Part Eighteen

Getting back to my own life, mother and I moved back to Beijing,

following my younger sister who had graduated from her rural high school and was allowed to return and take a job as gardener. Half a year later, toward the end of 1972, mother was allowed to join her, and she was given a two bedroom apartment in a building attached to the same complex from which we had come – i.e. the one built to accommodate the employees of the Friendship Hotel where my father had been a security director before his arrest.

Most of the hotel staff had been sent to the 5.7 cadre school for two years, and all their old apartments – including ours - had been reassigned. But since almost all the foreigners had fled China during the Cultural Revolution, the hotel itself was almost empty, and two of those Hotel buildings were converted into residential buildings for the returning former residents –
and a wall was built to separate our two buildings from the rest of the complex.


Our new apartment was not as spacious as the double-apartment that we used to have –but at least we had a kitchen, toilet, and bath – which was a dramatic improvement over the dirt-floor sheep barn where the three of us had been living for the past two years.

As she returned to Bejing, mother’s life was restored in many ways. She could finally visit our father in prison – she was living near her old friends and neighbors, and she was even given access to her bank account – although visiting the bank was, again, an event that caused much anxiety. She was afraid to go herself, so this time my aunt and I made the trip – handed the account book over to the teller – and waited nervously while the matter was discussed in a back room out of our hearing.

Finally, the account book was handed back, along with the several hundred Yuan we had requested, and we were no longer living hand to mouth. Actually, during his imprisonment, my father’s salary had continued to be credited to our account – after deducting the 24 Yuan/month that were given to sustain us in the interim.

My sister had been at the top of the class in her rural school ( it was a part-time school, with students working the fields in the morning and attending school in the afternoon) – but the best job she could get was as gardener in a recreational park west of Beijing. I think she enjoyed her job – she cultivated the flower beds – and it was certainly an enjoyable environment – but even a factory worker in the city had a higher status, and mother wished a better job had been offered to her.

The park was located near an army facility, and many soldiers visited it for relaxation or exercise – including one young lieutenant who noticed this pretty girl carrying a heavy pot of flowers up the hill everyday and soon fell in love with her. He was a tall, handsome, and very pleasant young man – and even though he came from only a workers’ family, my mother adored him --- we all liked him. But after they had been dating for about four years, and expecting to be married, my sister came home from the park one day and announced that their relationship was over.

No reason was given then – or ever – and everyone was disappointed – especially the young officer who came to us many times asking us for help to get her back. He was even given permission by the army to postpone his next assignment, so he could stay in our area to pursue his flagging courtship. I don’t know whether iron-willed stubbornness is unique to our family – but that’s often how we are – and my sister would simply not be moved – nor would she ever explain her decision --- and soon she declared her love to another man.

But now it was the rest of us who objected to the relationship – since the new boyfriend was nowhere near as handsome as the last one – and worst of all – his father had been convicted of political crimes back in the fifties.

Since our own father had spent many years in prison, maybe we should have been more open minded – and certainly this young man had had suffered a quit a bit in his life. He was very young when his father went to prison, and his mom had a very hard time making ends meet. Every day had been a struggle for them ever since he could remember.

My younger sister had pity on him. She knew that our family would never approve their relationship, so she never brought him to see us. It was her secret. Soon she was losing a lot of weight and started looking very fragile and pale.


But this time we dug in our heels – we had family meetings – and after many evening of tears and talks, she finally she gave up her second boyfriend. Soon thereafter, my old sister’s new husband introduced her to his co-worker, and soon after they met, they got married.

Perhaps the non-Chinese reader of my stories is wondering how China ever came to have a billion people – since sex outside of marriage is so discouraged – and marriages themselves seem almost impossible to accomplish – and yet, somehow new generations manage to be born.

So my mother and sister were beginning to lead something like normal lives – but I was still a displaced person – without a job – without an education – and not really supposed to be in Beijing. But I wasn’t completely indolent – for I had discovered the English language lessons given two hours daily on the government radio --- English was the ONLY foreign language being taught in this way – and I was a very eager student. The fact is – I love English ! I listened every day – and I did all the exercises.

But still – I was over 20 years old – I needed to have my own life – I needed a job – so my mother sent me to one of her old army comrades, now a general, to help get me into the People’s Army.

Unfortunately, the army was not accepting recruits at that time – so next my mother reached out to another contact – a second cousin who held a high position in that same far northern province where I had been sent four years before – and he found me a job as a nurse in a hospital.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Chinese medical industry –– there were no nursing schools during the Culture Revolution– so nurses received only on-the-job training. During those years, China produced a lot of “bare foot doctors” who worked side-by-side with farmers, but who were also functioning as “doctors”


I took that 1,000 mile train ride back up north – even further north (and west) of where I had been – and moved into a room above the hospital.

What an improvement over life at the farm !

Instead of 60 roommates – I had one – a very nice young woman from Shanghai who had been a nurse for many years. We became good friends, and she helped me learn the ropes of my new job.

First, I worked as a receptionist – getting the patients to sign in as they lined up outside our outpatient clinic. But after proving that I was a quick study, I was taught how to give shots (practicing on a pillow), to sew up wounds, and to sign the doctor’s name on prescriptions. Isn’t that all that nurses ever do ?

Actually, the physicians at our clinic were well trained –some of them had been sent to this location back in the late 1950’s. They had been accused of being rightist, but never denounced as criminals, and since our location was so remote – there hadn’t been pressure to turn our doctors into farmhands during the Cultural Revolution. But I’m sure they all wished that they could be living closer to civilization.

Perhaps this is a good place to talk about the Chinese medical system.

The only people who don’t have to pay for health care are government workers – and even back in the first decades of communism – 92% of the population were peasants and they were not included. In the 1980’s, as the government began to cut back, fewer and fewer people qualified for health benefits, and even those who could afford coverage still had to pay 20% out of pocket.

My father, for example, as a government employee, had complete health coverage – but this did not extend to his wife – so after she quit her ministry position, mother had to pay for her own healthcare. She has been very lucky and very healthy, but now that she is 88 years old, health insurance is big a problem for her. Government insurance will not cover her, and private health insurance is too expensive due to her advanced age. They may take her in, but it would cost her a fortune.

