Under the Hawthorn Tree

by Anna Holmwood

  Jingqiu was known for her ability to interpret texts; she was the writer of her class. Her teachers always picked her to join the propaganda team, to be responsible for their magazine. At that time, every class had to take turns painting big character posters with brush and ink. These would criticise some or other person or idea, or otherwise report on the progress the class was making in their industrial, agricultural and military education. Jingqiu was good at writing and painting, both with a single brush or with a row of brushes tied together, big characters or small characters. She was good at everything like that. She could do a whole wall of posters all by herself.

  Her Chinese teachers always praised her essays in highest terms, especially Mr Luo, who deemed them ‘full of wit and talent’. He read her essays out in front of the class and commended them to the city-level ministry of education, and always included them in his booklet, ‘Best of Yichang No. 8 Middle School Student Writing’. The school had organised two essay writing competitions in the past, and Jingqiu had won both times, gaining her fame among all the students. Jingqiu’s classmates, including the boys, would bring things to Jingqiu that they didn’t understand, such as love letters and break-up notes, in part because they knew she would keep her mouth shut, and also because the teacher kept extolling her ‘superior powers of understanding’. She could grab the core of an idea quickly, even those written in the windiest, most circular prose.

  But even with her ‘superior powers of understanding’, she couldn’t make out exactly what it was Old Third was trying to say in his ‘essay’. Was it a love letter, or a break-up note? The break-up letters she’d read before all started with things like ‘the wind and rain send spring away, the flying snow welcomes spring back’. She didn’t know who came up with it, but it seemed that break-up letters were always full of the changing seasons symbolising a changing heart.

  Jingqiu had read quite a few love letters. Crass, mischievous boys would usually ask directly, ‘Do you want to go out with me?’ or ‘D’you want to be my bird?’ Once, her class was preparing to denounce a classmate and they asked Jingqiu to look over the materials. The obscene love letter contained the sentence ‘garlic nuts smell good’. She knew it was a hidden code and that she was supposed to rearrange the letters of ‘garlic nuts’, but despite trying for hours, she couldn’t work it out.

  The relatively cultured love letters that Jingqiu had read mostly used maxims from Mao’s Little Red Book or lines from his poetry. At that time the most popular one, a particular favourite of the boys, was, ‘Wait until the mountain flowers bloom, and out from the thicket she will smile’. She remembered once one boy had misunderstood this line, and wrote ‘and out from the crickets she will smile’, but luckily he had given this love letter to Jingqiu to give the once over. Jingqiu laughed until her belly ached, and helped him rewrite it, sentence by sentence, explaining each mistake carefully. He gasped in realisation, ‘I was also wondering why he was talking about crickets.’

  Old Third’s letter definitely couldn’t be called a love letter because nowhere did he use the phrase ‘and out from the thicket she will smile’, nor did he ask ‘will you go out with me?’, not to mention the absence of ‘could our relationship take the next step beyond being just comrades?’. He had referred to her as simply Jingqiu, he hadn’t added ‘my dear’. In signing off he had dropped his last name, Sun, and had just written Jianxin, which sounded a bit creepy, but not too creepy, because it was normal to miss out a character in a three-letter name. Most people would call him that.

  So, Jingqiu decided, this letter was primarily a summation, a bit like the song they always sang at the end of meetings, ‘Sailing the Ocean Needs a Helmsman’; as soon as you heard the opening chords you knew things were drawing to a close. She remembered how when she was small she used to go with her father to a teahouse to listen to readings. When reciting his favourite line the story-teller used a judge’s gavel, striking the beat, ‘Two flowers bloom, each on its own stem’. Perhaps Old Third was also using this narrative technique? Their time together had been a branch in bloom, and now the display of flowers was over, he was gathering everything up and going home to his other branch.

  Jingqiu decided not to reply. Were anyone else to see Old Third’s letter they probably wouldn’t investigate it as a love letter, but it would be viewed as a reactionary piece of writing. ‘For thirty years the river flows east, for forty years the river flows west’ had the tone of a class enemy’s wishful thinking. Furthermore, phrases such as ‘you were born at the wrong time’, ‘your parents are the victims of injustice’ et cetera, all displayed a certain resentment against society, and were exceedingly reactionary. If found, this letter would finish Old Third off, and as his protector and accomplice in propagating these reactionary views, that’d be it for her too.

  In the past few years active counter-revolutionaries had been treated harshly, and reactionary views that showed dissatisfaction with prevailing social realities were resolutely attacked. Every now and again reactionary posters would surface in No. 8 Middle School, and as soon as they did the school would be cloaked in terror, making everyone feel insecure. Jingqiu remembered once playing out on the sports field when the loudspeaker suddenly screeched into action announcing the appearance of a reactionary poster.

  Jingqiu was terrified of these investigations. She had held her brush and stared dumbly at the white piece of paper placed in front of her, unable to make a mark. What would she do if her handwriting just happened to be the same as that of the big character poster? With her class background, did she stand a chance? How could you guarantee that your handwriting wasn’t the same as in the poster?

