by Yunte Huang
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, on this boundless land
Who rules over man’s destiny?
I was here with a throng of companions,
Vivid yet those crowded months and years.
Young we were, schoolmates,
At life’s full flowering;
Filled with student enthusiasm
Boldly we cast all restraints aside.
Pointing to our mountains and rivers,
Setting people afire with our words,
We counted the mighty no more than muck.
Remember still
How, venturing midstream, we struck the waters
And waves stayed the speeding boats?
—1925
Mount Liupan
—to the tune of “Ching Ping Yueh”
The sky is high, the clouds are pale,
We watch the wild geese vanish southward.
If we fail to reach the Great Wall we are not men,
We who have already measured twenty thousand li.
High on the crest of Mount Liupan
Red banners wave freely in the west wind.
Today we hold the long cord in our hands,
When shall we bind fast the Gray Dragon?
—1935
Snow
—to the tune of “Chin Yuan Chun”
North country scene:
A hundred leagues locked in ice,
A thousand leagues of whirling snow.
Both sides of the Great Wall
One single white immensity.
The Yellow River’s swift current
Is stilled from end to end.
The mountains dance like silver snakes
And the highlands charge like wax-hued elephants,
Vying with heaven in stature.
On a fine day, the land,
Clad in white, adorned in red,
Grows more enchanting.
This land so rich in beauty
Has made countless heroes bow in homage.
But alas! Chin Shih-huang and Han Wu-ti
Were lacking in literary grace,
And Tang Tai-tsung and Sung Tai-tsu
Had little poetry in their souls;
And Genghis Khan,
Proud Son of Heaven for a day,
Knew only shooting eagles, bow outstretched.
All are past and gone!
For truly great men
Look to this age alone.
—1936
Quotations from Chairman Mao (excerpts)
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
*
If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revolutionary party.
*
In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.
*
War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions.
*
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
*
All reactionaries are paper tigers.
*
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
*
Serve the people.
*
Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving a problem to the day of birth.
*
We have the Marxist-Leninist weapon of criticism and self-criticism. We can get rid of a bad style and keep the good.
*
In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and screws in the whole revolutionary machine.
*
All our literature and art are for the masses of the people, and in the first place for the workers, peasants, and soldiers.
*
Let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend.
AI QING
(1910–1996)
Born Jiang Haicheng into a landlord family in Zhejiang, Ai Qing was brought up, as a fortune-teller suggested, by a peasant woman in order to avoid bad karma. Trained to be an artist, he went to France in 1929 to study painting. There he was influenced by French Symbolist poets and turned to writing. Returning to China in 1932, he joined the League of Left-Wing Writers. The following year he was arrested by the Nationalist regime for his radical politics, and in jail he composed his best-known poem, “Dayanhe—My Wet Nurse” (1933), a loving tribute to the working class as represented by the peasant woman who had raised him. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the resistance movement and the Communist cause. Like most free thinkers of his generation, he was condemned in 1957 as a “Rightist” and exiled to remote regions for twenty years. In 1979 he was rehabilitated and allowed to write and publish. A major poet of twentieth century China, Ai was also the father of Ai Weiwei, the famous Chinese artist whose provocative work has made him a target of government censorship in recent years.
Wheelbarrow
In the land where the Yellow River once flowed
In the countless riverbeds now gone dry
A wheelbarrow
With its single wheel
Squeals, sending the cheerless sky into spasms
Across the silence and chill
From the foot of this mountain
To the foot of that mountain
Reverberates
The sorrow of the north country people
On the days of snow and ice
Between destitute little villages
A wheelbarrow
With its single wheel
Cuts deep ruts in the yellow soil
Across the vast and wild desert
From this path
To that path
Crisscrosses
The sorrow of the north country people
Dayanhe—My Wet Nurse
Danyanhe, my wet nurse,
Her name was the name of her native village.
She was a child bride
Dayanhe, my wet nurse.
I am the son of a landlord,
But also the son of Dayanhe
Brought up on Dayanhe’s breast milk.
Raising me, Dayanhe raised her own family
And I was one raised on your milk
Dayanhe, my wet nurse.
Dayanhe, the snow today makes me think of you:
Your grass-covered snowbound grave
The dry weeds on the eaves of your shuttered house
Your mortgaged garden, ten feet square
Your stone bench by the door overgrown with moss
Dayanhe, the snowfall today makes me think of you.
