Under the Hawthorn Tree (2 page)

Realising with a start that their work had begun, the four rushed to find their notebooks. Four or five scratching pens seemed to be an everyday occurrence for Mr Zhang, so he continued talking. Once he had told the story of the tree which had borne witness to the glorious deeds of the people of West Village, it was time to set out again.

After a while Jingqiu looked back to the hawthorn tree,ﾠnow faint, and thought she could see a person standing beneath it. It wasn't a soldier from Mr Zhang's story, tied upﾠtightly by those Japanese devils, but a handsome young man . . . She scolded herself for her petty capitalist thoughts. She must focus on learning from the poor peasants, and work hard on writing this textbook. The hawthorn tree story would definitely be included in the textbook, but under what title? What about, ‘The Blood-stained Hawthorn Tree'? Perhaps that was too gory. ‘The Red-blossoming Hawthorn Tree' might be better. Or, simply, ‘The Red Hawthorn Tree'.

Jingqiu's backpack and string bag felt heavier after the rest, not lighter. She thought, perhaps it's like clashing flavours: a little bit of sweetness before a mouthful of bitterness makes the bitter taste much more bitter. But not one of them dared to complain. To be afraid of struggle and exhaustion was for capitalists and to be labelled a capitalist was the one thing that scared Jingqiu. Her class background was bad, so she mustn't go around exploiting the peasants, making them carry her bags – that would mean elevating herself above the masses even more. The Party had a policy, ‘You can't choose your class background, but you can choose your own path.' She knew that people like her had to be more careful than those with good class backgrounds.

But struggle and exhaustion didn't go away just because you didn't talk about them. Jingqiu wished that every aching nerve would wither and die. That way she wouldn't feel the weight on her back or the pain in her hands. She tried doing what she always did to help dismiss pain: she let her thoughts run wild. After a while she would almost feel that her body was elsewhere, as if her soul had flown away and was living a completely different life.

She didn't know why she kept thinking of the hawthorn tree. Images from Mr Zhang's story of the soldiers tied up alternated with the handsome young white-shirted Russian men from the song. In her imagination she became an anti-Japanese hero, punished by her enemies, and then she was the young Russian girl, wracked by indecision. Jingqiu couldn't honestly say if she were more of a Communist or more of a revisionist.

Eventually they reached the end of the mountain road and Mr Zhang, halting, pointed down the mountainside. ‘That's West Village.'

The students rushed to the edge of the cliff to admire West Village spread out before them. They could see a small jade-green river that snaked down from the foot of the mountain and circled the village. Bathed in early spring sunlight and surrounded by bright mountains and crystal water, West Village was beautiful, prettier than the other villages Jingqiu had previously worked in. The panoramic view showed fields spread like a quilt across the mountainside in patches of green and brown scattered with small houses. A few buildings were concentrated in the middle, alongside a dam, which Mr Zhang said was the army base. According to the system in Yichang county each village had a large army detachment, and the head of the village was actually the army unit's Party secretary, so the villagers called him ‘Village Head Zhang'.

The group walked down the mountain, arriving first at Mr Zhang's home which was located at the river's edge. His wife was at home and welcomed them, asking them to call her Auntie. She said that the rest of the family was either in the fields or at school.

Once they were all rested, Mr Zhang began to arrange where they would stay. Two teachers, Mr Lee and Mr Chen, and the student Good Health Lee, were to live together with one family. The other, Mr Luo, would only be here for a short while, providing guidance on the writing – within a day or two he would need to return home to get back to school – so he would just squeeze in somewhere. One family had agreed to give one of their rooms to girls, but they only had space for two.

‘Whoever is left over can live with me,' Mr Zhang said, deciding to set an example. ‘I don't have any spare rooms, I'm afraid, so that girl will have to share a bed with my youngest daughter.'

The three girls looked at each other, dismayed. Jingqiu took a deep breath and volunteered. ‘Why don't you two live together? I'll stay at Mr Zhang's.'

There were no activities planned for the rest of the day so they had time to settle in and have a rest. Work would start officially the next day. As well as interviewing the villagers and compiling the text, they knew that they would be working in the fields with the poorest farmers, experiencing peasant life.

