The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices (23 page)

Wang Yue had never stopped asking herself how much of her suffering Shilin had been conscious of before she lost her mind. I told her reluctantly that, like other people who lose their awareness in adulthood, Shilin must have done so as a result of extreme pain. Shilin’s pain had built up in layers from the night she fled Nanjing through her confused childhood, and she had never had an outlet for it because she did not want to make the Wang family unhappy. The years of abuse in Hubei had crushed her consciousness.

When I returned to the radio station for my night broadcast after spending the afternoon at the hospital, the office was empty. I found a glass of fruit juice on my desk with a note from Mengxing, who had kept the juice for me, concerned that I would be exhausted. Mengxing had a reputation as a tough woman who never gave anyone anything, so I was very touched. The station director had also left me a note asking me to hand in my report on the interview with the Guomindang general’s daughter the next day.

In the morning, I told the director about Shilin, but said that we could not broadcast her story. He was surprised. ‘What’s wrong? Usually you are pleading to be able to broadcast things.’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I replied, ‘but I can’t bring myself to tell this story again or make a programme about it. It would be too difficult.’

‘This is the first time I’ve ever heard you say anything is too difficult, so it really must have been a hard story to listen to. I hope you can manage to put it behind you.’

I never did manage to have a talk about understanding the disabled with Old Wu. He died of a liver ailment during a banquet that weekend. At his memorial service, I silently told him my thoughts, sure that he could hear me. After people leave this world, they live on in the memories of the living. Sometimes you can feel their presence, see their faces or hear their voices.

I had begun my search for Chinese women’s stories full of youthful enthusiasm but knowing very little. Now that I knew more, I had a more mature understanding – but I also felt more pain. At times a kind of numbness would come over me from all the suffering I had encountered, as if a callus were forming within me. Then I would hear another story and my feelings would be stirred up all over again.

Although my internal life was in turmoil, in career terms I was becoming more and more successful. I had been made Director of Programme Development and Planning, which meant that I was responsible for developing the future strategy of the whole broadcasting station. As my reputation and influence grew, I was able to meet women who would otherwise have been inaccessible to me: the wives of Party leaders, women in the military, in religious institutions, or in prison. One such meeting came about because of an encounter at a Public Security Bureau award ceremony. I had done some work organising public education activities for the PSB and, as a result, I was to be awarded the title of ‘Flower of the Police Force’. The award didn’t mean a great deal, but I was the only woman in the province to be honoured in this way and it was to prove extremely useful in my attempts to reach out to more women.

The Chinese will use any excuse to throw a banquet: we live according to the principle ‘food is heaven’, and eat and drink away untold wealth. Although only four people were receiving prizes, there were more than four hundred guests at the banquet. Very few women win honours or receive prizes in police circles, let alone those from outside the PSB, so I became the subject of much discussion that evening. I hated the crush and the endless questions, so I slipped into the service corridor to escape. When the bustling waiters in the corridor saw me, they shouted, ‘Out of the way, move along, don’t block the way!’

I pressed myself back against the wall. The discomfort of this place seemed better than the scrutiny of my fellow guests. A few moments later, Chief Constable Mei came by to thank the waiters, and was surprised to see me. He asked me what I thought I was doing.

I had known Chief Constable Mei for a while and trusted him, so I spoke frankly. He chuckled and said, ‘There’s no need for you to hide in this horrible, cramped space. Come, I’ll take you to a better place.’ He led me away.

The banqueting hall, which was famous throughout the city, had several adjoining parlours and meeting rooms that I had not been aware of. Chief Constable Mei led me into one of these rooms, telling me that the hall had the same layout as the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, which had been designed for the convenience of central government leaders when they came to inspect the city. I felt rather overwhelmed to be admitted to this inner sanctum, and was also worried that other people might put a malicious construction on us being alone together.

Noticing my hesitation, Mei said, ‘You needn’t worry about gossip. There’s a sentry outside. Ah, I’m so tired . . .’ He yawned and collapsed on to the sofa.

