Anchee Min - Red Azalea

I don’t want to hear your reasons, said my father. It doesn’t help Coral any if either of us wins the argument. I just want you to be aware of the fact, and the fact is that you’re no longer a peasant and the family needed to have a peasant to fulfill the government’s quota, and Coral, your little sister, is assigned to fill that hole.

I said, What can I do? How can I help? Accept your lot and stay in your place, said Father. Your mother and I can’t afford to have more losses. If you get kicked out of the studio, we will have two peasants at Red Fire Farm.

I wished I could have said it out loud, that I was not doing well at the film studio, but I could not let them down. I said, You just saw how my teachers dislike me. How can I stop them? My parents went silent. They were hurt.

I should have gone downstairs to personally see them off, my father murmured. Soviet Wong and Sound of Rain must be upset about my impoliteness. You are an idiot if you think that would have made any difference, said Mother. They did not deserve to be treated as my guests. Not in my house. One should at least pay attention to its master when hitting a dog. I will never put on a smiling face when someone comes to spit on my daughter’s face. Hold back your bad temper now, yelled Father. Don’t you have to put up with enough bad treatment by behaving this way at work? I don’t regret it a bit, yelled back my mother. Live honorably or die-that’s my principle and I want my children to behave according to it.

But see what you have caused them? When they behave according to your principle, this idealistic nonsense, see what happens to them? They get crushed by society! Mother said I can’t believe it, you, the man I am married to, the father of my four children, disgrace my principles.

My father beat his chest, kicked his feet, swore that he did not mean that.

Coral did not speak to me. She was packing for the Red Fire Farm. It hurt me to see her leaving for the hardship I had gone through. I did not know how she would ever make out. I did not know what to say to her. Guilt filled me. I gave my salary to Mother and asked her to buy Coral some necessities. Mother told me that Coral had said that she did not want anything from me. I knew I could never pay the price for her sufferings.

I did not come home the day Coral was supposed to leave for the farm.

I expected Soviet Wong to question me. But she did not. She had conversations with everyone else in the room but me. I thought she would openly criticize me, but she did not. She talked to my classmates about Red Azalea, about the exciting energy the movie was about to generate. She gave out parts of the script, but did not tell me when and what to play. I was left out. No one was in charge of me. I was not told what was wrong with me. All of a sudden, I had nothing to do. I was assigned to watch everyone else rehearsing. I heard loud voices reciting the lines. I heard Cheering Spear reciting lines in her sleep. My pain felt like water penetrating into sand, soundless, into the core of my being. I did not seem to exist anymore.

Bee OhYang had been warned because she was playing too much table tennis with a male student. It was reported that they were flirting with each other as they hit the ball. Bee OhYang cried and denied that there was anything going on between her and the man. Soviet Wong had spoken with them separately. She called all of us to a meeting. She stated that she had discovered that the couple had not gone too far. She advised us. She said, A healthy mind is the most important thing in life. As I listened, I watched her face. Every nerve on it expressed righteousness. Her skin was very white. Her handkerchief smelled of Tiger Balm. She told us a story, a story she had witnessed. It was about how a former young actress corrupted and destroyed her own future by having an affair with an older man. Soviet Wong pointed out that the actress had read too much Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre had destroyed her.

I immediately wanted to read the book Jane Eyre, although this was the first time I had ever heard of it. According to Soviet Wong, the couple was caught on Chow Family Pond Road. While they were hiding in the bushes late one evening, the woman was recognized by a passing comrade. As the saying goes, There is no such thing as a windproof wall. Their deed was brought out into the night. It was useless when the woman confessed that she regretted what she had done. Soviet Wong had heard her say it at a mass rally. But it was too late. She was considered a criminal for the rest of her life. She now worked as a restroom cleaner in the studio.

Soviet Wong said, I sincerely hope you do not follow her catastrophic road. She rested her sight on me and nodded lightly. I wanted to avoid her stare but forced myself to face her. My mind was picturing how the young actress was touched by the older man in the bushes. I now knew who Soviet Wong was talking about. I knew the young actress. She was a rare beauty with a pair of flowery eyes. The whole studio called her a prostitute. Anyone could joke about her. The male workers made dirty jokes about how they had had her. She became the joke. Strangely, I did not see a sad expression on her face. She had the face of a rogue. She did not care anymore. She joked back with the workers. She told the wives who had scorned her that she had slept with their men. She told the workers that she had slept with their bosses. She became a real whore.

Sunday morning I went back home to spend the day with my parents. Our yard was a mess. The Wu Lee Hardware Workshop was assigned a new ambitious leader who, on his first day on the job, declared he would expand his shop into our yard to make a shed for bicycles. He had his workers cut out all the greens and erect the frames of a shed. We protested, fighting for the yard, shouting the whole day. But he had more men than we did. Those were desperate men, the new employees. We lost. The cement was poured over the grass. My parents said to the leader: You can’t do this to us. We have been putting up with your machine noise and chemical smell for years; you can’t have an inch and then take a foot. You can’t take away our only yard, our green. My parents almost begged. The leader was unmoved. He said, I am doing this to open positions for the unemployed, people who desperately need rice in their bowls. You think I want them? The hopeless, the society-walkers? Where is your conscience? Don’t you have any feelings for the proletarians?

The day at home was depressing. Blooming was in boarding school, Coral at Red Fire Farm. Space Conqueror was sent by his middle school to a tractor factory to learn to be a worker. Father leaned on the table all day working on his project, a pop-up book, Fly to the Moon. He made maps of Mars and the moon. My mother said he should be a member of the solar system instead of this family. I watched Father painting the black hole. He was patient, glasses hanging on his nose tip. He said, Let me tell you what makes the moon shine-would you like to hear it? I said, So what whether the moon shines or not.

After lunch Mother sat down with the book Dream of the Red Chamber. She called me, recommended the book to me. She thought I was now mature enough to read it. She said that it was all right to read it because Mao had said that the book did not have to be read as an ancient back-garden love story; it could be studied as educational material. The book revealed a vivid picture of China’s feudalistic society, the ugly nature of the oppressor class. This was Mao’s newest instruction. Mao recommended everyone read it from his perspective. I said to Mother, Maybe some other time.