The Good Women Of China

by Xinran

  When Jingyi received a copy of the list of the people who would attend the Qinghua anniversary celebration in 1994, she searched it eagerly for Gu Da’s name, but it was not there. When she travelled to Beijing for the event, she brought with her dozens of form letters requesting help, to distribute among her old classmates.

  On the first day of the celebration, people from all over China assembled on the Qinghua campus. The younger people greeted each other excitedly: time had not changed them greatly yet. The older ones seemed more hesitant; for most of them, it was not until they had walked into the room designated for their year and class that they could identify old classmates with any certainty.

  Nobody had recognised Jingyi in the initial mêlée, and she too had been unable to identify anyone at first. A university attendant directed her to the room assigned to her year and class. As she walked in, she immediately saw a man with his back to her, a man whose form would never be unfamiliar to her, no matter how the hardships of life had changed it – Gu Da. Jingyi was overcome; she began trembling, her pulse raced and she grew faint. The young attendant supported her by the arm and asked with concern what the matter was; did she have a history of heart disease? She was unable to speak – she waved her hand to signal that she was fine, pointing at Gu Da at the same time.

  She forced herself to walk towards him, but her heart was so full she felt she could hardly move. Just as she was about to call out to him, she heard him say, ‘This is my wife Lin Zhen, my eldest daughter Nianhua, my second daughter Jinghua and my third daughter Yihua. Yes, yes, we’ve just arrived . . .’

  Jingyi froze.

  Gu Da turned around just then, and was paralysed by the sight of Jingyi. He gaped foolishly. Concerned, his wife asked him what was wrong. He replied in a trembling voice: ‘This . . . this is Jingyi.’

  ‘Jingyi? She can’t be . . .’ His wife had heard the name.

  The three elderly people were overcome, and remained silent for a few moments as they grappled with their feelings. With tears in her eyes, Gu Da’s wife finally told Jingyi that he had only married when he heard that she was dead. Then she made to get up and leave Jingyi and Gu Da alone, but Jingyi held her back.

  ‘Please . . . please don’t go. What we had was in the past, when we were young, but you have a complete family in the present. Please do not hurt this family; knowing Gu Da is happy will be a much greater comfort.’

  Jingyi did not truly mean what she said, but she spoke with sincerity.

  When the youngest daughter heard who Jingyi was, she said, ‘The initial characters of my and my sisters’ names form the sentence “Nian Jing Yi” – in remembrance of Jingyi. My parents say it’s to remember you by. The Cultural Revolution threw so many people’s lives into chaos. Please find it in yourself to forgive my parents.’

  Jingyi suddenly felt calmer, and found the strength to stand up and shake Gu Da’s wife’s hand, saying, ‘Thank you for remembering me, thank you for giving him such a happy family. From today I will be happier, because I have one less worry. Come, let’s go in to the meeting together.’

  Everyone took their cue from Jingyi, and walked towards the auditorium. Once they were seated in their assigned places, Jingyi slipped out and returned to her hotel, where she burned the letters asking for help that she had brought with her. Along with the paper, her long-cherished hopes and her momentary calm melted away.

  Several days later, she pulled herself together to call her work unit and request a few more days’ leave. Her colleague told her that there was a telegram for her from someone called Gu Jian, asking her to get in touch as soon as possible. Jingyi realised that, for reasons unknown to her, Gu Da had changed his name to Gu Jian – that was why her enquiries had been unsuccessful.

  Jingyi took a train south to Lake Taihu, planning to find a house for herself like the one she and Gu Da once dreamed of. She had neither sufficient strength nor money to accomplish this, so she moved into the hotel by the lake instead. She did not want to see anyone, and survived on instant noodles soaked in hot water as she spent the days and nights thinking.

  Jingyi had nearly finished telling her tale. She raised a hand weakly and drew a circle in the air.

  ‘Forty-five years of constant yearning for him had made my tears form a pool of longing. Every day I waited by that pool with confidence and love. I believed that my lover would step out of the pool and take me in his arms – but when he did finally step out, another woman was at his side. Their footsteps disturbed the clear surface of my pool. The ripples destroyed the reflections of the sun and moon – and my hope was gone.

