Feather in the Storm: A Childhood Lost in Chaos (33 page)

“I know one thing for sure,” I said after removing a dozen little balls of rat shit.

“What is that?” Xu Yuqing asked. “What have you learned today, Comrade Wu?”

“I have learned that I am never going to eat any Popsicles, Comrade Xu.”

There were giggles around the table. We separated beans from shit for four weeks. Then we attended classes in math and chemistry and
English for a short time. The level of instruction was elementary. In English class, we memorized mispronunciations of the alphabet. We were taught to wave our fists in the air and proclaim, “Lang Li Wu Qi Men Mao,” which we were absolutely convinced was “Long live Chairman Mao” in perfect English. After a few weeks of this it was decided we had more to learn from workers. This time we all marched off to a truck factory. I was assigned to work with a welder. She was a friendly woman with a very red round face and an unusually musical voice. She greeted me with a smile. “Welcome,” she said. “My name is Master Worker Jiang. You are a high school student, and no doubt you are a big intellectual in this humble factory. What are you doing here wasting your time? You should be studying.”

“I am here to learn from you, Master Worker Jiang,” I replied timidly. “You are supposed to teach me how to weld.”

She burst out laughing. “And what will you do after you learn how to weld?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What a waste!” she grumbled. “Anyway, as long as you’re here, follow me.”

She led me to her work area in a corner of a huge room. The odors from the chemicals she was working with were overpowering. My eyes watered and sharp pains shot through my head. Master Worker Jiang, however, seemed oblivious to the smells. She held a metal mask in front of her face and welded a small spot on a piece of iron. “Put this on,” she said and handed me the mask. “Hold this with your left hand.” She thrust a welder’s gun into my hand. Then she had me weld a spot. It looked simple. She gave me a piece of scrap metal to practice on. I tried to do what she had done, but my work was uneven and messy. She laughed and said, “Ah, you’re just a kid. You’re too weak. You’ll hurt yourself. You don’t have to do anything. Just sit down over there.”

“But aren’t I supposed to do something?”

“No, there’s nothing you can do here,” she said.

The factory was organized on new theories called “the no-government
theory” and “the iron rice bowl.” As far as I could figure, this meant there were no bosses and nobody worked.

I noticed that beneath her open overalls, Master Worker Jiang was wearing a colorful sweater. Embarrassed by my inability to weld, I changed the subject and said, “That’s a beautiful sweater.”

She smiled at my remark and her eyes flashed. “I made it myself,” she said. “Maybe there is something I can teach you. Bring some needles and yarn tomorrow, and I’ll show you how to knit a sweater.”

The next morning I brought knitting needles and yarn with me to the factory. Master Worker Jiang sat next to me on a short welding stool and patiently showed me how to create fancy stitches and designs and to put flowers into the material. Day after day we sat together and knitted. She brought her own knitting and made a sweater for her husband. Now and then she paused to do some welding, but only to make a washbasin stand for her home. Since it was a government factory and government materials, she was stealing. I didn’t say this, of course. I noticed when we left the factory in the evening that many of the other workers were taking articles home—a small fish tank, a table, a chair. They were slowly looting the factory.

One afternoon I was talking with a student who worked in another department of the factory. I stood next to a table and asked her, “What are you doing here?”

She smiled and held up a book and replied, “Reading. What do you do?”

“I knit,” I said. We talked for a time until I wandered back to my department to resume my knitting.

I finished the sweater while we were in the factory, and my classmate was successful in getting a good deal of reading done.

One year after we arrived in Wuhu, Yiding graduated from high school and was sent down to the countryside as an “educated youth.” There were limited choices each student might make as to where he would be sent. My parents tried to learn something about the living conditions in different areas of the province in order to help Yiding find a good commune. Yiding, for his part, tried to comfort my parents. “I’ll be okay,” he assured them. “I learned how to work in the fields in Gao Village.” But they were worried. They signed him up for a commune in Dangtu County, thirty miles south of Wuhu. When he departed, I was sad for him. I knew that the same fate awaited me in a year. I didn’t go to see him off. It was just too painful for me to say goodbye at yet another official departing ceremony.

