Da-jie,
I’m in! It’s unbelievable, but I made it! I mean, I’m one of the seven girls they’ve chosen. I’m so happy, and I’m scared stiff. Now I’ll have to stay in Beijing, and you will be so far away. I have to do it, of course. But how will I manage?
Zhongmei
12
Comrade Tsang
Dear Zhongmei,
The whole of Baoquanling is celebrating your success. No, it’s bigger than Baoquanling. It’s all of Luobei County. Yesterday the county party secretary came to our house in a big car to congratulate Ma and Ba. The mayor of Baoquanling came too. The whole lane turned out to watch. And this morning there was a picture of him and all of us in the newspaper. You’re very famous. It’s just about the biggest thing to happen here ever. Do well, work hard, and don’t forget us back home!
Zhongqin
Dear Da-jie,
How can you even think that I would ever forget you? At the moment I’m terribly homesick. I miss everybody, Er-jie, Da-ge, Xiao-di, and especially you, Big Sister. If it hadn’t been for you, I would never have been able to come here. You are my best friend, forever.
Zhongmei
Zhongmei had only gotten a one-way ticket when she came to Beijing, and she didn’t have enough money to go back to Baoquanling for the rest of the summer, so she stayed at the home of Policeman Li, his wife, and their son, Li Guang, for the two months left before the term would begin at the Beijing Dance Academy. It was true what she said about being homesick. She did miss her family. But it was also exciting to have a few weeks in China’s capital, and she used it to visit all the famous places there. Usually she went with Li Guang. He took lots of pictures of her, mostly dressed in her yellow pleated skirt and pink blouse. There she was posing in front of the Forbidden City, the picture of Chairman Mao and the upturned eaves of the imperial halls in the background. There were pictures of her in front of the Temple of Heaven, whose luminous beauty and grandeur left Zhongmei speechless. Li Guang took pictures of her in front of the Confucius Temple and the Lama Temple. She went to the Summer Palace and posed on the prow of the famous marble barge, whose story she had learned at school. It had been the pet project of a long-ago empress of China, named Cixi, who diverted government money intended for a real navy to build this beautiful but useless thing instead. Zhongmei took long walks along the lake in Beihai Park, where she and Li Guang went out in a rowboat. She learned about Beijing, which had been China’s capital for most of the years since the Ming Dynasty six hundred years before!
She climbed Coal Hill behind the Forbidden City and got a view of the whole vast, incredible complex, which was testimony to the glories of China’s past. The palace grounds stretched out in an immense rectangle surrounded by a high rust-red wall and moat. Ornate guard towers with curved, multilayered red-tile roofs stood at each corner of the complex and within was a splendid network of grand halls and smaller mansions, too many to count. It was magical, a fairy tale come true. Zhongmei had never even imagined anything at once so mighty and beautiful, and she was filled with pride in her country, realizing how great an honor it was to be called to the capital to study at one of its most famous institutions. To be sure, Baoquanling was nothing like this!
Finally the day came for Zhongmei to arrive at the Beijing Dance Academy. It was a crisp, sunny day at the end of August 1978 and, needless to say, Zhongmei was full of happy anticipation as she rode on the back of Policeman Li’s motorcycle on what was now the familiar route to the school. Still, she stopped for a moment at the gate and read the brass plaque identifying the Beijing Wu-dao Xue-yuan, the Beijing Dance Academy, as if to confirm to herself that, yes, she was really going to be a member of that august institution. Just inside the gate was a small brick guardhouse, and Zhongmei saw an elderly man with a wispy white beard, wearing a rumpled blue Mao suit, standing at the entrance and smiling at her.
“Are you one of the new students?” he said.
“Yes,” said Zhongmei.
“Welcome,” the man said. “My name is Zhou and I’m the night watchman. Everybody calls me Lao Ye, so you can too.” As we’ve seen, Lao ye means “grandpa” in Chinese.
“And I’m Little Zhou,” a girl a few years older than Zhongmei said. “No relation to Old Zhou, I mean, Lao Ye, I’m afraid.” Little Zhou said she was a sixth-year student and was there to help the new girls get settled. She led Zhongmei to the dormitory building, which was diagonally across from the main classroom building where the auditions had taken place. “That’s the cafeteria over there,” she said, pointing to a two-story whitewashed building nearby. “And that’s the theater on the other side of the cafeteria. That’s where we have our special shows and competitions.”
