A Heart for Freedom (4 page)

Because my mother possessed all the attributes of a successful modern woman (intelligence, talent, and a future career as a highly respected medical doctor) yet also maintained all the virtues of a traditional Chinese woman (beauty, tenderness, kindness, and tolerance), she had many eager suitors. Her pure mind, childlike love for singing, and joy for life attracted a wide range of men, from high-ranking military officers, to classmates, to doctors and professors. Mom kept her preferences close to her heart, which made my dad work even harder to win her over. She never told us how Dad managed to beat out the other competitors, but we’re thankful he won.

At the beginning of the 1960s, just as a new China was emerging, their young lives were ready to blossom, and their view of the future was full of hope and happiness. Mom graduated a year ahead of Dad, and when the army came to recruit among the recent college graduates, she applied. After inspection and review, this Cinderella from a peasant family, who’d had to finish all her chores in order to stay in school, became a bona fide army doctor. Upon her enlistment, she had a picture taken in her crisp, new uniform, and she looked radiant. When my siblings and I were growing up, Mom often teased us by asking who wore the uniform better, Dad or Mom. Of course, we always said both, but Mom was simply gorgeous.

Six months after Dad’s graduation, they married. Assigned to separate units, stationed on opposite sides of Jinan, Mom and Dad were able to see each other only on weekends and occasional evenings. When Dad was assigned to another location to help build a new army hospital to serve the local peasants, Mom volunteered to leave her comfortable city assignment to be with him in the countryside. The army higher-ups quickly approved the change. So, in 1965, Mom and Dad were reunited and were able to start their family. At that time, Chairman Mao was encouraging families to have many children. Some women who had seven or eight kids were deemed to be Mothers of Glory. Mom regretted that between military training and her medical practice, all she could handle was three. With both my parents working full-time as doctors, Grandma was brought out to take care of me and my two siblings.

* * *

China in the late 1950s, ’60s, and early ’70s was filled with massive political storms and tragedies. When the anticorruption and anticapitalist movements initiated by Chairman Mao led millions of peasants to suffer in a devastating famine, the military became a place of refuge. The leaders made sure the People’s Liberation Army had enough food. When my dad was courting my mom, he saved some of his food coupons to make sure she had enough to eat. Soon the Cultural Revolution swept the entire country, but the military structure remained virtually untouched, except for a few higher-up leadership conflicts. My parents survived this period of unrest without harm, except that their promised promotions were frozen.

During the Cultural Revolution, a time when education and knowledge were condemned as useless or as something that could actually bring harm, my father quietly maintained the conviction that education is good. As soon as the new reforms began, Dad delayed purchasing any luxury goods, such as a television or new furniture, and instead used an entire month’s salary to buy me a thirty-volume set of reference books to invest in my education. Those books were effective in supplementing my schoolwork, and today I would have to say my father’s vision paid off. Grandpa’s and Dad’s unfinished dreams came to fruition in my generation, half a century later.

Even though my family did not suffer many of the hardships others faced during the Cultural Revolution, life in the military had its own price for parents and families. Because Mom and Dad were two young army doctors who devoted their lives to caring for the sick and the poor, my earliest memories are of separation from them. I remember as a young child standing with my grandma at the gate of the army compound, waving good-bye to my mother and father as they marched with a group of soldiers to a row of trucks that would take them to faraway places. And that was just the beginning.

When I was five, Grandma declared she couldn’t take care of three children at once, lest something awful happen to one of us. So I was sent to live with a peasant family while my parents were off tending the poor and the sick, delivering the great leader Chairman Mao’s love and care. The night before my dad was to leave again with the troops, he dropped me off in the countryside, along with a bag of grain and some food coupons, and told me to be a good girl while he was away.

I went to the village school with the sons of my foster family, ate salty fish and homemade cornbread, sang songs to provide entertainment for the family, and slept with them all on the same mud-brick bed. I don’t remember how long it went on like this (it felt like a century), but one night, after laughing and dancing and pretending to be happy, I woke up in tears and the truth came out: “I want to go home. Please take me back home!”

