The next day in school we nibbled on coal while listening to Teacher Yu’s lesson, our mouths smeared black, coal crumbs in the corners. The boys weren’t the only ones either. Wang Dan taught even the girls who’d been absent the day before how to eat it. Old Wang’s daughter, my future wife, Renmei, enjoyed it more than anyone. Now that I think about it, she probably had a gum disease, since her mouth bled as she chewed. After writing several lines on the blackboard, Teacher Yu turned back to the class and asked her son, Li Shou (Hand): What are you kids eating? It’s coal, Ma. Want some, Teacher Yu? called out Wang Dan, who sat in the front row, a lump of coal in her hand. Her voice was like that of a kitten. Teacher Yu stepped down from the podium and took the lump from Wang Dan, holding it up to her nose either to smell it or get a closer look. She didn’t say anything for a moment then handed it back. Today we’re on lesson six, class, ‘The Fox and the Crow’. The crow found a piece of meat and was proud of herself, perched high up in a tree. From under the tree, the fox said, Crow, you have such a beautiful singing voice you put all the other birds to shame. Swooning over the flattery, the crow opened her beak to sing and, ha, the meat fell right into the fox’s mouth. The teacher led us in reading the story aloud, which we did with our black-as-crow mouths.
Teacher Yu was an educated, out-of-towner who followed the local custom by giving her son the name Shou (Hand), using his father’s surname, Li. Li Shou did well enough in the exams to be admitted to medical school. After graduation he returned to the county health centre as a surgeon. When Chen Bi lost four fingers while cutting hay, Doctor Li was able to reattach three of them.
2
Why did Chen Bi have a big nose that was so different from everyone else’s? Probably only his mother can answer that question.
His father, Chen E (Forehead), with the style name Tianting (Middle of the Forehead), was the only man in the village with two wives. A well-educated man, he came from a family that had farmed a hundred acres of prime land, run a distillery, and owned a business in Harbin before the establishment of the People’s Republic. Chen’s first wife, a local, had borne him four daughters. He fled north just before Liberation, but was brought back from the northeast in the custody of Yuan Lian and a pair of militiamen around 1951. He had fled alone, leaving his wife and daughters at home in the village, but brought another woman back with him. This woman, who had brown hair and blue eyes and looked to be in her early thirties, was called Ailian. She carried in her arms a spotted dog, and since she and Chen E had married before Liberation, it was perfectly legal for him to have two wives. Poor, unmarried village men were upset that Chen had two wives and half jokingly asked him if they could share one of them. Chen could only grin in response, a look somewhere between laughing and crying. The two Chen wives lived in the same house at first, but since they fought like cats and dogs, Chen received permission to put his junior wife up in two rooms next to the school, given that the school buildings had once housed his family’s distillery, which meant that the two rooms counted as his property. He reached an agreement with the women that he’d divide his time between them. The dog the light-haired woman had brought with her was tormented to death by village mongrels, and not long after Ailian buried it she gave birth to Chen Bi. People liked to say that he was a reincarnation of the spotted dog, which might explain his ultra keen sense of smell. By that time, my aunt had returned from the county seat, where she’d gone to learn the newest methods of midwifery. She became the first professional midwife in the entire township. That was in 1953.