This is why so much of the Chinese economy goes into savings instead of consumer spending. Everyone needs to protect both themselves and their family.

When one of my uncles came down with a liver disease in the 1990’s – he had to come up with 18,000 Yuan for an operation. That’s a fortune ! His son told him that they did not have the money, and he would have to go home without an operation.

Only by pooling their resources could his siblings afford his health care. (he got the operation – but, unfortunately, died a year later).

(The last time I saw him was in 1992, during that year after his operation. When we visited his village, he was very thin and his back was bent low, but he was very happy to see us, and he made a great effort to put a smile on his face while bustling about trying to help his wife cook a meal for us. He showed us the flowers that mom had given him a few years earlier, and he told us that some of them had been stolen by villagers. He had such love for beautiful things. Before we left the village, he asked us to take at least five long strings of garlic with us. They almost filled the entire trunk of our car. He knew mom and dad would appreciate his garlic – and he also asked us to take a pair of Ming Dynasty tea pots with us to give to mom. They were very precious to him, and many years earlier, antique dealers had offered him 400 Yuan for them, but he had refused to sell. Then, while he was busy carefully wrapping them, I had a feeling I cannot describe. I knew it would be the last time I would ever see him. Now, whenever I make dumplings I remember him. He made most beautiful and fast dumplings I have ever seen. )

Part Seventeen

It was in 1967, while I was on the big farm, that my mother’s mother died.

Like the rest of us, she had recently been sent to a remote, country village. Mom sent my oldest brother to attend the funeral, but it turned out to be a very difficult trip.

Like everyone else, the bus drivers were embroiled in revolution. There was no longer any bus service to the village, and due to gunfire in that region, it was also difficult to hire a pedicab.

The driver had demanded a fee commensurate with the risk, but as they were approaching the village – the sound of gunfire was heard and the driver refused to go any further.

After walking the final miles by himself, my brother saw a large group of people at the cemetery. The funeral was already over, and all he could do was throw a handful of dirt on the coffin – a sad ending for a life that was so different from the lives of her children and grandchildren.

My Grandmother had married into a landowning peasant family – substantial enough to hire three peasant workers – but her own birth family was very poor.

When she was a child of three, she went blind in one eye. The story goes that she had been helping her mother in the kitchen, when she dropped a plate, began to cry, and by rubbing her eyes, one of them became infected. Health care was minimal for poor people, and eventually that eye went blind.

When she grew up, that handicap did not prevent her from getting married – but it did mean her bride price was very low – so she was something of a bargain for the husband’s family who purchased her for their oldest son.

Was her new, young husband thrilled about taking this bargain as his wife ? She gave him four children – but apparently love was never involved. He went into a business that kept him constantly traveling all over China – and she became more like a servant to her mother-in-law than a wife to her husband.– a situation that is rather common throughout Chinese society, from top to bottom.

Their relationship got worse when illness forced her husband to return home in his early thirties. Though undiagnosed, he probably had liver cancer – and he was always in great pain and unable to work.

It became one of my grandmother’s jobs to care for him – which meant preparing the opium to relieve his pain – but still, he took out his misery by beating and yelling at his wife.

The money for that opium came from what she and her young daughter (my mother) earned by weaving cloth and selling it at the market. In order to make enough cloth, they often worked throughout the night, but her mother-in-law begrudged her even the oil for her lamp – and she either had to buy the oil herself or cover the windows to conceal her lamp.

During the day, she had to cook three meals a day for the entire extended family. She had to grind the grain, fetch the water, feed the pigs and chickens, and do all the other household chores, while constant verbal and physical abuse were part of her daily life. She must have been a very strong woman to live through all that, and several times, mom woke up to find her mother crying --- with a rope in her hand ---- but she could not do it -- she had a sick husband and 4 small children to care for.


When her husband finally died at the age of 35 – my grandmother stayed on – for the next 15 years -- as a servant in her mother-in-law’s house.

That was a woman’s life in pre-revolution China – even at the top of the social pyramid (as described in the popular 18th Century novel, “Dream of Red Chamber”, which, like many Chinese women, my mother read over and over again)

I remember once asking her “What is your name, grandma?” – and she explained that she didn’t have one – since after marriage, a woman’s name became the combination of the names for her birth family and her husband’s family.

But after the revolution – it was a different story – especially since several of her children, both boys and girls, became cadres who rose to higher positions within the new society.

So in the early fifties, grandmother came to live with us in Beijing – where she helped mother with babysitting and other chores (since both my father and mother spent every day at their jobs)

Being away all week at boarding schools, I was only home on the weekend, and I didn’t get very close to her. And she preferred boys anyway – getting very close to my older brothers – and always made a point of giving them special treats when she served us food. (but I loved her anyway!)

She also served as babysitter for my mother’s brother’s children – and eventually this got her into trouble with mother – who came home from work one day to find my young sister asleep on the curb outside our compound. My sister was only 2 or 3 three years old at the time, and anyone could have snatched her while grandmother was attending to my infant cousin.

A domestic storm ensued that left my grandmother in tears – and soon she went to live with my uncle’s family instead of ours.

In 1963, after our family moved into the complex next to Tiananmen Square, grandmother moved back with us and shared a room with my younger sister.

But when the Cultural Revolution began, and father was getting into trouble, mother thought it best for everyone if grandma went to live the countryside.

She had been a poor peasant woman her entire life. She was illiterate, blind in one eye, and since her feet had been bound as a child, she was barely able to walk..

But since she had been married into a landowning family, she was considered a landowner, and this was problematic for her sons who were cadres in the city. None of her successful sons could accommodate her. The only son who could take her was the impoverished one who had stayed on the farm (I’ve already introduced you to him: he was the uncle who came to the city a few times every year to bring us vegetables and pick up some cash)

Grandma really didn’t want to go – and many times she told mom that she would not mind dying in the city and being cremated. Mom promised to bring her back as soon as the troubles were over -- but that day never came for her.

