China's Son

  I flashed the light around the dark room; in the corner my old friend glistened like a beacon at sea. As I stepped over cautiously, my big toe caught a round thing that rolled until it hit the wall with a healthy clang. I turned the light onto it, and there, standing on its bottom, was an aged, elegant pot shaped like a short, flat pumpkin. It was Grandpa's liquor jar. It used to sit on his lap and sleep by his pillow. He sipped blissfully from it when it was full and whistled into it when it was empty. It was his other child, the child Grandma didn't have any part of bearing. Nor was it one she approved of.

  I scooped up both of Grandpa's legacies and dodged my way out, without ruining too many of the webs guarding the room.

  “What are you doing with those things?” Mom asked. She had been standing by the door waiting for me.

  “Well, I decided to study by myself in my room in the evenings, so I need a good lamp for light and a teapot.” I clutched my two treasures.

  Anything for my studies. Mom could have objected, but she didn't. She knew my ways of tackling a problem. If I danced around something long enough, I would eventually give it my total attention. Mom was a little goddess that the big god had sent into our lives. She understood my vices and tried to forgive me as much as her limited powers allowed her.

  That night after dinner I officially locked my door, lit my big lamp, and filled up the old jar with dark, steaming tea. I made sure a night pot stood by, prepared to take a larger than usual output. I was ready to burn.

  But as I picked up physics, I thought about chemistry. When I leafed through chemistry, the math book screamed for my attention. I fought the temptation of the green English book, which by now had become my favorite, and there were the books on history, geology, and philosophy moaning and groaning at the bottom of the pile like stepchildren.

  Only Chinese history was a given. My midterm results in that subject put me legitimately at the top of the class. I juggled all these books like parts on an assembly line, finally dropping them and resting my head in the cradle of my hands.

  Finally, I settled for the English book. I was showing decent progress, I was told. There were the usual vocabulary, grammar, drills, tests, and conversations. These simple conversations were silly but thought-provoking. I often wondered why Englishmen greeted each other with phrases like “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” and “Good night.” Simply “good” everything. If I walked around the dirt street of Yellow Stone and greeted people with the “good” formula, they would think I was crazy. Some might even knock my teeth out and ban me from the town forever. Those folks were content asking each other, “Have you had breakfast [or lunch or dinner] yet?” After all, nothing was “good” about a day till your stomach was filled.

  I was awakened by Mom's knock on the door. It was five in the morning and I was in my bed, my English book still on my desk. The lamp had used up the whole bottle of oil. The teapot was empty. I had no recollection of undressing myself or putting the light out.

  “How did I go to sleep last night?” I asked Mom, whose face was now inside my door.

  “Dad saw your light still on at two and found you asleep with your face on the book.” I must have drifted off. “No more irregular hours like that. You are going to ruin your health.”

  “But, Mom, I need to study longer hours to catch up.”

  “You won't catch up that way. You need to have a good, healthy schedule.” Such intense conversation made my head throb. I slipped under the warm quilt and had another fifteen minutes in bed before I kicked off the blanket and splashed my face with icy water from the river.

  One afternoon, as I was on my way to Professor Wei's house, the rain began to penetrate the thick foliage that covered the narrow road.

  It was so loud and urgent, it sounded as if a machine gun were spraying the leaves with bullets. It saved me the trouble of bending down in the river to wet my hair. I combed my mop with my hands as I saw the thick clouds gathering on the western horizon. A storm was coming.

  I skidded along the wet road and was happy to finally arrive at Professor Wei's door. It had been left open, and as I ran upstairs I could hear her voice coming from the secondfloor window. She waved to me. I smiled back.

  Not surprisingly, the dog was standing in the rain, greeting me with his mean dark glare. He dug his back feet firmly into the ground, as if warming up to attack me. He gave a throaty rumble, a weak threat that I had gotten used to, and blocked my way. There was something different in his eyes that day, a knowing look. I checked the second-floor window for help. Professor Wei was gone. It was just me and the dog, and he had the upper hand. I wished I had a rifle. The spot between his eyes looked very tempting.

  He sniffed my thoughts and shook his head in defiance. Water splashed all over me. I shook my own head. Not as much water. The cunning animal was enjoying seeing me get drenched by the storm. He wanted to see me chilled, sneezing, then on the floor begging for mercy, at which time he would walk over and sink his teeth into a juicy part of me. A dinner in the rain was better than no dinner at all.

  Sudden lightning cleaved the dark sky, followed immediately by deafening thunder no more than half a mile away. The loud sound brought me to my knees. I closed my eyes and plugged my ears with my thumbs, waiting for the imminent attack from both the thunder and the dog, but nothing happened. The thunder trailed down to spasmodic firecracker mutterings and vanished. I opened my eyes and saw the dog crawling in the mud toward his house, his tail tucked between his legs.

  At that moment, I lost all respect for the animal and wanted to shoot myself for having put up with his cruel, unfair treatment.