  ‘To continue living, I needed to wash Gu Da and my feelings away. I had hoped Lake Taihu would help me, but forty-five years are too difficult to get rid of.’

  I listened to the emptiness in Jingyi’s voice, anguished and helpless. No empathy could be sufficient.

  I had to get back to PanPan and my work, but did not want to leave Jingyi alone, so I telephoned my father that evening to ask if he and my mother could come to Wuxi to keep Jingyi company for a few days. They arrived the next day. As she was seeing me off from the hospital, my mother said, ‘Jingyi really must have been very pretty when she was young.’

  One week later, my parents returned to Nanjing. My father told me that, with Jingyi’s permission, he had contacted her work unit. They had been looking for her, and immediately sent someone to Wuxi to nurse Jingyi when they heard the news. My father said that, unknown to Jingyi, he had given her colleague a sketchy account of her story over the telephone. The gruff man had broken down, and said, sobbing, ‘We all know how much Jingyi suffered looking for her love, but nobody can describe the depth of her feelings.’

  My father had found out why Gu Da had changed his name, and told Jingyi what he knew. The leader of the Red Guards in the second prison Gu Da was sent to had exactly the same name, so Gu Da was forced to take a new name. The Red Guards changed his name to Gu Jian on all his documents without any authority. Gu Jian had fought with the local authorities to change his name back, but they had merely said, ‘So many wrongs were committed in the Cultural Revolution – who can put them all right?’ Later, someone told Gu Da that Jingyi, for whom he had searched for years, had died over twenty years previously in a car crash, so he decided to let the name Gu Da die as well.

  Jingyi said that women were like water and men like mountains – was this a valid comparison? I put this question to my listeners, and received almost two hundred replies in a week. Of these, more than ten came from my colleagues. Big Li wrote: ‘Chinese men need women in order to form a picture of themselves – as mountains are reflected in streams. But streams flow from the mountains. Where then is the true picture?’

  11

  The Guomindang General’s Daughter

  The subjects discussed on my programme sometimes provoked enormous debate among my listeners and, to my surprise, I often found that my colleagues would want to continue the discussion the next day. The morning after I had presented a programme on the subject of disability, which had elicited particularly varied opinions, I found myself in the lift with Old Wu, the head of Administration. As the lift creaked and juddered to the sixteenth floor, he took the opportunity to talk to me about the previous night’s programme. He was a regular listener of mine, and was eager to share his views and ideas with me. I was touched by his interest. Politics had dulled so much enthusiasm for life in China that it was rare to find middle-aged men like Old Wu who were still curious about things. It was also unusual for people who worked in the Chinese media to watch, listen to or read the medium they worked in: they knew it was merely the mouthpiece of the Party.

  ‘I thought what you discussed on your programme last night was very interesting,’ Old Wu said. ‘Your callers all agreed that we should have compassion and understanding for the disabled. Compassion is easy enough, but I think understanding is not so easy. How many people can break away from their able-bodied mindset and understand disabled people on their own terms?
And the experiences of people who are born with a disability must be distinguished from those of people who become disabled later in life. Of course . . . hey, what’s up? Is the red light on?’

  The lift had jerked to a halt and the alarm light was on, but nobody panicked – breakdowns were an everyday occurrence. Luckily, the lift had stopped at one of the floors rather than in between, and the repairman (one of the most popular people in the building) soon opened the door. As Old Wu got out of the lift he said one last thing to me, almost as if he were issuing an order: ‘Xinran, find some time to have a chat with me soon. Don’t just think about your listeners. Did you hear that?’

  ‘Yes, I heard that,’ I replied loudly as Old Wu walked away.

  ‘So you’ve heard, Xinran?’ A programme supervisor stopped me in the corridor.

  ‘Heard what? I was talking to Director Wu,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you’d heard about the argument the editorial department had yesterday about your programme.’

