A Boy of China

by Richard Loseby

  ‘Xu Qing,’ I asked once she’d finished, ‘can you ask him what he knows about Mao An Hong?’

  Wang listened to Xu Qing then picked up his blackboard and, with a piece of chalk, wrote a few characters in Chinese with a shaky hand. It seemed like an age before she could read his answer.

  ‘Dead,’ she said sadly.

  Wang rubbed the characters out with his pyjama sleeve and continued writing, as Xu Qing translated.

  ‘Killed . . . by . . . police . . . in Ganzhou.’

  ‘When?’ I asked, trying to swallow the disappointment I was now feeling.

  Wang’s chalk moved again, this time with greater urgency. Then his arm dropped to his side after the exertion.

  ‘Long, long ago,’ read Xu Qing.

  She looked at me sympathetically and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So let me get this straight. What he is saying is that the son of Mao was murdered by police forces — which doesn’t make much sense to me because the police would have been loyal Maoists — and that this happened some time back?’

  She shrugged her shoulders and looked at Wang, who was writing again.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘If it were true, surely someone would have known about this? It would have been global news, and I don’t think even the Chinese government could have swept something that big under the carpet.’

  ‘He says ask Zhou Fung Mu.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  As if expecting my question Wang was already writing the answer. We waited patiently. The chalk was nearly all gone and he had to hold what little remained with his fingertips.

  ‘Ganzhou Chief of Police,’ said Xu Qing finally.

  Wang sighed and sank deeper into his pillows, as if a great weight had been lifted from him. He closed his eyes, but this time they didn’t open again. His breathing was shallow and laboured. I felt guilty that we had used up so much of his precious energy. Down the corridor I could hear the metallic rattle of an orderly’s trolley approaching.

  ‘Perhaps we should go,’ Xu Qing said.

  I nodded, but as I got up from the chair it made a scratching noise against the floor and Wang’s eyes flicked open. His hand grabbed mine and squeezed, then with a chalk-stained finger he drew lines on the crisp white sheet that covered him.

  Xu Qing followed each line and then looked puzzled.

  ‘What did he write?’ I asked.

  Outside the orderly was singing; her voice was shrill and off-key. She came round the corner to find us both standing beside Wang’s frail body. Her song ended abruptly, mid-note.

  ‘Xiaoxin,’ muttered Xu Qing. ‘It means, be careful.’

  NINETEEN

  THE MEN SQUATTED IN A TIGHT CIRCLE UNDER A LARGE POSTER OF a woman advertising face cream. It was hot, even though the sun was past its zenith; a thick haze hung over everything and the hoarding provided the only welcome shade. The men wore baggy green trousers and long-sleeved shirts. The soles of their feet were cracked around the edges, especially at the heels, which bore deep fissures. In the street their carts were parked one behind the other, like cabs at a taxi rank.

  Xu Qing walked beside me saying nothing. I noticed how much older she looked out of her school clothes. The men ogled my pretty dark-haired companion in her short skirt and T-shirt as they smoked cheap cigarettes and waited for their next delivery job. She quickened her step until we were well past.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

  ‘Go to Ganzhou, I guess. Maybe see if I can find out anything more about this man.’

  ‘Zhou Fung Mu?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps there’s more to the story.’

  We walked on a little more before she spoke again.

  ‘In Zhang Xiao San’s book Song in the Clouds, there are times when I think the story is over for the main character, Huo Yunge. But then in the next chapter it begins again and I am happy for her.’

  ‘What happens in the end?’

  ‘She marries a handsome prince.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘No, not good,’ she replied. ‘He’s the wrong prince. She actually wants to marry the emperor.’

  ‘So that’s that?’

  ‘No, she has great ambitions. She doesn’t give up. Huo Yunge becomes a powerful woman in the emperor’s court and then she marries her true love.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. The last thing I needed right now was a discourse on the highs and lows of Xu Qing’s favourite romance novel.

  ‘So you see,’ she continued, ‘her story is just like yours.’

  ‘Come again?’

  Xu Qing skipped along in front of me then turned round, spreading her arms out wide.

  ‘She doesn’t give up of course.’

  Maybe, despite her youthful exuberance, she had a point. After such a promising trail had gone cold, I was down, but not completely out. There was still something of a mystery surrounding Wang’s version of events. Had he been well enough to speak, who knows what else he might have told us. It could be that I was still close to finding out the truth.

  When I told Xu Qing that I would leave the next day for Ganzhou she was upset. Apparently she and her friends had been hoping to take me to Ruijin’s most famous historic site.

  ‘Is it far?’ I asked.

  ‘No, the Red Well is close,’ she said. ‘My friends have arranged transport for all of us to go.’

  Xu Qing wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  ‘Be at the bridge at nine o’clock tomorrow morning,’ she said. Then she kicked up her heels and ran off down a side street, in the direction of her home.

