01
In the spring of 1970, when I returned to Beijing from the construction site in Weixian, Hebei Province, on leave, I went to the Summer Palace with my classmates Cao Yifan and Shi Kangcheng. Spring came early that year, and the sun was so bright that even the shadows were translucent. We rode side by side, stopping the road, and the No. 32 bus, with its whistle blaring, roared by, raising a cloud of smoke and dust.
Cao Yifan was a classmate and a neighbor. He and Shi Kangcheng were the “old bubbles” who were determined to take root in Beijing during the “movement to the mountains and the countryside”. The so-called “old bubble” refers to those who stayed in the city with the bubble patients, few but not to be underestimated – in addition to having the tough nerves to resist all kinds of pressure, they also had to be well versed in pathology and forgery techniques. Fortunately, they stayed behind, and after a few months I moved to the far suburbs of Beijing with the construction site, soaking together every work break, reading, writing and listening to music, and being called the “Three Musketeers” by my neighbor Pang’s wife.
Beijing was nearly empty, and the Summer Palace was even less crowded. When I entered the main gate, I went through the Hall of Life, where the magnolia flowers were in bud, and a wooden sign read “Fines of 50 yuan for breaking flowers”. At the pier of Paiyun Hall, we rented a boat, went around the stone boat, and rowed towards the back lake. Joking along the way. The back lake was even quieter, and singing Russian folk songs drew echoes. We put away the oars and let the boat drift.
Shi Kangcheng stood at the bow of the boat and recited with his chest high: “Untie the cable of emotion / Say goodbye to the port of mother’s love / Ask from life / Do not beg from fate / The red flag is the sail / The sun is the helmsman / Please take my words / Always keep in mind ……” After a moment’s pause, he continued: “When the cobwebs relentlessly seized my hearth / When the residual smoke of ashes sighed the sorrow of poverty / I still stubbornly spread the ashes of disappointment / Write down with beautiful snowflakes: Believe in the future ……”
I was moved to ask the author who he was. “Guo Lusheng,” said Shi Kangcheng. Reading aloud He Jingzhi’s and Guo Xiaochuan’s poems has little to do with us except to be catchy, like ticket holders hoisting their voices in the morning. Initially, I liked them because of the revolution and the sound, but when the revolution declined, only the sound was left. In the construction site work roar a voice: “people should be so born, the road should be so line -“, the master comments: these boys can not find a wife, look to the anxious. And Guo Lusheng’s poem is like plucking the strings of the piano, and touched a certain nerve.
When I retired from the boat and went to the Harmony Garden, a middle-aged man sat in the corridor playing the harmonica, as intoxicated as he was, concentrating on his own thoughts. I remembered the verse again. Who is Guo Lusheng? I asked.
I don’t know, I heard that he was in Shanxi Xing Hua Village, said Shi Kangcheng with a shrug.
So it was one of us, how incredible. My seventies began with those poetic spring days. At that time, almost everyone wrote old-fashioned poems with clichés, but Guo Lusheng’s poems were different and opened an unexpected window into my life.
02
At noon one day in late September 1971, five minutes short of 12 o’clock, I rushed to the radio station inside the cafeteria as usual, cracked open various switches, and played “The East is Red” first. The record was played so many times that it sizzled and the big cymbal that shone like the rising sun had a broken sound. Near the end, I lowered the volume of the music and announced that the radio station at the Dongfang Hong Refinery site in the third construction area would now start broadcasting. I was able to make my voice an octave higher, with the right words, referring to the standard of the CCTV news broadcast. After reading the editorial, I read the report of the site correspondent, which was full of typos, and the speed of speech was fast and slow, like a tape recorder fast-forwarding or losing turn, but no one listened carefully, and the crowd was noisy – it was lunch time. 12:25, another announcer “Donkey” came to take over the shift. The broadcast ended at one o’clock with the sound of the International Anthem.