  Knowing how sharp my colleagues’ tongues could be, I was defensive. ‘What were they arguing about? The topic? Something the callers said? Was it something I said?’

  ‘They were arguing over whether it was sadder to be born disabled or to become disabled later,’ the programme supervisor replied airily as he walked off without a backward glance.

  That morning, the editorial department seemed to have renewed the previous evening’s argument. As I walked into the office, seven or eight people were engaged in a heated discussion; two of the technicians had joined in. They all felt strongly about the topic: some of them were flushed with excitement, others were gesticulating or drumming their desks with pencils.

  I was wary of being dragged into the fray, having experienced the difficulties of addressing the issue of disability with my listeners, who had kept me in the studio long after the broadcast; I had only got home at three in the morning. As unobtrusively as possible, I scooped up the letters I had come to retrieve, and hurried out.

  Just as I reached the door, Old Chen shouted, ‘Xinran, don’t go! You started this fire, so you should put it out.’

  I murmured an excuse – ‘I’ll be back, the boss wants me to see him for a minute’ – and scuttled to take refuge in the station head’s office, only to find him waiting for me.

  ‘Speak of the devil!’ he exclaimed.

  I tensed, fearing the worst.

  ‘Here’s a copy of the register of incoming phone calls. I think there might be the possibility of a really interesting interview there. Take a look and put some ideas together by this afternoon,’ he said peremptorily.

  There was a message for me in the telephone register: the daughter of a Guomindang lieutenant general was in a mental hospital and I was to contact a Dr Li. There were no details that hinted at a good story, but I knew the director was very astute; if he said there was a lead, he was probably right. He had a knack for seeing wider, newsworthy issues behind smaller ones. I had often thought that he would have thrived professionally in a free press environment.

  I called Dr Li, who was brief. ‘This woman is the daughter of a Guomindang general, she’s mentally retarded, but she wasn’t born that way. They say she won some big province-wide prize for essay-writing as a child in Jiangsu but now –’ He broke off suddenly. ‘I’m sorry, can I talk to you in person?’

  I agreed immediately, and we arranged for me to visit the hospital at half past one that day.

  After exchanging a few words of greeting, Dr Li took me to see the woman. A pale, blank face turned towards us as we entered the still white room.

  ‘Shilin, this is Xinran. She’s come to see you,’ said Dr Li.

  Shilin was silent, and her face remained expressionless.

  Dr Li turned to me, ‘She reacts to virtually nothing, but I think we should treat her with respect regardless. She wasn’t born mentally deficient – she understood normal feelings and speech once.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Yesterday, some of Shilin’s family members heard your programme and one of them asked me to make an appointment with you. I’m on duty now, but please wait here for a moment. Shilin’s relatives should be along any minute.’

  I had never been alone with a mentally disabled person before. I tried to talk to Shilin; she seemed to hear me speaking, but she did not react at all. Not sure what to do, I took my sketchpad out and began to draw her. She remained completely still, and paid no attention to what I was doing.

  Shilin was very beautiful. I guessed she was around forty, but the skin around her eyes was clear and unlined. Her features were regular and well proportioned, and her straight nose drew attention to her long, narrow eyes, which turned up slightly at the corners, as if she was about to smile. Her lips were thin, like those of the women depicted in ancient Chinese paintings.

  Before I had finished my sketch, Shilin’s relatives arrived: her aunt and cousin – a mother and daughter. Shilin’s aunt, Wang Yue, was a well-spoken woman, who bore herself with great propriety. Shilin’s cousin, Wang Yu, was in her thirties and worked as an accountant for a magazine publisher.

  Wang Yue said that the night before, the family had switched on the radio before going to bed. She told me that they listened to my programme every night because it helped them to fall asleep. I wondered to myself whether my programme was so stultifying, and did not know whether to be put out or amused.

  Wang Yue’s daughter had obviously noticed the ambiguous expression on my face; she nudged her mother, but Wang Yue ignored her. She told me that they had become very agitated listening to those of the previous night’s callers who had thought that it was much more tragic to be born mentally handicapped than to become so later in life. Shilin’s family disagreed completely, and had felt a good deal of animosity towards those callers, whom they had thought completely wrong.