  That night I found a cool alleyway filled with the wood smoke emanating from several family-run kitchens. Assorted wooden tables with miscellaneous chairs had been spread out on the pavement under fluorescent lights and all were occupied by locals or visiting workers. I waited for a while until a table became available and then sat down. No sooner had I done so than a family also moved in. Suddenly, I was the surprise guest rubbing shoulders with Mum, Dad, Granny, Grandpa and a little boy about two years old. He sat on his father’s knee and seemed none too phased about me being there. They ordered without even looking at the menu and, when they saw me trying to decipher its two creased laminated pages, they chose for me as well, including a few bottles of Chinese beer. Everyone laughed when I taught the small boy to say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ and ‘What’s your name?’, though Mum had had enough after the millionth repeat and then made him sit still so that the others could talk. Even though no English was spoken, I was made to feel part of every conversation. Tales were told and, once the effects of the beer took hold, songs were sung. The father wrote the lyrics of one beautiful tune on some paper and I had it translated later, though it’s clear the translator wasn’t quite up to the task:

  Don’t, my love, be jealous of the flower

  your sweat glands perspire great beauty

  Don’t, my love, be jealous of the mountain

  Your sweet voice is high like the cliff

  That I leap from when you come near

  Leave regret for your next life

  Don’t, my love, be envious of the sun

  your eyes are like a burnt-out fuse

  Don’t, my love, be envious of the ocean

  you’re as fat as all the water

  in every stream and every sea

  Leave regret for your next life

  Don’t, my love, resent the trees

  Your spirit is as strong as wood

  Don’t, my love, resent the moon

  Your skin shines like an oil lamp

  to light the way for this weary heart

  Leave regret for your next life

  The inclusion of terms such as ‘sweat glands’ and ‘oil lamp’ in a love song might be questionable, but it still sounded great. And it turned out to be nothing short of a brilliant night out. The family tolerated my gradually improving Mandarin and taught me some new words, all of which went into my journal. For me,
language is an easy thing to learn phonetically, from a real person. Textbooks I find difficult and laborious to wade through, but give me a pen and some paper and I’m happy collecting words and phrases to add to my vocabulary. It’s being in situ that really helps me get to grips with a language. But then, take me out of the country and a few months later its language will be mixed up with other ones I’ve acquired over the years. German is now fused with Persian, French with Pashtu. Because of its wildly different nuances Mandarin survived longer, but it too eventually became a muddle. Despite this, and to my amazement, I can return to a country and, within days or even hours of being back, the correct words slip back into focus. The mind never ceases to amaze.

  We shared the plates of food and drank endless cups of green tea, until junior yawned and it was time to go. I didn’t pay — they wouldn’t let me. It was particularly generous, as it was patently obvious that the father and mother weren’t big earners working in some flash office. Judging by the man’s hands, he probably cleaned or worked a machine. Just like his father and his father before him, probably. Yet they still insisted on treating me to a bowl of noodles.

  It made me wonder about Xu Qing and her family. I got the impression they would be just like these hard-working people. In Xu Qing’s parents’ case, they were pinning all their hopes on their daughter to improve their situation. As I walked back to the hotel, I wondered what I could do to help her — and her loved ones — get ahead in life.

  Early in the morning I got up, showered in the bathroom down the hall, put on the clean clothes I had washed in the sink the previous night, and walked the short distance to the bridge. In June 1934, 86,000 Communist troops under the command of Fang Zhimin had used the same bridge to cross the Mianshui River and eventually hurl themselves at a very surprised Nationalist army to the north, which was vastly superior in number at the time and did not expect an attack on its heavily fortified ‘turtle-shell’ perimeter. With fire coming from all directions the Communists were wiped out. Yet in one sense they were entirely successful. Chiang Kai-shek was fooled into thinking they would attack again at this point, and so brought in even more troops from neighbouring units manning his blockhouse lines. It proved to be a mistake, and was just the opportunity Mao’s First Army needed to escape.

  On 16 October 1934, Mao made the arrangements for his son to be left behind with his own younger brother, Mao Zetan, then ordered a Communist army of about 130,000 to attack Chiang Kai-shek’s weakened defensive blockade to the west, near Yudu. The vast majority, including Mao and He Zizhen, made it through the lines; about 30,000 troops stayed behind to fight, amongst them Mao Zetan.

  Having given Mao the chance to get away, many of these Communists simply melted away into the countryside, though several prominent leaders of this rearguard action were captured and executed by the Nationalists after the fall of Ruijin six months later, including Mao Zetan — the last-known person to have seen Mao An Hong alive.

  The market was already in full swing and I bought a bag of fruit to share, thinking there’d be a car or bus along any minute. But the vehicle that turned up a short while later wasn’t quite what I’d expected. This one had two wheels, was two sizes too small for me and had a spring poking out of its seat.

  Xu Qing’s friends arrived like the Famous Five, on bikes of every description, ready for an adventure. Xu Qing hopped off and explained that, if I pedalled, she’d sit on the rack at the back.

  ‘You can ride a bicycle, yes?’ she asked with a note of concern.

