, friendly smile. He extended his hand to her.
She saw him clearly now-the square face, the firm
straight nose, the black mole amid his slightly drooping brows.
Yes, it was he, he for whom she had longed through thirty-two
bitter years. The hardships of the years and months had really
not left that much of a mark on his face; his hair was still
black, and the outline of his face still plump and full. What
had changed was that his slightly smiling eyes seemed so cold
and distant.
"You are ... ," he said again. Yes, it was his voice,
completely unchanged, rich and gentle, as it had been
thirty-two years before. Yes, he was Ye Meng's father.
She leaned her entire weight against the telephone pole
and said in a weak, almost inaudible voice, "I am ... Ji
Dongping's mother; he ... is sick."
She stared directly into his eyes, sought his gaze, hoping
that he would recognize her.
But he wasn't looking at her at all. His eyes, stem and
solemn, were on the lights on the opposite bank. No, he hadn't
recognized her; perhaps she had changed too much. He coughed
once, rubbed his hands, and said mildly, "It's all right, your
coming makes no difference. Mm ... I've been meaning to
look your son up and have a chat with him for a long time
now, but our Meng ... well, when Ji Dongping's letter arrived
today at nightfall, she happened not to have come home yet,
so I thought ... well, that this would be a good time for me
to come and talk with him."
Ji Yuan felt her heart sinking lower and lower, the blood
in her veins turning cold, until it seemed as though it would
freeze. Her whole body felt cold, and her teeth began to chatter.
"It seems to me, well, perhaps you and your son have not
recognized the fact for a long time, but really, well, our
household is really not a suitable one for him and Ye Meng to
go on maintaining this sort of relationship. Naturally the
reasons are many and various, and we needn't spell them out."
He spoke with assurance and warmth, without ever looking at
her. "Of course, the responsibility lies chiefly with us, with
Ye Meng."
The last faint ember of flame in her heart went out. The
world lay pitch black before her eyes. She buried her face in
her hands, wanting to weep, but unable to. It was not that she
was hurt by the destruction of some fond hope for a lucky bit
of charity from Ye Meng's father, but because the man saying
these things to her was none other than the Zhao Yeheng whom
she had loved so deeply thirty-two years before.
"You mustn't get the wrong idea about us." He pulled
out a handkerchief and dabbed at his nose, showing that he
too was somewhat distressed. "You really shouldn't get the
wrong idea. We are certainly not the sort of people to be
unreasonable." He stopped for a moment, and seemed to be
choosing his words carefully, "You and Dongping may not be
aware of it, but the procedures for his return to the city and
the arrangements for his job were all taken care of with our
help. Our Meng knows this, but she hasn't been willing to tell
you, so it has been left to me to explain it now."
Ji Yuan uttered a faint "oh," stiff with fear.
He took a few steps with his hands behind his back,
spealcing as he had become accustomed to doing to his
subordinates, "I've discussed all this with Meng's mother a
number of times, and we believe that Dongping's sincere
attachment to Meng is understandable. Therefore we want to
do everything that lies within our power. That way, Ye Meng
will be treating Dongping fairly, wouldn't you say? Now, go
home and try to persuade your son not to come to see Ye Meng
anymore."
Ji Yuan shuddered violently, so angry that her entire body
shook. So he had actually come to clear his account with her.
She suddenly had a feeling that she had heard these words
somewhere before. Where had it been? She went on wondering
absent-mindedly, but couldn't recall where.
"All right, let's leave it at this. Young people are governed
by their feelings, but they may grow out of them slowly later.
You are older, and should realize that the distinction between
us has an objective existence."
50
There lept into her mind the words that she had heard her
father say to the poor young man in the courtyard from her
high window in that dusky morning thirty-two years before.
Then he had left in anger at the insult he had received; how
could he say this kind of thing now? Of course he didn't feel
that he was insulting them, what he held in his hands were not
jewels, but . . . but what was it? Something that money
couldn't buy. God! How superior he was to that despicable
jeweler! Ji Yuan hung her head in dejection, feeling the world
spinning about her with a wave of nausea. She had lived for
fifty-one years, and yet been so naive. She had hated her father
all her life, hated his cruelty, unable really to understand why
he had wanted to destroy the happiness of two young people.
But now she suddenly understood. Her father had said, "The
parties must be of equal status; that has always been the rule!"
Was this really the answer that she had been unwilling to accept
through thirty-two years of pain?
The car's horn suddenly gave a honk, and she awakened
with a start. She saw Zhao Yeheng, no, Ye Meng's father,
look at his watch and say to her with a very apologetic air,
"Excuse me; I have another appointment at seven-thirty. Do
you have anything more to say?"
Her lips moved once, but made no sound. Did she have
anything more to say? Hadn't he said very clearly everything
that needed to be said? She realized only now that she had
made a serious mistake this morning at five-thirty. Of course
this was a father who would not let his daughter receive
Dongping's letter; that was something she hadn't thought of.
Without intending to, she touched the ice-cold golden watch
in her pocket, and her heart fluttered involuntarily. Perhaps
she should bring out the watch and tell him who she was, tell
him everything! What sort of scene would that lead to? Perhaps
everything would change at once. Had she longed for him for
so many years only to part like this? There was not much time
left; if she let this opportunity slip, perhaps it would never
come again. Tell him, not to change things, but to make him
feel ashamed.
But she gave up these ideas at once. Across her worn and
pallid face there flickered a trace of a proud smile. The watch
had already been returned to its rightful owner along with all
the love once conferred upon it; what need was there to disturb
that carefree and complacent soul again? Stupid! Besides, the
watch really was no longer hers; it had now become a symbol
of the love between two faithful hearts, and no one had the
right to dispose of it. It belonged in common to the son of a
good mother and the daughter of a "well-intentioned" father.
She raised her head and straightened her muffler.
He asked, with a show of great concern, "Shall I have
the car take you part way?"
"There's no need to," she replied, indifferently.
When she had taken only a few steps, she heard the car
door slam heavily behind her. As the car sped past, he nodded
to her politely from inside. A puff of black exhaust burst from
behind it, and it drove quickly away.
Ji Yuan stood motionless in the cold wind for a long time,
silently watching the car vanish into the endless darkness.
The stars had come out, and the vast Milky Way spread
out across the breadth of the sky, cold and remote.
"After all, there is no Heavenly River to separate lovers
in the human world!" she suddenly thought angrily, "Why do
we still make our children suffer again the same unhappiness
that we knew?"
She felt that she wanted to see Ye Meng, that decent and
channing young girl, more than she ever had. She would take
the girl into her home herself, ten square yards, it didn't matter,
she and her daughter could sleep in the attic. For the sake of
the happiness that she herself had once lost, she was willing
to pay a higher price in her desolate old age than ever before.
As for Ye Meng, that cadre's child "not like the others," how
long she would stay in that simple little room, whether or not
she would run back home, that was a problem for the young
people themselves.
"Dong . . . dong . . . " The great clock on the customs
house struck, the long reverberation dying slowly away in the
air over the quiet city. Yes, seven o'clock, on the dot. The
bell went on tolling and tolling in her ears, and as she listened
it seemed to her just as thirty-two years before the sound of
oppression, and of rage.
*
Originally published in Shiyue (October), no. 3, 1980.
Translated by Daniel Bryant
Among articles appearing in Journal oj
Contemporary Asia in 1984
Ferol Ahmed, Transfonnation of Agrarian Structure in North
West Pakistan
Hing Ai Yun, Women and Work in West Malaysia
A. V. Jose, Agrarian Refonns in Kerala
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Japan's Role in the New International
Division of Labour
Victor Lippit, Economic Development In China and Pakistan
Han Hak & Erik van Ree, Was the Older Mao Still a Maoist?
James Petras Towards a Theory of Capitalist Industrialisation
in the Third World
Michel Bruneau, Class Fonnation Among Northern Thai
Peasantry
D.L. Clark, Foundations of the Theory of Planning and
Growth
Peter Limqueco, Vietnamese Agriculture in Transition
Kraisak Choonhavan, The Growth of Domestic Capital and
Thai Industrialisation
Rizwanul islam, Non-Fann Employment in Rural Asia
J....... of ee. .... ponrJ AIle
P.O. Box 49010,
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51
The System
For me, the most spLendid tribute to human dignity was
something I saw on a mountain top in PeLoponnesia. It was
not a piece ofscuLpture or a flag, just the three Greek Letters
oxi meaning "no."
-Orianna FaLLaci
Living
A net
-Bei Dao
Hu Yaobang's speech at the 1980 Drama Forum contained
a lengthy theoretical discussion of the correct way for writers
to treat the twin problems of "bureaucratism and special
privileges" (guanliao zhuyi and teshuhua). His position in brief
was that these perennial evils of Chinese government could
and should be criticized, but that such fictional criticisms should
never imply that "bureaucratism" was a systemic problem or
that the Chinese Communist Party represented some sort of
specially privileged new class. Yet, two years later, at the
Twelfth Congress, the Party leadership announced a new
Rectification Campaign to purge the ranks of those Party
members who cultivated their own personal interests rather
than wholeheartedly serve the people.
The high tide of broadside attacks on cadre "special
privileges" had gradually declined during 1980, but in 1981
and afterwards writers continued to produce rather more
oblique critiques which were in fact sometimes much more
successful as literature than some of the earlier exposes. The
Photo by Saundra Sturdevant
revolutionary cadre" Liu Dayong, but the sad consequences of
his thirty years of "perfect loyalty," of never saying "no!" to
any Party directive however wrongheaded or cruel, is made
abundantly clear through the revelation of his inner musings,
recollections, and gUilt. Dai seems to be telling us that this is
a kind of unthinking loyalty that the Party can no longer afford
to cultivate as it attempts to make China a truly modem nation.
Qiao Shi's "Providing a Meal" (Guanfan) gives another
glimpse of how "the system" works and extends the neo-realist
exposure of rural poverty from the Cultural Revolution all the
way down to 1979. It seems to imply the complete failure of
the Maoist revolution in the countryside through the weary
Y an' an cadre's bitter words, "If our poor peasants are supposed
to consider it their glory to be poor forever, then why did we
need a revolution?" Earlier in 1979, the New China News
Agency revealed that the average food grain allotment was less
in 1977 than in 1957. This story provides a powerful image
of those statistics in simple existential terms-eating coarse
* young, new writer Dai Qing's "No!" (Bu!) is a good example. grained porridge for thirty years.
The story never denies the good intentions of the "old
52
No!
by Dai Qing
Night-still and silent, but a night on which the slightest
sound could be heard: the tick-ticking of the clock, the
humming of the watch by my pillow, the rustle of leaves outside
the window, "krggt-ptt" -someone in the distance spitting into
the night.
Liu Dayong was accustomed to waking at this hour. Was
it midnight? One o'clock? The soft pillow, the soft bed, and
this soft, light, fluffy eiderdown quilt. He didn't like it. It had
no substance. It was like having no cover it all, yet it made
his feet hot and clammy. He didn't like the feel of it when he
turned over, the slippery, silky nylon rubbing against his
shoulders, with an oily feel. It was no match at all for the
thick, home-spun cotton qUilt he remembered from his
hometown days. Then there was the smoky smell of the adobe
kang' and the mats on it, browned from use. Ah! What perfect,
unrestricted comfort.
The huge floor lamp cast a soft light on the deep-purple
rug. The lampshade was a cross between red and blue, and Li
Ying insisted on burning it through the night for him. On the
day she installed it, he snored lightly pretending to sleep, but
he overheard the entire discussion conducted in whispered
tones. Li Ying wanted a light green one, but her young
daughter-in-law protested that it clashed with the rug and
insisted that it be exchanged.
"Huh! She thinks she will inherit it after I'm dead, the
little hussy," Liu thought to himself, lying there with a gurgling
sound in his throat as they haggled.
He felt out of sorts with Li Ying, this wife twelve years
his junior. Catching sight of her sparse, thinning hair which
she kept in little curls all over her head, he quickly turned his
head away. For many years Li Ying had kneaded him in her
I. A kong is a Northern Chinese bed made of adobe brick under which a fire
can be built.
hands with deliberate soft-spoken tones and a gentie, patient
manner. Three meals a day turned into five. There was
plain-woven silk in summer, cotton-padded silk in winter, a
Simmons mattress, a rug, a lamp kept burning through the
night, and a cabinet full of medicines. With respect to his body,
which he thought of as a machine, the situation couldn't be
more clear. His "machine," true enough, was still in operable
condition, but it was too old, too worn; it had known too much
wear and tear. A machine like this was beyond the point where
it could be maintained merely by providing it with the best
lubricant and keeping it touched up with a little shiny varnish.
That would be the equivalent of replacing the gears regardless
of the condition of the main drive-shaft or the motor. You just
can't replace everything.
"When your time is up, it's up," he thought. His father
had been more and more on his mind recently, a man who had
never known disaster or illness. He died peacefully on the kang
that served him as a bed all his life, without a trace of pain on
his face. Death is something every man must come to terms
with on his own, or at the very least leave to the hands of Old
Man Heaven, but in his case it was all in Li Ying's hands.
