The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (25 page)

I don’t know if Yin Da had sensed his fate in this melancholy song when he sang it to me, but he had left behind a melody for himself, through which I could remember him.

During my first night at West Hunan Women’s Prison, I did not dare to close my eyes for fear of my recurring nightmares. Yet even with my eyes open, I could not block out images of my childhood. At dawn, I told myself I had to leave the past behind and find a way to get Hua’er to trust me so that I could share her story with other women. I asked the Warden if I could speak to Hua’er again in the interview room.

When she came in, the prickliness and defiance of the previous day had melted away, and her face was etched with pain. From her look of surprise, I guessed that I too looked different after a night of being tormented by memories.

Hua’er started our interview by telling me how her mother had chosen names for her and her sister and brothers. Her mother had said that all things in the natural world struggled for their place, but that trees, mountains and rocks were the strongest, so she had called her first daughter Shu (tree), her elder son Shan (mountain) and her younger son Shi (rock). A flowering tree will bring forth fruit, and flowers on a mountain or a rock beautify it, so Hua’er had been called Hua (flower).

‘Everyone said that I was the most beautiful . . . perhaps because I was called Hua.’

I was struck by the poetry of these names, and thought to myself that Hua’er’s mother must have been a very cultivated woman. I poured Hua’er a glass of hot water from the thermos flask on the table. She gripped it with both hands, staring at the steam rising from it, and muttered in a low tone, ‘My parents are Japanese.’

I was taken aback by this. There had been no note of it in Hua’er’s criminal record.

‘They both taught at university, and we were given special treatment. Other families had to live in one room, but we had two rooms. My parents slept in the small room and we had the big room. My sister Shu often took my elder brother Shan and me to her friends’ homes with her. Their parents were kind to us, they would give us snacks to nibble on, and ask us to speak Japanese for them. I was very young, but my Japanese was very good and I enjoyed teaching the adults little words and phrases. The other children grabbed all the food while I was doing this, but my sister always kept a bit for me. She protected me.’

Hua’er’s face lit up.

‘My father was proud of Shu because she did well in school. He said that she could help him become wiser. My mother also praised my sister for being a good girl because she kept an eye on my elder brother and me, giving my mother time to prepare lessons and look after my younger brother Shi, who was three years old. We were happiest when we were playing with our father. He dressed up as different people to make us laugh. Sometimes he was the Old Man Carrying the Mountain from the Japanese fairy tale, and he carried all four of us on his back. We pressed down on him until he gasped for breath, but he continued carrying us, shouting, “I’m . . . carrying . . . the mountain!”

‘Sometimes he wrapped my mother’s scarf round his head to be the Wolf Grandmother from the Chinese fairy story. Whenever he played hide-and-seek with us, I dived under the quilt, and shouted innocently, “Hua’er is not under the quilt!”

‘He hid in the most ingenious places. Once he even hid in the large jar where grain was kept. When he came out, he was covered with maize, buckwheat and rice.’ Hua’er laughed at the memory, and I joined in.

She took a sip of water, savouring it.

‘We were very happy. But then, in 1966, the nightmare began.’

The leaping flames of the bonfire that had marked the end of my happy childhood appeared before my eyes. Hua’er’s voice banished the image.

‘One summer afternoon, my parents had gone to work, and I was doing my homework under my sister’s supervision while my little brother sat playing with his toys. Suddenly, we heard the rhythmic shouting of slogans outside. Grown-ups were always shouting and yelling then, so we didn’t think much of it. The noise came closer and closer, until it was right outside our door. A gang of young people stood there shouting, “Down with the Japanese imperialist running dogs! Eliminate the foreign secret agents!”

‘My sister behaved like a grown-up. She opened the door and asked the students, who seemed to be the same age as her, “What are you doing? My parents aren’t at home.”

‘A girl at the front of the crowd said, “Listen, you brats, your parents are Japanese imperialist secret agents. They have been placed under the control of the proletariat. You must make a clean break with them, and expose their spying activities!”

