by Ken Liu
None of us knew that a more violent storm lay in waiting.
The Red Guard movement grew, and young men and women turned on their teachers as “reactionary academic authorities.” At every school, Red Guards held mass rallies called “struggle sessions” to torture and denounce these enemies of the revolution. My mentor, a famous professor who had studied overseas, naturally became a target, and I was brought along to the struggle sessions as a secondary target. Half of the hair on our heads were shaved off; tall, conical hats were stuck on top; and then our arms were pulled back and held up to force us to bow down to the revolutionary masses who hurled abuse at us. My mentor was beaten and tortured until he collapsed and lost consciousness. Only then did the mass rally end.
I held my old teacher and called his name, but he didn’t wake up. Heizi helped me bring him to the hospital, but it was too late. He died a few days later.
The Red Guards were not satisfied with having murdered my mentor. They imprisoned me and demanded that I confess to all my past sins—what they really had in mind was my participation in the Tiananmen protests twenty years ago. I debated them by putting my academic skills to good use: “I was protesting against the dark path Deng Xiaoping wanted for China. We spoke loudly, wrote openly, and demanded true revolutionary democracy. This was absolutely in line with Mao Zedong Thought. We were supported by the masses of Beijing, the ordinary workers and laborers who also participated in the movement. How could you call such protests counterrevolutionary?”
The Red Guards lacked sufficient experience in this style of argument to win against me. They couldn’t get me for having foreign contacts, either, because I had burned or buried anything having to do with America, and there was now no proof of my relationship with Qiqi. But ultimately, I was probably saved because of my friendship with Heizi.
After I was finally released and allowed to go home, I found out that Shen Qian had been taken away by the revolutionary rebels who had taken over her newspaper.
Someone at the newspaper, it turned out, had revealed Shen Qian’s long-ago affair with Liu Xiaobo in a big character poster. Liu Xiaobo was without a doubt one of the worst counterrevolutionary rightists—he had once claimed that China could only be saved by three centuries of Western colonization; had drafted the capitalist legalistic screed “Charter ’08”; and had been utterly corrupt in his sexual relationships. Although he was dead, his influence continued to linger. Since Shen Qian had been his lover for several years, she must have known many of his secrets. The revolutionary rebels salivated at the prospect of interrogating one of Liu’s mistresses. They held her in a “cowshed”—a prison set up at the newspaper—and demanded that she write her confession.
Shen Qian was locked away for a whole week and I was not allowed to see her. By the time she returned, her hair had all been shaven off and her face and arms were littered with scars. She stared at me dully, as though she no longer recognized me. Finally, she recovered and sobbed uncontrollably as I held her.
She never told me what she suffered during her interrogation and I never asked. However, not long after, many people who had once known Liu Xiaobo were imprisoned and interrogated, and the rumor was that Shen Qian’s confession had been used as the foundation for accusations against them. I knew it was wrong to blame Shen Qian. In this age, survival was the only goal, and conscience was a luxury few could afford.
In this manner, both Shen Qian and I were stamped with the label of counterrevolutionaries. By the time our son returned from his revolutionary tour, he found his parents to be bona fide, irredeemable class enemies. This meant that he was also considered impure. To remedy the situation, he went to the school and hung big character posters denouncing Shen Qian and me, and revealed some so-called sins that he knew we had committed. While others watched, he slapped me in the face and declared that he was no longer my son. He turned around and walked away, proud of his steadfast revolutionary ardor. I almost fainted from rage.
After our son left, we were angry for a few days, but then began to worry. We asked around for news about him but heard nothing for a couple of months. Then Heizi’s son, Xiaohei, came to visit.
“Um, Uncle Xie … I have to tell you something. Please sit down.”
Xiaohei and my son were good friends. I realized something was wrong. I took a deep breath and said, “Go ahead.”
“Weidong … he …”
My heart sank and the world seemed to wobble around me. But I insisted that he continue.
My son and Xiaohei had joined a faction of Red Guards called the “April 14th Brigade.” He had been promoted to squad leader, but because of my status and his mother’s, he was demoted and almost expelled. To show that he had completely cast us away and was a dedicated revolutionary, my son decided to take on the most dangerous tasks and always led every charge. A few days ago, his faction fought a battle against another faction at the university; my son rushed ahead with an iron bar, but the other side had obtained rifles from the army, and with a bang, my son’s chest exploded and he collapsed to the ground …
The world blacked out around me before Xiaohei could finish.
13.
The death of our son destroyed the only hope left for Shen Qian and me. Our hair turned white almost overnight. My mother died from the shock and grief. Although Shen Qian and I weren’t even fifty, we looked much older. We sat in our home with nothing to say to each other.
I didn’t know how we survived those dark years. I didn’t really want to recall the time. Like two fish tossed ashore, Shen Qian and I lay gasping, trying to keep each other’s gills wet with the foam from our mouths. But eventual suffocation was our certain fate.
One year later, the Cultural Revolution ended.
