Before they went to bed, Taohong told her classmate that she slept naked. The girl was a little uneasy about doing the same, but Taohong said she would give her a massage, so she agreed to undress. Taohong was astonished by the soft smoothness and pliability of the girl’s body, especially her breasts and hips. The slightest contact with it sent the blood rushing to Taohong’s head, and thrills all over her. Just as Taohong was rubbing the girl until she gasped for breath, Taohong’s father came in.
With unexpected calm, Taohong pulled a quilt over their naked bodies and asked, ‘Why are you back, didn’t you say you were off on business?’ Her father backed out without a word, stupefied.
Later, when I interviewed Taohong’s father on the telephone, he told me that, from that day on, he knew Taohong had grown up, and, moreover, had become part of a special group. He could not bring himself to ask Taohong why she was homosexual, but often put the question to her dead mother when he swept her tomb during the Festival of Pure Brightness every year.
From then on, Taohong often brought girls home ‘for a massage’. She thought women were exquisite beings, but there was no love in her feelings for them.
She fell in love for the first time during the preparations for the homosexual conference she had told me about. Taohong was allocated a hotel room with a woman fourteen years her senior. The woman was graceful, quiet and very friendly. She asked Taohong why she was attending the conference, and learned that Taohong liked women. She told Taohong that sexual love was the most exalted mental state, and that that of women was the most precious of all. When the conference was aborted, she took Taohong to another hotel with her for a course of ‘sexual training’. Taohong experienced sexual stimulation and pleasure that she had never known before. This woman also gave Taohong guidance about sexual health and how to use sex tools. She told her a lot about the history of homosexuality, in China and outside it.
Taohong said she fell in love with this woman because she was the first person to share ideas and knowledge with her, to protect her and give her physical pleasure. But the woman told Taohong that she did not and could not love her; she could not forget, let alone replace, her former lover, a female university lecturer, who had died many years before in a car accident. Taohong was very moved; she said she had known that love was more pure and holy than sex since she had been a child.
After Taohong had answered my two questions, we left the Cock-Crow Temple. As we walked Taohong told me she had been in search of a woman with whom she might be able to share the same kind of relationship as with her first lover. She read widely, and had passed the exam to be a presenter in Radio Ma’anshan eight months ago. She presented a hotline programme on film and television. She told me that one of her listeners had written to her to suggest that she listened to Words on the Night Breeze. She had tuned in every day for six months, and had pinned her hopes on me as someone who could be her new lover.
I told Taohong a saying that I often repeated on air, ‘If you can’t make someone happy, don’t give them hope,’ and said frankly, ‘Taohong, thank you. I am very happy to have met you, but I do not belong to you, and I cannot be your lover. Believe me, someone is waiting for you out there. Carry on reading and expanding your horizons, and you will find her. Don’t make her wait for you.’
Taohong was subdued. ‘Well, can I consider you my second ex-lover?’ she asked slowly.
‘No, you can’t,’ I said, ‘because there was no love between us. Love must be mutual; loving or being loved in isolation is not sufficient.’
‘How should I think of you then?’ Taohong was beginning to come round to my point of view.
‘Think of me as an older sister,’ I said. ‘The ties of kinship are the strongest.’
Taohong said she would think about it, and we parted.
When, a few days later, I received a call from a listener who preferred to remain anonymous, I could tell immediately that it was Taohong. ‘Sister Xinran,’ she said. ‘I wish that everyone had your sincerity, your goodness and your knowledge. Will you accept me as a younger sister?’
8
The Woman Whose Marriage Was Arranged by the Revolution
There is a saying in Chinese: ‘The spear hits the bird that sticks its head out.’ I had not been a radio presenter for long before the number of letters I received from listeners, the promotions and awards that were given to me earned me snide remarks from my colleagues. The Chinese say, ‘If you stand up straight, why fear a crooked shadow?’, so I tried to remain cheerful in the face of any envy. In the end, it was the voices of Chinese women themselves that brought my colleagues closer to me.
The radio station had bought for me four long-playing telephone answering machines, each with tapes that lasted four hours. Every evening after eight, these machines would be available to women who wanted to offer an opinion on the programme, ask for help or tell me their story. My greeting on the machines invited them to unburden themselves so they could walk towards their futures with lighter loads, and assured them that they need not identify themselves or tell me where they were from. Each morning, when I arrived at the office, I found more and more of my colleagues – editors, reporters and presenters – waiting to hear the stories that came spooling out of the tape recorders, told in voices coloured by embarrassment, anxiety and fear.
One day, we heard:
‘Hello, is anybody there? Is Xinran there? Oh, good. It’s just a tape.’
The woman paused for several seconds.
‘Xinran, good evening. I’m afraid I’m not really one of your regular listeners; I’m not from your province, and I only started listening to your programme recently. My colleagues were discussing you and your programme the other day, they said you had installed special telephones where listeners could leave messages – and where every woman could tell her story anonymously. They said you broadcast these stories the next day for your listeners to discuss freely on the hotline, hoping to help women understand each other, help men understand women, and bring families closer together.