The cupboard was full of bottles of all sizes and colors-round
ones, flat ones, tubes and liquids. Medicines of all types had
gone down his throat year after year, but to no avail. What
was the use, after all, of trying to sustain a body that would
never have a second lease on life? For the glory of the medical
profession? Not very likely. For the revolution? For work?
"Commissar Liu, we need you and so does the revolution
... ," uttered the iron-legged Regimental Commander who
made a special trip from distant Guizhou to visit him a year
ago when this wretched ailment-cerebral thrombosis compli
cated by hemiplegia-suddenly flared up. Even the sun
scorched cheeks of this rare man of iron constitution, moved
by some unknown emotion, were wet with tears. "Commissar
Liu... ," Leopard called out in a hoarse voice, his contorted
face exposing his snow-white teeth. He had been called
53
Leopard as a boy, and hearing that old familiar name again
made a hotness flare inside him.
"I can't die yet," he thought, recalling all the physical
examinations and medical treatments his old bones and flesh
had endured on account of the bullet holes that had riddled his
body. But that was a year ago. At present he was hardly so
stupid as to believe the phrase "the revolution needs you."
Revolution! He was not yet twenty the first time he heard
the word. The dirt floor of the village schoolhouse had been
trod into hard little mounds by the muddy feet of the farm
children. They sat in disorderly fashion around a crudely-con
structed, unpainted table of poplar-wood, like flocks of sheep
turned loose in the neighborhood. As the aged schoolmaster,
clad in a long gown, raised his arm to write the word, his
all-too-ample sleeves slid down all the way to the elbow,
exposing those arms lined with blue veins. Revolution! The
word entered my memory as my eyes traced those earthworm
like veins down the arm of this man in a long gown. Ah, almost
half a century now!
Revolution! All those years-from the time he'd carried
a sword, then a Hanyang rifle, then a pair of pistols on the
hips, then a Browning automatic, following which came a pair
of German-made binoculars and a gold-ringed Parker pen
right up to the present, when he kept reaching for his
multi-function pocket calculator and punched away at it while
squatting proudly at the comer of a table. During all these
years not a day had passed when he wasn't preoccupied by the
word revolution. But the strange fact was that the meaning of
this word had changed over time. When the change began was
no longer clear in his memory. It seemed the concept of
revolution had expanded from being merely a substitute for
fighting, reading documents, attending meetings and making
business trips, to include ideals, personality, personal integrity,
weddings and funerals, begetting and raising sons and
daughters; and finally it even embraced the color of one's
clothing and the style of one's cuisine. Meanwhile the burning
hatred he used to feel for the Japanese, the warlords, and social
corruption had come to seem alien to him.
"The revolution needs you." Ah, Leopard, this fiery
phrase, this burning-hot title "Commissar Liu" by which you
address me, retains its flavor and avoids cliches only when it
comes from you. No wonder titles like "Miss Zhao" and "Mr.
Liu" were penned on the envelopes of the letters that his son
and his girl-friend wrote to each other. No wonder he
sometimes became so angry when these letters came into his
hands that he tore them to shreds. The son watched with a
pale, ashen face as his father shredded the letters, but he made
no effort to defend himself. No, no, he understood his son too
well. The boy was fleeing something, not searching for it. But
what was he fleeing? Could it be that his son was fleeing the
concepts embraced by revolution? And by comrade? Yes! Yes!
And how had he understood the boundless implications in these
words? All he knew were the cliches that had been worn out
on the lips of others.
How could the revolution get along without him? Anybody
could lose touch with it, even our Chairman, our Premier, our
ranking generals. Hadn't they all lost touch? Everyone does
eventually, but Liu Dayong wanted the revolution to continue
to need him.
Fatty Zhang, whose name always used to follow Uu's
when it appeared in the newspapers, but who was later
promoted internally by the Party Standing Committee to the
position of Vice-minister, spoke to him once when they were
attending lectures by a visiting expert. "In an era when everyone
is working hard for the Four Modernizations, if we don't push
ourselves there is always the danger that we will fall behind,"
he said laughing, as he pulled out the big handkerchief he
carried year in and year out, to mop the damp sweat from his
bald spot.
Of course he was falling behind. It was a reality, and a
clear warning that he no longer had the energy to keep pace.
For the past year or more he had seen many official documents
that were unfamiliar to him, large parts of which he couldn't
understand at all. He was able to grasp the basic idea behind
such phrases as "oceanographic radiation and ecology," and
he had been informed that such words as "Cobol" and "Fortran"
were neither English nor French, but machine-communication
languages. With a little improvising here and there he was able
to manage, but when he encountered such things as
IF = aXmaIlX, aXIl = I
F
aIlXEI
F
aIlIII(XIl)2
or the ability of Litmus to absorb radon at zero degrees
centigrade, he couldn't understand it at all. A few months ago
when he still had a little resilience, he yelled at Li Ying, "I
won't take any more; I won't read any more," as he pushed
away the medicine bottles and documents heaped up on the
bed. Li Ying's response was to part her lips slightly in a simple
smile.
"Bad tempers are common among the sick," she explained
to others. "He wants desperately to get well and go back to
work." She had attended to so many things. After a year of
illness he had everything he could ask for-a rug, a
refrigerator, a soft bed ... It wouldn't have bothered him so
much had she confined her efforts to these few material things,
but she even had the secretary deliver official documents to
the house. On days when his condition allowed, she read them
to him, haltingly.
"He hasn't been demoted to the position of advisor yet,"
he overheard her arguing with the confidential secretary when
he failed to deliver two sections of documents. He could almost
imagine the accommodating smile that was certain to be on
the secretary's face.
"Things grow worse over there by the day. You just get
your health back, old one, that's the important thing," she
remarked, as she lightly rearranged his bedding, all the while
sprinkling MAXAM perfume all around. This fussing all the
time. Was it just to satisfy herself, this wife who understands
everything yet understood nothing? He drew in his head, but
there was no way to escape the depressing smell of perfume.
Oh, if only he could escape to the adobe kang, where he could
lie on a hard pillow and gaze through the window at the com
and red peppers hanging under the eaves . . .
When they married Li Ying was just fifteen. That was
more than thirty years ago while he was still a Regimental
Commander, stalwart and brave, with a stubble of black
whiskers on his chin.
2. The difficult fonnula given in the original at this point seems to be
meaningless. perhaps because of faulty typesetting. An equally arcane fonnula
concerning the economic problem of balance of payments in the United States
(used in Theodore Roszak. Where the Wasteland Ends [New York: Doubleday
Anchor. 19731. p. 48) has been substituted to make a similar point about the
great difficulty of understanding modem social problems if one is not an expert
in the field.
54
"Hey, old Liu, the new one in the cultural brigade isn't
bad at all," teased his colleagues who were remarrying one by
one after long years of bachelorhood.
"Oon't be silly!" He thought of his first wife, five years
his senior, who had been betrothed to him as a child. At the
time they were separated by more than a hundred miles.
"I wonder if the baby has been born yet?" he often thought
to himself.
"There's a regulation, you old feudalist, which says that
if you have been apart for eight years, it's a legal separation."
Their parents had arranged the match. They lived together
scarcely more than a few days, but he could still recall her
rosy, swelling cheeks and the black thickness of her hair.
"What a bright, handsome girl she is," they said, urging
him on with smiles. In those days Li Ying was just like a
freshly soaked, tender bean sprout, with her staring, anxious,
intelligent eyes. But it seemed impossible. How could he ever
justify it to his parents? On the other hand he hadn't seen her
for ten years, and nearly everyone was in the same quandary.
Tempted by them in this fashion, he felt desire rise in him,
desire to be close to a woman. Precisely at this juncture, when
he felt caught between conflicting emotions, he put her out of
his mind once and for all, the wife who had suffered so many
hardships.
He didn't know how she had been able to endure it. The
local organization explained it all to her immediately after
Liberation. He didn't dare reflect on it, nor did anyone else
ever mention it again. The whole thing just dissolved from the
face of the earth, like a dream, like a wisp of smoke. But not
in his memory.
He saw her later on two occasions. Had it not been for
the care with which the elder son led his mother by the arm,
unmistakably indicating the relationship between them, he
never would have recognized her. The son was taking her to
see the doctor. He ran head-long into them at the entrance to
the hospital, just as he was about "to get into a car. Gone were
the rosy cheeks and the thick, black hair but not the bound
feet. He had paid no attention to them at the time of their
marriage, but now they caught his eye. She obviously
recognized him. Over the many years that had separated them
she had not forgotten what he looked like. Probably she had
seen many photographs of him over the past ten or more years
since he renewed contact with his eldest son, but he had never
seen any ofher. Possibly she had never had her picture taken.
With lowered head the son walked quickly past, assisting
his mother. His four-year-old son came running up, innocently
calling, "Grandpa, Grandpa, I want to ride the little car." The
fat little fellow stamped his feet like a spoiled child.
"Come back here," the usually mild-tempered man barked
at his little son. Fully comprehending the situation, Li Ying
cleverly thrust a packet ofcandy into the boy's hand and nudged
him in the direction of his father.
The old lady cast a glance full ofanger and sad resentment.
Perhaps he had just imagined it-his son had never mentioned
a word to him-but her look followed him. And it followed
him today, right up to the sick bed where he now tossed and
turned.
"Oh, my boyhood wife-."Recently, she had been in Liu
Dayong's thoughts more and more. As Li Ying's fat,-soft hands
gave him the tremella which she had stewed into a thick gruel,
he had the urge to knock it away in exchange for a freshly-baked
com muffin served by thin, coarse hands. Oh, how irresistible
freshly ground grain smelled in his memory.
His son was just fourteen when he came to Peking from
the village. He had a blue cloth bundle on his back and wore
the same kind of cloth shoes Liu Dayong had once worn. It
was under the old Scholar tree at the mouth of the village that
she had thrust that pair of shoes at him, silently turning her
back to wipe her eyes. More than ten years had sped by like
a flash, and there in front of him stood the son. No need to
look at the square chin or the small, bright, blinking eyes to
know that this boy was his. He was the spitting image of his
father. You had only to see the thick soles and the black uppers
to know that one kick from these old mountain shoes was
enough to send a man sprawling.
"Good," he said, patting the large-framed boy on the
shoulder. Li Ying had arranged for him to attend a boarding
school for children of ranking cadres. He was a headstrong
boy. He made no friends at school and he rarely spoke while
at home, which made Li Ying somewhat anxious for him. Liu
Dayong wanted, over Li Ying's objections, to take him to the
seashore during the summer vacation, but the boy declined,
preferring to spend the summer at home with his mother. In
1959 the boy brought back unsettling news.
"Dad, the old folks in the village hope you can make a
trip back home. If we keep blundering on the way we have
been ... "
"What are you talking about? Who put you up to this?"
Even today he could stil\ feel how his face had flushed as he
berated his son. Actually, even as he bawled him out he knew
that what the boy said was true. Yet old Party member Liu
Dayong, the dialectical materialist who had always taught his
son to speak up honestly and openly, yelled back at the voice
of truth from the mouth of a child. And his opinion of the
truth? Naturally he couldn't tell it to a mere boy. But at Party
branch meetings, Party committee meetings, andfmeetings of
the National Congress? He had never spoken up there, either.
How could he?
How often he had awakened from nightmares, bathed in
sweat, screaming "my conscience is clear." Actually, he had
never been of two minds about the Party. Far from ever having
spoken any doubts, he had never allowed himself to think such
things before. Any reservations he had about Party policy could
always be repressed by the simple, sincere query, "00 you
think you are more brilliant than the Central Committee?" This
never failed to provide him a safe haven from storms of doubt
whenever they flashed into his mind.
He couldn't tolerate flippancy in the language of the
younger generation, who always considered themselves to be
right. On one occasion he simply lost control, and with a
trembling hand, hurled a teacup at his son. But his strength
was insufficient and the cup, which stood for his loyalty and
indignation, fell to the ground and shattered, fully a third short
of its mark.
"What did I do to deserve having to raise a counter-revolu
tionary?" he shouted, smacking the bed with his hand.
Actually, when he wasn't angry, Liu Dayong loved his children
very much. When they first moved to the city, it was his habit
to lean over his young son's crib, which was festooned with
magnolias and colorful toys, and run his hand through the boy's
tousled hair. He loved to plant kisses on the chubby neck that
reeked of mother's milk and Urine. For the older son he reserved
a more sober fatherly love. He couldn't control himself. Time
after time he surveyed that sturdy physique and the brow deep
55
in thought. It was as though his own life, his thoughts and
aspirations, yes, even his love for griddle cakes flaked with
green onions, would live forever in that same chin and that
body with the same blood-type and chromosomes.
"Good boy," he thought warm-heartedly in his mind as
he scrawled his signature on his son's report card. He came
near tearing the thin paper every time. Only later did he realize
how much this reticent boy loved literature. While still in his
teens the boy secretly wrote reams of poetry about his family
and scenes from his native village. Even today those poems
had the power to tear Liu's heart out. But he had stubbornly
insisted that the boy enter the College of Engineering.
"The nation needs engineering talent," he announced in
dignified paternal tones. He thought he detected a flash in the
small, deep-set eyes, so like his own, but the boy said nothing.
