Years of Red Dust (14 page)

“Oh, the unit price means a
liang
, equivalent to fifty grams.”

“How can that possibly be?”

“It's a convention in five-star restaurants. You've never been to one before?”

“Of course I have.”

“Then you should have known about the unit price,”
she said, turning to the last page of the menu. “Take a look. It states it clearly.”

It was true—it was printed in tiny characters there, though he had never thought to check at the end of the menu. If he weren't in Lili's company, he might have admitted his ignorance, paid with whatever money he had with him, and then paid the remaining balance later. But he couldn't afford to lose face like that. As an alternative, he tried to come off as a man fighting for principle, not for money. Only this way, he thought, would he stand a chance in her eyes, though it was difficult for him to define the principle or the fight for it.

“Come on. The Shanghai newspapers are filled with stories about rip-offs like this,” he said. “My buddy works for the
Wenhui Daily
. He would jump on a story like this.”

“What would the article possibly say?” the waitress asked sarcastically.

“It's no longer the days of Victor Sassoon,” Dong said, invoking the name of the Jewish tycoon who built the Peace Hotel with money exploited from Chinese people. “The fish costs more than two months of my salary as a state-run company worker. Do you think that's socialist?”

“So you are still holding onto an iron rice bowl,” she said. “You know what? The customers here are holding gold bowls and silver bowls. They have their own companies. Let me tell you—we are not a state-run restaurant. If you are so proud of your iron bowl, you don't have to come here.”

While he was arguing with the waitress, Lili stood up and left the table without a word. She might have gone to the restroom, he thought.

But she didn't come back.

Then restaurant security came, took all the money he had, and dragged him out by the collar.

Afterward, when he tried to contact Lili again, she said on the phone, “Perhaps you can afford to lose face like that, but I can't.”

Dong couldn't afford to lose face like that either. So he quit his state-run company and left for Shenzhen with a business plan of his own.

There he started manufacturing stainless-steel rice bowls, believing that the archetype of the iron rice bowl still held symbolic significance for people. It proved to be a brilliant idea, and they soon began selling all over the country.

This is the last issue of
Red Dust Lane Newsletter
for the year 1992. In January, Comrade Deng Xiaoping made his strategic “southern tour” to Shenzhen and Zhuhai Special Economic Zones, pointing out that revolution is the liberation of production forces, that reform is also the liberation of production forces, and that development, instead of being either socialist or capitalist, is the one and only truth. His important talk gave a great boost to the open-door economic strategies and accelerated the market reform to establish a socialist market economy, with major Yangtze River and border cities opening to foreign investment. Internationally, China ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And this year, China's GDP grew by twelve percent.

Bai Jie's story should have finished long, long ago.

It almost did, in 1954, the year she returned to Red Dust Lane after being taken and released as a POW of the Korean War. Since then, she had led a quiet but hardly visible life in the lane.

Her existence wasn't written off, even though she was merely a shadow of her former self. What happened to her in the years after was of barely any interest to anybody in the lane. Still, she didn't live in a vacuum. Whenever there was a new political movement, suspicions about her would come up again. And there were a number of new political movements during those years. It seemed quite possible that at some point the suspicions would bear fruit, but they never did.

Those years were like short sentences punctuated by one political movement after another, and one individual's story—not particularly tragic or dramatic in comparison to many others—couldn't hold people's attention for long. She had been brought up again only once in the evening talk of the lane. It was at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution: a radical young Red Guard branded the Chinese character “Loyalty” on her own shoulder to show her devotion to Mao, and someone brought up the topic of Bai.

“What people put her through is a shame,” Old Root snapped. “Don't even mention her again.”

A lot had happened to the people who knew her story back in the early fifties. Some moved, some died, and some
simply lost interest. The young and the middle-aged people who joined the evening talk of the lane weren't very interested in a withered, white-haired woman.

The water flows, flowers fall, and the spring fades. / It's a changed world.

Bai had retired from the hospital a couple of years ago. Still single, she stayed at home—in her room of eleven square feet—most of the time. She had bought a hot plate, so instead of mixing with her neighbors in the common kitchen, she also cooked in her own room. Even the people who lived in the same building saw little of her. One of her next-door neighbors thought Bai might have some sort of mental disorder. Or she simply wanted to pass into oblivion.

She might have succeeded, but for the unexpected return of Xue Zhiming, another prisoner of war, who appeared about forty years later, in 1992. His was a totally different story.

Xue had been another of the Chinese People's Volunteers marching proudly out of Red Dust Lane, leaving for the Korean War. A gawky young man, he was by no means as popular as Bai, and the lane paid little attention to the news about him being listed as having disappeared during the Korean War. Later on, there was some speculation about him being captured. Shortly after Bai's return, a police officer visited his parents too. Their talk was behind closed doors, and no one ever learned the contents. No red paper
flower ever appeared on the door, and even his parents hardly talked about him in the lane. When they passed away in the early seventies, there was no further news of Xue. It was believed that he must have died.

It was not until the early nineties that a different story began to come out. Xue was alive—and prosperous, too—in Taiwan. As it turned out, he had been captured in the same battle as Bai and put into the same prison camp, but instead of returning home when released, he went over to Taiwan, where he was given a considerable sum from the Nationalist regime in exchange for his denouncement of the Communist regime. There, he started his own business and succeeded. By the early nineties, he was a billionaire with several large companies to his name. There was no news of him in Red Dust Lane for many years, and he didn't contact home for fear of bringing punishment or trouble down on the people.

