1
Nowadays, many Chinese people like to have dogs, and they are all famous foreign dogs. Among the dogs, one class is the most inconspicuous, that is, the Chinese Cavalier, commonly known as “soil dog”. The protagonist of this article, Black Bean, is a dog.
After the “Gang of Four” was smashed, all walks of life in the country began to set things right and gradually get on the right track. The people at R Publishing House in the capital are busy every day, trying to regain the time delayed by the Cultural Revolution. However, no matter how busy they were, everyone rushed to the cafeteria at noon every day, not because they were hungry, but because they were eager to meet their common friends. It was not because they were hungry, but to meet their common friend, Hei Dou, a dog with a limp on both hind legs. Black Bean was originally from Xianning, Hubei Province, but how did he end up in a national publishing house in the capital? And why are they so beloved by the people there?
In 1969, the “Cultural Revolution” entered its third year, and also entered the stage of “purging the class ranks. With the birth of this “new thing”, the “May 7 Cadre School”, many of Beijing’s ministry cultural institutions were “wiped out”. All cadres and employees, no matter if they were healthy or old, sick or disabled, were sent to the “May 7 Cadre School” for re-education.
More than a hundred people from a national publishing house in Beijing came to a commune near the highway in Xianning, Hubei province. The commune arranged for them to go to a militia training camp in the commune, which had been a PLA post in the 1950s and 1960s, but was later vacated by the troops, leaving the commune to conduct militia training here every winter. For the other three seasons, each production brigade sends people to take turns watching the house and taking care of a few acres of melon fields nearby. Because of the “rotation” and “by the way,” people have no sense of responsibility, so the barracks here have become more and more dilapidated year after year, and the melons in the melon fields have been growing year after year until they are stolen.
However, there is a dutiful “resident population” here – black beans and hyena dogs. I don’t know which group of militiamen brought him here in which year, and I don’t know if his owner left him here intentionally or not, but he has called it home ever since. He grew up in hunger, never knowing the taste of meat, and even rice was an extravagant luxury. He ate moldy black beans thrown away by people all year round, and the fact that he was black all over gave him the name “Black Bean. Don’t look at this guy all black and bony, but he is energetic and selfless. Throughout the year, whoever comes to the melon field to steal melons or to the barracks to break down doors and windows, no matter if they know him or not, he will chase after them. He would chase after them and bark, “Woof! Woof! Woof!” Although the results are not always what the “dog” intended.
2
Black Bean had never seen this formation before, and more than a hundred men came and set up camp here. They settled down according to the military establishment of company, platoon and squad. The group dormitory (even if husband and wife were temporarily separated) rooms, large and small meeting rooms, kitchen canteens, men’s and women’s latrines were all available. In the midst of all the hustle and bustle of the people, Black Bean also jumped up and down, barking and shouting, and did his best to welcome these unexpected visitors from afar.
Soon, Black Bean became acquainted with the people of R Publishing House, because firstly, since the liberation, dogs were not allowed in big cities, so in the eyes of these city people, Black Bean was like a long-lost friend, and secondly, the presence and enthusiasm of Black Bean was a soothing agent for people who were depressed and away from their families in Beijing. Later on, it was proved that in the short years of living with black beans, people found in them the “truth, goodness and beauty” that had been lost in the endless class struggle of “struggling with others and having fun”. As the old saying goes, “Dogs are humane. When the humanity of man is annihilated, fortunately, the dog’s humanity is still alive.
3
Black beans were never hungry again, and every day the kitchen cafeteria became a paradise for it to gorge itself on the leftovers of people’s meals. It no longer had to worry about finding black, moldy beans every day that had been eaten for the last time without any next meal. Of course, it will be able to live up to this hard-earned ration.
In the early days of the May 7 Cadet School, one remembers that the two biggest headaches there were the early morning “morning instructions” and the late-night visits to the latrine.
