Little Emperors (19 page)

“Oh!”

I lift Alice's knapsack onto her bony little shoulders, and soon the Grade Twos, my class of adorable Deng Xiaopings, are on their way out the door.

It is All Hallow's Eve. The wooden door creaks open and the Vampire greets the minions of witches, ghouls, goblins, Frankensteins, Hello Kitties, and Cookie Monsters with a demonic laugh. They file like zombies into the room. The ghosts float in, their long paper tongues reaching down to their navels. The Vampire turns to the Masked One and asks, “What's with the tongues?”

“Ghosts in China have long tongues.”

“Oh.”

The assorted demons and cartoon characters take their seats and stare up at the Vampire through scissored eyeholes. They screech in mock fright as the Vampire flies around the classroom, her black cape, usually a skirt, trailing her like a gauzy shadow. The little demons' eyes shine with anticipation. They stare at the box of candy on the Vampire's desk, knowing that by the end of the hour it will be theirs
.

First, however, they must listen to the Vampire tell a chilling tale of pumpkins rising like the dead from a pumpkin patch on Halloween night. Then they must learn an incantation, foreign and strange, and go back outside to cast this spell against the wooden door. They hope the magic words will appease the Vampire within and convince her to bestow the candy upon them. The hollow rap of the demons' bony knuckles sounds on the splintered wood, like skeletons pounding for release from a tomb.
And then comes the bloodcurdling chant, as haunting as the howl of a hundred wolves at the moon: “Trick or treat, smell my feet. Give me something good to eat!”

The Grade Two class celebrates Halloween at Number 1 School
.

“What is wrong with this school?” I complain to Connie as we leave the red gates of Number 2 School. One of the older middle-aged teachers, a portly woman with a pinched face, the same woman who snarls sarcastically at us whenever we go to the teachers' room in search of the principal or vice-principal, grabbed my arm as we were coming down the stairs today after class. She dug her fingernails into my skin and told me to keep my classes quiet — the noise, she told Connie, disturbs the teachers' and students' nap time.

“What are we supposed to do?” I continue as we step onto the sidewalk. “This is a Chinese elementary school. It is by definition a noisy place! We can't whisper our way through English class. Why is that teacher so rude to us? The teachers at Number 1 School always smile and say hello — even their doorman runs out to chat with us! What's wrong with this place?”

I already have my own theory, my Theory of the Mao Posters. At Number 2 School, a huge portrait of Chairman Mao hangs on the wall above the principal's desk in the teachers' room. Number 1 School used
to have a portrait of Mao on the teachers' room wall, too, but it disappeared during the summer renovations. It was replaced with a set of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. My Theory of the Mao Posters leads me to believe that Number 2 School is more hardline than Number 1 School, that Number 2 School is not as accepting of modernization and openness. The staff at Number 1 School seem happy to have us in their school, while the staff at Number 2 seem indifferent or, as in the case of the teacher with the pinched face, almost hostile toward us. I don't tell Connie my theory. I just keep complaining about the school with the ivy-covered walls.

Connie is silent through my tirade. As we pass McDonald's, she frowns slightly and says, “Yes, I get a strange feeling from the school, too.” She pauses for a moment then asks, “Do you know about the Cultural Revolution?”

“Yes. Well, a little. I mean, I've read about it. Why?”

“You know, before that time in China, people were friendlier and happier. Then, during Cultural Revolution, people became angry. Many times they fight and argue in the street. People betray each other. Some people are still angry. They can't trust others. They can't be friendly anymore. They were hurt once before and they fear being hurt again. I think this is why Number 2 teachers act that way. Maybe. They are older. Number 1 teachers are younger. They were just babies at the end of the Cultural Revolution, like me. We didn't really know it.”

We wait for a break in the traffic, then dash across the street toward the noodle restaurant to get lunch. As we approach the restaurant, leaning into the breeze, I turn to Connie. “The Cultural Revolution was a crazy time in China, wasn't it?”

“Very crazy . . .” Connie answers, but I can't hear the rest of what she says over the roar of traffic. November's wind blows her words away, spiralling them like leaves down the street behind us.

Inside the noodle shop, safe from the flying dust of the world, we sit at our usual place by the window. I want to continue the conversation we started outside, but am hesitant. Asking Chinese people about the Cultural Revolution makes me nervous in the same way asking someone about a recent death in the family makes me nervous. I want to talk about it, I know they want to talk about it, but I am afraid to ask, afraid that bringing up the topic might dig up things too painful to bear. Also, for me, asking the Chinese about the Cultural Revolution is a bit like walking into a stranger's house, throwing open the closets,
and shouting, “Show me your skeletons!”

“Yes, it was a crazy time in China,” Connie says, bringing the subject back after we order our food. She squints out the window. “Being a teacher was a horrible thing then. The kids were very cruel to them. They made teachers wear hats that say
I AM STUPID
and
I AM BAD
. They lock teachers in classrooms and shout bad things to them. Some students even throw rocks at their teachers. Some teachers very injured. Some left to die in hallways. Others saw what happened and jump out of windows . . . you know, kill themselves.”

“Even here?” I ask, pointing my chopsticks toward the street as the waitress sets steaming bowls of won ton soup in front of us. “In Guangzhou?”

“Yes. Here. Everywhere. It was very common at that time.” Connie inhales a thick cord of noodles and wipes her mouth. “At that time, all learning stopped. My mother was fifteen when Cultural Revolution started. She has nothing more than middle school. She lost her learning time.”

