Letters in the Jade Dragon Box

by Gale Sears

“My grandfather painted this beautiful stand of bamboo. It looked like you could walk right into it.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Except there was something about it that wasn’t lovely.”

  “Really? What was that?”

  “There was a picture of Mao Tse-tung glued to the top.”

  “That had to be a shock.”

  “I pulled it off.”

  “Very forthright of you, I must say.”

  “I didn’t want his photograph on my grandfather’s beautiful picture.” She finished her soda. “Did you know that Mao Tse-tung ordered the torture and murder of my teacher’s parents?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My teacher saw it happen.”

  Mr. Pierpont lowered his head. “Oh, my.”

  “I don’t understand, Mr. Pierpont. If God is so powerful and can make the Heaton’s boy better, why couldn’t he save Mrs. Yang’s parents? Why can’t He just make evil people get sick and die?”

  “Well, Mao Tse-tung is dead, isn’t he?”

  Wen-shan hesitated. “Yes, but he caused a lot of suffering before he died. My mother wrote about people starving and people being sent away from their families and artists tortured.”

  “I don’t have an answer for you, Wen-shan, other than to acknowledge that there is good and evil in the world, and that perhaps, at times, it seems evil is winning.” He patted her hand. “But I know in the end, good will prevail.”

  “That’s what Mahatma Gandhi said—that in the end, tyrants will fall.”

  “I think we can trust that.”

  She nodded. “It doesn’t help much for right now though, does it?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  Wen-shan looked out at the passing traffic. But she wanted things to be better now. She shook her head. She couldn’t understand it. It was all too complicated. She stood. “We should be getting back to work, Mr. Pierpont.”

  He smiled at her. “Absolutely! Right you are. Those lamps are not going to count themselves.”

  They moved back into the store, and Wen-shan was glad for the counting and sorting. She was only fifteen and didn’t want to think about anything more serious than outings with her friends and possible adventures on a scooter bike.

  Notes

  Communal canteens: During the Great Leap Forward, individual cooking was eliminated and all eating was done in a communal canteen.

  The cult of Mao: During the Cultural Revolution, the propaganda to enhance the cult of Mao was expanded. Pictures of Mao were everywhere, and badges bearing the Chairman’s picture were worn by most citizens. It’s estimated that some 4.8 billion badges with Chairman Mao’s image were manufactured.

  The Little Red Book: Compiled in 1964, this book entitled Quotations from Chairman Mao eventually grew to contain 33 topics and 427 quotations, with a total printing of 1,055,498,000 copies (from 1964 to 1976). During the latter half of Mao’s rule, it was an unofficial requirement for every Chinese citizen to own, read, and carry the book at all times. This was especially true during the Cultural Revolution. The Ministry of Culture, under the direction of the CCCP, stated that their goal was for “ninety-nine percent” (of the population of China) to read Chairman Mao’s book.

  Healing of Grant Heaton Jr.: The healing of Grant Heaton Jr. is a true occurrence and is documented by both his mother and his father.

  Chapter 19

  1966

  Today in the square I watched as Red Guards punished the brother of Ming-mei for being too foreign in his dress. He was sent down from Peking to be taught the ways of the farmer, and he was being harassed by the Red Guards because he was not wearing the wide pants and the round-toed cloth shoe of the peasant. Secretary Zhang and Ming-mei stood to the side as three male guards shoved him around and the broad-faced female guard yelled insults.

  “What? What are you doing in those pointed shoes and pants that are not wide enough? Are you a running dog for the capitalists? Take out your scissors, comrades, and cut those pants! Rip them to the knee! We will do our job! We are in charge of killing the four olds! Cut up his expensive shoes too! We do not want anything of the foreign evil! We need only the words of our great leader, Chairman Mao!”

