Red Azalea (5 page)

I wrote what my mother asked of me a thousand times. It was an old teaching passed down since Confucius. It said, Do not treat others how you yourself would not like to be treated. My mother demanded I copy it on rice paper using ink and a brush pen. She said, I want to carve this phrase in your mind. You are not my child if you ever disobey this teaching.

W
hen I was seventeen, life changed to a different world. The school’s vice principal had a talk with me after his talks with many others. He told me that he wanted to remind me that I was a student leader, a model to the graduates. The policy was there, as strict as math equations. He told me that I belonged to one category. The category of becoming a peasant. He said it was an unalterable decision. The policy from Beijing was a holy instruction. It was universally accepted. It was incumbent upon me to obey. He said he had sent four of his own children to work in the countryside. He was very proud of them. He said that twenty million Chinese worked on these farms. He said many more words. Words of abstractions. Words like songs. He said when one challenges heaven, it brings pleasure; when one challenges the earth, it brings pleasure; when one challenges one’s own kind, it brings the biggest pleasure. He was reciting the poem by Mao. He said a true Communist would love to take challenges. She would take it with dignity. I was seventeen. I was inspired. I was eager to devote myself. I was looking forward to hardship.

I listened to the stories of the neighborhood. My next-door neighbor wrote from his village and said that he had purposely hammered his finger at work in order to claim injury for a chance to be sent back home. Little Coffin’s big sister went to the northern border and wrote that her roommate was shot on the border as a traitor when she tried to escape to the USSR. My cousin who went to Inner Mongolia wrote and said that his close friend died
while putting out a mountain fire. He was honored as a hero: he saved the village’s grain storage at the expense of his life. My cousin said the hero made him understand the true meaning of life so he decided to spend the rest of his life on horseback in Mongolia to model himself after the hero.

Among the gossip, I heard that the Li family’s daughter was raped by a village head in the Southwest province; the Yang family’s son was honored for killing a bear that had eaten his coworker in a forest at a northern farm. These families were upset. They took the horror stories to the local Party administrators. The letters were shown. But the families were told not to believe such monstrous lies. Because it was made up by enemies who feared the revolution spreading. The Party authorities showed the families pictures of the place where their children had gone, pictures of prosperity. The families were convinced and comforted. The family upstairs sent their second and third children to the countryside. Little Coffin’s parents were honored with certificates and red paper flowers, for the family had sent three children to the countryside. Their doors and walls were pasted with big poster-sized letters of congratulation.

Finally, my name appeared on the school’s Glorious Red List—I was assigned to the Red Fire Farm, which was located near the shore area of the East China Sea. The next day I was ordered to go to a city building to cancel my Shanghai residency.

It was a cold afternoon. The city building had no
lights. The clerks worked in the shadows. It was in the shadows I began my heroic journey. The officer passed me back my family’s resident registration book. I saw my name blotted out by a red stamp. The red stamp, the symbol of authority. That afternoon I felt like a bare egg laid on a rock. Maybe I would come to a real birth or maybe I would be smashed by the paw of some unfamiliar creature. I realized at that moment that it was much too easy to sing “I’ll Go Where Chairman Mao’s Finger Points.” I remembered how I sang that song. I never realized what I was singing until that day.

I sat in the dark. And my family sat with me. And the day came.

O
n the morning of April 15, 1974, my family accompanied me to the People’s Square. Ten huge trucks were parked in the center of the square. Red flags with characters the color of gold were tied to the side of every truck, proclaiming “Red Fire Farm.” The flags were blown to their full size, bright as the color of fresh blood.

I registered. A woman of about twenty-five, with short hair cut to the ears and half-moon-shaped eyes, greeted me. She was warm. She introduced herself as Comrade Lu. She said congratulations to me repeatedly and leaned over my shoulder and said, Be proud of yourself! She smiled. The half-moon eyes became quarter moons. She shook hands with me and tied a red paper flower to the front of my blouse. She said, Hey, smiling, we are family now.