So that’s where grandmother went to live – and as those familiar with Chinese family politics might understand – this created a huge problem with her son’s wife who would never stop resenting the presence of her mother-in-law – even though her other sons contributed money to the family.

One time – when I was 13 – I was sent to take her some cash as well as provisions from the city, including a string of sweets, some cakes, and specially selected pieces of her favorite salty belt fish that my mother had spent all evening to prepare. It was my first trip outside Beijing, so I was very excited, I went with my granduncle who was a retired school teacher. Mom paid for the trip but she dared not to go herself, because dad was still in very bad situation.

When we arrived, Granduncle handed the heavy bag of goodies to my uncle. Grandma, living in the opposite room, came out to greet us and see what we brought for her. That’s when Aunt got very upset, started shouting, and threw the bag down, scattering everything, including the cooked fish, all over the dirt floor.

The swearing continued, as Grandma went back to her room, closing the door behind her.


The next a few days, we spent a lot of time together. She followed me everywhere and was so happy to see me ( even if I was not her favorite grand child.) She asked me to tell mom that when things got better in Beijing, she would like to return.

She did not tell me how she was treated by her son and daughter-in-law, but she did refer to them as "animals".

One day she sent me to the farmers’ market (it was only open a few days a month) , and asked me to buy her some fruits and various cooked meats like sausage. The moment she received it, she began wolfing it down – and as soon as she finished, she began searching for something in her room.

Finally she found it – it was a piece of cotton -- and she lit it on fire to smoke the room and remove the aroma of the spicy meats. I did not understand, so I asked her what she was doing. Her brief answer was: “animals have sharp noses”


Her life there was not happy.

The neighbors later told us stories about the loud arguments – and when she fell ill, no one would care for her and she was left to lie in her own filth. At mealtime, they would bring her a bowl of food, but if she asked for more, it never came.

She recovered from that illness, but one day as she was reaching for a chicken out in the yard, she fell off a ladder and went unconscious. She never woke up and 10 days later she was dead.

She had lived for 73 years, but only a few of them were happy.

I missed her dearly.

Part Sixteen

We’re nearing the time when we finally re-established contact with my father, after four years of captivity.



He had been imprisoned in the special prison, about 60 miles from Beijing, especially built to hold the top political prisoners. Its first inmates had been officials from the Guomintang – but now it held my father and all the other ministers denounced by the Cultural Revolution. It featured a maze of high walls that kept any prisoner from meeting another, and ironically enough – inspecting it had been one of my father’s duties when he worked for the Security Ministry. (As you might recall from an earlier episode, he took some of us kids for a holiday there to visit the scenic surrounding hills while he was working at the prison. On the way home, our driver baked delicious, sweet yams on the engine block of the automobile)

But now, of course, he was prisoner, not administrator, and that very same driver who had baked us the yams later accused him of taking advantage of his job to give his children leisure.

Every prisoner had his own cell – 6 feet on a side – just enough space for a bed, a toilet hole , and a sink – and each prisoner lived in total isolation beneath an electric light that burned 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Once a day, prisoners were carefully led to the prison yard– one at a time – in such a way that they would never meet each other. In the yard they stood for one hour in a cell just like the one they had left – except that it was empty and had no ceiling. It was their daily chance to see the sky.

Those early Guomintang prisoners had been given pen and paper, so that, in ancient Chinese imperial tradition, they could write the history of their previous regime. ( Dad had been one of the few party officials who could subscribe to their publication. Unfortunately, over the years, many have been lost. We still have 30 – 40 of what were once 80 – 100 volumes.)


But these new prisoners were given nothing: no pen, no paper, and only one book: Chairman Mao’s little Red Book – which my father memorized word-by-word, cover to cover.

The prisoners were sufficiently fed. Once a day, a tray of food was shoved beneath their door – and the higher ranking inmates were even given a cup of milk.

But this complete isolation had to be a real challenge to mental health.

My father practiced a regimen of mental and physical exercise that included some Chi-gung and martial punching exercises that he had learned in his youth – and walked several kilometers every day through the 2 meters of his cell Lacking any sound to break the quiet, he made his own, by drumming on his sink with his chop sticks ---(a daily practice that he continued -much to our dismay - for several years after his release ) And lacking pen and paper, he memorized his own poetry as he wrote it. Over the course of those six years – he wrote 250 poems about his childhood – which he would eventually calligraph with brush on paper after he had been released. (a detail of which is shown at the top of this post)

The prisoners were not tortured or beaten (unless their shouts angered the guards) – but over the course of many years – complete isolation is torture enough.

After four years, our family was finally notified of his imprisonment – and just as I was returning to Beijing with my mother, we got to pay him his first visit.

All six of us gathered in Beijing and were loaded into a van that drove us out to the prison.

What a tearful reunion that was !

My father looked terrible – and we even had a hard time recognizing each other . His head was shaved, and he wore the prison uniform of black pants with a black cotton padded jacket. He had gained some weight, and his eyes were sunken in a face so pale and swollen.

I began sobbing – and could not stop until later that evening – after which came a very bad headache that lasted throughout the night. We had gotten very close during those six months we’d spent together after I transferred to the school near his work – and it hurt me so much to see him suffering like this.

And he had difficulty recognizing some of us – my younger sister and I – as the previous four years had changed our adolescent appearance as well.

We spent three hours together with him in a special visiting room – telling him our stories – and I suppose that I especially remember his reaction to mine: he wept to hear that I had been sent north to the Russian border – because he knew that this had been the destination of all kinds of criminals, and he feared for my safety.

The family would make many more such visits over the next two years – about one every 8 weeks -- but since I would soon be sent to another part of the country, I only saw him a few more times before he was eventually released.

And when would he be released ?

There had never been a trial – there had never been a sentence – there had only been an order for incarceration –and since Chou Enlai had signed that order, nobody wanted to countermand it. As it turned out – neither Chou nor anyone else would ever sign for his release – but two years later – after nearly 6 full years in solitary confinement – my father, and all the other prisoners of the Cultural Revolution – were set free.

