Frog (2 page)

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.

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.