Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  “When you give the officials expensive presents or money in order to get permission for a job transfer, are you not afraid you might get into trouble?” I asked her.

  “Of course, there’s a risk. But I’m desperate. Anyway, I think such instances are too numerous to be investigated. One day the Party leadership may clamp down, but at the moment they are too busy fighting each other. We must seize the opportunity.”

  Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Da De, who had taken upon himself the task of supplying me with freshly baked pies and cakes from the bakery. I knew, of course, it was just an excuse for making sure that he could pay me a daily call to see who was visiting me. While he was putting the cakes away in the kitchen, I accompanied Meiping’s friend downstairs, carrying her baby’s paraphernalia while the baby slept quietly in her arms. When we were at the front gate and she saw that no one was around, she whispered to me, “Be careful of that student of yours. He seems to me like a plainclothes policeman.”

  “He’s just an unemployed youth,” I told her.

  “Don’t believe it! Be careful what you say to him” were her parting words.

  Sun Kai, the young man my daughter was going to marry, found out my address and came to see me on the last day of the Chinese New Year holiday. He told me that he was no longer working as a mathematics teacher, since the school had been closed. Instead he was in a research institute designing precision instruments.

  “In 1966 when Meiping told me you had been arrested, both my parents and I thought Meiping and I ought to get married right away so that she could move into our place and not have to live alone. But she wouldn’t agree. She insisted on waiting for your release and said that she couldn’t get married without your being present. Of course, at the time we all thought the Cultural Revolution would be over in a year,” Sun Kai said.

  “Did you see her often before she died?” I asked him. I felt terribly sad to see this handsome young man who might have been my son-in-law if my daughter had not been killed so ruthlessly.

  “I saw her two or three times a week. We tried to be together as much as we could manage. You know my father was denounced as a Rightist in 1957. I was labeled ‘the family member of a class enemy,’ and since I was a teacher, I also belonged to ‘the stinking ninth category’ of enemies. Meiping had to take part in the film studio Cultural Revolution activities. She didn’t seem to have any trouble there. Then, out of the blue, some unknown people abducted her.”

  “Please tell me about it,” I begged him.

  “She was supposed to have dinner at our house on June sixteenth. When I went to pick her up in the afternoon, Mrs. Chen, the wife of the professor whose house Meiping was living in, told me Meiping had committed suicide that very morning. I went immediately to the film studio. No one seemed to know anything about it. Then I went to the crematorium. I was not allowed to see their records because I was not a family member. But when the attendant saw how distraught I was, he told me that the body of a young actress of the Shanghai Film Studio had been brought in for cremation that morning.” Sun Kai broke down and wept.

  “Do you believe she committed suicide?” I asked him.

  “No, of course not! I went to see the place where she was supposed to have done it. It’s not possible.”

  “Are you talking about the scaffolding?”

  Sun Kai looked at me in alarm and said, “How did you know about that? Who told you? You mustn’t let anybody know you know.” Then he added, “If those people responsible for Meiping’s death think you do not believe she committed suicide, they may do things to endanger your life. You must be extremely careful. They are completely ruthless and cruel.”

  “I understand. I won’t talk about it,” I assured him. But I asked, “Do you know who was responsible for her abduction?”

  “I’m not sure. But I think it had something to do with the men conducting the investigation of your case. Whoever they were, they were acting on the orders of some leaders in Shanghai.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “As you know, the Athletics Association was closed by the Red Guards at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and the Revolutionaries took over the building. But the defunct Athletics Association retained one floor for storage of documents. It was from one of their men that I learned that the men who abducted Meiping were acting on orders from above.”

  “Do you think you could arrange for me to see this man from the Athletics Association?”

  “That would be dangerous for you.”

  “I’m prepared to take any risk to find out the truth.”

  “So many years have passed, I don’t even know whether he is still there. Why not wait until the political situation clarifies?” Sun Kai seemed reluctant to accede to my request.

  Indeed, many years had passed since Meiping died. One could not grieve forever. Sun Kai did not visit me again. The following year, I heard that he had married the daughter of a senior Party official. The man agreed to his daughter’s union with the son of a Rightist because he wanted to take a young wife himself after being widowed. He thought that an unmarried daughter of the same age as his new wife would be an embarrassment. I understood why Sun Kai wanted to marry a girl from an official family. After what had happened, it was natural that he should wish to make sure that the woman he married would never become a victim of political persecution. Besides, married to the daughter of a senior Party official, he would no longer have to suffer the stigma of being the son of a Rightist, a burden he had borne with courage since he was a boy.

  Sun Kai’s visit made me so sad that I told A-yi I would lie down in my room to rest. A-yi went to clean up the kitchen. Suddenly I heard the sound of knocking on the front gate. The entire Zhu family was out. I called A-yi, and she went out to the balcony to find out if the visitor had come to see them.

  She came back from the balcony and said to me, “It’s an elderly man. He asked me if you lived here. Shall I go down?”