With your thick palms, you cradled and caressed me
After you had stoked up the fire in the stove
After you had patted down coal ashes from your apron
After you had tasted the rice to make sure it was cooked
After you had set the bowls of soy paste on the black table
After you had mended your sons’ clothes torn by mountain thorns
After you had bandaged your little child’s hand cut by a firewood ax
After you had crushed one by one the lice on your children’s shirts
After you had collected the first egg laid that day
With your thick palms, you cradled and caressed me.
I am the son of a landlord
After I had drunk dry your milk, Dayanhe
I was taken back home by my parents.
Ah, Dayanhe, why did you cry?
I was a guest in the house of my birth!
I touched the furniture of red lacquer and floral carving
I touched the gold patterns on my parents’ bed
I stared dumbly at the “Family Happiness” sign on the eaves,
unable to read the inscription
I put on new clothes and touched the silk and mother-of-pearl buttons
I looked at my sister, whom I barely knew, in mother’s arms
I sat on a lacquered k’ang bench with a brazier underneath for warmth
I ate white rice that had been milled three times
Yet, I felt so uneasy! Because I
Was a newcomer in the house of my parents.
Dayanhe, to survive
After her milk had run dry
She began working with those arms that had cradled me
Smiling, she washed our clothes
Smiling, she carried a basket to the icy pond by the village
Smiling, she sliced turnips frozen in winter
Smiling, she stirred the grain hulls in the pig trough
Smiling, she fanned the flames under the stew pot
Smiling, she carried a winnowing basket of beans and wheat
to bake them in the sun of the village square
Dayanhe, to survive
After her milk had run dry
She put those arms that had cradled me to work.
Dayanhe, who adored the child she had suckled
At New Year’s, for him, she busied herself cutting rice candy
For him, who would sneak away to her house at the edge of the village
For him, who would walk up to her and call out “Mom”
Dayanhe, who would stick his bright red and green drawing
of Guan Gong on the wall by the stove
Dayanhe, who would brag and boast to villagers about her foster child
Dayanhe once had a dream she could not tell anyone:
In the dream, she was enjoying the wedding banquet of the child she
nursed
Sitting in a splendid hall adorned with silk garlands
And her beautiful daughter-in-law called her affectionately, “Mother”
. . . . . .
Dayanhe, who adored the child she had suckled!
Dayanhe did not awake from the dream.
When she died, the child was not at her side
When she died, the husband who beat her shed tears
Her five sons each cried bitter tears
When she died, she called out tenderly the name of her child
Dayanhe is dead
When she died, her child was not at her side.
Dayanhe, who left with tears!
Along with four decades of humiliation at the hands of the world
Along with countless sufferings as a slave
Along with a four-dollar coffin and a few bundles of rice straw
Along with a few-feet-square burial plot
Along with a handful of ashes from burning paper money
Dayanhe, who left in tears.
But these are what Dayanhe does not know:
Her drunkard husband is dead
Her eldest son became a bandit
Her second son died in the smoke of gunfire
Her third, fourth, and fifth
Live their days cursed by their teachers and landlords.
And I am writing condemnations of this unjust world.
When I returned to my village after years of wandering
On mountain ridges, in the fields
When I met my brothers, we felt closer than six or seven years ago.
This, this is what you, Dayanhe, resting quietly in your sleep
This is what you do not know!
Dayanhe, today, your child is in jail
Composing this hymn dedicated to you
To your spirit, a purple shade under the sallow earth
To your outstretched arms that once embraced me
To your lips that kissed me
To your gentle earth-colored face
To your breasts that once suckled me
To your sons, my brothers
To all of them on earth
Wet nurses like Dayanhe and their sons
To Dayanhe, who loved me as she loved her own sons.
Dayanhe,
I am your son
Brought up on your breast milk
I worship you
With all my heart!
—On a snowy morning,
January 14, 1933
(Translated by Yunte Huang and Glenn Mott)
On a Chilean Cigarette Package
On a Chilean cigarette package
One sees a picture of the Goddess of Freedom.
Although she holds a torch in her hand,
She yet remains a dark shadow;
For serving as a trademark, an ad,
Let’s give the goddess a space.
You can buy a pack with a few coins,
After you are through with it, in smoke it’s gone.
You toss away the empty package on the sidewalk.
