“Hand over the keys! We don’t have time for more grunts with you.” Their leader shouted at me.
“The keys were taken by the Red Guards yesterday.”
“Nonsense!” The guy raised his whip again like he was going to whip me, but this time, he only touched my shoulder with the end of the whip and didn’t whip me.
Another man asked impatiently, “Did they take everything away?”
“No.” I answered.
One of them pushed me and the servants into the kitchen and locked us in, while he stayed outside to keep watch. A few others removed a few boxes from the house, and then they left in a panic, forgetting to even open the kitchen door to let us out. It was later that the Grand Secretary climbed out of the window and jumped into the garden, then went into the house and opened the door.
Chen’s mother went up to my room and made my bed for me. I sat at the kitchen table. The cook made me a cup of tea and let me drink it, while he himself sat across from me peeling beans.
“What happens later?” He asked, “After that it will be even more lawless. Anyone who enters with a Red Guard condom can just go up to people’s homes and take things.”
“Those Red Guards put up a big poster at the front door, let me go see what they wrote?” Old Zhao asked me.
“Go ahead, go see.” I said.
After going there, Zhao came back and told me that they had denounced me as a “foreigner”. In the Cultural Revolution, this meant that I was a foreign agent. “Inside-out”, which itself means “to communicate with foreign countries”, is considered normal and unquestionable anywhere in the world. But in the ultra-left era of China, it was a crime to have contact with foreigners.
As I was pondering this peculiarly Chinese rhetoric of words, I heard the sound of my daughter opening the door, and then her hand pushing her bicycle to the workshop to put it away.
“My sister’s back! She’ll be surprised.” Lao Zhao and Da Siwei called out in unison. In a Chinese family, the old maids always call the proprietor’s children by their nicknames. They had called my daughter “sister” since she was a child.
I acted as if nothing had happened and got up to greet her.
When she opened the door to the hall and saw the mess, she was frozen. When she saw me, she opened her arms to hug me and whispered, “Mom, good mother, are you okay?”
“Don’t be nervous,” I said as gently as I could, “we’ll decorate a new home after the Cultural Revolution is over. It will be just as beautiful and comfortable. No, it will be even better than it was.”
“No, Mom, in the future, no one will be allowed to have a home like this again.” Man-ping said, trying her best to control her emotions.
We went upstairs with mother and daughter in each other’s arms. I went into her room with her. Everything was still intact and untouched. I sat down in a comfortable chair and she went into the bathroom. When we came out of her bedroom, Jo had cleared a space in the corner of my study, set up a bridge table, and prepared dinner. The first secretary had cooked us a delicious noodle dish with minced meat and green beans in a spicy sauce. By then, my whole body was in a paralyzed state, so I was oblivious to hunger and fatigue before dinner.
At dinner, I told Man-ping that the city liaison had promised us that we could leave some necessary furniture and household items to maintain the living standard of the general workers. I wanted to ask the government to leave the entire second floor to us and the rest could be given to others. I think leaving my room, bathroom, and Man Ping’s room and bathroom, plus the study, is enough for both of us. I was still optimistic about the future, and I could reduce my standard of living to a minimum. This may make me feel more relaxed inside myself. At least I won’t have to worry about so many things. Life can be flexible, and I am an optimist by nature.
While I was planning my future life, Man Ping also calmed down. She told me that in addition to the Shanghai Municipal Committee sending liaison officers to guide the Red Guards, the city government had passed ten resolutions emphasizing the protection of cultural monuments and stating that it was unconstitutional to storm private homes. The old Zhao could not help but also stop the work at hand and listen in awe. Chen’s mother also rushed out from the bathroom and clapped her hands together. They were both relieved by the good news. But the actions of the Red Guards, who had not long left, and their accusations against the revisionists, made me doubt whether the ten resolutions would be implemented as they were.
I knew she was worried about me as Man Ping watched me with concern. To reassure her, I told her what had happened to us in Chongqing during the war.
“In the summer of 1941, Dad and I were preparing to retreat to Canberra (the capital of Australia) with the first Chinese diplomats and their families to open a new Chinese embassy when, just two days before we were scheduled to leave, we were subjected to a prolonged and violent air raid. A bomb fell on the tennis court in front of our house. A fire burned through our roof so that part of the house collapsed.” I said.
“My God! Where were you?” My daughter asked.
“I was in the bomb shelter down there. Your dad was in the bomb shelter over by his office. The bomb shelters in Chongqing are deep holes dug into the side of the mountain, very deep, and very safe.”
“So everything in the house was destroyed?”
“Luckily, we put the suitcases we had already ordered under the stairs when the siren sounded. The stairs collapsed, burying our suitcases underneath, and we dug up three of them later. Naturally, we were miserable that time. Later, when we arrived in Hong Kong, we had to buy a new set of clothes. At that time, we couldn’t afford to dig out the furniture and miscellaneous things from the debris in the house. To this day, I don’t know how they were finally disposed of. So if you think about it, at that time, we could say that we basically lost all the money in the house.”
“You never talked about it.”
“That was a long time ago. You weren’t even born then. And I wasn’t even a few years older than you are now. I really forgot about it. Now the Red Guards are raiding the house, and that reminds me of it.”
“Well, Mom, how could you forget such a terrible thing? You’ve lost your family fortune!”
“Yes! But I really forgot about it, but it happened during the war. All of them suffered from air raids almost all the time. Any misfortune that doesn’t befall you alone is easier to bear.”
“I am never going to forget this day, not in a million years.” The daughter said.
“Always look forward in everything, not backward. Possessions don’t matter. Think of all my antiques, before they belonged to me, I don’t know how many people have owned them, how many wars and natural and man-made disasters they have endured. I was able to get it because someone lost it. When they were in my possession, I could enjoy them, but now that I have lost them, let others enjoy them. Life is supposed to be a transition, and possessions are not the most important thing.”
“I’m so glad you have such a philosophy.” My daughter said, smiling for the first time since she came home that day, “Of course, happiness does not depend on possessions. As long as we can all be happy together, I’m not afraid even if we suffer from poverty.”
“We will not be poor. I told you long ago that we have property overseas. Our life will always be a little better than the rest of the people in China. You are too tired, look at the dark circles under your eyes, rest quickly.”
Man-ping sat silently for a while. As she overtook her seat and left, she said to me, “Mom, we have weathered this big storm together. I’m still optimistic about the future of the country. Things are always changing, it won’t always be like this. There are many good leaders in the Party, like Premier Zhou, and other leaders.”
“Yes, I don’t know what they are doing now, so many innocent people are suffering!”
“Don’t be disappointed. In due time, they will take measures. I love my country, even if it is not always right, I love her.” My daughter said firmly.
Hearing what she said, tears came to my eyes. I love my country, too, even though I am an outcast because of my origins, but I will always love her!
Recent Comments