A trace of fatherly tenderness swept over him. Had he been
unfair to the boy? Was his personality being stifled? Nonsense!
There were only the needs of the Party and the people. Nothing
else.
His son spoke less and less as the years went by. He even
seemed to diminish in physical stature. Only yesterday, at
forty, he sat at his father's bedside in the home-made gray
uniform he had worn for years and years. Its collar was bent
and the pockets fixed too high. It looked like he had outgrown it.
"Elder sister-in-Iaw's needlework," he overheard Li Ying
and her son's wife whispering. "Actually she can't be saving
much money that way." The worn edge of his cotton jersey
showed inside the twisted collar. The son just sat there all
evening without a word. The broken temple of his glasses had
been tied with string and under the dim lamplight's glare the
white, thick, bristling hair of a man at mid-life was transformed
into a patch of eye dazzling brilliance, which sent a prickling
sensation through his heart.
"Oh <\od!" Liu moaned, starting from a catnap. The son
raised his head. There was no gleam of light under those eyelids
tight from sleep, only weariness and wretchedness, and a string
of saliva hanging at the comer of his mouth. Was this the son
molded by his own hand? Was this the hope of generations to
follow? His generation's successor? Son, pull yourself
together. You have forgotten everything I taught you about
struggling heroes and model workers, and all the revolutionary
stories I told you since childhood. So this is how you have
turned out? The older you get the more useless you become.
Where has my ruddy-faced little fellow gone?
He lifted his down-filled qUilt. The night beyond was the
color of water. He loved it. He loved its gentle kindness, its
tolerance, full of understanding and sympathy. Under night's
thick curtain he could get everything off his chest, with nothing
to hide. Not like under brilliant sunlight, when he couldn't
raise his gaze and had to keep his eyes closed.
"Report your ideological progress at this stage," stated
the secretary, opening his all-important notebook bound in red.
"We want an honest confession of your inner-most
thoughts," said the young commanders ofthe revolution, taking
off their leather belts, immune to empathy with human
suffering.
"Must everything come to light? Even tiffs between my
wife's parents?"
Ah! The night! He wanted to sit up, but the bed was too
soft, and there was nothing to prop himself up with. Slowly
inching toward the edge of the bed he groped for his thornwood
cane. By turning himself several times he was finally able to
slide off the edge.
His strength declined daily. Several days ago he could
still pick up his glasses, but now no matter how he tried, he
couldn't reach the things he wanted. He decided not to tell the
doctor or let Yi Ling know. He didn't need to. It was evident
when he repeatedly dropped his porcelain spoon and couldn't
cough up the soup caught in his windpipe. How could they
fail to understand? But they kept repeating the same phrases,
"After you're well again ... , wait till you've regained your
health," as though that day would come.
"That day" was constantly in his mind, but it was the day
they would hold his memorial service. During the eulogy, of
course, there would be the standard phrases: "Forever loyal
. . . self-sacrifice for the good of all . . . for the Party and the
people ... ," but what good would that do him? How can a
man's life be summarized in a standardized eulogy with
time-worm slogans? Better to say nothing and allow the true
images-the good and the bad-to rest in the memories of
those who knew you best. Why must public opinion be molded
to conform to one standard? I have seen enough uniformity in
my lifetime.
He had attended all the meetings he ought to have
attended. He had taken all the stands expected of him. The
grey and olive-drab military uniforms, the Sun Yatsen jackets,
the octagonal caps, the Liberation caps, the woolen caps, the
round-topped shoes, the leather shoes, the gold star pens. The
hero pens . . . but what had he stood for? What had he ever
opposed? Finer men than he had stood silent and had flowed
with the current. What did he, Liu Dayong, count for? Ah,
how much better to be like his father sleeping peacefully on
the foothills, bathed in sunshine and wild flowers, the spot
marked by a solidly erected stone tablet coarsely inscribed,
"Communist Party member Liu Dayong."
He had wanted to achieve something in life but he had
little to show for his efforts. He had been assigned work
unsuited to his taste, but he had not dared to refuse it. If they
begrudged him a burial plot, then they could just scatter his
ashes over the clay soil of his hometown or among the drifting
clouds in the blue sky. For God's sake don't have those ashes
lie here in this room with the red rug, where every day he
would see Li Ying oiling her hair and his daughter-in-law trying
on clothes. That's how these women were. It was so easy to
win a woman's attention. At the mention of fashion or hair
styles, they forgot everything else.
Men, on the other hand ... of course the time for
spanking and cuffs to the head was long since past. It was
fifteen years since he had last given his son a beating, and that
was over a killing. With a group of fifteen and sixteen year
olds he had helped kill a woman said to have been the wife of
an aging capitalist. Liu beat him mercilessly in the face, on
his back, his buttocks, any place he could reach. The boy
howled himself hoarse, finally dissolving into incessant
sobbing. He beat and beat him as though he could drive away
the well-deserved remorse that he felt himself. Is this what he
had created? Liu Dayong could forgive neither his son nor
himself, but the son forgave his father.
Several months later, while he was the target of struggle,
the immature youth exhibited courage beyond his expectations.
Countless times the son carried his father on his back from the
courtyard to the cowshed, his temporary quarters. The full
weight of his body in its prime crushed down on the boy's not
yet fully developed shoulders. He could hear that tender, young
56
heart beating courageously and sincerely through the boy's thin
back.
"Even if I lose everything, I still have my son, who is
full of the vitality of life," he wept. The two were so close
then, father and son, like one mass of cells joined by skin and
tissue and a single heart. But once the muscles began to swell
in his arms, the son grew more distant from his father. While
he was at the cadre school his son wanted everything his own
way, since economic position determined everything. Recalling
the principles of political economics that he studied years ago
in the Party school, Liu Oayong could reconcile himself to the
situation. Yes, there was nothing that escaped his son's
attention, from housing repairs to face-to-face arguments with
leaders of rebel factions, but after the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution, the entire situation reversed itself. Liu Oayong
was reinstated. The son had to rely on his father's influence
to get transferred back from the countryside and secure a job,
and he had to register as a member of his father' household.
Liu's initial fears were that his son would rebel by wearing
bell-bottomed trousers, or join the craze over the latest popular
song idols, but Liu was sensible enough to realize that these
fads were natural in young people and he believed he would
be able to exercise reasonable control over his son. The problem
was that the son became too serious, too severe. He seemed
in hot pursuit of something, yet he stood on the sidelines with
an air of aloofness.
Li Ying had worked in a cultural troop and was presently
involved in propaganda work, so she liked listening to the
daily, noon time fiction hour. For the past year he listened in
a daze as she tuned in on the story of Li Zicheng.' The present
episode was a woman reading the Tale of Perfect Loyalty in
articulate, melodious tones:
Qin Gui sat in his room, his eyes rolling furtively. "Who can be
appointed to interrogate Vue Fei')"
Not just her radio, but probably every set in Peking was blaring
at once:
"Among the long-tailed dogs and short-tailed wolves, I, Vue Fei,
will place myself at the disposal of my country. I'm a man of
merit and have yet to be found at fault. Tai .....
"Click!" The sound was abruptly cut short. Slowly opening
his eyes, Liu Oayong's gaze fell on the flustered, exasperated
face of his younger son. Not one to rebuke her son, Li Ying
turned for help to the old man, who could do no more than
utter a grunt.
"God-damned perfect loyalty! That brand of blind loyalty
is China's undoing!"
"How dare you say such a thing?" Li Ying protested in
alarm, bending a concerned face toward the bed. He closed
his eyes. He felt as though he had been stabbed through the
heart, but it was a joyous stabbing that made his stifled heart
bleed.
3. Li Zicheng (1606-1645) was a rebellious soldier who was instrumental in
the downfall of the Ming dynasty. He captured Peking in 1644. then was
overthrown by the Manchu founders of the Qing dynasty. H is saga is being
written in a multi-volume historical novel. Li Zicilellg. by Yao Xueyin. Thn;e
volumes in eight parts have been completed so far.
Perhaps his son was right. He caught himself weighing
the possibility over and over in his mind. No! These frivolous
young people are not dependable. Recently he had heard that
these half-baked kids were now engaged in finding devious
ways of using the social system to their own advantage. These
practices were certainly not to be found on the pages of Das
Kapital or The History of the Russian (Bolshevik) Communist
Party. He could ask, or have the secretary check the original
works, but he didn't. All heresy! He wanted to curse but he
just didn't have the strength. He had a vague feeling that he
ought to be bidding farewell to his son, or to his life, or to all
those tasks he was accustomed to handling with ease, whether
he loved or hated them. But how could he do that?
He clutched the thick handle of his walking stick and with
faltering steps made his way toward the door. This stick had
been a gift from Zhao Shuanzi, a faithful orderly who had been
with him since his teens. Ten years ago at forty, Zhao Shuanzi
had been returned to his hometown, through an administrative
directive signed and approved by Liu himself. This reliable
and trustworthy administrative aid, flustered by God knows
what, inadvertently omitted the word "not" in a document,
making it read, "Regardless of the consequences, we should
forget class struggle," instead of "we can never, under any
circumstances, forget class struggle." At first Liu decided to
help him out by having him write a confession and
administering appropriate disciplinary action, letting the matter
drop. Who could dream that in writing his confession the old
boy would delete the word "forget" and write in bold, black
letters, "Under no circumstances should we have class
struggle." Poor naive Shuanzi, who under no circumstances
would ever have advocated dispensing with class struggle, wept
bitter tears, but he had to be sent back to the countryside where
he came from for the crime of "evil attacks" on Party policy.
This little, orphaned shepherd, who always brought him his
wash water with his out-sized uniform trailing on the ground,
stayed in Liu's memory. So did his chapped hands, split from
exposure to the cold so that they revealed red, tender flesh.
Shuanzi held no grudges against his old leader, even after he
was sent home. He had even gone to the trouble of finding
someone to bring this walking stick.
"Shuanzi, what have I doneT' Leaning on his stick, Liu
Oayong made his way to the window, the very window from
which he later saw his first wife one last time. That was several
years before he took sick. He noticed her standing at the base
of the wall surrounding the compound of his three-story
building. A sudden gust of wind churned up the dust. She
turned away and beat the dust from her clothes with her
handkerchief. Then from her bosom she extracted a cotton
scarf.... He started, not knowing why she had .... He drew
nearer to lean out the window, thinking to hail her, but he
couldn't think what to say .... The old lady turned toward
him, and her half-opened mouth appeared to be moving ... ,
but had she really seen him? Another cloud of dust arose, and
when he looked again she was gone. Then he heard a hesitant
knock at the door. When he opened it, in walked Old Wang,
stiff-legged, wearing a felt hat worn shiny, and a large
cotton-padded jacket covered with dust.
"Auntie, she ... Auntie said she had an errand to run;
she told me to come right in ... ," he said haltingly, taking
some peanuts and red dates out of an old cotton sack flung
over his shoulder.
"Old brother, you shouldn't have done this," said Liu,
57
coming forward to press his hand, which was coarse as tree
bark. As he did, two cloudy tear drops fell from the old man's
eyes, which were red and ringed by dark circles.
"Your nephew, he didn't mean to offend the commune
. . . " It was yet another unjust case in which the fanner had
no place to present his grievances. In the eyes of his fellow
villagers Liu was a high-ranking official of the Party, a
well-intentioned man whom they knew well. They had watched
him grow up. In the end they knew that their only recourse
was to come to him with their side of the story. Bringing the
few peanuts and dates that they had sent so that Liu could
enjoy them fresh, the old fellow had traveled over a hundred
miles to find a sympathetic ear and justice. But could Liu do
anything? He might write a letter to the provincial seat, but
would it have any weight? Once he was passing through
Xinhuamen district in Peking. Despite the speed with which
his little Mercedes clipped through town, he could sense the
people surging toward him, wrapped in mats and padded-cotton
qUilts. The effect of the glazed, wooden look in their eyes as
they watched him go by was like saliva spit drop by drop into
his face.
"Oh, Old Wang," he groaned and trembled, gazing
through the window into the pitch-black night. After a while
Liu Dayong didn't dare inquire about the fate of Old Wang's
son, nor did he dare return to his hometown, although the
yearning to do so these past years was tugging at his innards.
He was afraid to see his fellow villagers, whom he had once
protected, ask without a trace of resentment how he was getting
on.
"Everyone on this year's production team was allotted
more than five-hundred catties of grain, and we get more than
fifty cents for a day's work," he read in a recent letter from
Old Wang's grandson. "Granddad says that by year's end
everyone will be able to afford some new clothes, thanks to
the policies of the Party ... Uncle Liu, be sure to take good
care of yourself."
"I haven't the heart to face them." He pounded the floor
with his walking stick, but it made no sound on the thick carpet.
He felt inexpressibly depressed, as though he had spent his
entire life in this small carpeted room filled with the oppresive
smell of perfume. He should have . . . but he hadn't. He was
a leader, astrict father. He rode in automobiles and ate tremella.
Was this the goal of life? True, he had achieved all these things,
but he felt depressed. He had been depressed the whole last
half of his life. Using the wall for support he had made his
way toward the door. It was a moonless night, pitch-black.
