by Lisa See
As she spoke, I wanted to cry, because sometimes it’s just so damn hard to be a mother. We have to wait and wait and wait for our children to open their hearts to us. And if that doesn’t work, we have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally.
I have my worries, but life continues elsewhere. Z.G. has a new poster, which shows Mao—as the Chairman himself asked to be painted, according to Joy—in simple trousers and a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck against a plain background. He looks like a benevolent god—of and for the people. I honestly can’t go anywhere or do anything without seeing his face. He’s literally everywhere—on the sides of buildings, in restaurants, in private homes. I’m told that 40 million copies of this poster have been sold across the country. In any other part of the world, this would make Z.G. an extremely wealthy man. Here, it earns him privilege and party (Party!) invitations for him and Joy.
And still no letter from May. Do I write another note to her or stop writing completely for a while? I don’t know where or what the problem is. In case there’s been an issue with the content of my letters, I decide to write something pro-political about the Great Leap Forward. I’m still careful, but that’s easy. All I have to do is echo the enthusiasm I hear on loudspeakers, see on posters, or read in the newspapers. May and I are sisters. I expect her to look for hidden meanings in my words.
May 15, 1958
Dear May,
Chairman Mao, our Supreme Leader, is leading us into wonderful times. He has come up with a slogan that we all joyously repeat: Hard work for a few years, happiness for a thousand. You remember how people used to starve in China? Now China will be a land of abundance and wealth. Other nations will no longer look down on us. We will accomplish this with help from “two generals”: agriculture and steel. If we all work hard, soon everyone will dress in satins and silks. We’ll live in skyscrapers—with heating, air-conditioning, telephones, and elevators. We’ll have leisure time to spend with our families.
I can’t grow grain, but every day before and after work I join my neighbors in creating steel. We are happy not to be paid, because we are building the nation. Each block has at least one blast furnace made from gray brick. The comrades in our old house all agreed to take our last radiator to our street’s furnace. Oh, May, you should see me. Three nights a week I work the bellows to keep the furnace going. Can you imagine me smelting iron? That’s how strong I am for the People’s Republic of China. When I’m not at the bellows, I walk the streets with my eyes down, looking for old nails, rusty cogs, and any piece of metal that has been overlooked by others. Chairman Mao says steel is the marshal of industry!
I don’t write that when it comes time to pour what we’ve melted onto pallets it doesn’t look at all like the steel I’ve seen being made in news-reels. Instead, it comes out in dull, red, sandy blobs. When it dries, it looks like cakes of nui-shi-ge-da—cow turds. I can’t imagine what anyone will use it for. Certainly not to make tractors, girders, or textile machines, because it won’t be strong enough. So, as far as I can tell, it’s all a waste of time, energy, and sweat—and all without remuneration, which, if I said that aloud, would cause me to be struggled against by the boarders and the block committee for being too capitalistic in my thinking.
The biggest news is that last month the first people’s commune opened. It has 40,000 people! Chairman Mao says, “The people’s commune is great!” I have not been to the countryside and can only rely on Chairman Mao’s mouth to tell me what his eyes have seen. He says that in the countryside bags of grain reach the sky. Yes, we are on the way to outgrowing the United States. Soon China will be exporting grain to you!
Love, Pearl
Finally a letter arrives, and it’s not in response to my news about the Great Leap Forward. It’s dated March 1, and May must have sent it upon receiving my letter saying that Joy had returned to Shanghai. A good part of it has been blacked out. What’s left are mostly questions for which not only May but apparently the censors and Superintendent Wu would like to know the answers. “Where has Joy been all this time? If Joy isn’t staying with you, then where is she living? Who bought her clothes? Was it this Tao you mentioned? I don’t like the sound of that. She is not a girl to be bought for a few yards of fabric.” This line more than any other tells me May has no understanding of what’s happening behind the Bamboo Curtain. There are no bad girls anymore. Then she asks the question I’ve been expecting for some time. “Have you found Z.G.? It will be difficult for you, but you must try to find him. We were all good friends once. He must help us.”