In the canteen window to buy food, I went to the stage behind the curtain, which is the site youth lunch place. I said I was “eating and living” with the master workers, “living” had to be – dozens of people sleeping in the bunk, “eating” with “It is difficult, in addition to the topic, there are differences in the food: the youth wages are low, but are bachelors, special order more than 20 cents of the A-class dishes; and the master pulling the family, only buy five cents 10 cents of the C-class dishes.
The first night, in the canteen held a general meeting of all workers, just before the curtain, by the secretary to convey the central documents. There were ominous signs long before the transmission. First, the site leaders met in secret, similar to the Politburo meeting; the next set of party cadres, going out each with a black face; the last turn to our working class, which is tantamount to announcing to the world: September 13, Vice Marshal Lin fell to his death on the way to the Soviet Union by plane.
When it comes to political learning, “lightning strikes”, from Monday to Friday, every night, to the shift as a unit. After a day’s work, first seize the favorable terrain, snooze and refreshment roll “cannon”. In addition to the central documents and editorials, but also learn everything, from the “Water Margin” to “anti-Durin theory”, which can be difficult for the teacher who does not know the words. And the young people came to the spirit, read the newspaper and read the documents. Those proper nouns sank in the smoke. Master Meng Qingjun spit on the spit and started to curse: Du Lin this kid is really not a fucking thing, dare to oppose Chairman Mao, first shot. The squad leader Liu and Rong heard a happy: small Meng, learn half a day you do not understand, people now in Germany as a professor, even Engels can not control. Gags, political learning has become entertainment. The deputy class leader Zhou Zenger (nicknamed “more ears than chicken”) coughed dryly and declared the meeting adjourned. The political study had at least one advantage: it spread knowledge of international geography – Tirana the day before yesterday, Phnom Penh yesterday, and now where is it? By the way, Wendur Khan.
I came behind the curtain with my lunch pot and sat down on the floor. The specter of Vice Admiral Lim guides the lunch conversation with seven words, including assumptions about escape routes and so on. I opened my mouth to speak, a stream of single-bounce vocabulary idioms. The torrent was inexhaustible. I talked about the paradox of revolution and power, about Marx’s “doubt everything”, about the spiritual way out of our generation …… until An Zhisheng stabbed me with his elbow, and only then did I see the trepidation in the eyes of the crowd, and they got up and said goodbye. The backstage was empty in the blink of an eye, and we were left with the two of us. The original An Zhisheng is the thirteenth, and I work in the same class group, like-minded, both with a long backbone. In those days, friendship often depended on the degree of political trust. We walked through the curtain in silence, down the stairs, and went to the sink to brush the dishes.
On the way back to the shed to pick up the shovel, I was still reveling in the excitement of free expression. Once again, I was troubled by the recurring theme of the Cultural Revolution: Where is China going? We had read and debated, doubted and wavered, but never had we felt this sense of crisis – like being in the abyss, with no way back. I was up all night, like waking up from a big dream – where is China going? Perhaps more importantly, where was I going?
A Kai (my nickname at the construction site), An Zhisheng said, breaking the silence. You have to be more careful. Don’t be so honest. If someone had reported what I just said, it would have been the end.
I tried to recall what I had just said, but couldn’t focus my thoughts. The times, what a heavy word, it is overwhelming. But we were at the peak of these times. A feeling of abandonment – we were suddenly the orphans of our time. At that very moment, I heard a cry from within: I don’t believe-
03
One spring night in 1973, Shi Baojia and I arrived at Yongdingmen Railway Station, accompanied by Song Haiquan from the former Tsinghua High School. Our destination was Di Zhuang, Baiyangdian, to visit Zhao Jingxing and Tao Luozhuan, who were in the army there. Zhao Jingxing was a classmate of mine at Beijing No. 4 Middle School, one level below me, and Tao Luozhan was a classmate of Shi Baojia’s Girls’ High School. 1969, Zhao Jingxing was branded a “counter-revolutionary” for writing a philosophical manuscript, and was imprisoned with his girlfriend Tao Luozhan, who was released six months ago.
