China's Son

  At eight sharp the old bellman wobbled to the bronze bell that hung under an old pine tree. The sound of the bell echoed far and wide. In the school hallway, the Peking Man snuffed out his cigarette and shuffled into our classroom. He smiled like a gorilla at the new slogan on the wall. He tried hard for a few seconds to conceal his laughter, but his thin lips were unable to cover his big teeth.

  “Who put it there?” Peking Man asked. “Is that a joke or something?” The class was very quiet.

  “When Mao said study hard, I don't think he meant the kind of stuff we're studying now,” he stuttered. “You should know that he was referring to his Little Red Book, but I doubt any college would give you credit for that.” The whole class rocked with laughter. Only Peking Man could open the first class of the year that way. What he said was brave, because Mao's ghosts still haunted the nation, but Peking Man was fearless and angry. He had been beaten and sent to labor camps not too long ago.

  He snapped his fingers and the class calmed down. “About learning history, let me tell you a story.” We were all ears.

  “When I was at the university, I roomed with a medical student. Every night before going to sleep, the guy stuck his hand into a wooden box under his bed and mumbled things. Day in and day out. Finally, I couldn't contain my curiosity and I asked him what he was doing. You know what he said? He had a whole collection of human bones in that box. He was trying to develop a feel for the bones blindfolded, because he wanted to be a good doctor.

  “What are the bones of history?” Peking Man paused and looked at us.

  “From that day on, I did the same thing with all the historical facts: dates and names of the dynasties, all the important little things in the study of history. I had flash cards, stacks of them, under my bed next to my stinking shoes. Before we turned out the lights, he would be busy with his bones, and I with my cards. We had a grand time. We both graduated with honors.”

  Peking Man didn't ask us to do the same thing; he simply inspired and challenged us to follow in his footsteps. He was the perfect teacher for us to follow. His hairy chest, long limbs, formidable face, and that mountain of a jaw all attested to a man who knew the past well.

  “Now, I heard that you guys are going to take the liberal arts examination. We don't have a lot of time left. Thousands of years of history have to be learned and relearned. I am here to guide you, but you have to do the rowing. Do you have any special requests before I begin?”

  “How many questions did you guess right on the last national history examination?” one boy asked.

  My question exactly.

  “I would say I guessed them all, because I taught them all.”

  “No. I meant in the final days, when you gave your cram session,” the boy persisted.

  “Oh, that. Three out of the five essay questions. I gave my last graduating class the exact answers two days before the test. I considered it my gift to them. The smart ones went home and committed them to memory, and they came out of the test smiling from ear to ear.” Another point driven home. Thou shalt heed my words. Peking Man had the mentality of a god, and we were brought down on our knees in the presence of his achievement.

  “But,” he said, “my guessing is just a bonus. Sometimes I guess correctly, other times I don't. You need to go home and chew up this thick volume.” He waved his textbook as if it were scripture. “Digest this and make it become part of you. Every word in here, every fact, is a building block to your dream of a college degree. Young people like you belong there.” His eyes swept across me, and my heart warmed up ten degrees. “Remember, for the next few months you have to sleep, eat, walk, and talk with these books. And you students who are behind, you had better dream about them as well.”

  During the winter holiday, I had finished my history studies. They included Chinese ancient history, world history, and the stupid history of the Communist party. The subjects were contained in a thick volume of one thousand pages. In the beginning, I had been stunned by how many dynasties China had. The names of all the emperors and their successors piled up like endless waves of the Dong Jing River.

  Gradually, I developed a method of study. I arranged the dynasties into a series of charts, a family tree, and gave them funny names, like those I used to give to my dogs, chickens, and ducks. I carried the charts with me at all times and reviewed them again and again, even when I went to the bathroom.

  Every minute was put to good use in my schedule.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Every morning I rose with the sun. Then I shuffled to my brother's room and woke him up. I went through our backyard, opened the squeaky door, trotted down the steps to the river, and squatted by the clear, cool water to check my reflection. I splashed my face with water and wiped it with my sleeves. Six hours of sleep every day. I needed a lot of cold water to keep my eyes open.

