Years of Red Dust (10 page)

This is the last issue of
Red Dust Lane Blackboard Newsletter
for the year 1984. It has been a year of great success and achievement for our country. In January, Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang visited the United States, and then American President Ronald Reagan visited China in April. The Party authorities stressed two major tasks for the country in the new period: restructuring the economy and opening the country to the outside world. Deng Xiaoping made the solemn promise that Hong Kong's socioeconomic system would remain the same after its return to China: “One country, two systems.” In December, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Premier Zhao signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the return of Hong Kong in 1997.

Xie Zhengmin had got his nickname—Big Bowl—when his family moved from Jin'an district into Red Dust Lane in 1967, the second year of the Cultural Revolution. He was then only ten.

He immediately learned about the culture of the lane. Most families had no air-conditioning or electric fans at home, and in the summer, it was almost unbearable to have a hot meal inside. There was no traffic in the lane, and a pleasant, fitful breeze rippled through, so people came out holding their rice bowls, eating heartily in the open. It was a sort of social occasion for the lane. Talking and laughing, one would put a piece of soy sauce–braised lamb into his friend's bowl in return for half of a smoked fish head. Such exchanges were particularly common among kids.

So Xie Zhengmin also chose to eat outside. His nickname might have originated from the extraordinarily big bowl in his hands. There were those who thought there was more to it, though. Instead of mixing with the other kids, he stood aloof in a corner, as if burying his face in that big bowl. What was the point of eating outside if you were going to eat like that? The nickname could have been a reference to that puzzle.

Whatever the origin, the nickname stuck. Big Bowl's younger brother got his by association—Small Bowl—and then their parents got nicknames too. The mother was called Bamboo Chopsticks, because she was so thin, and the father was Steamed Bun, because he looked a little fermented.

In the evening talk of the lane, people didn't care so much about those nicknames, but there was something suspicious about the Xies. In the city of Shanghai, location mattered a lot. Red Dust Lane, though at the center of Huangpu district, was not considered an upper-class area. The
shikumen
houses here had been built with neither gas nor bathroom facilities, so early in the morning, the housewives had to start a fire in their coal briquette stoves by waving palm leaf fans like robots and had to carry out the chamber pots with sleepy eyes. In contrast, Jin'an district was a higher-class area. That the Xies had moved from there to a pathetic two-room combination here—an attic and a
tingzijian
cubicle over the kitchen—was too much of a bad bargain not to arouse comment.

It wasn't long before the answer came. Steamed Bun had become a target for the neighborhood criticism meeting in Jin'an district, and he had been forced to wear around his neck a blackboard that showed his class status: Stinking Capitalist. As a capitalist, he and his family members were viewed as “black”—politically unreliable—and subject to revolutionary discrimination in the neighborhood.

But it was useless for them to move. The Red Guards from Steamed Bun's company followed them over to Red Dust Lane, putting a bunch of slogan papers and posters on their door and windows:
Down with stinking capitalist
.

Indeed, the proletarian dictatorship was everywhere. The neighborhood committee of Red Dust Lane, too, held a mass-criticism meeting against the Xies.

The Xies did not move anymore. Big Bowl hung his head lower in the lane, with or without the bowl.
“No face,”
an elderly neighbor said, pointing out the symbolic meaning of the gesture. “That's why the boy has been hiding his face in the big bowl since his arrival.”

Face or no face, Big Bowl grew up like others. In the late seventies, the Cultural Revolution was officially declared a national disaster, and the class system was practically shelved. Big Bowl started to greet his neighbors amiably, holding his head high. There were other changes in the lane too. People did not eat outside as much, since more and more families bought electric fans.

Big Bowl became a young accountant for a state-run company. According to Bamboo Chopsticks, he took evening college courses, turned in his application for Party membership, and went to Beijing several times as a representative of the company. In short, he was a young man with a promising future.

Soon we saw him bringing a young girl surnamed Qian into the lane. She worked at the same company, though it was said that their relationship faced challenges. In the once popular class system, Qian's father was a worker, and their families did not match, politically. While it was difficult to tell what Qian saw in Big Bowl, it was not so difficult to understand the reverse. Qian was very pretty, and Big Bowl went out of his way to introduce her to his neighbors.

The class difference was no longer considered that
important, not like it was back in the days when Big Bowl had first acquired his nickname. Things had changed in China, the way colorful balls rotate through a juggler's hands. Now people actually found there were benefits to a black family background. Some of those families got compensation for their losses during the Cultural Revolution. Some were able to reestablish contact with relatives overseas, which often meant a sizable amount of money coming to them from abroad. Big Bowl, it turned out, had a rich uncle in the United States.

In the second year of their relationship, the young couple began discussing their marriage plans, but Bamboo Chopsticks started to complain in the lane. “Qian's family has nothing. The revolutionary proletariat indeed. We have to pay for everything.”

Qian's family, it was said, was not happy either. The issue of family background aside, where was the “wedding room” for the young couple? Big Bowl's family remained huddled together in that two-room combination—an attic and a cubicle above the kitchen—and in the best scenario, the young couple would get one of the two.

“To marry into such a capitalist family,” Old Qian, the young girl's father, admonished her, “is like having the smell of the fish, but not getting any of the meat.”

“Some people simply cannot resist the smell!” Bamboo Chopsticks declared at the lane entrance when she heard, stamping her feet as though in a loyal character dance.

But it was no longer the time of arranged marriages.
The two young people remained adamant, and the parents on both sides could do little to change their minds.