There were quite a few stories like ours – like my father’s former boss who was arrested soon after he had remarried following the death of his first wife.
His new son never met his father until he was six years old.

Later, of course, the prison received a new generation of prisoners, including the Gang of Four in 1976, shortly after Mao’s death. One died of cancer - Madame Mao supposedly managed to kill herself while in hospital – and one of them, the young radical who had been chosen as Mao’s successor, went mad and was kept in prison until his death in 2005.

Part Fifteen

My life at the farm ended as soon as I got a chance to leave.

Every student was eventually given the chance to go home for a visit – but we had to take turns – and my turn didn’t arrive until two full years after I had arrived.

Of course, we students were also expected to return after that visit was over ( usually about 2- 4 weeks) – but I had suffered there enough – and I became something of an illegal immigrant to the rural village where my mother and younger sister had been sent a year earlier– about 600 miles south of Beijing in Henan province. (Many cadres from Beijing were sent there to be educated by the farmers. It was called the “May 7 Cadre School”)

As I traveled south to her village, I passed through Beijing, and that’s where I joined my older sister who had traveled from her village to purchase supplies for mother (since so little, like toiletries for example, was available in her remote area). Both of us stayed with our aunt (mother’s cousin) for several days as we made our purchases from a list mother had sent -- and I should mention that I had lots of money then (200 – 300 Yuan) – which I had scrupulously saved. (wages at the farm had been good, 32 Yuan/month -- and meals only cost 10 Yuan/month)

Mother’s shopping list ended with a warning not to show it to her cousin – since it contained certain items – like fancy baked goods – that our aunt might consider rather luxurious – but much to our embarrassment, auntie managed to read that letter over our shoulder. Very embarrassing !

Mother still had a taste for urban luxuries – but she certainly lived a Spartan lifestyle out in the countryside.

Her home was a sheep barn, 12’ on each side, and you can imagine the dirt and the smell – especially until she dug out the sheep-dirt floor and replaced it with fresh soil from the fields. She covered the walls with newspaper, doing her best to make it comfortable. The room was very dark - with only one small window - and the smell was so bad, that eventually she dug a window out from the opposite wall so that air could circulate.

And mice were a big problem for mom. They not only chewed everything they could get, they also carried disease, and when I first got there, I noticed that there were all kinds baskets or buckets hanging in the middle of the room. Later that evening I discovered that they contained food - trying, with little success, to keep it away from the rats and mice (who managed to scamper across the ropes anyway)


This was the space that mother, myself, and my younger sister had to share for two years – and during the Summer holiday, it was also home to my two brothers and older sister. That’s six people in a 12’ X 12’ room !

We had a double bed for mom and the three sisters, and my two brothers shared a single small bed (they added a piece of wood so they could both fit) The sewing machine also served as a dinning table and desk – and there was no room for anything else. It was crowded, but we were happy to be together and happy to be alive.

And for a while, our tiny, crowded room also had a cat.

My younger sister was an animal lover, and back in Beijing, nobody was allowed to keep cats or dogs.(that was government regulation) . But here, she finally she had her chance, and she adopted a black and white kitten. The little kitten helped somewhat with the mice problem, but when all my brothers and sisters were visiting, the little kitten was always being stepped on. Eventually we convinced my younger sister to give the kitten up, and she did so in tears.


When my second-oldest brother visited, we were shocked by his appearance – so thin, so yellow – he had come down with hepatitis A – and healthcare in this remote area was minimal – especially for us, the family of a known criminal. But as luck would have it – there was a “barefoot doctor” in the village who had once worked as a door guard at our compound in Beijing. He recognized mom – he liked us --- and primitive though his medicine was – my brother’s condition began to improve.

He may also have been helped by our healthy diet of carrots – which were more easily obtained than the grain that required food coupons for purchase (and Mom was only receiving enough coupons to feed two people)

Mother purchased a bushel of carrots – and carrots were in every meal eaten that winter.

I had become a permanent resident there, but my older siblings only visited temporarily – whenever they had a few weeks off – and then they had to return to their own remote villages in other parts of China.

My oldest brother had it worst – since the people in his village didn’t even have houses – they lived in caves – so when my brother arrived, he had to dig his own cave out from a hillside. His life was cold, damp, lonely, and depressing. Many days he refused to work –so he was also hungry – and thirsty – since water had to be hauled up in buckets from the valley below. He wasn’t taking good care of himself – and failing to brush his teeth – his gums became infected and he lost several front teeth. He was 22 years old.

I remember the first time he visited us – because he missed his train (and, of course, there was no telephone to advise us of that fact.) He missed it because he had tried to carry too much grain to the station – 30 miles from where he lived – and he could not bear to abandon any of it along the way – so he had to walk all the way back to his cave with the excess that he could not carry.

When the train arrived without him, my sister and I had then had to walk the 5 miles back to our village without him – and since it was late at night – we were very scared to be walking alone through the field rows – having heard stories of girls our size being recently attacked by a mountain lion. I know it sounds crazy –but these two, small teenage girls were very frightened --- and our worried mother was out looking for us. After we finally got home, I came down with a bad fever that lasted for several days.

Most of the two years I spent in my mother’s village – I spent doing practically nothing

My mother and sister worked the fields in the morning – and my sister also attended half-day classes at the rural school – but I wasn’t supposed to be there –and I just did nothing – except for some knitting. Mother had brought several of father’s books with her from Beijing – but they were the old-style Chinese literature, and I couldn’t read them.

Maybe you could call these my lost years – all I really did was stay alive.


My second oldest brother wasn’t quite so isolated – but as the months passed – most of the city students assigned to his village were retrieved by their parents who found new ways to work the system and get them back. But my brother’s father was still in prison (if he were even alive) – and he was left in his village with only one other student, a girl from the top high school in Beijing.

He got to know that student very well – maybe too well. They had bought some food and liquor to celebrate Chinese New Year together, and both of them drank a little too much. Eventually she became pregnant – which became – of course – a serious problem.

