Frog

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Dear Sugitani Akihito sensei,

It has been nearly a month since we said goodbye, but I can relive virtually every moment of our time together in my hometown as if it were yesterday. With no concern for age or physical frailties, you crossed land and sea to come to this out-of-the-way spot and engage in literary conversations with me and with local fans of literature; we were deeply moved. On the second morning of the year, you favoured us with a presentation in the county guesthouse auditorium that you called ‘Literature and Life’. With your permission, we would like to publish a transcription of the taped lecture in the local publication Frog Calls, so as to make available to those who were unable to attend in person a chance to appreciate and learn from your use of language.

On the morning of the first day of the year I accompanied you on a visit to my aunt, an obstetrician for more than fifty years, and though she spoke too quickly in her accented Chinese for you to grasp everything she said, I am sure she left a deep impression on you. In your talk the next morning you cited her often in support of your views of literature. You said you came away with an image of a doctor racing across a frozen river on a bicycle; another of her with a medical kit slung over her back and an open umbrella in one hand, trouser cuffs rolled up, as she forces her way through a mass of croaking frogs; yet another of a doctor laughing joyfully as she holds a newborn infant in her hands, her sleeves spattered with blood; and finally one of a doctor with a care-laden face, a cigarette dangling from her lips, clothing rumpled… you said that all these mental pictures sometimes come together into a single image and at other times split into discrete fragments, like a series of carvings. You urged local literature fans to create poignant works of art out of my aunt’s life, either in fiction, in verse, or in drama. Sensei, your encouragement has produced a creative passion in many of us. An associate at the county cultural centre has already begun a novel about a village obstetrician, and though my understanding of what my aunt accomplished is much greater than his, I do not want to enter into a competition and will leave the writing of a novel to him. What I want to do, sensei, is write a play about my aunt’s life. On the night of the second, when we were talking as we sat on the kang at my house, I experienced an epiphany thanks to your high praise and detailed analyses, as well as your unique insights into the plays of the Frenchman, Sartre. I want to write, I feel I must write librettos as fine as The Flies and Dirty Hands, with the audacious goal of becoming a great playwright. With your instruction as a guide, I will proceed slowly, without forcing the issue, as patient as a frog on a lily pad waiting for insects to come its way. But when I put pen to paper, it will be with the speed of a frog jumping up to snatch an insect out of the air.

When I was seeing you off at the Qingdao airport, you asked me to send you in letters the story of my aunt’s life. Although she is still alive and well, I could describe her life using such potent metaphors as ‘surging forth magnificently’ and ‘rife with twists and turns’. There are so many stories, and I don’t know how long this letter ought to be, so with your indulgence, I will put my meagre talents to use by simply writing until the time has come to stop. In this age of computers, writing a letter with pen and paper has become a luxury, but a pleasurable one, and I hope that as you read this, you enjoy a taste of olden times.

While I’m at it, I want to tell you that my father phoned to say that on the lunar twenty-fifth, red blossoms burst onto the tree in our yard, the one whose unique shape prompted you to call it a ‘talented’ old plum. Many people came to witness our blooming plum, including my aunt. My father said that a feathery snow fell that day, saturated with a redolence of plum blossoms that cleared the head of anyone who smelled it.

Your student, Tadpole

21 March 2002, in Beijing

1

Sensei, an old custom in my hometown dictated that a newborn child is given the name of a body part or organ. Nose Chen, for instance, Eyes Zhao, Colon Wu, Shoulder Sun… I haven’t looked into the origin of this custom, but I imagine it embodied the outlook of ‘those who are badly named live long’. Either that or it evolved from a mother’s thoughts that a child represented a piece of her body. The custom is no longer followed, as young parents have no interest in naming their children in such an unusual way. Local children these days are endowed with elegant and distinctive names of TV characters in dramas from Hong Kong, Taiwan, even Japan and Korea. Most of those who were named the earlier way have adopted more conventional names, most but not all. We still have Chen Er (Ears) and Chen Mei (Brow).

Chen Er and Chen Mei were the daughters of Chen Bi (Nose), my classmate and my friend. We entered Great Sheep’s Pen Elementary School in the fall of 1960. That was during the famine, and nearly all my strongest memories of the time deal with food. I’ve told the story of eating coal. Most people think I made that up, but I swear on my aunt’s good name it’s true.

The coal was part of a ton of high-grade ore from the Longkou Coal Mine, so glossy I could see my face in it. I’ve never seen the likes of it since. Wang Jiao (Foot), the owner of a horse cart, transported the coal over from the county seat. Wang, a man with a square head, a thick neck and a bad stammer, had a bright look in his eyes when he spoke, his face flushed from the effort. He had a son, Wang Gan (Liver), and a daughter named Wang Dan (Gallbladder). They were twins, and both were my classmates. Wang Gan was tall and well built, while his sister never grew to full size and remained a tiny thing — to be unkind, a dwarf. Everyone said she was so small because her brother had sucked up all the nutrition in their mother’s womb. After school was out, we ran over with our backpacks to watch Wang Jiao shovel the coal to the ground, where it landed crisply on a growing pile. He stopped to wipe his sweaty neck with a blue cloth he’d wrapped around his waist, and when he saw his son and daughter, he shouted: Go home and mow the grass.

Wang Dan turned and headed for home, struggling to keep her balance as she ran, like an infant learning how to walk; a lovely sight. Wang Gan backed up but did not run. He was proud of his father’s occupation. Children these days, even those whose fathers are airline pilots, are not as proud of theirs as he was of his. Wang drove a horse cart whose wheels threw up dust as it rumbled along; an old branded warhorse said to have distinguished itself by once towing an artillery piece was between the shafts, while a bad-tempered mule was up front in a harness, a mean animal known to kick and bite. That aside, it was astonishingly powerful and could run like the wind. No one but Wang Jiao could control it. Though many villagers admired his line of work, they kept their distance from the mule, which had already bitten two youngsters: Yuan Sai (Cheek), son of Yuan Lian (Face); and Wang Dan, who had been bitten and picked up by the head while playing in front of the house. We were in awe of Wang Jiao, who stood over six-two, with broad shoulders, and the strength of an ox. He could lift a stoneroller weighing two hundred jin over his head. But what really wowed us was his skill with a whip. That time the crazy mule bit Yuan Sai, Wang pulled back the brake and, with one foot on each of the shafts, brought the tip of his whip down on the animal’s rump with a crack that drew blood. The mule reacted by kicking out, but then began to quake as its forelegs buckled and its head hit the ground, mouth in the dirt, rump raised ready for another hit. It was Yuan Sai’s father, Yuan Lian, who came to its rescue. It’s okay, Old Wang, he said, sparing the animal further anguish. Yuan was our village’s ranking official, the Party secretary. Not heeding his word was not an option for Wang Jiao. After the crazy mule bit Wang Dan, we eagerly awaited another good show, but instead of striking out with his whip, Wang Jiao scooped up a handful of roadside lime and pressed it against the girl’s head as he carried her inside. The mule did not taste his whip this time, but his wife did, just before Wang kicked his son.

That crazy mule was one of our favourite topics of conversation. Skinny as a rail, the indentations above both eyes were so deep they could accommodate hen’s eggs. Its eyes emitted a sorrowful gaze, as if it were about to howl. How a skinny animal like that could exert such strength was a mystery. We were talking about that as we drew up to the mule. Wang Jiao stopped shovelling coal and glared menacingly, backing us up terrified. The pile in front of the school kitchen grew higher and higher, the load of coal on the cart kept getting smaller. We sniffed in unison at the strange aroma in the air, a bit like burning pine or roasting potatoes. Our sense of smell drew our gaze to the pile of glistening coal as Wang Jiao flicked the reins and drove his cart out of the schoolyard. This time we didn’t chase it out of the yard, as we usually did, even risking the bite of Wang’s whip when we tried to climb aboard to satisfy our desire for a ride. No, we kept our eyes glued to the pile of coal as we shuffled forward. Old Wang, the school cook, wobbled over with two buckets of water on his shoulder pole. His daughter, Renmei, was also a classmate who, much later, would become my wife. She was one of the rare children not burdened with the name of a body part, and that was because her father had attended school. As the one-time head of a commune animal-husbandry station, a careless comment had cost him his job and sent him back to his village. He observed us with a wary eye. Did he think we were planning to raid his kitchen? Go on, you little shits, get out of here! There’s nothing here for you to eat. Go home and suck your mothers’ teats. We heard him, of course, and even considered what he’d said. But he was just mouthing off. Already seven or eight years old, we were way past nursing at our mothers’ breasts. Even if we hadn’t been, our half-starved mothers, with their flattened chests, had nothing to give us. But we weren’t interested in arguing with Old Wang. Instead, we stood in front of the pile of coal, heads down and bent at the waist like geologists who have discovered an unusual rock formation. We sniffed the air like dogs searching for food in a rubbish pile. At this point I need to first thank Chen Bi and then Wang Dan. It was Chen who first picked up a chunk of coal and sniffed it, crinkling his brow as if pondering a weighty question. His big, high-bridged nose was a source of laughter for us. After a thoughtful pause, he smashed the coal in his hand against a much larger piece, like shattering glass, releasing a strong aroma into the air. Both he and Wang Dan picked up shards. He licked his to taste it and rolled his eyes as he looked our way. She copied him by tasting hers and looking our way. They exchanged a glance, smiled, and as if on cue, cautiously took small bites; they chewed briefly before taking bigger bites and chewing like crazy. Excited looks burst onto their faces. Chen Bi’s big nose turned red and was beaded with sweat. Wang Dan’s little nose turned black with coal dust. We were entranced by the sound of coal being chewed and shocked when they swallowed it. They’d actually swallowed coal! It’s good, guys, he said softly. Eat up, big brother! she cried out shrilly. Wang Gan picked up another piece and really started to chew, while she grabbed a large chunk and handed it to him. So we followed their lead, smashing the coal into smaller chunks and nibbling it at first to see how it tasted. Though it was sort of gritty, it wasn’t half bad. Chen Bi picked up a large chunk. Eat this kind, guys, he said helpfully, it tastes the best. He pointed to some slightly transparent, amber-like pale yellow coal. That was the source of the pine aroma. From our nature study class we’d learned that coal formed over millennia from buried forests. Our teacher for that class was our principal, Wu Jinbang. We hadn’t believed him or what the textbook said. How could green forests turn into black coal? We’d thought he and the textbooks were lying. But the smell of pine trees changed our minds. Our principal and the textbook were telling the truth. All thirty-five students in our class, except for a few absent girls, picked up chunks of coal and started chewing, crunching away, slightly mysterious looks of excitement on our faces. It was like improvisational theatre or a strange game. Xiao Xiachun (Lower Lip) turned a piece of coal over and over in his hand, but chose not to eat it, a superior look on his face. He didn’t eat it because he wasn’t hungry, he said, and that was because his father was the commune granary watchman.

Old Wang the cook came out, his hands flour-dusted, and was stunned by what he saw. (My god, that’s flour on his hands! In those days, the only people who ate in the kitchen were the principal, our political instructor, and two locally stationed commune cadres.) What are you kids doing? Old Wang cried out in alarm. Are you… eating coal? Who does that? Wang Dan picked up a piece and, in a tiny voice, said, It’s delicious. Here, Uncle, try it. Old Wang shook his head. Wang Dan, he said, why is a nice little girl like you acting like these wild kids? She took a bite. It really is delicious, Uncle, she said. A red evening sun was setting in the west. The two privileged commune cadres rode up on their bicycles. We got their attention, as Old Wang tried to shoo us away with his shoulder pole. The fellow named Yan — I think he was the assistant director — stopped him. With a disdainful wave of his hand and a sour look on his face, Old Wang stormed back into the kitchen.

The next day in school we nibbled on coal while listening to Teacher Yu’s lesson, our mouths smeared black, coal crumbs in the corners. The boys weren’t the only ones either. Wang Dan taught even the girls who’d been absent the day before how to eat it. Old Wang’s daughter, my future wife, Renmei, enjoyed it more than anyone. Now that I think about it, she probably had a gum disease, since her mouth bled as she chewed. After writing several lines on the blackboard, Teacher Yu turned back to the class and asked her son, Li Shou (Hand): What are you kids eating? It’s coal, Ma. Want some, Teacher Yu? called out Wang Dan, who sat in the front row, a lump of coal in her hand. Her voice was like that of a kitten. Teacher Yu stepped down from the podium and took the lump from Wang Dan, holding it up to her nose either to smell it or get a closer look. She didn’t say anything for a moment then handed it back. Today we’re on lesson six, class, ‘The Fox and the Crow’. The crow found a piece of meat and was proud of herself, perched high up in a tree. From under the tree, the fox said, Crow, you have such a beautiful singing voice you put all the other birds to shame. Swooning over the flattery, the crow opened her beak to sing and, ha, the meat fell right into the fox’s mouth. The teacher led us in reading the story aloud, which we did with our black-as-crow mouths.

Teacher Yu was an educated, out-of-towner who followed the local custom by giving her son the name Shou (Hand), using his father’s surname, Li. Li Shou did well enough in the exams to be admitted to medical school. After graduation he returned to the county health centre as a surgeon. When Chen Bi lost four fingers while cutting hay, Doctor Li was able to reattach three of them.

2

Why did Chen Bi have a big nose that was so different from everyone else’s? Probably only his mother can answer that question.

His father, Chen E (Forehead), with the style name Tianting (Middle of the Forehead), was the only man in the village with two wives. A well-educated man, he came from a family that had farmed a hundred acres of prime land, run a distillery, and owned a business in Harbin before the establishment of the People’s Republic. Chen’s first wife, a local, had borne him four daughters. He fled north just before Liberation, but was brought back from the northeast in the custody of Yuan Lian and a pair of militiamen around 1951. He had fled alone, leaving his wife and daughters at home in the village, but brought another woman back with him. This woman, who had brown hair and blue eyes and looked to be in her early thirties, was called Ailian. She carried in her arms a spotted dog, and since she and Chen E had married before Liberation, it was perfectly legal for him to have two wives. Poor, unmarried village men were upset that Chen had two wives and half jokingly asked him if they could share one of them. Chen could only grin in response, a look somewhere between laughing and crying. The two Chen wives lived in the same house at first, but since they fought like cats and dogs, Chen received permission to put his junior wife up in two rooms next to the school, given that the school buildings had once housed his family’s distillery, which meant that the two rooms counted as his property. He reached an agreement with the women that he’d divide his time between them. The dog the light-haired woman had brought with her was tormented to death by village mongrels, and not long after Ailian buried it she gave birth to Chen Bi. People liked to say that he was a reincarnation of the spotted dog, which might explain his ultra keen sense of smell. By that time, my aunt had returned from the county seat, where she’d gone to learn the newest methods of midwifery. She became the first professional midwife in the entire township. That was in 1953.

In 1953, villagers were adamantly opposed to new midwifery methods, thanks to rumours spread by old midwives, who said that children born through these methods were prone to be arthritic. Why would they spread such rumours? Because once the new methods caught on, they’d be out of work. Delivering a baby at the mother’s home meant a free meal, a pair of towels, and a dozen eggs. Whenever these women entered the conversation, my aunt — Gugu — ground her teeth in anger. She could not begin to calculate how many infants and pregnant women had died at those old witches’ hands. Her descriptions of their methods were chilling: they grew long fingernails, their eyes emitted green will-o’-the-wisp-like glimmers, and their breath stank. She said they pressed down on the mother’s belly with rolling pins and stuffed rags in their mouths to keep the foetuses from coming out there. They knew nothing about anatomy and were totally ignorant of a woman’s biological make-up. When they encountered a difficult birth, according to Gugu, they crammed their hands up the birth canal and pulled with all their might, sometimes actually wrenching the womb out along with the foetus. For the longest time, if I’d been asked to compile a list of people most deserving to be lined up and shot, I’d unhesitatingly say: the old midwives. Gradually I came to understand why Gugu was so prejudiced against them. Crude, ignorant old midwives certainly did exist, but experienced old midwives who, through their own experience, had a keen grasp of the secrets of a woman’s body, existed as well. Truth be told, my grandmother was one of those midwives, one who advocated a policy of interfering as little as possible into the process. Her approach could be characterised as ‘the melon will fall when it is ripe’. In her view, the best midwives simply offered encouragement as they waited for the foetus to emerge, then cut the umbilical cord, sprinkled on some lime, wrapped the child, and that was that. But she was not a popular old midwife, considered by some to be lazy. Those people seemed to prefer women whose hands were constantly busy, who kept running in and out of the room, shouting and carrying on; those old midwives perspired as much as the woman in labour.