I read this last part several times. Pathetic jealousy burbles in me, but how can I be jealous—now, after all these years? I’m here to do whatever I can to get my daughter to remember who and what she is, but a part of me still dwells on petty things from twenty years ago. I think back on all the letters I’ve received from May since I arrived in Shanghai. Has she asked about Z.G. before? No, but his presence has been in every letter she’s written: “Do you see anyone from the past? What of the friends we knew back then?” How many times have I ignored her questions, blocking them out even more blackly than the censors? Sure, I’ve written back here and there: so-and-so died during the war, was a hero, was shot, or escaped … But never once have I written about Z.G. Why? A bitter place inside me kept that secret. Has this been my revenge for May’s part in Sam’s death? How can it be, when I now know she was not at fault?
None of us is perfect. I’m not the good woman I always believed myself to be. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t write back, because I could say things that would really hurt her. Ever since Joy came to visit me by herself, she and Z.G. have been taking me out to dinner once a week. I could tell May that just last night Z.G., Joy, and I had a meal of stewed crab with clear soup, duck triplet, and Mandarin fish—all Shanghai delicacies—at a restaurant on the Bund. I could write about how beautiful Joy looked and how the tension between us seems to be lifting, but that Z.G. stared at me in my red dress that May herself loved so long ago. I could write that sometimes the three of us go for walks in the Yu Yuan Garden. Or that we’ve worked together at the backyard furnaces either in my neighborhood or in Z.G.’s. We’ve been having a nice time, and I don’t want to break the spell by sharing it with my sister. But while I may not be perfect, I can’t not write to my sister. That would be brutal and unnecessary, and she would worry too much. Again, though, I stick to politics.
June 20, 1958
Dear May,
It’s been almost three months since the first people’s commune opened. A commune is made when several collectives or villages are brought together to share in the work and the profits. Now communes are everywhere! Some have 4,000 members, some as many as 50,000. We Shanghainese are helping our comrades in the countryside. We’ve always sent our nightsoil on barges to farmers. Now we all wait for those moments in the day when we can add what comes out of our bodies to the building of socialism and the attainment of our targets. What indescribable happiness, excitement, and pride we feel when the nightsoil barges leave the Bund and head upriver to the communes.
The steel the people have produced has given Chairman Mao great confidence in our abilities. First we were to overtake Britain in steel production in fifteen, then seven, then five years. Now we’re to do it in two years! At the same time, he’s announced we’ll double our grain harvest. Chairman Mao says that communes are the gateway to Heaven. China will be able to leapfrog over socialism and go straight to communism. I wish you were here to see all the changes. You’d be laughing and crying with happiness at the same time.
How fortunate Joy never feels homesick for the land of her birth. She relishes the land of her blood. She understands that true free thought comes when everyone obeys the commune. Her heart brims with idealism.
You should remember your motherland and send remittances to help build the nation.
&nb
sp; Love, Pearl
I’m sure May will understand my not-so-hidden messages about the craziness of these communes, the ridiculousness of the Great Leap Forward targets, and the fear I feel for Joy.
On July 28, I receive a package from Wah Hong. Inside I find a skirt and a blouse. I cut through the stitching on the collar and find twenty dollars and a short note from May.
I have great faith in my sister, but you must work harder to convince Joy to come home. And you still haven’t told me about Z.G. Has Joy found him?
If I’ve been sending her coded messages—and leaving out things that surely she would notice—then she has sent a note she must have known would upset me. I must “work harder to convince Joy” to leave China, as though I haven’t given up my life to be here, as though I’m not struggling every single day to keep myself strong for the moment I can break through to her? And, of course, there’s the part about Z.G.
I hide the letter with the others I’ve received and write back what I consider to be a chatty missive.
