The Good Women Of China

by Xinran

  I studied Russian and Military Communications at the academy, where almost all my classmates came from the countryside. Because the main admission requirement was the right political background, there were enormous differences in our levels of education. I was the best student in the class because I had attended one year of senior middle school. On top of that, I seemed to have a gift for languages, for my Russian marks were always very good. The instructors in the department all said I had the makings of a diplomat, and that it would be no problem for me to be an interpreter at the very least. I worked very hard, and never stopped studying on account of the rheumatism that I had had since I was a child. I wanted to repay the kindness of the villagers who had raised me.

  Hongxue, a year ago, I was no longer able to avoid the reality that I had grown up, and I was painfully aware of being a mature woman. You don’t understand this yet, but you will in a few years.

  Little sister, I was the woman you wanted to ‘save’ on the hill behind the hospital.

  I wasn’t being hurt, I was with my boyfriend . . .

  Dr Zhong and the others sent us to the Department of Military Discipline. My boyfriend was locked up and interrogated, and I was sent back to the hospital under house arrest because I needed medical treatment. That night, my boyfriend, who had a very strong sense of honour, killed himself. The next day, officials from the Department of Military Discipline, the Public Security Bureau – and other departments too, perhaps – arrived at the hospital to investigate. They said I had supplied my boyfriend with the ‘means to commit the crime of making himself dead to the Party and the people for ever’ (they said that suicide is a crime). I refused to say I had been raped and swore undying love to my boyfriend instead.

  The price I am paying for my love is to be back in this poor village as a peasant. The villagers shun me now – I don’t know if there is a place for me here.

  My boyfriend was a good man, I loved him very much.

  I am not writing you this letter because I blame you in the slightest. I know you are still young, you were trying to save someone out of the goodness of your heart. Promise me not to be unhappy because of this. Otherwise, the price I am paying will be even higher.

  Finally, little sister, are you prepared to answer these questions:

  Why are you unwilling to see your father?

  What made you think of drawing a fly, and why did you make it so beautiful?

  I hope you will be happy and well soon.

  I miss you.

  Yulong

  By candlelight, evening, 30 June 1975.

  Now I know why many people have been ignoring me recently. They all know about Yulong’s tragic end, and that I am the culprit, the criminal who has brought her such unhappiness.

  Yulong, I have done something unforgivable to you.

  Who can forgive me?

  30 July – Oppressive heat before a storm

  I have hardly been outside for days. I don’t want to see anybody. Every word of Yulong’s letter has been carved into my brain. Her questions will not go away:

  Why are you unwilling to see your father?

  What made you think of drawing a fly, and why did you make it so beautiful?

  To answer Yulong, I will have to remember, and return to hell. But Yulong has been banished to hell because of me. So I must make the journey. I cannot refuse her.

  The baby fly is still sleeping in the heart of the liqueur chocolate; nothing more can trouble it now.

  When I was looking at it today, I was filled with envy.

  8 August – Hot

  For the last half month it has been constantly hot and humid. I don’t know what is brewing up in the heavens to bring people down here out in sweat like this.

  I need courage, courage to remember. I need strength, and I need willpower.

  Wading through my memories, the pain clings like mud; the hate, which had faded in this white world of illness, suddenly rushes back.

  I want to write back to Yulong, but don’t know where to begin. I don’t know how to answer her questions clearly. I only know that it will be a very long letter.

  For the last three days, I haven’t dared to look in on the baby fly. It talks to me in my dreams . . . oh, it’s too hot!

  18 August – Cool

  The heavens have given vent to their feelings at last. The autumn skies are high and the air is clean and fresh. Everyone seems to have heaved a sigh of relief, and expelled the gloom of so many days. The patients, who were sweltering in the hospital, afraid of the heat, now find reasons to go out.

  I don’t want to go anywhere. I have to write to Yulong. This morning, though, I took the baby fly out for a half-hour stroll in a matchbox. But I was afraid that the chocolate would melt and hurt the baby fly, so I put it back in the fridge as soon as possible.

  Yesterday, Dr Zhong gave me a warning when he did the rounds. He said that even though the results of my blood test had shown that I had no serious blood disease, my blood was abnormal because of repeated high fevers and the side effects of the medicine. If I didn’t rest properly, I would be very likely to get septicaemia. Nurse Gao frightened me by saying that people die of septicaemia. She also pointed out that after ten hours on a drip I shouldn’t sit at the desk writing, without rest or exercise. Nurse Zhang thought I was writing another essay for the People’s Liberation Army or Youth of China magazines and asked me eagerly what I was writing about. I have managed to get several of my essays published and Nurse Zhang must be my most enthusiastic reader.

  24 August – Sunny

  Today I sent a letter to Yulong by recorded delivery. The letter was very thick, so it took all the money I had received for one of my essays to pay for the postage.

  I used to dream that my pain could be cleared away somehow, but can I clear away my life? Can I clear away my past and my future?