My aunt was the daughter of my great-uncle, who had served as a doctor in the Eighth Route Army. He’d entered the army as a specialist in traditional Chinese medicine, but then had been taught Western medicine by the Canadian Norman Bethune, whose subsequent death from blood poisoning hit him so hard he fell desperately ill. He told his superior he wanted to see his mother before he died, a request that was granted so he could recuperate. Gugu’s grandmother was still alive at the time, and the minute he walked through the door he was greeted by the familiar smell of mung bean soup. His mother had washed the pot and started a fire to make the soup, and when her daughter-in-law came up to help, she pushed her away with her cane. My great-uncle sat in the doorway waiting impatiently. Gugu said she was old enough then to remember such things, and when she was told to greet her father, she ran behind her mother to peek at him from there. She’d often heard her mother and grandmother talk about her father, whom she was now meeting for the first time, and to her he was a stranger. She told us how he sat in the doorway, sallow-faced, his hair long, fleas crawling up his neck, tufts of cotton wadding peeking out through tears in his tattered lined coat. Gugu’s grandmother — my great-grandmother — was in tears as she worked at the stove. When the soup was finally ready, Great-Uncle eagerly picked up a bowl and began slurping, despite the mouth-burning heat. Son, his mother said, slow down. There’s more in the pot. Gugu said his hands were shaking. He ate a second bowl, and his hands stopped shaking. Sweat ran down the sides of his face. Signs of life showed in his eyes as the colour returned to his face. Gugu said she could hear his stomach rumble, the sound of a millstone turning. An hour or two later, Gugu said, her father went to the outhouse, where he emptied his bowels, almost taking his intestines along with the loose mixture. That’s when his recovery began, and within two months he was his old, vigorous self again.

I told Gugu I’d read something like that in The Scholars. The what? she asked. I told her it was a famous classical novel. She glared at me. If things like that happen even in classical novels, that proves it was true.

Now that he was fully recovered, my great-uncle made preparations to rejoin his troops on Mount Taihang. Son, his mother said, I can’t live much longer. Wait to go till after my funeral. And there was another matter his wife found hard to bring up, that was left to Gugu. Father, she said, Mother doesn’t mind if you go, but she’d like you to leave me a little brother before you do.

Soldiers from the eastern Shandong military district of the Eighth Route Army showed up at Great-Uncle’s house to recruit him, as a follower of Norman Bethune, reminding him of his fine reputation. I already belong to the Shanxi-Chaha’er-Hebei arm, he said. But we’re Communists, just like they are, the Shandong representative said. It doesn’t matter where you work. We really need someone like you, Old Wan, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to keep you here. Commander Xu said if an eight-man sedan chair won’t do the trick, he’d hogtie him and take him under escort to a banquet in his honour. That is how Great-Uncle wound up staying home in Shandong, where he founded the Xihai Underground Hospital.

The hospital had underground passages that linked the wards and other rooms, including a sterilisation room, a treatment room, an operating theatre, and a recovery room, all of which remain in Zhu Family Village, which is part of Yutong Township in the Laizhou Municipal area, and are still well maintained. An old woman of eighty-eight, Wang Xiulan by name, who was Great-Uncle’s nurse back then, is still alive and well. Several of the recovery rooms lead directly to a well. One day back then, a young woman went to the well for water, and was surprised when her bucket stopped before reaching the bottom. She looked down, and there in a hollow in a wall, a young, wounded Eighth Route soldier looked up and made a face at her.

Talk of Great-Uncle’s superb medical skills quickly made the rounds. It was he who removed the shrapnel lodged near Commander Xu’s scapula. He also managed to save both Political Commissar Li’s wife and her child during a difficult birth. Word had even spread to Pingdu city, which was under the command of an officer named Sugitani, whose warhorse had stepped on a land mine during a mop-up operation. He had taken off on foot, leaving the horse behind. Great-Uncle performed surgery on the horse, and after it recovered it became the mount for Regimental Commander Xia. But before long, the horse was so homesick it bit through its tether and ran back to Pingdu. Sugitani was so happy to see his horse again, with its wounds healed, he told his Chinese collaborators to find out what had happened. He learned that the Eighth Route Army had established a hospital right under his nose, and that the medical skills of its director, Wan Liufu, were responsible for saving the life of his horse. Commander Sugitani, who himself had received medical training, was impressed by Great-Uncle’s skills and summoned him to surrender. To do so, Sugitani adopted a scheme from the classical novel Three Kingdoms, which was to secretly infiltrate our hometown to kidnap my great-grandmother, my great-aunt, and my aunt, and take them back to Pingdu, where he sent a letter to Great-Uncle, telling him they were being held hostage.

After reading Sugitani’s letter, my great-uncle, a dedicated Communist, wadded it up and threw it away. The hospital commissar retrieved the letter and delivered it to district headquarters. Commander Xu and Commissar Li wrote a joint letter to Sugitani, denouncing him as a petty man and threatening to throw the entire weight of the Shandong Eighth Route Army against him if he harmed a hair of any of the three members of Wan Liufu’s family.

Gugu said that she and her mother and grandmother were well treated during the three months they spent in Pingdu. According to her, Sugitani was a fair-skinned young man who wore white-framed glasses and had a moustache. Quiet and bookish, he spoke fluent Chinese. He called my great-grandmother Aunt, called my grandmother Sister-in-law, and called Gugu Niece. She did not have a bad opinion of him. Of course, she only said that privately to members of the family. To others she said that all three were victims of Japanese brutality, subjected to coercion and bribery, though they remained steadfast.

Sensei, I could talk about my great-uncle for three days and nights and never exhaust the subject. We’ll continue this some other day, but I must tell you about how he died. Gugu said he was gassed while performing surgery in the underground hospital. That is how his death is listed in historical documents prepared by the county consultative congress, but a private source claimed that he rode his mule into Pingdu with eight hand grenades on his belt, determined to single-handedly rescue his wife, his daughter and his ageing mother, but unfortunately struck a land mine placed by the Zhao Family Trench militiamen. The source of this account was Xiao Shangchun (Upper Lip), a stretcher-bearer for the Xihai Hospital. A quirky individual, Xiao served as the commune granary watchman after 1949, where he invented a pesticide that was a potent rat poison, for which he was extolled in the local newspaper, which changed his name from the chun that meant ‘lip’ to the one that meant ‘purity’. Later it was discovered that the main ingredient of his rat poison was a banned highly toxic pesticide. He and Gugu were bitter enemies, which makes his account highly unreliable. He once said to me that my great-uncle disobeyed orders by neglecting his patients in favour of playing the hero, and that he’d fortified himself before setting out by drinking two jin of potato liquor, winding up so drunk that he stumbled on one of their own land mines. A gloating Xiao Shangchun flashed a yellow-toothed grin as he continued: Your great-uncle and the mule he was riding were blown to bits, both carried back to the hospital in boxes, bones and hooves all mixed up, and dumped into a coffin. Not a bad coffin, though, one confiscated from a wealthy family in Lan Village.

When I repeated his story to Gugu, her eyes grew wide and she gnashed her silver teeth. One of these days, she said, I’m going to cut that bastard’s balls off!

Boy, she said staunchly, you can forget about everything else, but the one thing you must believe is that your great-uncle was a hero of the resistance and a revolutionary martyr! His body rests in a mausoleum on Martyrs Hill, his scalpel and leather shoes are part of the display in Martyrs Hall. They are English shoes, bequeathed to him by Norman Bethune on his deathbed.

3

Sensei, I rushed through the story of my great-uncle so I could take my time telling Gugu’s story.

She was born on 13 June 1937, the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which is Duanyang, the day of the Dragon Boat Festival. They called her Duanyang until she started school, and was then called Wan Xin (Heart). Great-Uncle named her, showing respect for local tradition while investing her name with a message. Not long after Great-Uncle’s death, his mother died of natural causes in Chengdu. Members of the Shandong military district launched a large-scale rescue mission to free Gugu and her mother from their captivity, and once they were in the liberated zone, Gugu was enrolled in the Resistance elementary school and her mother was sent to a factory to make soles for cloth shoes. After Liberation, the future for descendants of martyrs like Gugu could not have been brighter, but her mother hated the idea of leaving her hometown and Gugu hated the idea of leaving her. Officials at the county level asked her what she would like to do; when she said she’d like to carry on her father’s work, she was admitted to the prefectural medical school. She graduated at the age of sixteen and was assigned to the township health centre, where she undertook a training course for modern birthing methods organised by the county health bureau. Gugu forged an unbreakable bond with the sacred work of obstetrics. According to her calculations, from the fourth day of the fourth month of 1953, when she attended her first birth, till the spring of last year, she delivered around ten thousand babies, counting two as one when working with someone else. She told you this in person. I assumed she’d inflated the number somewhat, but there had to have been seven or eight thousand at least. She had seven interns, one of whom she called ‘Little Lion’, a young woman whose hair was never combed, who had a flat nose, a square mouth, and a face full of zits. She was so devoted to Gugu that if she’d been told to kill someone, she’d have picked up a knife and done it without asking why.

We’ve already seen how, in the spring of 1953, women in my hometown resisted modern birthing methods, including the old midwives, who spread all sorts of rumours. Gugu was only seventeen at the time, but with her unconventional experience and privileged background, she was already an influential young woman who was held in high esteem. Admittedly, her good looks played a role in that. Putting aside head, face, nose, and eyes, her teeth alone are worth mention. Our water was so heavily fluoridated that everyone, young and old, had black teeth. But after spending her youth in the liberated areas of eastern Shandong and drinking spring water, not to mention being taught to brush her teeth by Eighth Route soldiers, Gugu’s teeth were spared of that noxious effect. Hers were the envy of all, especially the girls.

Chen Bi was the first baby Gugu delivered, a fact that caused her a lifetime of regret — her first ought to have been the son or daughter of a revolutionary, not a landlord’s mongrel. But at the time, the necessity to start something new and do away with old birthing methods would not allow her to take such issues into consideration.

When Gugu learned that Ailian had gone into labour, she jumped on her bicycle (a rarity at the time), a medical kit over her back, and rushed home, covering the ten li from the health centre to our village in ten minutes. Village secretary Yuan Lian’s wife, who was washing clothes on the bank of the Jiao River, watched her race across the narrow stone bridge, so scaring a puppy playing on the bridge it fell into the river.

Medical kit in hand, Gugu burst into Ailian’s room, only to find that the old midwife Tian Guihua was already attending to her. The old woman, with her pointed mouth and sunken cheeks, was in her sixties; by now, thankfully, this torchbearer for the obstructionists is feeding worms. When Gugu entered, Tian was straddling Ailian and pushing down on her bulging belly with all her might. As Tian was suffering from chronic bronchitis, the sound of her laboured breathing merged with the hog-butchering screams of her pregnant victim, producing a tragically heroic aura in the room. Chen E, the landlord, was in the corner on his knees, banging his head in supplication on the floor, over and over, and mumbling incoherently.

As a frequent visitor to Chen’s house, I knew its floor plan well. Two cramped rooms with hanging eaves faced west. The first thing you encountered after entering was the stove, which was backed by a two-foot-high wall. The sleeping platform, the kang, was behind that low wall. So Gugu witnessed the scene the moment she walked in, and was livid with anger; in her own words, ‘the flames were thirty feet high’. She dropped her medical kit, ran up and, with her left hand on the old woman’s left arm and her right hand on her right shoulder, yanked her off the kang. The old woman’s head banged into the bedpan, splashing its contents all over the floor and filling the air with the smell of urine. Dark blood oozed from a head wound. It wasn’t a serious injury, but you wouldn’t have known that by her shrieks of agony. Most people, hearing such pitiful wails, would go dumb from fright. But they had no effect on Gugu, who had seen a thing or two in her life.

She took her place next to the kang, donned rubber gloves, and spoke sternly to Ailian: No more crying, no more screaming, since neither of those is helpful. Listen to me if you want to come out of this alive. Do exactly as I say. That had the desired effect on Ailian, who knew all about Gugu’s background and her uncommon experiences. You are a little old to be having a child, Gugu told her, and the position of the foetus is wrong. Babies are supposed to come out headfirst, but yours wants to come out hand first, his head still inside. In years to come, Gugu often teased Chen Bi by saying he wanted to emerge with an outstretched hand to ask the world for something. To which, Chen always remarked: I was begging for food.

It was her first case, and yet she was calm and composed, not a hint of panic, someone whose techniques produced better than expected results. Gugu was a natural genius as a woman’s doctor. What her instincts told her, her hands put into practice. Women who witnessed her at work or those who were her patients absolutely revered and admired her. My mother said to me more than once: Your aunt’s hands are different than other people’s. Most people’s hands are cold some of the time, hot at other times, sometimes stiff, and sometimes sweaty. But your aunt’s hands were always the same, whether in the cold of winter or the heat of summer: soft and cool, not spongy soft, more like… How can I describe them? My educated elder brother said: Like a needle tucked into cotton, supple yet firm? That’s it, Mother said. And the coolness of her hands was never icy. I can’t find the words… Again my brother came to her aid: Can we call it outer heat and inner coolness, like cool silk or fine jade? That’s it, Mother said, that’s it exactly. All she had to do was lay her hands on a sick person for that illness to retreat at least 70 per cent. Gugu came close to being deified by the women in our township.

Ailian was a lucky woman; she’d been a smart one to begin with. As soon as Gugu’s hands touched her belly, she felt a sort of vigour. She often told people she met afterward that Gugu had the bearing of a general. Compared to her, the woman lying on the floor in a puddle of piss was a clown. In the inspiration and power derived from her scientific approach and dignified demeanour, Ailian saw brightness and gained the courage to deliver; her gut-wrenching screams and pain were greatly reduced. She stopped crying and did as Gugu said, working in concert with Gugu’s movements to bring Chen Bi safely into the world.

Chen wasn’t breathing when he emerged, so Gugu held him by his feet and smacked him on the back and chest until he produced a kitten-like cry. How is it the little imp has such a big nose? Gugu wondered. He looks like one of those Americans. She was as happy as she could be, like an artisan who has just completed the first project. And a smile spread across the face of the exhausted mother. Though Gugu was imbued with strong class-consciousness, class and class struggle were completely forgotten as she helped the infant emerge from the birth canal. Her elation constituted the pure essence of happiness.

When he heard that it was a boy, Chen E stood up. Feeling helpless, he threaded his way back and forth in the narrow space behind the stove, strings of tears dripping like honey from his dried-up eyes. He was incapable of describing the joy he felt. (There were terms like male heir and patriarchal clan, but from a man like him they would have been offensive.)

The boy has such a big nose, Gugu said, why don’t you just call him Chen Bi — Nose Chen?

She was just teasing, but Chen E nodded and bowed to her, taking her words as if they constituted an imperial edict: I thank Gugu for favouring him with a name, he said. Nose it is. We’ll call him Chen Bi.

Swathed in Chen E’s insistent thanks and Ailian’s tears of joy, Gugu packed up her kit and was on her way out when she spotted Tian Guihua sitting in the corner against the wall, the broken bedpan on the floor in front of her. She actually appeared to be asleep. Gugu could not say when this transformation had taken place or when her hair-raising shrieks had stopped. She thought the woman might be dead, but light in her cat-like eyes proved her wrong. Waves of anger surged through her mind. What are you hanging around for? she said. I did half the work, the woman said, and you did the other half. By rights I should get one towel and five eggs, but my head is injured, thanks to you. For the sake of your mother, I won’t report you to the authorities, but you have to give me your towel to wrap the wound and your five eggs for my health.

That reminded Gugu that the old midwives always demanded a fee, and the thought disgusted her. Shame on you! she said through clenched teeth. Shame, shame on you! What do you mean, you did half the work? If I’d let you finish, there would be two corpses lying on that kang. You witch, you think a woman’s birth canal is like a hen’s rectum, that all you have to do is squeeze for an egg to pop out. You call that a delivery? What it is is murder. And you want to report me? Gugu aimed a flying kick on the woman’s chin. You want a towel? And eggs? Another kick followed, this one on the woman’s backside. She then grabbed her medical kit with one hand and the tight bun of hair on the woman’s head and dragged her out into the yard. Chen E followed them out, wanting to make peace. Get your arse back in there! Gugu demanded angrily, and take care of your wife!

It was, Gugu told me later, the first time she’d ever struck anyone. She’d never thought herself capable of such a thing. But she kicked her again. The old woman rolled over and sat up, pounding the ground with both hands. Help! she shrieked. She’s trying to kill me… Wan Liufu’s bandit daughter is trying to kill me!

Evening is when that occurred. The setting sun, a colourful western sky, light breezes. Most of the villagers were taking their dinner out in the streets, rice bowls in hand, and they came trotting over to see what all the commotion was about. The village Party secretary, Yuan Lian, and Brigade Commander Lü Ya (Tooth) was among them. Tian Guihua was a distant aunt of Lü Ya, close enough to be considered family. Wan Xin, he said to Gugu, aren’t you ashamed to hit an old woman?

Who did Lü Ya think he was, scolding me like that, a creep who battered his wife to make her crawl around the house?

Old woman? Gugu said. Old witch is more like it. A demon! Ask her what she was doing here.

I don’t know how many people have died at your hand, but if a woman like me had a gun, she’d happily put a bullet in your head. Gugu pointed her finger at the old woman’s head. She was all of seventeen at the time. The crowd tittered at her use of ‘a woman like me’.