To raise money for the trip, I sent my watch to a commissioning company to sell it – as if we were traveling outside of time. While waiting for the bus, I stopped at a small restaurant for a snack, and there was a very poetic dish called “cinnamon loin”. I drifted off to sleep at the table while Pauja and Song Haiquan chatted. The steam whistle sounded.
We were on a slow train that left at zero o’clock, creaking and rattling, stopping at almost every little station. We arrived in Baoding in the early morning, took a long-distance bus to Anxin County, parted with Song Haizhuan, then took a fishing boat and arrived at Di Zhuang at noon. The village is a small village of a hundred or so families, surrounded by water on all sides, a row of brick houses at the north end of the village is the youth dormitory, they live in two rooms at the end, there is a piece of land in front of the door, planting melons and beans.
Tao Luo chanting screaming, and Bao Jia and hug and hug. Zhao Jingxing smiled haughtily, his eyes squinted and glittered behind his black-rimmed glasses. We bought pork and eggs from the villagers and cooked together over a fire, the aroma overflowing. We raised a glass in the dim light. We had mixed feelings – the joy of reunion, the celebration after the robbery, the confusion of youth, and the worry about the obscure times. The shortwave radio played foreign classical music, wavering and interspersed with odd Chinese gospel sermons. In the waters of northern China, four young men, one lonely lamp, talked from country to prison, from philosophy to poetry, until the break of dawn.
The vast space of Baiyangdian seems designed to show the flow of time – the changing of the seasons and the laying out of the characteristic colors. Many Beijing youths settled here in search of freedom and peace. In fact, Baiyangdian was not a place to escape from the chaos of the world; at the end of 1968, my classmates and I came to conduct an educational survey, just in time for the armed struggle, and were besieged in the county guest house for many days, under fire. We were forced by the rebels to attend the memorial service for those who died in the struggle.
When the school organized the criticism of Zhao Jingxing, circulated Tao Luo recited a line from a love letter: “Before the maiden stood the eighteen-year-old philosopher ……” to make us envious. Zhao Jingxing is introverted, does not talk much, and is strong-willed. Tao Luo recitation is just the opposite, she is lively by nature, unstoppable, and always the center of the party. During our three days in Di Zhuang, we often went out by boat. At sunset, the lake was dyed red until the twilight rose and the moon was in the sky.
One afternoon, when I was alone with Kyung-Hsing Cho, he opened the opening chapter of the fourth volume of War and Peace and wanted to hear my opinion. It was the author’s discourse on life in Petersburg after the defeat, and there was this passage (as far as I could remember): “But the settled, luxurious, Petersburg life, which only worries about some phantom of reality, remains the same, through which it takes a great deal of effort to realize the dangers and difficulties of the situation of the common people of Russia… …”
Seeing my bewildered face, he said: for Tolstoy, history is not only about the accounts of princes and nobles. And it is the daily life of the common people that is the most important part of history that is ignored.
Are you talking about the current history of China as well? I ask.
History has to do with the will to power, and the suffering of the literati is often exaggerated in the writing of history. And who has ever really cared about the common people? Look at the peasants around us. They live and die, and they have nothing to do with the written history. He said.
Leaving Di Zhuang, we went to visit Mangke in Dadian Tou. Mangk is a physical education teacher in an elementary school. When we went into the village and asked the children, all of them knew each other, and they led us to the elementary school. Mangk had just finished playing basketball with the students and was sweating profusely as he took us to his place. The hut was low and dark, but clean and neat, and on the small table by the bed was a hardback notebook of his poetry.
Munch unhooked and sculled, as light as a swallow, with the swaying sky behind him. The wind was slightly chilly as it had just thawed. It was Munch who brought Baiyangdian, the fields and the sky into his poetry: “That cold and great imagination / It is you who are transforming the desolation of our lives.” The year 1973 was the peak of Munch’s poetry. He wrote a dedication to his twenty-third birthday: “Young, beautiful, and thoughtful.”