Ah, fresh in his memory was the first violent uprising to
eradicate traitors, which erupted on just such a night as this;
and the first trip to inspect the huge dike project, also made
on a night like this. With a sudden gesture he pulled the door
open. The night wind swept across his face and blew a stack
of documents off the table.
'" will go back home. , won't take any more medicine or
sleep under an eider-down quilt, and I'll ask my fellow villagers
to forgive me," he said. Mustering all his strength he closed
the door with a bang, a sound so resonant that it filled him
with joy. "Life is for heroes." Falteringly, he stretched toward
the door handle and pulled it open, letting in the wind. "Bang!"
The door closed heavily again. Bang ... whack! Bang ...
whack! In the still night this recurring sound elated him. It was
like purging his life of many decades of grievances and
depressions.
"Ai, old man, what are you doing up again?" Li Ying
hurried out in her night dress.
"Dad bangs the door like that every night. It drives me
crazy," he overheard his daughter-in-law complain.
"Will you get up and get Dad something to put on?" Li
Ying called to her daughter-in-law, helping him lovingly by
the ann.
"You are old, old, but you act like a child. What thrill is
there in playing with the door? Quickly, get back into bed."
"No," he said, putting up a struggle all the while he was
being pulled and bundled back into the soft-silky-smooth qUilt.
Quickly and quietly, Li Ying brought him a large handful of
multi-colored tablets. The daughter-in-law with tip-tapping
steps and Li Ying with plodding thuds padded back to their
rooms. The lamp blazed away with a light somewhere between
red and blue, and he could hear the tick-tick-tick of the desk
clock.
"No!" Liu Dayong called out forcefully. But no sound
came out at all.
"No! ... No ... "
*
Originally published in Shiyue (October), no. 3, 1981. This
story was originally preceded by the quotation from Orlanna
Fallaci (without footnote) translated from the Chinese and used
as the epigraph to this section.
Translated by Dale R. Johnson
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58
Providing a Meal
by Qiao Shi
Standing in the doorway, the Brigade Leader said with a
snicker, "Third Mother, in the morning you're in charge of the
food!"
Third Mother, who was sitting in the sun in the doorway
spinning cotton, was surprised; the wheel, which_ had been
humming along happily, came to a stop with a whine. She
lifted her head, her eyes blinking, blinded by the sun. In a
loud voice, she asked unbelievingly, "What? In charge of the
food?"
"Right, in charge of the food!" The Brigade Leader
answered with certainty.
When Third Mother heard it was for sure, she clearly was
panic-stricken. Hastily throwing down the thread, she pushed
the wheel aside and stood up.
"You want me to handle the food?"
"Right, I want you to handle it!"
"Good Lord, you want me to handle it?" Third Mother
held out her palms, so agitated that even her voice was shaky.
"I don't even have a cup of wheat flour!"
"It doesn't matter if you don't have any wheat flour." The
Brigade Leader seemed to be comforting her, "Even corn flour
is all right. Make coarse-grain porridge!"
"Coarse-grain porridge?" Third Mother could not seem to
believe her ears. "Make coarse-grain porridge for a public
official?"
"Right, coarse-grain porridge it is!" The Brigade Leader's
answer was affirmative.
But Third Mother still shook her head, and stared at the
Brigade Leader's face with doubting and uncertain eyes. She
finally waved him away and, sitting down again by the spinning
wheel on a brick made of grass and mud, stretched out her
hand to grasp her cotton thread and wheel.
"Off with you! What kind of a joke is that, make
coarse-grain porridge for a cadre!"
When the Brigade Leader saw that Third Mother really
did not believe him, he quickly strode in through the door.
"Really, Third Mother!"
As soon as Third Mother saw the Brigade Leader's
expression, she knew this was for real. There was nothing she
could do about it; she could only mumble, "Can't you send
him somewhere else?"
The Brigade Leader said, "No, he specifically said he
wanted to come to your house for coarse-grain porridge!"
When Third Mother heard this, her body unwittingly
trembled, and her heart unwittingly sped up its thump-thump
thumping. The hand outstretched to grasp the thread and the
wheel drew back again. She sat dumbly on the brick, her lips
slightly trembling as if she were chewing on these words and
measuring their weight. After a while, as if awakening from
a nightmare, she asked, loudly, "Who? Who is it?"
"Who?" The Brigade Leader stared at Third Mother
laughing. "It's a high official-the Prefectural Committee
Secretary!"
The Brigade Leader had originally thought Third Mother
would be happy that the Prefectural Committee Secretary
specifically wanted to come to her house for coarse-grain
porridge. He never imagined that when he said who it was,
Third Mother would be as shocked as if she had been burned
by fire. She yelled, "Good lord! The Prefectural Committee
Secretary! Aiya, Brigade Leader, let Third Mother off! You
want me to make coarse-grain porridge for the Prefectural
Committee Secretary?"
The Brigade Leader panicked too; he knew this matter
touched on Third Mother's sore spot. He quickly tried to
explain and convince her.
"Uh, Third Mother, this time, it's him who wants to eat
it, not you asking him to, and furthermore, one person is not
the same as another; uh, uh, he also said, he wants the
dumplings good and thick."
Actually, Third Mother used to enjoy having cadres to
her house to eat; she regarded it as an honor. When she was
59
young, she looked on the cadres who came to her house to eat
as brothers who had come for a visit. Later, when she was a
bit older, she looked on them as children returning from afar.
What was worth celebrating was that ever since land reform,
her home life was better than before. All the cadres who came
to her house to eat, she felt, had been sent by Chairman Mao
and the Communist Party to do good things for the people.
They had turned their backs on their homes and bid farewell
to their parents, and she would not feel right about it if she
did not treat them well. So each time a cadre came to her house
to eat she would go to great lengths to get something good for
him to eat; rolls stuffed with vegetables, thick-cut noodles,
fried pancakes, sesame cakes, soup noodles, and also stir-fried
eggs and hot peppers. This was the best local fare, things you
would prepare for your relatives. Third Mother would run
around busily, not worrying about the smoke in her hair; as
long as the cadres who came to her house got a lot of tasty
food, she felt extremely satisfied.
But how could she have known that one year, when she
was in charge of food, she would bring on a catastrophe and
be deeply hurt. It was in the spring of 1975, right around
February or March, when Commune Secretary Hou brought a
group of people to get to know the place. On that day, it was
her turn to be in charge of the food for Secretary Hou.
At that time, Third Mother's family were in such difficult
straits that they could not even take the lid off the cooking
pots. To say difficult straits did not mean there had been a
natural catastrophe or that the crops had not been harvested.
It was because this Secretary Hou had been saying for years:
you cannot speak of who has more or less, only of your
contributions; contribute more for your country, contribute
more for the revolution; we must think of the whole four billion,
and not complain about the watery rice in our own mouths;
first country, then collective, then individual. So it was that,
while the newspapers reported bumper harvests for years on
end in this commune, making it famous throughout the province
for its high-level, stable production and excellent contributions,
Third Mother and her family went hungry for years on end. It
was really true that "people should fear fame, like pigs fear
growing fat!"
It seemed almost perverse that just exactly at that moment
Secretary Hou was coming to her house to eat. There was a
proverb that said a clever housewife could not make porridge
without rice. Third Mother, who usually regretted being unable
to dig out her own heart and liver for the cadres to eat, became
extremely despondent. She held out her palms to her husband.
"Daddy, what shall we do?"
At that time, Third Mother's husband Li Santian was still
alive. Li Santian sat on the edge of the kang sucking noisily
on his waterpipe. He said slowly, "What shall we do? Whatever
we eat, he eats!"
And what did her family eat? They couldn't even afford
to steam a bun; for three days in a row, three meals a day,
they ate alfalfa greens and rice dregs. Occasionally they made
some corn-flour mush or steamed some corn-flour buns, and
that was considered a great improvement. But Secretary Hou
was the highest official in the commune; when he coughed,
everyone else had to come down with a cold. Wouldn't it be
just too embarrassing to make this sort of food for Secretary
Hou? According to what people said, ever since Secretary Hou
had been coming into town and taking turns eating at each
house, everyone scrambled to think of ways to kiss up to him;
if we tum out to be "special," a level worse than everyone else
... Third Mother stared dumbly at her old man, feeling things
were especially difficult. "What are you staring at?" Li Santian
chewed on his water pipe. "If he wants to eat dragon liver and
phoenix wings, I have to have them first!"
Stumbling for words, Third Mother discussed the issue
with her husband. "At least we should make some noodles for
him!"
Li Santian said, "Go ahead .and make them!"
Third Mother sighed and said, "And the wheat flour?"
Li Santian grimaced. "So! I thought you really were
capable, and were going to make noodles without flour! Ha!
That would be a rare thing!"
"Can't we borrow a little?" Third Mother said.
"And return it with what?" Li Santian asked.
"We can return it after the harvest," Third Mother said.
"It's still seventy days to harvest. What if they come ten
times a week to get it?" It was true, this was a difficult problem.
Third Mother, not knowing what to do, said, "Then what shall
we do?"
Li Santian said, "I told you before; what we eat, he eats!"
Third Mother said, "But this is Secretary Hou!"
Li Santian tapped on his waterpipe as he said, "Isn't
Secretary Hou a Communist Party cadre too? He's not a tiger
in the mountains, or a god in the temple. He should share the
thick and the thin with us poor- and lower-middle peasants.
Do you mean to say he won't be able to forgive us for making
him some coarse-grain porridge? You never know, he may
even think it's something new!"
Third Mother thought about it and said, "That's true!"
Li Santian went on, "You've forgotten that year when
you borrowed flour and made noodles for Brigade Leader Chen;
not only did he not eat them, he criticized you good. Didn't
he bring the bowl over and dish out the porridge himself'?"
Third Mother could not help but smile and nod at this.
The Brigade Leader Chen whom her husband had
mentioned was later District Committee Secretary, Chen
Zhimin. At that time, Chen Zhimin was still the land reform
Brigade Chief of this village. Although he later became District
Committee Secretary, Third Mother still kept calling him
Brigade Leader Chen; she was used to saying it, and couldn't
change. What Li Santian was saying about Brigade Leader
Chen dishing out coarse-grain porridge went this way: During
land reform, Third Mother and her husband still lived in a
broken-down old house that let in the wind on all sides. In the
middle of the night they could view the stars, and at dawn they
were frozen like two raw scallions. That day it was Third
Mother's turn to handle the food, so she specially borrowed a
pound of flour and made flat noodles for Brigade Leader Chen.
For her own family, she only made coarse-grain porridge. To
avoid stimulating the taste buds of her six-year-old daughter
Yufeng, she sent her out behind by the chicken coop. Brigade
Leader Chen wore a grey military uniform with a Mauser pistol
in his shoulder holster. As soon as he saw Third Mother bring
a bowl of noodles for him but not for the two of them, he
immediately understood that they were playing a trick on him.
Taking the bowl of noodles from her, he put it on the table
and said, "Auntie, I'm not from this area. I don't like noodles!"
This really stumped Third Mother: "Well ... "
The Brigade Leader pointed to the big ceramic pot on the
chopping board and asked, "What's in there?"
"Coarse-grain porridge!" Third Mother replied with
60
difficulty. "Made with corn flour!"
Brigade Leader Chen slapped his thigh. "So! Coarse-grain
porridge is my favorite!"
Without waiting for Third Mother or her husband to
answer, Brigade Leader Chen walked right over to the chopping
board; with one hand he picked up an old bowl, with the other
a ladle, and dished himself up a bowl of porridge. He added
a pinch of salt, poured on some vinegar and hot sauce, and
slurped it up. When Third Mother and her husband saw him
eating so greedily, they couldn't help laughing. As for that
bowl of noodles, Brigade Leader Chen took it with his own
hands and gave it to Yufeng, who was hiding by the chicken
coop. The child had not tasted the flavor of wheat noodles for
a long, long time, and wolfed them down so fast she choked.
When Brigade Leader Chen first saw the way the child was
eating, he laughed happily, but as he laughed, tears as big as
beans welled up in his eyes. When Third Mother and her
husband saw this, they could not help sobbing themselves.
When he was about to leave, Brigade Leader Chen
criticized Third Mother, "Auntie, you took me for an outsider!"
Third Mother quickly disagreed, "No, no!"
Brigade Leader Chen said, "Then why did you borrow
flour to make noodles for me? If you're going to be like this,
I won't come to your house anymore. We are cadres of the
Communist Party, not ward bosses of the KMT!"
It had already been twenty years, but this incident was
especially clear in Third Mother's memory. Every time it was
brought up, it seemed to be right in front of her eyes. In Third
Mother's mind, Brigade Leader Chen was a yardstick; she used
this yardstick to measure the cadres of the Communist Party.
So today, when her husband Li Santian brought up this incident,
Third Mother naturally thought that having Secretary Hou eat
coarse-grain porridge was probably all right. Maybe, like
Brigade Leader Chen, he would find it quite tasty!
That morning, Third Mother took special care with this
batch of porridge; she mixed it a long time and got the fire
exactly right. Needless to say, the fish-shaped dumplings were
firm, shiny, and long. Third Mother was quite satisfied with
her product.