There was more Lü Ya wanted to say in Tian Guihua’s defence, but he was cut short by Yuan Lian: Doctor Wan did nothing wrong. Old witches who play games with people’s lives deserve to be severely punished. Tian Guihua, stop the phoney act. You got off lightly with only being struck. You ought to be sent to prison! From now on, Doctor Wan is to be called when any woman is about to have a child. Tian Guihua, if you ever again show up to do what you do, I’ll rip those dog fingers right off your hands!

Gugu said that Yuan Lian was not an educated man, but he could see which way tides ran and knew the importance of justice. He was a good cadre.

4

Sensei, I was the second child Gugu delivered.

When my mother’s time came, my grandmother did what tradition called for her: she washed her hands, changed clothes, and lit three sticks of incense, which she stuck in a burner in front of the ancestral tablets. Then she bowed three times, rapping her head against the floor, and sent all the males in the family outside. It was not my mother’s first child: two boys and a girl had preceded me. You’re an old hand at this, my grandmother said to her, you don’t need any help. Just take your time. Mother, my mother replied, I don’t feel good about this one, there’s something different. My grandmother would not hear of it. How different can it be? she said. You’re not expecting a unicorn, are you?

My mother’s feeling did not betray her. My brothers and sister had all come out headfirst. Me? Leg first.

My grandmother was scared witless when she saw my tiny leg emerge. There’s a popular saying in the countryside that goes: If a leg is foremost, then you owe a ghost. Owe a ghost? What does that mean? It means that in a previous life someone in the family had an outstanding debt, and the person owed had returned as a newborn baby intent on making things difficult for the woman in labour. Either both woman and child die together, or the child hangs around till a certain age, then dies, leaving the family destitute and devastated. So Grandma tried her best to appear calm. This one, she said, is born to be a runner — someone who runs errands for an official. Now, don’t worry, she said, I know what to do. She went out into the yard, where she picked up a copper basin, carried it inside, then stood at the foot of the bed, and beat it like a gong with a rolling pin — Bong! Bong! Come out, she shouted, come out now! Your father wants you to deliver an urgent message, and you’re in for a whipping if you don’t come out right this minute!

Sensing that something was indeed seriously wrong, Mother tapped on the window with her bed whisk and shouted to my sister, who was waiting anxiously in the yard, Man — my sister’s name — go fetch your aunt, and hurry!

Quick-witted as always, my sister ran to the village administrative office, where she asked Yuan Lian to phone the township health centre. I later put that ancient hand-crank telephone away as a keepsake. You see, it saved my life.

It was the sixth day of the sixth lunar month, a day when the Jiao River overflowed its banks and submerged the local bridge, although waves crashing over the stones made it easy to see where it stood. Du Bozi — Du the Neck — who had been fishing in the river, saw my aunt speed down the opposite bank on her bicycle, sending sprays of water at least three feet into the air as she crossed the bridge. The way the river had turned into rapids, if she’d fallen into the water, well, sir, I’d never have made it into this world.

Gugu rushed in dripping wet and took charge.

Mother later said that seeing Gugu walk in the door put her mind at ease. She told me that the first thing Gugu did was take Grandma aside and say, with unmistakable sarcasm, Auntie, how would he dare come out with you making all that racket? With a lame attempt at defending herself, Grandma said, Children crave excitement, so why wouldn’t he want to see what the noise was all about?

Well, Gugu said she grabbed hold of my leg and yanked me out like pulling a radish out of the ground. I knew she was joking. After bringing Chen Bi and me into the world, our mothers became her volunteer propagandists. They showed up everywhere to spread the word, while Yuan Lian’s wife and Du Bozi told everyone about Gugu’s incredible bike-riding skills. The speed at which her reputation spread matched the drop in interest in the old midwives, who were relegated to the status of historical relics.

The years 1953 to 1957 saw a rise in China’s rate of production, creating a period of vigorous economic activity. The weather was good, producing bumper crops every year. With plenty to eat and good warm clothing, the people’s mood was one of wellbeing, and the women were eager to get pregnant and have a child. Gugu was a busy woman in those days. The tyre tracks of her bicycle were visible on every street and in every lane of all the eighteen villages of Northeast Gaomi Township, her footprints in most people’s compounds.

From 4 April 1953 to 21 December 1957, she performed 1612 deliveries, bringing a total of 1645 babies, six of whom died. But of those, five were stillborn, the sixth died of a congenital illness. This remarkable achievement approached perfection.

Gugu joined the Communist Party on 17 February 1955. That occurred on the day she delivered her one-thousandth baby. The child was our classmate Li Shou.

Gugu said that Teacher Yu, Li Shou’s mother, was her most nonchalant patient ever. While she was busy down below, Teacher Yu was preparing for class, a textbook in her hand.

In her later years, Gugu often thought back to this period — modern China’s golden age, and hers as well. I don’t know how many times I saw her eyes light up as she said longingly: I was a living Buddha back then, the local stork. A floral perfume oozed from my body, bees swarmed in my wake. So did butterflies. Now, now nothing but goddamn flies…

Gugu also came up with my name: in school I was known as Wan Zu (Foot), but I was Xiaopao — Jogger — as a toddler.

I’m sorry, Sensei, I should have made myself clear: Wan Zu is my true name, Tadpole is just a pen-name.

5

Gugu had reached marrying age. But she was a salaried professional, a public servant who ate marketable grains and enjoyed an enviable background, which kept the local boys from entertaining any hope of being the one for her. I was five at the time, and often heard my great-aunt and my grandmother talk about my aunt’s marital prospects. Wan Xin’s aunt, I heard Gugu’s mother say, her voice laden with anxiety, Xin is twenty-two. Girls born the same year as her already have two children of their own, but not a single proposal has ever come her way. There’s no reason to be concerned, my grandmother said. A girl like her, who knows, she could marry into the royal family and wind up as Empress. When that happens, you’ll be mother-in-law to the Emperor, and we’ll all be royalty, enjoying reflected glory. Nonsense, Great-Aunt said. The Emperor went out with the revolution. We’re a republic now, with the Chairman at the helm. Well, if that’s the case, Grandmother replied, then we’ll have Xin marry the Chairman. You might live physically in the modern world, Great-Aunt said impatiently, but your mind is stuck in pre-Liberation days. I’m different than you, Grandmother said. In all my life I’ve never left Heping. But you’ve been to the liberated areas and spent time in Pingdu city. Don’t talk to me about Pingdu city, Great-Aunt said. Just hearing the name makes my scalp itch. I was kidnapped by those Jap devils, taken there to suffer, not to enjoy myself.

The longer the two sisters-in-law talked, the more their conversation sounded like an argument. The way Great-Aunt stormed off angrily, you’d have thought she never wanted to see my grandmother again. But she was back the next day. Whenever my mother witnessed the two of them talking about Gugu’s marital prospects, she had to stifle a laugh.

I recall one evening when our water buffalo calved. I don’t know if the mother modelled herself after my mother or the calf modelled itself after me, but it started coming out leg first, and got stuck. The mother’s bellows gave testimony to her agony. My father and grandfather were so distressed they could only wring their hands, stomp their feet, and pace the area in tight little circles. A farmer’s life revolves around a buffalo, and this particular one had been sent to us by the production team to tend. There’d be hell to pay if it died. My mother whispered to my elder sister: Man, I heard your aunt coming in. My sister took off. My father glared at his wife and said: Don’t talk like an idiot. She works with women. The principle’s the same, Mother replied.

Gugu walked in the door and raged: You people are going to kill me from exhaustion. Delivering human babies has me running all day, and now you want me to deliver a cow!

With a smile, Mother said: Like it or not, Sister, you’re a member of this family. Who else should we ask for help? Everybody says you’re a reincarnated bodhisattva, and bodhisattvas are supposed to deliver all living creatures from torment, to save the lives of all sentient beings. A water buffalo may not be human, but it’s a life, and I can’t imagine you letting it die without lifting a finger.

It’s a good thing you can’t read, Auntie, Gugu said. If you knew how to read a couple of handfuls of characters, our village would be too small to hold you.

If it had been eight handfuls, not two, I’d still be no match for even your little toe.

Annoyance still showed on Gugu’s face, but the feeling behind it was fading. Night had fallen, so Mother lit all the lanterns in the house, turned up the wicks, and carried them out to the barn.

When the birthing mother saw Gugu come in, she bent her front legs and knelt on the ground. The sight nearly caused tears to spurt from Gugu’s eyes.

Ours were not long in following.

Gugu made a quick examination of the mother’s body. Another leg-first, she said in a sympathetic, but slightly mocking tone.

Gugu sent us out into the yard so we wouldn’t be upset by what we might see. By the sound of her commands, we could picture what she was telling Father and Mother to do. It was the fifteenth day of the lunar month; as the moon hung in the southeast corner of the sky, illuminating the earth below, we heard Gugu shout: Good, it’s out!

With whoops of delight we ran inside, where we saw a little sticky-coated creature on the ground behind its mother. Wonderful, Father announced excitedly, it’s another female!

Isn’t it strange, Gugu seethed, how men pull a long face when a woman gives birth to a girl baby, but grin happily if a cow does the same thing.

When this calf matures, she’ll have calves just like her, Father said.

What about humans? Gugu countered. When a girl matures, she’ll give birth to girls, also just like her.

That’s different, Father said.

Different how?

Seeing that Gugu was about to lose her temper, Father stopped talking.

The mother turned her head to lick the sticky substance that covered her calf’s body. Her tongue appeared to have miraculous powers, for every spot she licked clean seemed to be strengthened. The sight overwhelmed us. I sneaked a glance at Gugu, whose mouth hung open and whose eyes radiated love, as if she were the one being cleaned and groomed by the cow’s tongue, or it was her tongue that was cleaning the calf. When the sticky substance was nearly all gone from its hide, the calf wobbled onto its legs.

Someone brought a basin and filled it with water. A bar of soap materialised, and a towel, so Gugu could wash her hands.

Grandma sat in front of the stove using a bellows. Mother stood at the kang making noodles.

I’m starved, Gugu said after washing her hands. I’ll eat here tonight.

This is your home, isn’t it? Mother said.

Of course it is, Grandmother said. It wasn’t long ago when we all ate out of the same pot.

On the other side of our compound wall, Gugu’s mother shouted for her to come home for dinner. I can’t work for them for nothing, Gugu shouted back. I’m going to eat here. Your aunt has lived on a tight budget, Great-Aunt replied. If you eat even one bowl of her noodles, she won’t forget that for the rest of her life. My grandmother picked up a poker and ran over to the wall. If it’s food you want, come in and have a bowl. If not, then go home! I’m not interested in eating anything you’ve got, Great-Aunt said.

When the noodles were ready, Mother filled a bowl and told my sister to take it to Great-Aunt. (Years later I learned that in her haste, my sister stumbled, spraying the soupy noodles everywhere as she dropped the bowl and broke it. To keep her from getting yelled at back home, Great-Aunt took a bowl from her cupboard, and told my sister to take it home with her.)

Gugu loved to talk, and we loved listening to her. After she’d eaten her noodles, she sat on the kang, leaned back against the wall, and started the chatter. By appearing in just about every house in the area, she’d met all sorts of people and heard many interesting things, and was not above spicing up her accounts like a professional storyteller. In the early 1980s, when we watched the serialised TV stories told by Liu Lanfang, Mother would say, That could have been your aunt. If she hadn’t become a doctor, she had what it took to be that kind of storyteller.

That night she began telling us about her battles of wits with Commander Sugitani in Pingdu city. I was seven at the time. She looked at me and said: I was just about Xiaopao’s age when I went with Great-Grandma and your great-aunt to Pingdu city, where we were shut up in a dark room with two ferocious guard dogs outside the door. The dogs were fed human flesh every day and drooled whenever they saw a child. Great-Grandma and your great-aunt cried all night long. But not me. I went to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and I didn’t wake up till the next morning. I don’t know how many days and nights we spent in that room until they moved us to a separate compound, where there was a lilac tree that smelled so good it made my head swim. A gentleman from the countryside in a long robe and formal cap came to invite us to a banquet hosted by Commander Sugitani. Your great-grandma and your great-aunt wept and did not dare accept the invitation. The gentleman said to me: Young lady, tell your grandmother and your mother there’s no need to be afraid. Commander Sugitani has no desire to harm you. All he wants is to be friends with Mr Wan Liufu. So, Grandma, Mother, I said, you can stop crying. It doesn’t do anybody any good. It won’t help you sprout wings, will it? Can you bring the Great Wall down with tears? The gentleman clapped his hands. Well spoken, young lady, you’re a smart one. You’re going to be someone special when you grow up. At my urging, your great-grandma and great-aunt stopped crying, and we all followed the gentleman over to a large wagon pulled by a black mule. After countless twists and turns, we entered a compound with a high gate, flanked by two military guards, a Chinese collaborator on the left and a Japanese soldier on the right. It was an enormous compound, with one courtyard after another as we went deeper and deeper, with no end in sight. Finally, we came up to a large reception hall in the middle of a garden, with sandalwood armchairs and windows framed by wooden carvings. Commander Sugitani was dressed in a kimono, slowly folding his fan in and out, the cultured man. After greeting us with some formal gibberish, he offered us seats around a large table overflowing with fine food. Your great-grandma and great-aunt wouldn’t even pick up their chopsticks, but I wasn’t shy, not about eating the little prick’s food. His pointed chopsticks were hard to use, so I dug in with my meat hooks, cramming food into my mouth. Sugitani held his wine cup and watched me eat, smiling the whole time. When I’d had all I could eat, I wiped my hands on the tablecloth and started to doze off. Would you like your father to come here, little girl? Sugitani asked. I opened my eyes. No, I said, I wouldn’t. Why not? My father is Eighth Route, you’re Japanese, and the Eighth Route fights the Japanese. Aren’t you afraid that’s what he’ll come to do?

Gugu paused and rolled up her sleeve to check her watch. There couldn’t have been more then ten wristwatches in all of Gaomi Township at the time, and Gugu wore one of them. Wow! my eldest brother exclaimed. He was the only member of the family who’d ever seen one before. He was enrolled in the county middle school, where he studied Russian, taught by a returnee from the Soviet Union, who also wore a wristwatch. My brother’s ‘Wow!’ was followed by a second exclamation: A wristwatch! My sister and I joined in: A wristwatch! we shouted.

Gugu rolled down her sleeve, feigning indifference, and said, It’s only a watch. What’s the big deal? That casual comment — intended as such — intensified our interest dramatically. My brother spoke up first: Gugu, I’ve only seen teacher Ji’s watch from a distance… can I take a look at yours? Please, Gugu, show it to us, we joined in.

She smiled. You little rascals, it’s just an old wristwatch, not worth looking at. But she took it off her wrist and handed it to him.

Be careful! Mother said.

My brother accepted the watch timidly, cradling it in his palm at first, and then put it up to his ear. When he was finished, he handed it to my sister, who handed it to my second brother when she was finished. He didn’t even have time to hold it up to his ear before Eldest Brother snatched it away and handed it back to Gugu. I showed how unhappy I was by crying.

Mother was quick to scold me: When you grow up, Xiaopao, you’ll run far enough away to have a watch of your own.

Him? Eldest Brother snapped. His own watch? I’ll draw one on his wrist tomorrow.

People cannot be judged by appearance alone any more than the ocean can be measured by bushels, Gugu said. Don’t be swayed by how ugly our Xiaopao is. He could grow up to be someone special.

If he becomes someone special, my sister said, then the pigs out in the sty can turn into tigers.

What country is this from, Gugu? Eldest Brother asked. What brand is it?

It’s Swiss, an Enicar.

Wow! he exclaimed. Second Brother and Sister echoed him.

Warty toads! I hissed angrily.

What’s it worth, Little Sister? Mother asked her.

I don’t know. It was a gift from a friend.

What sort of friend gives something that valuable? Mother said as she gave Gugu a searching look. Are we talking about a new uncle?

It’s almost midnight, Gugu said as she stood up. Bedtime.

Thank heavens my little sister is spoken for, Mother said.

Now don’t you go around saying things, Gugu said, giving us all a stern look. We haven’t even exchanged the horoscope for our birth dates. I’ll tan your hides if you do.

The next morning, maybe because he was feeling guilty for not letting me see Gugu’s watch the night before, my brother drew one on my wrist with a fountain pen. It looked like the real thing; it was beautiful, and I took pains to keep it that way. I kept it dry when I washed my hands and covered it up in the rain. Whenever it started to fade, I borrowed my brother’s pen to add ink. It stayed on my wrist for three whole months.

6

The man who gave Gugu the Enicar wristwatch was an air force pilot. In those days that was something to be excited about — an air force pilot! When they heard the news, my brothers and sisters croaked like an army of frogs, while I turned somersaults in the yard.