  Those of us standing around felt sorry for the young man’s shame as the guards laid him on his back, stripped off his shoes, and carried out their orders. Ming-mei stood silently beside her husband seeming not to care, but when the female guard slapped her brother, I saw her hands turn into fists. The brother ran away, and the female guard called out more insults. “Look, look! He is a running dog for the capitalists!”

  I recognized her—Han Yen-sui. It was odd because when we were in school together she never spoke a word. Learning was difficult for her. She always stared at the teachers with blank eyes when they asked her a question. She went about with her head lowered, and the boys made fun of her. They called her mouse and pulled her long thick braids. Now her hair is short and her voice is loud.

  Mrs. Yang stared directly at Wen-shan when she looked up from the parchment. “Thank you for reading that, Wen-shan. Your mother paints a vivid picture of cruelty.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She rolled the scroll. “Mrs. Yang, I don’t understand what the Red Guards were trying to do.”

  “They thought they were doing the work of the revolution. They were going to move the socialist ideals forward. They were young people caught up with Mao Tse-tung thought.”

  “But how did they get started?”

  “I have met with teachers who fled China after Mao Tse-tung died. They said it began with a select group of young people in Peking—children of party officials in the Central Committee. Mao told them they did not have to respect their teachers, that they should seek out counterrevolutionaries even in their own families, and that they should destroy anything that was capitalistic or that distinguished someone as upper-class.”

  “Like a pair of pants?”

  “Or books, or art, or higher education.”

  Wen-shan felt light-headed, and she put her head in her hands.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded and looked up. “It just sounds very frightening.”

  “It became frightening very quickly. Can you imagine high school and college students stirred up to do Mao’s bidding? He loved chaos, and chaos is what the Red Guards gave him. They smashed up their schools and beat their teachers.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Yes, Wen-shan, they did. Many young people were thrilled to exercise their power over adults. One of the teachers I met from Shanghai said she quoted a passage from Shakespeare one day and her students beat her with their red books and ran her out of the classroom. One boy threw a rock at her and said she was showing honor to someone other than Chairman Mao.”

  The color drained from Wen-shan’s face. “But we have always been taught to respect our elders.”

  “Which is what Mao Tse-tung wanted to destroy. He wanted the young people to follow only him, to love only him. One of the slogans for the Red Guards was ‘We can soar to heaven, and pierce the earth, because our Great Leader Chairman Mao is our supreme commander!’ Mao used them like pawns.” She turned to look at the bulletin board of great thinkers. “Do you know what Lenin called young people?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Useful idiots.” She looked back to Wen-shan. “Not such a great thought.”

  Wen-shan shook her head. She was trying to imagine young people beating their teacher. She looked at Mrs. Yang’s gentle brown eyes and felt sick to her stomach at the thought of one of her classmates raising a hand to harm her. “How many Red Guards were there?”

  “No one knows for sure. I understand that thousands of people, perhaps a million, joined in Peking and from there it spread to the entire country. Mao even encouraged the Red Guards to travel around the country to meet with other Red Guards. They were to be given free passage on any train. He wanted them to share methods for routing out the ‘four olds.’”

>   “What does that mean?”

  “Mao wanted to destroy old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits. His lawless Red Guards broke into people’s houses and tore up books and destroyed pieces of art.”

  Wen-shan thought of her grandfather’s exquisite paintings. “Did Mao think that was going to make people’s lives better?”

  Mrs. Yang walked over, sat down on the other side of Wen-shan’s desk, and took her hands. “Wen-shan, do you think Mao Tse-tung was concerned with making people’s lives better?”

  Wen-shan felt nauseous as she thought about the murder of Mrs. Yang’s parents in Yan’an. She shook her head. “No, ma’am.”

  “So why do you think he did it?”

  “Power.”

  Mrs. Yang took her hands away. “That’s exactly what I think. He lost power because of his failed policies. Don’t you think the failure of the Great Leap caused many in the party to question his leadership?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s exactly what it did. For a time, Mao was held back, but like a mad dog in a muzzle, I think he spent every waking minute trying to get back into full power and punish those who made him step down. Mao was out to get rid of anyone who would stand up to him, and he used another purge to do just that.”