  It was already late April. The smell of summer was pungent everywhere. Our backyard was a colorful garden with red roses, yellow gagai blossoms, and white lilies. Mom had planted some lima beans, which had flourished in the most imaginative way and now crawled overhead along the wood frames of the doors and windows. I found a spot beneath the thick leaves, away from the scorching sun, placed my favorite bamboo chair there, and munched on some bean pods as the gentle breeze ruffled my hair.

  I started by tackling political studies, the most boring of the five subjects required in the big exam. It was all about the twisted philosophy of the Communist party. Some of the theories were so involved, they sounded like sophistry at best, and that was what they were.

  It was like a carpet-cleaning salesman raving about this great revolution taking place in the carpet-cleaning industry, when actually none existed. And the machine he was trying to sell you wasn't one bit as good as what he claimed. It was tedious self-promotion, mixed with a little bit of lying. Many times I wanted to throw the book into the river. What was this? Marxism combined with Mao's superior thoughts? It was simply some foreign garbage, stir-fried with local flavor until it became a dish called Communism, Chinese style. Moo goo gai pan with ketchup.

  Some of the questions and explanations given were so farfetched, I felt like spitting. Like why in the beginning of the revolution Mao had ordered his armies into the countryside instead of starting a revolt in the big city. The book said Mao was applying Marxism to China's unique circumstances. That was bull. Mao was just running for his life.

  He hadn't even had time to wipe his ass. The Nationalist army was after his head and he'd had to flee into the woods. There had been no Marxism in his mind at that time.

  I almost puked as I read a whole chapter talking about the virtue of Mao's one-liner “True knowledge comes from practice.” Yeah, right.

  Well, he'd had plenty of practice, starting with dumping his ugly country-bumpkin first wife and crawling into bed with a chic Shanghai actress, while his army was chewing tree roots and getting their butts frozen in northern Shanghai, a hiding spot in which they were eventually able to revive.

  But reality was reality. Political studies stayed, accounting for one fifth of the exam's total 500 points. I swallowed the sawdust and tried to keep my sentiments to a minimum.

  After three months of intensive work, Jin was making amazing headway. I fed him all that I had and gave him my best guidance. He didn't need much help. Neither did he need any motivational pep talk.

  While we studied, our three sisters toiled under the sun, taking over the workload for my brother. Each day, they came back sweaty and exhausted. My brother and I would come to the door to greet and thank them. They would just smile and ask us how much we had studied that day. We would tell them, and they would be happy for us. There were such hope and caring in their eyes. Brother Jin couldn't wait to jump back into farming as soon as the tests were over. He couldn't stand the thought that someone else was bearing his load for him. He knew how grueling the summer heat was, how sore your back could get, and that no matter how callused your hands were, cutting the rice with the ancient, blu
nt sickles gave you raw, open blisters every year. It was life at Yellow Stone we were trying to escape from.

  After a light breakfast—three bowls of rice porridge for Jin and two for me—we studied geology and history together at a long table in the living room, facing the lush garden. We drew history charts on our makeshift blackboard, and more were spread all over the floor. We examined every detail of China's long history and pored over every exotic city in the world.

  Jin sometimes offered me a cigarette during our fiveminute afternoon break as we talked about our dreams and desires. His were practical and comfortable, while mine were whimsical and somewhat far-fetched. He wanted to go to solid college with a good economics department near home, become a manager of a company, marry a pretty girl with a solid temperament, and raise a family. I wanted to go to Beijing, the pearl of China, which was a fifty-hour train ride from home, and study English. From there, the sky was the limit.

