by Vivian Yang
“No need. Just for your pretty blushing face, I’ll give them to you for free.”
“Oh, you’re really a kind kind man, Master Baker, and you too, auntie!” Wang Hong reached over the counter and received four thick slices.
“Thank you so much,” I said to the baker and the cashier.
As I watched Wang Hong chewing the khleb, I noticed that dirt no longer accumulated under her nails.
“This is more delicious than I imagined,” she said. “You’re so lucky, Mo Mo. Everyone does special things for you.”
“To tell you the truth, I’d rather be treated like an ordinary person.”
“But you’re not like the rest of us. Nobody would think twice about you shuffling from one Huaihai Road store to another because you belong in this classy place, unlike us.”
Immediately, I thought about the masked street sweeper. In my imagination, he would be the type of person who truly belonged here. Although the establishments’ names had been changed to either political or numerical, most of the storefronts from Avenue Joffre days still remained. I could almost picture him shopping here, wearing his well polished shoes and his crisply ironed trousers.
“But everybody is allowed on Huaihai Road,” I said. “All you need to do is to come and window shop.”
“From now on, I’ll do just that,” Wang Hong said.
In time, Wang Hong would learn to walk the walk and talk the talk of the Shanghai folks, sophisticated in commodities selection and quality assessment. She might not have had much “People’s Money” yuan then, nor much Japanese yen later during she sojourn in Tokyo, but a yearning for social and commercial success would be with her forever.
On the Sunday of my departure for the Film Studio, Mother was away with her students in the “sending the educated down to help with the autumn harvest” campaign. Owning only one set of bed sheets, I brought one and kept the other at home until such time when we would have enough cloth ration coupons to acquire a new set.
From under my mattress I took out my notebooks. The sheet was folded in half to proximate a square spread. Swimsuit and underpants went in first to serve as a cushion. The secret diaries were tucked in the middle, buried between the changes of clothes.
I boarded a public bus with the bundle and my People’s Liberation Army-green satchel, standing by the back windowpanes as it pulled away. In my heart I said goodbye to the little white house I had called home for over a decade. Only then was I struck by a strange sense of relief. I would not have to see the big black padlock on Mother’s bedroom door everyday anymore.
There were sixteen of us, eight of each gender. The1975 recruits for the Young Actors and Actresses Training Program were juvenile employees of the Shanghai People’s Film Studio. Although unpaid, we were thrilled with the benefits. Each of us would receive three pairs of black cotton pants, no cloth coupons required. Lantern-like knickerbockers with baggy design and wide elastic bands, they were intended for physical training yet we wore them exclusively since they could be replaced once worn out.
All were also issued a Municipal Bus monthly pass and meal tickets redeemable at the employee canteen. The menu was scratched out in chalk on a blackboard, often smudged but always discernable as selections were limited. Stir-fried chicken-feather vegetable and hairy-peas with pickles were the staple, the latter was a far cry from the way Ah Bu used to make them for us back in Hong Kong but I loved it still. The matchbox-sized 1/6-inch thin “big pork chop” was a rare treat.
We occupied two adjacent rooms with concrete floor and bunk beds. Wooden-framed windows were without curtains and didn’t close well. Gauze bed nets, fending off mosquitoes in the summer and keeping the unheated room a tad less bone-chilling in the winter, provided an unintended screen of privacy – something hard to come by elsewhere in China. As in Coach Long’s dorm, one bare bulb extended from the ceiling. An originally white but now gray nylon clothesline was tied to nails across the room. Conflicts often arose when the girls rubbed against each others’ hand-washed laundry, accidentally or deliberately, while climbing up into or down from their bunks. Curfew was 10 p.m., when I often began writing my journal with the aid of a flashlight, mosquito net drawn.
Military music from the loudspeaker on the Chinese parasol tree served as the initial reveille at six o’clock, followed five minutes later by extended bugle calls from our 14-year-old boy class-monitor. By six-twenty we would have gotten dressed, finished with the communal washroom, and been ready for roll call in the compound. Between the callisthenics music, we shouted slogans like the following:
“Exercise our bodies, heighten our vigilance, and defend our motherland!”
