by Cheng Nien
After we had sat down, Winnie looked up at the large painting of a female figure in pale blue by the famous painter Lin Feng-mian, who was once the head of the Hangzhou Academy of Art. This painting was the decorative centerpiece of my blue-and-white dining room. It went well in color and style with the blue-and-white Xuande plate and Kangxi vase displayed on the blackwood sideboard.
“Have you heard? Lin Fengmian is in serious trouble,” Winnie told me.
I was surprised. I knew the painter was earning large sums of foreign exchange for the People’s Government, which bought his paintings for a paltry sum but sold them in Hong Kong for twenty or thirty times the amount.
“He is accused of promoting the decadent art form of the West. But a more serious charge is that he has maintained contact with people outside China and has given information to captains of foreign ships calling at Shanghai. The foreigners were observed coming to his home by his neighborhood activists.”
“Well, his wife and daughter are in Brazil. Actually I know for a fact that the ships’ captains came to buy his pictures,” I said.
“Many other painters are in trouble too. Your old teacher, Miss Pang, is also being criticized. It’s said she once painted a branch of the meihua tree [a flowering tree that blooms in late winter or early spring] hanging down rather than upright to symbolize the downfall of the Communist Party.”
I laid down my fork and said to Winnie, “They are mad. In the paintings by old masters the meihua tree is often depicted hanging over a cliff. It isn’t anything she has invented.”
“Well, you know how it is. The Party officials in her organization have probably never seen any paintings by the old masters. Party officials in charge of artists are not required to know the difference between watercolors and lithographs. And most of them don’t know.”
Our conversation was so disheartening that it depressed our appetites. We couldn’t do justice to the delicious meal my cook gave us.
When we were drinking tea in the drawing room, I told Winnie about the struggle meeting I had just attended. After thinking it over, she said, “It seems you are going to be treated just like us now that Shell has closed its Shanghai office. No one outside China will know what happens to you.”
“What do you think is the purpose of their getting me to attend the meeting?” I asked her.
“To frighten you, of course.”
“I’m not easily frightened.”
“That, I think, they don’t know. All they know is that you are a rich woman who has led an easy life and who has never been involved in any political campaign before. They probably think you are easily frightened. As a rule they underestimate our courage.”
“Why do you think they want to frighten me? What for?”
“That’s very hard to say at this juncture. Whatever it is, be prepared for unpleasantness. Be alert and keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything inadvertent, whatever the provocation.”
“What about yourself? How are you getting on?” I asked her.
“I’m worn out. We spend all our time at meetings or writing Big Character Posters. Classes have been suspended. Several professors and medical experts have already been denounced. The situation seems even more serious than in 1957 at the beginning of the Anti-Rightist Campaign.”
“Are you likely to become an object of criticism?”
“Of course one can’t be sure. But I don’t think I’m important enough. I’ve been a junior lecturer for sixteen years, without promotion or a raise. I always humbly ask my Party secretary for instructions and never indulge in the luxury of taking the initiative. I carry out his instructions even when I know he is wrong. At indoctrination meetings I never speak unless told to do so. Then I simply repeat whatever was said by our group leader or the Party secretary. I think my behavior can be considered impeccable. Anyway, in the last analysis, the more senior you are the more likely you are to get into trouble. ‘A big tree catches the wind’ is a true saying.”
“What about Henry?”
“I’m worried about Henry. I think he will be denounced as a ‘cow’s demon and snake spirit’ like all the other professors and will be struggled against,” Winnie said helplessly. Then she closed her eyes and sighed.
“I thought he never did anything apart from teaching or spoke a word outside the classroom anymore,” I said.
“It’s true. He has learned a lesson from all his friends who were labeled Rightists. But he’s a full professor, for one thing. Moreover, his family used to be very rich. And his sister is in Taiwan.”
“But you have no contact with his sister. You don’t write to her.”
“That doesn’t matter. She is there and she is Henry’s sister. If the Party wants to make an issue of it, we can’t stop them.”
Lao-zhao came in to fill our teacups.
“Cook would like to have a word with you before he goes home,” Lao-zhao said.
“All right. Ask him to come in,” I told him.
Both Cook and Lao-zhao came in.
“The vice-chairman of the Shell Labor Union, Qi, came again tonight just before you returned. He asked us to give you a message,” the cook said.
“What did he say?”
“He told us to tell you to be careful when you talk to the Party officials. He said that after you left the meeting, they complained that you were rude to them. Qi wants you to know that the Party officials were annoyed,” the cook said.
“Qi is a good man,” Lao-zhao chipped in.
“A good man? You should have seen him denouncing Tao Feng at the struggle meeting!” His ugly performance was still in my mind.
“He can’t help it. He had to do what he was told. If he weren’t a good man, he wouldn’t have bothered to come to give you this warning,” Lao-zhao countered, defending Qi.
“You are right, Lao-zhao. I’ll remember to be careful. It’s good of Qi to have bothered to come. Thank you both for telling me this,” I said to Lao-zhao and the cook.
