Old Town (30 page)

1.

T
HE
R
EVOLUTIONARY
M
ARTYRS
’ Cemetery in Old Town was not far from our primary school. Every year during the Qingming Festival,
³⁸
the school would organize a visit to the cemetery to sweep up and offer flowers. On a wall in the cemetery’s Memorial Hall were displayed photographs of the Sixty-One Martyrs. I clearly remember that number. The Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery was on a big piece of sloping land outside West Gate. There the pine trees were blue-green and flowers were in bloom the whole year round. It was also a good place for us to play hide-and-seek. The old custodian of the cemetery watched over the place strictly but we always had a way of slipping in. For example, we would send a boy student to make a frontal attack to distract the old fellow’s attention, and then our large detachment of troops would pass behind him in single file. Once we were inside, if he wanted to find us, it would be like dredging the sea for a needle.

I hid countless times in the Memorial Hall in some corner or the other, but no matter in which one, I could always see that wall. The Sixty-One Martyrs looked at me. I looked at them. It was like our saying, “Well water won’t seep into river water.”—
I’ll mind my business if you mind yours
.

When Cousin Su, the one who changed his name to “Oppose Revisionists” Lin, was fifteen years old, he was sent out to do labor in the countryside. He never had the chance to attend university, but today he is the richest of his generation of Lins. Nobody remembers “Oppose Revisionists” Lin. Because of my grandfather’s wrath, the name lasted only three months. At the mention of that old matter of the name change, Cousin Su just gives a big laugh. Nowadays he doesn’t oppose revisionism; if anything, he’s only afraid there won’t be enough of it.

Cousin Su took me to his
other
home, the one for his mistress. It was where a young chick who had once been a beauty contestant in Old Town now lived. He wanted me to see how good he was at moving back and forth between his two homes to make two women feel content with their lives. Starting in the early nineties, a man would keep a mistress to demonstrate how successful his endeavors had been and to show off his ample wallet.

As we walked into the building complex, somebody’s speakers were just then blaring out a popular rock song of the day in which a singer shouted until he was hoarse, “It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s just that this world is changing too fast.”

So true…Every morning bright and early when you open your eyes, today’s sunshine isn’t the same color as it had been yesterday. Everything is changing so drastically there’s no time to make any sense of it, and if you try you’re already l eft behind.

Just before we arrived at Cousin’s “grand mansion for beloved women,” I suddenly felt a bit hesitant as I thought of his wife. She was a good and capable woman and loved by one and all in the Lin family. I had just decided to entrust Beibei to her, so how could I deceive her by going to visit my cousin’s other woman?

I mentioned this worry to him, but he just planted his hands on his burly waist and laughed and laughed.

“You’re such a hick. Are all Beijing people hicks like you? I tell you, unless your husband proves totally worthless, you’ll need to learn how to be the Number One and put up with his little concubine. I wouldn’t hurt my wife, nope, not the slightest little hair on her body.”

Actually, I was annoyed no end about my own husband’s other woman. Chaofan was already in America. He still had that pretty violinist who had left the orchestra with him. I never dared mention to my Old Town relatives that he had now left China, or that I was at a crossroads in my own destiny—looking back, ahead, and all around—indecisive about what direction to take.

Cousin Su misread my glum expression to mean that I was feeling some ethical or moral pressure. He took out a mobile phone as bulky as a brick and called his mistress to tell her that the visit had to be cancelled due to an unexpected event. A woman’s affectedly sweet voice carried from the hand phone. “What a bore.”

The land this complex stood on was right where we children used to play hide-and-seek. At that time several square miles of the hillside were all part of the cemetery. Since then, though, the martyrs’ domain had been swallowed up piece by piece and was now dense with new properties for rent or for sale. All that was left was the stone Remembrance Tablet and the Memorial Hall so pitifully hemmed into one little corner.

I said I would like to visit the Memorial Hall to see the photograph of a newly added martyr, one who had borne the crime of being a counterrevolutionary. It was only after thirty years in the Nine Springs of the netherworld that he had been rehabilitated. He had been Enchun’s leader in that long-ago time. He had also been the older brother of Enchun’s wife.

Remembering the origin of the relationship of this martyr with my family and especially with me, Cousin Su shook his head. “For someone dead for so long…she just had to get him a martyr’s name. But, really, what was the point?”

I knew he meant Chaofan’s mother. In order to overturn the judgment against her brother, she had bitterly struggled on for fully thirty years and more. She lost her job, her family broke up, she was treated as a rightist, she went to prison, but as long as there was one breath within her she insisted on going to Beijing to register her grievance. And when her yellow petitions
³⁹
were turned down, she cried out this injustice to the entire country.

“Foolish.” “Silly.” This was Cousin Su’s judgment on our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Of the whole Lin family only he had penetrated to the true meaning of life, that is, getting money and seeking pleasure. And, whatever you do, never shortchange yourself.

Chaofan says the same thing. When he was at university in Beijing, his mother was still there seeking redress but she never disturbed her son right up until her brother’s remains were transferred to the Martyrs’ Cemetery. Then she wrote her son a long letter in which she extolled the heroic vision of the party. For more than thirty years her loyalty and belief in the party had kept her going. There were seven or eight densely packed pages of this. Her son only glanced at the letter and with a cold, mocking laugh tossed it all into the wastepaper basket. This woman, who disappeared three days after giving birth to her son, never received that son’s pity and forgiveness.

The displays inside the Memorial Hall were just the same as when I was young. Then, when I stood before the pictures of the martyrs, their gazes seemed to come alive and touch me deeply. Their average age had been only twenty-two years. When their pictures were taken, they knew that the moment of death had come, but there was no look of terror on their faces, rather, they looked calm and collected. The oldest among them was that one there: he had suffered injustice for several decades and was no more than thirty years old. He looked out at the world with a disdainful smile.

Maybe they had been happier than us
. Just then I was rushing about madly, getting set to leave China. Crowds thronged the embassy district in Beijing all year long regardless of the season. Many people had passports simply so they could leave China. If they couldn’t get to one country they would just go to another. Those receiving visas would go wild with joy. Those who were refused visas were like people mourning a death in the family. I belonged to this latter group. Sometimes I would be startled awake in the middle of the night thinking about where my life was going. I couldn’t keep from feeling frighteningly devoid of any substance. I had to leave because I couldn’t find anything with greater meaning here. After Chaofan had gone, my life became utterly chaotic. I wanted to bring Beibei back to my old home down south and then go meet head-on a life that was even more chaotic.

Cousin Su, standing beside me, expressed a different sort of regret as he pointed to a martyr who had only been nineteen years old. “To die so young…I’ll bet he had never even met a woman. Look how handsome he is. If he had been born in this age he might have become some youth idol and made a major bundle.”

For most people nowadays, money is the measure of everything. While feeling real pity for these figures, Cousin Su congratulated himself at his great luck in becoming such a favored son of the times.

Maybe I’m the incompetent one, with almost no salary to speak of and not enough money to use for measuring right and wrong. I never told my cousin that I envied these martyrs who had died so young. I envied them for their fulfilled lives.

It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s just that this world is changing too fast.

There’s another saying too: “The moment humanity starts to ponder, God just laughs.”

Standing in the gaze of the martyrs, I tried to reflect on philosophic theories of human life, but I became even more confused than before.