  Jingqiu hated the people who wrote these reactionary posters – what was the use? Sure, you could write away merrily, but it was other people who suffered from your actions. Jingqiu was sure that a considerable number of her brain cells popped of fright every time they conducted one of these investigations. Once, one of the offending posters appeared in her classroom. That day she happened to have been writing the bulletin for her year group on the blackboard outside her classroom. She hadn’t finished when she heard a voice from the school’s loudspeaker calling everyone to the sports ground, the announcement containing the dreaded words ‘reactionary poster’, and its location: the blackboard of year one, class one.

  Jingqiu had nearly fainted. Did I make a mistake while writing on the blackboard? Her class was ushered into a different classroom and asked to write the stipulated sentences on a sheet of white paper. That time they were quick to find the culprit, a foolish classmate of hers called Tu Jianshe. After school, bored and with nothing to do, he had taken a piece of chalk and started scribbling and drawing, absent-mindedly writing some words from Mao’s Little Red Book: ‘never forget class struggle’. But he had been careless, and forgot ‘forget’, so that instead he had written ‘never class struggle’. The worst of it was that he came from a bad class family. He was taken away on the spot, and Jingqiu had no idea what happened to him after that.

  Jingqiu agonised, but couldn’t bring herself to rip up Old Third’s letter. Instead she tore off the geological unit’s printed header, her name and Old Third’s name, and dropped the pieces in the toilet. Then, she found a piece of cloth and sewed a small pocket into her padded jacket, slipped his letter and poem into this hiding place, and sewed it shut. Her needlework was exceptionally fine, and as she used hidden stitches it was impossible to see that there was any patch at all without peering at it closely.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jingqiu started back at school the day after her return but the students weren’t spending much time in the classroom. They studied industrial production, agriculture, military training, medicine – lots of things really, as long as they weren’t from books. Jingqiu’s class were to start their studies in medicine not long after her return from West Vill
age. Most of the students went to a town called Guanlin, where they were to stay with local peasants and take classes at the local military hospital. As Jingqiu could afford neither the bus ticket nor the mess fee she stayed in Yichang along with the other poor children, to be sent to hospitals around the city. Since these students were not going to experience the destitution of rural life, a deprivation that was deemed detrimental to their development, the school decided to send the headteacher of No. 8 Middle School’s adjoining primary school, Mr Zheng, to lead them in the study of traditional Chinese medicine.

  They were kept busy. Weekends consisted only of Sundays, and while from Monday to Saturday Jingqiu had to go to the hospital to study medicine, clocking on and off with the nurses, Sundays were spent with Mr Zheng. Occasional trips to the outskirts of the city to pick herbs to make into medicine for the poor and lower peasants only added to their hectic schedule.

  On their herb-picking expeditions they walked along small country roads, and as dusk spread across the sky, and smoke from nearby kitchens curled up into the twilight, Jingqiu would think of her time in West Village, and the first time she had laid eyes on Old Third. A bewildering sort of grief surged in her chest, and she felt like crying. On these evenings, once home, she would bury herself under her quilt, open the secret pocket in her padded jacket, remove Old Third’s sewn-in letter, and pore over it. Mostly she just wanted to see his writing; the content she had long since memorised. She had always liked his handwriting, it was special, most notably when he wrote his name. He wrote the ‘xin’ of Sun Jianxin – which meant new – in two sweeping strokes. She surreptitiously traced along the lines, copying sections of the village history he had helped her to write, until she succeeded in mastering its exact likeness.

  There was a popular song at the time called ‘I Read Chairman Mao’s Books’, that went:

  Chairman Mao’s books, my most beloved books,

  a thousand times, oh! ten thousand times, I’ll read them through;

  his deep reasoning, my careful reading, it fires me up!

  Hey! Just like dry land drinks timely showers,

  young sprouts draped in strung pearls of rain.

  Mao’s thinking arms me hey-ho,

  with strength to make revolution.

  There was supposed to be a musical interlude between the verses, but as people usually sang unaccompanied, they would have to croon the part, ‘la-do-la-do-lai-lai’, instead.

  Previously, when Jingqiu had sung along, she had been like a young monk reciting the scriptures, all words but no heart, but now, reading Old Third’s letter, she finally understood the feeling this song described. Of course, she knew that was like comparing Old Third to their great leader, and that was naturally an extremely reactionary thing to do, but the more she read his letter the more she loved reading it. Gradually, she came to realise that he too had deep reasoning, and it inspired her.

  When he said that she should believe that ‘if heaven made me, I must be of use’, he was saying she had talent, and that having talent was a good thing. Whenever anyone said she was talented she got very nervous, ‘you’re talented’ could well mean ‘you’re concentrating on apolitical, technical matters’, and being ‘technical’ was the opposite of being ‘red’. According to the wisdom of the time, when satellites ascend to the sky the red flag will fall to the earth, so ‘technical’ people and their knowledge had to be overthrown.

  Old Third’s letter comforted her. Her favourite sentence was ‘if ever you want to tell me, then please do’. She hadn’t given it much thought the first time she had read it, but now she saw that it meant he wanted her to tell him, he was waiting for her to tell him.

