The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (21 page)

I was wary of being dragged into the fray, having experienced the difficulties of addressing the issue of disability with my listeners, who had kept me in the studio long after the broadcast; I had only got home at three in the morning. As unobtrusively as possible, I scooped up the letters I had come to retrieve, and hurried out.

Just as I reached the door, Old Chen shouted, ‘Xinran, don’t go! You started this fire, so you should put it out.’

I murmured an excuse – ‘I’ll be back, the boss wants me to see him for a minute’ – and scuttled to take refuge in the station head’s office, only to find him waiting for me.

‘Speak of the devil!’ he exclaimed.

I tensed, fearing the worst.

‘Here’s a copy of the register of incoming phone calls. I think there might be the possibility of a really interesting interview there. Take a look and put some ideas together by this afternoon,’ he said peremptorily.

There was a message for me in the telephone register: the daughter of a Guomindang lieutenant general was in a mental hospital and I was to contact a Dr Li. There were no details that hinted at a good story, but I knew the director was very astute; if he said there was a lead, he was probably right. He had a knack for seeing wider, newsworthy issues behind smaller ones. I had often thought that he would have thrived professionally in a free press environment.

I called Dr Li, who was brief. ‘This woman is the daughter of a Guomindang general, she’s mentally retarded, but she wasn’t born that way. They say she won some big province-wide prize for essay-writing as a child in Jiangsu but now –’ He broke off suddenly. ‘I’m sorry, can I talk to you in person?’

I agreed immediately, and we arranged for me to visit the hospital at half past one that day.

After exchanging a few words of greeting, Dr Li took me to see the woman. A pale, blank face turned towards us as we entered the still white room.

‘Shilin, this is Xinran. She’s come to see you,’ said Dr Li.

Shilin was silent, and her face remained expressionless.

Dr Li turned to me, ‘She reacts to virtually nothing, but I think we should treat her with respect regardless. She wasn’t born mentally deficient – she understood normal feelings and speech once.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Yesterday, some of Shilin’s family members heard your programme and one of them asked me to make an appointment with you. I’m on duty now, but please wait here for a moment. Shilin’s relatives should be along any minute.’

I had never been alone with a mentally disabled person before. I tried to talk to Shilin; she seemed to hear me speaking, but she did not react at all. Not sure what to do, I took my sketchpad out and began to draw her. She remained completely still, and paid no attention to what I was doing.

Shilin was very beautiful. I guessed she was around forty, but the skin around her eyes was clear and unlined. Her features were regular and well proportioned, and her straight nose drew attention to her long, narrow eyes, which turned up slightly at the corners, as if she was about to smile. Her lips were thin, like those of the women depicted in ancient Chinese paintings.

Before I had finished my sketch, Shilin’s relatives arrived: her aunt and cousin – a mother and daughter. Shilin’s aunt, Wang Yue, was a well-spoken woman, who bore herself with great propriety. Shilin’s cousin, Wang Yu, was in her thirties and worked as an accountant for a magazine publisher.

Wang Yue said that the night before, the family had switched on the radio before going to bed. She told me that they listened to my programme every night because it helped them to fall asleep. I wondered to myself whether my programme was so stultifying, and did not know whether to be put out or amused.

Wang Yue’s daughter had obviously noticed the ambiguous expression on my face; she nudged her mother, but Wang Yue ignored her. She told me that they had become very agitated listening to those of the previous night’s callers who had thought that it was much more tragic to be born mentally handicapped than to become so later in life. Shilin’s family disagreed completely, and had felt a good deal of animosity towards those callers, whom they had thought completely wrong.

Wang Yue spoke passionately. Could people forget the pain of losing something they once had? Surely it was more tragic to once have had knowledge and understanding, and lose them irrevocably than never to have known anything else? Wang Yue said the family had become so worked up over this matter that none of them had been able to sleep. They had decided to prove their case by telling me about Shilin’s life. Shilin’s expression remained wooden as Wang Yue recounted her story.

