Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (22 page)

But neither he nor my mother could stop the flood of gossip.  The women in the Federation were particularly virulent.

At the height of this whispering campaign my mother heard that her appeal for Hui-ge had been turned down.

She was beside herself with anguish.  She had made a promise to Hui-ge, and now she felt that she had somehow misled him.  She had been visiting him regularly in prison, bringing him news of her efforts to get his case reviewed, and she had felt it was inconceivable that the Communists would not spare him.  She had been genuinely optimistic and had tried to cheer him up.  But this time when he saw her face, red-eyed and distorted from the effort of hiding her despair, he knew there was no hope.  They wept together, sitting in full view of the guards with a table between them on which they had to place their hands.

Hui-ge took my mother's hands in his; she did not pull back.

My father was informed of my mother's visits to the prison.  At first he said nothing.  He sympathized with her predicament.  But gradually he became angry.  The scandal about Bian's attempted suicide was at its height, and now it was alleged that his wife had had a relationship with a Kuomintang colonel and they were still supposed to be on their honeymoon!  He was furious, but his personal feelings were not the decisive factor in his acceptance of the Party's attitude toward the colonel.  He told my mother that if the Kuomintang came back people like Hui-ge would be the first to use their authority to help restore it to power.  The Communists, he said, could not afford that risk: "Our revolution is a matter of life and death."  When my mother tried to tell him how Hui-ge had helped the Communists he responded that her visits to the prison had done Hui-ge no good, particularly their holding hands.

Since the time of Confucius, men and women had to be married, or at least lovers, to touch in public, and even under these circumstances it was extremely rare.  The fact that my mother and Hui-ge had been seen holding hands was taken as proof that they had been in love, and that Hui-ge's service to the Communists had not been motivated by 'correct' reasons.  My mother found it hard to disagree with him, but this did not make her feel any less desolate.

Her sense of being caught up in impossible dilemmas was heightened by what was happening to several of her relatives and many people close to her.  When the Communists arrived, they had announced that anybody who had worked for Kuomintang intelligence had to report to them at once. Her uncle Yu-lin had never worked in intelligence, but he had an intelligence card, and felt he should report to the new authorities. His wife and my grandmother tried to dissuade him, but he thought it best to tell the truth.

He was in a difficult situation.  If he had not turned himself in and the Communists had discovered the facts about him, which was highly likely, given their formidable organization, he would have been in dire trouble.  But by coming forward, he himself had given them grounds to suspect him.

The Party's verdict was: "Has a political blemish in his past.  No punishment, but can only be employed under control."  This verdict, like almost all others, was not delivered by a court, but by a Party body.  There was no clear definition of what it meant, but as a result of it, for three decades Yu-lin's life would depend on the political climate and on his Party bosses.  In those days Jinzhou had a relatively relaxed City Party Committee, and he was allowed to go on helping Dr.  Xia in the shop.

My grandmother's brother-in-law, "Loyalty' Pei-o, was exiled to the country to do manual labor.  Because he had no blood on his hands, he was given a sentence called 'under surveillance."  Instead of being imprisoned, this meant being guarded (just as effectively) in society.  His family chose to go to the country with him, but before they could leave, "Loyalty' had to enter a hospital.  He had contracted venereal disease.  The Communists had launched a major campaign to wipe out VD, and anyone who had it was obliged to undergo treatment.

His work 'under surveillance' lasted three years.  It was rather like assigned labor under parole.  People under surveillance enjoyed a measure of freedom, but they had to report to the police at regular intervals with a detailed account of everything they had done, or even thought, since their last visit, and they were openly watched by the police.

When they finished their term of formal surveillance, they would join people like Yu-lin in a looser category of 'quiet' surveillance.  One common form of this was the 'sandwich' being kept under close watch by two neighbors who had been specifically assigned this task, often called 'two reds sandwiching a black."  Of course, other neighbors, through the residents' committees, were also entitled and encouraged to report and inform on the unreliable 'black."  The 'people's justice' was watertight, and was a central instrument of rule because it enlisted so many citizens in active collusion with the state.