‘My parents, secret agents! In the films I had seen, secret agents were always wicked. Noticing how frightened I was, my sister quickly shut the door and put her hands on my shoulders. “Don’t be scared. Wait till Mama and Papa come home and we’ll tell them about it,” she said.

‘My elder brother had been saying for some time that he wanted to join the Red Guards. Now he said quietly, “If they are secret agents, I’ll go to Beijing to take part in the revolution against them.”

‘My sister glared at him and said, “Don’t talk nonsense!”

‘It was dark by the time the students stopped shouting outside our door. Later, somebody told me the group had intended to search our house, but couldn’t bring themselves to do it when they saw my sister standing in the doorway protecting the three of us. Apparently, the Red Guard leader had given them a terrible tongue-lashing because of it.

‘We did not see my father again for a long time.’ Hua’er’s face froze.

During the Cultural Revolution, anyone from a rich family, anyone who had received higher education, was an expert or scholar, had overseas connections or had once worked in the pre-1949 government was categorised as a counter-revolutionary. There were so many political criminals of this kind that the prisons could not contain them. Instead, these intellectuals were banished to remote country areas to labour in the fields. Their evenings were occupied with ‘confessing their crimes’ to Red Guards, or else with lessons from the peasants, who had never seen a car or heard of electricity. My parents had endured many such periods of labour and re-education.

The peasants taught the intellectuals the songs they sang as they planted crops, and how to slaughter pigs. Having grown up in bookish, learned environments, the intellectuals shuddered at the sight of blood, and often astonished the peasants with their lack of practical skills and knowledge.

A woman university professor I once interviewed told me how the peasant who had been supervising her looked at the wheat seedlings she had uprooted by mistake and asked pityingly, ‘You can’t even tell the difference between a weed and a wheat sprout. What did the schoolchildren you taught learn from you? How did you command their respect?’ The professor told me that the peasants in the mountain area she had been sent to had been extremely good to her, and she had learned a great deal from their poverty-stricken lives. She felt that human nature was basically simple and unsophisticated, and that it was only when people were taught about society that they learned to meddle with it. There was truth in what she said, but she had been lucky in her experience of the Cultural Revolution.

Hua’er continued her story. ‘One day, my mother came home unusually late. Only my sister was still up. Dozing fitfully, I woke to hear my mother say to her, “Papa has been locked up. I don’t know where they’ve put him. From now on, I’ll have to go for special lessons every day, and may be back very late. I’ll take Shi with me, but you’ll have to look after Shan and Hua. Shu, you’re grown up now, believe what I tell you: Papa and I aren’t bad people. You must believe in us no matter what happens. We came here to China because we wanted more people to understand Japanese culture and help them to learn Japanese, not to do wrong . . . Help me look after your brother and sister. Pick wild plants on the way home from school and add them to the food when you cook. Coax your brother and sister to eat more; you’re all growing, you need to eat enough. Be sure to put the lid on the stove before going to bed so you won’t be poisoned by the coal gas. Shut the windows and doors properly when you leave the house, and be careful not to open the door to anyone. If the Red Guards come to search the house, take your brother and sister outside so that they aren’t scared. From now on, go to bed at the same time as your little brother and sister. Don’t wait up for me. If you need anything, write me a note, and I’ll leave a note for you the next morning before I go. Don’t stop studying Japanese language and culture. The knowledge will come in very useful some day. Study in secret, but don’t be afraid. Things will get better.”

‘My sister’s face was still, but two lines of tears trickled silently down her cheeks. I hid under the quilt and cried quietly. I didn’t want my mother to see me.’

Remembering how my brother had cried for our mother, I could not hold back my tears as I imagined the scene Hua’er described. Hua’er was sad, but dry-eyed.

‘For a very long time after that, we hardly ever saw my mother. My brother and I knew that our mother now slept in our room, but the only signs of her existence were the instructions and information she passed through Shu.