Shilin was the daughter of a Guomindang general, the youngest in her family. Unlike her two elder sisters and elder brother, Shilin grew up protected and indulged. When civil war broke out in China in 1945, her father was promoted to the rank of general in Chiang Kai-shek’s army. Unlike the Communists, the Guomindang had lost the support of the peasants. This was a disaster, for the peasants constituted over 98 per cent of the population. Despite being supplied with arms by Britain and the United States, the situation deteriorated rapidly for the Guomindang. Chiang Kai-shek’s army of several million was soon routed and driven to Taiwan by the Communists. As the Guomindang fled eastwards, many of their leaders were not able to arrange for their families to escape in time. Shilin’s had been such a family.

In the spring of 1949, Shilin was seven, and had been living with her grandmother in Beiping for two years. She was getting ready to return to her parents’ home in Nanjing, to go to school there. Her mother had written to say that Shilin’s father was going away on a campaign so she had to stay in Nanjing to look after the other children and could not travel to Beiping to fetch Shilin. Her grandmother was weak and in poor health and could not manage the journey, so it was agreed that Shilin’s young aunt, Wang Yue, would take her back to Nanjing.

This was the time of the Guomindang–Communist battles that were to prove decisive. When Wang Yue and Shilin reached the bank of the Yangtze River, the ferry service, the only means of transport between north and south, had just been partially shut down. Piles of goods were massed on both banks.

As they waited, they heard that there was going to be a battle in Nanjing; the People’s Liberation Army was about to cross the river. Despite this, there was nothing for it but to go on to Nanjing. When they arrived in the city, with a great tide of people, they found a red flag flying outside Shilin’s house; a crowd of People’s Liberation Army soldiers had moved in.

Wang Yue did not stop before the house. She hurried Shilin on and enquired in the shops and tea houses nearby for news of Shilin’s family. Some people had seen the family cars being packed and boxes taken away, and had heard that the family had dismissed many of their servants. Others had heard that the whole family had vanished without trace the day before the Communists crossed the Yangtze. Nobody could give them any definite news, but it seemed that Shilin’s family had fled to Taiwan without her.

Soon after, Wang Yue received the news that her mother had died while the Communists were searching her house in Beiping – renamed Beijing by the new government – because of her relationship to Shilin’s father. Returning to Beiping was now impossible. Not knowing what else to do, Wang Yue took Shilin to stay in a small guesthouse in Nanjing. One day, the kind-hearted landlord said to her, ‘Didn’t you say you could read and write? The new government is recruiting teachers for new schools – you should apply for a position.’ Wang Yue only half believed him, but she applied anyway, and was taken on as a teacher.

Though Wang Yue was only twenty – a mere thirteen years older than Shilin – she had told Shilin to address her as ‘mother’ in order to conceal their identities. As ‘mother and daughter’, they were allocated a room by the new government-run school, which also helped them acquire some household items. Shilin was accepted as a pupil in the school.

Wang Yue made herself up and did her hair to make herself look old enough to be Shilin’s mother. She reminded Shilin every morning not to mention her parents’ names or anything about their old home under any circumstances. Though Shilin kept her aunt’s warnings firmly in mind, she did not realise the full implications of letting anything slip. Children enjoy showing off to each other; once, playing jacks using tiny cloth beanbags, Shilin told her classmates that the little beanbags her father had given her to play jacks with had had little jewels sewn on them. One of her classmates mentioned this at home, and word spread among the adults.

At the time, everyone sought political advantage to consolidate his or her own position in the new Communist order. Before long, a representative from the local army garrison informed Wang Yue that she would have to give a full account of her ‘late husband’, Shilin’s father.

One night, the headmaster of Wang Yue’s school ran over to their room in a state of high agitation. ‘Both of you must go now – they’re going to arrest you. Run away as far as you can. Don’tcome back to Nanjing whatever you do. They say Shilin is the daughter of a Guomindang general, and you have committed the crime of sheltering a counter-revolutionary. I don’t want to hear your explanations. In these times the less one knows the better. Go at once! Don’t pack anything, they might even seal off the riverbank at any moment. Go, hurry! If you need anything in the future, come and look for me. I have to go. If the PLA catch me, my whole family will be in for it.’

