by Ting-Xing Ye
It seemed that history was repeating itself. Father and Mother had lived apart for a long time after their marriage. Looking at my smiling brother, I was overwhelmed with sadness. I found Great-Aunt in the kitchen and told her I was going for a walk to get some fresh air. My face must have signalled my thought, for she didn’t argue. It was dark and cold outside and the streets were almost deserted. Probably everyone was feasting, I thought, the main activity of the New Year celebrations. With nowhere to go, no friends to visit, I wandered the streets for hours.
A couple of months later Number 1 wrote to me with good and bad news. Yu-qin was pregnant, but she had been listed as one of those to be sent to work in a small town in Anhui Province, northwest of Shanghai, another undeveloped area of the country.
As with so many people in those days, Fate had played a trick on my new sister-in-law. Both Yu-qin’s parents were workers. When she had graduated from junior middle school, she had chosen to enroll in a trade school attached to a factory. Such a choice was a last resort, made by those who couldn’t get into a normal middle school, and involved a major loss of face for both the student and the family. But subsequently the humiliation was paid back when Yu-qin saw her contemporaries who had made it into good schools sent to the countryside, while she, a worker, and therefore exalted, remained in Shanghai.
But the blessing was short-lived. Now married and pregnant, and with her husband in faraway Guizhou, she was transferred. She was able to postpone her departure until her baby was born, then she left for Anhui, taking her son, Ye Xiang, with her. Ten months later, after he had been weaned, she brought him back to Shanghai and left him in Great-Aunt’s care. Number 1 still had not seen his son.
And so Great-Aunt, at sixty-three, suffering from high blood pressure, began to care for the fourth generation of the Ye family, who had taken her in and given her a place to live more than forty years before. But now the Ye family was scattered, and she cared for the baby alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In March 1973, Deng Xiao-ping was brought back to power as vice-premier of China, after years of disgrace. Within a month the “Suggestions for University Enrollment” was issued by the Party’s Central Committee. Deng realized the need for educated people after years of turmoil throughout the school system. Until then, a person who had worked in a unit for at least two years and had a recommendation from his or her unit leaders and co-workers could get into university without taking entrance exams. These were the “Worker-Peasant-Soldier” students. Deng’s declaration stated that Worker-Peasant-Soldier candidates must sit for exams, although their scores would not be the sole criteria; for university entrance political correctness would also count.
I took this as a sign that things might be returning to normal and was encouraged in my English study, though I dared not hope that I would ever get a chance at university. Just a couple of weeks before, my application to be a taxi driver in Shanghai had been refused. The farm’s new civilian leader, Sun, told me that as the youngest of the experienced hands in the brigade I should let the older men and women go back to the city first. Instead I was assigned as “elder sister” to a batch of newly arrived seventeen-year-old girls, to show them the ropes. For days and nights I was like a firefighter, running out one door and in another, except that I put out tears instead of flames. My heart went out to the miserable teenagers. They were about the same age as I had been when I first came to the farm and they were depressed, scared and homesick. I did the best I could to teach them everything, from the differences between rice seedlings and grass to the best way to hang their laundry to avoid insect contamination. I was an old hand now, I realized without joy, a veteran with calluses on my palms and on the soles of my feet—and, I sometimes thought, on my soul. But using my five years of experience to help them gave me great satisfaction.
In May of the following year I learned that our farm had been allotted ten slots for university enrollment. One of them was for an English major.
My heart leapt. Was this my chance? Or was it nonsense to even consider that I would get the support of the brigade to take the exam, even though I had been studying English alone for two years? The summer before, I had applied to go to Fudan University to study Spanish, but the unit had turned me down, once again citing seniority.
But this seemed to be a more auspicious time. I had now been on the farm for almost six years and, according to the regulations, if I was successful I could take my salary with me to university. I would not need to ask my family for support. I filled out the application.
The votes of the young women to whom I had acted as an elder sister tipped the count in my direction. My unexpected success at getting over this first hurdle gave me sleepless nights. The next obstacle was another selection: the farm was made up of thirty brigades, and each had elected a candidate. Now the administration would select fifteen from the thirty to take the medical exam. Those who passed it would sit the entrance exam.
I was encouraged that Representative Huang, who had quashed my attempt to return to Shanghai as a teacher—probably because he found out I had written something about him in my confession—had nothing to do with the present selection process.
So I waited, trying not to think about it as I laboured, bent double, in the paddies. One afternoon, as I washed the mud from my legs and feet, I heard that the medical team had arrived at the sub-farm. I entered the dorm and sat on my bed, afraid to move, and asked someone to bring back my supper from the canteen: I didn’t want to be away from my dorm in case I was sent for. Hours passed by and no one came. The village got darker and quieter, and my heartbeat soared each time I heard approaching footsteps. But there was no news.
I woke up in the morning fully clothed, with a severe headache. I had failed again. I tried to put it out of my mind, but it was hard. I dragged myself out of bed and to the canteen.