“Let a hundred flowers bloom in artistic fields. Weed through the old to bring forth the new!”
Breakfast consisting of steamed buns, rice congee and soy sauce-pickled rutabaga slices was served between seven and seven-thirty. Classes began at eight. School pupils no longer, we were working boys and girls, future actors and actresses.
Math was dropped and Chinese became the core. “Revolutionary Performing Arts Techniques” was the sole techniques course. We studied theatrical theories developed by a Russian with the tongue twisting name of Si-tan-ni-si-la-fu-si-ji.
“As a partial possessor of the Russian dramatic genealogies,” I wrote in my secret journal, “I may share something with the master on a minuscule level that can help me study the performance art. After all, my mother and grandfather were musically talented.”
Better known to the world as Konstantin Stanislavsky, the great producer held that an actor’s main responsibility was to be believed, rather than to be recognized or understood by the audience. His theatrical model known as “The Method” had been condemned in China following the Sino-Soviet ideological breakup in the late 1950’s but reinstated to coincide with the resumption of the 1975 training program.
“Bear in mind that The Method should be studied with severe reservations,” we were pre-warned by the teachers.
What was taught without restraints was the revolutionary artistry demonstrated in the 1974 People’s Liberation Army Film Studio movie The Brightly Shining Red Star, in which the protagonist Winter Boy Pan keeps a red star badge from his father’s Red Army cap as inspiration to stand up to the “despotic landowner” Hu Hanshan. For weeks, the theme song played in my head:
Hongxing shanshan, fang guangxcai,
Hongxing cancan, nuan xionghuai.
Hongxing shi zan gongnong de xing,
Dang de guanghui zhao wandai!
Hongxing shi zan gongnong de xing,
Dang de guanghui zhao wandai!
The red, red star, shining bright,
The red, red star, warming our hearts.
‘Tis the star of our workers and peasants,
The brilliance of the Party will shine 10,000 generations!
‘Tis the star of our workers and peasants,
The brilliance of the Party will shine 10,000 generations!
Thanks to my appearance, I was assigned the role of a Uighur girl in Xinjiang Is a Wonderful Place, a film to be released to coincide with a political campaign to promote the great unity of all nationalities of China.
The gist: an olive-skinned farmer with a Muslim skullcap and thick stubble steals watermelons from the People’s Commune before they are completely ripened. The authority sees this as a vicious attempt to sabotage nationality unity. My role is to illustrate how well the Uighur minority are treated by the Han majority, here represented by the People’s Liberation Army soldier.
I sat through photo shoots wearing various “babushka” head-scarves, prompting one Assistant Director of Photography to remark how similar I looked to Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the WWII Soviet teenage heroine Mother had portrayed on stage two decades ago.
Mo Mo, you should try your best to out-perform your mother and succeed in your career, I urged myself.
As part of the role preparation, I learned to eat like a native by nibbling on the boiled sheep’s feet, che
wing up sinews and soft bones off a carcass and washing it all down with “brick tea”, a black exact dissolvable only in boiling water. Consuming “grabbed rice”, a concoction of grain, raisins, nuts and grated carrots fried mutton lard, involved fingers instead of chopsticks commonly used by us Han people. A skilled diner’s hand had no contact with the mouth; the thumb “shoots” in a marble-playing motion, a technique I mastered readily. Compared to what was being served in the employee canteen, this was a gastronomic heaven. Unaware at the time, what I was exposed to then would help me develop Maison Jasmine’s fusion style menu several years later.
Like Winter Boy, my character was to demonstrate her strong gratitude for the People’s Liberation Army. One of my key scenes involved me slipping from the river bank into the muddy waters and simulating drowning before a heroic People’s Liberation Army soldier came to my rescue. In a dozen takes I managed not to swallow any water while still looking realistic. My swim training came in handy in the most unexpected way. I only wished that Coach Long, whom I now saw only on Sunday afternoons, could substitute the actor whom played the solider.
