by Anchee Min
The translator looked at my paintings with a stone face.
“Help me! I’ll forever be grateful.”
The translator bit her lip. She looked at her watch.
“I am so sorry to bother you.” I wept.
The translator stared at me in silence, then abruptly stepped out of the room.
{ Chapter 2 }
I was handpicked by Madame Mao’s talent scouts while hoeing weeds in a cotton field. The year was 1976. I was working in a labor camp near the East China Sea. Half of China’s youth had been sent to labor camps in the country. Mao had won the Cultural Revolution. Using the students, calling them the Red Guards, he had successfully eliminated his political opponents. But the youth had started to cause unrest in the cities, so Mao sent them to the countryside. He told us to get “a real education by learning from peasants.”
It didn’t take long for us to realize that we were in hell. We thought we were growing rice to support Vietnam, but we could barely grow enough to feed ourselves. The salt-saturated land was hostile. We worked eighteen hours a day during planting seasons. There were a hundred thousand youth between seventeen and twenty-five in the camps near the East China Sea. The Communist Party ruled with an iron fist. Harsh punishment, including execution, applied to those who dared disobey the rules. There were no weekends, holidays, sick days, or dating. We lived in army-style barracks without showers or toilets. We worked like slaves. Since childhood we had been taught that we owed our lives to the Communist Party.
Like a package, I was shipped to the Shanghai Film Studio. I was to be trained to play a leading role in Madame Mao’s propaganda movies, although I knew nothing about acting. I was chosen only because my looks matched Madame Mao’s image of a proletarian heroine. I had a weather-beaten face and a muscled body capable of carrying hundreds of pounds of manure. I froze the moment I heard the sound of a camera rolling, but I tried hard so that I could escape the labor camp.
The nation suffered a double shock in 1976. Chairman Mao died on September 9. When we were still deep in our grief, Madame Mao was overthrown. My status changed in a heartbeat. I was considered “Madame Mao’s trash”—guilty by association. My “proletarian beauty” was “evidence of Madame Mao’s taste and evil doing.”
How could I be disloyal to Mao if I was loyal to Madame Mao? I had never had any say in life. My school textbooks taught me to admire those who died for the cause of Communism. People jumped off buildings, hanged themselves, drank pesticide, drowned in rivers, took sleeping pills, and cut wrists just to prove their loyalty to Mao.
I discovered that killing myself was more complicated than I had thought. I felt undeserving of death, because I was not guilty. It was not my fault that Madame Mao had picked me. She wanted “a piece of a white paper on which to paint any color she liked.” All I did was follow orders. I was even taught how to drink water “in the proletarian style” at the Shanghai Film Studio.
“No, you’re drinking the water incorrectly, Comrade Min,” my instructor yelled. “Your pinkie is up, and that’s Miss Bourgeois. You must grab the cup, gulp the water down in one breath, and wipe your mouth with both of your sleeves!”
I had no talent for acting. The camera assistant had to pin the corner of my costume down to hide my trembling. My back was soaked with sweat at the sound of “Action!” I kept picturing myself being shipped back to the labor camp.
I couldn’t sleep. I remembered the freezing winter at the labor camp when I woke up to discover that a mother rat had given birth by my feet. I dreaded the taste of the salt water from the man-made pond. I brushed my teeth with water that carried living organisms in the bottom of my mug. My fingernails and toenails were stained brown from chemical fertilizers. Fungus and infections made my skin crack. The infection spread between my toes and caused them to bleed. The skin on my face peeled off along the sweat lines on each side of my nose.
The manure pit was where we did our personal business. I had to squat on a wet wooden board. It took me a week to figure out how to balance like an acrobat while taking a shit. I had to swing both arms behind my back in order to keep mosquitoes from attacking—the kind of mosquitoes with needle-sharp mouths that could shoot through sturdy canvas. If I fell, below me in the pit swarmed millions of maggots.
I didn’t fear hardship but the permanence of it. I could endure carrying a hundred pounds of manure balanced across my shoulders from a bamboo pole with two buckets hung by rope. I walked in knee-deep water across countless rice paddies. I worked day and night shifts. I was proud of the calluses developing between my neck and shoulders. Then an accident injured my spinal cord—a rotten bucket rope broke and I lost my balance and fell into the canal. From then on I was unable to bend my back. I had to kneel in the muddy waters to continue planting rice.
As the guilty one, I was ordered to attend public rallies denouncing Madame Mao. The former first lady’s victims marched onstage, giving their accounts of the torture they had endured. Nobody mentioned Mao. His wife was held solely responsible for the millions of deaths during the Cultural Revolution. She was sentenced to death.
I watched the trial on television. Madame Mao delivered her last performance like the heroine in her propaganda opera. Waving both arms in the air, she shouted, “I am Mao’s dog! Mao asked me to bite, I bit!”
Looking at me with a triumphant smile, one of the old actresses revealed that in her fight against Madame Mao, she had taught me no valuable lessons in acting. “I made sure that our time together was wasted. Min is no innocent newcomer. She was Madame Mao’s foot soldier.” Her wrinkled face blossomed like an autumn chrysanthemum. “Look at Min’s flushed and exhausted face. I am certain that she was plotting tricks. The dark rings around her eyes show that she is fully aware of her role—a bourgeois individualist. Down the drain, finally!”
