China Witness

by Xinran Xue

  XINRAN: After your father was detained in front of all those people, how did your neighbours and people like that treat you?

  YISHUJIA: Some were pretty good, and still had dealings with us, but whenever there was the least sign of trouble I'd get called a jailbird's brat.

  XINRAN: How long was your father detained?

  YISHUJIA: Five years, I suppose, though he was sentenced to twenty. My father never accepted it, he appealed, and finally the high-ups sent someone down to examine the scene of the crime and recheck the plans. In the end he was rehabilitated.

  XINRAN: When your father was in prison, how did your mother manage to make a living while bringing up you children?

  YISHUJIA: She was a gatekeeper at a neighbourhood-run chemical factory; later on she did embroidery. We only had twelve yuan a month for a family of five, for food, clothes and everything else, it was very hard.

  XINRAN: Was this the reason why you started work so young?

  YISHUJIA: My mother had no choice – once I'd left home to work there was one burden less on the family.

  XINRAN: After you left, how did the family keep going? Did your mother discuss this with you?

  YISHUJIA: I know for certain that my mother had a very hard time, but she was a strong woman, she never talked about it. [Tears stream down her face.] Whenever I talk about my mother I feel so awful, she suffered so much! She suffered all her life, and she died early too…

  ***

  We sat in silence for a while, but I didn't stop the video recorder. Seeing her weeping in front of me, thoughts of many other women I had interviewed welled up in my mind: how many women in China worked day after day, night after night, toiling away to raise their children in this desert of human culture? We Chinese use our mothers like candles, they melt themselves away to shine their light on others.

  I didn't continue with the question of her mother. I knew it was a very, very painful subject.

  ***

  XINRAN: I know you joined an acrobatic troupe before you were twelve – can you tell me something about your first few years? What was your training like? Where did you perform? What were your leaders like? I think it must be etched deeply in your memory.

  YISHUJIA: At the very beginning I didn't perform, I just had lessons and practised my acrobatic skills – the waist, legs and the crown of the head are very important in Chinese acrobatics. I got up very early every day; in the morning after breakfast we had professional practice and lessons; sometimes in the afternoon we had school, or sometimes the school lessons were in the evening. In those days we could never get enough sleep, everyone was constantly nodding off – one time in somersaulting class I turned a few somersaults and then went to sleep on the spot. The first time I performed I was thirteen. It was the dance "Catching Butterflies" – I can still remember it. I turned three somersaults and very nearly somersaulted myself off the stage. In those days it was very dark at the bottom of the stage – once the stage lights were on you couldn't see anything below the stage.

  XINRAN: What sort of places did you mostly perform in? How did the audience react?

  YISHUJIA: We mostly went up into the mountains and to the countryside. The peasants had no cultural activity at all from one year's end to the next, and they loved acrobatics, which you could understand whether you'd been to school or not, so just about every family came to watch, lots and lots of people. There was no electric light in the countryside in those days, we used big hanging hurricane lamps to light the performances we held to bring cultural entertainment to the peasants, and to promote the Party's policies. Sometimes we'd move on very quickly; we'd put on two shows and then leave, then another two shows and off again. All our things went in two big horse-drawn carts, sometimes we even slept on the carts – from time to time there'd be a thump, and that would be someone falling to the ground. We often slept on the ground; if we did get a room there'd be no windows, you'd sleep over here, and over there the worms would be wriggling in and out. After a while conditions improved a bit – we got a tractor, later on it was trucks, ferries and trains, and in the 1980s, after the Reform and Opening, we even got to take a plane. When we retired we joked that we Chinese acrobats had been on everything except submarines and the Shenzhou VI. [5] Ha!

  XINRAN: You said your troupe went to many villages to perform – how did you do those performances? I think it must be impossible for many young people to imagine: no theatre, no lights, no proper stage, how did you put on a show?

  YISHUJIA: In the countryside we used the threshing grounds. Some of those big threshing grounds had an earth platform, others didn't.

  XINRAN: What was the earth platform for?

  YISHUJIA: I don't know, singing opera perhaps? The countryside was very poor, but you still used to get people who went there to sing traditional opera, trading and singing opera at the same time – I think it was a bit like going to market.

  XINRAN: I've seen that too, a big acrobatic display on market day – hardly ideal conditions for a performance!

  YISHUJIA: Too right! Take juggling stools with your feet: if there happened to be a strong wind, the stool would be blown to one side with one gust, and then, whoosh, it would turn over onto the other side, it was really difficult! If you were juggling umbrellas with your feet, whoosh, one puff of wind and you couldn't find your umbrella at all!

  XINRAN: If you fluffed your performance, what would the locals do?

  YISHUJIA: You'd have to have another go. If you got it right the second time there'd be clapping from the floor, otherwise they'd curse you for a clumsy fool – peasants are very down to earth, you know.