The dormitory was a low-ceilinged building with long dark corridors. Little Zhou led Zhongmei up a flight of stairs to the second floor. Zhongmei noticed a sign at the entrance to the corridor—NO BOYS ALLOWED. Little Zhou told her that all the first-year girls would share two dormitory rooms. Six girls, Zhongmei included, would be in the first room on the left, marked number one, and Zhongmei took it in at a glance. It had three double-decker bunk beds pressed against the walls, and between them were small metal desks and chests of drawers. Zhongmei had her small suitcase in her hand. It didn’t contain all that much because Zhongmei didn’t have all that much: a blouse, one pair of blue trousers, one padded suit for winter, two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, and a pair of cotton shoes, all made by her mother. She had a toothbrush and a plastic comb and the yellow skirt, pink blouse, and green shoes from Zhongqin and Zhongling. It only took a couple of minutes for her to put all of her possessions into the single drawer that Little Zhou said was hers. It was less than half full. She slid her suitcase under the lower berth of the bunk bed that Little Zhou said had been assigned to her.
“You’ll sleep in this one,” she said, patting the upper bunk.
Then, having done all she could for the moment, Zhongmei went back downstairs to survey the scene at the entrance. There was a great milling about. Cars pulled up to the front gate and disgorged boys and girls and their families, who carried suitcases through the courtyard and into the dormitory entrance. Zhongmei immediately noticed that most of the girls had larger suitcases than she did, or, in some cases, two suitcases, both larger than her single one. As usual she was the only arrival unaccompanied by a parent or two, a brother or a sister, some grandparents, sometimes entire three-generation families. Despite her excitement, she felt a stab of loneliness, but then she comforted herself with the thought that she too had a family, with four brothers and sisters. These other students didn’t have anything that she didn’t have. It’s just that they had these things closer at hand. At the same time, Baoquanling, which Zhongmei had left three months earlier, seemed so far away it might as well have been on another planet.
Zhongmei went back upstairs and sat on her bed as her classmates stuffed their clothes into the drawers assigned to them, using up a lot more of the drawer than Zhongmei had. Just when everybody was installed, there was a sudden banging noise as the door flew open and a large woman wearing a regulation gray Mao suit strode into the room, which suddenly went quiet.
“My name is Tsang,” she said, “and I am the administrator of the Beijing Dance Academy. You will call me Tsang Tungzhi”—Comrade Tsang. “Listen carefully. I’m only going to say this once. These are the rules that you will strictly obey. Some of them are the rules of the Ministry of Culture and the school; some of them are my rules. But you must obey all of them, and you will be punished if you don’t.”
The seams of Comrade Tsang’s suit seemed to strain against her stoutness, which gave her a look of great strength. Her voice seemed somehow to be amplified, as if she were speaking through a loudspeaker, though no loudspeaker was present. She had a broad, flat face with puffy eyes and closely cropped hair flecked with gray.
“First,” Comrade Tsang resumed, “no one is allowed to have any money. You will hand over all of the money your pa
rents gave you to me. I will make a record of the amount, and when you need money for any purpose, for clothes or bus fare or personal supplies like toothpaste or soap, you will tell me what you need and I will give you the appropriate amount out of your own funds.”
Zhongmei watched as Comrade Tsang surveyed the room, fixing a brief stare on each girl as if to imprint the rules into their heads. When Zhongmei felt Comrade Tsang’s eyes reaching her, she swallowed involuntarily.
“Second,” Comrade Tsang resumed, “at no time is anyone allowed to leave the school grounds without permission, except for the time between the end of class on Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening, when you are free to go. If you have family or friends in Beijing, you may stay with them Saturday night, though you must report to me where you are going, and I will give you your bus fare out of your personal funds. Except for these family visits, you must never go anyplace outside the school alone. You must always be accompanied by at least one classmate, even if it’s just to go to Taoranting Park across the street.
