The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (12 page)

‘When I had almost given up hope, someone told me that many injured people had been taken to the airport runways. As long as there was a thread of hope, I had to go and have a look.

‘But when I made it to the airport I was speechless with shock: the long runways were packed solid with groaning bodies, laid out in four or five rows. Only then did it really sink in that the earthquake had not just shaken our building, it had destroyed an entire city of hundreds of thousands of people. Filled with dread, I started to try to identify my daughter from among the rows of dead and injured people; they must all have been alive when they arrived, but some had died before there was time to administer first aid. It was difficult to identify anyone: hardly any of them were wearing clothes; some of the women’s faces were covered by their hair; some people were covered in mud. After half a day, I had gone over less than half a runway. When dusk fell, I went to the tents the garrison had provided for us. I planned to continue my search the next morning.

‘Many people were sleeping in the tent I was in. There was no distinction between the sexes, and no distinction between rich and poor either. People collapsed in any empty space they could find, exhausted from rushing about desperately, searching without eating or drinking, living on hope.

‘Just as I was nodding off, the voices of two men drifted over from close by:

‘“What are you up to? Still not sleeping?”

‘“I’m thinking about that girl . . .”

‘“Still?”

‘“I’m not thinking about
that
. I was just wondering if she mightn’t die after being dumped in that place.”

‘“Damn, I hadn’t thought of that!”

‘“What we did was bad enough, what if she dies?”

‘“What do you mean by that? Do you want to go and check? If so, we’d better go quick. Then there’ll still be a space for us when we get back, otherwise we’ll get soaked by the rain if we sleep outside.”

‘I looked around to see who was talking, and was shocked to see a length of multicoloured string trailing from one of the men’s shorts. It looked like the string my daughter used to tie her hair back. I didn’t want to believe that it was my daughter they were talking about, but what if it was? I rushed over to the men and asked where the multicoloured string had come from. They wouldn’t give me a proper answer, which made me even more suspicious. I shouted at them ferociously, asking them where the girl they had been talking about was; frightened, they mumbled something about a ditch by a distant runway, and then they fled. I could not ask them for any more details, let alone catch them; all I wanted was to know if the girl was my daughter.

‘I ran off in the direction the men had indicated. When I had reached the edge of a ditch, I heard faint groans, but could not see who it was in the dark. Just then, two soldiers on patrol came over to me; they had electric torches and were guarding the injured people on the runways. I asked them to shine their torches into the ditch. In the weak torchlight, we saw a naked girl. At that moment my feelings were thoroughly confused; I both hoped she was and was not my daughter. When the two soldiers helped me carry her on to the runway, I realised that she was indeed my daughter.

‘“Xiao Ying, Xiao Ying!” I shouted her name, but she looked at me in confusion, without the slightest reaction.

‘“Xiao Ying, it’s Mama!” Suddenly, I noticed that the lower part of her body was sticky and wet, but there was no time to think any more of it as I hurriedly dressed her in clothes the soldiers lent us. Strangely, Xiao Ying pulled the trousers down again.

‘When I asked her why she had done that, she just closed her eyes and hummed. She was so tired, she soon fell asleep. I lay dazed for a long time before I too, fell asleep.

‘At daybreak, the roaring of a plane woke me. When I saw Xiao Ying lying next to me, I was dumbstruck: she was pulling down her trousers with an idiot grin on her face, and her legs and groin were all bloody. Just then, I remembered the words of those two men. Had they taken advantage of the disaster to rape Xiao Ying? I dared not believe it. And my daughter, a radiant, vivacious girl, had lost her mind.

‘The doctor said that Xiao Ying had had too great a shock, and told my husband and me that Xiao Ying had definitely been gang-raped. That was all I heard before I blacked out. When I came to, my husband was holding my hand, his face wet with tears. We looked at each other speechlessly and wept: our daughter had been brutalised and gone mad, our son’s legs were gone . . .’

Warden Ding fell silent.