  Professor Wei greeted me with a dry towel as I sauntered toward the door like a real man for the first time, fearless and dignified. I could feel the weak look in the dog's eyes now that he had been brought to his knees by the thunder. I had withstood the uproar. I took the towel and gave my head a good drying. Professor Wei found me a T-shirt and I was once again comfortable. But no feeling surpassed the sweetness of winning. That dog was forever crossed off my fear list. It was, after all, a man's world out there, pal.

  “You look happy today,” Professor Wei said, rather surprised.

  “Thank you, I'm happy to be here,” I said in English.

  “Maybe you know something already,” she said in Chinese.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I heard from my friend in Putien that for the next college examination, if you choose English as your major, you don't have to take tests in science or math at all.”

  “Is that right?” I pinched my thigh, almost jumping out of the seat.

  I tried to imagine life without math, chemistry, and physics. It would be like a honeymoon forever. I felt like standing up and singing an aria.

  “Oh, but why?”

  “Well, the government lacks English majors in all the major universities. I think you should shoot for a college in, say, Beijing.” Beijing! Only the best went there. Yes, ma'am, whatever you say!

  “You think I am going to be that good?”

  “You will be if you work hard. You have shown tremendous progress.”

  “Really?”

  “I am going to cram you until you are full.”

  Cram me, please. I never felt emptier.

  “Here you go.” She pulled out a bagful of books and printed papers. “These are the exercises and all the English vocabulary that you need to know to pass the test.” She patted the stack like an insurance man talking about a rainy day.

  I rushed over and touched the pile with a shaking hand. This would be my salvation.

  The news about the college examinations worried my parents a great deal. It meant that I would give up my science courses. Was it premature? The government was changeable on policies like that. This was a country that had changed the constitution more often than its meals. There was intense conversation between my parents. I felt it necessary to drop in the key words.

  “With this policy, I might be able to app
ly to study English in a college in Beijing.” It was a showstopper. They were silenced. They looked at me with doubt.

  But Dad thought about it for a second, then nodded with approval. “I like the sound of it.” He was the man who had made me the first violin player in the history of Yellow Stone, however bad I was, and he was ready for me to major in English and to send me off to Beijing. He would share every bit of my progress over tea with his many friends for the rest of his life.

  Dad was the dreamer. Mom was the practical enforcer who knocked on the door at five every morning to wake me and shake the mosquito net, making sure I didn't take too long a nap between studies or waste time daydreaming.

  “Wouldn't that be a little too fancy and exotic for us?” Mom asked.

  You bet it would. Think mud, think manure, think digging the hills, that would be more appropriate for us, but I wanted to be special.

  NINETEEN

  Cousin Tan locked himself up in the attic on the day the results of the examinations came out. The pressure was so great that he hadn't eaten for days, and he had been suffering a mild depression since taking the test. He had tried alcohol. It didn't help. Then he had slept and slept, with the team leader laughing outside his window, calling him crazy. We were all worried. Then one day Tan had emerged suddenly, throwing himself into farmwork. He kept silent about the test and shut his mouth whenever anyone talked about college. He was an angry mute, immersed in his own world. He had lost weight and looked forty, even though he was only in his early thirties.

  His excellent scores sent shock waves through Yellow Stone. Tan cried as the results were slipped under the door of his hideout. He at first refused to open the envelope. When he eventually did, he let out a piercing scream and danced downstairs to meet his beaming family.

  He was the sort of guy born for college life. Nerdy, wearing thick glasses, he read everything, including the microscopic directions on the backs of chemical fertilizer bags. He wrote poetry and dabbled in fiction in his spare time. He was dreamy and romantic. Way beyond the marrying age, he had refused many matchmaking sessions with sorry-looking countryside girls. His vision of a wife existed only in books.

  Considering he came from a landlord's family with no prospects whatsoever, he was lucky anyone would even consider him. The situation didn't trouble him a bit. He had made peace with himself. Why bother with marriage? Wait until you could afford it, he used to say, which frustrated the heck out of my uncle, who believed that by now he should have been surrounded by mischievous grandkids.

  Two days after the results came out, Tan fell into another bout of depression. He said the high scores would only worsen his disappointment in the end. The scores were nothing but a cover-up. One's political background would take precedence. Such a drop from a staggering height would crush his soul. There were again rumors that candidates from the wrong families, despite high scores, would be placed at the end of the admission line. When all the slots were filled, they would be left holding an empty bag, just another way of finishing off the wrong families. Tan retreated into his attic and stared out the window all day long.

  At the end of the summer, Tan became the first college student in Yellow Stone after the Cultural Revolution. Amoy University, finance major. When the certified admission letter arrived bearing his name, the whole town was stunned. Amoy University, located on the beautiful subtropical island of Amoy, was the best in Fujian. It trained the cadres for the province. It was an old boys' club. Tan would fit in beautifully.

  This time, the whole family was teary-eyed. Many years of suffering had suddenly come to an end. The sun had risen and that night the stars would shine. Tan was now the happiest of men, giving Flying Horses away as if he were getting married. I eyed his slightly bent back and tired eyes. It wouldn't surprise me if some professors were younger than he. Maybe he, too, would become a professor and marry one of his female students. I was so happy for him.