This was a joyous event for more than our family; the elation spilled across the township. Everyone considered a pilot the perfect match for Gugu. Cook Wang from the school kitchen, who had fought in the Korean War, was of the opinion that they were made of gold. Can you make a person out of gold? I asked him, filled with doubt. In front of the teachers and the commune cadres, who were eating their dinner, he said: How stupid can you be, Xiaopao Wan? What I mean is, the cost of training an air force pilot to the nation is the equal of seventy kilograms of gold. Oh, my, Mother said when I told her what Wang had said. How in the world are we supposed to treat your new uncle when he comes to the house?

We youngsters spread all sorts of fanciful talk about pilots. Chen Bi said his mother had seen a Soviet pilot when she lived in Harbin. They wore deerskin jackets, high-topped leather boots, had gold inlays in their mouths, wore gold wristwatches, ate black bread and sausage, and drank beer. Xiao Xiachun (Lower Lip, the characters later changed to summer and spring), son of Xiao Shangchun (Upper Lip), the granary watchman, said that China’s pilots ate better than their Soviet counterparts, and even created a menu, as if he were going to cook for them. Breakfast: two eggs, milk, four oily fritters, two steamed buns, and a chunk of pickled tofu. Lunch: braised pork, a whole croaker, and two large corn cakes. Dinner: roasted chicken, two pork buns, two mutton buns, and a bowl of millet congee. Fruit, of course, after each meal: bananas, apples, pears, grapes… whatever they couldn’t eat they could take home. Pilots’ leather jackets had two large pockets. What for? For carrying fruit. What people said about the pilots made us drool. We all dreamed of one day becoming air force pilots and living a magical life.

When the air force announced that they were coming to our county’s Number One High School to recruit pilots, my eldest brother signed up excitedly. Our great granddad had worked as a landlord’s hired hand, was a tenant farmer, and served the People’s Liberation Army as a stretcher-bearer. He’d fought in the battle of Mengliang Mesa and was one of those who’d carried the body of Zhang Lingfu down the mountain. My maternal grandmother’s family was also dirt poor. Add to all that the fact that my great granddad was a revolutionary martyr, and our family background and social status were above reproach. One day my brother, who was a high school sports star, a discus thrower, came home for lunch and feasted on a fat lamb’s tail. Back at school that afternoon, he had energy to burn, so he picked up a discus and flung it over the school wall into the field beyond. It so happened that the farmer was ploughing his field at that moment, and the discus hit his water buffalo’s horn, slicing it off. All this is to say that my brother’s background was unimpeachable, his grades in school were excellent, he was especially fit, and his aunt was going to marry an air force pilot. Everyone naturally assumed that even if they only picked one candidate from our county, it would surely be him. He wasn’t chosen. The reason: a scar on his leg from a childhood boil. Our school cook told us that scars were immediate disqualifiers, because the pressure of high-altitude flying would cause them to rupture. Even a set of uneven nostrils would squelch one’s chances.

In sum, from the time my aunt began a romantic relationship with the pilot, we were alert to anything having to do with the air force. I’m now in my fifties, and still haven’t shaken off the essence of vanity or my penchant for showing off, someone who would blare all over town the news that he’d won a hundred yuan in the lottery. Just think, I was only in elementary school and had a future uncle who was an air force pilot. You can imagine how insufferable that made me.

The Jiaozhou airport was fifty li south of our village; the Gaomi airport was sixty li to the west of us. Aeroplanes flying in and out of the Jiaozhou airfield were big, black, and very slow — bombers according to what the adults told us. Aeroplanes that used the Gaomi airfield were swept-wing, silvery aircraft that left contrails and could make spectacular manoeuvres. Eldest Brother said they were Jian-5s, modelled after Soviet MIG-17s, elite fighter planes, the ones that shot the shit out of US jets during the Korean War. Needless to say, these were the planes our future uncle flew, at a time when war fever was at its peak, and training manoeuvres filled the skies over the Gaomi airfield every day. They swept over the township, opening up a site for dogfights. Three more planes arrived one moment, then six, one plane nipping at the tail of another. Suddenly one plane went into a steep dive, pulling up just before crashing into a pine tree at the head of our village and soaring back into the sky like a sparrow hawk. One day there was a thunderous explosion in the sky — Gugu told us she was assisting an older woman who was experiencing convulsions from anxiety, preparing to use her scalpel, when the explosion startled the woman, breaking her concentration; the convulsions stopped, and with one push, the child emerged. The explosion tore the paper window coverings in every house in the village. Shocked by the sound, we couldn’t move for a moment, until our teacher led us outside, where we looked up into a clear blue sky and saw several aeroplanes chasing one that was towing a tubular object. We saw puffs of white smoke emerge from the tubular object, followed by earsplitting explosions. But these bursts of cannon fire weren’t nearly as powerful as the blast that had pounded our eardrums just a moment before, the second most powerful explosion I’ve heard in my entire life. Not even a lightning strike powerful enough to split a willow tree in half made that much noise. It seemed as though the fliers did not want to bring the target down, since the puffs of white smoke appeared near but not on the tubular object. Even as it disappeared from view, it had not suffered a direct hit. Chen Bi rubbed his nose, which had earned him the affectionate title of ‘Little Russian’, and sneered: China’s flyboys can’t hit a damned thing. If those had been Soviet pilots, one burst would have brought that target down! I knew his comment stemmed from jealousy towards me. Born and reared in our village, he’d never seen a Soviet dog, let alone one of its air force’s top guns.

At the time we kids, who lived in an out-of-the-way village, had no idea that Sino-Russian relations were deteriorating. Chen Bi’s unflattering comparison of Soviet and Chinese fliers made us all — especially me — unhappy, but no one’s thoughts went beyond that. Years later, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, when we were in the fifth grade, our classmate Xiao Xiachun exposed this incident from the past, not only causing trouble for Chen Bi, but leading ultimately to the deaths of his parents. The Soviet novel A Real Man, about a Soviet Air Force hero who returned to active duty after both feet were amputated, was discovered in his house. Based upon a true story, this novel of revolutionary inspiration was proof to the mobs that Chen Bi’s mother, Ailian, was the Soviet hero’s lover and that Chen Bi was their bastard offspring.

While the Jian-5 fighter planes were training, the Jiaozhou airfield aircraft were not idle. They went out at night, every night around nine o’clock, which was about the time the nightly local broadcast was coming to an end. Airfield searchlights abruptly lit up the sky, their broad beams beginning to break up in the sky above our village, though they sent shivers through us anyway. I was always saying stupid things at the worst possible moment. Wouldn’t it be great if I had a flashlight like that! I remarked. Stupid! Second brother said as he rapped my head with his knuckles. Of course, since we were about to gain a special uncle, my second brother had become a sort of expert in flying affairs; he’d committed to memory the names of all the volunteer pilots and could recite the details of their heroic achievements. He was also the one who told me once, when he asked me to check him for fleas, that the explosion that ripped the paper in our window coverings was called a sonic boom, caused by a plane breaking the sound barrier. What does that mean? I asked. It means going faster than the speed of sound, you dope. When the Jiaozhou bombers flew training missions, the mesmerising searchlight beams were the only things worth talking about. Some people said they weren’t for the sake of training, but were intended to guide lost planes home. The beams swung back and forth, crossing in places, moving together in others, occasionally capturing a bird in mid flight and throwing it off balance, like a fly caught in a bottle. In the end, after a few minutes of watching the searchlights, we heard the roar of an aeroplane engine, and then spotted the outline of a big black object in the sky, its outline visible because of the lights on its nose, tail and wingtips. It gave the impression of sliding down a beam of light to its nest. Aeroplanes have nests, just as chickens do.

7

In the second half of 1960, that is, not long after our coal-eating incident, word spread that Gugu would soon be marrying the air force pilot. Her mother came over to our side of the wall to discuss a dowry with Mother, and together they decided to cut down the hundred-year-old catalpa tree on the other side of the wall and have a man named Fan, the finest carpenter in the township, make a set of furniture from it. I saw Father and Fan come over to measure the tree, which shook so hard from fright as it anticipated its death that leaves fell to the ground, as if the tree were crying.

In the end, nothing came of the plan, and Gugu was away a long time. I ran over to Great-Aunt’s to see if there was any news, for which I got a taste of her cane. That’s when I discovered that she was older than those old midwives I’d heard about.

On the morning of the season’s first snowfall the sun shone bright red. On our way to school in our hempen sandals, our hands and feet were half frozen. We were running around the playground, whooping and hollering to keep warm, when suddenly we heard a frightening roar in the sky. We looked up, mouths agape, and spotted an enormous object — dark red — trailing black smoke — a pair of staring red eyes — gigantic white teeth — shuddering in the sky — coming right at us. Aeroplane, damn, it’s an aeroplane! Was it going to land on our playground?

None of us had ever seen an aeroplane so close before, so close its wings blew feathers and dead leaves off the ground to swirl in the air. Just think how great it would be if it could land on our playground! We could walk up and get a good look, we could touch it, and if our luck held, we’d be allowed to climb into its belly and have a great time. We might even be able to talk the pilot into telling us war stories. Maybe he was one of my future uncle’s comrade-in-arms. No, my uncle-to-be flew a Jian-5, which was much better looking than this dark thing. My uncle-to-be wouldn’t have a comrade-in-arms who flew something this big and slow. But, how should I put it, anyone who could fly anything was pretty impressive, don’t you think? Anyone who could get something this big, made of steel, up into the air had to be a hero. I couldn’t see the pilot’s face, but years later, lots of my classmates swore up and down that they saw it through the windshield. The aircraft, which we thought was going to land in our midst, veered to the right almost reluctantly and scraped its belly on the top branches of a poplar tree on the eastern edge of the village before crash-landing in a wheat field. We heard a thunderous explosion, louder and deeper than a sonic boom, and we felt the ground shake. Our ears rang and we saw spots in front of our eyes. A pillar of dense smoke and fire blasted into the sky, immediately turning the sunlight a deep scarlet and releasing into the air a strange smell that made it hard to breathe.

It took us a long time to snap out of our stunned state. We started running to the head of the village, and when we reached the road, we were nearly overcome by heat. The plane lay in pieces, one of its wings stuck in the ground like a gigantic torch. The field was on fire, filling the air with a burnt leather odour. Then a second explosion sent shock waves through the air. Wang the cook, who had plenty of experience, screamed, Hit the deck!

We did as he said and, following his lead, began to crawl.

Crawl fast, there are bombs under the wings!

We were later told that the aircraft was outfitted for four bombs, but only carried two that day. If there had been four, none of us would have made it out alive.

Three days after the crash, Father and other village men carried remnants of the destroyed aeroplane and the body of the pilot to the airport on their carts and wagons. They had barely returned to the village when Eldest Brother came running up out of breath. Our champion athlete had run all the way home from County High without stopping. Fifty li, just short of marathon distance. The moment he entered the yard, he sputtered a single word — Gugu — and simply collapsed, foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back into his head. He was out.

Everyone rushed to his side. Someone pinched the spot over his upper lip, someone else pinched the spot between his thumb and finger, and a third person thumped him on the chest.

What about Gugu?

Finally, he came around. His mouth twisted and he burst into tears.

Mother rushed up with water in a gourd and poured some into his mouth. The rest she flung into his face.

Out with it. What about your aunt?

Gugu’s pilot defected with his aircraft…

The gourd fell out of Mother’s hand and smashed to pieces.

Defected to where? Father asked.

Where else? My brother wiped his face with his sleeve and clenched his teeth. Taiwan! The traitor, the turncoat flew to Taiwan to join Chiang Kai-shek!

What about your aunt? Mother asked.

Taken away by county security agents, Eldest Brother said.

Tears fell from Mother’s eyes. Do not tell your maternal grandmother, not a word, she commanded. And don’t talk about this outside.

What good will that do? Everyone in the county already knows about it, Eldest Brother said.

Mother went into the house and came out with a large pumpkin, which she handed to my sister. Come with me, she said, we’re going to see your great-grandma.

My sister came running back breathlessly before too long. Grandma, she called out the minute she stepped inside, Mother wants you to go over there right away. Something’s wrong with Great-Aunt!

8

Forty years later, my eldest brother’s son, Xiangqun, was recruited into the air force. There had been many changes in the world in all that time, and lots of things that had once seemed so sacred they could cost you your head had turned to jokes; professions that had once made people sit up and take notice had become the work of the lower classes. But being recruited into the air force was still a joyous development that excited families and made neighbours green with envy. And so, my brother, who had retired as head of the Bureau of Education, returned to the village to host a celebratory banquet for family and friends.

The meal was served in my second brother’s yard. An electric wire was strung from the house for a light bulb that lit the yard up like the sun. Two tables were put together to accommodate a couple of dozen chairs, on which we sat shoulder to shoulder. The meal was catered, with delicacies of every kind, meat and foul and fish, dish after colourful dish of tasty food. In her heavy Yantai accent, Eldest Sister-in-law said: I hope you enjoy these meagre offerings. Hardly, Father said. Think about the 1960s, when even Chairman Mao could not have eaten a meal like this. My soon-to-be flyboy nephew said: Those days are over, Grandpa.

After three rounds of toasts, Father stood up and said: Our family managed to produce an air force pilot. Back when your father applied to be one, a scar on his leg was all that kept him out. Now Xiangqun has made our dream come true.

What’s the big deal about being a pilot? Xiangqun said with a bit of a scowl. If you want to really make it big, become a high-ranking official or a millionaire.

Hogwash! Father said, holding out his cup, draining it, and banging it back down on the table. An airman is a dragon among men, he said. Your great-aunt had a man way back then, Wang Xiaoti, who was a towering tree standing and a brass bell seated. He took vigorous strides when he walked, and if he hadn’t foolishly flown over to Taiwan, he could be air force commander-in-chief today…

Are you kidding me? Xianqun exclaimed. I thought Great-Aunt’s husband made clay figurines. Where did that airman come from?

That’s ancient history, Eldest Brother said. Let’s drop the subject.

No, Xiangqun said. I’m going to ask her. Wang Xiaoti flew his plane to Taiwan. That’s wild.

Don’t you go looking for that kind of excitement, his father said anxiously. People need patriotism, especially in the military, and that goes double for air force pilots. A man can steal, he can rob, he can commit murder and arson… what I mean to say is, you cannot become a traitor. They leave a tainted name forever, and are doomed to a bad end…

That’s really got you scared, hasn’t it? Xiangqun said scornfully. Taiwan is part of the motherland, so what’s wrong with flying over there to have a look?

I’ll have none of that! his mother exclaimed. If that’s the way you think, then you have no business becoming a pilot. I’ll go phone Chief Liu of the Armed Forces Bureau.

Don’t get excited, Ma. I’m not that stupid. I wouldn’t sacrifice my family for my own pleasure. But don’t forget, the Nationalists and Communists are all members of the same family. If I flew over there, they’d have to send me back.

That’s the way to uphold our family’s moral standing, Elder Brother said. Wang Xiaoti was a son of a bitch who ruined your aunt’s life.

Did I hear my name mentioned? Gugu broadcast her arrival as she squinted in the bright light. She turned and put on a pair of sunglasses, looking quite cool, if slightly comical. Do you really need that bright a light? Like Great-Grandma always said, You won’t stuff food up your nose even if you eat in the dark. Electricity requires coal, coal has to be dug by miners three thousand feet underground, hell on earth, corrupt officials, crooked bosses, the miners’ lives as worthless as the dirt above them. Every lump of coal is stained with blood. With her right hand on her hip, she held her left hand out in front, the thumb and outer two fingers curled inward, her index and middle fingers pointing ahead; she was wearing a 1970s-vintage Dacron military uniform, sleeves rolled up. Overweight and greying, she had the look of a commune cadre from the Cultural Revolution. Seeing her provoked mixed emotions in me. This is what Gugu, who had once been pretty as a lotus fresh out of the water, had become.

Eldest Brother and his wife had gone round and round trying to decide whether or not to invite Gugu to the celebration meal. So they’d asked Father, who had thought long and hard before saying, Better not. Now she’s… she doesn’t live in the village anyway… we’ll tell her later…

Her arrival created an awkward situation. We all stood, at a total loss.

What’s this? After spending most of my life on the road, I come home to find there’s no seat for me. There was an edge to her voice.

That woke us up. Mass confusion followed, as we all stepped back to offer her our seats.

Eldest Brother and his wife rushed to explain: You were the first person we planned to invite. The Wan family seat of honour is always reserved for you.

Bah! Gugu sat down next to Father. She chided Eldest Brother. Do you really expect me to take the seat of honour while your father is alive, Dakou? Or, for that matter, after he dies? When a daughter marries, it’s like spilled water, isn’t it, Eldest Brother?

You never were an ordinary daughter, Father said as he pointed to each of us. Your contributions are greater than anyone’s. Is there a single one of these youngsters you didn’t bring into the world?