So the wedding was scheduled for the summer. Most of the neighbors in the lane got small bags of happiness candies, including two chocolate coins wrapped in gold paper. Some also received a wedding invitation. Big Bowl's parents had reserved more than thirty tables at the Guoji Hotel, one of the top restaurants in Shanghai. At the rate of eight hundred yuan per table, it would cost about twenty-five thousand yuan—more than Old Qian's income for ten years—not to mention the other expenses. But the lane had another way to calculate the cost. In China's time of economic reform, the most practical and popular wedding presents came in the form of cash in a red envelope. The current standard gift was a hundred yuan per person, and some honored guests—those at the table with the bride and bridegroom—could pay up to five hundred yuan. With ten to twelve people per table, if each and every guest was as decent as expected, such a grand wedding might even turn a profit. No one could be sure, though. Some cheap guys might put in only twenty yuan in a red envelope.

“It's a capitalist wedding,” Old Qian grumbled. He was an ex-member of the Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team, who still flourished a couple of political terms like his metal tooth. “Nothing but exploitation.”

“It's a wedding,” Bamboo Chopsticks countered, spitting out the husk of a watermelon seed. “If they don't need face, we have to have ours.”

It seemed like a sound argument in the changed times. During the Cultural Revolution, people had simple, cost-effective weddings based on the principle of following the Party's tradition of hard work and a simple life. Nowadays such a practice would make laughingstocks of the young couple.

A tough negotiation was staged between the two families. Conventionally, the two sides would share the cost, but Old Qian had recently suffered a pay cut at his factory. It was finally agreed that the groom's family would be responsible for all costs and, in exchange, only two banquet tables would be allocated to the bride's family and friends.

“It's an unbelievable bargain for them,” Bamboo Chopsticks concluded with a chuckle. “They can pocket the red envelopes from those two tables. A huge profit out of the thin air.”

Her continuous “news conference” kept the lane informed of all the progress up to the day of the wedding. When that day arrived, the lane held its breath in excitement. Cameras flashed at the dowry of twelve silk quilts piled high in front of the door, at the red paper cut designs put on the windows, and at the Red Flag limousine at the lane entrance, a special automobile that had allegedly chauffeured Chairman Mao in the sixties.

We wondered what the wedding at the celebrated Guoji Hotel would be like, and we waited eagerly to hear. Before the banquet was finished, Small Bowl hurried back to the lane, to prepare for the young couple's homecoming. His
face flushed the color of a red cloth, he declared that it was an unprecedented wedding.

“Eight cold dishes. Eight hot dishes. Four big platters. The whole duck. The whole chicken. The whole fish. The whole Jinhua ham. Two soups. Not to mention four desserts. The banquet lasted more than three hours. The bride and bridegroom had to walk around to each and every table, with cups in their hands. The guests kept toasting to their happiness, and the young couple, especially the bridegroom, had to drink to their toasts or the guests would lose face. So I had to act as the wine guard, drinking on his behalf. It would be a shame for the bridegroom to get drunk tonight. Indeed, one minute in the wedding room is worth tons of gold.”

Small Bowl then brought out a pile of firecrackers, arranging for some to be set off at the lane entrance; some, at the center of the lane; and the rest to be set off by himself in front of the
shikumen
door. It was considered auspicious for the couple, and the more firecrackers, the better luck.

Upon the Red Flag limousine's arrival, the whole lane was overwhelmed by a joyful outburst of firecrackers.

Now, there's no story without coincidence.

As the bride was stepping into the house, the long bunch of firecrackers in Small Bowl's hand failed to explode.

“This one is rotten,” Small Bowl grumbled in the awkward silence that instantly shrouded the air. “Let's start a new one.”

“What? What do you mean?” Old Qian exploded. “You cannot be humiliating us like that.”

“Come on. It is only a bad firecracker. You know the quality of those products nowadays.”

“A bad firecracker at the moment my daughter steps into your home as the bride? It's not just humiliating, but downright unlucky too.”

“How can you say that today?” Bamboo Chopsticks shot up like a firecracker herself. “Your mouth needs to be cleaned thoroughly with a chamber pot broom!”

“Damn you, you black-hearted-and-black-lunged capitalist wife,” Old Qian shouted, as if miraculously transported back to the days of the Cultural Revolution, a white-haired working-class rebel cursing in front of a door decorated with red signs of happiness. “You are good at nothing except exploiting people. How much have you made from the red envelopes? We working class are still the leading class in socialist China. Don't you forget that!”

“What have you done, you old idiot?” Small Bowl was furious. “You have not paid a single penny out of your own pocket. You are the cheapest dirt.”

“Nobody did it on purpose,” Steamed Bun said. “It was only because of the quality of the firecrackers.”

“The quality?” Old Qian went on relentlessly. “Couldn't you have chosen something better? You have money, don't you? How dare you to treat my daughter like dirt! Yes, we are working-class people, but we won't save money on the firecrackers for the wedding.”

Now all the neighbors poured out to watch the scene. They tried to calm down both sides, but without success. Apparently, the firecracker was only the fuse that finally set off the long pent-up feud between the two sides. It was clear that nobody—except perhaps the bride and bridegroom, who had already evaporated into their room—would be able to put an end to the fight.

But the couple did not come out.

They might not have heard it at first, but when no one followed them into the wedding room, the couple should have noticed. It was a time-honored convention that the guests would “celebrate by turning the wedding room upside down.” No one in the street, however, paid any attention to the ritual, what with the increasingly intense drama of the brawl.