‘For the last few days, I’ve been listening to your programme every day. The reception isn’t very good, but I like the programme a lot. I hadn’t thought there would be so many women’s stories, similar yet different. I’m sure you’re not allowed to broadcast all of them. Even so, I think many women will be grateful to you. Your phone lines give women the opportunity to talk about things they have not dared to or have not been able to talk about since they were very young. You must know what a great relief it is for women to have a space to express themselves without fearing blame or negative reactions. It’s an emotional need, no less important than our physical needs.’
There was another long pause.
‘Xinran, I seem to lack the courage to tell my own story. I want very much to tell people about what kind of family I live in. I also want to hear my own story, because I have never dared look back at the past before, afraid that my memories might destroy my faith in life. I once read that time heals everything, but more than forty years haven’t taken away my hatred or regret; they have only numbed me.’
She sighed faintly.
‘In the eyes of others I have everything a woman could want. My husband has an important post in the provincial government; my son, who is nearly forty, is a manager in the city branch of a national bank; my daughter works in the national insurance company and I work in the office of the city government. I live quietly and peacefully; I don’t have to worry about money or my children’s future like most people, and I needn’t worry about being made redundant either.
‘At home, we have more than enough of everything we need. My son has a big flat of his own, and my daughter, who says that she remains single on principle, lives with us. The three of us live in a big flat of nearly two hundred square metres, with designer furniture and the latest electrical appliances – even the toilet bowl and seat are imported. Most days, someone comes in to do the cleaning and brings fresh flowers. However, my home is merely a display c
ase for household objects: there is no real communication in the family, no smiles or laughter. When we are alone with each other, all you hear are the noises of animal existence: eating, drinking and going to the toilet. Only when there are visitors is there a breath of humanity. In this family, I have neither a wife’s rights nor a mother’s position. My husband says I’m like a faded grey cloth, not good enough to make trousers out of, to cover the bed, or even to be used as a dishcloth. All I am good for is wiping mud off feet. To him, my only function is to serve as evidence of his “simplicity, diligence and upright character” so he can move on to higher office.
‘These were his very words to me, Xinran – he said them to my face.’
The woman broke off, sobbing. ‘He told me that in such an indifferent manner! I thought of leaving him countless times. I wanted to rediscover my love of music and rhythm, to fulfil my longing for a true family, to be my old free self – to rediscover what it meant to be a woman. But my husband said that if I left him, he would make life so difficult for me that I’d wish I were dead. He would not stand for me jeopardising his career, or making him a target for gossip. I knew he would be as good as his word: over the years, not one of his political enemies has escaped his revenge. The women who rejected his advances have all been trapped in the worst jobs, unable to leave or transfer for a very long time. Even some of their husbands were ruined. I cannot escape.
‘You may wonder why I believe I don’t have the position of a mother. The children were taken away from me soon after they were born and sent to the army nursery because the Party said they might affect the “commander’s” – their father’s – work; it was the same for most soldiers’ children back then. Whereas other families could see their children once a week, we were often away, so we saw our children only once or twice a year. Our few meetings were often interrupted by visitors or telephone calls, so the children would be very unhappy. Sometimes they even returned to the nursery ahead of time. Father and Mother were only names to them. They were more attached to the nurses who had cared for them for so long.
‘When they got a little older, their father’s position brought them many special rights that other children didn’t have. This can influence growing children for the worse, giving them a lifelong feeling of superiority and the habit of contempt for others. They regarded me as an object of contempt too. Because they picked up how to deal with people and get things done from their father, they saw his kind of behaviour as a means to realise their ambitions. I tried to teach them how to be good, using my ideas and experiences, hoping maternal love and care would change them. But they measured a person’s worth in terms of status in the world, and their father’s success proved that he was the one worth emulating. If my own husband did not see me as worthy of respect or love, what chance did I have with my children? They did not believe that I had once been worth something.’
She sighed helplessly.
‘Forty years ago, I was an innocent, romantic girl, and had just graduated from a small town girls’ senior school. I was much luckier than other girls of my age; my parents had studied abroad and were open-minded. I had never worried about marriage like my classmates. Most of them had had their marriages arranged for them in the cradle; the rest were betrothed in junior middle school. If the man was very keen or family tradition dictated it, the girls had to leave junior middle school to be married. We thought the unluckiest were the girls who became junior wives, or concubines. Most of the girls who dropped out of school to be married were in this position, married off to men who wanted to “try something fresh”. Many films now depict concubines as the apple of the husband’s eye; they show them making use of their position to throw their weight about in the family, but this is far from the truth. Any man who could marry several wives was bound to be the son of a large, important family, with many rules and household traditions. These families had more than ten ways of greeting people and paying respects, for example. Even a slight deviation from these rules would cause the family to “lose face”. An apology was not enough – the junior wives would be punished for any perceived misdemeanours. They would be slapped by the senior wife, forbidden to eat for two days, made to do hard physical labour or forced to kneel on a washboard. Imagine how my classmates from a modern, Western-style school bore all this! There was nothing they could do; they had known from their earliest youth that their parents had the final say in choosing their marriage partner.