We trainees could leave the Studio late Saturday afternoon and be back by seven Sunday night. I told Mother that I had to return after lunch and took the bus to the Native City where Coach Long and I would amble down streets in search for inexpensive eateries. He had taken to calling me his “film starlet” and continued to refer to himself as my hero.
Someday, he vowed, looking steely-eyed, someday, I will make it big and become a real hero.
8 Seeing Red
The ninth day of the ninth month of 1976 was earth-shattering for China. The Great Teacher, the Great Leader, the Great Commander-in-Chief, and the Great Helmsman Chairman Mao passed away. By government decree, our nation of nine-hundred-million people went into synchronized mourning. Studio employees gathered for a mass ceremony in central Shanghai’s People’s Square, site of the pre-Liberation Race Course built to accommodate several thousand people. So many more congregated there that mid-September day that not a drop of water could have trickled through.
For hours while surrounded by the sounds of wailing, I waited with my colleagues for our turn to enter the Shanghai Municipal Grand Mourning Hall behind the Rostrum. A gigantic portrait of Mao framed by black ribbons and yellow cloth flowers was mounted in the front center of the Square, dwarfing thousands of black crowns below. The non-stop funeral music – a combination of revolutionary marches and Peking opera drum tunes -- filled the air. Slogan shouts came from various handheld speakers:
“Comrades, battle-companions, revolutionary masses, turn our grief into strength and carry Chairman Mao’s great cause through to the end!”
“Chairman Mao is the red sun that will never set in our hearts!”
“Eternal glory to Chairman Mao!”
Having held back the urge to pee, I grew restless as I sensed tepid ooze creeping down my crotch. The sensation reminded me of Coach Long’s probing fingers. Remembering the Menstruation Record Card he had shown me, I wondered if my first period, known colloquially as jian hong, or seeing red, had begun. Yet sandwiched like a sardine, I could not make it out to the public toilet and thread my way back. Fortunately, with my training lantern pants, nobody else would notice what was happening down there.
Back at the dorm hours later, “seeing red” was confirmed. This was good news as I now qualified for the monthly one yuan (50 cents) “hygiene subsidy” for female employees, twice the amount given to male employees for haircuts since men were forbidden from wearing hair below the earlobes. Actors reaching puberty and beyond were not issued condoms, however. Abstinence was expected although not always practiced, as Coach Long’s ingenious utilization of the Wrigley’s gum illustrated.
Subsidy notwithstanding, every fen (half a penny) counted when it came to actual supplies. Wang Hong would not tell me about the existence of tampons until much later. At a time when the tears of our nation were being shed on millions of faces, I needed something to contain my dripping vaginal blood flow. Sanitary napkins were sold in the pharmaceutical counter of the Shanghai Women’s Products Store on Huaihai Road, but they were way beyond most teenagers’ budget. Even Mother rarely bought a package.
My initial “hygiene subsidy” had to be applied for in writing and verified and approved by the Studio accounting office. As the idiom goes, “Water far away is of little use in putting out a fire.” I had to turn to our political instructor for help. She happened to be the wife of Secretary-General Ouyang but used her maiden name professionally like all other female Party cadres. Few knew about her connection to the Secretary-General but Old Wang did and Wang Hong told me about it.
“You’re so full of bourgeois thoughts, Mo Mo!” she scolded as soon as I stuttered out the words “sanitary napkins.” “How many girls your age in China do you think are already having their period? Very few! Your kind develops earlier and you’re already been given a movie role. You should set a good example for the rest and not fall into the trap of pursuing a luxurious lifestyle!”
Taking in an earful as I stood with my head low, I could feel a chunk of bloody tissue sliding down my thighs. The political instructor was making a dig at my “kind” as having earlier-than-most menstrual onset as though I had control over the timing of it. But Mrs. Ouyang was a responsible revolutionary cadre after all. Once her reprimand was over, she showed me what most menstruating women did at the time: using toilet papers wrapped around pieces of shredded cotton to hold the flow. The part of cotton not stained should be reused, she emphasized.