The girl had grown up with her grandparents, and the grandfather (an army general) was opposed to her marriage into a family like ours. He had already chosen a husband for her: one of his bodyguards ( but she never loved him.)

She told my mother that she loved my brother, and a few months later, when mother had gotten permission to move back to Beijing, this girl stayed in her apartment while they arranged for an abortion at a local hospital. The fetus – aborted at 5 months – would have been my mother’s first grandchild..

Part Fourteen

My first love.

Many times it felt like I was despised and shunned by everyone up on that miserable farm -- but the truth is , I did have several girl friends.

Two of those girls, like myself, were from the elite families of high officials or intellectuals – but my best friend was from a worker family – and often we conspired to help each other out.

One time she got very sick, and I spent 5 days in the hospital to be with her. Many of the girls had come down with the same thing: a severe rash that ran up the arms, accompanied by a very high fever, and several girls died from it. The group leaders must have understood how we felt about each other, because I was allowed to take all those days off from work.

But the big event was my first real boyfriend -- a student from my own high school ( though I didn’t know him back in Beijing, since he was one year senior) . He was tall (6 feet), handsome, and witty. He was so perfect, I never looked at another other young man for the next six years!

His parents had divorced (an unusual event) when he was two, and he had grown up with his mom (he really hated not having a father).

His mom was a law professor at Beijing Peoples’ University. She was short and dark and spoke with a strong accent, but she was very down to earth – so I ended up being very comfortable with her – and I think she liked me very much, too.

He had been sent to a village about 6 kilometers from mine – and he first noticed me when I was going to visit a good friend from my grammar school who was also staying there.

One day, I was stopped by a group of boys who usually bullied and harassed me – but this time they stopped to gave me a letter – his letter – and I had never read a letter written so well. It was like a novel – filled with stories and imaginative descriptions. I read it a dozen times -- no, more like a hundred times -- trying to find the real meaning behind each and every word.

I was in love ! And thus began a correspondence that would last for six years.

In the beginning, we wrote to each other every day. No matter how tired I was, every night I spent hours trying to write him a letter at least as impressive as the ones he was sending to me.

How to describe his letters ? Sometimes he wrote about the things that happened at the farm – but mostly he wrote descriptive scenes – like, for example, a white-haired old man catching fish from a small boat on a river -- beautiful imaginative scenes -- like those found in the many books that he, but not I, had read.

We only got to see each other a few times a month – when I had a day off and could walk the 6 kilometers over to his farm. Usually these meetings were secret and we tried to hide where no one could see us. But even then, we never kissed. It was all very romantic – but physical affection was strictly forbidden – and all we did was hold hands.

I was very happy to see him each and every time. He was my whole world, I enjoyed so much his company, and I truly believed that he was the smartest young man I have ever met, and that he was the man I was going to marry.

Once, when we were together, I noticed that we were wearing the same wool long scarves: the same color, the same brand. So then we exchanged them – and when I put his on my neck, I could smell him. Even though that scarf became quite dirty, I never wanted to wash that smell away ! (but don’t worry -- eventually I washed it).

One day, a villager saw us beginning to embrace – and I was so afraid that we would get into trouble. But the villager gave me a knowing look – and later invited me to have dinner with his family at the village. He and his wife were so kind – and I appreciated their efforts – but I was not comfortable sitting on their kang and eating dumplings made with such dirty hands just a few feet above their dirt floor. In gratitude, I gave one of my blouses to his daughter – and they were very pleased to have it. This was the first time anyone had invited me home for dinner. (local villagers got to know some of us very well and they often invited students into their homes - but since I was considered to have such a bad family background, no one had ever invited me before.) I was touched under this special circumstance, and neither of us mentioned this incident ever again.

Most of our relationship was by correspondence – and letter writing was important to many of the girls in the dormitory because – let’s face it – the rest of our lives were misery. .

There was that 12-16 hours/day of hard work – the cold in winter – the insects in summer – and that ever-sensitive, unavoidable issue of sanitation.

We sixty girls had one outhouse : a pit with two boards, sheltered by four walls and a roof.

During the winter, the waste would freeze (probably even before it hit bottom) – and gradually the bottom of the pit rose higher than the ground – so we would be squatting on a raised mound of frozen waste. The earth was too frozen to dig another pit – so farm supervisors had some of us (like myself) dig it out it with a pick axe. Not a pleasant job – but as the daughter of a “bad family”, a job often reserved for me.

But even when the pit was dug out again – who really wanted to walk fifty yards through the sub-zero cold of a winter night to use it ? Most of the girls found a more convenient place to squat --- so soon the outside walls of the dormitory were encircled by a ring of frozen feces.

In the summer, the job of a special someone (often myself) was to carry off buckets of liquid waste. It was quite a challenge for me, because I wasn’t very strong, but there I’d be, with a long pole straddling my shoulder, and a heavy bucket of crap on either end.

By then, my group of students had been on the farm for a couple of years, and many of them had made new friends from different parts of the country, but I was still alone. Because of my family situation, no one wanted to be my friend, except for a couple of girls who either had pity on me or needed a friend as badly as I did. But even then, our friendship was never open to the public – everything had to be shared under the table.

Perhaps this will help explain why I jumped on the first chance I had to leave the farm – even though it meant leaving my boyfriend behind. After my second summer, I was given a holiday to visit my mother – and I never returned.

Our correspondence continued another 4 years --- the entire period of my life outside of Beijing. In the beginning, we were writing every day – but when he was transferred to a fire-fighting station, mail delivery became more sporadic.

I remember how I cried the day I got his letter announcing his departure for that trip, and I was so anxious to get his first letter after he got there. It took at least a week for that letter to reach me – and that was a very long time to wait !

Some days I would get none of his letters at all – and other days I would get five letters at once. Gradually our letters became spaced more widely apart –though I never lost faith in our future together.

But how can a long-distance relationship last forever ? I still felt committed to him – but he was taking longer – and then longer – to respond to my letters. Eventually I got a letter that seemed to darken the hope of a future together – or, at least, that’s how I interpreted it.

