China's Son (20 page)

My heart sank lower. There was a scheme out there to frame and ruin Siang and his friends, and possibly me. “Did you hear anything about me being involved in any way?”

“No, everyone knows you're a born-again good guy who was recently honored with the Young Communist League
title in school. You've been making quite a name as being a top contender for college.”

“How does your small village know so much about the things happening here?”

“My neighbor, the baldy. Remember, I told you about him. He's the head of the commune's militia command. He was drunk last night, boasting to my dad. I got the whole scoop. He's heading the investigation.”

“What's he doing now?”

“Nothing concerning you,” he told me. “Relax.” I had never felt so relieved. I prayed a quiet thank-you to Buddha that I hadn't followed them to the fields to gamble on New Year's Day. I could easily have been implicated. Buddha had been watching over me.

A dark shadow clouded my mood. My friends were in trouble. I should do something about it, but I didn't have a clue what. I truly believed that they had gone to Putien and cleaned Yi's colleagues out. They were self-made rich men, unjustly put on a short list of suspects. It would have been easy. They were social outcasts. Someone had probably known about their money, swiped the cash from the shoe factory, and laid the crime on them, just in time to get away clean. The whole town would believe it was Siang, of course. It was the holidays, gambling time, and he just happened to be back in town on the day the crime occurred. He probably went to see his dad at work and someone saw him and heard about the money they had won in Putien. Bingo. What better motive, what better timing!

Inside the school, the Head walked by us with his nose up in the air. He sported a new jacket, as well as a new hat for his formidable pate. He hurried by, sneering and ignoring us
as if we were a couple of stinking bugs he wouldn't mind stepping on and grinding to death.

“That guy annoys the heck out of me,” I said to Dia.

“My feeling exactly. Watch this.” Dia cleared his throat and shouted, “Hey, Head, there's bird droppings on your new hat.” The Head stopped without turning around. He knew where the voice came from. He thought for a second, then took off his new wool hat and checked the top quickly.

“Oops, I lied.” Dia laughed.

“You little rat.” The Head was angry. He rolled up his sleeves and walked up to Dia, who stood his ground.

I inserted myself between them and said, “There's no reason to get angry here. Dia just wanted to see your head, that's all. It's a joke. Can't you take a joke, big boy?”

“I can take a joke, but not from you two losers.” The Head gritted his teeth.

“Hey, watch your mouth.” I felt like shaking the guy. From the corner of my eye I saw Dia reaching into his bag, ready to do some serious damage to the self-proclaimed top intellectual of Yellow Stone High. I quickly put my hand on his arm.

“Why are you wasting your time in school?” the Head said. “You guys belong in the fields. There's no future for you two in school.”

“Says who? You?” I stepped closer.

“Says everyone. Haven't you heard? Liberal arts is just a dumping ground for waste like you guys. Don't think a few good scores will get you into college. No way.”

My anger was reaching its peak. You could insult my looks, my character, and my honor, but no one was allowed to tear apart my dream. I pulled back my right arm, ready to
shove my fist down his throat. This time Dia dragged me back.

“Hey, Head, let me tell you something. This man”—Dia pointed at me—“is gonna be an English major at a top college in Beijing, while you, the engineering major, will end up in a corner of this freezing country, spending your miserable life sawing lumber in the snow. And you're gonna get so lonely, you're gonna start thinking about a sheep while this man will be the translator for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, touring the beautiful Western world. Wake up, Head, and think.”

My anger subsided at Dia's rousing speech.

“In your dreams.” The Head put back his hat and walked off proudly.

Dia and I looked at each other and laughed. There was a reason why we liked each other. We worked well together, unrehearsed.

“How do you come up with stuff like that?” I asked Dia.

“Well, that's what I think is gonna happen to you, man. Don't disappoint me. Work your bony butt off if you have to and do honor to our friendship. I have high hopes for you and low expectations for that creep. I don't get it. How can such a big head be so stupid? I think the best thing for him to do would be to hand over his head to some scientist, who can study it and find out what's wrong with it. That would be his biggest contribution to science.” We had another good laugh.

The classroom was half full when I came in. There had been some changes. The broken windows were fixed and the wall was repainted with rough white paint. There was a large slogan about studying hard, a quote from the dead Chairman Mao. Students buried their heads in their books. Some stuck their heads out of the window and puffed their
tobacco rolls. There was a sense of seriousness that hadn't been there before. A fellow was actually reading an English lesson out loud.

Only a year ago, his teeth would have been knocked out for doing that.

I sat in my old seat, in the corner of the last row. The corner was no longer for the convenience of jumping out the window whenever I felt like it. It was an island. I felt safe here; I could survey everything and everyone, yet no one could see me.

It was ironic to bring Mao into this drive for intellectual excellence. If Mao had known what his Little Red Guards were doing, he would have howled like a lonely wolf in his icy coffin and cried his smoke-ridden lungs out. Mao, the dictator, had been the friend of the devils. He had wanted China in perpetual turmoil so that he could rule forever. He'd had a simple philosophy: peace and leisure bred unrest and resentment against leaders, while a sense of crisis strengthened his own leadership.

That was why, ever since the Communists took over in 1949, Mao hadn't stopped making fake smoke over fake fires. One political movement had followed another. And strewn down his long path lay the bones of millions of angry ghosts. He hadn't cared about the young generation, whom he had ordered to walk out of school and into the countryside to get reeducated by the poor farmers in their muddy fields. He had simply wanted them to be ignorant so that they wouldn't be aware of what a fiend he really was.