Who could have known that Secretary Hou, who was very
happy when he arrived and sat down at the table, would knit
up his eyebrows in a flash when he saw that porridge brought
out. He didn't say a word, but slowly picked up the bowl, and
slowly used his chopsticks to slide the stringy dumplings strip
by strip into his mouth. Once those shiny, long, fish-like
dumplings entered his mouth, they seemed to become as gritty
as sand. His expression was not that of someone eating food,
but of someone taking a bitter and astringent Chinese medicine.
Even a famous painter would have had a hard time accurately
recording that strange face.
When she saw how uncomfortable Secretary Hou looked
eating, Third Mother felt very uncomfortahle herself. She
looked at this "true dragon prince" of the commune with eyes
full oftrepidation, as if she owed him a debt. Her lips trembling,
she wanted to explain a little, but in the end nothing came out,
and all she could do was roll her eyes at her husband. Only
now did Li Santian understand that although this Secretary Hou
had broadcast his desire to "share the thick and thin" with the
people, and had announced that he "liked coarse-grain porridge
and iron-thread pancakes* best of all," this was really nothing
but a gold lettered signboard, not something he planned to put
into practice. Of course he saw the whites of his wife's eyes,
61
but Li Santian pretended he saw nothing, and continued without
expression to eat his cold porridge.
The situation was awkward, the atmosphere heavy, and
all was silent in that small room
Secretary Hou conquered the huge and difficult hardship:
with incomparably tenacious revolutionary spirit, heroic
bearing that took heed neither of misery nor death, and
dauntless fighting spirit, he finished his coarse-grain porridge,
put down the bowl, and got up and left without a word.
"Are you finished, Secretary Hou?" Third Mother asked
quickly.
"I'm full!" Secretary Hou said as he walked away.
Secretary Hou . . . ," Third Mother said apologetically,
"Ah, we have no good ... "
Before Third Mother could finish what she was saying,
Secretary Hou dashed out of the door and disappeared without
a trace.
"What are you saying?" Li Santian threw a glance at his
wife. "His teeth have been softened by steamed white buns
and juicy meat. What's the use of saying such ridiculous
things?"
Third Mother laughed bitterly and said no more.
After a few days, somehow everyone in the village was
talking about it. Some admired Third Mother, saying she had
''taken'' Secretary Hou's "rook," and had "given him a taste
of something new"; others were worried that her treatment of
Secretary Hou would invite the "guillotine." Just at that time,
all of the big shots were talking about the law, so who was
not afraid! When Third Mother heard about these reactions,
she could not help panicking; she blamed her husband Li
Santian.
"Just look, I told you we should make him some
noodles...."
Li Santian, on the other hand, was still unperturbed. He
said laughing, "Each family has fifteen, seven mouths and eight
tongues, so let them say what they want! Eating a bowl of
coarse-grain porridge is like celebrating New Years for us now;
didn't we give him a treat? If we had sharkfins and sea
cucumbers, don't you think I would bring them out?"
"But he's the Secretary of the commune!" Third Mother
said argumentatively.
"Then he should know about the misery of the common
people too!" Li Santian explained to Third Mother, "Can he
cause trouble for us just because of one meal? And moreover,
is his rank higher than Brigade Leader Chen's?"
When he put it this way, Third Mother calmed down a
bit, but she did not feel entirely secure. For many years, she
had felt things were slightly different than before, but she didn't
want to say anything and could not really say anything anyway.
As time went by, this incident also became part of the past.
Who could have known that when it came time to estimate
wheat production, this bowl of old, stale grain, eaten but
undigested in the stomach, would suddenly start to sprout?
On that day, Secretary Hou led some cadres from the large
and small brigades to the wheat fields to estimate production.
Li Santian was the representative of the poor peasants in the
large brigade, so naturally he was called on to participate as
well. This piece of communal land, everyone said, could
* Com-flour pancakes.
produce three hundred, but Secretary Hou said no, three
hundred and fifty; everyone said that this piece of land could
produce four hundred and thirty, but Secretary Hou said no,
five hundred and ten. There was, of course, no arguing with
Secretary Hou; this naturally became an ironclad production
estimate that no one could change. Everyone could see what
was going on, but they still said Secretary Hou had rich
experience and had estimated accurately. Li Santian, always
too honest, got the worst of things. He thought to himself, if
we go on like this won't we all have to go hungry? He sighed
lightly and mumbled: "What a way to estimate? How can grain
that's not in the ground show up on the scales?"
As luck would have it, not only was Secretary Hou's sense
of taste extremely sensitive, but his hearing was highly
developed as well. Just as Li Santian's words hit their mark,
Secretary Hou whirled around, opened his eyes wide, and said
sneeringly: "If it doesn't show up on the scales, how can it
end up in your mouth?"
Li Santian was stunned and said nothing.
Everyone said that Secretary Hou' s face looked as if it
had been covered by a layer of black clouds, dark, cold, and
stormy. The rays that shot from his eyes pierced like lightning.
"I figured out a long time ago that you are a trouble-making
devil up to no good ! You have been dissatisfied with the Party
for a long while!"
If you said "anything else about this old poor peasant Li
Santian, he would never say a word. True or false, he wouldn't
argue or hold a grudge. But, if you said something about his
feelings for the Party, that really was like digging out his heart
with a knife. He had been pierced to the core, and could not
help opening his eyes wide in amazement: "Me?"
"Yes, you!" Secretary Hou stared at him angrily, his lips
wide open like a pair of scissors. "You are just like a pig,
staring at the food in your trough! You are against planting
more grain, contributing more for the revolution! You run
around in other villages borrowing grain just for the purpose
of giving socialism a bad name! You drink corn broth just to
make a point before the commune leaders! From words to
actions, what is the difference between you and a rightist?"
Li Santian would never in the farthest reaches of his
imagination have thought that Secretary Hou would treat him
like this. He felt so terrible he just stood there like an idiot.
No one had imagined, either, that on the first field of
production estimation, this raging storm would suddenly
appear. From Secretary Hou's words, everyone also clearly
discerned that this was that meal of coarse-grain porridge
unleashing its tremendous power. But with Secretary Hou's
anger so extreme, he had to be placated. Who could have
known that the reasonableness of their pleas would only add
fuel to the fire?
"Hey, old poor peasant!" Secretary Hou's nostrils flared,
"You've shed your skin and metamorphosed! Class relation
ships have sparked another change! The old poor peasant of
before now becomes a turncoat, an opponent of the revolution!
Li Santian is a living example!"
No matter what was said, Secretary Hou would not
withdraw his criticism. That evening, Li Santian was pushed
up front during the general criticism and struggle meeting of
the entire commune. His head hanging, bent at the waist and
with tears in his eyes, he was a target of their barbs for three
hours.
Late that night, he went home with his breast full of
humiliation and rage; he lay by his wife's side, so miserable
that he shook all over.
Tears were also flowing down Third Mother's face. She
said sobbing, "Oh, if only we had made some noodles for him!
Look what we've done just to save a handful of flour!"
Now Li Santian understood that Third Mother had been
right all along. After all, as soon as Secretary Hou stepped out
of his door, he walked right in through Li Sangui's gate. And
as for the first meal Li Sangui prepared for Secretary Hou,
everyone in the village knew he had bought Western Phoenix
Wine, made juicy meat, stir-fried some eggs, made meat
dumplings, brewed chrysanthemum tea, and bought Peony
Cigarettes. After that time, Secretary Hou became a frequent
guest at Li Sangui's. And this Li Sangui, who was known
throughout the village for his stench of dog shit, who
racketeered in cloth-ration tickets, grain tickets, chemical
fertilizers, and wood, who profiteered all day on this
conscienceless money, within a short time became Secretary
Hou's pet. Even that son of his, who had graduated from high
school and been back home just a few days, was "recom
mended" to a university with a word from Secretary Hou.
"The world still belongs to those with money and power!"
Third Mother went on, so hurt and angry.
Li Santian said nothing. He was thinking: was it really
true that what the chopsticks picked up could mean so much?
What sort of mystery was hidden in this cold, harsh reality?
"If you have money you can hire devils to grind the grain
for you, if you don't people just kick you!" Third Mother was
still complaining angrily. "Huh, all your life you have only
known the hoe and plow, worked for the revolution farming
the land, farming, farming, farming; why didn't you learn a
little from Li Sangui?"
His wife's words made Li Santian mad. "We're farmers,
old poor peasants; we're poor, but we're poor and decent,
we're poor but we've got our pride."
Third Mother didn't care if he was angry. She rebutted
him right away, "Oh, you're poor? Poverty is just a gold lettered
sign board. Who pities you for being poor? You're so poor
you've become an opponent of the revolution, and you're still
bragging!"
Li Santian suddenly turned over and lay facing Third
Mother: "You're wrong! Brigade Leader Chen said poverty is
an honor, we are the pillars of the revolution!"
Third Mother laughed coldly. "Why try to go by a torn
old calendar of bygone years? Secretary Hou is right before
our eyes, not Brigade Leader Chen ! The world has changed!"
Li Santian could not help but give a cold shudder. The
world had changed? He had no way to counter his wife's
argument, so he might just as well sigh and say nothing. After
a long, long time he said, "I just won't believe that the world
will always be this way!"
Third Mother asked, "Then when will it finally change?"
Li Santian didn't answer, but just opened his desolate eyes
and stared dumbly at the stars in the sky outside.
Now, her old companion Li Santian was no longer in this
world. He had died. Taking his humiliation, and taking his
beautiful hopes, he had gone to another world.
Today if someone just mentioned providing a meal,
especially making coarse-grain porridge, Third Mother unwit
tingly thought of her husband, and the wounds deep in her
heart secretly bled.
62
Ai! Sighing, she got up from the spinning wheel and
mumbled, "In charge of the food, in charge of the food!
Coarse-grain porridge, coarse-grain porridge! What monster is
coming this time!"
But she still scooped up half a ladle of com, and quickly
but not too quickly went over to the electric grinder; she ground
it into fine, white, new corn flour, brought it back, lit up the
stove, and started to work.
Everything was ready. Once again she sat at the spinning
wheel in the door, slowly and sadly turning the wheel and
thinking; who was it? Who specifically said he wanted to come
to my house to eat, and even specifically said he wanted
coarse-grain porridge? Ha, what a joke! Are there such cadres
today? This must be another trick! She shook her head slowly,
wondering if this would tum out to be fortune or misfortune.
Just at this moment, she saw someone wearing a grey
uniform come bouncing in, striding with one step through the
door, laughing happily, staring at her, shaking a head of
pepper-white hair.
"Elder Sister, do you still recognize me?"
Third Mother couldn't say a word. She squinted her old
eyes and looked at this stranger. For the last several years, no
one who had eaten here had called her "Big Sister" or "Elder
Sister." When they came they wanted all kinds of offerings,
but when they sat down at the table and had a bowl and another
bowl, finished and wiped off their mouths, you could hardly
get a few polite words out of them. But today, she hadn't even
invited this person; he had found her door by himself, and as
soon as he opened his mouth out came "Elder Sister." This
was really something new! She couldn't help but warm up to
him. She wondered who he was, and at the same time answered
haltingly, "Yes, I recognize you, I recognize you!"
This person looked at her, laughing, and shook his head.
"You're fooling me! You've forgotten, you don't recognize
me."
Third Mother had allowed him to see right through her,
so she might as well honestly admit it. "Ai, yes, it's true."
Laughing with embarrassment, she said, ''I'm old, my memory
is not so good any more!"
This person laughed, ran over to the chopping board,
grabbed an old bowl, grabbed a ladle, and dished up a bowl
of fish shaped dumplings, saying, "Hey, do you remember
now?"
Third Mother, laughing so hard the tears flowed down her
face, rubbed her hands over and over on her apron.
"Ha ha, Old Chen, Brigade Leader Chen!"
Old Chen pinched some salt into the bowl, poured on
some vinegar, added some hot sauce, and laughed happily.
"I was just wondering if Elder Sister could forget me! It's
certainly an honor for me to be able to eat your coarse-grain
porridge!"
Third Mother couldn't stop herself from lifting up her
apron, wiping her eyes, and putting on an angry manner.
"So you've become a high official and forgotten our poor
family!"
Old Chen laughed, "Poor family? Ha ha, isn't this poor
family a cornerstone of the revolution?"
"Cornerstone, cornerstone," Third Mother found herself
so angry her eyes turned red. "We've already become the
opponents of the revolution, and you still call us cornerstones!"
Old Chen put down the chopsticks in his hands, and
looking with moist eyes at Third Mother, said heavily, "Elder
l
Sister, I know, I know everything!"
I
The room fell silent.
Third Mother suddenly felt that it had been almost twenty
years since she had seen Old Chen, so she really had no reason
to cry or get angry. She quickly wiped her eyes dry with her
apron, and laughed, "Ai! Hurry and eat! It's just that I haven't
anything good, otherwise I wouldn't make you eat this
coarse-grain porridge!"
Old Chen said laughing, 'This coarse-grain porridge of
yours is the only thing I like. It's better than the meat noodles
in the restaurants!"
Third Mother said laughing, "Ha ha, I simply don't believe
you!"
Old Chen said, "You may not believe it, but I do!"
Third Mother said, "How come your hair is white too? I
remember you're over ten years younger than me!"