04
One early morning in late November 1974, I finished the last line of my middle-grade novel “Fluctuation” and breathed a long sigh of relief. The masters next door were greeting me by rinsing their mouths and peeing, and Tinker Bell was banging his rice bowl to the canteen. I pulled open the curtains of the dark room, a thin ray of sunlight leaked in, fell on the desktop, and then refracted to the ceiling.
A month or so ago, the site publicity team Meng officer approached me, asking me to take off work for the site to engage in photography publicity exhibition, I did not move, my heart screamed: God help me. I was worried about the middle story I was thinking of. First of all, dozens of people slept on bunks, waited for everyone to fall asleep before starting to read and write, turned on the homemade desk lamp – foam brick lamp base, straw hat lampshade, and then covered with overalls. Then again, in order to earn a few dollars, the master especially like to work overtime, back to the dormitory in the middle of the night tired of thieves, the energy to read and write are exhausted.
This is still the good fortune of my “enthusiast” brand Czech camera: to the masters to take standard family portraits of posthumous photos, plus free photo washing, reputation. I bargained with Officer Meng, while calculating the layout of the novel: first of all, to build a special dark room, with a double layer of black and red fabric for curtains, from the door inside the pin – the reason is very simple, the film paper is extremely sensitive, someone mistakenly entered, the revolutionary achievements will be destroyed. Officer Meng nodded his head and said yes.
The dark room was built, and a row of collective dormitory wooden rooms adjacent, two meters square, a bed, a table and a chair, but a single door. Move in, draw the curtains, reverse the door, look around. I pinched my thighs and it was all true: I became the king of the smallest kingdom in the world.
With the curtains drawn all day and no day or night, I locked myself in a dark room except when I went out to take pictures. Around the manuscript paper were the enlarging machine I had designed and asked the master to make, as well as pots and pans holding various medicinal solutions, and from the darkness I developed photographs as well as novels, like an alchemist. When the site manager inspects the site, he will wait for it, and when the door is opened, they are amazed at the modern technology. I then take standard photos to “bribe” them, with cloth paper retouching plus vignette outline, each shiny like an apple duck pear, happy.
Wang Xinhua, an erector from the former 13th Middle School, was working nearby in those days and often came to visit. He knew I was writing a novel, so I simply showed him some of the chapters. He not only kept up with my writing, but also gave advice and even intervened in the original. He thought the name of the heroine, Xiao Ling, was bad and had to be changed because it meant pinning down the soul.
The dark room seemed to be designed for “Fluctuation”, with the closed structure of a stage set, the form of multi-part monologue and the obscure tone of the narration. The moment I finished the first draft in the morning light, I was exhausted but in a state of high excitement.
When I bound the manuscript into a book, the first person I thought of was Zhao Yifan. We had been close friends since we met in 1971. He was a central figure in Beijing’s underground cultural circle, disabled and paralyzed since childhood, and his big brain was full of whimsical ideas. He lived with his family in a large compound, and in the corner of the backyard, he had a small room of his own.
When I sat down at his desk, I pulled out the manuscript from my book bag. Yifan raised his eyebrows in amazement and asked in a shrill voice, “Is it finished? I nodded my head. He flipped through the manuscript with his two large hands, turned to the last page, looked up and pursed his lips in satisfaction.
You can leave the manuscript with me. Seeing that I had a difficult look on my face, he went on to say, “You know, my public identity is the secretary of the street branch, and this is the safest place in all of Beijing.
Thinking about it, I left the manuscript behind. But when I got home, I was not sure how to feel, especially his overconfident tone, which made me feel uneasy. On the third day after work, I rushed to his house and had to take the manuscript away on the pretext of revising it. I was looking straight at me with narrowed eyes and beads of sweat on his brain, spreading his hands out and sighing helplessly.
