All the Flowers in Shanghai (35 page)

The Party would hold many celebrations commemorating its own success and longevity and the way the country had been rebuilt. People would gather in the town square, the People’s Square, and accordion players and drummers would strike up marching music and Communist anthems that the local dance troupe would follow. There would be songs about the great examples of Maoist spirit sung by choirs of workers, as our ancestors had sung to welcome the coming of spring, and there would be readings about acts of great courage and Chairman Mao’s principles, and we would sit entranced, listening like villagers a thousand years before to tales about ancient heroes. But unlike them we had to unlearn everything we had ever known before: traditions, superstitions, and old philosophies were now forbidden and ridiculed, we were consumed by productivity.

As the night grew later fires would be lit and still the celebrations would go on. People were banned from meeting together for purposes other than this by many policies and directives unless it was agreed in advance but, far from the eyes of Chairman Mao, in the alleys and the fields, you could see couples secretly meeting all around; groping, touching, and greedily devouring each other in clandestine but unfettered release. In the dark, with their identical clothes, you could not tell which was the boy and which the girl. Perhaps it did not matter and they only saw themselves as two members of the Party. At this time, only the words of the Little Red Book had the power to interfere in our lives.

Madam Zhang and I became thought of as mother and daughter, and for a few years, before the madness, even though I was isolated from the city, I felt at home here. Provided our work was completed, we would have enough to eat and I would enjoy walks into the fields and woods outside the town. Sometimes I would go alone, at other times we would be together. We would talk about the other women, what work needed to be done, and then fall silent. The town stood at the edge of a mountainous wooded region; between the trees I found grass and wildflowers. With each flower an ancient name and a memory of Lu Meng. My mind has rarely strayed from either of you and on these walks, such short interludes of peace, I would forget nearly everything except your faces, young and soft, as they were that night in Lu Meng’s bedroom when you first came back to me.

Only on a few occasions was I tempted to tell Madam Zhang all that had happened. During our walks, our silence would sometimes become so comfortable that I wanted to tell her everything about my life. It felt important that she should know and tell me what she thought. We would walk perfectly in step, and my mind would race, searching for an opening sentence to my story. I feared that she would hate me by the story’s end and so the beginning was extremely important. But I always stumbled over those first few words, and a small inner voice would always tell me that an acceptable opening sentence to this tale of cruelty was impossible. In the end, I could not force myself to say even one word about what I had done.

You would appear in my dreams, sometimes just your face, smiling and looking up at me: kneeling in front of me as I sat on my old bed or appearing between the sheets hanging to dry in the courtyard. Or I would follow you at a distance as you skipped into the house and disappeared into its darkness. Other times I could feel my own body become filled with fear as I beat you. I would see the belt dig into your skin, blood covering both of us, then the old woman would appear and wash you clean. Lu Meng, Xiong Fa, and Yan would be next to me laughing, everything would be bathed in the red glow of the candle flames, the color I had seen throughout the night you were born.

Our team became a full production unit under new Party rules. To us it didn’t matter whether we were a team, a unit, or a production regiment, we had become a family. The Party didn’t want such bonds of affection or love, it wanted only itself to be the beginning and the end. The Party cadres were possessed by their belief in man’s ability to attain perfection, like the gods themselves. Yet in our small town, as in villages, towns, and cities everywhere, we could see the many shortcomings and failures in this relentless pursuit of the unattainable. We were able to insulate ourselves a little in our workroom from the dehumanizing process. They were only small transgressions, amid all the endless repetition, but sometimes we embroidered special patterns for people, their initials, or even small flowers, concealed inside cuffs and hems.