In the sixth year, as his mother’s only child, he had gotten special permission to move back to Beijing with her where he got a job in a shoe factory. (he was very smart – and eventually he would go to school and become a lawyer – but back then he was working in a shoe factory)

Sometimes I got to visit Beijing, and we would get together for a date – but it was always temporary – and I’d soon have to leave.

He lived with his mother in an old office building – their two rooms were on either side of a long hallway – and on my last visit there, he was gone when I arrived, so I had a chance to chat with his mother (who really liked me). Usually she was very upbeat about her son – but this day she was very critical – disappointed about his dead-end job at the factory etc.

This was a surprise visit – and I wanted to surprise him with the news that I had just become a college student, studying English in the Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute. I wanted to tell him that I was back and would never have to go away again.

But he had a surprise for me as well.

When he finally arrived home, he sat down and we chatted for a little while. He seemed very uptight, but he was still friendly, happy to see me and happy for me.

Then -- after a little while -- while we were still chatting, – to my complete surprise – another woman entered the room. She did not say anything to me and soon she left.

“Who is this woman? ” I asked.

“I have begun a new family for China” he replied.

I was stunned ! I did not know what to say. I never thought that he could get married that soon – since it was against policy, though not law, for a man and woman to marry at such an early age. (he was 23 years old—and I was 22 at the time) My whole world was turned upside down, I did not remember what I said to him, I was totally lost and very very sad. I still don’t remember how I got home that evening (and believe it or not – a big patch of hair fell off my head over the next few weeks)

Many years later, we ran into each other, and we got together at a café to talk about what had happened.

Then he told me how he had met a woman at the shoe factory and she happened to live nearby.

Before he could continue, I interrupted and said “let me finish your story”

Then I told him how what began by walking home together eventually became sleeping together. She had gotten pregnant – then had an abortion – then gotten pregnant again – at which point they finally decided to get married. (even though, at age 23, men are usually considered too young to marry)

I told him that he did not love her, but he had no choice except to marry her. He was shocked - and he told me so.

I had guessed correctly !

And that was the end my first true love.

We kept in touch a little after that – his daughter would be over 30 by now -- but he left his wife after a few years. They really had very little in common.

And now I’m going to cry.

Part Thirteen

More about life at the farm

Maybe I didn’t make clear the location of this place: it’s nearly 1000 miles due north of Beijing – at the northern tip of Manchuria – 50 miles from Russia (i.e. Siberia) –and like Siberia, it was cold, desolate, and had recently been used as a kind of penal colony for the rehabilitation of criminals after they had served their time in prison.

Some residents were army veterans whom the government had relocated after the Korean war. It was a remote and uncultivated land, but some of them were happy, because they had a better life here than in their home land and I think they were also being paid by the government.

A strange thing we noticed when we first arrived: all the girls and boys started smoking at the age of 7 or 8. I was used to see grown men smoke, but not children, and especially not young girls. Later I learned that it was to protect themselves from all the biting bugs and flies which I was told hate the smell of the smoking. But unfortunately, so do I, and I never got the habit.


Each village (which still included some of those former criminals) received an allotment of young high school students like us. The village had to feed and build shelters for us – and we had to work for them – under the supervision of the village leaders - who then selected our student leaders to be in charge. Overall, the region was administered by the army – so all of us were issued green coats, similar to a military uniform.

Everyone in the village was Chinese, but there was one half-Russian – the adult son of a man from a village just over the Russian border who had been abandoned by his Chinese mother. He was borderline retarded, and people would tease him. “Hey – we have found a wife for you – just wait here and we’ll send her over” – and he would wait there all day.

Though the growing season was short, the soil was black and fertile, and during the summer and fall, we harvested crops of winter wheat, soy beans, and corn.

There was still a lot of good, uncultivated land there, but for some reason local people were discouraged from using it. One day, during my first summer there, the village leader named Liu took us to a small vegetable field filled with huge Chinese cabbages almost ready for harvest, but we were ordered to destroy them. I was puzzled and asked for an explanation. Mr. Liu told me “we do not encourage capitalists in our society. Let the cabbage rot just like the Capitalist society ”. No argument from us -- we destroyed the entire cabbage patch. (but what a waste!)

Early in the planting season, we worked three shifts to put seeds in the fields with machines. On windy days, we came back from work covered with dust a—but still each of us had only half a basin of water to wash ourselves..

Every day, we had to stand in the line waiting for that water—and hopefully it was hot – but some days, nobody remembered to turn the heat on, or someone took too much hot water before every one else got a chance. Those were the days we washed ourselves with icy cold water!

In mid-summer, our day began before 4 am – just as the sun was rising – and we’d begin by walking two to three miles to the fields. Then we’d spend the next 12 – 16 hours walking down the field rows picking the crops (each row could be several miles long) – and throwing the harvest into piles that ran along each row – to be picked up later by the carts. We’d all line up – one to a row – and work side-by-side – with a kind of pride in moving ahead of the others in line.

In the beginning, I was slow and always got left behind. Usually, those who finished first would pick a line from the other end to help the slow person get to the end of her row, but nobody ever helped me. Later, I learned to choose an inner line, close to the pile, so I could be the leader of that line, and it really saved me a lot of time. I also got faster, and eventually I had time to rest as well as pick and choose those whom I would like to help.


We got a break for lunch – when freshly steamed bread was brought out to the fields – but often there was nothing to drink – and we’d get so thirsty, that we would drink from the puddles in the cart tracks if we had the chance (straining it through our neckerchief)

One time, the farm’s bad girl (I’ll talk about her later) told me that she had found a pond where we could drink and swim. I followed her into the brush, but as she walked into the pond, she sank into mud, almost up to her waist. I tried pulling her out – but it wasn’t easy, since I was getting sucked into the swamp as well. (After that – I stayed away from open water).

Back at the buildings, there was also work to be done: preparing the grain for shipment. This was hard, dirty work and the floor was swarming with mice, hundreds of them. (I had nightmares about them, and still don’t like mice, to this day). We tied strings around the cuffs of our pants to keep mice from running up our legs.