A hero is silent about past glories, Gugu said. Back then… what’s the point of dredging up the past? Let’s drink! What’s that? I don’t have a glass. Well, I’ve brought my own. She reached into her oversized pocket and brought out a bottle of Maotai, which she banged down on the table. Fifty-year-old Maotai, she said. Given to me by an official in the city of Tinglan whose mistress — twenty years his junior — wanted nothing more than to give him a son, and since she’d heard that I had a secret formula for changing the sex of a foetus from female to male, that’s what she wanted me to do. I told her that was just a quack doctor’s trick, but she didn’t believe me. She cried and refused to leave, all but getting down on her knees to beg. She said the man’s wife had given him two daughters, and if she could produce a son, the man would be hers. His head was filled with feudal ideas like favouring boys over girls, not the sort of thing you’d expect from someone so important. Hell, Gugu spat out angrily, those people’s fortunes are all ill-gotten, so whom should I take advantage of if not the likes of him? So I made up nine packets of herbal concoctions, with things like angelica, Chinese yam, rehmannia and licorice, stuff you can buy for ten cents a bunch, no more than thirty yuan in total, and I asked her for a hundred for each packet. She was so happy she sort of waddled as she climbed into a red car and drove off, leaving a trail of exhaust fumes. This afternoon the official and his mistress came to see me with their pudgy little baby boy and gifts of fine tobacco and liquor to thank me. If not for my miracle prescription, they said, they wouldn’t have such a wonderful son. Ha ha! Gugu laughed loudly, grabbed the glass my brother was respectfully holding out to her, and drank it down in one swallow. I can’t tell you how happy I am! she said as she smacked herself on the thigh. I ask you, how could a high-ranking official, someone who’s supposed to be educated, be such a simpleton? Changing the sex in the womb! If I could do that, I’d have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine a long time ago. Pour me another. She held out her empty glass. Don’t open the Maotai. Save that for Eldest Brother. No, no, no, my father said. Putting something that good into my stomach is a waste. But she stuffed the bottle into his hand and said, This is from me, so you drink it.

He fingered the red ribbon at the top. How much does something like this cost? he asked gingerly. At least eight thousand, Elder Brother’s wife said. The price has gone up recently. My god! Father exclaimed. That’s not liquor. Dragon slobber and phoenix blood aren’t worth that much. Wheat sells for eighty cents a jin. Can one bottle of liquor be worth ten thousand jin of wheat? I could work like a dog all year and not be able to afford half of one of these bottles. He handed the bottle back to Gugu. You keep it, he said. I can’t drink liquor like this. I’m afraid it’d shorten my life.

I gave it to you, so you drink it, Gugu said. It didn’t cost me anything. You’d be crazy not to enjoy it. Like back in Pingdu city. I’d have been crazy not to eat the spread the Japanese devils prepared. Don’t be crazy. Drink it.

I understand what you’re saying, my father said, but I ask you, can a bottle of peppery liquor really be worth that much money?

Eldest Brother, you don’t get it. Nobody who drinks this stuff ever pays for it. People who have to pay for their liquor can only afford to drink this — Gugu held out her glass and drained it. You’re over eighty years old, she said. How many more years do you have to enjoy a good drink? Patting herself on the chest, she said dramatically: I’ll make you a crazy offer in front of all these members of the younger generation: I will supply you with Maotai from today on. What’s there to be afraid of? I used to be scared of my own shadow, and the more scared I was the worse things got. Pour some more! Do you people have no vision? Feel sorry for the liquor?

Of course not, Gugu, Father said. It’s for you to drink.

How much do you think I can manage? she said, a note of melancholy creeping into her voice. Back then, I held my own with those bastards from the People’s Commune. A bunch of guys who figured they could easily make a spectacle of me wound up under the table barking like a pack of dogs — come on, you youngsters, down the hatch.

Have something to eat, Gugu.

Something to eat, you say? Your great-uncle could drink half a jug of sorghum liquor with only a leek to go with it. Real drinkers don’t need food. You people are eaters, not drinkers.

Warming up from the alcohol, Gugu unbuttoned her blouse and patted Father on the shoulder. If I tell you to drink, Elder Brother, you have to drink. You and I are the only two left from our generation. We should be eating and drinking anything we want. What’s the point in saving money? Money is just paper until you spend it. I have a skill, so I’m not afraid I’ll ever be short of money. You can be an official, high or low, but you’ll still get sick, and then you’ll have to come see me. Besides, Gugu roared in laughter, I have that special talent to change a foetus’s gender. People would happily shell out ten thousand for the complicated technique of turning a female foetus to male.

But what if they still got a baby girl after taking your gender-bending potion? Father asked anxiously.

You don’t get it, Gugu said. What’s traditional Chinese medicine anyway? All practitioners of traditional medicine are adept at fortune-telling, and fortune-tellers are adept at going round and round when telling someone’s fortune without ever getting themselves tangled up.

Xiangqun managed to slip a question in when Gugu paused to light a cigarette. Can you talk about the pilot, Great-Aunt? Maybe one day on a whim I’ll fly to Taiwan to see him.

Stop that nonsense, my elder brother said.

You’re out of line, his wife said.

A seasoned smoker, Gugu puffed away, sending clouds of smoke up through her uncombed hair.

When I think about that now, Gugu said after draining the liquor in her cup, I can say he destroyed me, but he also saved me.

She took a couple of deep puffs before flicking the butt away with her middle finger. It described a dark red arc before landing on a distant grapevine trellis. I’ve had too much to drink, she said. The party’s over and it’s time to go home. She stood up, looking stoutly clumsy, and swayed her way towards the entrance. We hurried over to steady her. Do you really think I’m drunk? she asked. You’re wrong. I can drink a thousand cups without getting drunk. At the gate, Hao Dashou, the clay-doll maker who’d recently been named a county folk artist, was waiting patiently for her.

9

Sensei, the next day my nephew, curious to learn more about Wang Xiaoti, came home on his motorcycle and asked my father to take him to see Gugu. You don’t want to do that, my father said. She’s nearly seventy and she’s had a difficult life. I’m afraid you’ll upset her by bringing up the past. Besides, she’d find it hard to talk about that in front of her husband.

Xiangqun, I said, listen to your grandfather. Since you want to hear what happened, I’ll tell you what I know. Actually, all you have to do is go online to get most of the details.

I’ve long planned to write a novel based on Gugu’s life — now, of course, that’s changed into a play — and Wang Xiaoti will figure prominently. The work has been twenty years in preparation. Relying on connections, I’ve interviewed many people from that time, made special trips to the three airfields where Wang had served, visited his hometown in Zhejiang, interviewed one of his squadron comrades-in-arms as well as his commander and deputy commander, actually climbed into the cockpit of his Jian-5, and interviewed the one-time head of the county security bureau’s anti-espionage unit, and the one-time security division head at the county health department. I don’t mind saying that I know more than anyone else; my only regret is that I never got to meet Wang Xiaoti himself. But your father got Great-Aunt’s OK to sneak into a theatre before they arrived to see a movie. He saw Wang and Gugu enter hand-in-hand. He was sitting close enough to Wang to be able to describe him for us: Five-nine, maybe a bit taller, fair skin, a long, gaunt face, eyes on the small side, but alert. Sparkling white, even teeth.

Your father said they were showing a Soviet version of Ostrovsky’s novel How the Steel Was Tempered. He was watching Wang Xiaoti and your aunt’s movements and gestures until he was drawn to the love and revolution themes of the movie. In those days, many Chinese youngsters had Soviet pen pals. That included your father, who was writing to a girl named Tonia, the same as the girl in the movie. He got so caught up in what was happening on the screen that he neglected his vital mission. That isn’t to say the scheme was a total failure, since he was able to get a look at Wang before the movie began and could smell the sweets on Wang’s breath when they were changing reels (back then theatres had only a single projector). Naturally he also smelled and heard the sunflower seed and peanut eaters in front and behind. Back then you could eat almost anything in theatres, resulting in a thick layer of wrappers, melon seeds and peanut shells on the floor. When the movie was over, in the bright lights at the lobby entrance, Wang pushed his bicycle up to ride your great-aunt back to the health centre dormitory (she had a temporary assignment at the health centre). Wang Xiaoti, she said with a little laugh, I want to introduce you to someone. Your father was hiding in the shadows behind a column in the entrance. Wang looked all around. Who? Where is he? Wan Kou, come over here. Your father stepped shyly out from behind the column. He was about Wang’s height back then, but skinny as a rail. All that talk about hurling a discus over the school wall and slicing off an ox’s horn was just that — talk. His hair looked like a magpie’s nest. This is my nephew, Wan Kou, your great-aunt said by way of an introduction. Aha! Wang slapped your father on the shoulder. A spy, I see. Wang Kou, that’s a good name. Wang reached out his hand. Nice to meet you, pal. I’m Wang Xiaoti. Apparently overwhelmed by the attention, your father grabbed Wang’s hand with both of his and shook it spiritedly.

Your father said he went to look up Wang at the airfield after that, and was treated to a casual air force meal of braised prawns, spicy chicken nuggets, eggs and day lily, and as much rice as he could eat. His description of the meal made us green with envy. For me, there was pride as well. Not just because it was Wang Xiaoti, but because I had a brother who’d eaten in the air force mess.

Wang Xiaoti also gave your father a harmonica, a very expensive one. Your father characterised Wang as multi-talented. He wasn’t a bad basketball player, who could shoot from all angles, and as well as the harmonica, he could play the accordion; he was also a fine calligrapher and painter. He had tacked a sketch of his onto the wall, a portrait of Gugu. There wasn’t a blemish in his family background. His father was a high-ranking Party cadre, his mother a university professor. Why would someone like that fly to Taiwan and go down as a thoroughly reviled defector?

Wang’s squadron commander said he’d defected after secretly listening to enemy propaganda broadcasts. He had a short-wave radio capable of receiving broadcasts from Taiwan, in particular a KMT station announcer with a sweet and highly alluring voice who called herself ‘Night Air Rose’; a real killer, she was, he assumed, and what ultimately turned Wang into a defector. Did that mean my aunt wasn’t attractive enough for him? The doddering former squadron commander said: Your aunt wasn’t bad, with an excellent family background, good-looking, and a Party member. By standards of that time she was an ideal catch, and we all envied Wang Xiaoti. But your aunt was too revolutionary, too principled, and not appealing enough for someone like Wang, who had fallen for the poisonous appeal of bourgeois thinking. Afterward, the security division examined Wang’s diary, in which he had given your aunt the nickname ‘Red Blockhead’. It was a good thing they had his diary, his squadron commander said, for it left your aunt in the clear. Without it, she could not have recaptured her good name even if she’d jumped into the cleansing waters of the Yellow River.

Sensei, I told my nephew that his great-aunt wasn’t the only one who nearly met destruction by Wang’s hand. The authorities investigated your father several times, I said, and that harmonica was confiscated as evidence of Wang Xiaoti’s corruptive influence on the young. He’d written in his diary: Red Blockhead introduced her dumb nephew to me, another Red Blockhead, and he had a goofy name: Wan Kou, Wan Mouth! Again, it was that diary that saved your father.

Maybe Wang did all that on purpose, my nephew said.

Your great-aunt came to that conclusion later. She believed that Wang had left his diary behind to protect her. That’s why last night she said that he’d ruined her, but he’d also saved her.

Sensei, my nephew was mainly interested in how Wang Xiaoti managed to defect. He especially admired Wang’s flying skill. He said the slightest miscalculation while flying eight hundred kilometres an hour no higher than five metres above the water could have sent his Jian-5 plunging into the ocean. It was a skillful, gutsy performance, according to the youngster. There’s no denying his cockpit mastery, regardless of weather conditions. Before his defection, every time he flew a training mission over our village, he’d wow us with his aerobatics. We used to say he could fly down to the watermelon patch on the eastern edge of the village, pluck a melon out of the ground, and, with a wing wave, soar back up into the clouds.

Did they really reward him over there with five thousand ounces of gold? my nephew asked.

Maybe, I said. But even ten thousand ounces wouldn’t be worth it. You mustn’t envy him, Xiangqun. Money and beautiful women are as transient as floating clouds. Country, honour, and family are the only true treasures.

You must be joking, Third Uncle, he said. Who says things like that in this day and age?

10

In the spring of 1961, after Gugu came out from under the cloud of the Wang Xiaoti incident, she returned to work at the obstetrics ward in the health centre. Over a two-year period, however, not a single infant was born in any of the more than forty villages that made up the People’s commune. The reason? Famine, of course.

Hunger disrupted women’s menstrual cycles. Hunger turned men into eunuchs. The obstetrics ward included only Gugu and a middle-aged doctor named Huang. Dr Huang was a graduate of a prominent medical school, but because of a questionable family background and her own history as a rightist, she’d been exiled to a rural health centre. Every time she mentioned the woman’s name, Gugu could barely contain her anger. The woman had a strange disposition. Some days she might not say a word to anyone, on other days she’d be bitterly sarcastic, talking a blue streak. She could give a lengthy speech to a spittoon.

Gugu stopped going home so often after her mother died, but whenever there was something special on the table, Mother had my sister send some over to Gugu. One day my father got his hands on half a rabbit in the field, probably the remnant of a hawk’s meal. Mother went out and picked half a basket of wild greens and cooked them together with the rabbit. She wrapped up a bowlful of the meat and told my sister to take it over to Gugu. When she said she wouldn’t do it, I volunteered. You can go, Mother said, but don’t sneak some of it for yourself on the way. And keep your eyes open while you’re walking. I don’t want you breaking that bowl.

The health centre was about ten li from our house. I started off trotting, wanting to get there while the rabbit meat was still warm. But my stomach began to growl at the same time as my legs began to ache, and I was sweating and light-headed. In short, I was hungry. The two bowls of porridge with greens I’d eaten that morning had passed through my stomach and the smell of the cooked rabbit was seeping through the wrapping. A debate, soon to develop into an argument, between me and myself broke out. Have a bite, one me said, just one bite. No, the other me countered, you have to be an honest boy and do what your mother said. My hand came close to undoing the wrapping more than once, but the image of Mother’s face flashed into my mind.

Mulberry trees lined both sides of the road from our village to the health centre, all stripped bare of leaves by famine victims. I broke off a branch and began gnawing on it, finding its sharp, bitter taste hard to swallow. But then I spotted a cicada that had just emerged from its cocoon, a nice soft yellow, its wings not yet dry. Ecstatic, I flung down the mulberry branch, scooped up the cicada and popped it into my mouth. Cicadas were a nutritious delicacy to us, but only after they were fried. By eating this one raw I saved on fuel and time. It had a fresh taste and, I was willing to bet, was more nutritious than if it had been fried. I searched all the trees as I walked along, but found no more cicadas. I did, however, find a fancy coloured handbill showing a young man with a glowing face holding a lovely young woman in his arms. The text read: Communist Air Force pilot Wang Xiaoti has left the dark side and flown into the light, where he is now a Nationalist Air Force Brigadier General. He has received five thousand ounces of gold, and is the glorious mate of the famed songstress Miss Tao Lili. My hunger abruptly forgotten, I experienced a strange and powerful emotion. I felt like screaming. In school I’d heard that the Nationalists sent reactionary handbills across the Strait by balloon, but I never thought I’d actually see one or that it could be quite so flashy. And I had to admit that the woman in the photograph was better-looking than Gugu.

Gugu and Dr Huang were having a heated argument when I walked into the ward. Dr Huang wore a pair of dark glasses over a hooked nose, thin lips, and exposed, badly stained teeth — in future years Gugu would often remind us that staying single was preferable to marrying a woman whose teeth showed when they talked — there was a gloomy cast in her eyes that sent chills down my back. I heard her say, How do you get off telling me what to do? You were still in nappies when I was in medical school!

Gugu gave her tit for tat: Don’t think I don’t know that you, Huang Qiuya, are a capitalist’s daughter and were the campus queen in med school. Did you wave a flag to welcome the arrival of the Japanese into the city? Did you dance cheek to cheek with Japanese officers? Well, when you were dancing with them, I was in Pingdu engaged in a battle of wits with the Japanese commander there.

The woman sneered. Got any witnesses? I’d like to know who saw you have your battle of wits with the commander.

The mountains and rivers are my witnesses.

I couldn’t, I mustn’t, under any circumstances let Gugu see that handbill, not now.

What are you doing here? she asked unhappily. And what’s this?

A reactionary handbill, one of the KMT’s reactionary handbills. My voice quavered with excitement.

Gugu barely looked at it, but I saw her body tense, a spasm like she’d been shocked. Her eyes grew wide, the blood fled from her face. She flung the handbill away as if it were a snake — no, a frog.

When she had regained her composure and bent down to retrieve it, she was too late.

Huang Qiuya had already picked it up and examined it. She looked up, glanced at Gugu, and took another look at the handbill. A green glare emerged from behind those dark glasses. That was followed by an icy laugh.

Gugu sprang at the woman to snatch the handbill back, but Huang spun around to prevent that. So Gugu grabbed the back of Huang’s smock and shouted, Give me that!

Huang lurched forward to free herself, and we heard her smock rip, exposing her back, which was the white of a frog’s belly.

I said give me that!

Huang turned around, but held the handbill behind her back; she was shaking as she moved slowly towards the door.

