In the old society, this is how it was:
A dark, I so dark dry well, deep down in the ground.
Crushing the common folk, women at the bottom, at the very, very
bottom.
In the new society, this is how it is:
A bright, I so bright sun shines down on the peasants.
Women have been freed to stand up, at the very, very top.
4
My ability to memorize lyrics and my musical talent stood out among the students in Ji Qiongzhi’s music class. As I was singing “with women at the very very bottom,” Mother held up a towel-wrapped bottle filled with goat’s milk, stood outside the window, and called out repeatedly: “Jintong, come have your milk!”
Her shouts and the smell of the milk diverted my attention, but when class was nearly over, I was the only one who finished the song without missing a beat. There were forty students in the class, and I was the only one Ji Qiongzhi commended. After asking my name, she had me stand up and sing “Women’s Liberation Anthem” from start to finish. Now that class was over, Mother handed me my milk through the window. When I hesitated taking it, she said, “Drink it, son. Mother’s proud to see how well you’re doing.”
There was muted laughter in the room.
“Take it, child. What’s there to be embarrassed about?” Mother said.
Ji Qiongzhi walked up beside me. Leaning on her pointer as she looked out the window, she said in a friendly voice, “I see it’s you, aunty. I ask you please not to do anything to disrupt the class from now on.” Gazing into the classroom, Mother replied respectfully, “Teacher, he’s my only son, and, unfortunately, he hasn’t eaten real food since he was a baby. When he was small, he lived on my milk, and now he gets by with goat’s milk alone. This morning the goat didn’t give enough for a meal, and I want to make sure he has enough to get through the day.” Ji Qiongzhi smiled and said, “Take it. Don’t make your mother stand there holding it.” My face was burning as I took the bottle from her. Ji Qiongzhi said to Mother, “But he needs to eat real food. You don’t expect him to drag a milk goat along when he goes to high school and college, do you?” She was probably trying to picture a college student walking into a classroom with a goat on a tether. But then she laughed, a hearty laugh without a hint of ill will, and asked, “How old is he?” “Thirteen, born the year of the rabbit,” Mother answered. “He worries me too, but he can’t keep other food down. It gives him such a terrible bellyache that he breaks out in a sweat, and that scares me every time it happens.” “That’s enough, Mother,” I said unhappily. “Please don’t say any more. And I don’t want the milk.” I handed her the bottle through the window. Ji Qiongzhi flipped my ear with her finger. “Don’t be like that, student Shangguan. You can gradually overcome your problem, but for now drink your milk.” I turned and saw all those shining eyes and felt deeply ashamed. “Now listen to me,” Ji said. “You are not to laugh at other people’s weaknesses.” She walked out of the classroom.
Facing the wall, I drank down the milk as fast as I could, and handed the bottle out through the window. “Mother,” I said, “please don’t come here anymore.”
During the break between classes, Wu Yunyu and Ding Jingou were on their best behavior, sitting expressionless on their stools. The fat kid Fang Shuzhai took off his belt, stepped up onto his desk, and looped his belt over a rafter to play the hangman’s game. Then, in the high-pitched voice of a widow, he began to sob and voice her grief: Dog Two, Dog Two, how could you do that? With your arms outstretched, you return to your maker, and leave your little woman to sleep alone night after night. A worm gnaws at my heart, so I must hang myself. I'll see you down in the Yellow Springs.
He sobbed and he grieved until, there on his fat little piggy cheeks, two lines of tears appeared. His nose was running, the stuff dripping down into his mouth. “I can’t go on living!” he wailed as he stood on his tiptoes and stuck his head through the loop he’d made with his belt. Grabbing hold of the noose with both hands, he leaned forward and jumped. “I can’t go on living!” he shouted. He jumped again. “I’ve lived long enough!” The laughter in the room had a strange quality. Wu Yunyu, who was still nursing his anger, placed both hands on his desk, stuck out his leg, and knocked Fang Shuzhai’s desk out from under him, leaving him hanging there. He shrieked as he grabbed the rope with both hands and hung on for dear life, his squat, pudgy legs flailing in the air, but more and more slowly by the second. His face began to turn purple, he was foaming at the mouth, and a death rattle sounded deep in his throat. “He’s dead!” several of the younger children screamed in terror as they ran out of the classroom. Out in the yard they stomped their feet and continued to scream: “He’s dead! Fang Shuzhai hanged himself!” Fang Shuzhai’s arms were hanging limply at his sides by now and his legs were no longer flailing. With a jerk, his body stretched out long. A loud fart wriggled out of the crotch of his pants like a snake, while out in the yard, the other students were running around crazily. Ji Qiongzhi came out of the faculty office along with several men whose names and the subjects they taught I didn’t know. “Who’s dead? Who is it?” they asked on their way into the classroom, tripping on all the construction debris that hadn’t yet been cleared away. A bunch of excited and panicky students led the way, stumbling when they turned to look behind them. Leaping like a gazelle, Ji was inside the classroom in seconds. She looked confused as she went from bright sunlight into a dark room. “Where is he?” she demanded. Fang Shuzhai’s body lay fell heavily on the floor like a slaughtered pig. His belt had snapped in two.