The police guard outside tapped on the door and asked quietly, ‘Chief Constable, do you need anything?’

‘That will be all,’ Mei replied in a terse, cold tone. This was how all senior officials spoke to their underlings in China; it made me think about how this had created the habitual attitudes of superiority and inferiority among the Chinese.

Chief Constable Mei massaged his head with both hands as he sprawled on the sofa. ‘Xinran, I’ve just come back from a trip to Hunan where I visited a number of prisons. I heard about a female inmate who might interest you. She’s been in and out of prison several times on charges of sexual deviance and illegal cohabitation. Apparently, she has a very tragic family history. If you’d like to interview her, I could set things up and send a car for you.’

I nodded and thanked him. He shook his head wearily, saying, ‘Chinese women really have a hard time of it. I’ve listened to your programme several times. It’s sad, very moving. How much happiness can there be in the life of a woman who has lived through the last few decades? My wife says that women give their smiles to others and save their heartaches for themselves. She likes your programme a lot, but I don’t want her to listen to it too much; she’s very emotional, and one story can torture her for several days.’ He paused. ‘I wouldn’t want her to die before me, I couldn’t bear it.’

Chief Constable Mei was a big, tough man from Shandong. I had known him for many years, but never guessed that he could be so sensitive. Chinese men are brought up to believe that they should command respect, and many are unwilling to let others see their softer side. For the first time in our acquaintance, our conversation that evening was not about work, but about men, women and relationships.

Two weeks later, a PSB jeep took me to a women’s prison in the mountains of west Hunan. The group of buildings looked like any other prison: the electric fence, the sentries and the searchlights mounted on the dark grey wall instantly created an atmosphere of fear and tension. The main gate, through which only the cars of the powerful could pass, was shut; we entered through the side gate.

Looking up at the huge building, I could guess from the sizes and shapes of the windows what was behind them. Behind the wide, high, broken windows, grey figures moved back and forth amid the thundering of machines. Prisoners usually work while they serve their sentence: mending cars, lorries or machine tools, or sewing and producing textiles. Some are set to hard labour, quarrying stone or working in mines. Through the mid-sized windows, uniforms, equipment and dashes of colour could be seen; these were offices and political study rooms. The smallest windows at the top of the buildings belonged to the convicts’ dormitories and canteens.

The main building formed a horseshoe around a smaller building which housed the prison officers’ sleeping quarters and control rooms. Two things about West Hunan Women’s Prison struck me as different from other prisons: one was that the walls were covered with dark green moss and lichen because of the humid west Hunan weather; the other was the strangeness of seeing policewomen shouting at women prisoners. The lives, loves, sorrows and joys of the women in police uniforms could not be so very different from those of the women in prison clothes.

Chief Constable Mei’s letter of introduction acted like an imperial edict; after reading it, the prison governor allocated me a private interview room for my meeting with Hua’er, the prisoner Mei had mentioned.

Hua’er was a slight woman of about my age. She shifted restlessly in her prison uniform, as if struggling with her powerlessness. Although her hair had been cut by inexperienced hands and was ragged and uneven, it reminded me of some of the bizarre styles hairdressing salons were turning out. She was beautiful, but her hard, closed expression was like a flaw in an exquisite piece of porcelain.

I did not ask for details of her sentence, nor why she had broken the law against cohabitation time after time. Instead, I asked her if she would tell me about her family.

‘Who are you?’ she retorted. ‘What’s so special about you that I should tell you?’

‘Because you are the same as me – we are both women, and we have lived through the same times,’ I said slowly and distinctly, looking into her eyes.

Hua’er was momentarily silenced by this.

Then she asked in a mocking tone, ‘If that is so, do you think if I tell you my story you will be able to bear it?’

It was my turn to be lost for words. Her question had struck home: would I be able to bear it, indeed? Did I not still struggle to forget my own painful memories?