  “How?”

  “By calling it the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, he made it seem like the people were the ones rooting out the evil counterrevolutionaries, that the Red Guards were the heroes, destroying the old culture and establishing a new socialist order.”

  “But they weren’t.”

  “No. It was chaos Mao wanted, and the chaos hid the fact that he was having perceived party enemies, intellectuals, and artists thrown into detention centers, beaten, tortured, and executed. He even got his wife, Jiang Qing, involved. She became the leader of the Red Guard activities, and she was ruthless.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Facts are beginning to come out as refugees talk about their experiences. I am only fitting little pieces together.”

  Wen-shan nodded. It would be just like Mrs. Yang to fit little pieces together.

  Mrs. Yang gently picked up the letter. “Your mother is one of those voices, Wen-shan. She is writing down the truth.” She handed Wen-shan the scroll. “Thank you for sharing this with me.” She stood. “Do you have any more questions?”

  “I always have questions, but I can keep some until later.”

  “Very well then. Have a good weekend.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Yang . . . for everything.” Wen-shan picked up her schoolbag and headed for the door.

  “And, Wen-shan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Remember what Mahatma Gandhi said about tyrants.”

  “In the end they always fall.”

  “Always.”

  Notes

  Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution: The Cultural Revolution was Mao’s major campaign from 1966 to 1976 to get rid of all dissidents and revisionists in the CCCP under the guise of the people breaking apart the shackles of an old culture.

  Red Guards: The Red Guards were a loosely structured organization of high school and college students from “red” family backgrounds. They were ardent followers of Mao and became his machine for chaos during the Cultural Revolution. Millions of young adults joined Red Guard groups during the years of the Cultural Revolution.

  Four olds: During the Cultural Revolution, Mao decreed that these “four olds” must be abolished: old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits.

  “Running dog for the Capitalists”: Anyone sympathetic with or in agreement with any tenet of capitalism was labeled with this derogatory title.

  Juang Qing: Mao’s fourth wife. Mao put her in charge of the Small Group—the office that dealt with the Great Purge. She joined Mao in his personal vendettas and helped him discredit and destroy his enemies. During the Cultural Revolution, she was associated with Zhang Chungiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wen-yuan. They were known as the “Gang of Four,” a tight-knit political faction that used extreme and cruel measures to accomplish their goals. She was arrested shortly after Mao’s death for crimes committed by the “Gang of Four.” In the courtroom she said, “I was Mao’s dog. Whoever Chairman Mao asked me to bite, I bit.”

  Chapter 20

  Wen-shan took her time choosing the chopsticks she would place on the table. The serving bowls sat ready to receive the food, and the house was cleaned to sparkling. Now she checked the food for the tenth time and went to look out the window. There was a spot of dirt on the glass, and she ran to get a paper napkin to clean it. She was breathing on the window as she saw the taxi pull up in front of the half-moon arch. She quickly rubbed the spot as her uncle got out of the taxi and went around to open the opposite door. Master Quan emerged and Wen-shan’s stomach did a little flip. She ran to the cupboard and tossed the napkin in the trash can. She took one last look around the room as she heard the footsteps on the front porch. The door opened and Master Quan shuffled in. He was dressed in his scholar’s robes and walked with a simple black cane. Her uncle came behind, looking much like a mother bird protecting its chick.

  Wen-shan stepped forward and bowed. “Welcome to our home, Master Quan.”

  He grinned broadly, which made his eyes crinkle. He bowed too. “Thank you for inviting me. I smell many good smells.”

  “I hope so.”

  “This way, Master,” her uncle said, guiding his teacher toward the kitchen. “Our home is small, so we eat in the kitchen.”

  “It is better,” Master Quan said as he slowly made his way forward. “That means you are closer to the food.”

  Wen-shan giggled. “That is wise thinking.”