  Mom would bring in our lunches, rice with some meat soup. I knew that we didn't have any money, so I asked Mom where the money to buy the meat came from. She was quiet for a bit, then said we needed nutrition to study, that I was not to worry, just to continue the good work. I knew that our family was probably piling up loans just to feed our two nonperforming mouths. Jin and I talked, and we decided to tell Mom to stop doing it. It was getting a little too luxurious for us. We just wanted simple soup made with vegetables from our garden, and a lot of rice. April was when the green couldn't meet the yellow, the time right before harvest when the food from the last harvest was about to run out. And we didn't know where Mom got all that long-grain white rice. By then we should have been eating just cheap yams three times a day, but that was something we didn't want to concern ourselves about at the moment.

  I decided a lot of time could be saved by not going to school anymore. Everything was in the books. By April, most of the real teaching had been accomplished.

  Jin and I stopped talking about dreams and instead tested each other on everything, the more detailed the better. We became so involved that when we took a bathroom break at the same time, we still tested each other through the thin partition separating our stalls. Every minute counted.

  Soon we began to lengthen our days by two hours, adding an hour before sunrise and an hour in the evening. We lived on four hours of sleep. Our appetites diminished. Dad was concerned and gave us a brief lecture. We shrugged it off. The exam was only a couple of weeks away. What more harm could such a short time do? When Jin was tired, he stared into the empty space before him, deep in thought. His cheeks were sunken, his face was wan, and he'd grown an unruly beard. Each time I took my eyes off my book and stole a glance at him, my heart went out to him. He was a man consumed by his quest for the only way out of this hellhole. He wanted only to give it one try. If he failed, he was going to burn those books and be a farmer forever. Each minute of his time was precious. I prayed silently for us every night before going to sleep, even on my most exhausting days.

  We smiled and encouraged each other. I had never felt closer to Jin, nor he to me. We were a couple of marathon runners, each taking inspiration from the other. We kept saying to each other that, yes, we were nearing the finish line: hurry, hurry, or it would be forever too late.

  Immediately after the Cultural Revolution ended, going to college suddenly became the rage. The radio talked about young heroes who had overcome severe difficulties and had made it to prestigious colleges. Heroism, glamour, money, and cushy jobs awaited those who crossed the threshold. A college education was money in the bank—and getting there was as rare as hitting all six numbers in the lottery.

  In China, from the moment you were admitted into a college, no matter how low-level it was, your life would be totally taken care of by the government. There was no tuition to pay. They gave you the train ticket, a food stipend of thirty-six jin (about thirty-three pounds) of rice a month, a bed, all the books you needed, and a guaranteed job—a prestigious white-collar job. It was the best college deal in the whole world.

  I drew a flag in red ink on the calendar for each of the three examination days in July. Each day, as I looked at the flags, I felt a lump in my throat. My blood would begin to boil, my heart would race, and my exhaustion would vanish as my energy returned. I would rush back to my books and read for a few more hours.

  Finally, the big exam was only ten days away. Jin began to have difficulty sleeping. No matter how early he got up and how hard he studied, he still couldn't find peace. He would stare at the top of the mosquito net and listen to the mosquitoes hum their war songs. Dad had to find some sleeping pills to help calm him down. There were times when Jin would simply sit quietly, staring at his book, his eyes unmoving, thinking and thinking. I knew the pressure he was feeling.

  He began to claim he couldn't remember anything. I made him some tea and told him that we were not going to waste all the work we'd done. We hadn't slept enough, had seen no friends, and had hardly been outside the house in weeks. Finally, I tested him on a few tough questions and he answered them beautifully. I slapped him on the back and he returned to his studies. At this point, we were bound together like a couple of soldiers in battle. My words meant more to him than anyone else's.

  In the back of my own mind, however, there was always the fear of opening the exam paper and not knowing any of the answers. I had nightmares about my mind going blank. I woke up sweating and shaking.