In 1953, villagers were adamantly opposed to new midwifery methods, thanks to rumours spread by old midwives, who said that children born through these methods were prone to be arthritic. Why would they spread such rumours? Because once the new methods caught on, they’d be out of work. Delivering a baby at the mother’s home meant a free meal, a pair of towels, and a dozen eggs. Whenever these women entered the conversation, my aunt – Gugu – ground her teeth in anger. She could not begin to calculate how many infants and pregnant women had died at those old witches’ hands. Her descriptions of their methods were chilling: they grew long fingernails, their eyes emitted green will-o’-the-wisp-like glimmers, and their breath stank. She said they pressed down on the mother’s belly with rolling pins and stuffed rags in their mouths to keep the foetuses from coming out there. They knew nothing about anatomy and were totally ignorant of a woman’s biological make-up. When they encountered a difficult birth, according to Gugu, they crammed their hands up the birth canal and pulled with all their might, sometimes actually wrenching the womb out along with the foetus. For the longest time, if I’d been asked to compile a list of people most deserving to be lined up and shot, I’d unhesitatingly say: the old midwives. Gradually I came to understand why Gugu was so prejudiced against them. Crude, ignorant old midwives certainly did exist, but experienced old midwives who, through their own experience, had a keen grasp of the secrets of a woman’s body, existed as well. Truth be told, my grandmother was one of those midwives, one who advocated a policy of interfering as little as possible into the process. Her approach could be characterised as ‘the melon will fall when it is ripe’. In her view, the best midwives simply offered encouragement as they waited for the foetus to emerge, then cut the umbilical cord, sprinkled on some lime, wrapped the child, and that was that. But she was not a popular old midwife, considered by some to be lazy. Those people seemed to prefer women whose hands were constantly busy, who kept running in and out of the room, shouting and carrying on; those old midwives perspired as much as the woman in labour.
My aunt was the daughter of my great-uncle, who had served as a doctor in the Eighth Route Army. He’d entered the army as a specialist in traditional Chinese medicine, but then had been taught Western medicine by the Canadian Norman Bethune, whose subsequent death from blood poisoning hit him so hard he fell desperately ill. He told his superior he wanted to see his mother before he died, a request that was granted so he could recuperate. Gugu’s grandmother was still alive at the time, and the minute he walked through the door he was greeted by the familiar smell of mung bean soup. His mother had washed the pot and started a fire to make the soup, and when her daughter-in-law came up to help, she pushed her away with her cane. My great-uncle sat in the doorway waiting impatiently. Gugu said she was old enough then to remember such things, and when she was told to greet her father, she ran behind her mother to peek at him from there. She’d often heard her mother and grandmother talk about her father, whom she was now meeting for the first time, and to her he was a stranger. She told us how he sat in the doorway, sallow-faced, his hair long, fleas crawling up his neck, tufts of cotton wadding peeking out through tears in his tattered lined coat. Gugu’s grandmother – my great-grandmother – was in tears as she worked at the stove. When the soup was finally ready, Great-Uncle eagerly picked up a bowl and began slurping, despite the mouth-burning heat. Son, his mother said, slow down. There’s more in the pot. Gugu said his hands were shaking. He ate a second bowl, and his hands stopped shaking. Sweat ran down the sides of his face. Signs of life showed in his eyes as the colour returned to his face. Gugu said she could hear his stomach rumble, the sound of a millstone turning. An hour or two later, Gugu said, her father went to the outhouse, where he emptied his bowels, almost taking his intestines along with the loose mixture. That’s when his recovery began, and within two months he was his old, vigorous self again.
I told Gugu I’d read something like that in The Scholars. The what? she asked. I told her it was a famous classical novel. She glared at me. If things like that happen even in classical novels, that proves it was true.
Now that he was fully recovered, my great-uncle made preparations to rejoin his troops on Mount Taihang. Son, his mother said, I can’t live much longer. Wait to go till after my funeral. And there was another matter his wife found hard to bring up, that was left to Gugu. Father, she said, Mother doesn’t mind if you go, but she’d like you to leave me a little brother befor
e you do.
Soldiers from the eastern Shandong military district of the Eighth Route Army showed up at Great-Uncle’s house to recruit him, as a follower of Norman Bethune, reminding him of his fine reputation. I already belong to the Shanxi-Chaha’er-Hebei arm, he said. But we’re Communists, just like they are, the Shandong representative said. It doesn’t matter where you work. We really need someone like you, Old Wan, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to keep you here. Commander Xu said if an eight-man sedan chair won’t do the trick, he’d hogtie him and take him under escort to a banquet in his honour. That is how Great-Uncle wound up staying home in Shandong, where he founded the Xihai Underground Hospital.