Young people loved it. Since the big guy didn't want them in school, they packed up and moved to the countryside by the millions, singing the Red Guard songs and waving their Little Red Books. But soon they found that all they could
learn from farmers was backbreaking labor and antiquated farming techniques dating back thousands of years. So they started insulting the farmers and stealing their daughters and stopped going to work. All day long the youngsters smoked, drank, gambled, and fell in love. There was nothing else out there to do.

The lonely countryside became their trap. They roamed around the hills, but it was too late to move back to the cities they had come from, because of China's population control system. A city person could easily give up his registration to move downward into the country, but not vice versa. They cried, and some committed suicide. Now they understood what their leader, Mao, had meant by finding your roots in the countryside. He had meant it literally.
Go marry someone there, breed a litter of ignorant farmers, and never come back to the city to bother me again.

At eight sharp the old bellman wobbled to the bronze bell that hung under an old pine tree. The sound of the bell echoed far and wide. In the school hallway, the Peking Man snuffed out his cigarette and shuffled into our classroom. He smiled like a gorilla at the new slogan on the wall. He tried hard for a few seconds to conceal his laughter, but his thin lips were unable to cover his big teeth.

“Who put it there?” Peking Man asked. “Is that a joke or something?” The class was very quiet.

“When Mao said study hard, I don't think he meant the kind of stuff we're studying now,” he stuttered. “You should know that he was referring to his Little Red Book, but I doubt any college would give you credit for that.” The
whole class rocked with laughter. Only Peking Man could open the first class of the year that way. What he said was brave, because Mao's ghosts still haunted the nation, but Peking Man was fearless and angry. He had been beaten and sent to labor camps not too long ago.

He snapped his fingers and the class calmed down. “About learning history, let me tell you a story.” We were all ears.

“When I was at the university, I roomed with a medical student. Every night before going to sleep, the guy stuck his hand into a wooden box under his bed and mumbled things. Day in and day out. Finally, I couldn't contain my curiosity and I asked him what he was doing. You know what he said? He had a whole collection of human bones in that box. He was trying to develop a feel for the bones blindfolded, because he wanted to be a good doctor.

“What are the bones of history?” Peking Man paused and looked at us.

“From that day on, I did the same thing with all the historical facts: dates and names of the dynasties, all the important little things in the study of history. I had flash cards, stacks of them, under my bed next to my stinking shoes. Before we turned out the lights, he would be busy with his bones, and I with my cards. We had a grand time. We both graduated with honors.”

Peking Man didn't ask us to do the same thing; he simply inspired and challenged us to follow in his footsteps. He was the perfect teacher for us to follow. His hairy chest, long limbs, formidable face, and that mountain of a jaw all attested to a man who knew the past well.

“Now, I heard that you guys are going to take the liberal arts examination. We don't have a lot of time left. Thousands
of years of history have to be learned and relearned. I am here to guide you, but you have to do the rowing. Do you have any special requests before I begin?”

“How many questions did you guess right on the last national history examination?” one boy asked.

My question exactly.

“I would say I guessed them all, because I taught them all.”

“No. I meant in the final days, when you gave your cram session,” the boy persisted.

“Oh, that. Three out of the five essay questions. I gave my last graduating class the exact answers two days before the test. I considered it my gift to them. The smart ones went home and committed them to memory, and they came out of the test smiling from ear to ear.” Another point driven home.
Thou shalt heed my words.
Peking Man had the mentality of a god, and we were brought down on our knees in the presence of his achievement.

“But,” he said, “my guessing is just a bonus. Sometimes I guess correctly, other times I don't. You need to go home and chew up this thick volume.” He waved his textbook as if it were scripture. “Digest this and make it become part of you. Every word in here, every fact, is a building block to your dream of a college degree. Young people like you belong there.” His eyes swept across me, and my heart warmed up ten degrees. “Remember, for the next few months you have to sleep, eat, walk, and talk with these books. And you students who are behind, you had better dream about them as well.”

During the winter holiday, I had finished my history studies. They included Chinese ancient history, world history, and the stupid history of the Communist party. The subjects were contained in a thick volume of one thousand pages. In
the beginning, I had been stunned by how many dynasties China had. The names of all the emperors and their successors piled up like endless waves of the Dong Jing River.

Gradually, I developed a method of study. I arranged the dynasties into a series of charts, a family tree, and gave them funny names, like those I used to give to my dogs, chickens, and ducks. I carried the charts with me at all times and reviewed them again and again, even when I went to the bathroom.

Every minute was put to good use in my schedule.

Every morning I rose with the sun. Then I shuffled to my brother's room and woke him up. I went through our backyard, opened the squeaky door, trotted down the steps to the river, and squatted by the clear, cool water to check my reflection. I splashed my face with water and wiped it with my sleeves. Six hours of sleep every day. I needed a lot of cold water to keep my eyes open.

It was already late April. The smell of summer was pungent everywhere. Our backyard was a colorful garden with red roses, yellow gagai blossoms, and white lilies. Mom had planted some lima beans, which had flourished in the most imaginative way and now crawled overhead along the wood frames of the doors and windows. I found a spot beneath the thick leaves, away from the scorching sun, placed my favorite bamboo chair there, and munched on some bean pods as the gentle breeze ruffled my hair.

I started by tackling political studies, the most boring of
the five subjects required in the big exam. It was all about the twisted philosophy of the Communist party. Some of the theories were so involved, they sounded like sophistry at best, and that was what they were.