  TWENTY-THREE

  As the sacred days slowly approached, the atmosphere in our household changed. Mom prayed a little harder and got up earlier to say longer prayers. Meals were more lavish. There was always meat on the table, just for Jin and me. We no longer argued with Mom about this unjust inequality among family members; we simply shoveled the food down and returned to our studies. Our sisters lowered their voices when they talked and walked past our rooms quietly. But the biggest change was in Dad. He actually bought some Flying Horses and slipped them into my room late at night. No words were needed. He badly wanted me to succeed.

  Two days before the exam, the whole town of Yellow Stone gathered to gossip and watch the candidates. Every third family had someone taking the exam. Few public events mattered as much to the townspeople. A militiaman from the commune paraded through the street with a loudspeaker, shouting about the virtues of the exam and yelling encouragement. “Don't panic, be brave, have a strong heart, and be prepared for both failure and success.”

  The slogans roared through the speakers, which had been mounted on the front of a muddy tractor. People listened quietly as the tractor drove noisily by. It was wartime, and the young people were going out to do battle.

  Food vendors loaded up their supplies and rented spaces near the test sites. Yellow Stone's high school and elementary school, where some of the tests would be held, were swept, mopped, and dusted by hundreds of temporary workers. The desks were all numbered, and schoolteachers were called back from their breaks to be monitors. The commune had several thousand exam applicants, all of whom were going to crowd into the town of Yellow Stone, the seat of higher learning, and take the tests that would determine their futures. Word was out that Peking Man was going to give his final predictions on the history questions. Since the entrance to the school was sealed, he would hold court in the commune's auditorium. His moment of glory had finally arrived. The site of much political significance was turned into his shrine.

  I strolled along the street for the first time in months and headed for the commune. Jin felt ashamed to be among the younger crowd. He stayed at home and took a nap. Only the graduates of Yellow Stone High were allowed in. Hundreds more stood outside the hall. Peking Man had set the rules; he was a tribal type, loyal to his own kind and nasty to all others.

  We sat on the crowded floor with the rest of our sweaty classmates.

  The surface of the street could have grilled a fish, and the temperature within the auditorium would have made a baker want his job back.

  Hundreds of eager faces were waiting for
Peking Man to perform his annual ritual. Everyone was solemn, pressured by peers, family, and society to succeed. What was usually a rowdy crowd now sat quietly, as if awaiting sentencing.

  Peking Man strolled in, sporting a T-shirt two sizes too small that revealed a couple of inches of his hairy potbelly and a pair of loose shorts that were cut too long. His legs were more bent than they appeared under long pants. That explained his unique side-to-side, rolling walk.

  The crowd took a deep breath. It would be our first brush with the examinations; it brought a raw awakening within us.

  Peking Man was silent and serious. He gazed at us with the look of a savior, a doctor. I know your pain and I am here to take it away.

  His eyes sparkled with those wild lights so rare among modern men.

  He opened his mouth a couple of times, but no words came out. A stutterer was a stutterer. On the third try, he made it. A loud sound filled the hall with echoes; it sounded like a cry from some ancient creature, but our hearts responded to it. It was a war cry.

  “My students!” he called. “This is a battle and I am here to give you the weapons!” Any other day, the house would have rocked with laughter at so silly a declaration, but not that day. That day we believed him. It was wartime, us against the world, and it felt good to have Peking Man on our side. I felt like standing and saluting our hairy commander, the Monkey King.

  “I have made my decisions after a long and hard search.” He rolled his sad eyes, then refocused them on us.

  “Here are my top selections for the year.” He threw open a portable blackboard. Written on it were four long essay questions. The crowd scribbled furiously. There were only the sounds of pen fighting paper and the noisy breathing of Peking Man, who seemed to have a loose valve somewhere, another of his unevolved organs.

  He then went on to explain the tricky points hidden in the questions, piloting us through them like a seasoned sailor in troubled waters. He dodged, turned, and twisted. His logic was clear and his delivery forceful. His face gradually wrinkled into a smile. Normally when he smiled, we ducked our heads, for no one wanted to witness the display of his big yellow teeth. But this time it was comforting, in a devious way. To us, those teeth were weapons.