  As they passed the painting of the cypress tree, Master Quan stopped and focused on the picture. After several minutes, his gaze moved to the other hangings. He studied each without speaking. Finally he made a small turn to the right and saw the calligraphy. He pushed himself a little taller with his cane. A sound rumbled from low in his chest, and Wen-shan watched as tears washed his face. “Ah, I was a fortunate teacher.”

  “And I a fortunate brother.”

  “Yes.”

  Master Quan slumped a little, and her uncle held his arms. “Are you ready to sit and have a nice dinner?” her uncle asked.

  Master Quan used his sleeve to dry his face. “Yes. After seeing that powerful writing I could eat a dragon!”

  Her uncle took him to the kitchen and held the chair as Master Quan sat down. Wen-shan went to dish up the food. She had patterned the dinner after the one she’d eaten at Auntie Ting’s, although she couldn’t quite manage the pork knuckles. As she set the vegetables in sesame sauce, spring rolls, fried fish, cashew chicken, and rice on the lazy Susan in the middle of the table, Master Quan clapped his hands like a child and made excited comments.

  “Look at the color of sauce. So beautiful. Like a Guilin sunset. The fish look like they are just caught. Very fresh. I have not seen vegetables like that since my mother cooked them for me.”

  Wen-shan was overwhelmed with all the praise and sat down a little out of breath.

  “We say a prayer before we eat,” her uncle said. “If that is all right with you, Master Quan?”

  Master Quan beamed. “I like prayers!”

  Her uncle’s blessing on the food that night added in words of gratitude for Master Quan and his bravery in bringing the jade dragon box to them.

  When Wen-shan said her amen to the prayer, she really meant it.

  They dished themselves the foods they wanted and, as dinner progressed, it seemed to Wen-shan that the lazy Susan went around and around many times.

  Master Quan ate and talked with great enjoyment. “So, have you learned much from your mother’s letters, Wen-shan?”

  “We have, Master Quan, though much of it is very sad.”

  He nodded as he picked up a few more leeks with his chopsticks. “There was not much good news in China.”

  “No.”

 
; “But perhaps things will get better now.”

  “We can pray,” her uncle said. He put more fish on top of his rice and gave Master Quan a searching look. “I cannot imagine how you escaped, Master Quan. It was difficult for me and Mei-lan. I cannot think what it was like for . . .”

  “For someone as old as me?” Master Quan chuckled.

  “You have hidden strength, that is all I can say.”

  “I would love to hear the story,” Wen-shan encouraged.

  “Of course. Of course,” the old scholar said happily. “For this dinner I would tell many stories! But Mr. and Mrs. Smythe have the main story to tell; they have much strength and intelligence. Like two clever monkeys.”

  “How did you meet them?” Wen-shan asked.

  “They came to Guilin in 1930s to look for art.”

  “For the museum?”

  “Oh, no. This long time before museum. They were young couple with much money. They own fancy Asian import business in London.” Master Quan became reflective. “When things got very bad in Guilin, they snuck word that they were going to get me out.”

  Wen-shan’s stomach clenched at the words, “very bad in Guilin.”

  “They must have some powerful contacts,” her uncle stated.

  Master Quan’s head bobbed several times, and he gave them a meaningful grin. “Yes, but still they take big chance.” He leaned forward. “One day an important official came from the Central Committee. He had much power and we were all afraid. He came to our university and ordered we hand over art pieces we were hiding from Red Guards. He was going to torture one of the teachers because no one would talk. I make decision. I order the art treasures brought out. One of the treasures is your jade dragon box.”

  Wen-shan was stunned. How did our box ever get out of the grasp of the government official? she wondered, but before she could ask, Master Quan went on with the story.

  “The official was very angry. He put art pieces into truck. Then he beat me and put me into truck too.”

  “Oh, no! Oh, Master Quan!”

  Master Quan patted her hand. “Not to worry. He beat me only a little bit to make it look good.”