I got on a less crowded truck. My father passed me my suitcases. Mother looked ill. Blooming and Coral went to hold her arms. Space Conqueror stared at me. His deep-set eyes were two wells of chaos. My father waved at
me and forced a smile. Now get out of here, he said, trying in vain to be funny.

My family stood in front of me, as if taking a dull picture. It was a picture of sadness, a picture of never the same. I was out of the picture.

I wanted to tell my family to leave because the longer they stayed the more bitter I grew. But I was not able to say anything. I was too sad to say anything. But I was seventeen. I had courage. I turned toward the direction where the wind blew. I said to the future, Now I am ready, come and test me!

When the trucks pulled away, the crowd moaned. Parents would not let loose of their children’s arms. I looked away. I thought of my heroic past, how I had always been proud to be a devoted revolutionary. I forced myself to feel proud, and that way I felt a little better. Comrade Lu saw me, saw that I did not wave goodbye to my family. She came to my side and said, Good guts. She asked us to sing a Mao quotation song. She led: “Go to the countryside, go to the frontier, go to where our country needs us the most …”

We began to sing with Lu. Our voices were dry and weak like old sick farm cows. Lu waved her arms hard, trying to speed up the singing. People paid no attention to her. It was a moment when memory takes root. The moment youth began to fade. I stared at my parents who stood like frosted eggplants—with heads hanging weakly in front of their chests. My tears welled up. I sang loudly. I screamed. Lu said into my ear, Good guts. Good guts. Her arm was holding the flag of Red Fire Farm. The
trucks advanced, facing the blowing wind. The dust blurred, the image of Shanghai faded.

On the truck no one introduced himself to the others. Everyone sat right next to his luggage, listening to the roaring sound of the wind. We sat, as if mourning. In a few hours we were greeted by the night stars of the sky. I started to miss my father. I thought of the night he dragged me, Blooming, Coral and Space Conqueror out of our beds at midnight to observe the Milky Way and the stars. He wanted us to be astronomers. The dream he had not had a chance to complete himself. It was as clear as tonight, the sky, the Milky Way, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and a man-made earth satellite in orbit …

It was in drowsiness that I smelled the East China Sea. Lu told us that we had arrived at Red Fire Farm. It was late afternoon. There was an ocean of endless sea reeds. The trucks spread out in different directions. Like a little spider our truck crawled into the green. The sky felt so murky and short. Short like a reachable ceiling.

I got off the truck with tingling legs. There were two rectangular gray-brick barracks standing on each side of me. Between the barracks there was a long public sink with many taps. I saw people walk in and out of the barracks. People who looked tired, bored, in dusty clothes, with greasy hair. They paid no attention to us.

I was picking up my suitcases when I heard someone shouting suddenly, Assemble! The commander is coming!

Commander? Was I in a military camp? Confused, I
turned to Lu, who was staring tensely toward the east. Her smile had disappeared completely. She looked hard. I followed her eyes toward the open field. A small figure appeared on the horizon.

She was tall, well-built, and walked with authority. She wore an old People’s Liberation Army uniform, washed almost white, and gathered at the waist with a three-inch-wide belt. She had two short thick braids. She had a look of a conqueror.

Stopping about five feet away from us, she smiled. She began to examine us one by one. She had a pair of fiery, intense eyes, in which I saw the energy of a lion. She had weather-beaten skin, thick eyebrows, a bony nose, high cheekbones, a full mouth, in the shape of a water chestnut. She had the shoulders of an ancient warlord, extravagantly broad. She was barefoot. Her sleeves and trousers were rolled halfway up. Her hands rested on her waist. When her eyes focused on mine, I trembled for no reason. She burned me with the sun in her eyes. I felt bare.