  Wang Yue spoke passionately. Could people forget the pain of losing something they once had? Surely it was more tragic to once have had knowledge and understanding, and lose them irrevocably than never to have known anything else? Wang Yue said the family had become so worked up over this matter that none of them had been able to sleep. They had decided to prove their case by telling me about Shilin’s life. Shilin’s expression remained wooden as Wang Yue recounted her story.

  Shilin was the daughter of a Guomindang general, the youngest in her family. Unlike her two elder sisters and elder brother, Shilin grew up protected and indulged. When civil war broke out in China in 1945, her father was promoted to the rank of general in Chiang Kai-shek’s army. Unlike the Communists, the Guomindang had lost the support of the peasants. This was a disaster, for the peasants constituted over 98 per cent of the population. Despite being supplied with arms by Britain and the United States, the situation deteriorated rapidly for the Guomindang. Chiang Kai-shek’s army of several million was soon routed and driven to Taiwan by the Communists. As the Guomindang fled eastwards, many of their leaders were not able to arrange for their families to escape in time. Shilin’s had been such a family.

  In the spring of 1949, Shilin was seven, and had been living with her grandmother in Beiping for two years. She was getting ready to return to her parents’ home in Nanjing, to go to school there. Her mother had written to say that Shilin’s father was going away on a campaign so she had to stay in Nanjing to look after the other children and could not travel to Beiping to fetch Shilin. Her grandmother was weak and in poor health and could not manage the journey, so it was agreed that Shilin’s young aunt, Wang Yue, would take her back to Nanjing.

  This was the time of the Guomindang–Communist battles that were to prove decisive. When Wang Yue and Shilin reached the bank of the Yangtze River, the ferry service, the only means of transport between north and south, had just been partially shut down. Piles of goods were massed on both banks.

  As they waited, they heard that there was going to be a battle in Nanjing; the People’s Liberation Army was about to cross the river. Despite this, there was nothing for it but to go on to Nanjing. When they a
rrived in the city, with a great tide of people, they found a red flag flying outside Shilin’s house; a crowd of People’s Liberation Army soldiers had moved in.

  Wang Yue did not stop before the house. She hurried Shilin on and enquired in the shops and tea houses nearby for news of Shilin’s family. Some people had seen the family cars being packed and boxes taken away, and had heard that the family had dismissed many of their servants. Others had heard that the whole family had vanished without trace the day before the Communists crossed the Yangtze. Nobody could give them any definite news, but it seemed that Shilin’s family had fled to Taiwan without her.

  Soon after, Wang Yue received the news that her mother had died while the Communists were searching her house in Beiping – renamed Beijing by the new government – because of her relationship to Shilin’s father. Returning to Beiping was now impossible. Not knowing what else to do, Wang Yue took Shilin to stay in a small guesthouse in Nanjing. One day, the kind-hearted landlord said to her, ‘Didn’t you say you could read and write? The new government is recruiting teachers for new schools – you should apply for a position.’ Wang Yue only half believed him, but she applied anyway, and was taken on as a teacher.

  Though Wang Yue was only twenty – a mere thirteen years older than Shilin – she had told Shilin to address her as ‘mother’ in order to conceal their identities. As ‘mother and daughter’, they were allocated a room by the new government-run school, which also helped them acquire some household items. Shilin was accepted as a pupil in the school.

  Wang Yue made herself up and did her hair to make herself look old enough to be Shilin’s mother. She reminded Shilin every morning not to mention her parents’ names or anything about their old home under any circumstances. Though Shilin kept her aunt’s warnings firmly in mind, she did not realise the full implications of letting anything slip. Children enjoy showing off to each other; once, playing jacks using tiny cloth beanbags, Shilin told her classmates that the little beanbags her father had given her to play jacks with had had little jewels sewn on them. One of her classmates mentioned this at home, and word spread among the adults.