People step on it, people spit on it.
Be it a fact, or be it a symbol,
The Goddess of Freedom is but a pack of cigarettes.
—1954
(Translated by Julia C. Lin)
WANG MENG
(1934– )
Born in Hebei, Wang Meng is a living example of the trials and tribulations experienced by Chinese writers in the second half of the twentieth century. A radical idealist, Wang joined the Communist Party at the tender age of thirteen in 1948. The publication of his short story “The Young Man Who Has Just Arrived at the Organization Department” in 1956 caused a stir for its exposure of bureaucratic corruption. It was first lauded as a manifestation of Mao’s Hundred Flowers spirit but soon condemned as an expression of a Rightist’s discontent with the party. Wang was exiled to the countryside for twenty years until his rehabilitation in 1978. His tenure as the editor-in-chief of People’s Literature (1983–86) and then as minister of culture (1986–89) spans the decade-long period of cultural renaissance in post-Mao China. He remained an influential figure, until he was dismissed again by the government after Tiananmen for his liberal views. A prolific author of over sixty books, Wang embodies the tenacity of Chinese writers, whose spirit may best be captured by the title of his novel, Long Live the Youth.
The Young Man Who Has Just Arrived at the Organization Department (excerpts)
Chapter 1
It was March, with a mixture of rain and snow in the air. Outside the door of the District Party Committee office a pedicab drew to a halt, and a young man jumped down. The driver looked at the large sign above the door and said politely to his passenger, “If you’re coming here, there won’t be any charge.” One of the message center workers, a demobilized soldier called Old Lü, came limping out. After asking why the young man had come, he moved quickly to help unload his bags. This done, he went off to summon the Organization Department’s office secretary, Chao Hui-wen. Chao Hui-wen grasped both of Lin Chen’s hands tightly and said, “We’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
Lin Chen had met Chao Hui-wen while in the teachers’ Party Branch in primary school. Two large eyes sparkled with friendliness and affection in her pale, beautiful face. Under those eyes, however, were dark circles caused by a lack of sleep. She led Lin Chen to the men’s dormitory, placed his bags in order, and opened them. She also hung his damp blanket up to dry and made the bed. As she was doing these things she continually reached up to arrange her hair, just as any other capable attractive female comrade would do.
“We’ve been waiting for you for such a long time,” she said. “Half a year ago we tried to have you assigned here, but the Cultural and Education Section of the District People’s Council absolutely refused to agree. Later on the District Party Committee secretary went directly to the
district chief and said he wanted you. He also made a fuss at the Education Bureau’s personnel office. After all of this we finally got you transferred.”
“I only learned about this the day before yesterday,” Lin Chen replied. “When I heard that I was being transferred to the District Party Committee I didn’t know what to think. What does this District Party Committee of ours do?”
“Everything.”
“And the Organization Department?”
“The Organization Department does organizational work.”
“Is there a lot of work?”
“At times we’re busy. Sometimes we aren’t.”
Chao Hui-wen took a hard look at Lin Chen’s bed and shook her head. “Young man,” she said indignantly, in the manner of an older sister, “you haven’t been keeping yourself clean. Look at that pillowcase! It’s gone from white to black. And look at the top of your blanket. It’s completely saturated with oil from your neck. Your sheet is so wrinkled it’s like seersucker.”
Lin Chen had the feeling that just as he was entering the doors of the District Party Committee and beginning his new life, he was also meeting a very dear friend.
Lin Chen was in an excited holiday mood as he rushed over to the office of the first vice director of the Organization Department to report his arrival. The vice director had a peculiar name—Liu Shih-wu.* As Lin Chen knocked nervously on his door, Liu Shih-wu was looking upward, a cigarette in his mouth, thinking about the work plans of the Organization Department. He welcomed Lin enthusiastically, but with a sense of propriety. After offering Lin a seat on the sofa, he himself sat down on the edge of his desk, pushing aside some of the papers that were piled high on the glass top. In a relaxed voice, he asked: “How are things going?” His left eye narrowed slightly. His right hand flicked his cigarette ash away.
“The secretary of the Party Branch told me to come here on the day after tomorrow, but since my work in the school was already finished I came today. Being sent to the Organization Department has made me anxious about my abilities. I’m a new Party member and I was formerly a primary teacher. The work of a teacher in primary school is quite different from the organization work of the Party.”