I was lugging bundles of seedlings on my shoulder-pole, heading to the paddy, when I was hailed by a man out of breath from running.
“Xiao Ye, someone has telephoned from the sub-farm,” he blurted, stopping to gulp down some air. “They’re asking why you didn’t show up for your medical checkup. The doctors are about to leave and—”
I threw down my shoulder-pole, scattering the green seedlings on the dike, and ran toward the paddy where brigade leader Sun was working. As soon as he caught sight of me he shrieked.
“Ai yah! I forgot to tell you—”
“How could you forget such a thing? How could you!” I cried.
Sun and I rushed back to his office, where he snatched up the phone and frantically wound the handle. He spoke to the operator and asked her to tell the doctors to wait.
“We’re on our way,” he said, hanging up. “Come on, Xiao Ye, we’ll take my bike!”
After bumping along the dirt roads, sidesaddle on the rat-trap carrier of Sun’s bike, I found myself in the clinic, feet, legs and hands still caked with paddy mud, talking to a group of white-clothed doctors. They did their best to calm me down, then conducted the examination.
The next day I was to have a blood test for hepatitis. This was another hurdle. Hepatitis was widespread throughout the country and our farm was no exception. The number of cases had climbed in the past few years because of contaminated water and poor and crowded living conditions. When I got up early the next morning, having eaten or drunk nothing overnight as ordered, I was showered with advice.
“My mother said sugar makes the liver softer,” said Xiao Jiang, one of the newer girls. “That’s why hepatitis patients get extra sugar coupons.”
I drank the proffered cup of sugar-water and immediately felt guilty for cheating. Later, as the doctor drew my blood, I confessed.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I have two daughters and one of them is your age. She is working on a farm in Heilongjiang Province. I hope someday she will get a chance like yours.” He didn’t tell me, though, whether the sugar-water would help me or not. My health was pronounced excellent.
So, more waiting. I was anxious about the coming exam. I felt confident I could pass, given all my studying of textbooks and the English lessons on the radio; but nothing was ever simple or clear.
One afternoon in August I was called from the paddies once more and told to go to the sub-farm administration office. This time I remembered to wash off the mud in a ditch. Xiao Zhao, a young man who worked in the canteen, took me on his bike. All I had with me was a ballpoint pen.
The sub-farm was quiet, a usual weekday afternoon, with everyone in the paddies. I hopped down from the bike, thanked Xiao Zhao, and went to the office. There I was directed to a room down the hall. I remembered the day of my middle-school entrance exams. There were flags snapping in the breeze outside the buildings, hundreds of students and their families milling around on the sidewalks, row upon row of desks in the sultry classroom. Mother had been alive then, and the most important issue challenging my young mind had been which middle school I would go to. Now, at twenty-two, I faced the most important test of my life. Success meant a brighter future. Failure would bring more of the same misery.
I stepped into the small room, where two middle-aged women, with their hair cut plainly at earlobe length, sat behind desks, fanning themselves. It was hot and stuffy. An armchair sat forlornly in a corner; a single desk and chair had been placed before the two women; the bamboo window curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun. I looked around, wondering where the other candidates were. The examiners rose.
“There is no one else here,” said one, who looked to be in her fifties. She smiled. “Yours is the only exam.”
In my nervousness I completely missed the significance of her words.
“I am Teacher Chen from Beijing University,” she went on. “Teacher Xu is from Qinghua University.”
I nodded at the younger, stern-looking woman.
“We are recruiting students from East China,” Teacher Chen explained.
My brain began to function. “Do you mean that you came down here just for one candidate?”
“This by no means suggests that you will be successful,” Teacher Xu cut in, indicating that I should sit down. “Now, let’s begin.”
She handed me a piece of paper on which a few passages in classical Chinese were printed. “Please translate them into everyday speech.”
I took out my pen and began. It was not difficult; my first semester in middle school had been devoted to this kind of work. About an hour later, I put down my pen. My second test was oral. Teacher Chen gave me a text in English called “We Have Friends All Over the World” and asked me to read it out loud. I didn’t need to translate, just read. It was a piece I had read over many times at night under my mosquito net, for it was in one of the books Number 2 had given me.
Now all my studying in isolation, while my dorm-mates played cards, chatted or crocheted, paid off. I read out the text, clear and loud. Teacher Chen could barely contain her pleasure. Teacher Xu maintained her serious demeanour and reminded me that, although I had done well, that didn’t mean I would be selected.
“One red heart, two preparations,” she admonished me—a good person should be prepared for failure as well as success—a common expression around exam time at school.
I stood up and forced myself to look her straight in the eye. “Please,” I stammered, “please let me go to university. I have been here for six years, working in the paddies the whole time. Don’t you think I have got enough education from the peasants, as Chairman Mao wishes? I promise you, if you accept me, I’ll never let you down.”
When I turned around and left the room, Teacher Chen followed me. As we shook hands, she looked into my eyes and squeezed my hand.
