Two Peasants and a President (31 page)

“Some of the people from the village worked for the foreigners in their magnificent homes.  They were so large that it took a dozen or more people just to keep them up.  When I was very small, I heard many stories of the foreigners and their houses.” 

“It was said the French had mirrors on every wall and the most elab
o
rate furniture you could imagine, so much so that some in the village didn’t believe it when they heard the stories.  A few even claimed that their furn
i
ture was covered with gold, others swore it was only paint.  The French l
a
dies wore strange objects that looked like bird cages on their rears under their dresses.  My grandmother said some thought it was because they had no behinds.  We children laughed and laughed at the thought of people with no behinds.”

“The Russians were enormous compared to us and we were afraid of them for that reason, that and their enormous beards and scowling eyes.  Children ran away whenever they saw a Russian.  The only thing that seemed to soften them was their music.  They had an amazing invention called a
Victrola
that made music come out of a box.  Sometimes, for reasons no one understood, they would play music on the
Victrola
and suddenly squat down and kick their feet out, looking as though they might fall over at any moment.  My grandmother said it was hilarious, but of course we Chinese couldn’t laugh out loud, it would have been considered rude and they would have dismissed us, or worse.” 

“The British were stiff and aloof.  They thought themselves superior and looked down upon us.  For that and the fact that they brought the opium, which poisoned thousands, many disliked them.  But they had a powerful navy when we had none so they could force us to do what they wanted.  Everyone had to earn money, so we swallowed our pride and looked the other way, even when the British were abominable.”

“The Italians seemed always to be waving their arms and gesturing.  They were loud too, like the Russians, but not in the same way.  It was as if their hearts were on the outside and they were always trying to keep them from escaping.  They seemed to eat all the time and some of their women were very fat.” 

“Everyone hated the Japanese.  They looked like us but thought they were better.  In 1937 they attacked us because they wanted what we had.  One morning we looked up when planes appeared in the sky.  Tiny objects were falling from them.  At first some j
ust watched as they grew larger.  T
hen we realized what they were.  We had no defense; entire families were blown to pieces, many were buried when buildings fell on them.”

“Their army was unspeakably cruel; they raped and murdered tho
u
sands.  They would just leave the bodies in the street for us to pick up.  My friend’s father didn’t come home one night and for many days his family waited for him, but they never saw him again.  Later we learned that he had been shot by a Japanese officer, but no one knew why.  They could do that then, just shoot you dead in the street and walk away.”

“At first, they left the foreigners alone in their fine houses, but in 1941 when they attacked the Americans, everything changed, even for the other foreigners.  When the Japanese were finally defeated, we were all so happy.  Many
Japanese
soldiers who were trapped when the Americans destroyed their navy were murdered by the Chinese they had brutalized.  We cel
e
brated, even though we knew it was not right to do so.”

“My grandmother said of all the foreigners, the Americans were the most kind.  Everyone wanted to work for them.  We never heard of any Chinese being beaten by them.  If you did something wrong, they wouldn’t yell at you; they would just tell you how to do it better.  But then the war started and the Japanese put them all in camps.  Many died there.  When we heard that some we knew had died, we were very sad.”

“When the war was finally over, things got better for awhile because there was work rebuilding what had been destroyed.  It was not happy work, though, because there were still so many bodies buried in the rubble.  Sometimes the workers would fine someone they knew.  It was very sad.”

“When Mao took over, most of the building was done and there were no more foreigners to work for.  The Communists controlled everything; it was supposed to be better that way, but the people were hungry.  The Communists couldn’t even grow food.  Can you imagine?  They wouldn’t allow you to have your own garden; everything had to be decided by a committee and the committees couldn’t tie their own shoes.  We would have laughed
if we hadn’t
been crying.”

“We thought it couldn’t possibly be worse, but then it was.  They told us we had to get rid of ‘the old ways’ but the new ways didn’t work.  Anyone who was a teacher or was educated was sent to re-educations camps.  Most never returned.  The people were left in the hands of the Red Guards, ign
o
rant thugs who were just as cruel as the Japanese.  They brainwashed our children and turned them against us.  Can you imagine that, children d
e
nouncing their mothers and fathers?  It was worse than even the war; at least during the war we had our families.  We couldn’t believe that our own people were doing this to us.”

“Then in 1979, I think, the American president came to China.  The Red Guard had taught us to hate the Americans.  Now they were coming
here.  It was all so confusing!  After that, things started to change.  First they told us we could have our own gardens.  Anyone who had two feet of dirt planted something.  Even if it was very small, it was our own.  Some even pried up paving stones to have a place to plant.  You had to be careful not to trip over all the little gardens.  Before we knew it, we could buy and sell things like the capitalists we were taught to hate.  It seemed very pu
z
zling at first.”

“Then the tourists began to come.  I will always remember the first time I saw one.  He was an American, very tall
, with reddish hair
and wea
r
ing cowboy boots.  I wondered if he was a cowboy back home.  Soon there were so many tourists that they had to build better hotels.  The foreigners didn’t want to stay in the old ones.  For the first time almost since we could remember, we had good jobs again.  We could go to work and on the way home buy fresh meat with what we had earned.  Then those who had raised the animals had money too.  No one had ever experienced that before and we thought we were in heaven.”

“My husband worked in a factory that made small tractors that you walked behind.  Some people put wheels on little carts for the tractors to pull so they could sit instead of walk.  Our village pooled their money and bought one of the little tractors.  The government told us we could use a small field next to the village for a bigger garden.  We even had enough to sell.”