05
In early February 1975, it had just snowed and the roads were muddy. I rode my bicycle east along Chaonei Street, turned south on the east side of the People’s Literature Publishing House building, and got off at No. 11 of the former Kuanjie Hutong. In the potholes in the front yard, the bicycle fender clanged as usual. When I looked up, I saw a seal crossed on the door with the red seal of the Beijing Public Security Bureau. Suddenly, four or five old men and women from the neighborhood committee appeared and surrounded me, grabbing my bike like an octopus. They interrogated me about my name and unit, and my relationship with Zhao Yifan. I made up my own words, and when they relaxed a little, broke through the siege, turned over and jumped on the bike and ran away.
I went home in a state of shock. When people are in danger, they always take a chance, but when I think of the years of correspondence and his collection of manuscripts, my heart is solid. What frightened me was the Soviet-made reproduction machine hiding in the corner, which must have been the most advanced reproduction technology at that time. If the manuscript of “Fluctuation” was reproduced by him and fell into the hands of the police, he would be imprisoned for at least eight to ten years, if not for a capital crime. I carefully calculated the time needed for the remake: the manuscript was kept in his house for two nights, which should be more than enough according to his superior energy and operating skills. But I was lucky, since the manuscript was in his custody, why rush it?
The day after the incident, the site publicity team to relieve me of the “chief photographer” position, expelled from the darkroom, back to the original team to supervise labor. Photography publicity exhibition ended without a hitch. Meng officer announced the decision, looking down at his fingernails, a sneer, as if finally solved the mystery of the darkroom.
I was ashamed, rolled up and moved back to the ironworking class dormitory. Chen Quan asked me what had happened. He is a sheet metal worker from the countryside, my iron brother. But it is difficult to explain the circumstances. Chen Quan sighed and said: I know you’re good at this – reading and writing, but what year is this? Don’t bump into the gun. I was too annoyed, waved my hand outside, and he walked out the door humming a yellow ditty.
I continue to beat iron every day. On the anvil, Master Yan’s small hammer clanking guidance, while my 14-pound sledgehammer is fast and slow, the point is not accurate. He was wondering about it, but he didn’t care. Security team of people all day in the ironworker class around, and master chatting and family life, but ignore me.
After work, I was busy transferring the manuscript of my letters, saying goodbye to my friends and preparing for prison. I went to see Peng Gang, an underground pioneer painter who lived near Beijing Railway Station. When he heard about my situation, he borrowed five dollars from his sister and went to the Western restaurant of the Xin Qiao Hotel to bid me farewell. He was six or seven years younger than me and had already been imprisoned twice. During the meeting, he analyzed the case and taught me how to deal with the interrogation. He said that the key is to never believe in “confession is lenient, resistance is strict”. In front of the Xin Qiao Hotel break up, the wind at first, the sky is full of sand and gravel. He patted me on the shoulder, sighed and walked away sadly.
That year I was twenty-six years old, the first time I knew the taste of fear: it is everywhere, shallow is touching the skin – shudder; deep can enter the bone marrow – vague pain. It was a dark tunnel with no end, and I had to walk forward. I even looked forward to the end, good or bad. I would toss and turn at night, and even when I fell asleep, I would be awakened by passing cars, listening to see if they were parked downstairs. Reflections of headlights swirled on the ceiling and quietly disappeared while I watched until dawn.
After a few months, the danger seemed to pass. Awareness of danger is an animal instinct, unspeakable, but after all, there were signs: the defense team appeared less frequently and met occasionally to say hello; there were signs of political loosening: Romanian films were released in cinemas; the girls wore subtle changes, revealing brightly colored underwear from the collars of their uniforms.
I decided to get my hands dirty and revise “Flux”. First of all, I was unhappy with the first draft, and I didn’t want to be left in an unfinished state. Besides, I had been scared, so I was emboldened. When I was writing at home, my parents were scared and nagged me a lot. I complained to Huang Rui, who said that his eldest sister Huang Ling’s family lived in the commune of Thirteen Lings, and that there was a vacant room.