Before coming here, cultural institutions like the R Press had already been taken over by the military propaganda team, so everything was militarized. This was especially true for the May 7 Cadet School. The first and foremost is to take roll call every morning and “ask for permission early”. The old men were still inside getting dressed and tying their shoelaces, and the black beans must have been inside with them. Sometimes the representatives of the military got tired of waiting outside and would run in to scold them. Then the black bean would scamper forward and shout: Woof! Woof! Woof! It’s like saying, “Don’t rush them. The latter is very embarrassed and always shouts with resentment, “Bastard, mind your own business.
In the rural areas, going to the toilet on a winter night is the most unpleasant thing for city dwellers, especially the elderly, who have to get out of their hot blankets and walk to the outside of the house in the dark against the bitter cold of the night. When it rains and snows, it is even more miserable. But wait, the black beans would surely be waiting outside the door. They will send you there and come back with you, not to warm you up physically, but to give you some comfort psychologically.
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The battle to purge the class ranks began. The objects of the purge were divided in this way: if you had joined the Kuomintang’s Three Youth League before liberation (even if it was a collective one), you must be the “remnants” of the Kuomintang’s reactionary faction; if you had studied abroad and returned to China, you must be an “American spy”. “British spy”, “Japanese spy” or “Soviet spy”; you must have been a “labor thief” if you participated in the labor movement or student movement before liberation! “If you were born to landlords or capitalists, you must be a “filial son and grandson” of the exploiting class. “If you are a leading cadre, you must be Liu Shaoqi’s revisionist black-liner; if you are young and he doesn’t like you, you must be “a revisionist sapling cultivated in the old school of seventeen years”. All in all, if you want to commit a crime, why not give an excuse?
So, from everyone’s passing to focused criticism, from internal investigation to external deployment, from surprise attack to fatigue bombing. Here, all the most basic qualities of human beings: benevolence, love, and dignity are trampled to the ground. Here, a group of cats plays with every mouse in their paws; here, I am a fish on the chopping block.
Gradually, some attentive, unconcerned participants (neither hoarse fighters nor exhausted fighters) discovered a strange thing. Black beans would sneak in every big and small critique session, and then quietly lie at the feet of the critics, staring ahead with their chins in the mud and their worried eyes (they didn’t understand why a group of people would come all the way out here to “kill” each other). Black beans are always in the small room.
Particularly before large scale criticism meetings, when the leaders are in “pre-war mobilization” and the victims are locked up in another hut waiting for “criticism”, Black Bean is always there to accompany them. As the old saying goes: “A dog’s eye sees a man as low. The kind-hearted black bean seems to be a different kind of bean; why does it always side with the weak?
On a winter night, outside the house, it was damp and cold with snow and rain. Inside the house, a white-knuckle battle of “class struggle” was in full swing, with Mr. and Mrs. Zhao, formerly respected translators of R Publishing, on the defensive, and the “revolutionary masses” on the offensive. One of them said, “Zhao, who deserved to die, dared to call the great leader’s English name, “Chairman Mao,” which means “cut bread. How can this be tolerated, and how can this not be tolerated? The crowd was in an uproar, shouting: account! Deliver! Plead guilty! Plead guilty! In those days, “great disrespect” to the Great Leader was the number one current counter-revolutionary act and was punishable by death. Those who attacked said yes, while those who argued said no. The Great Leader was the first counter-revolutionary to be killed.
Mr. Zhao hurriedly defended: “We love our country so much and have so much respect for the Great Leader that we gave up our privileged life abroad and came back to participate in socialist construction. How could we do such a thing? Besides, translation work is a very serious job, and I have studied rigorously all my life, so I would never joke about it!”
Mr. Zhao’s defense, which he thought was seamless, was attacked even more fiercely: “How dare you, a lackey of imperialism, say that socialism is inferior to capitalism.” “How dare you, an academic authority of the bourgeoisie, put on the reactionary airs of a teacher.” In fact, Mr. Zhao’s best defense at this time should be to say repeatedly: “I deserve to die, I deserve to die, I deserve to die.”
