Old Town

by Lin Zhe

  That day Great-Auntie had spent seven fen on me, first buying me popcorn and then a taro cake, so I had to listen to her weave her stories with more than my usual patience.

  “Your grandma loved keeping up appearances. No other woman loved keeping up appearances more than she did. And no other woman was more strong and unyielding. At the time no one realized that your grandpa had been arrested. For several months there was no news of him at all. It was very possible that he had already ‘eaten a bullet.’ She told all the Guos that Ninth Brother had gone to Shanghai to visit friends. I myself supposed that was where he had really gone. As for the story of your grandpa in Shanghai, I’ll wait until you’ve grown up before telling you more about that. Your grandma was all alone in the house, but she was so clean and particular about things, even if she cooked at home, the clothes she wore were starched with rice water and ironed stiff and smooth. Aiya! At that time it was really my fault…your great-uncle was blowing his stack practically every other day, so I ran over to your house and as always burst into tears in front of your grandmother. I’m old now and my tears have all dried up. But when I was young my tears could be worse than your mama’s. One night your grandpa all of a sudden returned. I was the one who opened the door. Just guess what I saw!”

  Great-Auntie’s tense and mysterious look made my little hairs stand on end.

  “What?”

  “A ghost! A shadowy figure stood there in the moonlight, as dry and thin as a scrap of paper and with a shaggy clump on top you couldn’t tell was beard or hair. I was so shocked when this figure called me ‘Big Sister’ in Ninth Brother’s voice. As I grabbed the gateway for support, my legs just went soft under me and I keeled over. That was the only time in my whole life that I fainted. I felt like the lightest of light feathers floating away in the wind. I saw your grandma lighting an oil lamp and coming out of her room—your home still didn’t have any electric lights at the time. ‘Ninth Brother, is that you?’ your grandma asked. When your grandpa saw Second Sister, he threw himself like a little child into your grandma’s arms and began to cry. What it was…your grandpa’s name had already been listed as one of those to be shot. Suddenly a high government official checking names released him. The foreign Buddha protects your grandfather. With him, calamity always changes into good luck.”

  I was so captivated by this story I hardly breathed. “What crime did Grandpa commit that he got taken away to be shot?”

  “It was the movement, the Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries Movement.”

  “Oh!”

  I didn’t ask any further. Even though I was still a kid, I already knew that a “movement” was a time of emergency and any unforeseen thing could happen. There was neither reason nor logic to it.

  2.

  ONCE AGAIN THE postman had become the person Second Sister most longed to see, for she was awaiting letters from her three children. There was no rule to Baohua and Baosheng’s letters. Sometimes several would come in quick succession and sometimes two or three months would go by without a single word from either of them. But Baoqing, off to Korea in the army, ensured his parents had a letter from him regularly each month. Whenever she wasn’t doing something at home, every morning at ten-thirty she would stand in the gateway respectfully awaiting the postman. Usually the only thing he handed her was The Old Town Daily News, which Ninth Brother had subscribed to.

  On this day, it was still just the newspaper. Watching the back of the postman as he pedaled off, Second Sister again couldn’t repress a twinge of disappointment.

  She took the newspaper to the clinic and handed it to her husband. “I thought today we’d receive Baosheng’s letter. Oh, that child, still heartless as ever.”

  The doctor had his head in the newspaper. “You know he’s heartless, so don’t get all wrought up by it.”

  As there weren’t any patients for the moment, Second Sister just sat down at the examining table and waited for Ninth Brother to discuss the latest important political developments reported in the news. This was right during the “Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries” period. Floods of print were devoted to “eliminating counterrevolutionaries,” and again a number of these elements “had fallen into the nets of heaven and the snares of earth.”

  The doctor looked up, perplexed, “Are there really so many counterrevolutionaries?”