I took a week’s sick leave through the back door, carried a folding bed, and took a long-distance bus to the far suburbs of Changping County. At dusk, I found a large compound according to the address and inquired with the boy at the door. He happened to know Huang Ling, and led the way for me through the maze of drying clothes and sheets, straight to the depths. Huang Ling and her newlywed husband had just gotten off work and greeted me for dinner. A few doors down, they had another hut, with a table and chairs and cardboard boxes stacked in the corner. The folding bed, I can not help but feel good: the sky is high, the emperor is far away, finally found the “paradise”.
Without curtains, I was awakened by the sun very early. Spreading out the paper on the table, I opened the film script “Casablanca” published by China Film Press. I had borrowed this little book for many days and loved it. It was extremely useful for my revisions, especially the dialogues, which were the most difficult part of the novel.
I had just written a line when there was a knock on the door and a couple of people looking through the window like a neighborhood association. I turned the paper and book upside down, opened the door, and blocked their view with my shoulder. The middle-aged woman in the lead said dryly, “We’re here to check hygiene.” I had no choice but to get out of the way. They went around the room, touching the east and moving the west, and finally landed their eyes on the upside-down manuscript paper. The woman asked me what I was doing here, and replied that I was recovering from illness and reading. She touched a corner of the manuscript paper, hesitated for a moment, but did not turn it over. When they couldn’t find out, they left unhappily.
I was just about to write the second line when the boy who led the way last night tapped on the glass window. He entered the room looking panicked and whispered to me: just now, I heard them say that you must be writing a pornographic novel. They are going to the police station to report it. You should go now. I was touched, stroked his head and said: I’m here to get well, it’s okay. I have to thank you, you are very kind! He blushed. Leave a note to Huang Ling. Five minutes later, I carried the folding bed across the yard and fled in haste.
07
One afternoon in early August 1976, accompanied by my classmate Xu Jinbo, I went to the Xinjiekou stationery store to buy a thick hardcover notebook and a lowercase brush, and went home to find a razor blade. I opened the title page of the notebook, and under the guidance of Xu Jinbo, I held the blade in my right hand, hesitated for a moment, and made a cut on my left middle finger. The pain was sharp. As the wound was not deep, only a few drops of blood seeped out, I gritted my teeth and made another deep cut, and the blood gushed out and gathered in my palm. I put down the blade and wrote on the title page with a brush dipped in blood: “Shanshan, my dear sister”, and tears came to my eyes.
About ten days ago, in the evening of July 27, 1976, there was only my mother and I at home. She had been transferred back to the medical office of the head office of the People’s Bank of China, and my father was still working at the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference cadre school in Changping.
That day after dinner came a guest named Jiang Hui, she is petite and cute, her husband is a high cadre son. She had written a long political novel about the power struggle within the Party during the Cultural Revolution, with Jiang Qing as one of the main characters. To be honest, the novel was crudely written, but the topic was sensitive and was being circulated underground in secret.
At around 9:30, Jiang Hui got up and said goodbye. I accompanied her downstairs to the entrance of the compound, and the gatekeeper, Mr. Zhang, came out of the communication room and said your family long-distance call. Jiang Hui accompanied me into the communication room. Pick up the handset, first the ear-splitting sound of electricity, telephone operators call each other. It turned out to be a long-distance call from Xiangfan South Barrier County in Hubei, the factory where Shanshan is located. Finally came the voice of a young man, surnamed Li, also a son of the People’s Bank of China head office. His voice is near and far, intermittent: Shanshan, she, she …… this afternoon …… swimming in the river …… missing, you do not rush, the whole factory is looking for …… you better send someone to come ……
I gripped the receiver tightly and heard the boom of my own blood. The lights in the transmission room were shaking. Jiang Hui’s concerned gaze and distant voice. I was at a loss for words, clutching her hand and mumbling, to calm down, gesturing for her to go first.
When I returned home, my mother asked me what had happened, and I stonewalled. I rode my bike to the telegraph building and called my father and brother separately. I told my father that Shanshan was sick and asked him to come home tomorrow morning. When I spoke to my brother, I said “Shanshan was flooded”, avoiding the word “death”.