Ji knelt down and turned him face-up. She frowned and scrunched up her lips to block her nostrils. Fang Shuzhai stank to high heaven. She reached down and put her finger under his nose and then savagely pinched the ridge between his nose and mouth. Just then, Fang Shuzhai reached up and grabbed her hand. Still frowning, she got to her feet and kicked Fang Shuzhai. “Stand up!”
“Who kicked that desk over?” There was anger in her look and in her voice as she stood facing the class. “I couldn’t see.” “I couldn’t see.” “I couldn’t see.” “Well, then, who did see? Or which of you kicked it over? How about showing some guts for once.” We held our heads way down low. Fang Shuzhai was sobbing. “Shut up!” she said, smacking the table. “If you’re really that eager to die, there’s nothing to it. I’ll teach you some surefire ways a little later. I don’t believe that none of you saw who kicked the desk over. Shangguan Jintong, you’re an honest boy, you tell me.” I let my head droop even lower. “Raise your head and look at me,” she said. “I know you’re scared, but you have my word there’s nothing to be scared of.” I looked up and gazed into that revolutionary face, with those beautiful eyes, and I was immersed in a feeling like an autumn wind. “I believe you have the courage to expose bad people and evil deeds,” she said crisply, “a necessary quality for the youth of new China.” I tilted my head slightly to the left, only to be confronted by an intimidating glare from Wu Yunyu. My head fell back down onto my chest.
“Wu Yunyu, stand up for me,” she said calmly. “It wasn’t me!” he bellowed. She just smiled and said, “Why are you so edgy? Why shout?” “Well, it wasn’t me,” he muttered, tapping the top of his desk with his fingernails. “Wu Yunyu,” she said, “any person of worth takes responsibility for his actions.” He abruptly stopped tapping the desk and slowly raised his head, his expression turning mean. He threw his book to the floor, wrapped his slate board and slate pencil in a piece of blue cloth, tucked it under his arm, and said with a sneer, “So what if I kicked that desk over? I’m not going to stick around this shitty school! I never wanted to be here in the first place, but you talked me into it.” He walked arrogantly toward the door. He was tall and big-boned, the perfect image of a coarse, unreasonable individual. Ji Qiong-zhi stood in the doorway, blocking his way. “Get out of the way!” he said. “What do you think you’re doing?” Ji smiled sweetly and said, “I’m going to show a thieving punk like you” — she stru
ck him in the knee with a flying kick with her right foot — “that if you do something evil” — Wu Yunyu groaned in pain and crumpled to the floor — “that you’ll be punished!” Wu took the wrapped slate board from under his arm and flung it at Ji Qiongzhi. It hit her in the chest. Protecting her injured breast with her arms, she moaned. Wu Yunyu stood up and said in a blustery voice that belied his fear, “You don’t scare me. I’m a third-generation tenant farmer. Every member of my family — aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews — is a poor peasant. I was born by the side of the road where my mother was begging for food!” Rubbing her sore breast, Ji Qiongzhi said, “I hate dirtying my hands on a mangy dog like you.” She laced the fingers of her hands and bent them back. Crack! Crack! Her knuckles popped. “I don’t care if you’re a third-generation tenant farmer or a thirtieth-generation tenant farmer, I’m still going to teach you a lesson!” With a blur, her fist landed on Wu’s cheek. He yelped and staggered from the blow. The next blow landed in his ribs, followed by another kick in the ankle. He lay spreadeagled on the floor, crying like a baby. Ji then grabbed him by the neck and lifted him to his feet, smiling as she looked into his ugly face. As she backed him to the door, she drove her knee into his belly and gave him a shove. Wu Yunyu lay face-up on a pile of bricks. “You,” Ji Qiongzhi announced, “are hereby expelled from this school.”
5
They stopped me on the path between the school and the village, each holding a springy mulberry switch, the bright sunlight casting a waxy sheen onto their faces. The gentle warmth of the sun’s rays brought special luster to Wu Yunyu’s snakeskin cap and swollen cheek, Guo Qiusheng’s sinister eyes, Ding Jingou’s funguslike ears, and the black teeth of Wei Yangjiao, who had a reputation in the village of being particularly crafty. I planned to get past them by hugging the side of the path, but Wei Yangjiao blocked my way with his mulberry switch. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked timidly. “What are we doing, you little bastard?” The whites of his crossed eyes leaped in their sockets like moths. “We’re teaching a lesson to the bastard son of a redheaded foreign devil!” “I didn’t do anything to you,” I complained. Wu Yunyu’s switch landed on my backside, creating hot currents of pain. Then the others joined in: four mulberry switches landed on my neck, my back, my backside, my legs. By then I was howling, so Wei Yangjiao took out a bone-handled knife and waved it under my nose. “Shut up!” he demanded. “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll cut out your tongue, gouge out your eyes, and slice off your nose!” Sunlight glinted coldly off the blade; properly terrified, I shut my mouth.