  Three years before, because Second Sister was literate and the dependent of a soldier of the Revolution, she had been elected a cadre of the residents’ committee and a representative of the neighborhood women. She frequently participated in senior-level organizational meetings and her ideological consciousness was now fairly high. “That’s why the district cadres all say we have to wipe our eyes clean and heighten vigilance. The reactionary forces are always trying to overthrow the new society.”

  The doctor’s expression grew even more puzzled. “Everyone repeats the saying, ‘The superior ones are those who know and understand the times.’ How come these other people just won’t grasp reality? Nowadays, everyone has work; everyone has clothing and sufficient food to eat. So what’s the matter? Isn’t this exactly the peaceful life that ordinary people wanted?”

  As he saw it, the so-called counterrevolutionaries and forces of reaction weren’t abstractions but real and living individuals.

  Second Sister reflected on this. She thought of the new term “class struggle” that she often heard at the most recent meetings, and parrotlike she said, “This is probably the class struggle that the leading cadres talk about.”

  When the work groups were being divided into separate classifications, the Lin family was designated as “urban poor,” defining them as part of the proletariat class. The rice shop boss at West Gate was classified as “small capitalist,” which meant one of the exploiting classes. After going to Taiwan, their two sons had broken off all contact with the family, and the owner’s wife grew seriously ill from pining for them. Dr. Lin often went to her home to treat her and the two families became very close indeed. How does this business of class struggle come into the picture?

  “The class struggle is very complicated,” Second Sister added. The doctor gave a laugh. “I see that you don’t understand it very well either. Go to the meetings more often and keep on raising your ideological level.”

  He strongly supported Second Sister’s participation in social activities. In this way she could divert her thoughts and worries about her children. She was one of those people who couldn’t bear to be idle for very long. The busier and wearier she got, the greater her vitality. After Liberation, if there hadn’t been the residents’ committee work, it is very possible she might have fallen chronically ill, just like the rice shop boss-lady.

  “I’ll go cook now. In the afternoon I’m off to another district meeting.”

  Second Sister stood up and was just leaving the clinic when the doctor said to her, “Second Sister, our friend at the rice shop’s been doing a bit better over the past couple of days now. The best thing you could do would be to take her along to your meetings. If you could make her a group head or something to handle various family matters like you do, her health would benefit greatly.”

  Second Sister turned to look at her husband and gave him a thin smile. But inside she was thinking, “Oh, Ninth Brother, you’re so naive. The rice shop boss-lady is from the exploiting classes. She has to be controlled and changed by the proletariat. How could she possibly emerge as cadre?”

  Unaware of his wife’s thoughts, Ninth Brother went on, “Her sickness is entirely due to psychological factors.”

  “Ninth Brother, I think you also ought to join in these meetings. You’re too behind in your thinking.

  “And what does that mean?”

  “The woman is classified as a small capitalist. She’s not the same class as us.”

  “What’s all this class business? Now it’s all joint private-state ownership. So they’re proletarian class too.”

  “The government doesn’t put it like that.”


  “Second Sister, don’t forget, we Christians preach that everybody’s equal.”

  Second Sister couldn’t utter a single response to this. She was still a devout Christian who never missed worship on Sundays. Every night she would fall asleep in the midst of her prayers. Even so, she had never linked her work on the residents’ committee with “the Word of God.”

  “As members of the proletarian class we can’t be arrogant and look down on other people,” said Ninth Brother, looking appraisingly at his wife. “Just think for a minute; if it hadn’t been for the Japanese bombing the Lin family ancestral home, or if the Guos hadn’t produced wastrels and drunks, how would we be classified now?”

  Yes! How would we then have been classified? On the eve of Liberation, Elder Sister’s three Zhang brothers-in-law all had a falling-out and their fighting bankrupted them. After Liberation, they too were evaluated as “urban poor” and, luckily for them, proletarian in class. The government even gave Elder Sister’s husband a comfortable job as a dispatcher at the bureau of industry, and in two years more, he could take his retirement money and live out the rest of his years at home.