With the dramatic change in the political environment across the Taiwan strait, Xue thought about coming back for a visit. He approached the Shanghai city government, inquiring about the possibility and expressing his wish to do something for his home city. His request was instantly granted. It was no longer the time of Chairman Mao's class struggle. China had now opened up to the world, and particularly to foreign capital coming in from anywhere. Besides, people now had some access to events in the outside world. For one thing, they read stories about Mitterrand, the French president who had been captured by the Germans
during the Second World War, an experience that hadn't cast a shadow over his political life. As for Xue's decision to go to Taiwan, it was easily brushed aside as a matter of history. According to a popular Party slogan, people should look forward, not backward.

The city government wanted the neighborhood committee of Red Dust Lane to do a good job welcoming Xue home. It was a political assignment, as it was an opportunity for the city to acquire outside investment capital, and it would help to propagandize the “new united front” as well. Xue was said to have a special attachment to the lane. Comrade Jun, the head of the neighborhood committee, ordered a clean-and-dress-up for the whole neighborhood. Several lane representatives were selected, including those old-timers who had known Xue before the Korean War.

When Xue arrived in Shanghai, as expected, he signed an intention agreement with the local government about a joint venture in the Huangpu district that could potentially add at least two hundred jobs to the area. He also gave a large donation to the elementary school he had attended, and in return, the school renamed the library the Zhiming Library.

The climax of Xue's visit was going to take place during his visit to Red Dust Lane. He carried a large number of red envelopes in his briefcase, it was said, for the people in the lane.

The neighborhood committee suggested a “wind-receiving” banquet for Xue in Xinya Restaurant, but Xue
insisted on choosing a small restaurant on Fujian Road, close to the side entrance of the lane. It wasn't too surprising. He must have had enough of dining in five-star restaurants.

“It's the lane in my dreams,” Xue said, the wine rippling in his cup.

“In your dreams, it's not just the lane, but the whole mainland too,” Comrade Jun said, raising his cup high. “We are all proud of you, Mr. Xue.”

“It's nothing—it's just like the old Chinese saying,” Xue said. “In the end, a leaf falls back down to the tree's root.”

“To Red Dust Lane,” the people of the lane affirmed, raising their cups around the table, their many arms like a forest.

After the first few rounds of toasts, Xue asked, “How is Bai Jie?”

It was understandable that he was concerned, while in his cups, about a fellow POW, as he sat in a restaurant so close to the lane. Long, long ago, he might even have been one of her secret admirers.

The lane representatives didn't know how to answer him, looking at each other in embarrassment. Comrade Jun mumbled that Bai was sick, which was true. According to the latest information from her neighbors, she might even have early Alzheimer's.

Holding a piece of stewed bear paw with his chopsticks, Xue continued, emotionally, “For many years, I have
thought of her constantly. What has happened to her, back in Red Dust Lane?”

What had really happened to Bai? For all these years, she had lived in the lane, single, solitary, like a hermit crab forever staying within a borrowed shell, as all the political trouble loomed over her. Comrade Jun came up with the excuse that he didn't start to work in the lane until the sixties, so he didn't exactly know. Old Root, on the other hand, suggested that Xue start by telling them about what had happened to him during the years since he left.

Draining the cup, Xue started to tell us about his experiences during the Korean War.

He and Bai had been put in the same prison camp, where the Taiwanese agents tried hard to talk them into defecting to Taiwan. At first Xue was quite adamant in his refusal. What finally brought him around was a story told by one of the agents, whose uncle, a nuclear scientist at an American university, went back to mainland China, but couldn't find a job in his field because no one trusted him. In the class system of socialist China, Xue's father was a “small business owner,” and he wasn't trusted in the new society either. It wasn't difficult for Xue to conclude that, even if he returned to Red Dust Lane, he would always be under suspicion, and he dreaded such a prospect. The compensation offered by the Nationalist regime was, needless to say, another factor that influenced his decision. It was an amount equal to his total income for twenty years back at the snack shop he had worked in.

“Right or wrong, it was a decision that weighed like a rock on my heart whenever I thought of her,” Xue said. “She was a young girl, but she had the guts to stand up for her principles. She said no to all the offers and ignored all the threats so that she could come back.”

“Don't be so hard on yourself, Mr. Xue,” Comrade Jun said. “It was long ago and things were complicated in those days. It wasn't exactly your fault. History has turned over a new page and you have come back to the lane.”

“We heard stories about the prison camps, stories of torture or branding of prisoners,” Old Root cut in unexpectedly. “Was that true?”

“It's possible, especially with Bai, who refused to cooperate at all with Taiwanese agents. As for branding, we heard stories of it in the camp too,” Xue said. He massaged his brows as if in pain before he went on. “They threatened to brand anticommunist slogans on us, I heard, so that it would be impossible for us to come back. To forestall such a dirty trick, Bai used a burning needle to engrave ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!' on her left shoulder.”

“Oh, she could have showed it to the Party authorities—” Comrade Jun cut himself short after a glance from Old Root.

“I really admire her,” Xue said, his head low. “She never wavered. There was a wealthy Taiwanese officer who was mad for her. He later became a general and if she had consented . . .”