Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (25 page)

There was a lot of catching up to do.  My father's mother was well into her account of what had happened to the family since he had left when she said there was one thing worrying her: what was going to happen to her eldest daughter, who had looked after her in Chongqing.  This daughter's husband had died and left her some land, which she had hired a few laborers to work.  There were a lot of rumors flying around about the Communists' land reform, and the family was worried that she would be classified as a landlord and have her land taken away.  The women became emotional, their worries shading into recriminations: "What is going to happen to her?  How is she going to live?  How can the Communists do a thing like this?"

My father was hurt and exasperated.  He burst out: "I have looked forward so much to this day, to share our victory with you.  All injustice is going to be a thing of the past.  It is a time to be positive, to rejoice.  But you are so distrustful, so critical.  You only want to find fault..."

Whereupon he burst into tears like a little boy.  The women all cried too.  For him, they were tears of disappointment and frustration.  For them, the feelings must have been more complex; among them were doubt and uncertainty.

My father's mother was living in the old family home just outside the city, which had been left to her by her husband when he died.  It was a modestly luxurious country house low-lying, made of wood and brick, and walled off from the road.  It had a big garden at the front, and at the back was a field of winter plums, which gave off a delicious perfume, and thick bamboo groves, which lent it the atmosphere of an enchanted garden.  It was spotlessly clean.  All the windows were gleaming, and there was not a speck of dust anywhere.  The furniture was made of beautiful shiny padauk wood, which is a deep red, sometimes almost shading into black.  My mother fell in love with the house from her first visit, on the day after she arrived in Yibin.

This was an important occasion.  In Chinese tradition the person with the most power over a married woman was always her mother-in-law, to whom she had to be completely obedient and who would tyrannize her. When she in turn became a mother-in-law, she would bully her own daughter-in-law in the same way.  Liberating daughters-in-law was an important Communist policy, and rumors abounded that Communist daughters-in-law were arrogant dragons, ready to boss their mothers-in-law around.  Everyone was on tenterhooks waiting to see how my mother would behave.

My father had a very large extended family, and they all gathered in the house that day.  As my mother approached the front gate, she heard people whispering, "She's coming, she's coming!"  Adults were shushing their children, who were jumping around trying to catch a glimpse of the strange Communist daughter-in-law from the far north.

When my mother entered the sitting room with my father, her mother-in-law was seated at the far end on a formal, carved square padauk chair.  Leading up to her on both sides of the room, enhancing the formality, were two symmetrical rows of square, exquisitely carved padauk chairs.  A small table with a vase or some other ornament on it stood between every two chairs.  Walking up the middle, my mother saw that her mother-in-law had a very calm face, with high cheekbones (which my father had inherited), small eyes, a sharp chin, and thin lips which drooped slightly at the corners.  She was tiny, and her eyes seemed to be half closed, almost as though she were medltaling.  My mother walked slowly up to her with my father, and stopped in front of her chair.  Then she knelt and kowtowed three times.  This was the correct thing to do according to the traditional ritual, but everyone had been wondering if the young Communist would go through with it. The room burst into relieved sighs.  My father's cousins and sisters whispered to his obviously delighted mother:

"What a lovely daughter-in-law!  So gentle, so pretty, and so respectful!  Mother, you are really in good fortune?

My mother was quite proud of her little conquest.  She and my father had spent some time discussing what to do.

The Communists had said they were going to get rid of kowtowing, which they considered an insult to human dignity, but my mother wanted to make an exception, just this once.  My father agreed.  He did not want to hurt his mother, or offend his wife not after the miscarriage; and besides, this kowtow was different.  It was to make a point for the Communists.  But he would not kowtow himself, although it was expected of him.

All the women in my father's family were Buddhists, and one of his sisters, Jun-ying, who was unmarried, was particularly devout.  She took my mother to kowtow to a statue of the Buddha, to the shrines of the family ancestors which were set up on Chinese New Year, and even to the groves of winter plum.~ and bamboo in the back garden.

Aunt Jun-ying believed that every flower and every tree had a spirit. She would ask my mother to do a dozen kowtows to the bamboos to beg them not to flower, which the Chinese believed portended disaster.  My mother found all this great fun.  It reminded her of her childhood and gave her a chance to indulge her sense of playfulness.  My father did not approve, but she mollified him by saying it was just a performance to help the Communists' image.

The Kuomintang had said the Communists would wipe out all traditional customs, and she said it was important for people to see that this was not happening.

My father's family was very kind to my mother.  In spite of her initial formality, my grandmother was in fact extremely easygoing.  She seldom passed judgment, and was never critical.  Aunt Jun-ying's round face was marked by smallpox, but her eyes were so gentle that anyone could see that she was a kind woman, with whom they could feel safe and relaxed.  My mother could not help comparing her new in-laws with her own mother.  They did not exude her energy and sprightliness, but their ease and serenity made my mother feel completely at home.  Aunt Jun-ying cooked delicious spicy Sichuan food, which is quite different from the bland northern food.  The dishes had exotic names which my mother loved: 'tiger fights the dragon," 'imperial concubine chicken," 'hot saucy duck," 'suckling golden cock crows to the dawn."  My mother went to the house often, and would eat with the family, looking out into the orchard of plums, almonds, and peaches which made a sea of pink and white blossoms in early spring.  She found a warm, welcoming atmosphere among the women in the Chang family, and felt very much loved by them.

My mother was soon assigned a job in the Public Affairs Department of the government of Yibin County.  She spent very little time in the office.  The first priority was to feed the population and this was beginning to be difficult.