‘Many girls envied me for being able to leave the house and go to school. At that time, women obeyed the “Three Submissions and the Four Virtues”: submission to your father, then your husband and, after his death, your son; the virtues of fidelity, physical charm, propriety in speech and action, diligence in housework. For thousands of years, women had been taught to respect the aged, be dutiful to their husbands, tend the stove and do the needlework, all without setting foot outside the house. For a woman to study, read and write, discuss affairs of state like a man, and even advise men, was heresy to most Chinese at that time. My classmates and I appreciated our freedom and good fortune, but were also at a loss because we had no role models.
‘Although we all came from liberal families who understood the importance of study, society around us and the inertia of tradition made it hard for any one of us to fix on an independent course in life.
‘I was very grateful to my parents, who had never made demands on me or made me follow the traditional Chinese rules for women. Not only was I allowed to go to school – albeit a girls’ school – I was also allowed to eat at the same table as my parents’ friends and discuss politics and current affairs. I could attend any meeting and choose any sports or activities I liked. The odd “goodhearted person” in the town admonished me for my modern ways, but throughout my childhood and time as a student I was very happy. Most importantly, I was free.’ She muttered quietly to herself, ‘Free . . .
‘I drank in everything around me. Nothing restrained my choices. I longed for some grand undertaking on a spectacular scale; I wanted to startle the world with a brilliant feat, and dreamed of being a beauty accompanied by a hero. When I read a book on the Revolution called The Red Star, I found a world I had only previously known from history books. Was this the future I longed for? I was beside myself with excitement, and decided to join the revolution. Surprisingly, my parents took quite a different stance from their usual liberal one. They forbade me to go, telling me that my decision was neither sensible nor based on fact. They said that immature ideas were bound to be bitter and sour because they were unripe. I took their words as a personal criticism, and reacted very badly. Spurred on by youthful obstinacy, I decided to show them I was no ordinary girl.
‘Over the next forty years, their words often sounded in my ears. I understood that my parents had not just been talking about me; they had been alluding to the future of China.
‘One night in midsummer, I packed two sets of clothes and a few books, and left my happy, peaceful family, just like a heroine in a novel. I remember to this day my thoughts as I walked out of the gate: Father, Mother, I’m sorry. I’m determined to be written about in books, and to make you proud.
‘Later, my parents did indeed see my name in many books and reports, but only as a wife, nothing more. I don’t know why, but my mother always used to ask me: Are you happy? Right up to her death, I never replied directly to this question. I didn’t know how to reply, but I believe my mother knew the answer.’
She stayed silent for several seconds, then continued in a confused tone, ‘Was I happy?’ She muttered to herself, ‘What is happiness . . . am I happy?
‘I was very happy when I first arrived in the area liberated by the Party. Everything was so new and strange: in the fields, peasants and soldiers were indistinguishable; on the parade ground, the civilian guard stood side by side with the soldiers. Men and women wore the same clothes and did the same things; the leaders were not distinguished by symbols of rank. Everyone was talking about the future of China; every day
there were criticisms and condemnations of the old system. Reports of injury and death in combat were all around us. In this atmosphere, the female students were treated like princesses, valued for the lightness of spirit and beauty we brought. The men who roared and fought ferociously on the battlefield were meek as lambs beside us in classes.
‘I stayed only three months in the liberated area. After that I was assigned to a team working on land reform on the north bank of the Yellow River. My work unit, a cultural troupe working under the general headquarters, brought the Communist Party’s policies to the people through music, dancing and all kinds of other cultural activities. This was a poor area; apart from the Chinese trumpet played at weddings and funerals, they had never had any cultural life, so we were warmly welcomed.
‘I was one of the few girls in my troupe who could sing, dance, act and play music; my dancing in particular was the best. Every time we had a get-together with the senior officers, they would always vie to dance with me. I was outgoing and was always smiling and laughing, so everyone called me “the lark”. I was a happy little bird then, without a care in the world.
‘You know the saying: “The chicken in the coop has grain but the soup pot is near, the wild crane has none but its world is vast.” A caged lark shares the same fate as the chicken. On the evening of my eighteenth birthday, the group threw a birthday party for me. Back then there was no birthday cake or champagne. All we had was a couple of biscuits saved by my companions from their rations, with a little sugar dissolved in water. Conditions were hard, but we enjoyed ourselves. I was dancing and singing when the regimental leader signalled for me to stop and follow him. Very unwillingly, I went with him to the office, where he asked me seriously, “Are you prepared to complete any mission the Party organisation gives you?”
‘“Of course!”’ I replied unhesitatingly. I had always wanted to join the Party, but because my family background was not revolutionary, I knew I would have to work much harder than others to qualify.