  I’d ridden road bikes hundreds of kilometres in a single day and raced mountain bikes over the toughest terrain, so the prospect of the day’s ride didn’t perturb me in the least — apart from the errant steel spring in the seat. This was remedied when Xu Qing tied one of her old school textbooks on top of it. So, thanks to Applied Mathematics, we were off — albeit without lashings and lashings of ginger beer.

  The route we took was through the town and out past an industrial district that wasn’t showing much industry. Grass grew up through cracks in the road and on the footpaths, making the place seem like a ghost town. High fences guarded concrete grain silos that were stained with rust marks, while, opposite, fields of fallow ground awaited planting. From directly behind me, Xu Qing explained:

  ‘The factory is very modern — built by German men. But there was an argument over money and the Germans refused to teach us how to work the robots.’

  ‘So what now?’ I asked, turning my head so that she could hear.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘We wait. We Chinese are good at that.’

  This reminded me of something Mao Tse-tung had apparently said (though it was also attributed to his second-in-command, Zhou Enlai) to President Nixon in 1972, when asked if he thought the French Revolution had had an impact on modern-day France. His answer, ‘It is too early to tell’, reflected the long-term view the Chinese take of life.

  Dong, Chang and Huang led the way past fields for some distance until we came to a flat, open area dotted with a few traditional houses with walls of packed earth, painted in a weathered red ochre. The roofs were made of grey tiles and had very little pitch, giving the buildings a squashed look, and there was no sign of the gentle architectural curve that typically ran from the peak of a roof down to each corner. There were few windows and some of the walls bore large spray-painted Chinese characters. The houses looked rustic, but unfriendly.

  A little further on, we reached the Red Well. There was a gate in an iron fence that was guarded by a petite woman in full Red Army costume: sky blue trousers, matching long-sleeved shirt and a cap emblazoned with a red star above the peak. She wore a black leather belt around her waist that made it look impossibly small.

  I bought a ticket while the others, being students, went in for free. Aside from the well, which was made of stone, raised by about 30 centimetres and surrounded by a low, red timber fence, there was not much else to get excited about. Someone had left behind a red bucket tied to a length of rope, presumably so that visitors could quench their thirst. But when Dong offered the girls a sip of the water, they turned up their noses and screwed up their faces. Nevertheless, the aura of this austere historical relic was not lost on our party. It was here, they said with a note of reverence, that the first Communist government was formed, that Mao and Zhou Enlai held court and manifestos were created. There was even a mint, which printed the first Communist currency. Of course, that was all before the Nationalist army chased them out on the Long March and burnt everything to the ground. Only the well survived.

  ‘What about these other buildings?’ I asked quizzically.

  ‘New,’ said Dong, waving an arm out across the area. ‘All new. But made to look old.’

  The ticket afforded us entry to some of the houses, which were meagrely decorated in the extreme. The recurring arrangement in most rooms was a simple wooden chair tucked under a small, roughly sawn timber desk beneath a window with, in some cases, a low bench or a single bed, its wooden slats covered by a straw-stuffed mattress, against a wall. The minimalism could have been due to budget constraints on the set designers, or it could in fact have been an accurate representation of the period — or perhaps both. Either way, because we knew the pieces weren’t genuine, the overall impression was a little flat. Like some of China’s Long March history, the display had clearly been re-created to fit with the accepted version of events.

  We cycled back the way we’d come, eating the fruit I’d bought at the market, while Xu Qing sang patriotic songs and giggled. The others joined in and taught me the first words of a revolutionary song, ‘The Sky Above the Liberated Zone’, which joyfully praised the unity of the people under the red flag of the Chinese Communist Party.

  A young woman keeps cool on the back of a bicycle

  When that ended, I said, without trying to be funny, ‘Give us another song, Dong.’

  Xu Qing chortled, then poked me in the ribs.

  ‘You’re trouble,’ she said.


  Dong didn’t get the joke, however. He started singing a more modern ballad. I asked her what it was and she explained it was the theme tune to a well-known computer game. Huang came alongside us and said in a loud voice, so that Dong could hear, ‘I love computer games.’

  Chang sneered and gripped her handlebars tightly.

  TWENTY

  BEFORE LEAVING RUIJIN, I ASKED XU QING IF THERE WAS ANYTHING I could do to help her, aside from paying her a fee for acting as my translator. More than anything, she said, she wanted conversation. So we exchanged email addresses and promised to keep in touch. It seemed insignificant at the time, and a little miserly on my behalf, but something told me this one small gesture would have greater significance later on.

  The seat next to me on the bus was filled by a short, stocky woman who clutched her canvas bags about her as if I was threatening to steal them. After half an hour it was all too much for her and she retreated to the back, preferring the discomfort of a seat above the rear suspension, which was like sitting on a trampoline, to the threat of my thievery. This meant, however, that I could stretch out a little — though not for long.

  The next passenger to join me wore a grey pressed suit and carried a briefcase of black faux leather. His hair was neatly parted and seemed weighed down by something other than gravity — hair cream, perhaps. He put down the case and sat beside me.

  ‘You are going to Ganzhou?’

  ‘Yes. You also?’