I remember that one of my colleagues in the Cultural Revolution was criticizing him for making a lot of mistakes at the meeting, and he was sent to the public security authorities by the revolutionary masses. He was unjustly imprisoned for ten days in the detention center.
The waves of criticism against Mr. Zhao continued to rise, and Mr. Zhao, an old intellectual who was willing to accept the truth and not beat about the bush, replied with three words: “I never said that.” The atmosphere of the meeting was about to reach the level of a “no-questions-asked” speech. Seeing that the atmosphere of the meeting was about to reach the critical point of “twisting and turning,” the leader of the meeting thought to himself: “This is a remote area, dozens of miles from the nearest county public security bureau, we do not have any transportation, and now it is cold and windy and muddy roads. Who would want to suffer this to be ‘twisted’?” So he cooled down at the right time and announced that the meeting was adjourned for today and would continue tomorrow.
Mr. and Mrs. Zhao are old, frail, and sickly, and they are both highly nearsighted. In order not to add to the troubles of others, the cadre had arranged from the beginning for the couple to live in a melon shed less than a hundred meters away from the army, and usually a colleague would send them back to the shed after the evening meeting. But in today’s atmosphere, who would dare to volunteer to “lose their class position” if the leaders don’t speak up?
The door was blown open by a bitterly cold wind and wet snow, and the old couple walked out with a plastic umbrella and a flashlight, holding each other up.
What happened next was what Mr. Zhao told a “compassionate” colleague a few days later.
When he left the house, he heard the black beans “Woof! Woof! Woof!” The bark of the black beans. So they followed the intermittent barking of the black beans running to them, as they trudged along the muddy country lane in the cold and wind. The black beans wandered three steps ahead of them, one back, five steps ahead, fearing that the two old men might meet with something unexpected at any moment. When it encountered a ditch, uphill or downhill, it called out with great urgency. On the one hand, it ran up to the two old men and held them by the corner of their pants with its mouth. Finally they returned to the melon shed in the dark, accompanied by the black beans.
This path was perhaps the most difficult path the old couple had ever traveled in their lives. (I once took my students on a “zip line” in the 1970s, which was also a muddy country road with snow and rain. But I was twenty-four years old at the time, and I was walking during the day. After the walk, my experience was that it was unbearably hard. Mr. and Mrs. Zhao, with tears in their eyes, touched Black Bean’s head and said, “Thank you, Black Bean, go back to sleep.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!” The black beans wagged their tails and disappeared into the darkness of the winter night.
5
The higher-ups instructed all “May 7 Cadre Schools” to have a revolutionary Chinese New Year. None of the members were allowed to go back to Beijing, although the children of those who had gone to the countryside could come to the school to spend the New Year with their parents. After ten days of preparation, reconstruction, and distribution, the dozens of small rooms were cleaned up. People moved in and waited for their children to return after a year’s absence.
During this period, the most busy and excited of course is the black bean, it went east, scurrying west house; here to see, there to smell. At Zhang San’s house, Zhang San would say to him: “Hei Dou, this is my brother’s bed, he likes to sleep lazily, don’t disturb him. When he came to Li’s house, Li would say to him: Hei Dou, my sister will bring you lots of delicious food when she comes back. She loves animals.
These days, one of the central topics of conversation in meetings, studies, and meals is the children coming home for the New Year. In the course of conversation, someone mentioned: “We are nowhere near the village and nowhere near the store, and the nearest shuttle bus stop is two miles away. How can the children find their way home when they get off the bus and can’t tell southeast from north? These times are so busy that they neglected this most critical part of the task.
Just when people were at their wits’ end, someone jokingly pointed to the black bean standing beside them and said, “Let’s give this difficult task to the black bean. “If only it had the stamina for it.” Everyone laughed at the banter. It was decided that the next day we would reflect to the leadership and arrange for parents to take turns going to the shuttle bus stop.
The next day at noon, the history team’s editor and his wife were taking a nap at home. Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door, “Mom and Dad, open the door!” Editor Wang opened the door and saw his son, Jingsheng, standing in the doorway. He was incredibly surprised and asked, “Why are you back?” The son was even more surprised when he asked, “Why can’t I come back?”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant, I asked how you know your way around? And how do you know about our house?”