  “Please do,” I told her, wondering who this visitor might be. I quickly straightened the cover on the bed and made the room tidy. Then I went to the landing to see who my visitor was.

  “Mrs. Cheng! Don’t you recognize me? How glad I am to see you!” said the man coming up the stairs.

  I realized by his voice and the formal manner in which he addressed me that my visitor was Mr. Hu, my husband’s old friend, whom I had not seen since he paid me an unexpected visit at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in the summer of 1966.

  The hand he stretched out to me was calloused, and his little finger was bandaged. Otherwise he seemed little changed. I greeted him warmly, remembering the kind advice he had given me in 1966.

  After ushering him into my room, I invited him to be seated.

  “I’m really happy to see you again. And you look very well; perhaps, if I may say so, much better than one has the right to expect, under the circumstances,” Mr. Hu said.

  “How are you and your family? Are you still living in the same house?” I asked him politely.

  “Oh, no! I was thrown out of my home by the Red Guards just like all of us,” Mr. Hu told me. “And I have had my share of misfortune. But we mustn’t dwell on the past. We must look ahead and be thankful that we have survived. Many of our loved ones didn’t. I know about Meiping, of course. I suffered the loss of my dear wife and my beloved mother. Both died of heart attacks during the most terrifying period of the Cultural Revolution. The hospital refused them treatment because they belonged to the family of a capitalist and I was under investigation.” Mr. Hu sighed and seemed for a moment to be almost in tears. But he quickly regained control. Taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, he blew his nose.

  “How did you find my address?” I asked him.

  “It was sheer luck. I met your old servant Lao-zhao on the street this morning and was overjoyed to hear that you were free. I had visitors all afternoon, but as soon as the last one departed, I came on my bicycle.”

&nb
sp; “Are you still working?”

  “Yes. I could retire, but there is no point in sitting at home. It’s good to do heavy physical work. At night I am so tired that I sleep soundly. I’m now living in my mother-in-law’s home. The Red Guards left her one room. We had it partitioned, and I moved in. She is well over eighty. I’m glad to be able to take care of her.”

  “What about your children?”

  “With a capitalist as a father, they were all sent to work in other parts of the country. My eldest son is married and has a baby girl.”

  “When you visited me in the summer of 1966, you very kindly gave me some advice. I’m very grateful to you. When I was in the detention house, I often thought of what you said. What do you think of the political situation now?”

  “It’s infinitely better, of course, but one can’t help wondering how long it’s going to last.”

  “Do you think there will be more power struggles at the top?”

  He looked at the half-open door and nodded. After a while, he asked me, “Would you care to go with me to Nantao tomorrow? I hear the old flower shop is open again and they have narcissus bulbs.”

  “I can’t go tomorrow. I have a student in the morning, and I must do some laundry in the afternoon. A-yi is going home for a short holiday. She has worked very hard the last few days.”

  “May I come help you with the laundry tomorrow afternoon? I have an extra day’s holiday because I volunteered to work on New Year’s Eve,” Mr. Hu said. I didn’t want him to help me with the laundry, but I also knew he wanted to talk. I decided that if I wanted to hear what he had to say, I must go out with him.

  “Perhaps the laundry can wait. Let’s go to the flower shop. It would be nice to have some narcissus bulbs,” I said.

  Mr. Hu beamed at me for accepting his invitation. I had forgotten how much Chinese men enjoyed having a woman do exactly what they wanted. It almost seemed that my innocent acceptance of his invitation to go to a flower shop had brought our relationship a step more intimate than it had been when he first crossed the threshold. Not only did he hold my hand a fraction of a moment longer than necessary when he took his leave, but he actually felt encouraged enough to offer me money.

  Taking a package from his jacket pocket, he said, “I know how stringent the living allowance is for people like us. I’m getting a regular monthly remittance from my cousin in Japan. May I offer to share it with you?”

  I was so taken aback that I was momentarily at a loss for words. He held out the package to me and added, “Please accept it. I would be so happy if you would accept.”

  “Thank you very much for your kindness. It’s good of you to offer to help me. But I’m not living on an allowance from the government. My foreign exchange account has been unfrozen, and I have no financial difficulties at all,” I said quickly.

  He seemed crestfallen but recovered in a moment. He said, “I have always had the highest regard for you. You cannot imagine how happy I am to see you again. It’s a miracle that you came through your ordeal so well. You are a woman of exceptional courage and fortitude.”

  I thanked him for his kind words and followed him down the stairs. As I stood in the garden watching Mr. Hu push his bicycle towards the front gate, I was conscious of Mrs. Zhu watching us through the window. It seemed they had returned from their outing while Mr. Hu was upstairs.

  “I’ll call for you at two-thirty tomorrow afternoon,” Mr. Hu said.

  “That will be fine,” I said.

  So curious was Mrs. Zhu about my visitor that she questioned A-yi closely when A-yi went through the back door to take out the garbage. I supposed Mrs. Zhu would report to the Residents’ Committee ladies in the morning and it would become known that I had had a male visitor during the holidays. The ghost of feudalism lingered in China. Although men and women worked together, they did not become friends in private life. Mr. Hu’s visit to me would become the subject of gossip, I was certain.