  From that point on, his fate changed dramatically. Tan received three wedding proposals in the next three days from the most eligible girls in town. They came from good families and had solid bodies that could plow the fields like oxen. Their families even agreed to forgo the standard marriage fees. One of the fathers promised to throw in two farming cows as part of the dowry. Not a bad deal, we joked. Cousin Tan laughed at them all and rejected their offers. He was our hope. We celebrated with him at a big banquet before he left. He encouraged my brother to take the plunge and cautioned me to concentrate on my major, make a reasonable study schedule, and persevere.

  That night I sat in my room facing a tall stack of books; I assigned a time slot for each subject. In order to cram everything into a single day, every day, I had to get up at five and go to bed at ten-thirty, allowing only short breaks for lunch and dinner. No entertainment, no goofing off with friends, no daydreaming, only hard-core studying. My heart beat with the excitement of the challenge; I couldn't close my eyes. I tried to imagine what a college classroom looked like, occupied by sharp professors and leggy city girls wearing sexy skirts. The stars blinked from a clear sky and the moon shone through my window. I made up my mind. College was the only thing for me. I'd get out of this small-town hellhole. If Tan could swing it, so could I.

  Beijing. The word split into four parts that split again, winking at me like stars as I fell asleep.

  Suddenly, school had a purpose. College was the goal, and ancient teachers like Mr. Du and the Peking Man paraded the street of Yellow Stone attracting many admiring looks and greetings. Only a few years before, shamed, they had walked the same street, wearing tall hats, with thick plaques hung around their necks on which their names were smudgily written in red ink. Their heads had been shaved and their hands tied behind their backs. Kids had thrown bricks at them and adults had spat in their faces. They were stinking intellectuals. Society had had no place for them then.

  Mr. Du's former wife, who had left him a few years before, now begged to come back to him. Du didn't want her. He married a young teacher who fell under the magic spell of his mighty mathematical talents.

  Genius and youthful beauty: the people of Yellow Stone could live with that. There were serious debates as to whether he would live longer or die sooner, given his new, energy-consuming marriage. Different schools of thought came to different conclusions. In the end he was the superstar teacher who had guessed correctly the answers to two big questions that had been on the national mathematics exam. He deserved to enjoy his new wife.

  The Peking Man didn't have any problems with his Peking woman, but luck also came his way. He was honored with Communist party membership. He called himself a fossil newly unearthed by the party. It was a mixed blessing he had difficulty accepting or rejecting. A cynical historian, he had his doubts about the party. But he also knew enough not to refuse such an offer. The Cultural Revolution could come back anytime and then he, the Peking Man, would be the one who had rejected party membership, thereby rejecting the party itself, maybe even rejecting the country. Then he would have to change his nationality or they might lock him away in some cage like they had the real Peking man.

  They said he shed tears at the swearing ceremony. Many suspected they were tears of pain and suffering, not joy. Poor guy. As for my goldfish-eyed, wheezing English teacher, he retired after his wife became bedridden and incontinent. With him gone, the school didn't lose much. I could attest to that.

  The finals for the fall semester loomed before us, and hardworking students were found lurking behind closed doors, hitting the books late into the night. And the students who boarded at school clutched their books and went off to find a quiet spot in which to study.

  The school announced that teachers would use the results of the fall semester finals to help determine which majors the graduating students should concentrate on. I abandoned the leaking compartments of my ship, the science courses, and steered the good parts along the misty coast.

  The teachers noticed I'd stopped going to science classes but didn't express
concern.

  I stopped going to Professor Wei's for two weeks and reviewed the subjects within the liberal arts field. I was up at five in the morning, taking my hurting body to bed at eleven. Teachers held review sessions for every subject. I skipped all the sessions, sequestering myself in my private spot in the wheat field outside the school's low wall, where I banged away at my books on my own.

  The finals for the fall semester took three full days. At each test, I swaggered into the classroom empty-handed and chose a seat apart from everyone else. It was just me and the paper. I wanted the teachers to know that there was no possibility of cheating for this born-again student. My message was loud and clear; the teachers looked at me suspiciously. I scribbled quickly and answered all the questions in my best handwriting. Good presentation counted for a third of your score, Dad had cautioned me. I did the best I could. This was a defining moment: I was declaring my intention to join the race for college, and if anyone had any problems with it, I couldn't care less. I had been at the bottom before, crawling on my knees. Now I was limping along. Soon I would be running. I wanted the world to know that I wasn't born in order for someone to step on me.

  I handed in the papers early. The teachers kept calm, their curiosity at bay, pretending not to look at me. As I left each classroom, I could feel their hands grabbing my papers and checking the answers. I knew they would be shaking their heads in amazement.

  The results of the finals were significant, because the college entrance examinations were only seven months away. If you didn't make this one, you might as well go home, sharpen the farm tools, and register as a proud farmer for life, just in time for spring harvest.

  I sweated through the semester finals, and the results blew me away.

  On the public announcement wall on campus, my name hovered at the top in every liberal arts subject. My proudest achievement was English. I scored 91 percent, putting me head to head with a guy they called the English Wizard, Cing, an apple-headed rival of mine since first grade.