The hospital had underground passages that linked the wards and other rooms, including a sterilisation room, a treatment room, an operating theatre, and a recovery room, all of which remain in Zhu Family Village, which is part of Yutong Township in the Laizhou Municipal area, and are still well maintained. An old woman of eighty-eight, Wang Xiulan by name, who was Great-Uncle’s nurse back then, is still alive and well. Several of the recovery rooms lead directly to a well. One day back then, a young woman went to the well for water, and was surprised when her bucket stopped before reaching the bottom. She looked down, and there in a hollow in a wall, a young, wounded Eighth Route soldier looked up and made a face at her.
Talk of Great-Uncle’s superb medical skills quickly made the rounds. It was he who removed the shrapnel lodged near Commander Xu’s scapula. He also managed to save both Political Commissar Li’s wife and her child during a difficult birth. Word had even spread to Pingdu city, which was under the command of an officer named Sugitani, whose warhorse had stepped on a land mine during a mop-up operation. He had taken off on foot, leaving the horse behind. Great-Uncle performed surgery on the horse, and after it recovered it became the mount for Regimental Commander Xia. But before long, the horse was so homesick it bit through its tether and ran back to Pingdu. Sugitani was so happy to see his horse again, with its wounds healed, he told his Chinese collaborators to find out what had happened. He learned that the Eighth Route Army had established a hospital right under his nose, and that the medical skills of its director, Wan Liufu, were responsible for saving the life of his horse. Commander Sugitani, who himself had received medical training, was impressed by Great-Uncle’s skills and summoned him to surrender. To do so, Sugitani adopted a scheme from the classical novel Three Kingdoms, which was to secretly infiltrate our hometown to kidnap my great-grandmother, my great-aunt, and my aunt, and take them back to Pingdu, where he sent a letter to Great-Uncle, telling him they were being held hostage.
After reading Sugitani’s letter, my great-uncle, a dedicated Communist, wadded it up and threw it away. The hospital commissar retrieved the letter and delivered it to district headquarters. Commander Xu and Commissar Li wrote a joint letter to Sugitani, denouncing him as a petty man and threatening to throw the entire weight of the Shandong Eighth Route Army against him if he harmed a hair of any of the three members of Wan Liufu’s family.
Gugu said that she and her mother and grandmother were well treated during the three months they spent in Pingdu. According to her, Sugitani was a fair-skinned young man who wore white-framed glasses and had a moustache. Quiet and bookish, he spoke fluent Chinese. He called my great-grandmother Aunt, called my grandmother Sister-in-law, and called Gugu Niece. She did not have a bad opinion of him. Of course, she only said that privately to members of the family. To others she said that all three were victims of Japanese brutality, subjected to coercion and bribery, though they remained steadfast.
Sensei, I could talk about my great-uncle for three days and nights and never exhaust the subject. We’ll continue this some other day, but I must tell you about how he died. Gugu said he was gassed while performing surgery in the underground hospital. That is how his death is listed in historical documents prepared by the county consultative congress, but a private source claimed that he rode his mule into Pingdu with eight hand grenades on his belt, determined to single-handedly rescue his wife, his daughter and his ageing mother, but unfortunately struck a land mine placed by the Zhao Family Trench militiamen. The source of this account was Xiao Shangchun (Upper Lip), a stretcher-bearer for the Xihai Hospital. A quirky individual, Xiao served as the commune granary watchman after 1949, where he invented a pesticide that was a potent rat poison, for which he was extolled in the local newspaper, which changed his name from the chun that meant ‘lip’ to the one that meant ‘purity’. Later it was discovered that the main ingredient of his rat poison was a banned highly toxic pesticide. He and Gugu were bitter enemies, which makes his account highly unreliable. He once said to me that my great-uncle disobeyed orders by neglecting his patients in favour of playing the hero, and that he’d fortified himself before setting out by drinking two jin of potato liquor, winding up so drunk that he stumbled on one of their own land mines. A gloating Xiao Shangchun flashed a yellow-toothed grin as he continued: Your great-uncle and the mule he was riding were blown to bits, both carried back to the hospital in boxes, bones and hooves all mixed up, and dumped into a coffin. Not a bad coffin, though, one confiscated from a wealthy family in Lan Village.