Chapter 25

T
he months and years of routine wore on; we carried our cards, badges, won production awards, set new targets, assisted other teams . . . yet in the tiniest stitches we found creation and companionship. Our lives were uncomplicated as long as we met the Party’s requirements; seasons were irrelevant, production schedules defined our calendar. Then, early in the new year of 1958, the leader of the local cadres came into the workroom in the middle of the afternoon. He stood at the door. Fortunately we were all working then, not talking among ourselves. He glanced down the room at Madam Zhang and walked quickly over to her. She remained seated while he stood over her, his left hand leaning on the desk and the other waving in a very animated manner. They looked as though they were deliberately keeping their voices low but the noise of the sewing machines helped. He seemed very concerned; she merely nodded calmly in reply. When he stopped speaking, she said only two or three words to him and nodded. He looked at her and we could see there was regret upon his face. Although he wielded authority over us, we had all grown to like him very much. He made life easy for us; so long as we slightly exceeded our targets, he would be happy. He had obtained my papers very quickly, and then when he had got married, about seven months after I arrived, we had made his fiancée a plain but traditional wedding dress and a smarter suit for him. We had even used some red scarf fabric for a traditional veil. Now he finished talking to Madam Zhang and offered her his hand. They shook and he turned immediately for the door. It seemed to me that as he was closing it, he glanced back for another look at us all.

Madam Zhang got to her feet.

“Come here, quickly!” This was the only time I ever saw her panic. “The team leader has just told me that he is to be replaced . . . a new leader is coming. He says there are new instructions and we’ll find out more tonight. He was very concerned about this, though he doesn’t know anything more. He says he has heard that huge changes have taken place across the country . . . there’s been violence in many places.” She paused to catch her breath. “It’s not just the greedy and the selfish, like the capitalists, who are the targets now. Many other people, guilty in different ways, have become enemies of the Party as well. Please, everyone, be very careful. He said we should work hard, make sure that whatever happens we exceed our targets, and most important of all . . . keep quiet.”

As I listened I wondered whether you, Lu Meng, and Xiong Fa would already have left the country, like Ming had. Against everything I had seen and still believed, I now just hoped blindly that Xiong Fa had always known you were his daughter and that somehow he had saved you and Lu Meng from the terror that was descending on the country. I watched the other women look at each other then return silently to their desks. They had already seen and lost enough to understand that our only course now was to keep working.

After an hour there was a lot of shouting and screaming in the street outside. Madam Zhang went to the door and stepped out for a moment. She reappeared with a young angry-looking boy who was carrying a large stick.

“All of you, get outside! The new team leader wants to see you.”

The boy was not much older than sixteen. He came forward and thumped the stick against the nearest worktable, which was mine. The end of it caught my box of pins, sending it into the air and raining pins across the table and over the floor.

“Pick them up, pick them up!” He was screaming at me, his face strained and red with anger, but he explained nothing of the reason for his anger, just continued screaming, “None of this work is good enough . . . pick them up!”

As he shouted he brandished one end of the stick, swiping the other through the air. We watched it and recoiled for fear of being hit.

“Why are you afraid? Why are you afraid? You would only be fearful if you had something to fear. The Party is for the people, you should not fear the people . . .” He kept screaming until his words became one endless howl.

Ah Sui and I bent down to start collecting the pins. He came forward and grabbed Ah Sui by the hair, dragging her across the floor. Initially she kicked out her legs behind her. He smacked her kneecaps hard with the stick and she screamed and kicked again. He hit her harder and she stopped kicking. As he dragged her across the floor to the door, she shrieked like a tortured animal. I froze, crouching down with my hands full of pins, and watched. It was like a hunter dragging an animal he had caught; he had not yet decided when and how to make his kill. I looked up at the other women, but they remained frozen behind their tables.

The boy took Ah Sui out of the door and Madam Zhang walked behind. I got up and followed her. Outside there was a circle of about a hundred youths, all dressed in our clothes but wearing different scarves and badges. They had the previous team leader and his wife down on their knees at the center of the crowd and had hung wooden signs around their necks. The signs said they were traitors to the Revolution and enemies of the people. Young people leapt out of the crowd to beat them, smashing their heads and backs with sticks and pummeling them with fists. They bled freely. The boy who seemed to be the new leader was shouting and holding up one arm. People in the crowd looked around as the young man who had burst into our workroom dragged Ah Sui through the howling mob. They did not have a sign ready for her but hit her anyway.