She began to speak. Her words carried no sound. People quieted down and a whisperlike voice was heard. Welcome to you, new soldiers to Red Fire Farm who join us as—she cleared her throat and spit out the words one by one—as our fresh blood. She said she welcomed us to break out of the small world of our personal concerns to be part of an operation on such a grand scale. She said that we had just made our first step of the Long March. Suddenly raising her voice, she said that she wanted to introduce
herself. She said, My name is Yan Sheng. Yan, as in discipline; Sheng, as in victory. You can call me Yan. She said she was the Party secretary and commander of this company. A company that was making earth-shaking changes in everything. She lowered her voice again to a whisper. She said she did not really have much to say at an occasion like this. But she did want to say one thing. Then she shouted, Don’t any of you shit on my face! Don’t any of you disappoint the glorious title of “The Advanced Seventh Company,” the model of the entire Red Fire Farm Army! She asked whether she had made her point clear. And we, startled, said, Yes!

Fanning her hand in front of her nose as if to get rid of some bad smell, she asked did we wish not to be as weak as we were. She repeated her phrase again. She wanted to hear us say
Yes!
in the proper manner of a soldier. And we shouted in one enthusiastic voice.

She said, That’s better, and then smiled. Her smile was affectionate. But it lasted only three seconds. She looked hard again and told us that the farm had thirteen thousand members and our company four hundred. She said that she expected every one of us to function as a screw in a big revolutionary machine. Keep yourself up. Run, run and run, said she, because if you stop, you rust. She wanted us to remember that although we would not be given formal uniforms, we would be trained as real soldiers. She said, I never talk nonsense, never. This phrase of hers stuck in my mind for a long time, for it was expressed in such a roughneck way.

As if blanketed by shock, no one moved after Yan called us to be dismissed. Lu raised her hand at Yan. And
Yan took a step back from the ranks and introduced Lu as her deputy commander.

Lu said that she had a couple of things to say to the ranks. She marched in front of the ranks. Big smiles piled up on her face before she opened her mouth. With a surgical voice she said that although she was newly transferred to this company, she was an old member of the Communist Party family. She started to recite the history of the Communist Party, beginning with its very first establishment meeting on a small boat near Shanghai. She talked and talked until the sun drew back its last ray and we were covered by the descending fog.

I was assigned to house number three, occupied by females. My room was about nine by fourteen feet, with four bunk beds. I had seven roommates. The only private space was within the mosquito net that hung from thin bamboo sticks. The floor was packed earth.

The next day we were ordered to work in the rice fields. The leeches in the muddy water frightened me. A girl named Little Green was working alongside me. A leech was on her leg. When she tried to pull the leech out, it went deeper. It soon disappeared into the skin, leaving a black dot on the surface. She screamed in horror. I called up an experienced soldier named Orchid for help. Orchid came and patted the skin above the leech’s head. The leech backed itself out. Little Green was very appreciative for my help and we became good friends.

L
ittle Green was eighteen. She had the bed next to mine. She was pale, so pale that exposure to the sun all day did not change the color of her skin. Her fingers were thin and fine. She spread pig shit as if she were organizing jewelry. She walked gracefully, like a willow in a soft breeze. Her long braids swayed on her back. She looked down at the floor whenever she spoke. She was shy. But she liked to sing. She told me that she was brought up by her grandmother, who used to be an opera singer before the Cultural Revolution. She inherited her voice. Her parents were assigned to work in remote oil fields, because they were intellectuals. They came home once every year on New Year’s Eve. She never got to know her parents much, but she knew all the old operas though she never sang old operas in public. In public she sang “My Motherland,” a popular song since Liberation. Her voice was the platoon’s pride. It helped us to get through the tough labor, through the days we had to get up at five and work in the fields until nine at night.

She was daring. Dared to decorate her beauty. She tied her braids with colorful strings while the rest of us tied our braids with brown rubber bands. Her femininity mocked us. I watched her and sensed the danger in her boldness. I used to be a head of the Red Guards. I knew the rules. I knew the thin line between right and wrong. I watched Little Green. Her beauty. I wanted to tie my braids with colorful strings every day. But I did not have the guts to show contempt for the rules. I had always been good.