  XINRAN: Did you get used to going to live in the countryside?

  YISHUJIA: At that time I only knew to follow the troupe everywhere it went, I didn't feel anything really. It wasn't that comfortable in winter. I've always had pains in the joints on this leg, and why? It's from one year when it was snowing heavily outside, there was only a grass curtain at the window, we were all very tired, we just went to sleep wherever we fell, huddled in pairs for warmth. One quilt couldn't cover four legs, so our legs stuck out, and my leg got frozen, it itched and hurt like mad, and now I'm old it gives me trouble.

  XINRAN: What did you do for food?

  YISHUJIA: We brought our own kitchen along with us, pots, bowls, ladles, oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar, the lot, and we bought whatever vegetables they had locally.

  XINRAN: Where was the poorest place you went?

  YISHUJIA: There were no rich places in those days. Shangqiu in Henan would have been the poorest. The wife of one of the troupe's members lived in Shangqiu, her children never had a chance to eat any meat, or to buy fish. The winters were bitterly cold, and for New Year she'd make the children grope for small fish in the ditches, and their New Year feast would be the whole family clustered around a pot of simple fish soup.

  XINRAN: How long did circuit tours like this go on for?

  YISHUJIA: Right up to the Cultural Revolution. Before that we went to the countryside at fixed times every year to put on shows for the peasants, but after the start of the Cultural Revolution we slowly stopped going to the countryside, and stuck to doing revolutionary performances in the city. In any case, our wages from the state were the same wherever we were – I got 29.5 yuan every month for ten years, which nowadays is barely enough for a cheap family meal out!

  XINRAN: When you think about the revolutionary operas, does it seem ridiculous? I find it very strange. I thought a lot about this before I came to hear your story, I suppose you can insert revolutionary slogans into things like opera, ballet or plays, but how do you add revolutionary slogans or quotations from Chairman Mao into acrobatics?

  YISHUJIA: It was ludicrous really, we were all idiots. We acted out battles, or things like "catching a spy", or taking American soldiers prisoner, that kind of revolutionary stuff, all fighting and killing. Some of the acrobats had good voices, so they'd sing a revolutionary song while making showy gestures, but I couldn't sing. Somet
imes we did fancy work with staves, and that was the PLA fighting a battle. And tumbling? Boys would do the big somersaults, girls would do the fill-in parts in the background, cheering "Ten thousand years of long life to Mao Zedong!" Basically, all the acrobatic skill was lost. When we went to the army units to show our support, we'd perform "In Praise of Men He", because we wanted to stick to the revolutionary model. This Men He was a hero of the Liberation, he died a hero's death to help the common people. Those of us who were playing the common people all had to wear Red Guard armbands.

  XINRAN: During the time of the Cultural Revolution, nobody in China could avoid making a public statement of their position, including foreigners. Those who went along with it survived, those who went against it perished. What were your feelings when you had to change from performing in your national costume to Red Guard costumes?

  YISHUJIA: Nobody dared to have an opinion in those days, we just knew we had to go along with the revolutionary image, it was the Cultural Revolution, you couldn't do anything else. And we really felt that national costume was old, we should smash the old and embrace the new, so we ought to wear something new. It's no different from young people these days who wear those rubbishy clothes to keep up with the fashion, at the time that's what we thought.

  XINRAN: So what was the difference between what you performed then and the things you did before?

  YISHUJIA: Originally it was pure skill and art. During the Cultural Revolution it was just revolutionary gestures, and you had to force words into the acrobatic numbers, to promote Mao Zedong Thought.

  XINRAN: So our traditional acrobatic arts were just actions put to music, then in the Cultural Revolution you started talking, like in a play? yishujia [laughs heartily]: Yes, it was all talk.

  XINRAN: I can't imagine what kind of acrobatic performance that would be! Who did the talking? How did they speak? Don't you need breath control for acrobatics? Could you control your breath while you were talking?

  YISHUJIA: The movements didn't matter, the important part was shouting slogans and making revolutionary gestures. For example, when I was doing fancy work with a stave, after I'd completed a set, I'd say: "Revolution is not a crime, rebellion is just! " before I went on to the next part. Thinking about it now, it was truly ridiculous. At that time everyone was a lunatic, some were genuinely crazy, some pretending to be crazy; if you weren't crazy you didn't come up to the demands of politics, or match the current ideology.

  XINRAN: You're a National Level One performer, what is your greatest accomplishment in the field of acrobatics?

  YISHUJIA: How much do you know about acrobatics?

  XINRAN: I don't understand it, I've only seen it, it's very mysterious to me.