One day, a mouse ran into a girl’s pants and she was so terrified, that she was screaming and grabbing it for almost 10 minutes. Finally, as she let other people help her catch it, the mouse dropped out from her pants. It had been squeezed flat.

Life was hard, but the young people tried very hard to please – and there weren’t any serious discipline problems – though once in a while, people noticed that things were missing from their pocket or from the trucks stored in the shed, and sometimes there were fights among the boys or quarrels among the girls.

One area of contention, was the spot on the chimney that could be used to dry our wet shoes which had been specially designed for the people of this area. The tops and the soles were of rubber, while the insides were cotton padded, and if you did not dry them out , they could be hard as a rock to wear the next day, but not every one could get a safe spot on the top of the chimney every night.

So, almost every night, someone’s shoes got scorched, and we were often woken by clouds of black smoke accompanied by much crying and swearing.. The smell of burning rubber shoes was almost unbearable --especially during the winter, when all the dormitory windows were kept tightly closed.

I was not lucky enough to get spot on the kang, but at least I was not one of those who slept close by the door, and who were always yelling whenever the door swung open during the winter.

I remember once that I was bullied by the girl ( mentioned above ). She pushed me down to the floor from my second level bed. But no one helped me because everyone else was afraid of her and I was so unpopular due to the arrest in my family. I felt so bad, sad, and helpless.

But on the whole, there were no serious crimes, nothing that couldn’t be handled within the criticism sessions we had at night.

I never saw students get beaten – but one time we caught some young men from the village who had come to steal our grain. The village leader had them tied up – and then instructed our young men to give them a beating. It was a terrible – I remember their screams – and one of them was nearly killed (it took him a month to recover)

And even though there were so many adolescent boys and girls working side by side – in the entire two years I was there – only one girl got pregnant – that bad girl I mentioned earlier – who slept near me on the shelf above the kang. She was overweight, and not very attractive, and had a reputation of being available for any boy who wanted her. An older couple from the village adopted her child, and eventually, she married and moved into the village herself.

During the harvest months, we were too tired to do anything at night – but otherwise, we would have political meetings – many of which concerned preparing us for an impending Russian invasion. One time, we were loaded up with packs, and got to practice our own “long march” throughout the night.

Regarding food, I should mention that since we were paid a salary, we had to purchase our own food at the cafeteria – but the offerings were rather minimal: steamed bread and “soup” – where the soup was hot water that had been politely introduced to a few slices of turnip.

One day, when I took my usual breakfast meal of hot soy milk and steamed bread back to the dorm., I spilt the soy milk on my little finger. Within a few seconds, my finger had turned white, and it was so painful, I almost dropped everything in my hand -- but I held on – because otherwise I would have had to go back to buy the meal again. I was in tears.

Being a cook was the best job anyone could have (since you could eat whatever and whenever you wanted) But being a blacklisted person like me, almost everyone treated me badly, and every time I was buying my meal, I noticed that I was given the smallest portions. Nor could I complain, because I knew that if I did, I would be treated even worse.

An exception was New Year – our one, big holiday – where we all got together to make dumplings – using our own wash basins as pots. One of the offerings at the cafeteria was soy milk – and this is what I bought every day – not because I liked the taste – but because it was the only offering that had serious nutritional value. (who knows what went into that bread –one time it was filled with sand and mouse droppings – as if it were made from floor sweepings)

Due to poor nutrition, I was among the first students from our group who got night blindness. I could not see anything at night except for the flame of the oil lamps, and I got scared. I wrote to my mom and friend in Beijjng, and both of them sent me a few bottles of vitamin A. When I opened the package, only one bottle was left – but that bottle was enough, and soon my vision had recovered.


The water from the wells was yellow – so all of our towels turned the same color. We survived it, but it must have affected the people who grew up here – because all of them had swollen joints – and rather than walk straight , they seemed to waddle from side to side.

Regarding my life among others, it had been immediately announced (by a blabbermouth who knew me) that my father was in prison – not the ordinary kind of prison where so many people were detained for questioning in those days – but in a special high security prison – with walls 30 feet high – that incarcerated the very worst political prisoners. So being friendly with me was not a wise path to follow – and that’s why nobody would ever help me.

Our group leader especially hated me (she was 2 years older and came from Tienjin). It was policy that all working women got a 3 day rest during their period – but this policy was not applied to me – and I had to work everyday, regardless.

I had never imaged that I could end up like this. All my dreams were gone, and I was facing a grim reality – not only of physical labor – but of missing my mom and everybody else I knew, ---as well as the mental torture inflicted by my peers. I just could not handle it any more. There is a Chinese phase like “ calling the sky, the sky will not respond --calling the earth, the earth will not answer” . I felt helpless, I was so sad, and I could not imagine spending my whole life there.

I made a pledge that I would get out in 5 years. I did not know how I would survive until then - or where I would go --but I was determined.

And in the meantime, I became a fervent writer of letters.

One day, my oldest brother was staying with mother when she received one of my long, whining communications – begging her to help me get me out – telling her that I could not stand my miserable life any longer.

When he saw how mother wept to read it - he sent me a reply – gently asking me to take her feelings more into consideration. I think I grew four years older on the day I read his letter – and I never shared my misery with mother again.

But I also wrote letters to everyone else whom I thought might possibly return them – including – and especially – my first real boy friend.

Yes ! -- amazingly enough -- I had fallen in love – for the first time in my life – with a student who was working on a nearby farm.

Part Twelve

I go to the countryside

With my older siblings dispatched to the countryside, I spent the next year in the Beijing apartment with my mother and younger sister.

I was supposed to be attending my first year of high school at this time.

But when high schools reopened after Red Guard chaos, it was a completely different system. There were only local schools now – no more schools ranked by student ability – and it turned out that what had been the lowest school ( with the lowest ranked teachers for the lowest ranked students) – was now my local school. It was a disaster – I hated it – I learned nothing the entire year – and I skipped classes as often as I could , so I could hang out with my friends.

My friends were like me – children of high officials – whose parents had been arrested or sent to the countryside – so they were often under their own supervision, left alone to live on their own with money left by their parents,

One time, I was invited to a friend of friend’s house.