After the servants had withdrawn, Winnie said, “They are right. You must be careful. It doesn’t pay to offend the men directly in charge of you during a political campaign. They have absolute power to decide your fate. If they send you to a labor camp, you will have to go.”
“How can they send me to a labor camp? Winnie,” I said, “I don’t even work for the government. Besides, I haven’t broken the law!”
“Don’t be naive! They can if they want to. You live here. You can’t get out of the country. The only good thing about not working for the government is that they can’t cut your pay.”
Winnie got up to leave. I accompanied her to the front gate.
“Why didn’t you go to Hong Kong when Shell applied to close the office last year?” Winnie asked me.
“How could I request such a thing? The general manager needed me during the negotiations. He didn’t know the language. The whole thing was conducted in Chinese. I couldn’t leave him holding the fort alone. Shell has treated me well. I couldn’t let them down when they needed me,” I said.
“I hope they appreciate your sense of duty. They can’t help you now. You should have gone.”
“I hope you and Henry will both come through this as well as you did the Anti-Rightist Campaign.”
“I sometimes feel a real premonition of disaster,” Winnie said sadly. “Think of all the years we spent just trying to survive!”
We stood outside my front gate to bid each other goodbye. After taking a few steps, Winnie turned and said to me, “I may not be able to come again until things clarify. Phone me if you need me.”
“I understand. Take care of yourself!” I said.
“You too!” she said and waved.
After closing the front gate, I walked towards the house under a cloudless sky. A thousand stars were sparkling in space. It was a beautiful summer night.
Feeling tired and depressed, I went to my room to get ready for bed. My daughter came home while I was lying on my bed unable to sleep, with scenes of the day’s events passing
in front of my eyes.
“Mommy, Mommy!” she called as she mounted the stairs two steps at a time, just as she had as a teenager. I called out to say that I was in my bedroom. Chen-ma followed her into my room with a glass of milk and a plate of sandwiches on a tray.
“Goodness! I’m famished! I’ve had nothing to eat since breakfast.” She picked up the glass and drank the milk. I saw that her fingers were stained with ink.
“Look at those fingers! Are you going to eat your sandwiches with inky fingers? You are already a twenty-three-year-old young lady, but you behave like a ten-year-old. In the old days, girls of your age were married and had two or three children already,” scolded Chen-ma. As Chen-ma had been with us since my daughter was a small girl, she could chide her as an old servant would.
“Well, this isn’t the old days anymore, dear Chen-ma, old-fashioned lady!” Meiping protested and went into my bathroom to wash her hands.
Chen-ma placed the sandwiches on the table and turned to leave the room. She said to me, “You don’t have to worry about Lao-zhao, Cook, and me. We’ll always stand by you.”
“Thank you, Chen-ma, for your concern for me. Please tell Lao-zhao and Cook not to worry,” I answered, deeply touched by her remark.
“We worry about you because you are alone. I wish the master were still with us,” she murmured and shut the door behind her.
Chen-ma really was old-fashioned. In time of crisis she believed firmly in the superior ability of the male sex. In fact, I had been thinking of my husband as I lay on my bed in the darkened room before my daughter came back. For the first time since he died, I did not regret his death. I was thankful that he was to be spared the insults and persecution that would surely be directed against him if he were still alive.
With the bathroom door closed and the water running, my daughter did not hear our conversation. She was apparently having a shower.
My daughter Meiping was an attractive and intelligent young woman. In the course of growing up in Communist China, she had seen the disappearance of a society in which children of the educated and affluent had enjoyed many advantages. In its place was formed not an egalitarian society in which everyone enjoyed equal opportunity and status but a new system of discrimination against children like herself and their families. In each stage of her young life, she had been handicapped by her family background. For instance, to be admitted into a good middle school, she had to pass the entrance examination with marks of 80 percent, while children of workers and peasants got in with a pass mark of 60.
“This is unfair!” I had exclaimed at the time, indignant that my child was being discriminated against. “What is the reason for such an unfair regulation?”
“Don’t worry, Mommy! I can do it! I can get eighty! It isn’t hard,” piped the twelve-year-old.
“It isn’t fair!” I was still fuming.
“But, Mommy, the teacher told us the children of workers and peasants have to do housework or cook the evening meal after school. And their parents can’t help them with homework. The treatment I get is fair if you consider all that.” She had learned to be philosophical at a young age.
This kind of discrimination followed her in everything she tried to do. Whenever she encountered it, she was made to feel guilty and ashamed of her family background. She, and other children like her, just had to try harder than the children of workers and peasants. They learned from an early age that the “classless” society of Communism was more rigidly stratified than the despised capitalist system, where a man could move from the lower to the upper class by his own effort. Because my daughter had to try harder, she did well. In the prestigious No. 2 Municipal Girls’ Middle School, she was a student leader and won honors and prizes. She seemed happily adjusted and had many friends, among them several children from working-class families. Although she was by nature loving and generous, I thought it was mainly the feeling of guilt instilled in her by Communist propaganda about the rich exploiting the poor that created in her the desire to help these children. She would bring them home to share her food, help them with their studies, and even go to their homes sometimes to assist them with their chores. While I thought her activities rather commendable, Chen-ma disapproved heartily, especially when she loaned her clothes to other girls and then brought home the dirty laundry for Chen-ma to wash.