I had long stopped my correspondence with Yan, my best friend at the labor camp. The last thing I wanted to do was harm her with my negative status. My mother told me that the officials from the film studio had come to my home to announce my downfall. My father believed that my mother had made things worse by claiming my innocence.
My mother was known for being politically backward at her work unit. She not only did not know how to recite Mao’s teachings correctly, but she was in denial about anything she didn’t wish to happen. For example, she didn’t pursue a man who tried to molest me when I was seven years old. I walked home after school one day as a second grader, and the young man approached me asking for help reading a directory in an apartment building. Because I was too short to reach the directory board to identify the characters, the man lifted me. The man wouldn’t let me down after I finished identifying the characters on the board. “There is another character on the second floor’s board that I need your help with,” he said.
We went up, but there was no board. I asked to be let down. The man refused. He held me and sat down on the staircase. I told him that I wanted to go home. He said that he would only let me go if I would let him see my underwear. I was willing to please an adult, but my underwear was too torn and dirty to be seen. The man forced me. I struggled to get away. The sound of a door slamming at the far end of the hallway allowed me to escape.
I reported what had happened to my mother as soon as I arrived home. My mother said that she didn’t want to hear about it, which confused me. When I mentioned his interest in my underwear, my mother screamed, “No! It didn’t happen. It can’t happen!”
My mother might have been helpless and incapable, but she was a domineering figure in my life. She threatened to disown me after I was honored by my elementary school principal for following his order and denouncing my favorite teacher as an American spy. My mother refused to hang my award certificate on the wall, which read MAO’S GOOD CHILD. Other parents would have been thrilled and honored.
My mother said that the school was turning her children into monsters. She didn’t believe that Mao’s books should be the only books children read. I wondered if I
should report her to the authorities. It was a joke to me that my mother had earned a college degree in elementary education. She told me that she never got a chance to teach a real class because she was unable to discipline her students. Mother was repeatedly transferred from bad schools to worse schools. Eventually, she was dumped into a school crowded with troubled teens and convicts.
Mother was nicknamed “Teacher Idiot” at her work unit. Her last name was Dai, which also can be pronounced as dai—“retarded/idiot.” I fought with my mother and tried to get her to act “normal.” I didn’t care that I was breaking her heart when I told her that she deserved the nickname Teacher Idiot. I didn’t stop trying until one day my uncle, my mother’s younger brother, revealed the root of my mother’s mental illness.
My uncle said that my mother had suffered a trauma at the age of eight. It took place during a journey in 1938. The family was on a ship sailing from Shandong province to Shanghai, escaping the Japanese. My mother’s closest siblings were dying of typhoid. Superstition made people believe the ship would sink if children died on board. My mother watched as her sister and brother were thrown into the ocean while still alive.
I remembered my mother’s obsession with water. She would sit for hours on end facing water, be it the Huangpu bund or a pond in People’s Park. When there was no water, she would sit facing a picture of water. Resting her chin in her hand, she would stare into the scene. I once stood behind her to see how long she stayed there. I hoped that she would turn around and see me, but she never did. It was I who ran out of patience. My uncle’s explanation made sense.
Mother never told me the reason why we had to offer steamed bread to a homeless old tailor who lived under a staircase next door. The man had a potato-size tumor growing on the back of his head. I begged my mother to let me have a bite of the bread first. She refused. “You don’t give people your leftovers and call it kindness.”
One day, my mother picked us up from school early. She wore a white cotton mask, and it wasn’t cold. I asked why she had to wear a mask. She replied that her tuberculosis had worsened. Doctors had declared her contagious. This was the reason she was given permission to leave work for three months.
“Let’s celebrate,” my mother said. “Finally I get to see my children in daylight!”
After we arrived home, Mother cleaned the house with absolute joy. I was so happy to spend time with my mother.
Mother started to wear black clothes. When I asked her the reason, she explained, “I’ll be in the right clothes if I don’t wake up tomorrow morning.” She was smiling, but her words gave me nightmares. I dreamed about my mother lying on her deathbed, asking me to take care of my siblings.
When I asked my mother about men and love for the first time, I was turning seventeen and about to depart for the labor camp. Mother was embarrassed. “Shame on you” were the only words she offered. It is a memory I wish I didn’t have. I never asked Mother a question of that nature again. Throughout school, I had been assigned to sit next to a “bad girl” to influence and help her. She was deemed “morally corrupted,” which meant that she had had an inappropriate relationship with a man. She was looked down on by everyone. I learned from her lesson and avoided attention from any male. Yet I was curious about how a marriage would take place. My mother told me, “A man who is meant to be your husband will look for you when the time comes.”
Unfortunately, the man meant to be my husband never appeared. It wasn’t a problem until I turned twenty-seven. If I had discovered anything about myself, it was that I was unable to attract men. I didn’t know how to approach them, how to express myself and show my interest. My self-confidence was so shaken that I gave up trying. Yet the need for affection pained me.