‘Later, I discovered that I could see my mother if I woke up to go to the toilet at night. I started drinking as much water as possible before going to bed. My mother never seemed to sleep: every time I got up, she reached out to stroke me. Her hands were getting rougher and rougher. I wanted to rub my face against them, but I was afraid my sister would say that I was disturbing my mother’s rest.

‘I became increasingly listless and tired in the daytime because I was getting up to see my mother several times a night. Once I even fell asleep while studying “the highest directives” of the Party in school. Luckily, my teacher was a very kind woman. After class, she took me to a hidden place near the sports ground and said, “Falling asleep while studying the highest directives of Chairman Mao is seen as very reactionary by the Red Guards. You’ve got to be more careful.”

‘I didn’t really understand what she meant, but I was frightened because my teacher’s husband was the leader of the local Red Guard faction. I hurriedly explained why I hadn’t been sleeping well. My teacher was silent for a long time, and I got even more anxious. Eventually, she patted my head affectionately, saying, “Don’t worry, maybe your mother will be able to come home earlier soon.”

‘Not long after, my mother did start coming home earlier. She would arrive just as we were getting ready for bed. We could tell that she had changed a lot: she seldom spoke, and moved about very quietly; she seemed afraid of disturbing our faith in her and in our father. My elder brother, who had a strong personality, couldn’t bear to argue with her now about going to Beijing to be one of Mao’s Red Guards. Slowly, life became more normal. One day I heard my mother say with a sigh, “If only your father could come back too . . .”

‘None of us could feel happy at the thought of seeing our father. We loved him, but if he were a secret agent we would still have to ignore him.

‘Some time later, in the autumn of 1969, my sister was told that she had to attend an evening study group, to enable her to take a firm stand after our father’s release, and draw a clear line between him and us.

‘My sister came back very late from the first evening of the study group. My mother waited anxiously by the window, unable to sit still. I could not sleep either, because I was eager to know what the study group was like. The Red Guards only admitted to the group people whose thinking was revolutionary. I knew that after some people had joined it, they were no longer interrogated, their homes were no longer searched, and the people in their family who had been imprisoned were released. Would our father be back soon?

‘My mother sent me to bed, and I rubbed my eyes repeatedly and put pen nibs on my pillow to keep myself from falling asleep. Finally, I heard footsteps and a man’s low voice outside the window, but I could not hear what he was saying. When my sister came into the room, my mother rushed to her and asked, “How was it?” Her voice was full of fear.

‘Shu lay down silently, fully clothed. When my mother tried to help her undress, my sister brushed her off, turned over and wrapped herself tightly in the quilt.

‘I was very disappointed. We had waited up so long for nothing.

‘That night, I heard my mother crying for a very long time. I fell asleep wondering if she was hurt by my sister’s silence, or if she was afraid that we didn’t love her. That night, I dreamed that I had got into the study group too, but as soon as I walked through the door to the class, I woke up.

‘Shu spent an unusually long time in the study group, and she never told me anything about it. For several months, she came home very late every evening, long after I had fallen asleep. One evening, she came back not long after she had left for the study group. The man who brought her back told us, “Shu keeps on being sick, and today she fainted. The political instructor made me see her home.”

‘My mother had turned chalk white, and stood rooted to the spot as my sister fell to her knees before her and said, “Mama, there was nothing I could do. I wanted Papa to be released sooner.”

‘My mother shuddered, and seemed about to collapse. My elder brother rushed to support her and made her sit down on the bed. Then he led my little brother and me into the other room. I did not want to go, but I did not dare to stay.

‘The next day, as I was leaving school, a man from the Red Guard faction was waiting for me. He told me that the political instructor had ordered me to join the study group. I hardly dared believe him. I was only eleven years old. How could I possibly go? Perhaps, I thought, the teacher had told them I was very obedient.

I was so happy I wanted to go home to tell my mother, but the man said that my mother had already been informed.