When I got home again, my mother was already lying down, and she suddenly asked in the darkness, “What happened? I said nothing, let her sleep first. I sat at the dining room table in the outer room, my mind blank. We have the deepest relationship as siblings, but lately, due to my own troubles, I seldom write back to her.
At 3:42 a.m., the ground shook, the frames on the wall fell to the ground, and the furniture rattled. From outside came the sound of collapsing houses and cries for help. The first thing I thought of was the end of the world, and there was a hint of pleasure in my heart. The neighbors shouted, and then I realized it was a big earthquake. I helped my mother and poured downstairs with the people. The compound was full of panicked people with unkempt clothes. I heard that the earthquake was centered in the Tangshan area.
My father and brother rushed back in the morning, and friends and relatives came to meet in the chaos of the compound. That’s when I received a letter from Shanshan, written three days earlier. In the letter, she said that everything was fine, except that this summer was particularly hot and that we should take care of ourselves.
It was finally agreed that my cousin’s husband would accompany my father and me to Xiangfan, first without my mother’s knowledge. My father and I went upstairs together to get our travel supplies. He was in front, hunched over, almost crawling, and I followed closely behind, stumbling and stumbling, wanting to reconcile with my father, who had been arguing for years, and hug him and cry.
Due to the earthquake, traffic was congested and chaotic all the way to Xiangfan, and the carriages were overcrowded. When we arrived at our destination, we learned about the accident: On the afternoon of July 27, Shanshan took some girls to swim in the Savage River. A pair of young sisters were swept away and their sister disappeared in the whirlpool. Shanshan grabbed her sister and swam with her to the shore, using all her strength to hold her to the shore, and due to physical exhaustion, she herself was swept away by the rapids. The next morning, only in the downstream to find the body. She gave her life in this way at the age of 23.
In the empty room filled with ice, I held her left hand, which had a black mole, and cried out loud. When she was cremated the next day, I put the poem she wrote on her twentieth birthday into the coffin. I spent my days wandering like a wandering soul, from the dormitory to the office, from the path where she was seen to the place of the accident. I threw handfuls of wild chrysanthemums into the river.
In her diary, I found a line of poetry she had written: “A path in the blue sky.” Yes, how attractive it was to be free and die together. On the way home, I felt the temptation to go under the wheel at times. But I knew that besides taking care of my parents, there were more important things waiting for me to accomplish, for Shanshan’s sake as well as my own. I assumed the will of two lives.
The blood in my palm was almost exhausted, and Xu Jinbo helped me squeeze the wound to let more blood flow out. I wrote on the title page of the memorial book: Shanshan, my dear sister, I will follow your free soul, for the dignity of man, for a goal worthy of dedication, I will be as brave as you and never look back …… (to wit)
09
On December 20, 1978, a rare heavy snow fell in Beijing, and almost all details were covered with white. At the north end of the embassy district of Sanlitun there is a small river called Liangma River. After crossing a small wooden bridge, there is a nameless small village, and then along a curved path uphill, turning into a small farmhouse, the west room that is Lu Huanxing’s house. He is a technician of Beijing Automobile Factory branch. His wife’s name is Shen Liling, and her singing voice is as sweet as her name. “At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, she was sent home to Shandong with her parents, and has been petitioning for years.
The area between the city and the countryside (now called the urban-rural area) has become a blind spot for strict rule. Since the mid-seventies, we have been meeting here almost every week, drinking and singing, talking about the world. At the end of each month, everyone came to exchange their “monthly tickets”, and Lu Huanxing was a master of this, never making a mistake.
In the afternoon of December 20, Zhang Pengzhi, Sun Junshi, Chen Jiaming, Mangke, Huang Rui and I arrived one after another, plus Lu Huanxing, making a total of seven. At the last minute before the work started, Huang Rui finally found a mimeograph machine, which was old and broken, apparently after the baptism of the Cultural Revolution. The mimeograph was a state-controlled device, so it was lucky to find one. Everyone immediately went to work – engraving wax plates, printing, folding, and working around the clock.