Mao decided to retire behind the scenes and Liu Shaoqi became the President of China. Working with Premier Zhou Enlai, Liu tried to lead an economic recovery by instituting limited free markets and allocating land to individual families instead of collective farming by communes. Slowly, the country recovered, and colleges opened their doors again to new students. Intellectuals were treated better, and after a few years, Shen Qian and I were rehabilitated and no longer labeled rightists.
The ten years of the Cultural Revolution had decimated academia, and my department lacked qualified faculty. I had the respect of my colleagues and years of experience, but since I wasn’t a member of the Communist Party (due to my political history), I was passed over for promotions. Summoning my courage, I wrote a letter to the authorities demanding the country make better use of the few intellectuals it had left, but I heard nothing.
A year later, when I had already given up all hope, my fortunes took an abrupt turn: I was promoted to full professor and given membership in the Communist Party. Even more amazingly, I was elected the department chair by a landslide.
In my new position of power, I began to get to know some elite intellectuals. One time, I met Guo Moruo, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He told me in confidence that Premier Zhou Enlai had read my letter and given the directive to promote me despite my flawed background. Guo told me to work hard and not disappoint the Premier. Sometime later, the Premier visited our school and asked specifically to meet me. Anxiously, I expressed my gratitude to him, and the Premier laughed. “Comrade Baosheng, I know you’re a talented man. The country is trying to get back on her feet and we have to focus on science and technology. Didn’t you once write science fiction? Why not write more and get our young people interested in science again?”
Since the Premier and Guo Moruo had both given the green light, the novels I had written were reissued in new editions. Readers had not had access to such books in a long time, and the response was overwhelming. Magazines began to approach me and commission new stories, and eventually I published a few collections. Fans began to call me a “famous writer.”
I knew very well that these new stories were nowhere near as good as my old ones. I no longer dared to write about politically sensitive subjects, and
these new offerings were affected works that praised the regime without articulating anything new. But who said the world was fair? I knew I was unlikely to accomplish anything great during what remained of my career. I decided I would use the little bit of influence I had to try to help talented young people, and to that end, I began to actively participate in social functions.
The good times didn’t last. Soon, the country hit another rough patch. China conducted another nuclear test, and once again, both the Soviet Union and the United States imposed sanctions. Food shortages became rampant, and everyone’s rations were reduced. The streets were full of hungry people, and it was said that even Chairman Mao had stopped eating meat.
But even so, those of us in the big cities were lucky. Heizi told me that people were starving to death in the countryside. But since no news of this kind could be published, no one knew the truth. We didn’t dare to speculate or say much, either. Although the Cultural Revolution was over, the political climate was still very severe. Rumor had it that when Marshal Peng Dehuai dared to offer some opinions critical of official policy at the Lushan Conference, he was severely punished.
The next year, Shen Qian died. No, not from starvation. She had liver cancer. As the wife of a high-status intellectual, she could have received treatment that would have prolonged her life, but she refused it.
“We stuck with each other … all these years…. Life has been so exhausting, hasn’t it? We are like those two fish … in that Daoist parable…. Rather than struggling to keep each other alive on land, wouldn’t it have been better … if we had never known each other at all, but lived free in the rivers and lakes? Don’t be sad…. I’m not sad to go….”
I held her hand, and tears made it impossible to speak. I remembered something from our youth: back then, everyone in middle school said we were a pair because we had classroom cleanup duty, but I didn’t like her, and she didn’t like me. When we worked together, it was very awkward because we refused to talk to each other. One time, I was standing on a chair to wash the windows and started to fall. She rushed over to help and I ended up falling on her. As we both limped to see the school nurse, the absurdity of the situation struck us, and we laughed as we blamed each other…. That faded memory now felt like a preview of our time together.
“I really want to … hear that old song again.” Shen Qian’s voice was fading. “I haven’t heard it in such a long time. Can you … sing for me?”
I knew the song she was talking about: “Rain, Hail, or Shine,” by the Taiwanese singer Wakin Chau. We used to sing it all the time when we were in high school. I had forgotten most of the lyrics, and the best I could do was to recall a few fragments about love, about the pain and pleasure that dreams brought us, about regrets. I sang, my voice trembling, tears flowing down my face, and my cracked voice not sounding musical at all.
But Shen Qian moved her lips along with mine. She could no longer make any noise, but she was lost in the silent music of yesteryear. The rays of the setting sun shone through the window and fell upon her, covering her gaunt face with a golden glow.
We sang together like that for a long, long time.
14.
The years of starvation finally came to an end. The Soviet Union and China repaired their broken bond and trade began to grow. The Soviet Union provided us with a great deal of assistance, and the domestic economy slowly recovered. But I was now almost sixty and felt much older. I resigned from the position of department chair, thinking I’d use what little time was left to write a few books. But I was nominated assistant dean of the university and became a standing committee member for the China Writers Association. In addition, I was picked as a delegate to the National People’s Congress. I was too busy to write.
One day, I received a call from Mao Dun, the Minister of Culture.