Often when I come home from work, Dun—do you remember the student boarder who lived in the second-floor pavilion?—makes tea for me and we sit in the salon and talk about books. The other day I went to a pawnshop and found one of Mama’s etched glass vases. I bought it, and now it sits on our dressing table. I filled it with roses I cut from our garden and their aroma scents the room.
I don’t write any of the things that would mean nothing to the censors but would wound my sister. She, however, has become impatient with me. Her next note is her shortest:
Have you seen Z.G.? Are you seeing him? Just tell me, because we’ve hurt each other enough.
I stare at the words. I have a feeling my sister wrote this late at night, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been so blunt. This makes me wonder if she’s moved inside, off the screened porch. Is she sleeping in Vern’s bed? In Father Louie’s bed? In my bed? Our house was not large, but it must seem enormous to her now that she’s alone.
Three days later, Z.G. and Joy come to my house with news. The Great Leap Forward is not just about steel and grain, they tell me. All 600 million Chinese must “go all out, aim high, and achieve greater, faster, better, and more economical results in building socialism.” As part of that mandate, Z.G. is being sent back to the countryside to visit several villages. Alarmed, I ask the obvious question.
“Is Joy going with you?”
“Yes, we’re going to the countryside,” Joy answers for him.
I don’t want her going back to the countryside. She can’t go if Z.G. doesn’t go. I turn to him. “You’re famous. You don’t have to do this, do you?”
Z.G. gives me a hard look. “I have a choice,” he says. “All art students and artists must spend three to six months in the countryside, getting the masses to produce art, or spend three to six months working in a factory.”
He goes on to explain that factories have given themselves challenges to manufacture more flashlights, radios, or thermoses in a week than in the usual month. Cotton mills have upped the amount of cloth they will make for the year. Z.G. would rather create art—something that’s at the very core of his being—than lose himself in a factory, where he might never get out.
“I’m trying to look at this as an honor and a privilege, really. The government wants to see a lot of art produced,” Z.G. explains. “To do that, we’ll need extra hands. Those hands are where they’ve always been. In the countryside.”
“But peasants aren’t artists.”
I’m trying to use logic as a way for him not to go to the countryside—and take my daughter with him—but Joy thinks this is a political argument.
“You haven’t seen Z.G. teach,” she says. Her eyes have that same glittering look they get whenever she talks about revolution. She more or less quotes Mao, saying, “As long as we have enthusiasm and determination, we can achieve anything!”
Z.G., as he has since we were young, takes a more pragmatic view. “Taiwan and the United States are allies. They’re trying to create an alliance with Japan and South Korea. Chairman Mao doesn’t like that, and he’s trying to show our power to the world.”
“But how does making a bunch of bad paintings—let alone thousands of cheap flashlights—prove anything to the outside world?”
“Redness, as it has for years now, takes precedence over expertise,” Z.G. answers. “We must think quantity, not quality, if we are to meet this new challenge. As for Joy and me, we’ll start in Green Dragon, where we went last summer. It’s now part of a commune. When we’re done there, we’ll head south to other communes. Then, at the beginning of November, the Artists’ Association wants me to visit this year’s commodities fair in Canton. After that, we’ll come home.” He pauses before adding, “I hope.”
That’s a long time, and I don’t want to be separated from my daughter again.
“Are you sure you want to be away so long?” I ask Joy carefully.
“Oh, Mom, don’t you get it? We’re here to ask you to come with us. Z.G. has received permission for all of us to go.”
Mom. She called me Mom.
“I want to show you everything,” Joy continues. “You should bring your camera so you can take pictures. Please say yes.”
This is the first time Joy has asked me to do something since I’ve been here. (Those dinners for the three of us have all been Z.G.’s idea.) I can tell she really wants me to come. And that, even though I’m nervous about going to the countryside, convinces me to join them.