Give it back? she said with a sinister, smug look. Hah! You dog of a spy, defector’s woman. The defector took all he wanted from you, you slut! Scared, are you? Have you quit selling the stink of your so-called martyr’s descendant?

Gugu, maddened by the comment, charged Huang.

Huang ran into the corridor. We’ve got a spy! she cried. Come catch the spy!

Gugu followed her into the corridor, where she grabbed her by the hair; even with her neck bent back, Huang thrust the handbill out in front, her cries even more shrill. Treatment rooms were in the front of the health centre, offices in the rear. Everyone heard her cries and came into the corridor to see what was happening. Gugu had by then pushed Huang to the floor and was straddling her as she fought to retrieve the handbill.

The director, a bald, middle-aged man, ran up. He had bags under his long, narrow eyes and blindingly white false teeth. Stop that! he shouted. What’s going on?

Gugu fought harder to pry open Huang’s fingers, apparently not hearing the director. By this time Huang Qiuya’s screams had turned into tearful wails.

Stop that, Wan Xin! the director demanded angrily. And you people, he said loudly to the rubberneckers, have you all gone blind? Pull those two apart!

Two male doctors went up and, with difficulty, pulled Gugu off Huang.

Two female doctors picked Huang up off the floor.

Huang’s dark glasses had fallen off and there was a trickle of blood from her gums. Cloudy tears poured from her sunken eyes. But she was still clutching the handbill. Director, she bellowed, you have to back me on this!

Gugu’s clothes were pulled this way and that, and her face was ashen. A pair of bloody gouges marred her cheeks, obviously from Huang Qiuya’s nails.

What’s this all about, Wan Xin?

Gugu’s face wore a desolate smile; tears fell from her eyes. She threw the torn pieces of the handbill in her hand to the floor and, without a word, walked unsteadily back to the ward.

Like someone who has performed heroically under brutal circumstances, Huang Qiuya handed the crumpled remains of the handbill to the director and then got down on her hands and knees to feel around for her glasses, which she found and put back on, holding them to her face since one of the arms was broken. When she saw the torn pieces Gugu had thrown away, she frantically scooped them up, as if she’d found hidden treasure.

What’s this? asked the director as he smoothed out the handbill.

A reactionary handbill, said Huang as she handed him the torn fragments, as if they were treasured gifts. Don’t forget these, they’re the rest of what the defector Wang Xiaoti sent to Wan Xin.

The curious doctors and nurses were transfixed.

Suffering from a case of far-sightedness, the director held the handbill out at arm’s length so he could read it. The doctors and nurses crowded around him.

What are you people looking at? What’s there to see? Get back to work, he scolded as he put away the handbill. Come with me, Dr Huang.

The doctors and nurses wasted no time in sharing their views of the incident as Huang followed the director to his office.

Gugu’s heart-rending wails erupted from the obstetrics ward, and I was suddenly aware of what a destructive thing I’d done. I stepped nervously into the ward, where I saw Gugu sitting with her head down on a table, crying and pounding her fists on the tabletop.

Gugu, I said, Mother sent me over with some rabbit for you.

She ignored me, just kept crying.

I laid my bundle down on the table, opened it, and placed the bowl of rabbit meat next to her head.

Gugu swept the bowl off the table with her arm. It shattered on the floor.

Get out of here! Go! Go! She raised her head to scream at me. Get out of my sight, you little bastard!

11

It wasn’t until later that I realised just how terrible the thing I’d done was.

After I fled from the health centre, Gugu slit her left wrist, then dipped her right index finger in the blood and wrote: I hate Wang Xiaoti! I have always been a Party member, and I will die a Party member!

When Huang Qiuya returned triumphantly to the ward, Gugu’s blood had seeped all the way to the door. Huang shrieked before crumpling to the floor.

Gugu was saved, and placed on probation by the Party. The reason was not that her relationship with Wang Xiaoti remained suspicious, but that she had tried to use suicide to show the Party what she was capable of.

12

Northeast Gaomi Township enjoyed an unprecedented harvest from its thirty thousand acres of sweet potatoes in the autumn of 1962. After putting us through three abominable years, soil that had refused to grow anything regained its bountiful generosity and its innate ability to nourish. Each acre produced a record of more than ten thousand jin of sweet potatoes that year, and the mere recollection of that year’s crop made me sense a stirring for some reason. A rich yield of sweet potatoes lay beneath the ground. The largest potato unearthed in our village came in at thirty-eight jin. A photo of Yang Lin, the county’s Party secretary, holding it appeared on the front page of Masses Daily.

Sweet potatoes are wonderful, truly wonderful. It was not only a bumper crop in terms of quantity, but the potatoes were rich in starches, they cooked up with a perfect texture, and they tasted a bit like chestnuts, delicious with high nutritional value. Sweet potatoes were piled in every family’s yard, wire was strung along every wall to hang slices of drying sweet potatoes. We had enough to eat, finally enough to eat. No more days of eating grass or the bark of trees; the days when people starved to death were gone, never to return. Before long our legs stopped suffering from oedema; the skin around our middle thickened, and our bellies flattened out. A layer of fat began forming under our skin, light returned to our eyes, and our legs no longer ached when we walked; we started to grow, to really grow. At the same time, women’s breasts swelled and their periods returned to normal. Men’s torsos straightened, whiskers reappeared above their lips, their sex drive was reawakened. After two months of eating their fill of sweet potatoes, all the young women in the village were pregnant it seemed. In the early winter of 1963, Northeast Gaomi Township experienced the first baby boom in the history of the People’s Republic. Two thousand eight hundred sixty-eight babies were born that year in the fifty-two villages incorporated in our commune alone. According to Gugu, this crop of babies was known as the ‘sweet potato kids’.

The health centre director had a good heart. He came to see Gugu after she returned home to recuperate from her failed suicide attempt. As the nephew of my maternal grandmother on her husband’s side, he was a shirt-tail relative, what we call ‘melon-vine kin’. He criticised Gugu for being foolish and hoped she could lay down her ideological baggage and return to work. The Party and the people are blessed with bright-seeing eyes, he told her. Under no circumstance would they treat a good person unjustly or make allowances for a bad one. He urged her to trust the organisation and prove her unsullied record through positive actions in order to be reinstated into the Party as quickly as possible. You’re different from Huang Qiuya, he said privately. Her character is essentially bad, while your roots are red and your limbs are straight. Though you have made missteps, if you work hard you can have a bright future.

The director’s words made Gugu cry bitterly once more.

His words made me cry bitterly as well.

Gugu regained her footing in a pool of blood and threw herself into her work as if on fire. At the time, even though every village was equipped with trained midwives, many women chose to have their babies in a health centre. Gugu put aside her resentment and worked closely with Huang Qiuya, in the capacity of both a doctor and a nurse. She might not shut her eyes once for days at a time, caught up in the business of pulling birthing mothers back from the gates of Hell. Over a period of five months, they delivered eight hundred and eighty babies, eighteen by caesarian section, at a time when the procedure was extremely complicated, and the fact that a small commune health centre obstetrics ward dared to even attempt it caused a sensation. Even someone as ambitious and proud as Gugu had to admire Huang Qiuya’s surgical skill. She was in debt to that one-time enemy for her fame in Northeast Gaomi Township as an obstetrician with both local and foreign skills.

Huang Qiuya was what was known as an old maid. She’d likely never tasted romance, which might explain why she had such an odd disposition. In her later years, Gugu often spoke to us of her old adversary. For the daughter of a Shanghai capitalist and the graduate of a top university to be sent down to Northeast Gaomi Township to work was a case of ‘a fallen phoenix is not the equal of a common chicken’. And who was the chicken? In a tone of self-ridicule, Gugu answered her own question. That would be me. A chicken that pecked at a phoenix. A chicken that beat a phoenix into submission. She shuddered when she saw me, Gugu said emotionally, like a lizard that’s swallowed a hunk of tar. Everyone was crazy in those days. It was a nightmare. Huang Qiuya was a magnificent obstetrician. She could be beaten bloody in the morning and show up in surgery in the afternoon, so focused and composed that not even an opera being performed right outside the window would have had an effect on her. What a pair of hands she had! Gugu said. With them she could create a flower on a pregnant woman’s abdomen… Gugu always enjoyed a hearty laugh at this point; she’d laugh till tears spilled from her eyes.

13

Gugu’s marital situation had become a family obsession. The grown-ups weren’t the only ones who worried about her; even teenagers like me were deeply concerned. But we didn’t dare broach the subject with Gugu since that made her unhappy.

In the spring of 1966, early on Qingming, grave-sweeping day, Gugu came to the village to perform routine exams on girls who had reached child-bearing age. She was accompanied by the apprentice we knew only by her nickname: Little Lion. Eighteen years old, short and stocky, she had a pug nose surrounded by pimples, eyes too wide for her face and dishevelled hair. When they’d finished their exams, Gugu brought Little Lion home with her for dinner.

Wheat cakes, hard-boiled eggs, yellow onions and fermented bean sauce.

We’d already eaten, so we watched Gugu and Little Lion eat.

The girl was so shy she wouldn’t look us in the eye. Her pimples stood out like red beans.

Seeming to take to the girl, Mother asked her one question after another, moving increasingly close to the marriage question. That’s enough questions, Sister-in-law, Gugu said. You’re not looking for a daughter-in-law, are you?

You must be joking, Mother said. How could a village woman like me aspire that high? Little Lion is on the national payroll. There isn’t one among your nephews who’s worthy of her.

Little Lion’s head drooped lower; her appetite seemed to have left her.

My classmates Wang Gan and Chen Bi came running up at that moment. Wang Gan was so focused on the inside of the house he stepped on a bowl of chicken feed and smashed it.

You clumsy oaf, Mother scolded. Why don’t you look where you’re going!

Wang Gan just rubbed his neck and sniggered like an idiot.

How’s your sister, Wang Gan? Gugu asked. Has she grown some?

About the same.

Tell your father when you get home — she swallowed a bite of wheat cake and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief — that your mother mustn’t have another child. If she tries, her uterus will come right out of her.

Don’t talk to them about women’s health, Mother said.

Why not? Gugu replied. I want them to know how hard it is to be a woman. Half the women in this village have a descended uterus, the other half have inflammations. His mother’s uterus has torn loose and hangs there like a rotten plum. But Wang Jiao wants another son. The next time I see him… and you, Chen Bi, your mother isn’t well either —

Mother cut her off and turned to me: Scram, she scolded. You and your knucklehead friends go play outside. I don’t want you goofing around in here.

Out in the lane, Wang Gan said, Xiaopao, you have to treat us to some roasted peanuts.

Why’s that?

Because we have a secret, Chen Bi said.

Tell me, I said.

First treat us to some peanuts.

I don’t have any money.

What do you mean, you don’t have any money? Chen Bi said. You stole a piece of cast-off copper from the state-run farm and sold it for one-twenty. Did you think we didn’t know?

I didn’t steal it, I jumped to my own defence. They threw it away.

Whether you stole it or not doesn’t matter. You did sell it for one-twenty. Your treat, come on. Wang Gan pointed to the swing set next to the threshing square, where people had gathered around an old man who sold roasted peanuts amid the back-and-forth creaks of swings.

After I divided thirty cents’ worth of peanuts into three portions, a dreadfully earnest Wang Gan said, Xiaopao, your aunt is going to marry the county Party secretary to be his second wife.

Like hell! I said.

Once she’s married to him, Chen Bi, said, your family will be in a much better position. Before you know it your brothers and your sister, even you, will be moved into the city, where you’ll get jobs, eat marketable rice, go to college, and become Party cadres. Don’t forget your friends when that happens.

That Little Lion is quite the looker! Wang Gan blurted out.

14

When the ‘sweet potato kids’ were born, the household heads could register them with the commune and receive coupons for sixteen and a half feet of cotton and two jin of soybean oil. The amounts were doubled for twins. The receivers’ eyes would be moist and their hearts would swell as they gazed upon the gold-coloured oil and the cotton coupons, printed with sweet-smelling ink. What a wonderful new society! Gifts for the newborn. The nation needs people, Mother said. The nation needs workers; it values people.

The masses were grateful for the gifts received and silently vowed to repay the nation with even more children. The wife of the granary watchman, Xiao Shangchun, who was the mother of my classmate Xiao Xiachun, had already given my friend three kid sisters, the youngest still nursing, and she was pregnant again. On my way home from tending our ox, I often saw Xiao Shangchun coming down off the little bridge on his rickety bicycle. He’d put on so much weight his bicycle strained audibly under its burden. Old Xiao, villagers liked to tease, how old are you now? Do you have to go at it every night? No, he’d say with a grin, but I have to labour hard to produce people for the nation.

In late 1965, the population explosion was a source of considerable pressure on the leadership. As the first family-planning policy in New China peaked, the government proposed: One is good, two is just right, three is too many. When the county film unit came to town, before the movie started, family-planning slides went up on the screen. Enlarged images of male and female genitalia produced queer shrieks and wild laughter from the viewers in their seats. We youngsters contributed mightily to the commotion as many young hands — boys and girls — came together on the sly. The birth control propaganda acted like an aphrodisiac. The country drama troupe split into a dozen small teams that went into the villages to perform the short play Half the Sky, that criticised favouring boys over girls.

By then Gugu had been promoted to director of the health centre’s obstetrics department and deputy head of the commune’s family-planning steering committee. The Party secretary, Qin Shan, was listed as committee head, but he was a figurehead, leaving the actual responsibilities of leading, organising and implementing family-planning policy for the whole commune to her.

Gugu had put on a bit of weight; her teeth, whose whiteness had been the source of so much envy, had begun to yellow as her work schedule hardly even allowed time to brush her teeth. A male-like hoarseness crept into her voice, as we heard over the loudspeakers on a number of occasions.

Gugu’s announcements invariably opened in the same way: People do what they’re best at and peddle the goods they have. I’ll stay with mine, so today I want to talk to you about family planning…

The prestige she’d once enjoyed was on the decline during those days; even village women who had benefited from her counsel and attention began to cool towards her. She worked diligently in the service of family planning, but with meagre results. In the village she became isolated.

One day the county drama troupe came. When the female lead sang out, The times have changed: boys and girls are equal. Wang Gan’s father, Wang Jiao, shouted out from beneath the stage, Bullshit! Equal? How dare you say they’re equal! His outburst was echoed by those around him — catcalls and unfriendly shouts. Then came the missiles — chunks of brick and roof tiles — that were hurled onto the stage, sending the actors scurrying like scared rats. Wang Jiao had finished off a half jin of liquor that day — courage in a bottle — and his wild nature surfaced. Pushing people out of his way, he jumped up onto the stage, wobbling unsteadily as he stated his case with unrestrained gestures: You people can govern heaven and earth, but who says you can govern common people about having kids? Get some twine and sew up women’s openings if you think you’re up to it. That was greeted by roars of laughter, which further energised him; picking up a broken roof tile, he took aim at the bright gas lantern hanging from a railing in front of the screen and hurled it. The lantern went out, leaving the area in darkness. Wang Jiao spent the next two weeks in lockup, but was unrepentant upon his release. If you’re man enough, he railed at just about everyone he met, just try to cut off my dick!

Gugu had drawn large enthusiastic crowds upon her return home years before. But now, on the rare visit, she was shunned by nearly everyone. Gugu, Mother once asked her, this family-planning business, was it your idea or were you following orders?

What do you mean, my idea? Gugu replied testily. It’s the call of the Party, a directive by Chairman Mao, national policy. Chairman Mao has said: Mankind must control itself, people must learn to embrace viable population growth.

Mother just shook her head. Since the beginning of time, having children has been governed by nature. During the Han dynasty, the Emperor issued an edict that girls were to marry when they reached the age of thirteen. If they were not married, their fathers and elder brothers were held responsible. If women didn’t have children, where would the nation get its soldiers? Every day we hear that America is planning to attack us and that we must liberate Taiwan. If women can’t have babies, where will the soldiers come from? And with no soldiers, who wards off the American attack and who liberates Taiwan?

Don’t bother me with those platitudes, Sister-in-law. Chairman Mao is a bit smarter than you, don’t you think? And Chairman Mao has said: We must control our population! With no organisation and no discipline, at the rate we’re going, mankind is doomed.

Mother was ready: Chairman Mao also said that more numbers means more manpower, and more manpower means more things can be achieved. People are living treasures. The world requires people. He also said: It is wrong to keep rain from falling and to keep women from raising children.

You are putting words into Chairman Mao’s mouth, Sister-in-law, Gugu said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. In olden days, you’d lose your head for falsifying an imperial edict. We’ve never said that women cannot have babies, but that they should not have too many. In other words, planned pregnancies.

How many children a woman bears in her life is controlled by fate, Mother said. Who needs your planning? To me you people are like a blind man lighting a candle, just wasting wax.