  I often examine my face closely in the mirror. It seems smooth with youth, but I know it is scarred with experience: heedless of vanity, two frown-lines often appear, signs of the terror I feel by day and night. My eyes have none of the lustre or beauty of a young girl’s, in their depths is a struggling heart. My bruised lips have had all hope of feeling ground from them; my ears, weak from constant vigilance, are unable even to support a pair of glasses; my hair is lifeless with worry, when it should shine with health.

  Is this the face of a seventeen-year-old girl?

  Just what are women, exactly? Should men be classed in the same species as women? Why are they so different?

  Books and films may say it is better to be a woman, but I cannot believe it. I have never felt it to be true, and I never will.

  . . .

  Why is this big fly that came buzzing in here this afternoon always landing on the picture I’ve just finished? Can it be that it knows the baby fly in the picture? I shoo it away but it is fearless. Instead, I’m afraid – what if it is the baby fly’s mother?

  This is serious. I must . . .

  25 August – Sunny

  Yesterday I hadn’t finished when it was time for lights out.

  That big fly is still in my room today. It is very clever. Every time anybody comes in, it goes into hiding, I don’t know where. As soon as the coast is clear, it either lands on my picture or buzzes all around me. I don’t know what it’s doing. I have a feeling that it doesn’t want to leave me.

  In the afternoon Dr Zhong said that if my condition stabilises, the treatment will be proved effective, and I will be discharged to build up my strength at home on a course of medication. The head nurse said that they will be very short of beds from the autumn on, so the people with lingering illnesses will all have to leave the hospital.

  Go home? That would be dreadful!

  I’ve got to think of a way to stay on.

  26 August – Overcast

  I hardly slept all night. I thought of many ways out, but they all seem impossible. What can I do?

  It’s probably quickest to infect myself with a disease, but access to the
contagious-disease wards is restricted.

  Today my head was so full of how to stay on that I missed a step at the canteen. One foot stepped into mid-air and I fell down. I got a big purple bruise on my thigh and a gash on my arm. When the shift changed, Dr Yu told the nurse to dab some more ointment on my arm. She said I had a weak constitution and could easily get septicaemia, and urged the nurse to watch out for flies when she changed my bandage, saying that flies were great carriers of disease.

  At night the duty nurse said there were flies in my room and he wanted to spray it.

  I didn’t want the big fly to be killed, so I told him I was allergic to fly spray. He said he’d swat the flies for me tomorrow instead. I don’t know where the big fly is hiding. I plan to leave the window open while I’m sleeping so it can escape. I don’t know if that will save it.

  27 August – Drizzling

  I couldn’t save the big fly. At 6.40 a.m. Dr Yu came to check the room and swatted it on my picture. Saying that I wanted to keep the picture, I stopped Dr Yu from getting rid of the big fly, and put it in the fridge with the baby fly. I don’t know why, but I’ve always felt they had a special relationship.

  I think the wound on my arm is slightly infected. It’s come up in a big red lump, and I’m finding it very uncomfortable to write. But I told the trainee nurse who changed the bandage that it was all right and there was no need to apply fresh ointment. To my surprise, she believed me! The long-sleeved hospital pyjama top covers my arm completely.

  I hope this will work.

  ‘Flies are great carriers of disease.’ Dr Yu’s words have given me an idea, which I’ve decided to try out. I don’t care about the consequences, even death is better than going home.

  I’m going to squash the big fly into the cut on my arm.

  30 August – Sunny

  Success! My temperature has been going up and up for the last two days. I feel very ill, but happy. Dr Zhong is very surprised at my turn for the worse; he is going to do another full blood test on me.

  I haven’t visited my dear little fly for the last few days. I feel like I’ve got cramp all over my body.

  Baby fly, I’m sorry.

  7 September

  Yesterday evening I was taken to the main hospital here.

  I’m very tired and sleepy. I miss my baby fly, I really do.

  And I don’t know if Yulong has replied to my letter . . .

  I finished reading this diary as the sun cast its first rays in the east, and the noise of people arriving for work began to filter through from neighbouring offices. Hongxue had died of septicaemia. A death certificate was included in the box of papers, dated 11 September 1975.

  Where was Yulong? Did she know about Hongxue’s death? Who was the woman in her forties who had left the box for me? Were the essays that Hongxue had published as beautifully written as the papers in the box? When he learned of his daughter’s suicide, did Hongxue’s father feel remorse? Did Hongxue’s mother, who had treated her daughter as an object of sacrifice, ever discover anything of a maternal nature?

  I did not know the answers to these questions. I did not know how many sexually-abused girls were weeping amongst the thousands of dreaming souls in the city that morning.

  3

  The University Student

  Hongxue haunted me. She seemed to gaze at me with helpless and expectant eyes, as if begging me to do something. An incident that took place a few days later deepened my resolve to find a way to make my radio programme more helpful to women.