The southwest was the last holdout of the Kuomintang leadership, and a quarter of a million soldiers had been stranded in Sichuan when Chiang Kai-shek fled the province for Taiwan in December 1949.  Sichuan was, moreover, one of the few places where the Communists had not occupied the countryside before they took the cities.  Kuomintang units, disorganized but often well armed, still controlled much of the countryside in southern Sichuan, and most of the food supply was in the hands of landlords who were pro-Kuomintang.  The Communists urgently needed to secure supplies to feed the cities, as well as their own forces and the large numbers of Kuomintang troops who had surrendered.

At first they sent people out to try to buy food.  Many of the big landlords had traditionally had their own private armies, which now joined up with the bands of Kuomintang soldiers.  A few days after my mother reached Yibin, these forces launched a full-scale uprising in south Sichuan.  Yibin was in danger of starvation.

The Communists started sending out armed teams made up of officials escorted by army guards to collect food.  Almost everyone was mobilized.  Government offices were empty.  In the whole of the Yibin county government only two women were left behind: one was a receptionist and the other had a newborn baby.

My mother went on a number of these expeditions, which lasted many days at a time.  There were thirteen people in her team: seven civilians and six soldiers.  My mother's gear consisted of a bedroll, a bag of rice, and a heavy umbrella made of tung-oil-painted canvas, all of which she had to carry on her back.  The team had to trek for days through wild country and over what the Chinese call 'sheep's-intestine trails' treacherous narrow mountain paths winding around steep precipices and gullies.

When they came to a village they would go to the shabbiest hovel and try to form a rapport with the very poor peasants, telling them that the Communists would give people like them their own land and a happy life, and then asking them which landowners had rice hoarded.  Most of the peasants had inherited a traditional fear and suspicion of any officials.  Many had only vaguely heard of the Communists,

To Family and Bandits 2oq and everything they had heard was bad; but my mother, having quickly modified her northern dialect with a local accent, was highly articulate and persuasive.  Explaining the new policy turned out to be her forte.  If the team succeeded in getting information about the landlords, they would go and try to persuade them to sell at designated collection points, where they would be paid on delivery.

Some were scared and disgorged without much fuss.

Others informed on the team's whereabouts to one of the armed gangs. My mother and her comrades were often fired at, and spent every night on the alert, sometimes having to move from place to place to avoid attack.

At first they would stay with poor peasants.  But if the bandits found out someone had helped them, they would kill the entire household. After a number of killings, the team decided they could not jeopardize innocent people's lives.  So they slept in the open, or in abandoned temples.

On her third expedition, my mother started vomiting and suffering from dizzy spells.  She was pregnant again.

She got back to Yibin exhausted and desperate for a rest, but her team had to set off on another expedition at once.

It had been left vague what a pregnant woman should do, and she was torn about whether to go or not.  She wanted to go, and the mood at the time was very much one of self sacrifice it was considered shameful to complain about anything.  But she was frightened by the memory of her miscarriage only five months before, and by the thought of having another one in the midst of the wilderness, where there were no doctors or transportation.  Moreover, the expeditions involved almost daily bat ties with the bandits, and it was important to be able to run and run fast.  Even walking made her dizzy.

Still, she decided to go.  There was one other woman going, who was also pregnant.  One afternoon the team was settling down for lunch in a deserted courtyard.  They assumed the owner had fled, probably from them.  The shoulder-high mud walls which ran around the weed-covered yard had collapsed in several places.  The wooden gate was unlocked and was creaking in the spring breeze.

The team's rice was being prepared in the abandoned kitchen by their cook, when a middle-aged man appeared.

He had the appearance of a peasant: he was wearing straw sandals and loose trousers, with a big apronlike piece of cloth tucked up on one side into a cotton cummerbund, and he had a dirty white turban on his head.  He told them that a gang of men belonging to a notorious group of bandits known as the Broadsword Brigade was headed their way and that they were especially keen to capture my mother and the other woman in the team, because they knew they were the wives of high Communist officials.

This man was not an ordinary peasant.  Under the Kuomintang, he had been the chieftain of the local township, which governed a number of villages, including the one the team was in.  The Broadsword Brigade had tried to win his cooperation, as they did with all former Kuomintang men and landlords.  He had joined the brigade, but he wanted to keep his options open, and he was tipping off the Communists to buy insurance.  He told them the best way to escape.

The team immediately jumped up and ran.  But my mother and the other pregnant woman could not move very fast, so the chieftain led them out through a gap in the wall and helped them hide in a haystack nearby. The cook lingered in the kitchen to wrap up the cooked rice and pour cold water onto the wok to cool it down so that he could take it with him.  The rice and the wok were too precious to be abandoned; an iron wok was hard to obtain, especially in wartime.  Two of the soldiers stayed in the kitchen helping him and trying to hurry him up.  At last the cook grabbed the rice and the wok and the three of them raced for the back door.  But the bandits were already coming through the front door, and caught up with them after a few yards.  They fell on them and knifed them to death.  The gang was short of guns and did not have Enough ammunition to shoot at the rest of the team, whom they could see not far away.  They did not discover my mother andthe other woman in the haystack.

Not long afterward the gang was captured, along with the chieftain.  He was both a leader of the gang and one of the 'snakes in their old haunts," which made him eligible for execution.  But he had tipped off the team and saved the lives of the two women.  At the time, death sentences had to be endorsed by a three-man review board.  It happened that the head of the tribunal was my father.  The second member was the husband of the other pregnant woman, and the third was the local police chief.

The tribunal split two to one.  The husband of the other woman voted to spare the chieftain's life.  My father and the police chief voted to uphold the death sentence.  My mother pleaded with the tribunal to let the man live, but my father was adamant.  This was exactly what the man had been banking on, he told my mother: he had chosen this particular team to tip off precisely because he knew it contained the wives of two important officials.