As Mother said, Gugu and the others were wasting their effort and money and creating a bad name for themselves. They began by giving free condoms to the heads of women’s associations in every village to pass out to women of childbearing age and ask their husbands to wear them. The condoms wound up in pigpens or were blown up like balloons, some even painted, for children to play with. Gugu and the others went door to door to distribute birth control pills, but met with resistance from women who complained about side effects. Even if they forced them to take pills in front of them, as soon as they left, the women would stick their fingers or chopsticks down their throats to regurgitate the pills. The resistance eventually led to a call for vasectomies.

Word quickly spread throughout the villages that Gugu and Huang Qiuya were the inventors of vasectomies. People even went so far as to say that Huang created the concept, while Gugu put it into practice.

They aren’t normal, two old maids who are green with envy whenever they see a married couple, Xiao Xiachun said assertively, which is why they came up with their plan to make every family childless. He told us that Gugu and Huang had first experimented on young male pigs, then on monkeys, and finally on ten death-row prisoners. When the experiment was called a success, the men had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment. Naturally, it didn’t take us long to discover that Xiao did not know what he was talking about.

Back then, Gugu’s voice often came to us through loudspeakers. Brigade cadres, hear this: In the spirit of the eighth meeting of the commune’s family-planning steering group, all men whose wives have borne them three or more children and any male with a total of three children are to report to the commune health centre to undergo a vasectomy. They will receive a bonus of twenty yuan to help them recuperate and will be given a week off with no deduction of work points.

Men got together to complain. Shit, they griped, you neuter a pig, you castrate a bull, and you geld horses and mules, but since when did they start cutting off a man’s balls? We’re not candidates for palace eunuchs, why go after us? But when the family-planning cadres explained to them that a vasectomy only… Well, they glared and they protested: That sounds fine now, but when you put us up on the bed and get us all numb, we doubt you’ll stop with our balls. They’ll probably cut our pricks off at the same time. Then we’ll have to squat to pee, like women.

Good for the women, it was a simple procedure with extremely rare after-effects for the men, but it met with inflexible resistance. Gugu and her helpers prepared a room in the health centre and waited. No one showed up. The county headquarters called daily for a report on numbers, and were openly dissatisfied with Gugu’s lack of progress. The Party secretary called a special meeting, which led to two resolutions: 1) Vasectomies will be performed on males beginning with the commune leadership and spread to Party cadres and regular workers. In the villages, brigade cadres will take the lead, followed by the masses. 2) Men who resist the procedure and those who initiate and spread rumours will be subject to the dictatorship of the proletariat; all those who qualify for vasectomies but refuse to undergo the procedure will have their right to work revoked until they do so; if that doesn’t prevail, their grain ration will be reduced. Cadres who resist will be removed from office, workers who resist will lose their jobs, and Party members who resist will have their membership revoked.

Party Secretary Qin Shan made a personal address over the PA system in which he said that family planning was an issue of paramount importance to the national economy and the people’s livelihood, and that commune departments and production brigades were to attach the greatest importance to it. Qualified male cadres and Party members were to lead the way in undergoing the procedure to set a positive example for the masses. Then, abruptly changing to a more relaxed, everyday tone, Qin said: Comrades, take me for instance. My wife has already undergone a hysterectomy due to an illness, but in order to allay men’s fears, I plan to have a vasectomy performed on me tomorrow morning.

In his address, Secretary Qin asked the Communist Youth League, the Women’s Association and school authorities to get behind the campaign and publicise it aggressively in order to reach peak participation. As in previous movements, Teacher Xue, the school’s most talented literary figure, composed a clapper-talk lyric, which we quickly memorised. Then, organised into groups of four and armed with homemade paper or tin-plate megaphones, we went up onto rooftops and climbed trees to spread the word:

Commune comrades be not afraid,

Commune comrades be not delayed.

Vasectomies are the simplest things,

No gelding attempts will ever be made.

The tiniest cut, half an inch long,

Fifteen minutes, you can’t go wrong.

No blood and no sweat,

Back to work that day, just as strong.

Over that special spring, according to Gugu, a total of 648 vasectomies were performed at the commune, only 310 by her hand alone. All that was really needed, she said, was a clear explanation of the rationale behind the policy; then, with the senior personnel taking the lead, followed by men at every level, the masses would respond reasonably. The majority of procedures she personally performed were on village cadres and organisational heads who came willingly. Only two cases involved troublesome men who were openly hostile and required coercion. One was our village carter Wang Jiao, the other was Xiao Shangchun, the granary watchman.

Wang Jiao, whose family background was politically ideal, acted with reactionary arrogance. He was no sooner released from detention than he began to rant that anyone who tried to force him into undergoing a vasectomy would know what it meant to see a knife go in clean and come out red. My friend Wang Gan, who had fallen hard for Gugu’s assistant, Little Lion, was on Gugu’s side emotionally. He tried to get his father to get a vasectomy, for which he was rewarded with two resounding slaps. Wang Gan fled from his house, his father on his heels, whip in hand. When they reached the pond at the head of the village, a coarse argument bridged the water.

Wang Jiao: You fucking dog, how dare you try to get your father to have a vasectomy!

Wang Gan: I’m a fucking dog? Okay, I’m a fucking dog!

Wang Jiao stopped to think. Calling his son names was the same as calling himself those same names. He renewed the chase; father and son began circling the pond, like turning a millstone. The curious stopped to look and added fuel to the generational fire with provocative shouts and raucous laughter.

One day Wang Gan stole a deadly sabre from his house and turned it over to the village’s branch secretary, Yuan Lian, telling him it was a lethal weapon that his father had said he’d use on anybody who tried to make him have a vasectomy. Yuan Lian did not waste a minute, running off to the commune with the sabre to report to Party Secretary Qin Shan and my aunt. He’s not on our side, Qin roared as he pounded his desk. Sabotaging our family-planning campaign is a counter-revolutionary act! Letting Wang Jiao get away with this will make our job harder, Gugu said. You’re right, Qin agreed, knowing that village males in line to get vasectomies were watching to see what happened with Wang Jiao.

Arrest the hoodlum, Qin ordered.

Ning Yao (Waist) from commune security, pistol on his belt, led a group consisting of the Party secretary, the Women’s League chairwoman, the militia commander and four of his men; they burst unannounced into Wang’s yard.

Wang’s wife was on a stool in the shade of a tree, a nursing infant in her arms, making a braid out of grass. She threw her handiwork down at the sight of the intruders, sat down on the ground, and wailed.

Wang Gan was standing under the eaves, not making a sound.

Wang Dan was sitting on the front door threshold, gazing at her small face in a tiny hand mirror.

Come out here, Wang Jiao! Yuan Lian shouted. The first time was a request, this time it’s a demand. Commune Security Chief Ning is here. You might get away today, but there’s always tomorrow. Be a man and do this on your own.

The Women’s League chairwoman turned to Wang Jiao’s wife. Stop crying, Fang Lianhua, and tell your man to get out here.

Not a sound from inside the house. Yuan Lian glanced at Security Officer Ning, who waved the four militiamen into the house, ropes in hand.

From where he stood under the eaves, Wang Gan pointed his chin at the pigpen for Ning’s benefit.

Even though one of Ning’s legs was longer than the other, he was fast on his feet. He hightailed it to the pigpen, unholstered his pistol, and shouted at the top of his lungs, Come out of there, Wang Jiao!

Wang Jiao crawled out of the pigpen, sporting cobwebs on his head, and was immediately surrounded by the four militiamen. He wiped his sweaty face. Cripple Ning, he fumed, what are you shouting at? Who do you think you’re scaring with that rusty piece of steel?

I’m not trying to scare you, Ning said. Come quietly and there’ll be no problem.

And what if I don’t? You going to shoot me? He pointed to his crotch. If you’ve got the balls go ahead and shoot me in mine. I’d rather lose my balls to a bullet than to a bunch of old biddies with scalpels.

Wang Jiao, the Women’s League chairwoman said, Don’t be so stubborn. All they do is tie off that little tube…

They ought to sew up that thing of yours, Wang Jiao retorted crudely, pointing at her crotch.

As he waved his pistol, Ning gave the command: Tie him up!

I’d like to see you try, Wang Jiao threatened as he reached behind for a shovel, then held it out in front of him, eyes blazing. I’ll lop off the head of anyone who comes close!

The diminutive Wang Dan chose this moment to stand up, still holding her mirror. She was thirteen at the time, but stood only two and a half feet tall. Though extraordinarily small, she wasn’t misshapen, and was like a lovely Lilliputian. She shone rays of blinding sunlight into Wang Jiao’s face with her mirror and giggled with girlish naivety at the sight.

The militiamen took advantage of Wang’s temporary blindness to rush him, wrench the shovel away, and yank his arms around behind him.

As they started to wrap their ropes around him, he burst into loud wails. There was such agony in his howls that rubberneckers sprawled atop his wall or gawking at his gate were pained by what they heard. The four men stood there helpless, ropes hanging from their hands.

Are you a man, Wang Jiao, Yuan Lian asked, or aren’t you? How can a little procedure like this put such a fear in you? I already did it, and it hasn’t affected me at all. If you don’t believe me, have your wife ask my wife.

That’s enough, Wang Jiao sobbed. I’ll go with you.

That bastard Xiao Shangchun set a bad example at the commune, Gugu said. His rationale for opposing the vasectomy campaign was his trifling service as a stretcher-bearer for an Eighth Route Army underground hospital. But when research determined that he was to be removed from his public office and sent back to his village to work the land, he rode his rickety bicycle up to the health centre and insisted that I personally perform the procedure. A notorious lecher, he was a filthy-mouthed hooligan. As he climbed onto the operating table he said to Little Lion: Here’s what puzzles me. There’s a saying — ‘When the essence reaches fullness, it will flow on its own.’ But if you tie off my tube, where will my essence flow to? Will my belly swell to bursting?

She looked at me, red-faced from embarrassment. Prepare him for surgery.

I hadn’t expected him to have an erection while she was prepping him. She’d never seen anything like that before; she dropped the scalpel and cowered in a corner. Clean up your thoughts! I demanded. My thoughts are perfectly clean, he said shamelessly. It got stiff on its own, and there’s nothing I can do about that. All right, then, Gugu said as she picked up a rubber mallet and, with a nonchalant tap, put an end to his erection.

I swear to the heavens, Gugu said, I took scrupulous care in carrying out the procedure on both Wang Jiao and Xiao Shangchun, with total success, but afterward, Wang Jiao walked around bent at the waist, complaining that I’d cut a nerve, and Xiao made a pest of himself at the centre, complaining to county officials that I’d made him impotent. Of those two, Wang Jiao was probably emotionally unstable, while Xiao was nothing but a troublemaker. During the Cultural Revolution, as head of a Red Guard faction, he raped more women than you can count. If we hadn’t performed a vasectomy on him, he might have retained some scruples out of a fear that he’d impregnate someone and suffer serious consequences. But tying off his tubes freed him from all that.

15

Winter, 1967

So many people turned out for the rally to denounce Party Secretary Yang Lin that the revolutionary committee head, Xiao Shangchun, came up with the ingenious idea of moving the site to the retarding basin on the northern bank of the Jiao River. It was the dead of winter. As people looked out over the ice-covered river, they were treated to a vista of glazed beauty. I was the first villager to learn that the rally was to be held there. One day I was ice fishing beneath a floodgate bridge over the basin when I heard loud voices above me. One of them was Xiao Shangchun. I could have picked his voice out of ten thousand. Damn, he said, what a great setting. We’ll hold the rally here. We can put the stage here on the bridge.

A floodgate had been built above the Jiao River Dam to protect the lower reaches. Every year, when summer turned to autumn, the Jiao River crested and the floodgate was opened, transforming marshland into a lake. Northeast Township residents were unhappy with what was done, since marshland was still land, and the only crop that could be planted in the marsh was sorghum. But who were we to take issue with the needs of the nation? This was one of my favourite hangouts when I skipped school, a place where I could sit and watch water rushing through twelve sluice holes. After the water was let out, the former marshland became a lake some ten square li in size, where fish and shrimp were plentiful enough to bring hordes of fishermen and, increasingly, fishmongers. They tried setting up their stalls on the bridge, and when that didn’t work, they moved to the eastern bank, under a row of willows. During the busy season, a line of stalls would stretch at least two li. Once they formed a market, the local marketplace moved from the commune to the eastern bank of the river. The vegetable peddlers came, the egg sellers came, the oil cruller peddlers came, and with them came other marketplace denizens: thieves, hooligans and beggars. Members of the commune’s armed militia turned out several times to clear the area, and their arrival sent undesirables scurrying; the militiamen’s departure witnessed a probing return of the same people. A combination of legal and illegal commerce thus came into being. I loved looking at fish: carp, silver carp, crucian carp, catfish, snakehead fish, eel, and, while I was at it, crabs, loaches and clams. The biggest fish I ever saw there weighed a hundred jin and had a white belly; it looked a little like a pregnant woman. The old fishmonger stood cowering behind the fish, as if he were in possession of a deity. By then I was palling around with those sharp-eyed, keen-eared fishmongers. Why sharp-eyed and keen-eared? Because agents from the tax bureau often came to confiscate their fish, not to mention the idlers in the commune who pretended to be from the tax bureau to trick them out of their wares. That huge fish was nearly taken away by two men in blue uniforms, cigarettes dangling from their lips, and black satchels in their hands. If the fishmonger’s daughter hadn’t come running up crying and making a fuss, and if Qin He hadn’t exposed the two men’s real identities, they’d have carried that fish off with them.

Qin He wore his hair with a side part and dressed in a blue gabardine student’s uniform, with a Doctoral brand fountain pen and a New China two-colour ballpoint pen clipped to his breast pocket; he looked like a college student reduced to begging during the May Fourth period. His face was deathly pale, his expression gloomy, his eyes moist, as if he were forever on the verge of tears. Yet he was an eloquent speaker of standard Mandarin, his every utterance stage-play quality. He exerted considerable influence on my later decision to try my hand at being a playwright. He was never without his enamel mug, emblazoned with a five-pointed red star and the word ‘Prize’. Standing in front of the fishmongers, he’d say emotionally: Comrades, I’m a man who’s lost the ability to work. And you might say: You’re too young to be a man who’s lost the ability to work. Well, I tell you, comrades, what you cannot see is that I have a serious heart condition, caused by a stabbing. Any physical exertion could cause my damaged heart to rupture, and I’d bleed to death. Won’t you give me one of those fish, comrades? It doesn’t have to be a big one, a small one, even a tiny one will do…

He was always successful, and then he’d rush down to the riverbank, clean his bounty with a penknife, find a spot protected from the wind, gather some kindling, and stack a couple of bricks; then, after placing his water-filled enamel mug on top, he’d make a fire and start to slow cook. I often stood behind him to watch him cook his fish and breathe in the aromatic steam emerging from his mug, which soon had me drooling. Oh, how I envied him and his lifestyle…

Qin He, who’d been one of the most talented students at the Number One High School, was the younger brother of Qin Shan, the commune’s Party secretary. According to some, the reason Qin He was like he was stemmed from his insane infatuation with my aunt, which became so serious that he tried, but failed, to kill himself with his brother’s pistol. The injury left him in that state. At first people laughed at him, but after he helped the old man hold on to that giant fish, the fishmongers’ view of him changed. To me he was like a magnet. I tried very hard to understand him. The look in his moist eyes cried out for sympathy.

Late one afternoon, after the fishmongers had left for home, I saw him walking into the sunset, trailing a long shadow; so I fell in behind him, hoping to discover his secret. When he realised he was being followed, he stopped, turned, and greeted me with a deep bow. Please don’t do this, dear friend, he said. In an imitation of his voice, I said, I’m not doing anything, dear friend. What I mean, he said in a forlorn voice, is please don’t follow me. You’re walking, I replied, so am I. I’m not following you. He shook his head and murmured, Please, my friend, show some pity for a man of misfortune. He turned and continued walking. I fell in behind him again. He started loping, taking long, high-stepping strides, his body nearly floating as he rocked from side to side, sort of like a paper cutout. I kept up with him at about half-speed, until he stopped to catch his breath, his face the colour of gold foil. Friend… his face was tear-streaked… I beg you, let me go. I’m terribly disabled, a severely wounded man…

Moved by his plea, I stopped and let him continue alone, my eyes filled with the image of his back, my ears to the sound of his sobs. I hadn’t meant to bother him; I’d just wanted to know a bit about how he lived, like, for instance, where he slept at night.

As a teenager I had exceptionally long legs and big feet — size 40 shoes — which caused my mother no end of worries. Our gym teacher, Mr Chen, was a one-time track and field star athlete, and a rightist. Like a buyer of livestock, he squeezed my legs and feet and pronounced me to have the wherewithal to be a star, with the right training, of course. He taught me how to run, to breathe correctly, and to use my strength to best advantage. I proudly took third place in the three-thousand-metre race in the youth category at the all-county elementary and middle school track meet. My skipping school to run to the fish market to see what was happening became an open secret.