  Second Sister considered her own ideological level to be higher than Ninth Brother’s, but when she tried to help him her thoughts would hit a wall and progress no further, like that rusty old clock on the wall in their house. Every time it reached five-fifteen the clock would just stop abruptly. She gave an awkward laugh and asked, “Would noodles be all right for lunch?”

  Ninth Brother nodded yes.

  Before leaving the house, Second Sister changed into the clothes she had ironed the night before and stood in front of the mirror to put on some light makeup. She was going to take part in a big awards meeting for the model dependents of soldiers. Feelings of honor and pride surged within her. In the beginning she had done everything she could think of to keep Baohua from joining the army. Two years before, Baoqing had put on a uniform and went off to fight in Korea and she was now no longer an ordinary housewife. As a women’s representative of the residents’ committee she knew that the country’s interests stood higher than all other principles. At his send-off party she wore a red flower for Baoqing. The photographers took pictures of that moving scene and she framed this page from the newspaper and hung it on the wall. Distinction and glory calmed her yearning for her youngest son. Baoqing was her very lifeblood; however, she hadn’t shed a single tear at their parting. But several times Ninth Brother had cried late at night when he prayed for Baoqing and all the soldiers who had gone to Korea with the volunteer forces.

  At fifty years of age, Second Sister still looked youthful and pretty. She walked into the clinic and told Ninth Brother, “I’m off to the meeting.”

  Ninth Brother was treating some old fellow from the neighborhood and was just then taking his pulse. He looked up at his wife and said, “Off you go then, Director Guo.”

  Over the past few years, people at West Gate who knew them well now called Second Sister, “Director Guo.” Ninth Brother himself often jokingly called her that too.

  His patient was a woman of about the same age as Second Sister, but her face was haggard with cares and grief and all her hair had turned white. She said with a sigh, “Director Guo gets younger with each passing year. Just look at me—still breathing but already halfway into the grave.

  “She’s always trying to improve her mind, that’s why she doesn’t get sick or look old. She’s able to accept whatever happens and always see the good side of things. When she has free time she helps with government in various ways. On Sundays she goes to the church to hear Pastor Chen’s sermons…”

  Just as the doctor said these words, he suddenly felt there was something he wanted to say to Second Sister. He turned his head and watched as she practically flew across the intersection. Smiling, he shook his head and said to his patient, “That’s her for you—already fifty years old, but when she walks the wind still flies out from under her feet.”

  “Director Guo has good fate. Her husband is kind, her children are proving their worth, and she’s still healthy.”

  “She ate bitterness to the fullest earlier in her life. Now that there’s no more bitterness, sweetness has taken its place.”

  The doctor prescribed some medicine for his patient, and again dispensed a basketful of soothing words to her. After several decades of practicing medicine he knew full well the decisive influence of the spirit on the body. He always did his utmost to get patients to let out whatever pent-up grief or anger they held within them and he did whatever he could to guide the reconciliation of their innermost troubles.

  At the district committee hall Second Sister once again wore a large red flower. Over the past few years, one of their drawers was filled to overflowing with the certificates of merit and red flowers she had accumulated. She had been invited to mount the chairman’s rostrum, and facing several hundred revolutionary army dependents, she spoke of her own journey in pursuit of progress. The secretary of the neighborhood committee had prepared the text of her speech and she read it through once beforehand. But when she was on the rostrum she delivered her speech without it in a cool and controlled manner.

  “Originally, I was an ordinary housewife. Raising children was entirely for carrying on the ancestral line, to look after me in my old age, and to see that I would be properly buried. When my daughter Baohua joined the army in 1949, every day I wept and grieved.”

  The secretary had instructed her to be sure not to say she had blocked her daughter’s enlistment into the army—that would have been too reactionary. She was just supposed to tell how she couldn’t bear giving her daughter up and that she cried with a broken heart, and nothing else.