“No, that’s it,” said Kyosei, pointing to the black bean next to him. As soon as I got out of the car, he ran up to me and barked at me, pulling my pants aside with his mouth on my horn. I also wondered why your publishing house was short of staff to send a black dog to pick up the man.”
Editor Wang and his wife laughed out of their tears, “Hei Dou, you’re so smart, don’t mind what brother Jingsheng says. “Woof! Woof! Woof!” The guy wagged his tail and ran off proudly.
Soon, the news that Black Bean had gone to the station to pick up Kyungsheng and bring him home spread throughout the cadet school. From that day until New Year’s Eve, Black Bean took on the task of picking up the children and bringing them home. Every day, from morning to evening, it was often Black Bean who was seen barking and running, followed by laughing and crying children throwing themselves into the arms of their parents. It was the first time that Black Bean had met them, so how could he bring each of them to their parents’ house with such precision?
Later the biology team’s chapter editor explained, “Each family’s genes determine the family’s distinctive odor, and the dog’s nose is more than a thousand times more capable of smelling than our human nose. Black bean has been with us for so long that it is familiar with the smells of every family, so this problem is a piece of cake for it. So this problem is a piece of cake for him. And, of course, there’s the important premise that Black Bean is an enthusiastic and quick-witted dog.”
On the evening of New Year’s Eve, when the children from the cadet school were coming home from the mountains, they were reunited with their parents and enjoying their family time. Black bean also enjoys the New Year’s Eve dinner prepared for it in the kitchen by the cook, Lao Chen.
6
With the Lin Biao Incident of 1971, the whole country had been seriously ill and was just beginning to recover. Although the root of the disease was still there, some of the functions of the body were slowly recovering.
The R Publishing House, along with other cultural units, gradually resumed its functions, and its staff from the “May 7 Cadre School” was transferred back to Beijing in batches. Of course, those who left were all happy, and those who stayed for the time being were not unhappy either, because they all knew that this was not a place to stay for long. The “dead or alive purge of the class ranks” has become a fleeting memory, and the political climate is slowly changing from overcast to cloudy. It might be a good thing to get away from the unpredictable political climate of Beijing for a while. At the same time, both those who were leaving and those who were not were thinking of Black Bean. The former thought that he would never see the kind, lovely, warm-hearted and quick-hearted Black Bean again, and couldn’t help but feel lost and despondent. The latter thought that they could continue to live a life of idleness with the black beans, which might never be found again in this life.
However, Black Bean was not happy lately, seeing these uncles, aunts, grandparents, and grandparents with whom he had spent so much time all of a sudden packed up their bags and seemed to be going on a long trip. Each time, he had to take them all the way to the parking spot on the highway, and they said goodbye to him with tears in their eyes. When she came back, she would lie in the corner of the kitchen without making a sound, and no matter how delicious the food was, she would have no taste for it.
In the office building of the Beijing R. Publishing House, people had nothing in common except for their work and the “fake, big, empty” catchphrases. But when people remember Black Bean, their excitement is aroused, and they can never have too many anecdotes about this guy, even if they have to repeat them a thousand times. Yes, the memory of good things can always eliminate the immediate worries of people.
Whenever a colleague who is going to work a shift at the May 7 Cadet School is about to leave, a large group of people in the organization always gather around him and ask him to bring bread, candy and enemas from home to Black Bean to eat. He said, “I’m not going to be able to do anything about it. “These are the bones left over from the months of making pork rib soup, and they were all washed clean. I left them especially for the black beans, just waiting for you to go.” She said, “Don’t look at my stuff, it’s not as nice as theirs, but it’s affordable and most appetizing to black beans. What do you think?” Everyone spoke in unison: “Of course, dogs gnaw bones and cats suck fish bones.” “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” It had been a long time since such unrestrained laughter was heard in the office building.