I completed my final year of high school and on March 23, 1976, I was sent down to the countryside with the other educated youth. I was seventeen. There was no graduation ceremony. The day the academic year ended was like any other day. The political atmosphere at that time was a bit stricter than the previous year. I did not have a choice. All I knew for sure was that I was going to Jingxian County. No other
details were provided. I stayed awake the night before I left. I packed a small suitcase with my clothing and a few books. My parents and Yicun came to see me off. It was a beautiful morning. The sky was blue. The sun was shining. The clouds were white. The parting ceremony was like all the others I’d seen. The only difference was that I was the one leaving in the long parade for a glorious future in the countryside.

There was a rally at the city bus terminal. A dozen weathered and rusted buses were lined up waiting for us. Red paper flowers were tied to them. The flowers symbolized honor and celebration because this was supposed to be a great patriotic undertaking. Some parents were already there when we arrived, helping load their children’s luggage. A group of students from some middle school halfheartedly pounded gongs and drums. Many parents were crying and holding their children’s hands. I tried to put on a good face and not cry and struggled to find something appropriate to say. I told my little brother that since Yiding and I were both gone, it was his responsibility to care for our parents. I reminded him to be a good student and go to market for Mama every day.

At eight o’clock the mayor of Wuhu appeared on a stage. He was a short fat man with thick glasses. He wore a perfectly pressed gray Mao suit and a little matching cap. He spoke with a heavy local accent. He gave a brief speech about what an honor it was to be sent down. “To be able to answer the call of the Great Helmsman,” he proclaimed, “is a great thing. You should put down your roots in the countryside and carry out the revolution there for the rest of your lives.” When he was finished, there was a burst of singing and the renewed clatter of drums and gongs.

The bus drivers started their engines. The air filled with fumes. As we lined up to board, the sky quickly darkened and a light rain began to fall. People covered their heads. I was surprised at how emotional I became. I broke down and began sobbing as I said goodbye to my family. Mama decided to ride the bus with me because she was worried about where I was going and what might happen. She climbed aboard
behind me. But the Party cadre was waiting for us in the aisle. He spotted her right away, trying to conceal herself in the crowd. He shouted, “No parents are allowed. Only the educated youth.”

Mama pleaded, “My daughter is not in good health. Please let me accompany her.” The cadre shoved her down the steps and out the door.

There were forty of us on the bus. The noise from the singing and drums and gongs outside was deafening. Everyone gathered around the buses, waving, screaming and crying. I looked at my mother and father and brother and waved weakly as we pulled away. Some of the parents in the crowd ran alongside, reaching up to touch their children one last time, banging on the side of the bus, trying to keep up as long as they could. As the bus gained speed, they fell behind. I pressed my face to the window and continued waving and sobbing as my parents and my brother disappeared in the exhaust and the dust.

I slumped in my seat and was jolted from side to side as the bus carried us through the city and out into the countryside. The Party cadre sat stiffly in a seat behind the driver and stared dispassionately out the window. In the countryside the road was rutted and full of potholes and sometimes sloped from side to side. The driver swerved back and forth and slowed and accelerated like the captain of a small junk navigating troubled water. The springs were useless in protecting those inside from the ravages of the road.

Each time we hit a pothole, the entire bus trembled and shuddered and sounded like a can filled with nails. The students clutched the sides of their seats in an effort to steady themselves. My queasy stomach couldn’t take it, and before long, I felt my breakfast rise into my throat. I yelled to the cadre that I was going to throw up and staggered into the aisle. The cadre told the driver to open the door but not to slow down or stop. I stumbled to the front of the bus and descended the stairs. I stood on the bottom stair and grasped the side rails and leaned out the door and vomited. Another girl, who was the only other student from my school on the bus, ran to stand behind me and hold me around the
waist to prevent me from tumbling out the door. The cadre watched with contempt.