“I had
a job in one of the new hotels.  Every day I rode a bus there and cleaned the rooms.  In the evenings I helped tend the garden.  The days were long but life was good.  Everyone in the village had enough to eat and we were happier than we could remember.”

Ping paused and a shadow descended over her face.  When she began to speak again, her words came haltingly.

“We had a son.  His name was Huang.  He was studying engineering at the Poly Tech in Tianjin.  We were very proud.  It was his third year and he was doing very well.  One more year and he would have a job that paid several times what my husband and I earned.  Then perhaps he would find a wife and we would have grandchildren to love too.”

“One evening a car stopped on the side of the road where our garden was.  Several of us were weeding and we stopped and looked up.  Three men got out and walked into the village speaking quietly to one another like we weren’t even there.   When we asked what they were doing, they just said they were checking something, but they wouldn’t tell us what it was.  It was very rude, you know, to just walk into our village without saying anything to anyone.  We would never do such a thing.”

“When Huang got back we told him about the men.  He had a strange
look on his face but said nothing.  Two months later, they came back.  This time there was an official from the city with them.  He told us the city was going to buy our land for development and he left some papers with us.  Our son took the papers to the university and spoke with someone there.”

“One evening, about a week later, Huang brought a friend to see us.  He told us that technically the government can take any land it needs because all the land belongs to the government anyway.  He said that the law states that we must be compensated fairly, but the price they were offering was very low, a fraction of what it should be.  This is how we learned that developers often make deals with officials by paying them under the table, that this sort of corruption is very common now.”

“He said there was only one thing we could do: appeal to the municipal council, but not to be too hopeful.  Huang and several others from the village went to the city to make an appeal, but when they returned they told us the officials seemed very evasive.  So when we received their decision, we were not surprised to learn that our petition was denied.  We didn’t know what to do; they told
us
we would have to leave the village and move into government apartments.  They said we would be much happier there but by this time we didn’t believe anything they said.”  

“We didn’t know it at the time, but Huang had friends at the university who knew how the developers were cheating many villages, especially in the countryside.  There was so much profit to be made that they could afford to pay the officials big bribes, more than they would make in a year.  Huang’s friends sometimes went to these villages to help organize the people so they would resist.  He and two others from our village went back to the city to demand that we at least be paid a fair price, but the officials became angry and told them to leave or they would call the police.”

“T
he next Sunday we had a meeting;
everyone in the village was there.  Huang and the two who had gone to the city to protest said that the only rights we have are those for which we are willing to fight.  They said that if we don’t make our stand here, there will always be some developer looking to make a profit at our expense.  Because our families have lived in the village for generations, we were in the right and should refuse to leave.”

“We were frightened, afraid that the police would come, but the others said our ancestors would revile us for giving away what they had spent their lives building.  So in this way the village was convinced to stay together and fight.  Because Huang was the most educated, he was chosen to be our leader.  It was agreed that we would all put our names on a piece of paper and demand that we be allowed to stay.  This we did and it was delivered to the city.”

“Two weeks later, a police car came.  They brought us a paper that said
we must leave within seven days.  We were afraid.  Huang believed that when they came to move us, if we all stayed together and refused to go they would have to give in.  But when they came they brought many police.  Somehow they knew who our leader was, and they arrested Huang.  My husband and I got down on our knees and begged them not to take him.”  Tears were streaming down her cheeks and she had to pause.  Finally she spoke again.  “But the police said it was our own fault.  They put him in the back of a police van and drove away.  That was the last time saw our son.”

“For two weeks we went to every police station in the city, asking for Huang.  Each time it was the same; they told us he was not there and they didn’t know where we could find him. Then our supervisors fired us from our jobs.  We knew the police had told them to do it.  They were already moving people out of our village, a block at a time until we were the only ones left.  We had no money then and almost nothing to eat.  They had started tearing the houses down at one end of the village.  We knew we had to leave.”

“It was very hard to find work after that; if the police tell a supervisor not to hire you, then they won’t.  We tried everywhere.  Finally my husband went to work in a rock quarry, but he was too old to lift heavy rocks.  At night he was so tired he could scarcely even eat and he would fall asleep after only a mouth full or two.  In his sleep he talked about Huang, and I cried when I heard him.”

“Then I found a job at the hospital; it was there that I learned what happened to Huang.  Another lady who cleaned rooms and I were sharing our twenty minute lunch break.  We had been getting to know each other and she was telling me about her children.  T
hen she asked if I had any.  I
kept a picture of Huang with me always, and I took it out to show her.  Instead of smiling, she looked horrified.  I asked her what was wrong, but she just handed the picture back to me and said she didn’t want to talk about it.”

Dr. Min suddenly stopped translating what Ping was saying.  Holly looked up at him and saw that there was great anguish on his face.  He put his hand to his lips as if to beg to be forgiven for not being able to continue.  Ping seemed unsurprised by this, as though she had expected it, but then she too began to mirror his anguish.  They were both silent for several minutes until finally the doctor cleared his throat and Ping, as if sensing his willingness, began to speak again: 

“Two days later when I got home from work, I learned my husband had died at the quarry.  I wanted to go to the roof of the hospital and throw myself off, but we were not allowed on any but the lower floors.  I cursed fate for not even allowing me to die.  One of Huang’s friends from the university heard about my husband and came to comfort me.  I stayed with his family for
several days.  They were so kind to me.  On the third night, after supper, it was obvious there was something they wished to say.”