“The Premier has asked you to attend a diplomatic function. There’s a group of avant-garde Western writers visiting, and he thinks you know one of them.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know the details. I’ll send a car for you.”
That evening, a car took me to the Beijing Hotel, which had one of the country’s best Western-style restaurants. Many important people were in attendance, including the Premier himself, who gave a welcome address. As I surveyed the foreign visitors, I recognized the writer I was supposed to know right away. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
After a series of boring speeches and a formal dinner, finally the time came to mingle and converse. I walked up to that man and said, in my terrible French, “Bonsoir, Monsieur Sartre.”
He gazed at me curiously through his thick glasses and gave me a friendly smile.
I switched to English and introduced myself. Then I told him how much I admired L’Être et le néant and how I had written papers on it. I had never expected to see him in China.
“Well.” Sartre quirked an eyebrow at me. “I never expected anyone in China to be interested in my work.”
I lowered my voice. “Before the Cultural Revolution, your work was very popular in China. Many people were utterly entranced by your words, though they—myself included—could not claim to truly understand your philosophy. However, I’ve always tried to understand the world through it.”
“I’m honored to hear that. But you shouldn’t think so highly of my words. Your own thoughts about the world are the most precious thing—really, thinking itself is the only thing that is important. I must admit I’m surprised. I would have expected you to be a socialist.”
I smiled bitterly. “Socialism is our life, but this form of life has turned me and many others into existentialists. Perhaps in that way the two are connected.”
“What is your thought on existentialism?”
“To quote you, ‘L’existence précède l’essence.’ The world appears out of an essenceless abyss. Other than time, it depends on nothing, and it has no meaning. All meaning comes after the world itself, and it is fundamentally absurd. I agree with this. The existence of the world is … absurd.”
I paused, and then, gaining courage, continued with the puzzle that had plagued me for years. “Look at our world! Where does it come from? Where is it headed? When I was born, the Internet had connected all parts of the globe, and high-speed railways crisscrossed the country. The store shelves were full of anything one might desire, and there were countless novels, films, TV shows…. Everyone dreamed of a more wonderful future. But now? The web and mobile phones have long disappeared, and so has television. We appear to live in a world that is moving backward. Is this not absurd? Perhaps it is because our existence has no essence at all.”
“Sir,” said a smiling Sartre, “I think I understand what is troubling you. But I don’t understand why you think this state is absurd.”
“If the existence of the world has meaning, the world must advance, don’t you think? Otherwise what is the point of generation struggling after generation? The world appears to be a twisted shadow of some reality.”
Sartre shook his head. “I know that the Chinese once had a philosopher named Zhuangzi. He told this story: If you give a monkey three nuts in the morning and four nuts in the evening, the monkey will be unhappy. But if you give the monkey four nuts in the morning and only three in the evening, the monkey will be ecstatic. In your view, is the monkey foolish?”
“Uh … yes. Zhuangzi’s monkey is a byword for foolishness among the Chinese.”
A mocking glint came into Sartre’s eyes. “But how are we different from the monkey in that story? Are we in pursuit of some ‘correct’ order of history? If you switch happiness and misfortune around in time, will everything appear ‘normal’ to you? If evil exists in history, does it disappear merely by switching the order of events around?”
I felt like I was on the verge of understanding something, but I couldn’t articulate it.
Sartre continued, “Progress is not a constant. It is merely a temporary phase of this universe. I’m no scientist, but the physicists tell us that the unive
rse expands and then collapses and then expands again, not unlike the cosmic cycles envisioned by your Daoist philosophers. Time could easily flow in another direction … or in one of countless directions. Perhaps events can be arranged in any of a number of different sequences, because time may choose from an infinite set of options. Remember the aphorism of Heraclitus: ‘Time is a child playing dice; the kingly power is a child’s.’
“But so what? Whichever direction time takes, what meaning does all this have? The world exists. Its existence precedes essence because its very existence is steeped in nothingness. It is absurd regardless of the order of the events within it. Perhaps you’re right—had time picked another direction, the universe would be very different: humanity would progress from darkness to light, from sorrow to joy, but such a universe would not be any better. In the end, joy belongs to those who are born in times of joy, and suffering belongs to those born in times of suffering. In the eyes of God, it makes no difference.
“Some say that if war were to break out between the Soviet Union and the United States, the world would end. But I say the apocalypse has long since arrived. It has been with us since the birth of the world, but we have become inured to it by familiarity. The end of the world comes not with the destruction of everything, but with the fact that nothing that happens around us has any meaning. The world has returned to primordial chaos, and we have nothing.”
Sartre stopped, as though expecting me to say something. My mind was utterly confused, and after a long while, I said, “What, then, is the hope for humanity?”
“Hope has always existed and always will,” he said solemnly. “But hope is not the future because time does not have an inevitable direction. Hope is now: in existence itself, in nothingness. The truth of nothingness is freedom. Man has always had the freedom to choose, and this is the only comfort and grace offered to humanity.”