‘May I ask if you sent Xiao Ying for treatment?’ I asked quietly.

‘We did, but we didn’t understand that she would still feel the terror even if she recovered. Two and a half years later, just as her memory was starting to get back to normal, the day before we were planning to take her home to start a new life, she hanged herself in her hospital room.

In the letter she left for us she said:

 

‘How old was Xiao Ying then?’ I asked.

‘She was sixteen, her brother was eleven.’ Warden Ding paused. ‘My husband tore his hair out with grief, saying that he was the one who had hurt the child, but of course it wasn’t his fault. That night, he did not come to bed until very late. I was exhausted, and went to sleep, but when I woke up, his body was cold, and his face was frozen in sadness. The death certificate issued by the doctor states that he died of a heart attack from extreme exhaustion.’

I found it hard to breathe. ‘Warden Ding, it’s very hard to imagine how you could bear this.’

She nodded resignedly.

‘And you didn’t want your son to know?’

‘He had already borne damage to his body; how could he bear the same damage to his mind and his emotions?’

‘But you bravely carried on.’

‘I made it, but I wasn’t really brave. I am one of those who are strong in front of other people, a so-called tower of strength among women, but when I’m alone I cry all night: for my daughter, my husband, my son, and for myself. Sometimes, I can’t breathe for missing them. Some people say that time heals everything, but it hasn’t healed me.’

On the train home, I cried all the way. I cried again when I took up my pen to write down the experiences of these mothers. I find it very difficult to imagine their courage. They are still living. Time has carried them to the present, but in every minute, every second that has passed, they have been struggling with scenes left to them by death; and every day and every night they bear the painful memories of losing their children. This is not pain which can be removed by the will of an individual human being: the smallest domestic object – a needle and thread, a chopstick and bowl – can carry them back to the smiling faces and voices of dead souls. But they have to stay alive; they must walk out of their memories and return to reality. Only now do I realise why there was a picture of an eye in every room of the orphanage – that big eye, brimming over with tears, that eye with ‘the future’ written on the pupil. They did not lock their mother’s kindness away in their memories of their children; they did not immerse themselves in tears of suffering and wait for pity. With the greatness of mothers, they made new families for children who had lost their parents. To me those women proved the unimaginable strength of Chinese women. As a mother, I can imagine the loss they must have felt, but I do not know if I would have been able to give so freely in the midst of pain like theirs.

When I presented a programme based on these interviews, I received more than seven hundred letters in five days. Some people asked me to send their respects to the mothers at the orphanage, and to thank them. Some people sent money, asking me to buy presents for the children. They shared the emotions the programme had roused in them: one woman said she felt grateful for her children; a girl said that she wanted to hug her mother for the first time; a boy who had left home several months before said that he had decided to return to his parents and beg their forgiveness. Every desk in the office was covered with these letters, and a big cardboard box by the door was filled with presents for the children and mothers. In it were things from Old Chen, Big Li, Mengxing, Xiao Yao, Old Zhang . . . and many other colleagues.

I hadn’t forgotten the university student Jin Shuai’s three questions: What philosophy do women have? What is happiness for a woman? And what makes a good woman? In the course of the research for my programmes, I tried to answer them.

I thought it would be interesting to ask my older and more experienced colleagues Big Li and Old Chen their opinions about the philosophies that guide women’s lives. Obviously, at a time when a belief in the Party always came first, I had to be careful how I phrased this question. ‘Of course, women believe in the Party above everything else,’ I began, ‘but do they have any other beliefs?’