She was a very pretty girl, about 15 years old, and she lived alone with her brother, age 7. She was so mean to this poor boy ! She forced him to do all the chores – constantly beating and slapping his face. He had to cook for her, and if she didn’t like the food, I saw her shove it into his mouth. He was in tears, but dared not to cry out, because the more he cried, the more she beat him. I felt so bad that there was nobody to stop her.

We were so-called hooligans – but of the genteel sort. Breaking into movie theaters was our worst crime. One time, my best friend stole a tomato off the window sill of a security office -- but that was the most outrageous thing we did (and I remember running like crazy to get away)

This wasn’t the 60’s in America – we rebellious youth had no drugs – no sex -- or even any rock n’ roll. (sometimes we played recordings – but the only records anybody had were Russian)

There was some dating among us – where someone would introduce someone else to a brother or sister – and we had some neighborhood boys on bicycles who liked to chase young girls. They especially liked to chase the girls who wore a military uniform or blue Mao jacket (since that could identify us as children of high officials)


I went out with a few boys --but I never had any special feelings for them. All of our behavior would have been quite appropriate for a church social.

But as I said – my high school was hell – and I especially hated the principal teacher who supervised my class. He knew that my father was arrested , and he used it against me before the other students. He was a peasant who had worked his way up to teach in a Beijing school.

One time he took a few students with him to visit our apartment – to berate my mother for having such an awful daughter. When I heard what he was doing, I raced home – but he was already there – and my mother was so upset by his attack, she went into a kind of fit – falling on the floor and clenching her fists. It was something I had never seen her do before – but it would happen several more times over the next 5 years.

I was furious ! And I ran out of the apartment to where the teacher had left his bicycle – and I stomped it – jumping up and down – going kind of berserk. Seeing his bicycle destroyed, he ran up to me and punched me full in the face, knocking me down.

I saw stars ! – yes, I actually saw stars, just like in the cartoons.


I was 15 - he was over thirty – I was a small, skinny girl from the city – he was a large, country man, strong as a horse – but I jumped up and slapped him twice on the face – leaving red hand prints on both his cheeks. (Well -- I’d never done that before - and I never did it again)


So as you can see, I was probably more eager than anyone to leave town and go to the countryside – and indeed, as summer came, all the students my age were being organized to leave the city. At first it seemed that my family’s bad record was going to keep me from going – and since my school was going way north – up near the Russian border – somebody like me might well try to escape to the other side.

But eventually – in October – the orders came for me to join them – and I was really looking forward to it.

For one thing, the students got paid 32 Yuan a month – a real salary. And for another – I so longed to get away from the neighbors ( who spied and accused us) – and, of course, away from that hellish school. Working with a bunch of boys and girls my age – out in the fresh air - among the valleys and streams – it all seemed very romantic – and I was eager to go.

Our destination was a large farm , formerly used to rehabilitate political prisoners –way up in HeiLongJiang province (Manchuria) –in a village about 50 miles from the Russian border.

We were on the train for 36 hours – and when it finally stopped – it was the middle of night – and in the middle of nowhere.

It was very dark – and there were no lights.

There was a very small train station—but nothing else.
No buildings - no trees - no nothing – just shoulder-high grass – and several tractors from each village that were waiting for us.. We were loaded into wagons – and the tractors pulled us for another four hours down the dirt road that led to the farm – where we were greeted with a great banquet upon our arrival.

I’m calling it a great banquet – it was only stir-fried cabbage and steamed bread. But compared to what would become our usual meals – it really was a banquet – even though we were eating in candle-lit darkness. (there was no electricity – and by the way, we never saw candles again)

And it did I mention that it was cold ? The newly built dining hall had windows – but they hadn’t yet been glazed – and this was October in a rather high latitude.

Yes, there was a lot of crying during the first week at the farm (and not just by me)

In preparation, my mother had used some of my uncle’s money to purchase a new, large wooden trunk to carry everything that might be needed in a place where nothing could be purchased—all my clothes – toiletries – bedding – water basin etc. It was probably the heaviest trunk taken to the farm – but that’s as far as it got – as it split down the middle while being loaded off the cart.

The boys and girls lived in two separate dormitories – that were like long tunnels with a long bed – called a kang – on either side – that were like horizontal chimneys that circulated hot air within them from the fire that burned at one end. That’s how homes have been traditionally heated in northern China for thousands of years. The room itself isn’t heated, but the bed is – though there wasn’t much warmth for those sleeping at the far end of the dormitory.


That autumn, we worked 12 hours a day – first in the fields, gathering brush/scrub to serve as fuel – and then in the barns winding rope out of hemp – a regimen that left most of us in a very bad mood at the end of the day.

We got a half-basin full of hot water every day. First we drank a little – then we used it for a sponge bath – and all of us had fleas.

I was meticulously clean and kept the fleas away as long as I could – but basically we were all sleeping in the same bed – and the fleas had a field day.

It was especially tough as winter wore on – as the snow piled up and the temperature sank far below zero. We used to say that if you spit – the frozen spittle would shatter when it hit the ground. And foraging for fuel became much more difficult as well – because several feet of snow had to be cleared off the top.

But the summer was not necessarily a holiday either – as we had great, black clouds of mosquitoes – and walking along –we continuously had to flail our arms to brush them off.

To relieve the monotony, we had singing (songs from the 8 operas approved by Madame Mao) . Occasionally, we got to see a movie, but they were all the same - and usually just more propaganda. Sometimes we had to walk many kilometers to a nearby village to see them. At other times , the headquarters would send some local entertainment team to perform shows for us (shows that were all about praising Mao and down with the rich. )


The only thing kept me going was letters from my family and friends. I cannot describe the joy I had whenever I received a letter.


It was at this time, that I became such a fervent correspondent – written by the light of a simple, oil burning lamp I had made. I wrote letters to anyone-everyone I ever know or hoped to know – and was, of course, so happy to get letters in return. One day, at mail call, I got 5 letters ! This was my greatest achievement – and one of the happiest moments of the two years I spent there.