Mr. Zhao also came over and said, “I don’t have anything. Please take this ten yuan back with you, buy some meat and stew it for the black beans. (According to the market price at that time, one catty of pork cost less than one yuan. The old man continued: “If the government hadn’t forbidden the raising of dogs in the city, I would have wanted to adopt Black Bean.” Yes, if it weren’t for the black beans, Mr. and Mrs. Zhao would have fallen to pieces that night.
7
In February 1979, the State Council announced the closure of the “May 7 Cadet School”, which had existed in name only for a long time, and the remaining members of the “May 7 Cadet School” of the R Publishing House were registered and transferred to the commune authorities. In the process of the transfer, the issue of black beans was specifically mentioned.
“We hope that after we leave, you must treat the black bean well. We need to find a good home for it and never let it eat those moldy, blackened this and that beans again.”
“Don’t you worry, the black beans are our black beans too.” The people in the commune have heard about the black beans in the past few years in the “57th Cadet School” of R Publishing House, “We are not to blame for what happened in the past, when we couldn’t even feed our people in the countryside, how could we care about the dogs?”.
The black bean’s keen sense of smell seemed to smell something strange. Once upon a time, he used to start his day’s work after breakfast: he patrolled the vegetable fields, melon fields, ditches, and houses of the “cadet school” several times, and then went to the nearby villages to fight and chat with his own kind. At night, he returns to the kitchen before dark for dinner. Now he doesn’t go anywhere. He follows old Chen, the cook, all day long and never leaves his side.
The day of parting finally came, and the night before the staff left, he brought the black beans and carried enough food for a month to his new master’s house. The old owner gave his advice and instructions; the new owner made his promises again and again. Black Bean lay down on the ground beside him and licked the hair on his legs with his tongue as if it had nothing to do with him. Before parting, Old Chen touched its head and said affectionately, “Black Bean, be good, be obedient.” He cried out twice in a seemingly unintelligible voice, “Woof! Woof! Woof!”
On the way back, the group talked about it.
“The black bean seems to have changed today, not like it used to be.” One man said.
Old Chen answered, “These days, it follows me everywhere I go. It is afraid that I will leave it. Why is it so cold to me today?” The people were all talking, but they couldn’t say why. The biology team’s chapter editor said, “An animal is an animal, and a dog is humane, but its emotional psychology is not as advanced as ours. Although dogs are humane, their emotional psychology is not as advanced as ours. So the black bean’s behavior today is not strange at all.” The amateur looks at the excitement, the insider looks at the door. When the expert spoke, the group naturally had nothing to say. They just couldn’t get rid of the mystery in their hearts.
After the last breakfast, they said goodbye to the people who had come to see them off, and went to the highway stop to wait for the first bus. The early spring breeze was a little chilly on the face, but the rising sun soon made people feel warm.
When the bus arrived, everyone looked out at the rich but poor land outside the bus and couldn’t help but feel emotionally overwhelmed: they had been tossing and turning for nearly ten years without realizing it.
The car drove on, and as the car got faster and faster, dust rolled up under the wheels. Old Chen looked out the window of the car and saw a flashing telephone pole. Suddenly he saw a shadow in the dust, appearing and disappearing from time to time, becoming clearer and clearer from far and near.
“Black Bean!” Old Chen shouted. We all stuck our heads out of the window and saw the black bean running with strong limbs. They chased after the car, faster and faster, closer and closer. As Black Bean ran closer to the car, people worriedly shouted, “Black Bean, watch out for the car. Hearing the familiar voice, the black bean became even more excited, barking wildly as it chased after the car: “Woof! Woof! Woof!” “Wow ………..” A scream, and the black beans were rolled into the wheel. “Squeak ……..” The car emergency brakes.
Old Chen held out the black beans in a pool of blood, a pair of back legs rolled off, blood flowing straight down the black beans licking his arms.
“What to do?” Someone asked.
“Take it back to Beijing, where there is a shortage of doctors and medicine, and stay here only to die.” “Emotional psychologist” said the chapter editor affectionately and decisively.
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