Zhu-ge, the scholarly looking intelligence officer who had married Miss Tanaka, my mother's Japanese teacher, was sentenced to forced labor for life and exiled to a remote border area (along with many former Kuomintang officials, he was released in an amnesty in 1959).  His wife was sent back to Japan.  As in the Soviet Union, almost all of those sentenced to detention did not go to prison but into labor camps, often working in dangerous jobs or highly polluted areas.

Some important Kuomintang figures, including intelligence men, went unpunished.  The academic supervisor at my mother's school had been district secretary of the Kuomintang, but there was evidence that he had helped to save the lives of many Communists and Communist sympathizers, including my mother, so he was spared.

The headmistress and two teachers who had worked for intelligence managed to hide, and eventually escaped to Taiwan.  So did Yao-han, the political supervisor who had been responsible for my mother's arrest.

The Communists also spared big shots like the 'last emperor," Pu Yi, and top generals because they were 'useful."  Mao's stated policy was: "We kill small Chiang Kaiosheks.  We don't kill big Chiang Kai-she ks Keeping people like Pu Yi alive, he reasoned, would 'be well received abroad."  No one could complain openly about this policy, but it was a cause of much discontent in private.

It was a time of great anxiety for my mother's family.

Her uncle Yu-lin and her aunt Lan, whose fate was hitched inexorably to that of her husband, "Loyalty," were in a state of acute uncertainty about their futures, and suffering ostracism.  But the Women's Federation ordered my mother to write one self-criticism after another, as her grief indicated she had 'a soft spot for the Kuomintang."

She was also sniped at for visiting a prisoner, Hui-ge, without asking for permission from the Federation first.

Nobody had told her she was supposed to do this.  The Federation said that they had not stopped her before because they made allowances for someone who was 'new to the revolution'; they were waiting to see how long it would take her to reach her own sense of discipline and ask the Party for instructions.

"But what are the things for which I need to apply for instructions?" she asked.

"Anything," was the answer.  The need to obtain authorization for an unspecified 'anything' was to become a fundamental element in Chinese Communist rule.  It also meant that people learned not to take any action on their own initiative.

My mother became ostracized within the Federation, which was her whole world.  There were whispers that she had been used by Hui-ge to help him prepare for a comeback.

"What a mess she got herself into," exclaimed the women, 'all because she was "loose."  Look at all these involvements with men!  And what kind of men!"  My mother felt surrounded by accusing fingers, and that the people who were supposed to be her comrades in a glorious new and liberating movement were questioning her character and her commitment, for which she had risked her life.

She was even criticized for having left the meeting of the Women's Federation to go and get married a sin termed 'putting love first."  My mother said that the city chief had asked her to go.  To this the chairwoman retorted: "But it was up to you to show your correct attitude by putting the meeting first."

Just eighteen, recently married, and full of hope for a new life, my mother felt miserably confused and isolated.

She had always trusted her own strong sense of right and wrong, but this now seemed to be in conflict with the views of her 'cause' and, often, the judgment of her husband, whom she loved.  She began to doubt herself for the first time.

She did not blame the Party, or the revolution.  Nor could she blame the women in the Federation, because they were her comrades and seemed to be the voice of the Party.  Her resentment turned against my father. She felt that his loyalty was not primarily to her and that he always seemed to side with his comrades against her.  She understood that it might be difficult for him to express his support in public, but she wanted it in private and she did not get it.  From the very beginning of their marriage, there was a fundamental difference between my parents.  My father's devotion to communism was absolute: he felt he had to speak the same language in private, even to his wife, that he did in public.  My mother was much more flexible; her commitment was tempered by both reason and emotion.  She gave a space to the private; my father did not.

My mother was finding Jinzhou unbearable.  She told my father she wanted to leave, right away.  He agreed, in spite of the fact that he was just about to receive a promotion.  He applied to the City Party Committee for a transfer, giving as the reason that he wanted to go back to his hometown, Yibin.  The Committee was surprised, as he had just told them this was exactly what he did not want to do.  Throughout Chinese history, it had been a rule that officials were stationed away from their hometowns to avoid problems of nepotism.