On April 5, 1978, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) decided to remove all the rightists’ labels, and on May 11, Guangming Daily published a special commentator’s article “Practice is the only criterion for testing the truth”, which became an important signal of political relaxation. On October 17, Guizhou poet Huang Xiang led a group to post poems in Beijing’s Wangfujing, including banners with slogans such as “Demolish the Great Wall, Dredge the Canal” and “The Great Wall of China should be destroyed. On November 14, the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) vindicated the 1976 April Fifth Incident, and from December 18 to 22, the CPC Central Committee held the third session of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee. An important message: “The wall of democracy is a good thing.”
One evening in late September 1978, Munk and I had dinner in the small courtyard of Huang Rui’s house, drinking and chatting around a small table under a large poplar tree, and were particularly excited about the changing situation. How about we start a literary journal? I suggested. Munk and Huang Rui responded in unison. In the sinking twilight, our faces were suddenly illuminated by alcohol.
We met twice a day, discussing the guidelines for the publication, writing manuscripts, and collecting printing equipment and paper. Paper was not a problem. Munk is a paper mill worker, Huang Rui in the factory propaganda section of the odd jobs, every day after work with a coat book bag “Shun” out. Zhang Pengzhi built a small shack in the courtyard, which became the place to hold editorial meetings. We often argued until late at night. Zhang Pengzhi kept playing the old records, especially the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, the melody stirred our hearts.
From December 20, we worked for three days and two nights. With the small curtains drawn over the windows, we worked from morning to night in the dim light, and whoever was tired fell down to sleep for a while. Lu Huanxing cooked for everyone, three meals of fried noodles a day. In the middle of the night, we went out together to relieve ourselves, creaking on the snow, lining up along the creek to take a shit, and looking at the lights of the embassy district on the other side. The dirty ice on the river reflected the dark light. The Landmark River was like a border river, separating us from the other world.
On December 22 (the closing of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China), we worked until 10:30 p.m. when we finally finished, piling pages on the floor and bed, smelling strongly of ink. After three days of eating fried noodles, the appetite, we decided to go to a restaurant to celebrate a good. We rode our bikes to a restaurant in Dongsijie (one of the few nighttime restaurants in the city), sat down around a small table, and asked for a bottle of dipotou in addition to the meal.
As we ate, we discussed the next step. The first step was to post Today all over Beijing, including government departments (Zhongnanhai, Ministry of Culture), cultural institutions (Academy of Social Sciences, People’s Literature Publishing House, People’s Literature and Poetry Magazine) and public spaces (Tiananmen Square, Xidan), as well as institutions of higher learning (Peking University, Tsinghua University, National People’s Congress, Beijing Normal University, etc.). After deciding on the posting route, we then discussed who would post the poems. Lu Huanxing, Munk and I – three workers and two singles – volunteered and decided to leave the next morning.
When we came out of the night restaurant, we were slightly drunk. There were tears when we hugged each other, including my own – the trip was unlikely, and when we would be together. You guys are so fucking useless, why are you shedding tears? Lu Huanxing spit on the ground, cursing.
On my way home, I broke up with my friends one by one. I rode wobbly, not in a straight line, plus the road is icy, almost fell. The street was empty. The stars, the shadows of the trees, the glow of the streetlights, and the eaves of the houses that rise up like boats sailing in the dark. Beijing is so beautiful. “Untie the cable of emotion / Say goodbye to the port of mother’s love / To ask for life / Not to beg from fate / The red flag is the sail / The sun is the helmsman / Please take my words / Forever in your heart ……” I remembered the first time I heard the lines of Guo Lusheng’s poem, my eyes filled with Tears. The feeling of facing death is beautiful. Youth is beautiful.
October 2008
From The Seventies, edited by Bei Dao and Li Tuo, Sanlian Bookstore, 2009
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