I begged and begged until the father took me home on the backseat of his bike. It was a thirty-minute ride in the darkness, and to a child, it was like coming back from another world. The man was not happy, but I could not endure my own misery any longer to please him and his family.

When we arrived at the military compound, the man knocked on our neighbor’s door and woke them up to open our house for me. The home that had been filled with warmth and people when I left was now dark and empty; everyone was gone. A curious neighbor saw the open door and stopped by to ask if I’d like to stay with her family. When I said no, she asked why I wanted to stay in the house when my family was all gone. I forced a smile and said, “Just being in my own room already makes me feel better.” She shook her head with confusion and tucked me into bed. As I was lying in the dark, I heard the neighbor say to someone else, “That poor child. She feels better by just looking at her room.” Tears came to my eyes as I held my pillow close to my chest and clutched my favorite blanket. The familiar smell and feel of the fabric comforted me. I missed my parents terribly.

When my father came home a few days later, he was understandably upset. “You are such an irresponsible kid! How could you quit like this? If you were in the army, you could be kicked out and locked up for punishment. Don’t you know your mom and I go out to help the poor and the peasants? It is a very important job, and it is our duty as military doctors. That’s why we can’t stay with you all the time. You are not just anyone’s daughter; you are the daughter of two PLA doctors. If you don’t ask yourself to behave better than other kids, how can I trust you and give you more responsibilities in the future? What a hopeless thing. You will not amount to anything worthwhile!”

Dad’s words of disappointment crushed me. How I wished I could be a good little trouper and please him. But I was only five. Later, my dad said, “What a shame. We just gave them a whole bag of grain,” which in those days was like a bag of gold.

“Can we ask for it back?” I asked carefully.

“Of course not!”

Now I felt even worse. As a PLA kid, I bore special responsibilities. There was no place for personal sentiment or emotion. My parents’ work was more important than my needs, and my irresponsibility had caused a terrible waste. But what was done was done. I could only try harder to redeem myself in the future to earn my father’s trust and respect.

That opportunity arrived five years later, at the time of the Tangshan earthquake, which struck in the early morning hours of July 28, 1976, measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale and killing or injuring more than 240,000 people. That night after dinner, when I slipped out to play with my friends, I overheard an announcement on the military base: “Emergency! Assembling! Ready to move out.”

When I came home and casually mentioned to my dad what I had heard, his countenance fell and he became serious. Dropping the dinner dishes he had been washing, he dried his hands and went outside. When he returned a few minutes later, he told my mom, “Pack up; the army is being sent on a rescue mission.”

Within half an hour, my parents emerged in full uniform with supply belts, water bottles—the whole package. After giving me a few instructions about how to use our ration cards to buy flour, rice, and cooking oil; where to take my siblings to kindergarten; and how to send letters to update them on family affairs, my parents walked out the front door and joined the assembling troops in the darkness.

After watching them march out the front gate and disappear into the night, I walked home slowly. There, in the dim candlelight—there was no electricity that night—I saw my six-year-old sister, my four-year-old brother, and my ancient grandma, who was terrified by the responsibility of caring for three children. In all the chaos, my little brother had managed to drink some of my dad’s alcohol and was now burning with a high fever. There I was, barely ten years old and fully in charge.

By the time my parents came back from Tangshan one year later, my childhood was over. I knew how to care for my siblings, purchase and cook all our food, write regular letters to my parents to report on family news, and comfort Grandma. With some determination, I learned how to build a chicken coop, bought some little chicks from a nearby farm, and raised them to lay eggs. With Grandma’s help, I also farmed a little piece of land and planted vegetables. I sent my brother to day care and took my sister to school with me. During this important time of transition into being a grown-up, my bond with Grandma grew even stronger.

3

“Make Me an Extraordinary Child!”