I had to admit that she was beautiful. But I and all the other female soldiers said she was not. We tied on brown
rubber bands. The color of mud, of pig shit, of our minds. Because we believed that a true Communist should never care about the way she looked. The beauty of the soul was what should be cared about. Little Green never argued with anyone. She did not care what we said. She smiled at herself. She looked down on the floor. She smiled, from the heart, at herself, at her colorful string, and was satisfied. No matter how tired she got, Little Green always walked forty-five minutes to a hot-water station and carried back water to wash herself. She cleaned the mud off her fingernails, patiently and gaily. Every evening she washed herself in the net while I lay in my net, watching her, with my pawlike fingernails laid on my thighs.

Little Green proudly showed me how she used remnants of fabric to make pretty underwear, finely embroidered with flowers, leaves and birds. She hung a string next to the little window between our beds on which she could hang her underwear to dry. In our bare room the string was like an art gallery.

Little Green upset me. She upset the room, the platoon and the company. She caught our eyes. We could not help looking at her. The good-for-nothings could not take their eyes off her, that creature full of bourgeois allure. I scorned my own desire to display my youth. A nasty desire, I told myself a hundred times. I was seventeen and a half. I admired Little Green’s guts. The guts to redesign the clothes we were issued. She tapered her shirts at the waist; she remade her trousers so that the legs would look longer. She was not embarrassed by her full breasts. In the early evening she would carry the two containers of hot water, her back straight, chest full. She walked toward
our room singing. The sky behind her was velvet blue. The half-man, half-monkey male soldiers stared at her when she passed by. She was the Venus of the farm’s evening. I envied and adored her. In June she dared to go without a bra. I hated my bra when I saw her, saw her walking toward me, bosoms bouncing. She made me feel withered without ever having bloomed.

The days were long, so long. The work was endless. At five in the morning we were cutting the oil-bearing plants. The black seeds rolled on my neck and into my shoes as I laid the plants down. I did not bother to wipe the sweat that was dripping and salted my eyes. I did not have the time. Our platoon was the fastest in the company. We soared like arrows. We advanced across the fields in staircase-shape formation. When we worked, we were sunk into the sea of the plants. We barely straightened our backs. We had no time to straighten our backs. Little Green did, once in a while. She upset us. We threw unfriendly words out. We said, Shame on the lazybones! We did not stop until Little Green bent down to work again. We did this to everyone but Yan. Yan was a horse rider. We were her horses. She did not have to whip us to get us moving. We felt the chill of a whip on the back when she walked by and examined our work. I watched her feet moving past me. I dared not raise my head. I paid attention to what my hands were doing. She stopped and watched me working. I cut and laid the plant neatly. I tried not to let the black seeds rain down. She passed by and I let out a breath.

A pair of Little Green’s prettiest hand-embroidered underwear was stolen. It was considered an ideological crime. The company’s Party committee called a meeting. It was held in the dining hall. Four hundred people all sat on little wooden stools. In rows. The question regarding the theft was brought up by Yan. No one admitted to the theft. Lu was indignant. She said she could not bear such behavior. She said the fact of what was stolen shamed us all. She said the Party should launch a political campaign to prevent such behavior from taking place. She said it should be more the fault of the company leaders than the soldiers. Yan stood up. She apologized for being soft on watching her soldiers’ minds. She apologized to the Party. She criticized Little Green for vanity. She ordered her to make a confession. She told Little Green that in the future she should not hang her underwear near the window.

Little Green was washing her fingernails in the evening. She tried to wash off the brown, the fungicide that had stained her nails. She used a toothbrush. I lay on my hands. I watched her patience. Little Green said that she was disappointed in Yan. I thought she was more human than Lu, said Little Green. Lu is a dog. I do not expect her to show elephant’s tusks. But Yan was supposed to be an elephant. She is supposed to have ivory instead of jigsaw-patterned dog teeth.