This self-assembled pad was fastened in chastity belt fashion on a “sanitary band,” one of which she gave me for immediate application. She had personally sewn it using plastic strips and scrap cloth from worn out clothes. It would be insane to waste ration coupons to buy new material for this purpose. Once worn, the sanitary band looked not unlike the loincloth worn by a Japanese sumo wrestler.
“I keep a few newly made ones with me so our trainee girls can have them for the first time,” she said.
I thanked her and turned to leave but not before she patted me on the shoulder. “Mo Mo, you’re a woman now and you should work hard to be an actress deserving your good looks and body image. Be sure to tell me first if the Studio leadership sends for you to do anything.”
It dawned on me that she was referring to her husband who, I realized with a chill, had also placed a hand on my shoulder – although not quite on the same way as she just had – during my self-initiated interview. His wife’s potential wrath was the reason Ouyang had changed his mind about having me “perform a song and dance number” for him. I could suddenly hear him calling me “little comrade.”
Another chunk of bloody tissue fell.
I was now a woman with good looks and good body image.
Indeed.
It was a time of bewilderment; it was a time of enlightenment. Within a month of Chairman Mao’s death, Madame Mao and her Gang of Four in the central government were incarcerated and held responsible for the disastrous, decade-long Cultural Revolution. Deng Xiaoping, who had been condemned as the “Second Biggest Capitalist-Roader in China” before, gained supreme power. Socialist planned economy was on the wane and market economy was taking hold. Our great motherland had entered a new era of Communist optimism.
“Much of Xinjiang is pastoral desert where the likelihood of a Uighur girl falling into a river is close to nil, and the only passerby is an Army soldier?” With these words, the script of Xinjiang Is a Wonderful Place was criticized as “divorced from reality” and the shooting was abandoned. Secretary-General Ouyang was ousted as a Gang of Four underling who had ingratiated himself with Madame Mao. Our political instructor was removed from her post by association. The one-year-old program was also disbanded and all sixteen of us were let go. My “film starlet” career was terminated before it ever took off.
When I next saw Coach Long, he greeted me with “Welcome back, my Little Kemaneiqi!”
“
What little kemaneiqi?” I asked grudgingly.
“Did you not hear about the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics in Canada? She is the biggest international sensation now, from Romania, and she looks just like you.”
In shoddy, unformed Chinese handwriting, he penned ke: a division; ma: a mare; nei: the inside; and qi: the rare. “This is how it’s written.” Each character had a definable meaning, yet when they were conjoined, her name made no sense to me.
Coach Long took out a clipping from a foreign newspaper placed in two pieces of celluloid candy wrapper and taped around to form a frame. I read out its caption: Another lighter than air spectacle of 14-year-old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, faltering only on the words spectacle and gymnast.
“You see, here is Kemaneiqi flying on a balance beam doing a Perfect 10 split. She looks as graceful as a white dove, just like you.”
“And Nadia is the same as my mother’s Russian name,” I blurted out, smoothing the used candy wrapper for a better look at the subject. My admirer was right: the pony-tailed Caucasian girl’s features vaguely resembled my own. “She is my age, too, and already an Olympic champion, unlike me, not athletic enough to stay on a swim team and not lucky enough to finish starring in one film.”
“Don’t start again, Little Kemaneiqi. You’ve got something few Chinese have, beauty and intelligence. You are so smart you can even read French.”
“No, I cannot. That was English.”
“But my friend from the National Team who gave me this said they spoke French in Canada, so the newspaper must be in French, too.”
“Believe me it’s English,” I insisted. “And I’ve learned many words myself, so I know.”
His face reddening, Coach Long moved his index finger back and forth on the candy wrapper. My attention was drawn to the tip of his closely-cut nail, then to the wrapper. “Aren’t those from the mixed fruit drops sold in the Second Food Provisions Store?” I asked, surprised that he would have had anything to do with a store on Huaihai Road.