I had no idea that my mother suffered for me. She was confused that no young man had knocked on my door. Many years later, after my mother passed away, my father revealed the extraordinary efforts she had made. She went to the college campuses around Shanghai and loitered around the medical school buildings. When an appealing man appeared, she would approach him with my photo and ask if he would be interested in dating me. My mother was chased off by campus security guards.
I was in tears imagining my mother in such a humiliating position. It was the only way she could think to help me. I imagined her pain and her bravery. It was only then that I realized the depth of her love.
My father hated to be dragged by my mother and her children on any kind of outing. His only passion was astronomy. During the week he labored at the print shop and had no time to work on his own project. Sunday was his only time. He resented doing anything except sitting in front of his little desk working on his star charts. I watched my father stare into the night sky and asked him why he was interested. He replied that it was because the stars wouldn’t hurt him.
My mother said that my father had little “guts,” or courage, left. The first time he lost his guts was when Japanese soldiers invaded his village in 1937. His family’s front yard was turned into a military training ground. The teenage Japanese soldiers were scared of killing at first. They were drilled until they became killing machines. My father witnessed his cousin tied to a post and poked to death with bayonets. He was never the same after that.
The second time my father lost his guts was over a postcard to Russia. My father was twenty-seven years old. He had been in touch with a Russian professor who encouraged him to go to Moscow University to study astronomy. My father wanted to know if he would still be permitted to go, since China was breaking ties with Russia. My father didn’t want to be accused of being secretive, so he communicated in an open way that he thought would be safest. He sent a postcard for everyone to see with his question addressed to the professor through the Russian embassy in China.
Forty years later, my father learned that the postcard never reached the Russian embassy. Instead it landed on the desk of the security boss at my father’s work unit. My father was labeled a “potential traitor,” although he was never notified. He didn’t understand why he was never promoted no matter how well he did his job.
To be strong and dependable was what my parents expected of me. No matter how scared I was, I had to wear a brave mask. I was made a caretaker as soon as I could walk. I closed the windows so the neighbors wouldn’t complain to my mother about my younger sister’s crying. After we four children grew into adults, the six of us shared one room. There was no privacy. Everyone was constantly in each other’s way. We shared a toilet with twenty other neighbors. Beating the morning toilet rush was always a challenge. Relationships between neighbors were strained because the toilet room was also used as a kitchen, laundry, and sink. I could be waiting for my neighbor’s mother to get off the pot while watching his sister cooking breakfast on the stove, his daughter brushing her teeth by the sink, and another neighbor washing sheets in the tub next to them. When it was my turn to use the toilet, I was always embarrassed. I dreaded the stink. Someone taking a shower meant that nobody could use the space.
{ Chapter 3 }
The shadow of a girl stood in front of my mosquito net. It was dawn and the temperature was freezing. I heard her climb down from her bed, go out to use the washroom, and then return. Her name was Chen Chong. Later, in Hollywood, she would become Joan Chen, a woman who embodied beauty, grace, and glamour. She would be the sex symbol of Asia. But for now, she had just turned fifteen and was only one of my roommates. The day I met her she had come with her grandmother. The girl had an egg-shaped face, ivory-smooth skin, and a pair of large almond-shaped, crystal-clear eyes. They reminded me of a dragonfly. She had a straight nose and a petal-like, full-lipped mouth. She wore a homemade sleeveless white shirt. I noticed her strong shoulders. According to her grandmother, she was a swimmer and a member of a rifle shooting team at her middle school. She had been discovered by the Shanghai Film Studio talent scout. The girl was timid and shy. She hunched her back to conceal her developing chest. Her grandmother had gently pushed her toward us, asking her to introd
uce herself.
The girl revealed her cute “tiger teeth” as she smiled. Her hair was tied into two buffalo horns. She didn’t introduce herself with a sloganlike phrase of our time, such as “I’m here to follow the Communist Party’s call, to learn from my comrades, and to give all my heart and soul to serving the people.” Instead she spelled her father’s name, first and last, followed by her mother’s name, then finally her own.
The dorm-mates giggled. “This girl must have been drilled by her grandmother on what to do when lost in the city.” When asked how she came to be here, the girl replied that she had been ordered to take acting lessons. She was assigned to play a child Communist in Madame Mao’s propaganda film, but the production had been canceled. She had no idea what to do or where to go next. She brought her schoolwork with her because her parents were not pleased that she was missing school.
When asked to explain the meaning of her first name, she replied, “Chong means to charge forward.” I learned that her parents were physicians and that her grandma was the editor in chief of the popular book The Family Medicine. The elderly lady asked everyone to help her granddaughter mature. Since there were only upper bunk beds available, the grandma picked one opposite mine. She tied bamboo sticks around the bed frame to support a mosquito net. When finished, she took out coils of rope. She rounded the bed with the rope to create a kind of barricade. She feared that Chong might fall off the bed at night. “The child has never slept in a bunk bed, and she loves to roll in her sleep.”
Chen Chong sucked on sweet-and-sour dried plums. She hurried her grandmother to depart. Afterward, she joined us for the martial arts practice class, and then a rally denouncing Madame Mao.