“Third, meals are to be taken in the cafeteria and only in the cafeteria. No food can be brought into the school, ever.
“Fourth, from Monday to Saturday, school days, everybody will wake up at six in the morning and will go to bed at nine at night, when the lights will be turned out. Nobody is to leave the dormitory between the hours of bedtime and wake-up. If anybody is caught outside the dormitory at that time, even in another part of the school, that person will be expelled.
“Is that clear?” Comrade Tsang again glared at the girls, who stood in a cluster in the middle of the room.
“Good. You will be orderly and decorous at all times. There will be no loud talking or rough behavior—ever. Every girl will be neat and clean. You will make your own bed in the morning. You will shower in the evening. All shoes are to be placed under the lower bunk. All clothes are to be placed in the drawers when not being worn. There are to be no clothes, books, shoes, or school supplies left lying around. Also, there is to be no talking after lights-out. You will be sure to go to the toilet before bedtime, because nobody is allowed to go to the toilet during the night. Each of you will be provided with a chamber pot, and, in case of emergency, you will use that to relieve yourself. You will deposit the contents of the chamber pot in the toilet in the morning.
“And,” Comrade Tsang continued, “you will sleep facing the wall. Nobody is allowed to sleep facing out and looking in the direction of the bunks on the other side of the room. This is to discourage talking after hours. I will conduct spot checks on this from time to time, and anybody caught facing out while lying in bed will go to my office to write a self-criticism. Is that clear?”
Six girls nodded obediently, Zhongmei among them. Tsang was the most terrifying human being she had ever encountered.
“Any questions?”
Nobody dared ask a question.
“In that case, it being six in the evening, you will go to dinner in the cafeteria.”
Filing out of the dormitory and across the courtyard, the girls murmured about Tsang and the rules. Zhongmei found herself next to a tall, pretty girl with long braids tied up in red ribbons.
“Hi,” the girl said. “I think we’re allowed to talk to each other now.”
“As long as we do it quietly and with no rough behavior,” Zhongmei said.
The girl smiled. “My name is Xiaolan,” she said. She pronounced it she-ow-lan.
“Zhongmei,” said Zhongmei.
“I saw you in the dormitory,” Xiaolan said. “You’re in the bunk opposite mine, but I guess we shouldn’t be looking at each other after we go to bed.”
“Or we’ll have to write a self-criticism,” said Zhongmei.
“But what if somebody just turns over while they’re sleeping?”
“Better not do that,” said Zhongmei. “You heard the rules.”
“Yes, Old Maid Tsang is pretty tough,” Xiaolan said.
“Old Maid Tsang?”
“Didn’t you know? She’s almost forty and never been married, so the students call her Old Maid Tsang.”
“That’s not very nice,” Zhongmei said, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Old Maid Tsang seemed appropriate enough.
That night after going to bed, Zhongmei lay in the regulation position, facing a window next to her bunk. She was too excited to sleep and so probably were most of the other girls. They all must have heard the click as the door of the dormitory opened, and, like Zhongmei, they must all have frozen in their beds as they followed the sound of somebody’s footsteps walking the length of the room and then back, until, once again, there was the sound of the door opening and closing and the footsteps disappearing down the corridor outside. It had been Old Maid Tsang making her first inspection, no doubt.
Feeling that the coast was clear, Zhongmei, still wide awake, slowly turned her head to look into the room, knowing that she was already breaking the rules. The light from a streetlamp outside that filtered through the dormitory window cast the bunks across from her in an eerie pale glow. It seemed to her, though she couldn’t be sure, that Xiaolan had also turned her head and was looking in her direction. Zhongmei wiggled her fingers and in the semi-darkness she saw that Xiaolan wiggled her fingers in response.
Then one of the girls started laughing softly to herself. The other girls started to laugh also, until the whole room was filled with a kind of stifled hilarity, each girl sure that to be caught laughing would mean immediate expulsion from the school and yet unable to stop. Zhongmei, choking back her giggles, turned her head back toward the wall and tried to think of something sad, like how much she missed her family, but the more she tried not to laugh, the more she laughed, until her stomach and sides ached and she thought she would die from a lack of air. Old Maid Tsang, she said to herself over and over until, finally, after a good long while, the choked-back giggles died down, and the six girls in dorm room number one went to sleep, all of them facing a wall.