Old Chen, chewing on his porridge dumplings, said, "I
ran into catastrophe, a flood and a drought!"
Third Mother could not help giggling, 'Then was your
hair drowned or scorched?"
Old Chen said laughing, "Both drowned and scorched,
and with the locusts, it's a wonder it wasn't chewed off!" When
he was done laughing, his expression became serious again,
and he said, "Otherwise, how could I eat your coarse-grain
porridge today? This is the good fortune these catastrophes
have brought me!"
Third Mother saw the slight quavering of the muscles in
Old Chen's face, the raging sadness shining in his eyes, and
the pain in the comers of his mouth. It seemed something was
eating away at his heart.
"If our poor peasants are supposed to consider it their
glory to be poor forever, then why did we need a revolution?"
Old Chen spoke with agitation, the chopsticks in his hands
faIling on the ground with a clack.
Third Mother was shocked and said nothing. Quickly
picking up the chopsticks from the floor, she wiped them off
and said, "Old Chen!"
After Old Chen had gone, Third Mother felt extremely
uneasy. She leaned against the door for a long time, gazing in
the direction Old Chen had gone, gazing, gazing. The brilliant
sun beat down on the spring land. The wheat sprouts were a
swath of jade green. A few branches of peach blossoms
stretched over the wall. Swallows were flitting among the
willow leaves. Third Mother picked up her apron, wiped her
eyes, and thought, Ai, if only myoid husband Li Santian were
still alive and could see Old Chen taking up that old bowl to
eat coarse-grain porridge!
*
Originally published in Shanghai wenxue, no. 5, 1979.
Translated by Wendy Larson
63
Marginal Lives
behind a small door
a hand draws the latch softly
as if pulling a rifle bolt
-Bei Dao
When you pass by my window.
Bless me, please,
For the light is still on.
-Shu Ting
Many of the problems and the compensations of life in
China, as anywhere else, have little or nothing to do with
politics. The alienation of big city life and cruelty toward the
handicapped and deformed are aspects of life anYWhere, as are
a love as warm as a shared overcoat on a winter's night or as
comforting as a desert oasis. Shi Tiesheng's sensitive story
"One Winter's Evening" (Yige dongtian de wanshang)
skillfully encompasses the elements of alienation, longing for
a normal family life, fear of rejection, and mutually sustaining
love that make up the lives of two people existing at the margin
in China's capital city. Typical of Shi's richly imagistic style
is the double encounter with the manhole cover; first to
demonstrate the good heartedness of the female protagonist,
Photo by Saundra Sturdevant
souls, kindred SplfltS who only appear crooked (deformed)
from a distance, because no one takes the time to look closely
enough.
In "Lunch Break" Shi Tiesheng takes us down into the
"lower depths" of Chinese society, to witness the pitiful and
ironic dreams of the much neglected lumpen proletariat. These
are people who work in the small workshops of urban China
and are not protected by the "safety net" of social welfare that
secures the lives of workers in state-run enterprises. Not since
Lu Xun's works have these people, warts and all. been
portrayed in such a realistic manner. The story was reprinted
in Xinhua wenzhai (Literary Selections) together with two
critical comments, one quite favorable and one extremely
* and finally to symbolize the true worth of these two gentle opposed to writing about such things in socialist China.
64
One Winter's Evening
by Shi Tiesheng
Ever since they got off the bus at four that afternoon the
two of them had been wandering around the neighborhood
looking for a certain lane.
"Are you sure you remembered it right?" asked the man.
"Quite sure," replied the woman. "Number 57, Moonlight
Lane."
The whole area was a maze of lanes, which was
unfortunate because the woman had lost her map with
directions. The sun was already fast disappearing behind last
night's heavy snowfall. The snow had melted slightly during
the day and now was beginning to freeze hard again. Walking
was difficult.
The couple were in their forties, with the man slightly the
older of the two. The woman was tiny. In fact she was a
midget. The man used a crutch and his face was covered with
hideous burn scars.
It was quiet within the alleyways, but the wind was strong.
People scurried past from time to time, no one looking anyone
else in the eye, which was just fine by them.
The woman walked in front, hugging a large tin of
cookies. She had tried several times without success to hold
the tin under one arm to give the other a rest, but she was
wearing too many layers of clothing and the tin was just too
big. As the woman wrestled with the tin, the man walked on
ahead and, breathing heavily, turned to look back at her.
"Serves you right," he said. "You almost managed to lose
yourself too!"
She raised her face to smile up at him and took a couple
of steps forward to catch up, still clutching the large tin.
The woman had lost her purse earlier when they were
buying the child's tricycle. She was dithering back and forth,
trying to choose the best one, when she discovered the loss.
Losing a bit of money wasn't so important, but the map had
been in that purse. Luckily, she could still remember the street
name and number.
"It's very cold today," she said, stealing a glance up at
her husband.
The man said nothing.
"Just think-we've been rushing around the whole day
. .. ," she continued, looking up apologetically at the man,
as if she were responsible for the day's bad luck.
With some effort the man continued on his way, his crutch
under one arm, holding the tricycle in his other hand and
dodging the patches of melted snow on the road, which were
beginning to harden.
"Is your liver bothering you again?" asked the woman.
The man ignored her.
"It wouldn't look good if we dido't go-we told Mrs. Shi
we would," she said in a small voice.
"There you go again, gabbling away and changing your
mind. If you don't want to go we could have gone home long
ago!" The man was very short-tempered.
The woman began walking faster, taking uneven strides
forward. The cookie tin was too big, preventing her from seeing
the ground beneath her.
"Your liver will get worse if you're unhappy like that all
the time. What's more ... " She swallowed whatever else she
had been meaning to say. After walking a while longer she
said, "Mrs. Shi has already arranged for us to see him. You
can have a look at him first and if you don't want him we don't
have to take him-it's not too late yet."
"I never said I didn't want him!" cried the man.
"In fact," commented the woman with a smile, "I don't
think this child is at all bad-better-looking than that other
one anyway." She spoke quickly, as if she had long been
waiting for an opportunity to say this.
"Well, as long as you think he's fine, there's no problem,
is there?"
"What are you saying that for? It's not just me . . . "
They went on in silence, examining the street-signs at the
entrance to each lane. There were so many in this neighborhood.
"If you like him too, then we'll take him." The woman
65
was trying her hardest to ease the atmosphere slightly. "What's
more, I ought to have another look too-I really only caught
a glimpse of him on the bus that time."
The wind set a few courtyard doors banging.
Occasionally a flurry of snow would be blown off a
shadowed roof-top and make its way down people's necks.
"I still think you should put on my scarf," said the woman.
"I'm not at all cold and, what's more ... " Her attention
focused entirely on him, she almost tripped over a brick lying
frozen in the road.
"I told you to give that tin to me," shouted the man.
"Well, 1 won't! Not unless you give me the tricycle to
push!"
"That's not necessary-I can manage both of them." His
voice had suddenly gone much lower.
A group of chattering, giggling girls turned out of the lane
ahead and came in their direction. There was a silence as the
girls walked towards them.
The man turned his face away, apparently studying the
street-sign.
The girls walked on past and the couple continued without
a sound. The woman wanted to go faster, but she was afraid
the man would not be able to keep up. Some time passed before
they heard the sound of laughter and voices again, going off
into the distance.
"Give it to me!"
"Then give me the trike!"
"It's not necessary!"
"I know what you're afraid of," muttered the woman,
holding on to the tin and walking steadfastly ahead.
"Me afraid? What have I got to be afraid of?"
The woman said nothing.
"If that's what you want, just go ahead and push it! What
do I care?" The man was still shouting, but his tone had softened
considerably.
And so the woman didn't take the tricycle after all.
Whenever she got angry or felt aggrieved she would blink
fiercely and not utter a word. She knew he was doing it for
her sake, that he was afraid that she too ... Well, being so
small in the first place, and wheeling a child's tricycle too ...
But she still felt upset and angry with him. "Why didn't you
find someone taller than me?" she asked silently.
"What if your leg had been fine and face not burned?"
"I don't know-my leg and face have been like this ever
since I can remember."
"But just suppose ... suppose your leg wasn't ... "
"Just suppose?!" He flared up again and pulled up a weed
which he twisted around his finger while looking off towards
some lights in the distance. There was a small shed there
belonging to the watchman at a construction site.
"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine," she said.
"But you mustn't be angry."
He turned his face fiercely towards her. "Just suppose I'd
never existed in the first place, eh? Just suppose the world
never existed?"
"What's the point in saying all this? I was talking about
reality ... "
"/ know there's no point, so let's not talk about it. This
is the way I am, and you're the way you are-that's reality
for you."
They were sitting beside a pile of bricks by the roadside.
The city moat's muddy water flowed on in the moonlight.
Mosquitoes attacked their faces. Beyond, in the distance, lay
the silent construction site.
"It'll be a real mess around here when those apartments
are built," she commented.
He looked at the moon, saying nothing. The moon was
so tiny and so far away. The moon that night, too, had seemed
particularly small and remote.
"Reality's the only thing that matters-what's the point
in talking about possibilities?" He continued looking at the
moon as he said, almost to himself, "As soon as I saw you
that day, I knew we should be together. That's reality for you. "
"As soon as you saw me? When was that?"
"I've forgotten when it was exactly, but I was sitting in
a bar near a bus-stop, watching you trying to squeeze your
way onto a bus and never quite making it."
"Yes," she thought, "that's reality! So many years now."
And she tried to catch his eye.
"I can carry it," she said. "Truly! It's only a cookie tin-I
can manage it." She was deliberately pretending nothing had
happened.
She continued, "Remember that time I got An-An? I
managed to carry that big basket all the way back by myself,
didn't I?" An-An was their cat.
Breathing hard, the man walked on, his crutch making a
tapping sound as he went. She began to feel bad again as she
remembered the loss of her purse.
"It was really strange losing that purse. You were standing
right behind me when I was buying the cookies, weren't you?"
She was trying to change the subject.
The man still said nothing, but did glance at her once.
"Why are you always so unhappy?" What she feared most
was his getting angry, for as soon as that happened his liver
began to give him trouble.
When she saw he still wasn't going to say anything she
brought up the subject of the map once again.
"Mrs. Shi really took a lot of care over that map-she
spent over half-an-hour drawing it!"
"And then you went and lost it." His tone was very mild.
She laughed and said, "It would have been better if I'd given
you the purse to carry!"
"Look out!" the man cried.
Startled, the woman avoided a small hole in the ground.
She was always looking up at her husband, hoping he was
happy, hoping he'd smile.
"Why do you keep on looking at me all the time?"
"How do you know I'm looking at you if you're not
looking at me?"
"Well, what's the verdict? Better-looking than a baboon,
eh?"
''Than what? Better-looking than who?"
"Haven't you ever been to the zoo?"
Yes, when I was a little girl."
"Well, what do you think I look like?"
"Like a wooden lump that doesn't know how to laugh."
"If a wooden lump laughed there'd be an earthquake."
"What are you afraid of. . . there's no one else around. "
"Aren't you afraid?"
"I'm really afraid when I see you unhappy all the time."
Then he smiled; he was really ugly; but she still hoped
that their family could be just like other people's .... That
66
night she told him for the first time that she really wanted a
child; from a hospital, naturally, or someone else's ....
The sun had disappeared completely. They were still
wandering around the same neighborhood, searching blindly
everywhere. People were leaving work. It was cold, and they
were hurrying homewards. The woman wanted to ask the way
several times, but the man wouldn't let her.
"What's there to be afraid of?"
"Who said anything about being afraid?"
"I'll go and ask-you don't have to."
"No you won't!"
They continued onwards. The number of people going
home now seemed to indicate a factory in the vicinity.
"Are you feeling tired?" asked the woman in a small voice
as if she were afraid of startling someone. "Is your liver
troubling you?" she asked again.
The man did not reply. He did not feel like talking.
"Oh, it's all my fault ... What if you just sit here and
rest a while and wait for me?"
The man rolled his eyes at her impatiently and continued
walking.
They walked on silently through the tide of workers
heading homewards, a gap sometimes appearing between them.
A tall chimney in the distance spewed out black smoke which
blew raggedly in the southeasterly wind. Some sparrows flew
in a flurry onto a rooftop, then onto the bare branches of a
jujube tree before flying off once again. An old woman wearing
a white apron stood on a comer, crying, "Fresh hot meatballs!
Just ready to eat!"
After some time they realized they had made their way
back to the main road. Not far off stood the cinema where they
got off the bus earlier that afternoon. There was nothing to do
but tum back. Fewer people were on the streets now. The ruts
in the road had turned into channels of ice and several children
were sliding along them. The woman kept turning back to look
at them.
"Are you coming or not?" The man had wanted to flare
up at her again, but then he noticed that she was looking at
the children.
A little flustered, she said, "I thought one of them was
him."
"Which one?" The man stopped walking and looked at
the children.
"It isn't him-he just looks a bit like that one over
there,the smallest one."
They continued looking for a while. The children were
having fun on the ice; all brightly colored, they looked like so
many balls of wool.
"Let's get going," he said, nudging her with the tricycle.
"Come on, let's go!" he said again.