On the way back to the village I was deep in thought. I had done my best and said what I wanted to say to the two teachers. Now I would have to let Fate take care of the rest. And yet, why was there only one person to take the exam? And what was Teacher Chen trying to tell me when she squeezed my hand?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
By that time I had been “dating” Xiao Zhao, the young man in the canteen, for a few months—the old prohibitions had been relaxed. It was the first relationship for both of us, although he was much sought after by the pretty women in our village. Nicknamed Huang-di—King—for his good looks, Xiao Zhao was three years older than me, the seventh of eight children in his family. His mother had died of a heart attack when he was seven and his father had remarried.
Like mine, his parents had been Shanghai business people. Though we came from the same background and had arrived at the farm on the same day, we had walked different paths. While the majority struggled in the paddies, buffeted by the northwest wind, he had worked in the canteen from the beginning—one of the plum jobs in the village. Xiao Zhao hadn’t suffered persecution like the rest of us with tainted blood. In fact, under Representatives Zhao and Cui he had been designated a “Five Goods” Worker—outstanding in five stated areas of political correctness—every year.
My first contact with Xiao Zhao had come after I was released from house arrest. I had been summoned to the brick house and told by Cui to prepare for another struggle meeting that night. By the time he let me go, supper was over. I took my food tin to the canteen, entered the darkened dining room and knocked on one of the serving windows. Xiao Zhao opened the window, took my tin and returned a few moments later, having gone to the trouble of heating up the food for me. I was grateful for the kindness and thanked him.
“Do you really think what you are going through is worth the trouble?” he asked, handing me the food through the serving window. “Why not just go along with them? Take my advice, don’t push against the wind.”
I didn’t speak to him again for two years, then a very strange thing happened. I was at home in Shanghai and my two-week tan-qin was drawing to an end. Number 3 found me in a nearby store where I was doing some last-minute shopping for my return.
“There is an old man in our apartment,” she exclaimed, “and he has a big parcel with him. He says he wants you to take it back to the farm and give it to his son.”
I was at a loss. No one at Da Feng had asked me for a favour.
“He’s well dressed,” Number 3 went on, “with a heavy Ningbo accent. Judging by the way he talks, I bet he used to be a boss.”
I hurried home to find a man exactly as Number 3 had described. Showing me a piece of paper with my address on it, he said that his son, Xiao Zhao, had written and asked him to come and request the favour. He knew his son had said nothing to me.
On the day I arrived back at the farm, Xiao Zhao came to my dorm to pick up his package. He apologized for not asking me ahead of time for the favour. I was confused and too shy to ask him where he had acquired my address.
One day the following spring when I came back from the paddies for lunch, Xiao Zhao met me at my dorm.
“Do you have any fresh water?” he asked. “The pump is not working.”
From then on, he would visit our dorm a couple of nights each week. Many of the girls were happy to see him. He would say “Hello, everyone!” and be entertained by hopeful females, plied with cookies and tea. But gradually he spent more and more time talking to me, and it soon became clear that I was the one he had come to visit.
For the first time, I had someone to talk to. Tentatively, Xiao Zhao asked me about my house arrest, but I gave him no details. I was still ashamed of myself and had decided to take my shame to the grave. Most people didn’t want to relive those days. “Look to the future,” they would say, “there’s no use refrying old rice.” Nevertheless, I was thankful for his concern.
Xiao Zhao was a kind and sympathetic listener, and our talks were the start of our relationship. I was flattered that he had chosen me when so many women were attracted to him, but at first I was reluctant to begin dating him, and said so.
“Is it because you haven’t written back to your pal Xiao Qian yet?”
“How did you know about that?”
He laughed.
“Oh, I have friends in the post office.”
He kept our relationship from his family. He was worried that his parents, especially his father, would reject it. Boss Zhao, a strict traditional Chinese father whose authority extended to every aspect of his children’s lives, especially their choice of partner, had insisted that Xiao Zhao not involve himself in any relationship until he left the farm. That was why Xiao Zhao had resisted all the women who would have loved to be his girlfriend.
“It was you I was interested in,” he told me, “ever since I saw you the first time.”
“Why did you wait so long to let me know?”
“Well,” he answered, “you always seemed to be in trouble of one kind or another.”
Although it was not the answer I wanted to hear, I accepted it. At least he was frank with me.
I didn’t tell anyone in my family about him, either. I didn’t know how long our relationship would last; most of those on the farm were short-lived. Besides, I didn’t want another reason for Great-Aunt to get stirred up.
On the day I took my exam, Xiao Zhao came to see me in the evening. We sat outside the dorm, as usual. I was utterly exhausted, but peaceful. Xiao Zhao was unusually quiet. Finally he spoke.
“Tell me. Will you drop me like a sack of potatoes if you get into university?”
“Of course not!” I answered. “Why are you talking about this? You shouldn’t. It’s bad luck to talk about events in advance.” Great-Aunt’s superstitions had had an effect on me and I thought for a moment he was trying to put a curse on my chance by predicting success before the results were known. I hoped my quick response would make him drop the subject.