Mr Zhang led the others to their new homes, leaving Jingqiu with Auntie Zhang. Auntie took Jingqiu to her daughter's room so that she could unpack. The room was like the other rural bedrooms she had been in, dark with a small window on one wall. It had no glass, just cellophane pasted to the frame.

Auntie switched on the light, dimly illuminating the room which was about fifteen square metres, tidy and clean. The bed was bigger than a single bed but smaller than a double. With two it would be tight, but adequate. Newly washed and starched, the sheets, more like cardboard than cloth, were spread tightly across the bed, on top of which lay a quilt folded into a triangle, the white lining turned out at two corners. Jingqiu pondered how it was folded and couldn't for the life of her work it out. Feeling a little flustered, she thought she would use her own blanket so that she wouldn't have to struggle to refold the quilt the next morning. Students who were sent to the countryside to live with lower and middle-ranking peasants knew they were to take their cue from the protocol used by the 8th Route Army during the civil war: use only that which the peasants use and return everything intact.

On the table by the window was a large square of glass used to display photographs, which Jingqiu knew was considered decadent. The photos lay on a dark green cloth. Curious, Jingqiu walked across the room to take a look. Auntie pointed to each photo in turn, explaining who everyone was. Sen, the eldest son, was a towering young man who looked completely unlike his parents. Maybe he's the odd one out, she thought. He worked at Yanjia River post office, and only came home once a week. His wife was called Yumin, and she taught at the village primary school. She had delicate, refined features and was tall and thin – a good match for Sen.

Fen was the eldest daughter. She was pretty, and Auntie told Jingqiu that after graduating from middle school Fen went to work in the village. The second daughter was called Fang. She looked very different from her sister, her mouth protruding, and her eyes smaller. Fang was still studying at Yanjia River Middle School, and only came home once or twice a week.

While they were talking Mr Zhang's second son, Lin, came home. He was there to fetch some water and to start preparing the food for the city guests. Jingqiu saw that he didn't resemble Sen, his older brother, but looked more like Mr Zhang. She was surprised. How could two brothers and two sisters look so different? It was as if when making the first son and daughter, the parents used up all the best possible ingredients so that by the time they came round to the next two, they'd just put them together any old how.

Jingqiu, feeling awkward, said, ‘I'll help you collect water.'

‘Can you manage?' Lin said quietly.

‘Of course I can. I often come to the countryside to work on the land.'

Auntie Zhang said, ‘You want to help him? I'll just cut some greens, and you can wash them in the river.' She picked up a bamboo basket and left the room.

Lin, left alone with Jingqiu, turned and scuttled off to the back of the house to get the water buckets. Auntie returned with two bundles of vegetables and gave them to Jingqiu.

Back with the buckets, eyes cast down to avoid her gaze, Lin said, ‘Let's go.' Jingqiu picked up the basket and followed him, tracing the small road towards the river. Halfway, they bumped into a few young boys from the village who teased Lin. ‘Your dad's got you a little bride, has he?' ‘Oooh, she's from the city.' ‘Things are looking up!'

Lin dropped the buckets and chased after the boys. Jingqiu called, ‘Don't listen to them!' Lin returned, picked up the buckets, and flew off down the road. Jingqiu was confused, what did the boys mean? Why did they make a joke like that?

At the river Lin decided the water was too cold for Jingqiu, it would freeze her hands solid, he said. Jingqiu couldn't convince him otherwise, and so stood waiting and watching from the riverbank. Once he had finished washing the greens, he filled up the two buckets.

Jingqiu insisted that she should carry them. ‘You didn't let me wash the vegetables, at least let me carry the water.' But Lin wouldn't let her, he picked up the buckets himself, and darted off towards home. And not long after they got back to the house, Lin quickly left.

Jingqiu tried to help Auntie cook but, again, wasn't given the opportunity. By now Lin's little nephew, Huan Huan, who had been sleeping next door, had woken up, and Auntie instructed him, ‘Take your Aunt Jingqiu to fetch Uncle Old Third for dinner.'

Jingqiu didn't know that there was yet another son in the family. She asked Huan Huan, ‘Do you know where Uncle Old Third is?'