"The little boy we're going to see is better-looking than
that one over there-not that he's so bad himself." She was
still turning back at intervals to look.
They passed two more lanes, neither of them the right
one. The woman kept going on about the boy. "Why do you
think everyone says illegitimate children are always good-look
ing and intelligent? His mother wants to get married-how
else could anyone bear to give their own child away to someone
else? That man must really be ... "
"Look out where you're going!"
"The only thing is . . . I was thinking that maybe
four-and-a-half is a bit too old."
"Well, whatever, it won't be like having one of your own."
"No, that's not what I was worrying about. What does
worry me is . . . "
The man turned round fiercely to face her and she came
to an abrupt halt, as if her own thoughts had scared her.
"You don't think he'll be afraid of us, do you? Do you
think he'll understand? After all, he's only four-and-a-half ..."
" She had finally managed to say it.
The wind had become even stronger. Somewhere an old
iron pot was blown clattering to the ground. They walked on
blindly, forgetting to check the street names.
In fact, this was not the first time either of them had
thought of this, but for some reason neither of them had ever
mentioned it. Perhaps they had thought that by avoiding
mention of it, it would remain only a possibility; or perhaps
they had meant to bring it up several times, but somehow the
subject always changed ...
"Do you think we should get a boy or a girl?" She sat on
the bed, rewinding her precious yam. Whenever she had some
money, she loved to wander around the yam shops, buying
brightly-colored yam which she never used and which lay piled
up in a chest. That evening she had tipped it all out and was
now rewinding it, ball by ball.
"It doesn't really matter which ... boy or girl," he said.
He had wanted to bring this up, but she had beat him to it.
"That's what I think, too. Girls and boys both wear bright
colors nowadays." She was referring to the yam.
He said nothing else, thinking that perhaps it wouldn't ...
One night she was once again awakened by his shouts.
He was always having nightmares. It was raining hard outside.
He lit a cigarette. "If you want one, get one that's a bit older
. .. ," he said suddenly. The red glow of his cigarette
brightened and dimmed.
"Try to sleep some more-it's still early," she said. The
street-lights were still on and the shadow of a tree wavered
against the wall.
"That's all I ask-you can decide everything else."
''I'm afraid if he's too old he might ... " She had wanted
to talk about it then.
He came suddenly to lay his head on her breast. "People
with cirrhosis of the liver don't live long you know. I think
we should get an older kid-and then he can help you out
when the time comes.
Lightning illuminated his tear-streaked face. She cradled
his head and lay there, terrified, looking at the wavering
tree-shadow on the wall. Later she cried, and forgot to talk
about it.
And then there had been the evening they had sat enjoying
the cool shade under the overpass. A young couple were playing
hide-and-seek with their little girl at the head of the bridge.
While the mother held her hands over the little girl's eyes, the
father crept behind a tree to hide.
She watched them with rapt attention, leaned on his
shoulders, and giggled, afraid to make a sound; then she
stretched her neck out and laughed out loud anyway.
The young father tickled his daughter's face with his
beard, so that she wriggled in his arms and chuckled
loudly....
67
He had thought of it again then and had been about to
mention it when she once more interrupted his train of thought.
She began talking about the little girl's bell-bottom pants.
"Just look how pretty those little pants are. The day before
yesterday they were selling some just like that at our factory
and lots of people were buying them . . . "
Later he thought of going somewhere else; seems as if he
had thought of a remote-controlled toy car . . .
She remembered it again as she watched Anna Karenina
serialized on television. Anna was persuading Aloysha to go
to sleep, saying, ''I'm a big, bad monster ... ," but he wasn't
home that time.
When they went to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
a young child in the audience asked in a loud voice, "Why
does that nasty bad man always keep ringing that bell?"
Children always think ugly people are evil. That time they
didn't say anything; didn't even talk the whole night long.
Today, when she suddenly came out with it he had not
been prepared and neither, in fact, had she. Perhaps it was
because she was unprepared that she did say it. But today of
all days! But then, perhaps it was precisely because it was
today. Once said, it could not be avoided-it had to be
considered now. In some ways it was like removing a heavy
stone from the heart, only to replace it with one even heavier.
They walked on in silence. The wind was still very strong.
The tattered remnants of a paper kite hung on the power lines
above.
Eventually they stopped in a spot sheltered from the wind.
The man leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. The woman
put the cookie tin down on the ground and looked up helplessly
at the man.
A flock of cawing crows flew crookedly against the grey
sky and were buffeted southeastwards in the wind.
"All that's needed is for us to look after him properly,"
said the man. "I think if we look after him well enough ..."
He was looking at the tricycle which had a large-eyed dragonfly
for its trademark. She was gazing up at the crows which had
made a circle and were now flying back .... They wanted to
rest on an old tree, but the wind was too strong.
The man repeated, "I think as long as we look after him
really well . . . what do you say?" The hand holding his
cigarette trembled incessantly.
The crows had finally succeeded in landing on the tree.
The woman said, "How about getting a younger one? Perhaps
there wouldn't be this problem if we got a baby."
"He's still going to grow up, isn't he?"
"But it's not the same-he'd be used to it from childhood."
The two of them stood there at the corner of the wall,
protected from the wind, saying nothing more for a very long
time.
The street lights came on. It must have been past six.
"Are you still tired?" asked the woman.
The man lit another cigarette. A village manure cart passed
in front of them, its wheels clattering over a manhole cover.
After it had gone by the woman noticed that the cover had not
been properly closed.
She nudged the man and said, "Look at that manhole
cover."
The man glanced at it.
"Look," she said, nudging him again. "The cover's not
on properly."
"WiIl you keep quiet!" He gave her a strong shove.
"Well," she said defensively in a small voice, as if she
had done something wrong, "the cover isn't on properly."
Ignoring her, the man poked with his crutch at some
yellow earth in a hole in the wall. She stared worriedly at the
manhole cover. After a while she began to walk towards it.
"Come back!" shouted the man.
"But it hasn't been closed properly," she objected, not
daring, however, to go any farther forward.
"Come back here at once!" the man shouted again. The
woman had to come back.
"Someone might faIl down it," she said.
"Serves them right! Are you the only one who cares?"
She stood beside him, looking from him to the manhole,
wanting to say something, but not daring. She was afraid to
provoke him, with his cirrhosis and all.
The street lights and their shadows swayed in the wind.
There was no one else in the lane.
"It's getting late, let's go," said the woman.
"Where toT'
"Mrs. Shi must be getting really impatient by now. Since
we've come this far we really should go."
"I didn't want to come in the first place. I didn't want
him in the first place."
"Let's go and have a look first, anyway, shall weT'
"We know already without having to take a look! It's not
as if it were our own kid . . . "
The woman said nothing for a long time. Finally she
swiftly picked up the tin and began walking rapidly forward.
It was only then that the man realized she was crying. He
grabbed the tricycle and followed ....
"Let's have one of our own instead!"
"No! No! I don't want to! You know very well ... " She
crawled onto the bed and cried.
"The doctor said that if only one side had it there was a
chance it wouldn't be passed on . . . "
"And what else? What haven't you said? You haven't said
that there's also the chance that it could be passed on! It can
be hereditary. It's sure to be transmitted through me! I
know-I've never been lucky!" She cried and shouted as if
insane....
He had never seen her like this before. Completely taken
aback, he dared not continue.
"I didn't mean it, really ... I meant ... I didn't mean
I wanted one of our own." He was trying hard to explain. "I
really didn't mean that at all. I mean ... I agree. We'll get
whatever kind you want. If you really want a younger one,
well then, I won't say no ... " He was placating her, as if
she were a child.
They walked on quite a distance, passing many small
lanes and forgetting to check the names.
"We've already arranged it with Mrs. Shi," the woman
sobbed. "We should at least go and take a look."
"Of course we'll go. After all, we don't want to have lost
that purse for nothing, now do we?" He wanted to make ajoke
out of it, but only succeeded in sounding sarcastic.
"Anyhow," he hurried on, "you can eat those cookies,
but I can't ride this tricycle!"
She smiled gratefully up at her husband. He gave her his
68
handkerchief. "Wipe your eyes. You can't go in looking like
that. "
For some reason she could not stop crying.
"Let's stop a bit for another rest," suggested the man.
There was a temporary vegetable stall with an awning set
up by the roadside ahead. The sellers had already left for home
and the stall was deserted. save for a few turnips nobody wanted
that were piled up on a table. They went to stand in the shadows,
away from the street-lights. The woman continued wiping her
eyes.
"Don't think so much. Really-don't spend so much time
thinking ... "
"I'm not, I'm not. I didn't want to cry."
"I just have a bad temper sometimes."
"No, you don't. It's me ... I bring you bad luck."
"What a thing to say!"
"But just suppose if . . . "
" 'Just suppose' again! We've been together ten years
now but you keep on saying, 'Just suppose ... ' but, I tell
you, those ten years of ours are the reality."
The moon was so tiny and so far away, just like on that
other night. She leaned against him closely, afraid that all this
was not real and that he was like that moon, so far away, so
far away ....
"Let's go."
"All right."
Just at this point a door opened in a courtyard opposite
and a young woman came out, leading a small child. A
middle-aged couple followed to see her off, accompanying the
mother and son to the end of the lane.
In a very displeased tone the mother said, "I must say I
do think you arranged this badly . . . "
The middle-aged woman replied, "You can blame me if
you like, but don't take it to heart."
The young woman said, "Actually, a professor wanted
him but I couldn't bear to part with him. Otherwise-well, as
it is, I'll just have to look after Mingming myself."
The voices slowly faded into the distance.
The woman stood completely immobile.
"Let's go, shall we? What's wrong?" asked the man.
The woman went back into the shadows, out of the street
light's reach and leaned against the stall, staring wordlessly at
the courtyard opposite. The man walked over to look at the
door opposite. It was No. 57, Moonlight Lane. He came back
to the vegetable stall and stood beside the woman, saying
nothing. The middle-aged couple returned.
"You shouldn't have told her," said the middle-aged man.
"I wouldn't want to give my kid away to a pair of cripples
either."
"Well, I couldn't lie to her. I tell you what though-I
won't have anything to do with this kind of thing any more,"
said the middle-aged woman.
"They'll be here in a while-what are we going to say to
them?"
The gate slammed shut with a bang!
It was silent ail around, as quiet as the desert. There was
only the sound of the wind, making one think of a tiny boat
caught in a deep valley between high, dark waves. The desert
has its limits, the ocean comes to an end. If there were no
oases, where could the camels go? If there were no harbors,
where could a smail boat shelter? There were times when
neither of them could see the point of carrying on . . . times
when they lay awake in the depths of the night. Perhaps he
had had yet another nightmare, or she had dreamt of the
hereafter, and then they talked of death.
"Do you think there's life after death?"
"I think there must be."
"You're just superstitious."
"Who can tell?"
"Have you thought about death?"
"Of course."
"Then why don't you die?"
"If I died, the loved ones I left behind would suffer too
much. What about you?"
"The same."
This was their oasis, they looked to this as they walked
through the desert. They were each other's harbor.
It was very late. Somewhere in the distance came the
sound of the time signal. Eight 0' clock or maybe nine. Probably
eight.
They continued standing in the stall, their thoughts
confused, saying nothing. The wind continued unabated-it
would probably blow all night. The matting of the stall roof
had blown open a crack and was flapping noisily against the
roof beam, letting in a flurry of old snow which fell on them,
unnoticed.
A long time later the woman said suddenly, "We haven't
fed An-An yet." An-An was their cat. They kept a pet cat.
The woman spoke almost dreamily.
He pulled her into his arms and wrapped her up inside
his large padded coat. She felt as if the cold were all on the
outside; let the wind blow-nothing could penetrate their
overcoat.
"We haven't fed An-An," she said from inside the coat.
He caressed her face, her eyes.
"I'm fine now," she said.
"I'm fine too," he said.
"Shall we go home now?"
"Yes, let's."
"Let's go then."
They turned homewards, keeping close to each other.
They had left the cookie tin and the tricycle behind in the
vegetable stall. They were always losing things.
"Oh, yes! I forgot! That manhole cover," she exclaimed
suddenly.
They retraced their steps to the first place they had stopped.
They found the manhole, but the cover was tightly shut.
"Was this the one?" asked the man.
"I think so, or at least, this seems to be the only one
around here."
The man banged his crutch down on the cover several
times but it didn't budge-it was shut tight.
The woman went back to the comer where they had stood
before.
"Oh, from here it looks as though it's not on properly
because there's a bit of black showing through the snow, like
a hole." *
Originally published in Chouxiaoya (Ugly Duckling), no. 10,
1982
Translated by Alison Bailey
69
Lunch Break
by Shi Tiesheng
All at once the whirring sewing-machines stopped and the
world became quiet. Warm sunlight filtered lazily through
small windows set at odd angles, and particles of dust hung
suspended in the air. One by one people began stretching,
yawning, and looking around; tired, expressionless faces
sagging and blurring as hints of half-smiles appeared at the
corners of their eyes and mouths. It was time for their lunch
break, time for a breather, time for a good laugh. Every day
it arrived as regular as clockwork, the way April Fool's Day
makes its appearance in the West every year.