I was pinned down under their knees while they attacked the backs of my legs with their switches, like wolves ganging up on a sheep and driving it into the wildwoods. Water flowed silently down the ditches on either side of the path, bubbles bursting on the surface and releasing a stink that grew stronger as dusk settled in. I kept turning back to plead, “Let me go, big brothers,” but that only made them hit me harder, and whenever I cried out, Wei Yangjiao was there to shut me up. I had no choice but to quietly take the beating, go where they wanted to take me.
After crossing a footbridge made of dried stalks, they stopped me in a field of castor flowers. By then my backside was wet — blood or urine, hard to tell. Red rays of sunset were draped across their bodies as they stood in a line. The tips of their mulberry switches were torn and ragged, and so green they looked black. The plump fanlike leaves of the castor plants were home to big-bellied katydids that chirped bleakly, and the strong odor of castor flowers brought tears to my eyes. Wei Yangjiao turned to Wu Yunyu and asked fawningly, “What are we going to do with him, big brother?” As he rubbed his swollen cheek, he muttered, “I say we kill him!” “No,” Guo Qiusheng said, “we can’t do that. His brother-in-law is deputy county head, and his sister’s also an official. If we kill him, our lives are as good as over.” “We can kill him,” Wei Yangjiao said, “and dump the body into the Black Water River. Within days, he’ll be food for ocean turtles, and nobody will be the wiser.” “You can count me out if you plan to kill him,” Ding Jingou said. “His brother-in-law, Sima Ku, who’s killed lots of people, might show up, and he’d capable of wiping out our whole families.”
I listened to them discuss my fate and future like a disinterested observer. I wasn’t afraid, and never entertained the thought of running away. I was in a state of suspended animation. I even had time to look far off in the distance, where I saw the blood-red meadows and golden Reclining Ox Mountain off to the southeast, and the boundless expanse of dark green crops due south. The banks of the Black Water River, as it snaked its way east, were hidden behind tall grain and reappeared behind the shorter stalks; flocks of white birds formed what looked like sheets of paper as they flew over waters I couldn’t see. Incidents from the past flashed into my head, one after another, and I suddenly felt as if I’d been living on this earth for a hundred years already. “Go on, kill me,” I said. “You can kill me. I’ve lived long enough!”
Looks of astonishment flashed in their eyes. After exchanging glances among themselves, they all turned back to me, as if they hadn’t heard me right.
“Go on, kill me!” I said resolutely, before starting to cry. Sticky tears ran down my face and into my mouth, salty, like fish blood. My plea had put them in an awkward position. Again they exchanged glances, letting their eyes talk for them. So I upped the ante: “I beg you, gentlemen, finish me off now. I don’t care how you do it, just make it fast, so I won’t suffer much.”
“You think we don’t have the guts to kill you, is that it?” Wu Yunyu said, cupping my chin in his rough fingers and staring me in the eye.
“No,” I said, “I’m sure you do. All I’m asking is that you make it quick.”
“Men,” Wu Yunyu said, “he’s put us in a sticky situation, and killing him is about the only way out. We can’t back down now, no matter what happens. It’s time to finish him off.”
“You do it, then,” Guo Qiusheng said. “I’m not going to.”
“Is that mutinous talk I hear?” Wu said as he grabbed Guo by the shoulders and shook him. “We’re four locusts on a string, so nobody better think about taking off. If you even try, I’ll make sure people know what you did to that goofy girl in the Wang family.”
“Hold on,” Wei Yangjiao said. “Quit arguing. All we’re talking about is killing him. If you want to know the truth, I’m the one who killed that old woman in Stone Bridge Village. No reason, I just wanted to try out this knife of mine. I used to think that killing someone would be hard to do, but now I know how easy it is. I jammed the knife into her rib cage, and it was like burying it in a cake of bean curd. Slurp. Even the handle went in. She was dead by the time I pulled the knife out. She didn’t make a sound.” He rubbed the blade of his knife against his pants and said, “Watch me.” Taking aim at my belly, he thrust the knife. I shut my eyes happily, and it seemed to me that I could actually see green blood gush from my belly right into their faces. They ran over to the ditch, where they scooped up water to wash off the blood. But the water was like nearly translucent red syrup, and instead of washing their faces clean, it actually made them dirtier than ever. As the blood gushed, my guts slithered out, slipping along the path over to the ditch, where they were caught up in the flow. With a cry of alarm, Mother jumped into the ditch to scoop up my guts, coiling them around her arm, one loop after another, all the way back to where I was standing. Weighted down by my guts, she was breathing hard and looking at me with sorrow in her eyes. “What happened to you, child?” “They killed me, Mother.” Her tears fell on my face as she knelt down and stuffed my guts back into my belly. But they were so slippery that she no sooner got one section in than it slithered right back out, and she wept in frustration and anger. Eventually, she managed to stuff them all back in; she then took a needle and thread from her hair, and sewed me up like a torn overcoat. I felt a strange shooting pain in my belly and felt my eyes snap open. Everything I’d seen up till that moment was an illusion. The real sit
uation was: They’d kicked me to the ground, taken out their impressive peckers, and were pissing in my face. The wet ground was spinning, and I felt as if I were flailing in a pool of water.