‘Yes, he's at the geobology camp.'

‘The geobology camp?'

‘He means the geological unit's camp,' Auntie explained smiling. The boy doesn't speak very clearly.'

Huan Huan pulled at Jingqiu's hand. ‘Let's go, let's go, Old Third has sweets . . .'

Jingqiu followed Huan Huan only to find that after a very short while Huan Huan refused to walk. Opening his arms he said, ‘Feet hurt. Can't move.'

Jingqiu started laughing and lifted him up. He might have looked small, but he was heavy. She'd already spent the best part of a day walking and carrying her bags, but if Huan Huan would not walk, she had no choice but to carry him a little way, put him down to rest, then lift him up and carry on, asking constantly, ‘Are we nearly there yet? Have you forgotten the way?'

They had walked a long stretch of road and Jingqiu was just about to take another rest when she heard from far off the sounds of an accordion. Her instrument! She stopped and listened.

It was indeed an accordion, playing ‘The Song of the Cavalryman', a tune that Jingqiu had played before, though she could really only play the right-hand part. This musician, however, played both parts very well. When they got to the rousing sections it sounded just like ten thousand horses galloping, winds howling, and clouds swirling. The music was coming from a building that looked like a worker's shed. Unlike the rest of the houses in the village, which were all detached, this building consisted of a long strip of huts joined together. It had to be the camp.

Huan Huan now found new, heroic, strength. His legs no longer hurt, and he wanted to throw off Jingqiu and run on ahead.

Keeping a firm hold of his hand, Jingqiu was dragged to where she could hear the music clearly. And now there was a new song. ‘The Hawthorn Tree', this time joined by a chorus of male voices. She hadn't expected people in this little corner of the world to know ‘The Hawthorn Tree'! She wondered if the villagers didn't know that it was a Soviet song, so freely were the men singing . . . They sang along in Chinese, and she could hear that they were slightly distracted, as if also busy with their hands. But it was this distracted quality, the starting and stopping, the low humming, that made the song particularly beautiful.

Jingqiu was mesmerised; she felt that she had been transported into a fairy tale. Dusk enveloped them, kitchen smoke curled up to the sky, and village smells drifted through the air. Her ears were filled with the sounds of the accordion and the low rumbles of the men's voices. This strange mountain village was at once familiar; its flavour had to be savoured, she thought, as she struggled to express it in words. Her senses were steeped in what she could only think to describe as a petty capitalist atmosphere.

Huan Huan escaped Jingqiu's grip, and ran into the building. Jingqiu guessed that the accordion player must be Huan Huan's uncle Old Third, Mr Zhang's third son. She was curious. Would this third son look more like the eldest, Sen, or the second son, Lin? She secretly hoped that he would look more like Sen. Such lovely music couldn't possibly come from the hands of a man like Lin. She knew that she was being unfair to Lin, but still . . .

A young man appeared carrying Huan Huan. He was wearing a dark blue, knee-length cotton coat, which must have been the geological unit's uniform. Huan Huan's little body obscured most of his face and it was not until he was almost in front of her and had put the little boy down that she saw his face properly.

Her rational eye told her, he's not the picture of a typical worker. His face isn't blackish-red, it's white; his figure is not robust ‘like an iron tower', but is slender. And his eyebrows are bushy but not like those on the propaganda posters which slant upwards like two drawn daggers.

He made Jingqiu think of a film, made on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, called
The Young Generation
. In it, there was a character who had what was called at the time a ‘backwards way of thinking'. Old Third didn't look a bit like a revolutionary or a brave soldier – he looked much more like a petty capitalist – and Jingqiu found herself admiring the non-revolutionary things about him.

She could feel her heart racing and she grew flustered, suddenly becoming aware of her appearance and clothes. She was wearing an old padded cotton outfit her brother used to wear, which looked a bit like a Mao suit except that the jacket only had one pocket. The standing collars on these suits were short, and Jingqiu's neck was particularly long. She was convinced she must look like a giraffe. Because her father had been sent to a labour reform camp in the countryside when she was young, the family had had to survive on their mother's salary. They were always short of money, so Jingqiu wore her brother's old clothes.