I thought that I’d never return to my family. I’d be a peasant, like the peasants of Gao Village, for the rest of my life. Wuhu was not the escape I once hoped it would be. It was merely a brief interlude between miseries. I knew that the life of a peasant with a black-family background was not worth living again. I wanted to jump out of the bus and fall under the wheels and end everything. I leaned a bit farther out the door and my schoolmate tightened her grip around my waist. “Careful,” she warned. “You don’t want to hurt yourself.” When I turned and looked up at her, I saw tears in her eyes and thought she must be reading my mind.

Three hours later we stopped outside a small town. The cadre announced, “We are stopping here for one hour for lunch.” Everyone filed past me and stepped outside. But I could hardly move. Everything hurt. I lay down across the rear seat of the bus to rest. When the other students returned, the cadre stood in the aisle and held up a large envelope. “Listen, everyone!” he shouted. “This is the list of your names and the communes to which you have been assigned. The bus will make drop-offs at each commune along the way. So pay attention. I want no mistakes.”

He began reading. This group was dropped off at this commune and that group at that and so on. I didn’t hear my name. The others appeared to recognize the name of the places to which they were being sent. Those in the same group grabbed hands in congratulations that they would be together.

When the cadre was finished, I said to my schoolmate, “I didn’t hear my name. Would you ask him where I am assigned?”

She moved to the front of the bus and asked the cadre, “Can you tell me where Wu Yimao is assigned?”

The cadre went down the list and seemed puzzled. He thought for a moment and said, “Oh, yes … I remember. She is the one nobody wants. She has family problems. She’s from a
black
family.”

I’d been an active member of the CYL for two years. I’d participated in all activities, earned good grades, and been a class cadre. I’d almost forgotten that the shadow of my family background was forever following me. At his words, I remembered, and the remaining pathetic residue of my youthful hopes and illusions was immediately and thoroughly dissolved. The past sucked me down like quicksand.

“It was decided at the last minute that she would go to Xiyang Commune, Luo Village,” the cadre said. “It’s deep in the mountains. A good place to bury someone of her kind. We will not have to worry about her anti-revolutionary activities because she will be in such a desolate area.”

His sharp words were tipped with poisonous glee. The other students stared at me as if I were a spy in their midst. I felt like a character from one of the popular operas of the time—a true enemy of the people working from within. Now I had been identified, and they were exiling me to the remotest mountain area. Poetic punishment for a spy. Again I felt the urge to jump from the bus and end my life. But I had neither the energy nor the courage. The bus stopped again and again, and the students stepped off in twos and threes, carrying their luggage. Finally, I was the only student left. The bus continued on for fifteen minutes before the cadre told the driver to stop. He turned to me and said gruffly, “You—get out here!”

I picked up my bag and stepped out and collapsed to the ground. The cadre strode to a nearby building. It was a small single-story brick structure with a gray tile roof. He found a man inside and brought him out. “This one is for you,” the cadre said, pointing at me with his foot as if selling a pig in the black market. The man who accompanied him was only about four and a half feet tall. He was slim and wiry and had the stub of a cigarette in his mouth. His eyes bulged out and the few teeth he had were black. He walked up to me and said, “I am Production Team Leader Huang of Luo Village.”

His accent was thick and I could hardly understand him.

He picked up my bag and started to walk away. “I’m so tired,” I
said to him. “Can I rest for a minute? I’ve been throwing up all the way here.”

“No,” he answered without looking back. “We can’t wait. We have a long way to go. If we don’t get to the village by dark, we may run into a tiger.”

I thought he might laugh, that he was trying to scare me. But he didn’t stop and he didn’t laugh.

I struggled to my feet and whispered weakly, “Well, let’s go, then.”

I followed him up the winding mountain path. He was clearly accustomed to climbing the steep trail. He moved deftly and I had a hard time keeping up with him. Now and then he looked down at me and spat on the ground. “Useless damned city girl,” he said. “Why did they send you to me? What in the world am I going to do with you? Another mouth to feed.”