Hua’er sensed that she had hit home. Smugly, she asked the warden to open the door and let her go back to her cell. The warden shot me an enquiring look and I nodded unthinkingly. As I stumbled back to the officers’ quarters where I would sleep that night, I was already immersed in my memories. Try as I might, I have never been able to walk away from the nightmare of my childhood.

I was born in Beijing in 1958, when China was at its poorest, and a day’s food ration consisted of a few soybeans. While other children of my age were cold and hungry, I ate imported chocolate in my grandmother’s house in Beijing, surrounded by flowers and birdsong in the courtyard. But China was about to iron out the distinctions between the rich and poor in its unique political way. Children who had struggled to survive poverty and deprivation would spurn and insult me; soon the material riches I had once possessed were more than balanced out by spiritual privation. From then on, I understood that there are many things in life more important than chocolate.

When I was little, my grandmother combed and plaited my hair every day, making sure the braids were even and regular before tying ribbons into a bow on each end. I was extremely fond of my plaits, and tossed my head proudly to display them when walking or playing. At bedtime, I would not let my grandmother untie the ribbons, and would position my plaits carefully on either side of the pillow before going to sleep. Sometimes, when I got up in the morning to find my bows undone, I would ask sulkily who it was who had spoiled them.

My parents were stationed at a military base near the Great Wall. When I was 7, I went to live with them for the first time since I was born. Less than a fortnight after I arrived, our house was searched by the Red Guards. They suspected my father of being a ‘reactionary technical authority’ because he was a member of the Chinese Association of High-Level Mechanical Engineers and an expert on electrical mechanics. He was also thought to be a ‘British imperialist running dog’ because his father had worked for the British company GEC for thirty-five years. In addition, because our house contained many cultural artefacts, my father was charged with being a ‘representative of feudalism, capitalism and revisionism’.

I remember Red Guards swarming all over the house and a great fire in our courtyard on to which were thrown my father’s books, my grandparents’ precious traditional furniture and my toys. My father had been arrested and taken away. Frightened and sad, I fell into a stupor as I watched the flames, hearing cries for help coming from within them. The fire burned away everything: the home I had only just come to call my own, my hitherto happy childhood, my hopes and my family’s pride in its learning and riches. It burned regrets into me that will remain till my death.

In the light of the fire, a girl wearing a red armband walked over to me carrying a big pair of scissors. She caught hold of my plaits and said, ‘This is a petit-bourgeois hairstyle.’

Before I had realised what she was talking about, she had cut my plaits off, and thrown them into the fire. I stood wide-eyed, watching dumbly as my plaits and their pretty bows turned to ashes. When the Red Guards left our house, the girl who had cut my plaits off said to me, ‘From now on, you are forbidden to tie your hair back with ribbons. That is an imperialist hairstyle!’

After my father had been thrown into prison, my mother seldom had time to look after us. She always came home late, and when she was home she was always writing; what, I did not know. My brother and I could only buy food in our father’s work unit canteen where they served a meagre diet of boiled turnips or cabbage. Cooking oil was a rare commodity then.

Once, my mother brought home some belly of pork, and stewed it for us through the night. The next morning, as she was about to leave for work, she said to me, ‘When you come home, poke the coals to make them hotter and heat up the pork in the pot for lunch. Don’t leave any for me. Both of you need the nourishment.’

When I got out of school at midday, I went to fetch my brother from the house of a neighbour who was looking after him. When I told him he was going to have something nice to eat, he was very happy, and sat obediently by the table watching me as I set to warming the food up.

Our stove was a tall brick range of the sort used by the northern Chinese and I was dwarfed by it. In order to be able to prod the coal with a poker, I had to stand on a stool. This was the first time I had done this alone. I did not realise that the poker would become red-hot from the fire within the range and when I had difficulty pulling it out with my right hand, I grasped it firmly with my left. The skin on my palm blistered and peeled off, and I screamed in pain.