From early childhood, she had shown an interest in music. We bought her a piano and arranged for her to have private lessons after school. When she was ten years old she became a member of the Children’s Palace in Shanghai, a sort of club for specially selected schoolchildren who earned good marks in studies and behavior. There she acted in plays and took part in musical activities. Being bilingual, she became one of the young interpreters whenever the Children’s Palace had English-speaking visitors from abroad. Having learned to swim as a toddler in Australia, she was the unofficial swimming instructor of her class. When she was fifteen and in middle school, she was selected by the Shanghai Athletics Association for training with the Shanghai Rowing Club during the holidays and became cox for the first women’s rowing team of Shanghai.
Although we lived in the midst of periodic political turmoil and were saddened by the personal tragedies of some of our friends and neighbors, I never had to worry about my daughter. I took it for granted that she would go to one of the better universities, be given a fairly good job upon graduation because of her good marks, and marry a nice young man. Her pay at work would be insignificant, but I could supplement her income with an allowance, as many other parents were doing in China.
I had hoped that after graduation she would be assigned a job in Shanghai so that she could live at home. But I couldn’t be sure of that. I knew that young people with family backgrounds like hers were often deliberately sent to distant regions of China where living conditions were backward and extremely poor. This had happened to some of my friends’ children. As I watched my daughter grow from a lanky teenager into a beautiful young woman, I wondered what was in store for her. However, when I felt optimistic, I would dream of converting the third floor of the house into a self-contained apartment for her and her family. The prospect of nursing a grandchild was immensely comforting to me. I gazed happily into the rosy future of my dream and could almost feel the warmth of the little creature in my arms.
It had been somewhat of a surprise when my daughter told me that two well-known film actresses, concurrently teachers in the newly established Film School of Shanghai, had approached her to suggest that she try for the entrance examination as a specially selected “talent.” I could see she was flattered that she had been chosen. But I had hoped for something different for her, some work in which her intellectual power rather than her physical attributes would be an asset.
“The film school is on Hongqiao Road near the old golf club.
I can come home easily for weekends. And the two teachers told me all graduates will be given jobs in the Shanghai Film Studio. Actually the school is a subsidiary of the film studio. It has sent talent scouts all over the country to select students for the entrance examination. There is bound to be a big response because everyone wants to live in Shanghai,” Meiping said.
“But do you really want to be a film actress?” I asked her.
“I don’t mind. I can do it. It isn’t hard.” This was her standard response to any problem.
“I’m sure you can do it. But do you want to?” I believed this to be an important point. To be happy one should do the job one wants to do.
“Well, I never think of what I really want to do. It’s no use thinking that way when I know the government is going to assign me a job. Thinking about what I really want to do only leads to disappointment. None of my friends think that way either,” she said. “I’ll just enjoy doing whatever the government wants me to do. If I try hard enough to do a job well, I generally end up liking it.”
I suppose my daughter’s attitude was sound under the circumstances. But could a man assigned to carry night soil as
his lifelong occupation make himself like the job by working hard at it?
“So you have decided to try for the entrance examination?” I asked her.
“Yes, if you agree. The teachers spoke to me officially. It would be hard to say no without appearing unappreciative. Besides, I like the idea of working in Shanghai. I’d hate leaving you alone here and coming home only once a year for a few days at Chinese New Year,” my daughter said.
“Yes, yes, darling, that’s certainly an important point to consider. I would hate you to go into the interior to work.” I agreed with her wholeheartedly.
So she went to the film school. Three years later she graduated and was given a job with the Shanghai Film Studio, which was run by the Bureau of Films of the Ministry of Culture.
The acting profession was somewhat glamorous even in Communist China, but those who worked in it did not receive higher pay or enjoy better working conditions than factory workers or teachers of the same age group. The function of an actress was primarily to bring entertainment to the masses, so besides appearing in films, she often gave performances in factories, rural communes, coal mines, and oilfields, traveling far and wide with her unit all over China. It was an arduous life. But she thought her experience enriched her understanding and knowledge of her own country and its people, and believed she was rendering service to them by giving them entertainment. For her, that was a meaningful way of life.
As she munched her sandwiches, she told me about the day’s events at her film studio.
“I spent the whole day writing Big Character Posters for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We were told that the more Big Character Posters one writes, the more revolutionary enthusiasm one demonstrates, so everybody wrote and wrote until the notice board and all the wall space in our section were completely covered.”
“Was that why you didn’t come home for dinner?”
“We gave up having lunch and dinner to show our revolutionary zeal. Actually everyone was hungry, but nobody wanted to be the first to leave.”
“What did you write about?”