One day during math class, the teacher assigned us some exercises to work on independently and then walked out of the room. I finished the assignment quickly and began looking around for something to occupy my attention. In the pencil box of a boy seated nearby, I saw a dried sea horse with a big, round belly and an almost perfectly round tail curling down. I asked the boy to hand it over so I could play with it, but he wanted a pencil in return. Just as we were haggling over the trade, the teacher opened the door and came back in.

“Who has broken the discipline?” he shouted. “Stand up, come up to the lectern, and talk if you have something to say!”

I immediately bowed my head, not daring to move an inch.

Seeing we weren’t responding, the teacher burst out like a fire doused with gasoline. Dragging my classmate out of his seat, he kicked him up to the lectern. As the boy struggled to his feet, the teacher punched and kicked him down again. I was scared out of my wits; I couldn’t imagine how this teacher was going to deal with me next. By this point, all the kids had stopped their exercises and were looking on. Between the teacher’s explosions of fury, there was utter silence in the room. I wanted to slip through a crack in the floor. Thankfully, the teacher didn’t raise a hand against me. Instead, he gave me a furious glare and turned his attention back to my cowering classmate, who was still lying on the floor at the front of the room.

In a sharp, shrill voice, the teacher hollered at the boy, “You’ll never amount to anything, you dog! You’re up to your tricks all day, and you won’t listen, no matter what! There’s a saying that goes, ‘You can teach first-class people with your eyes; with second-class people, you need the lips; but with third-class people, only a whip will work.’ You remember that! Now go!”

With that, he kicked the boy again and sent him scrambling back to his seat.

Though I was glad to have escaped such humiliation, I was shocked by what the teacher had said. In my heart, I swore to myself,
I’m not going to wait for someone to use a whip to teach me like that!

On my way to school the next day, the air was thick and oppressive, as it usually is before a storm. At the horizon, I couldn’t distinguish the sky from the earth. As I walked alone on the empty, quiet road, the phrase “You’ll never amount to anything” swirled about in my head. Gradually, an idea came into my mind:
You must become someone extraordinary!

At that moment my muddy thoughts became clean and bright, as if a magic force between the earth and the sky had brought me a revelation. As I continued on my way, I silently recited my new mantra: “Be an extraordinary person!”

That day in language class, I wrote a long essay as soon as I picked up my pen. When I turned it in, the teacher sighed happily and told all the students to put down their pens and listen as he read my essay aloud. Then, without saying a word, he gazed at me deeply. I was embarrassed and bashful at this sudden glory, but after that long stare from the teacher, I understood the meaning of “teaching with the eyes.” In his gaze, there was nurturing, hope, praise, delight, and expectation—and it planted an aspiration deep in my heart.

That night, after dinner, I took advantage of the general chaos in the house to sneak into my parents’ bedroom and latch the door behind me. Kneeling in front of the big mirror on the wall, I closed my eyes, pressed my hands together, and prayed, “Dear God, please help me to be an extraordinary child. Thank you!” I had never been to church, or seen a Bible, or prayed before; I had only read the word
God
in a foreign novel. We had been taught religion was poison, but the people in the novel prayed, so I decided to try it too. I was a little embarrassed. When I was done, I saw in the mirror the face of a pious and sincere child.

That year, I put a lot of effort into making other people treat me as a “first-class person who can be taught with the eyes.” By working hard, I earned the Three Merits Student honor, which was awarded to students who excelled in academics, athletics, and morals. I also made it into a Jenza class—the class for the best and the brightest—which was the top-level junior high school class, in which the best students from the entire county were gathered into one school.

The Three Merits Student award brought surprising attention to our army compound. Each year before the winter break, the teachers and students marched in a parade, banging on drums and gongs, while the Three Merits Student award certificates were brought into the military unit’s courtyard and pasted on the wall of the little convenience store. The year I got the certificate, all the military aunts and uncles came to have a look, clicking their tongues in admiration, praising Old Chai’s family for having a kid with potential. I didn’t think it was anything special, but there were some kids in the army compound who used to bully me, and none of them got the award, so I did feel quietly vindicated.