“Here is the woman who helped them engage in old practices! These are forbidden.” The new team leader threw the wedding clothes we had created for them in their bleeding faces. The clothes slid to the ground, stained with blood. “Do you understand?” the new leader screamed. “To be forgiven, you must admit that you were wrong . . . will you do that? No false pride before the people,” he shouted.

He was barely an adult, the others only just out of childhood. They looked blind and shouted as if they were deaf. Where had they suddenly come from? What mother had bred such animals? The new leader was thin and bony, with sharp features and large weak watery eyes behind thick glasses. His chin was covered in spots. This was not the handsome muscular worker, holding aloft a hammer, that all the posters celebrated.

I screamed, “No, it was not her—it was me! I helped them.”

“You . . . who are you?” the new leader demanded. His lips curled so that his teeth and gums were left bare like a dog’s.

Suddenly hands came out and grabbed my hair, forcing me to the ground. Lying on my back, I felt more hands sliding under my arms, propelling me through the crowd to its center. I could see Madam Zhang standing with her hand over her mouth, the whites of her eyes visible around wide terrified pupils.

“Do you admit that you observed these old traditions?” They picked up the bloodstained clothes and pushed them in my face. “Explain yourself!”

“Yes, it was me. I thought it was harmless. Why should we care about such a thing? It is nothing, isn’t it?” I screamed then as a hand yanked a fistful of my hair and my back scraped against the ground, tearing my shirt.

“It is
everything
. Chairman Mao said that we must eradicate all outdated practices. There can be no leniency for their supporters!” the cadre leader shouted, and raised his fist in the air. People shouted all around and one stick and then another crashed down on my legs. I curled up into a ball. A woman with a short stick poked me hard in the side, to force me to open up. When she realized she couldn’t uncurl me, she beat me on the head and then I felt another stick jab my hip. Over and over again.

All I could hear was the leader, shouting: “This won’t be tolerated! The people must be pure in spirit.”

My last thought was not for myself but it was the image of beating you and watching the blood flow from your cheek. In that deep red I lost consciousness.

When I awoke, I was in my bed with Ah Sui and Madam Zhang sitting beside me. My head hurt and I felt bandages around my forehead and on my left hand.

“How are you?” Ah Sui asked me. “Aiiiya, thank you, but you’re very crazy!”

“What happened?” I whispered.

“They beat you quite badly, but not as severely as the old team leader and his wife. Aiii, she didn’t live! And he was battered almost to death and lost an eye. An older party official arrived and stopped them, but they were like wild dogs. It has been chaos since then. He has told us that there will be a massive production increase. Those of us without skills will make iron—everything must be done to beat the production of the Western capitalists. We are being told to make a great leap toward modernity, challenging the West and all their capitalist prowess.”

“I don’t understand,” I replied.

“We will give everything we have to show the Chinese are the best in the world—even if we kill ourselves.”

And so we did.

I
slowly healed but my right leg still would not move well and I would get terrible pains in the right side of my head. In their turn, cadres in the newly appointed team were replaced, beaten, imprisoned, and occasionally just vanished. And so it went on, feeding off itself. Insatiable. Our targets became increasingly unattainable, and so, in order to ensure we made them and retained the coupons we needed to live, we made poor-quality clothes, using less stitching, and the cutting was done very crudely. We would be stopped arbitrarily, asked to produce something different; but only ever useless and pointless items, created not by design but on a whim. Eventually it became easier to lie to our superiors and get away with cutting corners as the administration imploded and our town fell into chaos. People had used up every pot, pan, tool, and utensil they had to make useless pig iron; we had killed flies, sparrows, and mosquitoes by the truckload, and beaten and kicked each other until there were no friends or enemies left, just rabid dogs running, barking, and scavenging to survive.