In the summer of 1949 the Communists were advancing southward with unstoppable momentum: they had captured Chiang Kai-shek's capital, Nanjing, and seemed certain to reach Sichuan soon.  Their experience in Manchuria had shown them that they badly needed administrators who were local and loyal.

The Party endorsed my father's transfer.  Two months after their marriage and less than one year after Liberation they were being driven out of my mother's hometown by gossip and spite.  My mother's joy at Liberation had turned to an anxious melancholy.  Under the Kuomintang she had been able to discharge her tension in action and it had been easy to feel she was doing the right thing, which gave her courage. Now she just felt in the wrong all the time.  When she tried to talk it over with my father he would tell her that becoming a Communist was an agonizing process.  That was the way it had to be.

7. "Going through the Five Mountain Passes' My Mother’s Long March (1949-1950)

Just before my parents left Jinzhou, my mother was granted provisional membership in the Party, thanks to the deputy mayor who oversaw the Women's Federation, who argued that she needed it because she was going to a new place.

The decision meant she could become a full member in one year's time, if she was deemed to have proved herself worthy.

My parents were to join a group of over a hundred people traveling to the southwest, most of them to Sichuan.

The bulk of the group were men, Communist officials from the southwest. The few women were Manchurians who had married Sichuanese.  For the journey they were organized into units and given green army uniforms. The civil war was still raging in their path.

On 27 July 1949 my grandmother, Dr.  Xia, and my mother's closest friends, most of whom were under suspicion from the Communists, came to the station to see them off.  As they stood on the platform saying goodbye, my mother felt torn by contradictory feelings.  With one part of her heart she felt like a bird which was now going to burst out of its cage and fly to the sky.  With the other part she wondered when or if- she would ever see these people she loved, particularly her mother, again.  The journey was fraught with danger, and Sichuan was still in the hands of the Kuomintang.  It was also 1,000 miles away, inconceivably far, and she had no idea if she would ever be able to get back to Jinzhou.  She felt an overwhelming desire to cry, but she held back her tears because she did not want to make her mother sadder than she already was.

As the platform slipped out of sight my father tried to comfort her. He told her that she must be strong, and that as a young student 'joining the revolution' she needed to 'go through the five mountain passes' which meant adopting a completely new attitude to family, profession, love, life-style, and manual labor, through embracing hardship and trauma.  The Party's theory was that educated people like her needed to stop being 'bourgeois' and become closer to the peasants, who formed over 8o percent of the population.  My mother had heard these theories a hundred times.  She accepted the need to reform oneself for a new China; in fact she had just written a poem about meeting the challenge of 'the storm of sand' in her future.  But she also wanted more tenderness and personal understanding, and she resented the fact that she did not get them from my father.

When the train reached Tianjin, about 25o miles to the southwest, they had to stop because the line ended.  My father said he would like to take her around the city.  Tianjin was a huge port where the United States, Japan, and a number of European states had until recently had 'concessions," extraterritorial enclaves (General Xue had died in the French concession in Tianjin, although my mother did not know this). There were whole quarters built in different foreign styles, with grandiose buildings: elegant turn-of-the-century French palaces; light Italian pa lazzi overblown, late rococo Austro-Hungarian townhouses.  It was an extraordinary condensation of display by eight different nations, all of whom had been trying to impress one another and the Chinese.  Apart from the squat, heaD', gray Japanese banks, familiar from Manchuria, and the green-roofed Russian banks, with their delicate pink-and yellow walls, it was the first time my mother had ever seen buildings like these.  My father had read a lot of foreign literature, and the descriptions of European buildings had always fascinated him.  This was the first time he had seen them with his own eyes.  My mother could tell he was going to a lot of trouble to try to fire her with his enthusiasm, but she was still down in the dumps as they strolled along the streets, which were lined with heavily scented Chinese scholar trees.  She was already missing her mother, and she could not rid herself of her anger against my father for not saying anything  sympathetic, and for his stiffness, although she knew he was trying, awkwardly, to help her out of her mood.