That incident initiated a friendship between Qin He and me. He always greeted me with a friendly nod. It was a pan-generational friendship, since he was more than ten years older than me. In addition to Qin, two other beggars camped out in the fish market: Gao Men was a broad-shouldered man with big hands, someone you’d peg as a man of considerable strength. Lu Huahua, who had suffered from jaundice, for some reason had been given a girl’s name. One day Gao and Lu, one with a willow club, the other with a worn-out shoe, ganged up on Qin He and gave him a severe beating. Qin did not raise a hand to defend himself. Beat me to death, he said, and I’ll be eternally grateful. But don’t eat any frogs. Frogs are our friends, and you mustn’t eat them. They have parasites that will make you stupid if you ingest them…

I saw green smoke spiralling into the air from a bonfire under a willow tree, and deep in the fire some half-cooked frogs; next to the fire burnt frog skins and bones gave off a foul, nauseating stench. That’s when I realised that Qin He had been beaten for trying to keep them from cooking and eating frogs. The sight of him being beaten brought tears to my eyes. Everyone ate frogs during the famine, though my family vehemently opposed the practice. We’d have rather starved than eat a frog. From that angle, Qin He was our ally. I picked a piece of burnt wood out of the bonfire and used it to poke Gao Men in the butt and Lu Huahua in the neck. Then I took off running down the riverbank with the two beggars hot on my heels. I kept them at a comfortable distance to have some fun, and each time they stopped chasing me, I shouted insults or threw objects at them.

That was the day commune members from forty-eight villages streamed down roads or across the frozen river, waving red flags and beating gongs and drums and pots and pans, as they dragged village miscreants to the retarding basin, where a rally was to be held to subject Yang Lin, the county’s number one capitalist roader, and bad people from all commune departments to public denouncements. We made our way across the river ice, some on homemade skateboards. Gym teacher Chen, who had been such a generous tutor, was wearing a paper dunce cap and a pair of straw sandals, a goofy smile on his face, as he followed the scowling school principal, who also wore a dunce cap. Xiao Shangchun’s son, Xiachun, was driving them along with a javelin. His father was the head of the commune revolutionary committee, while Xiachun himself was the leader of our school’s Red Guard brigade. He was wearing the white Warrior brand sneakers he’d taken off Teacher Chen’s feet. A double-bang starting pistol I’d have loved to get my hands on, and which was supposed to have been public property, now hung from Xiao Xiachun’s belt. From time to time he drew the pistol, added gunpowder, and fired it into the air: Pow pow! White smoke followed the explosions, saturating the air with the pleasant odour of nitrate.

I’d wanted to join the Red Guards when the revolution began, but Xiao Xiachun wouldn’t let me. He called me a black model promoted by Teacher Chen the Rightist. He called my great-uncle a traitor, a false martyr, and said that my aunt was a Nationalist secret agent, a turncoat’s fiancé and a capitalist roader’s paramour. To get even, I picked up a dog turd, wrapped it in a large leaf, and hid it in my hand. I walked up to him and said: Xiao Xiachun, how come your tongue is black? He opened his mouth, just as I’d planned. I crammed in the dog turd and took off running. He hadn’t a chance of catching me, since the only person in the school who could outrun me was Teacher Chen.

Watching him strut smugly along in Teacher Chen’s shoes, javelin in hand, starter pistol on his hip, gave rise to hateful jealousy — he needed fixing in the worst way. I knew he was deathly afraid of snakes, but there’d be no snakes in late autumn, so I scrounged up a length of rotting rope under a mulberry tree by the river, coiled it and held it behind my back. As soon as I was right behind him, I collared him with the rope and screamed: A venomous snake!

With a blood-curdling scream, he threw down the javelin and tore the thing off of his neck. When he saw it was only a piece of rope, he slowly gathered his wits, picked up the javelin and said through gnashing teeth: Xiaopao Wan is a counter-revolutionary!

Death! He pointed the javelin at me and charged.

I ran.

He chased me.

On the frozen river I lost my speed advantage, and sensed that a blast of cold air was catching up to me. I was terrified that I’d be run through by his javelin. I knew the guy had honed the tip on a grinding wheel, I also knew that he was mean enough to stick me with it. He’d already shown that by stabbing tree trunks and scarecrows, and had even killed a pig mating with a sow. I kept looking back as I ran. His hair was standing straight up, his eyes were open as far as they’d go, and if he caught me I was a goner.

I ran around people, I threaded my way through people, and when I slipped on the ice, I rolled and crawled to get away from his javelin thrust. He missed and struck the ice, sending chips flying. Then he slipped and fell. I scrambled to my feet and started running again. He got to his feet and was chasing me once more, banging into people right and left — men, women… Who the hell do you think you are! Hey — help! Murder —

I crashed into a line of people banging gongs and drums, sending them stumbling in all directions and causing dunce caps to fly off the heads of the miscreants. I bumped past Chen Bi’s father Chen E and his mother Ailian — I bumped into Yuan Sai’s father, Yuan Lian (he’d been labelled a capitalist roader), and crashed into Wang Jiao on my way past. I saw the look on Mother’s face and heard her horror-struck scream — I saw my good friend Wang Gan — I heard a thudding sound behind me, followed by a screech — Xiao Xiachun’s voice. I later learned that Wang Gan had stuck out his foot and tripped Xiao Xiachun, who’d cut his lip when his face hit the ice, and was lucky he hadn’t lost a tooth. When he got to his feet, he turned on Wang Gan, but was kept from getting even by Wang’s father. Xiao Xiachun, you little bastard, Wang Jiao growled, if you so much as touch my son I’ll gouge out your eyes! Three generations of our family have been tenant farmers, he said. Other people might be afraid of you, but you’re looking at one man who isn’t!

The meeting site was a sea of people, all gathered in front of an impressive stage made of wood and reed mats. At the time, the commune boasted a group of skilled workers who specialised in building stages and bulletin board kiosks. Dozens of horizontal red flags adorned the stage along with red banners with white lettering. When we arrived, four loudspeakers mounted on a pair of corner posts were blaring ‘A Song of Quotations’: Marxist thought has thousands of threads that come together in a single remark: To rebel is justified! To rebel is justified!

The place was in an uproar. I attempted to muscle my way up front, my eye on a spot at the foot of the stage. People I shouldered out of the way responded churlishly with feet and fists and elbows. But after all that hard work — my clothes were soaked and my body was black and blue — I not only didn’t make it to the front, I was actually manhandled to the edge of the crowd, where I heard the sound of cracking ice, and had a bad feeling in my bones. Just then a man whose voice sounded like a duck’s quack, burst from the loudspeakers: The public denouncement session is about to begin. All you poor and lower-middle-class peasants, please quiet down… in the front rows, please sit down, sit down…

I made my way over to the three storage sheds for gate boards on the western edge of the sluice gate. By wedging my toes in the spaces between bricks and grabbing hold of the eaves, I pulled myself up until I made it onto one of the roofs, all the way to the central ridge, from where I could see throngs of people and more red flags than I could count. I was nearly blinded by sunlight off of the river ice. Dozens of people were hunched over just west of the stage, all with their heads lowered. I knew who they were: the commune’s evil ox-ghosts and snake-demons waiting to be hauled up on the stage to be hounded by the masses. Xiao Shangchun was bellowing into a microphone. The one-time down-on-his-luck granary watchman could never have dreamed that such a position would one day be his. But at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, as rebel leader, he had created a title for himself: Windstorm Rebel Corps Commander.

He was wearing an old army uniform turned white from too many launderings and made whole with dark patches; a red armband circled his bicep. His hair was so thin the scalp glistened in the sunlight. He affected the speech of big-shot characters we’d all seen in movies: drawing out his words, one hand on his hip, the other making all sorts of gestures. The loudspeakers made his voice loud enough to burst eardrums, overlaying the sound of waves crashing onto a rocky shore created by the masses, and caused by disturbances here one minute, there the next. I began to worry about the safety of my mother and other oldsters who were there. I tried to spot them in the crowd, but the glare from the ice was too bright. Bitter winds cut through my tattered coat and chilled me to the bone.

Xiao Shangchun waved his hand, and a dozen hulking men with clubs and sporting Security bands around their arms came out from behind the stage. They jumped down and began to quiet the boisterous crowd with clubs that had red cloths tied to the ends, making them look like torches. One young fellow, who was hit over the head, angrily tried to take the club away, and received a nasty poke in the ribs for his effort. Wherever these ruthless crowd controllers wielded their clubs, the people meekly made way, as Xiao Shangchun’s shrill voice sliced through the loudspeakers: Sit down, everyone! Sit down! Drag out the troublemakers.

The young man targeted by one security enforcer was yanked out of the crowd by his hair… the masses finally quieted down, some on their haunches, others seated, but no one on their feet. Like scarecrows in the field, the enforcers stood evenly spaced amid the crowd of people.

Bring the ox-ghosts and snake-demons up on the stage! Xiao Shangchun commanded. The miscreants’ feet never touched the ground as they were bundled up onto the stage.

I saw Gugu among them.

She did not go meekly. Every time one of the men pushed her head down, she defiantly raised it as soon as the hand was taken away. Her defiance only increased the pressure the next time, and in the end she was knocked to her knees; one of the security men put his foot on her back. Some members of the crowd hopped up onto the stage to shout slogans, but they evoked no echoing response from the people below. Finding their shouts ineffective, the sloganeers slipped back down into the crowd. Just then, a piercing wail exploded from somewhere in their midst. It was my mother’s howl of anguish: My poor suffering sister… have you horrid beasts no conscience at all…

Xiao Shangchun ordered his men to take all the other ox-ghosts and snake-demons off the stage and leave Gugu alone up there. The enforcer kept his foot on her back and struck a valiant pose. This was a demonstration of the popular slogan: Knock the class enemies to their knees and step on them when they’re down. When I saw that Gugu wasn’t moving, I worried she might be dead. My mother’s howls had faded away, and I thought she might be dead too.

The remaining ox-ghosts and snake-demons were herded over to a large poplar tree, where they were guarded by a security team armed with rifles. The detainees sat on the ground, heads lowered, unmoving as clay statues. Huang Qiuya’s head was resting against a brick wall, half of it shaved to make her not only ugly, but terrifyingly so. I’d been told that during the early days of the movement, Gugu had been one of the founders of the Norman Bethune Combat Brigade in the local health system. Like a fanatic, she’d shown no kindness to the director who had once been her protector, and she had treated Huang Qiuya with unprecedented cruelty. I knew this had been a survival measure, like a night traveller whistling past a graveyard out of fear. The old director, a decent man who’d found the bullying and humiliation intolerable, had killed himself by jumping down a well. Huang Qiuya, on the other hand, had responded to the imprecations of her antagonist by producing evidence of Gugu’s concealed relationship with the turncoat Wang Xiaoti, revealing that she had often cried out his name in her sleep at night, and divulging that when she came off duty one night, she discovered that her colleague, Wan Xin, was not in the dormitory; she wondered where an unmarried young woman could be that late. As she was weighing the possibilities, she saw three red signal flares soar up out of a grove of willow trees on the bank of the Jiao River and heard the roar of an aeroplane engine high overhead. Not long after that, a figure slinked back into the dormitory, and she recognised who it was — Wan Xin. Huang said she reported the incident to the director, but the capitalist roader was in cahoots with Wan Xin and suppressed her report. There was no doubt, she said, that Wan Xin was a secret agent for the Kuomintang, and this incident was serious enough to cost her her life. But she wasn’t finished. She also said that Gugu had engaged in trysts with the capitalist roader Yang Lin in the county seat, resulting in a pregnancy that Huang herself had aborted. The masses were a repository of rich creativity, but also a repository of evil imagination. Huang Qiuya’s revelation of Gugu’s two major crimes easily satisfied the people’s emotional needs; Gugu’s refusal to admit to any of it and her steadfast defiance further guaranteed fireworks at every denouncement session, and constituted a monstrous episode in the history of Northeast Township.

I gazed down from my rooftop perch at Huang Qiuya’s weird half-bald head and my loathing was tempered by sympathy, confusion, fear and grief. I picked up a shard of tile and took aim at that head. I could have hit it with ease. But I hesitated, and in the end did not throw it. Years later I told Gugu what I’d thought of doing. I’m glad you didn’t, she said. That would have made things even worse for me. In her later years Gugu believed she’d been guilty of terrible, unforgiveable things. I thought she was being too hard on herself, convinced that she was no worse than anyone who lived during those times. You don’t understand… The note of sorrow in her voice was palpable.

Yang Lin was dragged up onto the stage. The man whose foot was on my aunt’s back moved away so they could pick her up and stand her next to Yang, where their heads were pushed down, they were forced to crouch, and their arms were yanked behind them, a contrived position to resemble the wings on Wang Xiaoti’s Jian-5 aircraft. I looked down at Yang Lin’s exposed scalp. Six months earlier, he had been the next thing to a god, someone who had reached unparalleled heights, and we had entertained hopes that he and Gugu might marry someday, even though he was more than twenty years older, and even though she would be a replacement for his recently deceased first wife. But he was the Party secretary, a high-ranking cadre with a monthly income of over a hundred yuan, a big shot who visited the villages in a green Jeep, accompanied by an assistant and bodyguards.

I only met him once, Gugu said years afterward. I found his big belly — easily the size of a pregnant woman in her eighth month — repulsive and was turned off by his foul garlic breath — he was as rustic as they come — but I’d have married him. For all of you, for the family, I’d have married him. The day after she met Yang in the county seat, she said, the commune Party secretary, Qin Shan, made an inspection tour of the health centre and, in the company of the director, came to the obstetrics ward, all smiles and honeyed words, a living, breathing slave. In the past, she said, Qin Shan had strutted around, high and mighty, but he had abruptly turned into the man she was looking at now, and she didn’t know what to make of that. I’d have married the man to spite all those petty people, if not for the Cultural Revolution.

A squat, stocky female Red Guard walked up with two pairs of worn-out shoes and draped one around the neck of Yang Lin, the other around Gugu’s neck. I could bear up under the labels of counter-revolutionary and special agent, Gugu said, but not harlot, not ever. It was an insult they concocted to disgrace me. She reached up, took the shoes off, and flung them away. As if they had eyes, they landed at the feet of Huang Qiuya. The Red Guard jumped up, grabbed a handful of Gugu’s hair, and pulled her head down. Gugu jerked her head back up to defy the girl. Lower your head, Gugu, I warned silently. If you don’t, she might rip your hair out and take some of your scalp with it. That girl has to weigh a hundred kilos or more. She’s holding onto your hair with both hands, actually hanging from you. Gugu shook her head like a wild horse tossing its mane, and the girl, who held onto the hair, lost her balance, bringing Gugu down to the stage floor with her, a tuft of loose hair in each hand. Gugu’s head started to bleed — she still has a pair of coin-sized scars there — the blood running down her forehead and into her ear. She held her body rigid. The crowd was deathly silent. A mule hitched to a wagon raised its head and split the air with a loud bray. I didn’t hear Mother howl; my mind was a blank.

As that was happening, Huang Qiuya picked the worn shoes up off the ground in front of her, trotted over, and went up onto the stage. I assumed she didn’t know what had just happened, because she wouldn’t have done what she did otherwise. She froze when she saw the scene in front of her, dropped the shoes, and backed up, mumbling something. Xiao Shangchun strode up onto the stage. Wan Xin, he bellowed, how arrogant can you be! With wild gestures, he tried leading the people in shouted slogans to change the atmosphere. But no one below the stage joined in. The fat girl flung away the two handfuls of hair, as if they were snakes, and began to blubber as she stumbled off the stage.

Stay where you are! Xiao ordered Huang Qiuya, who was slowly backing up. He pointed at the worn shoes. You, he said, put those around her neck.

The blood had run down Gugu’s ear onto her neck and past her brows into her eyes. She rubbed her face with one hand.

Huang picked up the shoes and walked unsteadily up to Gugu, where she stopped and looked into her face. With a garbled shriek, she began foaming at the mouth and fell backward.

Red Guards rushed up and dragged her off the stage like a dead dog.

Xiao Shangchun grabbed Yang Lin by the collar and pulled it back to straighten him up.

Yang’s arms hung loose at his sides, his legs buckled, and he went limp. If Xiao let go, he’d have collapsed in a heap.

Being stubborn is Wan Xin’s road to Hell, Xiao said. She won’t come clean, so you do it. Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who refuse! Tell us, did you and she have an adulterous affair?

Yang Lin held his tongue.

Xiao waved a hulking man up to join him and give Yang a dozen vicious slaps across the face, loud cracks that reached the tips of the trees. Some white things landed on the stage; I guessed they were teeth. Yang began to lurch and would have fallen if the man hadn’t grabbed his collar to hold him up.

Did you or didn’t you? Speak up.

Yes…

How many times?

Just once…

The truth!

Twice…

You’re lying!

Three times… four… ten… many times… I can’t recall…

With a spine-tingling screech, Gugu jumped up and threw herself at Yang like a lioness taking down her prey. Yang fell heavily to the floor, where Gugu scratched his face relentlessly. Several ferocious security men had to work hard to pry her off of Yang’s body.

At that moment, strange noises on the lake emerged as the ice began to crack, and people fell into the freezing water.