  At about ten o’clock that morning, I had just cycled up to the radio station when a colleague leaving after the early shift barred my way. She told me that an old couple had arrived at the station, ranting about having a score to settle with me.

  ‘What for?’ I asked, astonished.

  ‘I don’t know. They seem to be saying that you’re a murderer.’

  ‘A murderer? What do they mean?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I think you’d better keep out of their way. When some of these listeners get going, there’s no reasoning with them.’ She yawned. ‘Sorry, can’t fight it. I’ve got to go home and sleep. It’s torture having to come in at four thirty for the early news. Bye.’

  I waved goodbye distractedly.

  I was anxious to find out what was happening, but had to wait for the External Affairs Office to deal with the matter.

  At nine o’clock that evening, the office finally passed on a letter that the old couple had given them. The colleague who delivered it said it was the suicide note of the couple’s only child, a nineteen-year-old girl. Afraid that I would be too disturbed to go on air after reading it, I put the letter in my jacket pocket.

  It was after half past one in the morning by the time I left the studio. It was only when I had fallen into bed at home that I dared open the letter. It was stained with tears.

  Dear Xinran,

  Why didn’t you reply to my letter? Didn’t you realise that I had to decide between life and death?

  I love him, but I have never done anything bad. He has never touched my body, but a neighbour saw him kiss me on the forehead, and told everyone I was a bad woman. My mother and father are so ashamed.

  I love my parents very much. Ever since I was small, I have hoped that they would be proud of me, happy that they had a clever, beautiful daughter rather than feeling inferior to others because they did not have a son.

  Now I have made them lose hope and lose face. But I don’t understand what I have done wrong. Surely love is not immoral or an offence against public decency?

  I wrote to you to ask what to do. I thought you would help me explain things to my parents. But even you turn away.

  Nobody cares. There is no reason to go on living.

  Farewell, Xinran. I love you and hate you.

  A loyal listener in life,

  Xiao Yu

  Three weeks later, Xiao Yu’s first letter begging for help finally arrived. I felt crushed by the weight of this tragedy. I hated to think of the number of young Chinese girls who might have paid for their youthful curiosity with their lives. How could love be equated with immorality and offending public decency?

  I wanted to put this question to my listeners and asked my director if I could take calls on the subject on air.

  He was alarmed. ‘How would you guide and control the discussion?’

  ‘Director, isn’t this the time for Reform and Opening Up? Why don’t we give it a go?’ I tried to draw justification from the newly fashionable vocabulary of openness and innovation.

  ‘Reform is not revolution, opening up is not freedom. We are the mouthpiece of the Party, we can’t broadcast whatever we like.’ As he spoke, he gestured as if to slit his throat. Seeing that I wouldn’t give up, he finally suggested that I pre-record a programme on the topic. This would mean that the script and any taped interviews could be carefully vetted in advance at the studio and the final, edited programme sent to the monitoring department before it was broadcast. Because all pre-recorded programmes had to pass through so many stages of editing and examination they were considered absolutely safe. With live broadcasts there were far fewer checks in place. Everything was dependent on the presenter’s technique and ability to steer a discussion away from problematic areas. Directors would often listen to these programmes with pounding hearts, since mistakes could lose them their jobs, or even their freedom.

  I was disappointed not to be able to take calls on air. It would take me two if not three times as long to make a pre-recorded programme in this way, but at least I would be able to make one that was relatively free of Party ‘dye’. I set to work recording a series of telephone interviews.

  Contrary to my expectations, when it was broadcast the public response was muted. There was even one very hostile letter of criticism, anonymous of course:

  Before, radio programmes were nothing but strings of slogans and bureaucratic jargon. A slightly different tone had finally been achieved, with something of a human touch, so
why this regression? The topic is worth examining, but the presenter is shirking responsibility with her cold, distant manner. Nobody wants to listen to someone declaiming wisdom from afar. Since this is a topic for discussion, why aren’t people allowed to speak freely? Why doesn’t the presenter have the courage to take calls from the audience?

  The distant effect this disgruntled listener had described was the result of the lengthy editing process. The monitors, long used to working in a certain way, had cut out all the parts of the script where I had tried to introduce a more personal tone into my commentary. They were like the cooks in a big hotel: they only made one kind of dish and adjusted all voices to their accustomed ‘flavour’.

  Old Chen saw that I was feeling hurt and resentful.

  ‘Xinran, there is no point in being angry. Put it behind you. When you walk though the gates of this radio station, your courage is impounded. You either become an important person or a coward. No matter what other people say or what you yourself think, none of it is any use: you can only be one of these two things. You had better face the fact.’

  ‘Well, what are you then?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m both. To myself I’m very important, to others I’m a coward. But categories are always more complex underneath. You were discussing the relationship between love, tradition and morality. How can we draw a distinction between these three things? Each culture, each sensibility perceives them differently. Women who have been brought up in a very traditional manner blush if they see a man’s chest. In the nightclubs there are young women who flaunt themselves half naked.