  Nantao was the walled city of Shanghai. The walls had been torn down long ago, but the Nine-Twists Bridge over the pond and the pavilion made famous by the blue-and-white willow pattern of English dinner services remained. Nantao was now a marketplace with narrow, winding lanes and hundreds of small shops and stalls selling a great variety of commodities, from wigs to live frogs for medicinal purposes. It used to be said that one could get everything one wanted in Nantao except a coffin. There were also numerous restaurants offering special food unobtainable elsewhere. In the middle of the marketplace, near the pond, was a Ming dynasty garden, Yu Yuan, with ornate artificial rockeries and many courtyards surrounded by pavilions and studios. The Red Guards did not destroy Yu Yuan because an antiimperialist revolutionary organization of 1853, the Little Sword Society, had used the place as its secret headquarters.

  The street near Nantao was closed to motor traffic because of the crowd visiting the marketplace during the holiday period. Mr. Hu and I got off the bus several blocks away and walked towards one of the entrances of the market. We were literally carried along by the crowd, there were so many people. When we got to the flower shop, there were no flowers left. But the shop was jammed with men, women, and children buying or just looking at the Yixing teapots and cups on the shelves. There were also attractive porcelain figures, animals, vases, and flowerpots at a reasonable price. All these products had only recently reappeared after being destroyed and banned by the Red Guards at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. I bought a Yixing teapot in light brown earthenware decorated with the traditional motif of mountains and trees. I also bought a celadon flower vase that could be made into a table lamp.

  When we got out of the shop, Mr. Hu said, “You must be tired. Maybe we could find somewhere to sit down in the Ming garden.”

  But when we approached the Ming garden, we found a long line of people waiting to purchase entrance tickets and another line waiting to enter the enclave with tickets in hand. An officious-looking man wearing a red armband was there to keep order. He allowed only as many people to enter the garden as came out.

  “Why don’t we take the bus and go to Zhongshan Park? We shall be able to sit down and have a quiet chat. There won’t be many people at this time of year,” Mr. Hu suggested.

  Perhaps it was the effect of my solitary confinement for so many years that I felt nervous and exhausted whenever I was in a crowd for some time, even when the crowd was not hostile. So the deserted park with its wintry scene of bare tree branches and frozen pond was a welcome sight. Mr. Hu paid for our twenty-cent tickets, and we walked in.

  Even though it was a windless day, the February air was icy and seemed colder now that we were not surrounded by people. Both Mr. Hu and I were bundled up in many layers of padded winter garments, like everybody else in Shanghai, but my face tingled in the cold as we walked along the path. A holly bush with a profusion of red berries caught my eye. When we approached it, we found a seat behind an artificial rock formation. It seemed a good spot for Mr. Hu to tell me what he wanted to say. But I couldn’t help wondering how many people in the world would understand that we had to take such elaborate precautions just to have a perfectly innocent private conversation.

  After silently observing me for some time, Mr. Hu said, “You have had a terrible time. I shouldn’t remind you of your unpleasant days in the detention house, but I just wonder whether you found out why you became the target of persecution.”

  “I suppose it was because I worked for Shell. They said the Shanghai office of Shell was a ‘spy organization’ and my late husband and I were British agents. In fact, they never accused me of anything concrete. They just pressured me to confess.” Once again I remembered those days of shouted accusations by the interrogators and my efforts to cope with everything.

  “From the questions they asked you, did you not discern anything concrete?”

  “I thought what happened to all of us probably had something to do with the so-called struggle between the two lines within the Party,” I told him.

 
; “That’s true. I think you will find what I’m going to tell you interesting,” said Mr. Hu. “When the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries took over our factory after the January Revolution of 1967, the Revolutionaries demoted my Party secretary to the position of an ordinary worker and accused him of being a ‘capitalist-roader.’ He was assigned to my unit. As you know, we used to get along very well together before the Cultural Revolution when I was looking after the technical work of the factory and he was the Party secretary. Now we were both working as coolies. Often, during lunch breaks, when there was no one around, he would talk to me quite frankly. It was my former Party secretary who told me that your arrest was due to the so-called conspiracy of foreign companies and government departments.”

  “How did your Party secretary know about me?”

  “Before you were taken in, the Red Guards came to our factory to question me about you. The Party secretary was in charge then. He was present at the interview. Being a film actress, Meiping was well known. When she died, the tragic news was the talk of the city. Your case was frequently mentioned in connection with her death,” Mr. Hu said.

  “What else did your Party secretary tell you?” I asked him.

  “It seems one of the departments supposedly involved in the so-called conspiracy was the United Front Department, which was accused of shielding class enemies. Its director, a protégé of Premier Zhou, died in mysterious circumstances after a struggle meeting. It was alleged that he committed suicide by putting his face to the gas burner. But when his body was found, the windows were open and there was little gas in the room,” Mr. Hu said.