When I repeated his story to Gugu, her eyes grew wide and she gnashed her silver teeth. One of these days, she said, I’m going to cut that bastard’s balls off!
Boy, she said staunchly, you can forget about everything else, but the one thing you must believe is that your great-uncle was a hero of the resistance and a revolutionary martyr! His body rests in a mausoleum on Martyrs Hill, his scalpel and leather shoes are part of the display in Martyrs Hall. They are English shoes, bequeathed to him by Norman Bethune on his deathbed.
3
Sensei, I rushed through the story of my great-uncle so I could take my time telling Gugu’s story.
She was born on 13 June 1937, the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which is Duanyang, the day of the Dragon Boat Festival. They called her Duanyang until she started school, and was then called Wan Xin (Heart). Great-Uncle named her, showing respect for local tradition while investing her name with a message. Not long after Great-Uncle’s death, his mother died of natural causes in Chengdu. Members of the Shandong military district launched a large-scale rescue mission to free Gugu and her mother from their captivity, and once they were in the liberated zone, Gugu was enrolled in the Resistance elementary school and her mother was sent to a factory to make soles for cloth shoes. After Liberation, the future for descendants of martyrs like Gugu could not have been brighter, but her mother hated the idea of leaving her hometown and Gugu hated the idea of leaving her. Officials at the county level asked her what she would like to do; when she said she’d like to carry on her father’s work, she was admitted to the prefectural medical school. She graduated at the age of sixteen and was assigned to the township health centre, where she undertook a training course for modern birthing methods organised by the county health bureau. Gugu forged an unbreakable bond with the sacred work of obstetrics. According to her calculations, from the fourth day of the fourth month of 1953, when she attended her first birth, till the spring of last year, she delivered around ten thousand babies, counting two as one when working with someone else. She told you this in person. I assumed she’d inflated the number somewhat, but there had to have been seven or eight thousand at least. She had seven interns, one of whom she called ‘Little Lion’, a young woman whose hair was never combed, who had a flat nose, a square mouth, and a face full of zits. She was so devoted to Gugu that if she’d been told to kill someone, she’d have picked up a knife and done it without asking why.
We’ve already seen how, in the spring of 1953, women in my hometown resisted modern birthing methods, including the old midwives, who spread all sorts of rumours. Gugu was only seventeen at the time, but with her unconventional experience and privileged background, she was already an influential young woman who was held in high esteem. Admittedly, her good looks played a role in that. Putting aside head,
face, nose, and eyes, her teeth alone are worth mention. Our water was so heavily fluoridated that everyone, young and old, had black teeth. But after spending her youth in the liberated areas of eastern Shandong and drinking spring water, not to mention being taught to brush her teeth by Eighth Route soldiers, Gugu’s teeth were spared of that noxious effect. Hers were the envy of all, especially the girls.
Chen Bi was the first baby Gugu delivered, a fact that caused her a lifetime of regret – her first ought to have been the son or daughter of a revolutionary, not a landlord’s mongrel. But at the time, the necessity to start something new and do away with old birthing methods would not allow her to take such issues into consideration.
When Gugu learned that Ailian had gone into labour, she jumped on her bicycle (a rarity at the time), a medical kit over her back, and rushed home, covering the ten li from the health centre to our village in ten minutes. Village secretary Yuan Lian’s wife, who was washing clothes on the bank of the Jiao River, watched her race across the narrow stone bridge, so scaring a puppy playing on the bridge it fell into the river.
Medical kit in hand, Gugu burst into Ailian’s room, only to find that the old midwife Tian Guihua was already attending to her. The old woman, with her pointed mouth and sunken cheeks, was in her sixties; by now, thankfully, this torchbearer for the obstructionists is feeding worms. When Gugu entered, Tian was straddling Ailian and pushing down on her bulging belly with all her might. As Tian was suffering from chronic bronchitis, the sound of her laboured breathing merged with the hog-butchering screams of her pregnant victim, producing a tragically heroic aura in the room. Chen E, the landlord, was in the corner on his knees, banging his head in supplication on the floor, over and over, and mumbling incoherently.