  She really wanted to go to West Village to see the hawthorn tree again. Maybe then she would bump into him at Auntie’s house. Maybe he’ll come with me, and I’ll tell him the reason why I’m angry, and he’ll explain, and tell me he doesn’t have a fiancée, that Yumin was wrong. But to spend five or six yuan on a bus fare to see a hawthorn tree was simply out of the question. What’s more, she didn’t have time. Also his story indicated that he had agreed to marry the daughter of his dad’s boss. And that he held that girl’s hand.

  One Sunday at the end of May, when the weather was fine, Jingqiu got up earlier than usual to wash the family’s sheets before the afternoon’s acupuncture lesson with Mr Zheng. Just as she opened the door she saw some young boys hurtling away from her house. She didn’t bother to chase after them as there was nothing worth stealing or breaking. She glanced over to an old desk they kept outside and was surprised to see a glass bottle with a bunch of bright red flowers and green leaves sticking out of it. The bottle had toppled over and water was running out over the table. One flower had been pulled out of the bottle and flung on the ground. It must have been one of those little kids. They had probably made a grab for the flower as she opened the door.

  Were these hawthorn flowers? She had seen peach blossoms, plum blossoms, azaleas, but these were unlike any of those flowers. They were very similar in colour to the wool Old Third had bought, so they must be hawthorn flowers. That meant Old Third came by with them that day. Maybe he had been waiting for her to come back to West Village to see the hawthorn flowers, and as she hadn’t made an appearance, he had picked some and delivered them to her house? But how did he know where she lived? There’s always a way, he had said, the first day they had met. He must have served in reconnaissance missions before, she thought.

  Her heart was thumping. She took the bottle and filled it with water, rearranged the flowers and put them on the small table by her bed. She stared at them, transfixed: he remembers me, he remembered how much I wanted to see the hawthorn flowers. He’s come all this way just for me. Then, she thought, did he leave me a note beside the flowers? He wouldn’t put these flowers here, and then leave without a word, surely? If he left a letter, where has it gone?

  The area outside her door was like a bustling high street, it was the busiest area on the campus. The school only had two places to draw water and both were located by Jingqiu’s house. Furthermore, the back door to the school’s canteen was directly opposite. Everyone who came to wash or get food in the canteen came past this spot, and everyone who wanted to use the taps to wash clothes and vegetables or fill bottles would see the table outside her door as they did so.

  Growing fearful, she recalled something that had happened a few years before. At primary school she had a classmate called Zhang Keshu. His skin was dark and his figure spindly, and he was a clever student. Zhang Keshu’s parents worked in the Yichang ship building factory, and his mother was also a low-level cadre. Later, the factory set up its own school for the children of its workers, and from then on, Zhang Keshu and Jingqiu were no longer in the same class. She couldn’t remember when exactly it had all begun, but Keshu had started writing her love letters. He wrote well – the letters were clear and succinct – but for some reason Jingqiu couldn’t stand him. She warned him several times but he wouldn’t listen, and continued writing to her.

  One day Keshu put a letter in an old shoe outside Jingqiu’s door. He must have come round very early in the morning before school when no one in Jingqiu’s house was up. The next-door neighbour, Yan Chang, got up before them and saw the letter, and unconcerned by whether or not he had the right to do so, took it upon himself to open it and read it. The letter started with a discussion of the excellent international and domestic circumstances in which China currently found herself, before moving on to the fortunate conditions of their very province and city and those of his school and class. These thoughts took a good two or three pages, but that was how people wrote in those days, no one was in a position to ignore such formalities. It was only at the end of the letter that Keshu wrote how much he admired and respected
Jingqiu’s talents, as one intelligent person to another, just as a hero recognises heroism in his companion. And of course, he didn’t forget to ask if Jingqiu would like to be his girlfriend.

  Even a character like this Mr Yan could see that Jingqiu was in no way responsible for the affair, so he passed the letter on to Jingqiu’s mother, instructing her to have a good talk with her daughter about the importance of studying and not being negligent in her thinking. Mr Yan also trumpeted his success in public, saying that it was lucky he had seen the letter first as if someone else had, who knows what gossip might have spread about.

  The whole affair scared Jingqiu’s mother half to death, and inevitably she went back to repeating her mantra, one slip leads down a road of hardship. Jingqiu hated Keshu for his actions, but she wasn’t particularly worried, because they couldn’t accuse her of anything. She had a clear conscience. She had never spoken to him, let alone actually done anything with him.

  But when it came to Old Third, Jingqiu couldn’t take the same comfort. The more she thought about it, the more anxious she became; Old Third must have written a letter. He’s so ‘aerodite’, and took the trouble to write me a letter when he was only popping home for a bag, would he really not write a letter now? Maybe he put the letter on the table along with the flowers, and some shifty passer-by took the letter, leaving the flowers behind. Her heart burning with anxiety, she ran to find the small children, but they claimed not to have seen any letter, they had only wanted a flower to play with, they didn’t know anything else about it. When she asked them if they had seen who put the flowers there, again they claimed ignorance.