AFTER A LENGTHY interview, Superintendent Wu gives me a travel permit. I break down and change some of my dollars into special certificates at the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission. Before I leave Shanghai, I write a last short note to my sister. I know it will hurt her. I was going to tell her the truth sometime, but I didn’t think it would come out like this.
Z.G. and I are taking Joy to the countryside.
I imagine May in our home as she reads that line. She’ll think the worst of me. I know she will, because that’s what I would do. (And, if I’m honest, she’ll be right. This is the chance I’ve never had to be with him. Yes, Joy will be there, but who knows what could happen … I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.) May has always been easy with tears. This time I imagine them coming from a deeply scarred and tragic place. Her older sister has gotten revenge. No thrust into the heart is greater or more harmful than that from one who says she loves you the most. I know, because my sister drove that knife into my heart many times.
I’m sorry I haven’t told you about Z.G. before. Forgive me. Nothing has happened. I’m still just your jie jie, wishing I could have something of yours that I could never have and certainly don’t deserve. I will write from Green Dragon Village, our first stop, but I don’t know how good the mail service will be. I love you very much, May. Always remember that.
Joy
A SMALL RADISH
WE’RE ON THE bus taking us from Tun-hsi to the drop-off point for Green Dragon Village. Baskets of produce and pots of cooked food have been placed by the side of the road, sending the message that the Great Leap Forward has been so beneficial that people can give away food to anyone who passes. Eat! We have plenty! I see lots of small children—another of Chairman Mao’s gifts. Have babies! Have more and more babies!
Z.G. and my mother share a bench across the aisle from me. My mother has pulled her body into something small and taut, as though that will protect her from the other passengers, the chickens and ducks, the smells, and the cigarette smoke. Every once in a while, she fingers the little leather pouch that hangs around her neck. It’s identical to the one that Aunt May gave me before I went to college and that I wore when I came to China. I hope my mother isn’t going to keep grasping the pouch and acting like the end is near. I won’t let her take away my happiness, because …
We’re going back to Green Dragon and I’m going to see Tao again!
Shanghai has not been at all like what my mother and aunt described, but there’s a vitality t
hat can’t be resisted. I loved Z.G.’s house. I liked his three servants, although they sometimes looked at me strangely and argued among themselves about things I couldn’t figure out. But apart from that tiny unpleasantness—which Z.G. told me to accept because you can’t stop servants from gossiping—this was the good life, better than anything I’d experienced in Chinatown.
My father is very important. His position—plus a few packs of cigarettes passed to the right person—got me to the front of the line at the doctor’s office when I had a sore throat in the spring, and it’s placed us at the best tables at banquets. I’ve listened to jazz bands play familiar tunes: “You Are My Sunshine,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” and “My Darling Clementine.” Yes, it doesn’t sound very communist or socialist. And yes, everything I’ve been doing since Z.G. and I left Green Dragon months ago is a betrayal of my ideals, but to help China I had to know more about it. The meals—whether cooked at home by Z.G.’s servants or at a banquet—have been delicious. Food in Shanghai is sweet. I remember my mom always liked sugar and she put it on the craziest things, like sliced tomatoes. Now I understand where she got that. Even the fanciest banquet comes with a platter of French fries sprinkled with fine white sugar. There have been so many things to taste, see, and learn. It’s been fun.
Except I could never escape the fact that Shanghai was once my mother and aunt’s home. I don’t want to be them, like them, or reminded of them, and yet I couldn’t avoid any of those things. Just look at the way Z.G. wanted me to wear the clothes from his attic. They were beautiful and all, but the whole thing was kind of creepy. And, of course, my mother was in Shanghai. Z.G. insisted that we see her once a week. I can’t believe how often I had to listen to Mom and Auntie May go on and on about how big and elegant their home was, but I didn’t think it was so great. It was big all right, but dirty and filled with too many people. And what about Cook and the way he kept calling my mom Little Miss? No one’s supposed to talk like that anymore, but he did.