Old Chen was eager to discuss the subject. ‘Chinese women have religious faith,’ he said, ‘but they seem to be able to believe in several religions at the same time. Women who believe in the spiritual and physical exercises of qigong are always changing the type of qigong they practise and the Master they follow; their gods come and go too. You can’t blame them: the hardships of life make them long for a way out. As Chairman Mao said, “poverty gives rise to a desire for change.” Now we believe in Mao Zedong and Communism, but before we believed in Heaven, in the Celestial Emperor, in Buddha, in Jesus and in Mohammed. Despite our long history, we have no native faith. The emperors and rulers were considered deities, but they changed constantly and people became accustomed to worshipping different gods. As the saying goes, “For a hundred people there are a hundred beliefs.” In fact, you could say that there is no real belief at all. Women are much more pragmatic than men, so their attitude is to cover all the bases. They can’t make out which god has power or which spirit is useful, so they’ll believe in every one of them, just to be on the safe side.’

I knew that what he said was true, but wondered how people managed to reconcile the mutually antagonistic doctrines of different religions. Old Chen seemed to have guessed my thoughts: ‘I think that hardly any women understand what religion is. Most are just trying to keep up with other people, afraid to be at a disadvantage.’

Big Li agreed with Old Chen. He pointed out how, especially since religious freedom was declared in 1983, one household could have several altars dedicated to different gods. Most people who prayed only did so to ask for wealth or other benefits. He told us about his neighbours: one grandparent was a Buddhist and the other was a Taoist, so they were constantly arguing. Away from the joss sticks, the Christian granddaughter had set up a cross; the grandparents constantly scolded her for this, saying she was cursing them to an early death. The girl’s mother believed in some form of qigong and the father believed in the God of Wealth. They too were always quarrelling: the woman said that the man’s desire for money had damaged her spiritual standing, and the man accused the woman’s evil influences of attacking his wealth. The little money this family had was spent on religious rituals or holy pictures, but they had grown neither richer nor happier.

Big Li also told us of a woman manager he knew who was said to be very religious. In public speeches, she would hail the Communist Party as China’s only hope; once off the podium, she would preach Buddhism, telling people that they would be rewarded in their next life according to their deeds in this one. When the wind changed, she would spread word of some form of miraculous qigong. Someone in her work unit said that she would wear a Communist Party badge on her coat, fasten a picture of Buddha to her vest and pin a portrait of Great Master Zhang of the Zangmigong sect to her bra. Seeing my look of incredulity, Big Li assured me that this woman was often mentioned in the newspapers. She was a Model Worker every year, and had been selected as an Outstanding Party Member many times.

‘Her secret religiousness can’t be too good in the eyes of the Party,’ I said a touch irreverently.

Old Chen rapped the table and said sternly, ‘Xinran, be careful. Talk like that could lose you your head.’

‘Do we still have to be scared?’

‘Don’t be naive! In the fifties the Party called on us to “let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”. What happened then? Those who answered the call were all imprisoned or sent to poor mountain villages. Some of them had only expressed their thoughts in their diaries, but they too suffered public criticisms and imprisonment.’

Old Chen was basically a kind man. ‘You shouldn’t talk about faith and religion too much,’ he warned. ‘You’ll only be asking for trouble.’

Over the next few years, I interviewed a number of women about their beliefs and confirmed the fact that they were indeed able to believe in a whole variety of religions at the same time. In Zhengzhou, I met a retired woman cadre who managed to reconcile a devotion to the Communist Party with a strong faith in
Fangxiang Gong
(Scent and Fragrance qigong) – a kind of qigong where the idea is to cause the master to emit a fragrance by which you inhale his goodness and build up the strength of your body. Before that she had believed in keep-fit exercises and herbal remedies. When I asked her if she believed in Buddhism, she told me to keep my voice down but acknowledged that, yes, she did. The old people in her family had always said that it was better to believe in everything than nothing at all. She also told me that, at the end of the year, she believed in Jesus who was Father Christmas and came to your house to help you. When I expressed surprise that Jesus was the same person as Father Christmas, she told me I was too young to know and asked me not to tell anyone about our conversation: ‘We say, “At home, believe in your own gods and do what you like; outside, believe in the Party and be careful what you do.” But I wouldn’t like anyone to know what I have just said. I don’t want people to give me a hard time again now I’m old.’