Anchee Min: Red Azalea

She was daring. Dared to decorate her beauty. She tied her braids with colorful strings while the rest of us tied our braids with brown rubber bands. Her femininity mocked us. I watched her and sensed the danger in her boldness. I used to be a head of the Red Guards. I knew the rules. I knew the thin line between right and wrong. I watched Little Green. Her beauty. I wanted to tie my braids with colorful strings every day. But I did not have the guts to show contempt for the rules. I had always been good.

I had to admit that she was beautiful. But I and all the other female soldiers said she was not. We tied on brown rubber bands. The color of mud, of pig shit, of our minds. Because we believed that a true Communist should never care about the way she looked. The beauty of the soul was what should be cared about. Little Green never argued with anyone. She did not care what we said. She smiled at herself. She looked down on the floor. She smiled, from the heart, at herself, at her colorful string, and was satisfied. No matter how tired she got, Little Green always walked forty-five minutes to a hot-water station and carried back water to wash herself. She cleaned the mud off her fingernails, patiently and gaily. Every evening she washed herself in the net while I lay in my net, watching her, with my pawlike fingernails laid on my thighs.

Little Green proudly showed me how she used remnants of fabric to make pretty underwear, finely embroidered with flowers, leaves and birds. She hung a string next to the little window between our beds on which she could hang her underwear to dry. In our bare room the string was like an art gallery.

Little Green upset me. She upset the room, the platoon and the company. She caught our eyes. We could not help looking at her. The good-for-nothings could not take their eyes off her, that creature full of bourgeois allure. I scorned my own desire to display my youth. A nasty desire, I told myself a hundred times. I was seventeen and a half. I admired Little Green’s guts. The guts to redesign the clothes we were issued. She tapered her shirts at the waist; she remade her trousers so that the legs would look longer. She was not embarrassed by her full breasts. In the early evening she would carry the two containers of hot water, her back straight, chest full. She walked toward our room singing. The sky behind her was velvet blue. The half-man, half-monkey male soldiers stared at her when she passed by. She was the Venus of the farm’s evening. I envied and adored her. In June she dared to go without a bra. I hated my bra when I saw her, saw her walking toward me, bosoms bouncing. She made me feel withered without ever having bloomed.

The days were long, so long. The work was endless. At five in the morning we were cutting the oil-bearing plants. The black seeds rolled on my neck and into my shoes as I laid the plants down. I did not bother to wipe the sweat that was dripping and salted my eyes. I did not have the time. Our platoon was the fastest in the company. We soared like arrows. We advanced across the fields in staircase-shape formation. When we worked, we were sunk into the sea of the plants. We barely straightened our backs. We had no time to straighten our backs. Little Green did, once in a while. She upset us. We threw unfriendly words out. We said, Shame on the lazybones! We did not stop until Little Green bent down to work again. We did this to everyone but Yan. Yan was a horse rider. We were her horses. She did not have to whip us to get us moving. We felt the chill of a whip on the back when she walked by and examined our work. I watched her feet moving past me. I dared not raise my head. I paid attention to what my hands were doing. She stopped and watched me working. I cut and laid the plant neatly. I tried not to let the black seeds rain down. She passed by and I let out a breath.

A pair of Little Green’s prettiest hand-embroidered underwear was stolen. It was considered an ideological crime. The company’s Party committee called a meeting. It was held in the dining hall. Four hundred people all sat on little wooden stools. In rows. The question regarding the theft was brought up by Yan. No one admitted to the theft. Lu was indignant. She said she could not bear such behavior. She said the fact of what was stolen shamed us all. She said the Party should launch a political campaign to prevent such behavior from taking place. She said it should be more the fault of the company leaders than the soldiers. Yan stood up. She apologized for being soft on watching her soldiers’ minds. She apologized to the Party. She criticized Little Green for vanity. She ordered her to make a confession. She told Little Green that in the future she should not hang her underwear near the window.

Little Green was washing her fingernails in the evening. She tried to wash off the brown, the fungicide that had stained her nails. She used a toothbrush. I lay on my hands. I watched her patience. Little Green said that she was disappointed in Yan. I thought she was more human than Lu, said Little Green. Lu is a dog. I do not expect her to show elephant’s tusks. But Yan was supposed to be an elephant. She is supposed to have ivory instead of jigsaw-patterned dog teeth.

I made no comment. I found it hard to comment on Yan. I was unaware of when I had become Yan’s admirer. Like many others in the company, I guarded her automatically. During field breaks we gossiped legendary stories of Yan. I learned from Orchid that Yan had joined the Communist Party at eighteen. When she had arrived five years ago, the land of Red Fire Farm had been barren. She had led her platoon of twenty Red Guards in reclaiming it. Orchid was among them. Yan was famous for her iron shoulders. To remove the mud to build irrigation channels, she made twenty half-mile trips in a day, carrying over 160 pounds in two hods hanging from a shoulder pole. Her shoulders swelled like steamed bread. But she continued carrying the hods. She allowed the pole to rub her bleeding shoulders. She believed in willpower. After a year her blisters were the size of thumbs. She was the number-one weight lifter in the company. Orchid told the story as if Yan were a god.

I saw Yan carry large loads in the afternoon. She piled reed upon reed upon her head until she looked like she had a hill on her shoulders, with only her legs moving underneath. She had a man’s muscles. Her feet were like animal paws.

The older soldiers never got tired of describing one image of their heroine. A few years ago, after the grain storage there was a fire. Straw huts and fields of ripe crops were burned and all the Red Guards cried. Yan stood in front of the ranks with one of her braids burnt off, her face scorched and her clothes smoking. She said that her faith in Communism was all she needed to rebuild her dream. The company built new houses in five months. She was worshiped. She was more real than Mao.

Late at night, when I listened to the sound of Little Green washing herself, I imagined Yan with a burnt-off braid, her skin scorched by fire raging behind her… Yan had become the protagonist in my opera. I began to sing Red Detachment of Women. Little Green hummed with me, then the other roommates. I was singing the song of Yan. Yan was the heroine in real life. In singing I wanted to reach her, to become her. I wanted to become a heroine. I adored Little Green as a friend, but I needed Yan to worship.

The willow outside the window swayed hard. The leaves tapped on the glass. The night was windy. Tomorrow would be another hard day. Depression sunk in. I pushed my thoughts to Yan. She inspired me, gave significance to my life. Little Green’s disappointment over Yan did not diminish my admiration for her. I needed a leader to get me up. My back was sore. My fingernails were all brown, my skin cracked. But my focus was on Yan. In thinking of her I fell into sleep.