This news about her mother strikes my heart. I spoon hot broth over and over the won tons in my bowl. It is a form of genocide, I think to myself, to rob an entire generation of an education. What Connie tells me makes me sadly furious. I spoon more broth over the won tons.

“Many people had the same as my mother,” Connie continues. “Many of our students' parents had the same as my mother. They lost their learning time, too. That is why they push their kids to learn so much now. They push kids to learn English and piano and violin because they weren't allowed to learn these things.”

This fact also hits me. It steels me. I tighten the grip on my spoon and silently resolve to be the best damn teacher to my students I can be.

“But China is different now,” Connie says as she pops the last won ton into her mouth. “And Guangzhou is so different in China. In Beijing, the people have political minds. They still want to talk theories and ideas. Guangzhou people don't care about that. Not now. The Guangzhou people have economic minds. They just want to do business. They want to make money.”

The entire student body of Number 1 School has gone to an amusement park today, so Connie and I have the day off.

We plan to meet at Kathleen's Restaurant in the centre of town for
lunch. I am a few minutes early, so I sit on the steps outside and watch Connie as she walks through the alleyway toward the restaurant. She wears her usual sneakers, T-shirt, jean jacket, and jeans, her ponytail swinging with each step.

After lunch, we go for a walk in a neighbourhood up behind the restaurant called Hua Qiao. Walking its spacious, tree-lined sidewalks, following its clean, quiet streets as they meander up and around a small hill in the middle of the neighbourhood, I almost feel I am back in suburban Canada. Unlike the rest of Guangzhou, Hua Qiao has very few cars, very few people and, incredibly, almost no noise.

The houses in the area are big, mostly two, sometimes three storeys tall. Most of them have high fences or iron gates surrounding them, and many of them have small grassy yards or gardens. Some of these houses are now offices for companies, mainly joint ventures with foreign, Hong Kong, or Taiwanese firms. Many of the houses seem empty and deserted.

“Most of these villas are owned by Overseas Chinese,” Connie explains, pointing at a small mansion with broken windows and chipped yellow paint, “but no one lives in them.”

“Do they ever come back here to stay a while?”

“I don't know.”

At a junction in the quiet streets, we approach two black cars covered by canvas tarpaulins. One of the tarpaulins has half fallen off one of the vehicles, and we can see that the car is big and boxy and very much from the 1960s. The back seat is three windows long, each window covered by a sheer blue curtain. It looks like a hearse with seats. We go closer to look at the maker's name on the trunk.

“Oh! This car!” Connie cries. “It's made in China. It was used only for the top guys, the leaders. Only very few of these cars were made. It is a very good car, but not so good with gas.”

“What are they doing here?” I wonder aloud.

“I don't know.” She shrugs. We look at the cars for a bit, but keep our distance because a man on an embankment at the end of the road is watching us.

Continuing along the street, we turn a gently sloping corner and pass other grand old houses and mid-sized mansions, including one with a Chinese-style roof of sweeping, pointed eaves and green ceramic tiles. Many panes of glass in its many windows are cracked or broken.

“I can't believe how quiet it is here, Connie,” I say. “I mean, we're just
a few blocks from Huanshi Lu, but I can't hear any traffic. This has got to be the most peaceful neighbourhood in all of Guangzhou!”

“Yes, but once this neighbourhood met a terrible accident.”

“Really? What? Was someone hit by a car?”

“No,” she replies, hushed. “A murder.”

“Here? But this place feels so safe. Did it happen a long time ago?”

“Not really. It happened when I was in first year of middle school. A girl from my school was killed. She was maybe fourteen.”

“What happened?”

“An older boy, maybe eighteen, took her down one of these paths.” Connie points to some narrow concrete walkways that criss-cross between trees and bushes and the neighbourhood's backyards. “He made sex with her, then killed her. He cut her body into pieces and covered it with newspapers. Some old people found it early next morning.”

“Really?” I gasp, horrified that Guangzhou's quietest neighbourhood holds such a gruesome secret. Perhaps that is why the place is so quiet. Maybe all quiet streets keep dark secrets. “Do people know why the boy did such a horrible thing?”

“The girl's older sister was his girlfriend. They had a quarrel and she broke up with him. He did revenge with the younger sister. He was very, very crazy. The police caught him and he went to prison.”

As Connie tells me this, we turn and start walking down one of these paved pathways, perhaps, I think, down the very one where the girl was found. I eye the hedges and tangled weeds alongside the path nervously. “Is that kind of thing very common in China?”

“No. It's not very common.”

“Not like in the United States or Canada, where we hear about this kind of thing a lot.”

“Yes. In America, this thing is very regular. In Hong Kong, too,” Connie says. “On Hong Kong TV, there is always news about people finding body pieces in trash cans or in a field. An arm. Some fingers. It is very common in Hong Kong.” We recall one case during the summer where a man in Hong Kong killed his wife and then scattered her body parts all over the New Territories. The police finally arrested him after piecing the woman together like a macabre jigsaw puzzle.

“This thing almost never happen in China,” Connie says again, as if for emphasis. “When it does, it is a very terrible thing. Everyone is shocked.”

We walk out of Hua Qiao, down a hill, and through a market heavy with pigs' intestines and goats' heads, past women poised to silence
crowing black chickens with a snap of their necks. At the bottom of the market we come to roaring Huanshi Lu. We say goodbye for the day, and I watch as Connie turns and walks back through the market in the late-afternoon sunlight, over the hill, past the ghosts and other secrets of Hua Qiao.

There goes a unique soul
, I think to myself. I barely know Connie, but I already know I am lucky to have met her.

Serve the people.

— Mao Zedong

Billions and billions served.