The luckiest people are those born with the ability to do
as they please.
"Luck? I'll tell you what luck is-it's whatever you
fucking well want it to be, that's what luck is!"
The expounder of this theory was Old Bai, the presser,
chewing away at his ripe-smelling, pickled-bean-curd-stuffed
mantou.' Exactly who had been responsible for propagating
this theory no one was quite sure, but they were all completely
convinced by it. It might be thought that this theory was rather
similar to Ah Q's philosophy of life,> but none of the
eight-and-a-half people present (there was a young man
paralyzed from the waist down who could only be counted as
half) had any notion of who Ah Q was, even if some of them
had heard of Lu Xun. In fact, just the day before they had
been debating whether or not he lived in Zhongnanhai like all
the other bigwigs. In the end only the young cripple had
I. A mantou is a kind of steamed bun eaten in northern China.
2. A PRC urbanite who does not know what Ah Qstands for or who Lu Xun
was is culturally deprived in the extreme. The protagonist of Lu Xun's novella,
Ah Q zhengzhuan (The True Story of Ah Q), is the best known fictional
character in modern China. He is the epitome of what Lu Xun regarded as
the debased national character of the Chinese people. It is rather difficult to
see what his "philosophy of life" has to do with Old Bai's remarks about luck;
that is probably part ofthe author's characterization of these unlettered people.
dissented, while everyone else had come down in favor of Old
Bai's opinion-after all, what else could you expect with
someone as famous as that?
Enamel mugs clinked and the low, old room was full of
the pungent smell of garlic.
"How much meat have you got in there?"
"Meat? I'd have to bite my own tongue off if I wanted to
taste any meat!"
And then it was quiet once again-but don't worry, it
was just that no one had yet found the right topic to start the
ball rolling. The sound of brakes squealing came suddenly
through the back window. Everyone stopped in mid-chew and
pricked up their ears.
"You tired of living or something?"
Obviously no one was hurt. The engine soon started up
again and the car drove off, leaving the stage free for the next
act.
"Yesterday, after work ... ," began old Mother Xia,
narrowing her eyes and stretching out her neck in an effort to
swallow a piece of dry pancake. "Yesterday, after work ... ,"
she gulped down some water before taking a deep breath.
"Yesterday, after work, I almost died of fright! There I was
just walking along, when all of a sudden there was a noise
behind me just like that one a moment ago."
"The hell! I thought you'd choke to death first!" Madame
"Little Feet" sitting opposite broke off a piece of her vegetable
stuffed baozj3 and popped it into her mouth before continuing,
"The way you were carrying on I thought at least you were
going to tell us you'd found a diamond or something ... "
She grimaced and turned away, sitting with her right leg crossed
3. A baozi is another form of steamed bun which is usually filled with meat
or vegetab les.
4. The identity of Ma Lianliang is not known.
70
over her left and her four-and-a-half-inch bound foot swinging
proudly in the air.
The young cripple clicked away at his abacus as he ate.
"Mother Xia, you've had half a day off this month for personal
matters and half a day's sick-leave-that means 92 cents less
this month."
"I turned round to look," continued Mother Xia. "The
alley was so narrow and the car so wide, just where do you
think I was supposed to get? So I started running as fast as I
could. . . if it had been you with your precious little feet you'd
have never made it; you'd have ended up as a wheel-block
instead. She got her revenge on Little Feet.
"When I reached the end of the alley the car was just able
to get past. Some schoolkids said it was a 'Red Flag.' I've
heard of them, of course, but I wouldn't know what one looked
like, would you?" She slapped her leg in apparent exasperation
at missing the chance to get a really good look at one.
Everyone looked solemn at the mention of the "Red Flag,"
except for Old Bai who let out a grunt and said, "Well, you
have led a poor life, haven't you! I'll tell you what a 'Red
Flag' 's like-big and really fancy with bullet-proof windows.
Made in Germany they are. That's what a 'Red Flag' 's like."
His eyes met those of the young cripple, whereupon he added,
"Of course, China's got the know-how to make them herself
now, too . . . only bigwigs get to ride in cars like that. Why,
years ago, Ma Lianliant used to ... ," Old Bai stopped in
some confusion when he heard the cripple laughing to himself.
Just then Little Feet broke out into a prolonged cackle of
laughter. The more the others called her a crazy old woman
the harder she rocked with laughter.
"Quick! Send for an ambulance! We've got a nutcase on
our hands!" Apparently in deadly earnest, Old Bai rushed
towards the door. "I thought there was something funny about
the way she looked this morning ... as if she couldn't tell
her arse from her elbow . . . "
"Mr. Bai, you've had one day off for personal reasons
and two half-days off sick-that makes one yuan 85 cents off."
The cripple was still doing his accounts.
"Take it, take it! There'll be less for a thief to take if you
do!" said Old Bai breezily as he squatted by the door, his eyes
fixed on Little Feet and a self-satisfied, crafty smile on his face.
Little Feet finally stopped laughing, only to begin
hiccoughing instead.
"Hic! That old bitch was getting at me," and she stabbed
her finger in Mother Xia's direction. "Hic! So you think I'll
end up as a wheelblock, do you? Hic! Well, let me tell you,
it would be fucking good luck for me ifI did, hic! I'd lie there
stretched out in the road, all comfortable, no cares in the world,
with the car-owner's two bodyguards to look after me and lots
of good things to eat and drink . . . hic!"
"Are you sure you wouldn't like something to smoke as
well while you're at it?" Old Bai peered closely at her, a
sycophantic look on his face.
"Naturally!" Little Feet swept him a glance and assumed
a stem expression. "Listen to me, old man! When it happens,
you can be sure I won't need you around any more! Go on
out, old man, and buy a couple of Zhonghua filtertips!'"
Old Bai snorted in reply and grabbed Little Feet's wrist,
5. These are probably cheap cigarettes.
applying himself to the task of taking her pulse. "Is Madame
awake then?"
Little Feet gave him a violent push. "And why not? I was
knocked down, after all, wasn't I?" From the way she said this
it seemed as though her fate was not so bad after all.
"So they'd hit your poor old bag of bones, would they?
And then you'd just lie down there all nice and quiet, would
you? You'd lie down in a quiet mortuary or a crematorium!"
Old Bai broke a match in two and unhurriedly began
picking at his yellow teeth.
Round-eyed, Little Feet looked all around, feeling vexed
and having nothing to say, but then all at once she brightened
up and announced, "Well, even if I do get killed by the car
there's still my son!"
"And when he dies there'll be your grandson, and his son
and grandson, and so on and so on ... You might only be
able to dig away a little piece of the mountain yourself, but
all that's needed is time and it'll all disappear.
6
Three times
seven is twenty-one. Three from five leaves two." The young
crippled intoned all this to himself as if reading a sutra, his
head down, his eyes looking neither right nor left, straightening
his accounts while holding a half-eaten wheat pancake in his
hand.
"Well, what about your son, then?" someone enquired
curiously.
"The car-owner would have to give my son somewhere
to live so that he could get married at last. Just think-he's
thirty-two already and his girl-friend's twenty-nine!" Little
Feet's eyes had brightened up considerably and her forgotten
vegetable baozi rolled to the floor as she spoke. "That way we
could hurry things up a bit. We wouldn't even have to bother
with the lousy room the housing people gave us. Why, we
should fucking well be given an apartment in a block with a
kitchen and an inside toilet. My son and his wife could live in
one room and I'd have the other . . . "
Old Bai poked her. "I can see I'll have to wake you up
again! You've already been killed off by this car of yours or
had you forgotten? But that doesn't matter! I'll take over the
room for you instead and in the future I can do a bit of
baby-sitting and such-like for your son and his wife." He
wrinkled his nose as though he could easily cry. "If you do a
good deed like that you'll be sure of being born into a good
family next time round!"
People were on the point of laughing when another old
woman joined in the conversation. "Old woman" is not very
accurate. She wasn't all that old, but she didn't have a single
tooth in her head and she wheezed a bit. A whistling noise
issued from her throat as she spoke, "You're right there! Mind
you, it can be good or bad being run over by a car, depending
on your luck. The year of the earthquake myoid man was
knocked down by a hand-tractor and broke his leg; but the
driver had hardly a penny to his name so there was no way of
claiming anything for it. What a mess! But then there was a
simple girl back in our old village who got knocked down and
6. The young cripple is making light of Mao Ze Dong's favorite story, "The
Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountain." Although he could do very
little with a pick and shovel in his lifetime, his sons and grandsons could
continue the job and someday it would be finished. The story was required
reading during the Cultural Revolution.
71
killed by a 'Shanghai' model car, and guess what her family
got? One thousand RMB! One thousand! And that was just a
'Shanghai'."
Everyone's eyebrows shot up and their mouths fell open
in astonishment. This was deadly serious. They all slowed
down their chewing and seemed to be calculating something
in their heads. For a while the old room was almost deathly
silent and even Old Bai's face had lost its crafty smile.
"Aunty Luo-three days' sick-leave-that's two yuan 77
cents off." Only the young cripple continued as before.
"If I'd been hit," said the woman addressed as Aunty Luo,
"I wouldn't want a thousand RMB . After all, however much
money you get, it all gets spent in the end. No, what I'd do
is to get them to find me a real job. Maybe I could work for
the car-owner's family as their nanny. I don't know what she
did in her past life to deserve it, but one of my neighbors is a
nanny in a bigwig's house. They're always throwing away all
kinds of things, but they're all good enough for the likes of
us. Of course, I wouldn't say no if I could get a regular worker's
job instead."
Everyone's eyebrows relaxed as if they had suddenly all
seen the light.
"Isn't that why we can say life's better these days?"
queried old Granny Lu who did the button-holes, lifting up her
one eye above the thick lens of her glasses to peer at everyone
as she expressed her thoughts.
"In the old days myoId man used to pull a rickshaw for
the boss of a medicine shop. I remember going off to find him
at work one cold winter's day carrying our eldest girl. He gave
the little one a piece of New Year's cake from the boss' kitchen
and got a real bawling out for it-just a little thing like that!
What wouldn't I eat if I had the money? I'd eat ... " She
held out her hands as if cupping a large bowl between them.
''I'd eat ... I'd eat ... ," just exactly what it was she wanted
to eat never came out. Her one eye blinked repeatedly behind
her thick glasses.
"MyoId man's been going on about the old days the last
day or so ... mm ! I know! Green-haired turtles ... or maybe
the navy could get me some fresh prawns and the air force
could deliver them ...."
"That's what Lin Biao did! You're getting yourself all
mixed up!" said the cripple as he rested his cheeks in his hands
and smirked at her.
Old Bai snorted and stood up with a grin. He took a few
turns around his stool before sitting down once again and
saying,
"Are you stupid or something? Lin Biao's turned into the
boss of a pharmacy and you've been eating his New Year's
cake! You're getting old and muddled-whatever will your
kids think of you?"
Amidst the general laughter Granny Lu slowly drew in
her outstretched hands, an embarrassed smile on her face. She
said nothing more.
After that they returned to the original topic of discussion.
"If it were me, the least they would have to do would be
to get the kids' dad moved back to Beijing. When they sent
all the important industries into the interior for safety it was
meant to be for only three years, but our little "safety token"7
is thirteen years old already!"
A sigh came from someone in the corner.
Somebody lit a cigarette by the stove. "If I got hit it
wouldn't be asking too much to get them to help get my son
transferred back from Yunnan."
"Just getting allocated a job would be good enough!" A
gob of spittle came from behind a pillar. "My kid's been back
from Inner Mongolia for over two years now, but he still hasn't
been given a job. Just think what would happen if a "Red Flag"
drove up to the factory and issued an order! The boss' arse
would be way up in the air, bowing and scraping away he'd
be! But ..."
"Come on! Let's not get greedy here-just a little bit
more in the pocket each week would suit us ladies fine!"
The low, old room was silent once more, but you couldn't
say the silence of satisfaction after a good meal. Far from it.
There was a strange light in everyone's eyes-yearning,
perhaps, or joy or possibly a longing for some kind of
fulfilment? Who can say? Whatever it was, it was a light rarely
to be seen in this dilapidated old room and in these elderly
eyes. They seemed like statues, gazing unmoving into the
distance. Some fingered moles on their faces. Some plucked
at the hair in their nostrils. Yet others had picked their nose
and were now rolling something between their fingers ... , it
was as if they were all listening to something away upon high.
"Ice ... Cream!" The chilly autumn breeze carried in the
long-drawn out cry, wrenching everyone back from their world
of forgetfulness.
"Yes, well, I don't fancy being knocked down and killed
by a car, I can tell you!" Just who first came down to earth
no-one knew, but all at once the small alley rang wi th the
sound of laughter mixed with a barrage of curses.
With a whir the machines started up again and the world
became frantic once more.
1980
*
Originally published in Xiaoshuo xuankall (Short Story
Selections), no. I, 1981.
Translated by Alison Bailey
Moving?
Moving is costly. For you. And occasionally for
us. If you change your address but do not tell us,
the Post Office throws away your copy of the
Bulletin and then charges us!
Give us a break. Tell us before you move.
7. It was common during the Cultural Revolution for people to name their
children after events of national importance taking place when they were born.
72