  “When the war to help Korea and oppose America erupted, Imperialist America’s artillery shells landed right at our gate. At that time, I only had my youngest son, Baoqing, with me. He had graduated from the technical college and was just about to get a job and earn some money. But for the motherland I myself sent my son to the battlefield.”

  Applause interrupted Second Sister’s speech again and again. She was now thoroughly intoxicated with her own words. Letting her mind drift a bit, she remembered the words her father had said to her several decades before, his face sad and full of regret. “Second Sister, it is just too bad that you have a woman’s body. If you were a man, with your intelligence and ability you could become a big official for sure.” If Daddy were alive to see me standing in the district government hall making this report, oh how happy he’d be! Her mother had died just last year but she had shared in her daughter’s splendor. The old lady would tell everyone she met that her family’s Second Sister was now a big official. Whenever her little grandchildren fought with the neighborhood kids, she would hobble as fast as she could with her cane over to their doorsteps and warn their mothers, “Our family’s Second Sister is a government official. So don’t you bully my grandchildren!”

  After it was all over, Second Sister did not remove the red flower when she went to her drunkard brother’s home nearby. His wife, now over forty years old, had again added a boy to the Guo family and her month of post-parturition confinement had not been over for very long. The government was promoting births, for with many people came great power, and if the people were many they could defeat American imperialism. She was going to encourage her brother’s wife to keep up her efforts to continue raising the descendants of the Revolution.

  Her oldest nephew, Gan’er, who had barely managed to pass out of grade school, now dug in his heels and refused to study anymore. But the drunkard had never forgotten the ancient precept of studying to become an official, and just then he was at home drinking and smashing crockery onto the floor trying to keep his son in line and continue studying. Second Sister kept thinking about going home to make dinner but was unable to get away for the moment and stayed on to adjudicate the matter.

  When he had sent off the last patient, the sky was already darkening and still there was no sign of Second Sister. As h
e gazed across the intersection he smiled and repeated to himself the old saying, “Having too much fun to long for Shu, having too much fun to long for Shu.”46 He walked into the kitchen where the fire in the oven had gone out. They had just begun to burn coal balls at home and these never burned right. He had to keep relighting the fire almost constantly. He put the little coal burner by the gate and used some old newspaper and small pieces of charcoal to get the fire going. People passing by invariably stopped to ask, “Dr. Lin, what are you doing making your own dinner?” The men in Old Town didn’t go “down” to the kitchen. They carried their teapots with them and waited for their wives to serve the rice and vegetables. The doctor couldn’t care less about what other people thought of this. He saw doing the housework as a repayment to Second Sister. He owed her so much, so very much, in this life, and however much he did for her, these were trifles hardly worth the mention.

  This evening he intended to invite Pastor Chen over to enjoy a few cups of wine with him. Lately the pastor had seemed in low spirits. The pastor had really appreciated the bean curd potage that Second Sister made for him and the doctor got ready to feel his way through recreating this dish. By then, though, the vegetable market had closed so he went straight to Shuiguan’s house beside the river to ask for some bean curd. For two years now, Shuiguan’s wife had been running a bean curd stall. Nowadays, with each of their children gone off to seek a living from doing handicrafts, the husband and wife were enjoying a relatively prosperous life.

  When the doctor arrived at his house, Shuiguan was hugging his teapot and waiting for his wife to serve dinner. Now he excitedly guided the doctor back outside. That very day Shuiguan had bought a new three-wheeler pedicab, and so now he just had to take the doctor out for a spin. Along their way, Shuiguan jingled the crisp-sounding bell as he pedaled the doctor all around the streets of West Gate. All this really appealed to the “little kid” in the doctor and he asked Shuiguan to let him pedal. As he had never learned to pedal anything well, this three-wheeler turned out to be even more intractable than a bicycle. The doctor had no sooner climbed aboard when it just took off and narrowly missed hitting a tree.