13
“Six Years to Go!”
The morning bell came, as promised, at exactly six o’clock. Zhongmei climbed down from her upper bunk and dressed in a pair of cotton pants and knit pullover that each girl had been given the day before. She splashed water on her face in the bathroom, which was at the end of the corridor outside, made her bed, folded her pajamas, and put them in her drawer. Little Zhou, the girl who had helped her get settled the day before, appeared at the dormitory doorway carrying a box full of what looked like clear-colored plastic sheets. “These are your jian fei ku,” Zhou said—weight-loss clothes. “Find a size that fits you and put it on over your regular sweats,” she said, “and then go downstairs to the outside courtyard for morning exercise.” Zhongmei grabbed a set of the strange plastic clothes and pulled it on. It fit tightly at the neck, the wrists, and the ankles and made a funny crinkly sound as she ran down the stairs with the other girls, joining the six girls from dorm room number two, and running into the first-year boys, who were bounding out of the first-floor corridors in identical plastic suits.
“Form a line,” an instructor told the assembly in the courtyard. It was a clear, bright day, already warm. Zhongmei heard the steady sound of bicycle bells and the intermittent roaring of buses outside the gate. All the students of the school seemed to be there, from the youngest, like Zhongmei, to teenagers, and the courtyard was full. “Hold the hand of the person in front and the person in back, go out the gate and across the street to Taoranting Park,” he called. Zhongmei looked for Xiaolan and grabbed her hand and the hand of another girl, and went across the street to the park entrance. The instructor led them across an esplanade on one side of the park to a lake. It was a beautiful sight, the lake sparkling in the early-morning light, willows and chestnut trees lining its distant shores. A narrow paved roadway went around the lake under the canopy of trees. On the left, an arched bridge soared over a narrow inlet.
“Everybody is now going to run once around the lake, and that’s what you’ll do every mornin
g,” the instructor said. “But running for dancers is not the same as running for other people. We run like this,” he said, and he demonstrated a kind of leaping, prancing motion. “Go as high with each step as you go far,” he said, jumping off his left foot, extending his right leg, and coming down on his right foot in a sort of jeté. “We don’t so much run around the lake as we leap around it, like antelopes, or kangaroos, or, if you prefer, frogs. So now, go!”
Zhongmei began bounding down the path as instructed. At first it was fun to leap high, her pigtails flying and brushing the low-hanging willow branches. Even the crinkling sound of her plastic suit seemed sort of funny. But by the time she’d reached what she estimated to be the halfway point around the lake, she had realized why the plastic was called a weight-loss suit. She was sweating profusely underneath it, and before long her heavy cotton pants and jersey were soaked through. The morning was still cool, but she was broiling, running out of breath, and wondering if she was going to make the whole distance, which was longer than it had first looked. I’m skinny as it is, she thought. Why do I have to wear a weight-loss suit?
After another couple hundred yards, some of the first-year students had stopped and were leaning against trees, red-faced, panting, and holding their sides. Zhongmei kept going, lumbering over the arched bridge, gasping for breath now, the pain in her side almost unbearable. It felt as if her insides were about to erupt. Her thighs burned. When she got back to the park entrance, her legs were so tired, she wished somebody would carry her back across the street.
“Now,” the instructor called out, “to the courtyard for calisthenics.”
“Calisthenics?” Zhongmei moaned to herself. “I’m going to die.”
But she did the calisthenics too, grimacing through the pain, her body heating up still further inside her suit, the sweat pouring down her face, stinging her eyes, making her hands slippery. Jumping jacks were first, done to an accompaniment of military-sounding music that blared over an outdoor loudspeaker, then deep knee bends, stretching movements forward, to the sides, and back, followed by sit-ups and push-ups on the none-too-spotless courtyard ground. Zhongmei groaned, though not more loudly than many of those around her. She was straining so hard it was almost funny. When she’d done fifty push-ups, at least half of which were weak upper-body thrusts, not real push-ups, she breathed a sigh of relief, only to find out that she wasn’t finished yet.
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