Ready to weep with anxiety, Wang Yue took the half-asleep Shilin by the hand and walked out of Nanjing. Wang Yue had no idea where to go, but there was no possibility of asking anyone for help. She dared not imagine what would become of them if they were caught. They walked for nearly three hours; the sky was lightening but Nanjing still seemed to be right behind them. When Shilin could not walk any further, Wang Yue pulled her into some bushes by the roadside and sat down. The ground was wet with dew, and they were hungry and cold, but Shilin was so exhausted that she fell asleep immediately, leaning against her aunt. Tired and frightened, Wang Yue eventually cried herself to sleep as well.

Some time later, voices woke Wang Yue. A middle-aged couple and a tall young man were standing close by, looking concerned.

‘Why are you sleeping here?’ the middle-aged woman asked. ‘It’s cold and damp. Get up at once and find a house or some other place to sleep in, or you’ll fall ill.’

‘Thank you, but I, we, can’t go any further – the child is too tired,’ Wang Yue replied.

‘Where are you going?’ the woman asked, as she gestured to the young man to pick Shilin up.

‘I don’t know. I just want to get further away from Nanjing.’ Wang Yue did not know what to say.

‘Running away from a forced marriage, eh? Ah, it’s hard when you’ve a child with you,’ the woman said kindly. ‘Wait a moment, I’ll try to work something out with my husband. This is my son Guowei, and this is my husband.’

The middle-aged man standing to one side looked bookish and kindly. He spoke quickly, but with warmth. ‘No need to talk it over. We’re all in a hurry, so just come along with us. It’s easier to travel in a group. Besides, how could we abandon a widow and orphan like you? Come, let me carry your bundle of things. Guowei can take charge of the little girl. Ting, give her a hand up.’

On the road, Wang Yue learned the older man was called Wang Duo and that he had been headmaster of a school in Nanjing. His wife, Liu Ting, had been educated in a progressive girls’ school, so she had helped her husband with the teaching and the accounts at his school. Wang Duo was originally from Yangzhou, where his ancestors had taught the Confucian classics in a private academy. The school had been closed during the various wars and general chaos of the last decades, and had become a family dwelling. When Wang Duo married, the family profession and the house had passed on to him. He had wanted to set up a school, but found it difficult to realise his plans in the small town of Yangzhou. Because he wished his only son to have a good education, he had moved the family to Nanjing, where they stayed for ten years.

In the unsettled times, Wang Duo had faced difficulties setting up his school in Nanjing. He thought several times of returning to Yangzhou to write in peace, but Liu Ting, who wanted Guowei to complete his higher education in Nanjing, always talked him into staying on. Now that Guowei had completed senior school, they were returning to Yangzhou.

Wang Yue did not dare to tell the truth in return, but only spoke vaguely of some secret that was hard to put into words. At that time, educated people knew that knowledge was dangerous. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, China had fallen into a long period of anarchy and feudal rule. The chaos had been worst in the forty-five years prior to the new Communist government: governments and dynasties had seemed to change every day. No one knew the laws of the new republic yet, so the popular saying went: ‘Keep silent on affairs of the state, speak little of family matters: one thing less is better than one thing more.’ The Wang family did not press Wang Yue for details.

Yangzhou is a picturesque riverside town close to Nanjing. The local specialities of steamed vegetable dumplings, dried turnip and stewed tofu sheets with ginger are famous all over China. Girls from Yangzhou are renowned for their complexions and their beauty. Yangzhou’s rural setting and its backdrop of mountains and water have attracted many members of the literati and of the government. The Beijing Opera master, Mei Lanfang, and the famous poet of the New Moon School, Xu Zhimo, are both from Yangzhou, as is Jiang Zemin, the current President of China.

Wang Duo and Liu Ting’s house was a traditional courtyard house in a western suburb of Yangzhou by Lake Shouxi. Centuries of dredging and the planting of gardens and woods had transformed the lake into one of the most beautiful in China.

In their absence, the house had been looked after by an old couple, so it was clean and tidy. Though everything about the house was old, there was a pleasant, scholarly air about it. Shortly after they arrived in Yangzhou, Wang Yue and Shilin both came down with high fevers. Liu Ting was very worried, and had hurriedly called the Chinese herbalist, who diagnosed shock and chills from exhaustion, and prescribed some herbal treatments, which Liu Ting brewed for them.