  YISHUJIA: Some people say that acrobatics is a catch-all designation for every kind of art that involves the human body surpassing its normal limits. Actually that's inaccurate. Acrobatics includes art, animal training, farce, vocal skills (including animal impressions and funny voices, puppet theatre, shadow plays and the like), and many other different types and varieties of strange techniques and skills, like sword swallowing, fire eating, cutting people or horses into pieces, everything of that kind. For this reason, the ancients also referred to acrobatics as "Strange Theatre", the "Hundred Acts" and "Juggling Theatre".

  Compared with the acrobatics of other countries, Chinese acrobatics has its own special features: we attach a lot of importance to the skills of the waist, legs and top of head, this is what the phrases "artistic acting and lively fighting" and "tumbling from Peking Opera, skills with the head from acrobatics" are referring to. Seeking stability in the midst of risk, seeking peace in the midst of movement, seeking strangeness in the midst of the ordinary to attain perfection; the special characteristics of this art are displayed most plainly in gucai juggling: the performer wears a simple long robe, but can produce a thousand marvellous things from it; its philosophy is creating being from nothingness, light and heavy side by side, paper-thin flowery umbrellas, coloured balls, all kicked up high to flutter, twist and float.

  Chinese acrobatics is very adaptable: you can set up a stage and put on a show in squares, theatres, streets or hotel rooms, for as many as a hundred people or as few as one. All this is the unique charm of our acrobatics, and China is internationally acknowledged to be the best country in the world for acrobatics.

  My specialities were the diabolo, magic tricks and light and heavy foot juggling. Heavy foot juggling is juggling with stools, light foot juggling is with umbrellas. You could say my best skill was heavy foot juggling, that's the juggling with stools; after that comes "mountain country drums and gongs", which I invented, playing music with the hands and feet, the feet beat drums and the hands beat other drums, the feet play the music while the hands keep the beat. When I was young, I was at the top of a human pyramid, and they juggled me along with the stools; as I got older and heavier I moved lower down the pyramid; in the last decade or so I was the one juggling all the people and stools!

  XINRAN: How many performances have you given in your life?

  YISHUJIA: I can't remember how many performances I did in how many places, but I do remember clearly that in South America alone I was in over five hundred shows.

  XINRAN: Your troupe doesn't have any records?

  YISHUJIA: Hardly any records have been preserved from the Cultural Revolution, and they only started keeping records on the arts in the nineties. I must say, it was tragic, the way all those cultural relics were burned; in the palaces of the Tang dynasty [ad 618-907] Chinese acrobatics was as important as music and dance, there were said to be many records in the history books. After the Song and Yuan dynasties [tenth-fourteenth centuries ad], song, dance and music were less highly regarded, acrobatics gradually became one of the humble professions, a poor man's job. In those days, who would keep records about poor people? Apparently, our troupe didn't start keeping records until after the Liberation. It's a shame they were all burned in the Cultural Revolution, a sin and a shame.

  XINRAN: Before we came here we consulted many reports on you in the media. How many countries have you visited?

  YISHUJIA: Well, we went to Japan for the first time in 1981; after that we were flown all over the place: Pakistan, Japan, America, Sri Lanka… what country's Manila?

  XINRAN: It's the capital of the Philippines.

  YISHUJIA: The Philippines, that's right. And then we stayed in Colombia for over a year, but we never performed in Europe.

  XINRAN: What were your feelings after going abroad?

  YISHUJIA: I had the strongest reactions towards Japan and America, the other countries were pretty much like us. In America, there was such a distance between their country and ours. The people there were more civilised. I'll give you a practical example: when you get on a public bus nobody pushes you, people form a queue without being told to. The cities were cleaner than ours at that time too – after two months there, the soles of your shoes would still be clean. Nowadays our cities are a lot better, some are even cleaner than theirs. In those days we knew that life in the West was better than here, but when some foreigners asked us "Does China have milk candy?" we were furious. "How could we not have milk candy [6]? We've got everything you have!" Behind closed doors we all admitted that they were advanced and we were poor, but we couldn't bear for anybody else to say that Chinese people were bad, or that we were deprived. How can I put it? Dogs don't hate their homes for being poor.

  ***

  What Teacher Yishujia said was quite right. I have felt this very strongly myself: every time someone brings up China's problems or her dark side, I cannot stop myself from trying to rebut them – we need our national pride. This instinct for self-respect is as important to us as the pride of a mother who is convinced that her child is a genius before that child can even walk. In the same way, all of us feel that our home town is a special place, with a beautiful story to tell for every inch of it.

  ***

  XINRAN: You've been to so many places, do
you feel that people in other countries respect China?

  YISHUJIA: Some places aren't so good. In South America people used to swear at us. I was told they were joking, but I could see they looked down on us Chinese. They liked white people. We just concentrated on our performance, we didn't have a lot to do with other people, as soon as the show was over we just went back to our dormitories or the hotel.