Ha Jin: War Trash

Ha Jin (哈金) – Jīn Xuěfēi (Simplified Chinese: 金雪飞; Traditional Chinese: 金雪飛)

War Trash – 战争垃圾

Below my navel stretches a long tattoo that says "FUCK… U… S…" The skin above those dots has shriveled as though scarred by burns. Like a talisman, the tattoo has protected me in China for almost five decades. Before coming to the States, I wondered whether I should have it removed. I decided not to, not because I cherished it or was nervous about the surgery, but because if I had done that, word would have spread and the authorities, suspecting I wouldn't return, might have revoked my passport. In addition, I was planning to bring with me all the material I had collected for this memoir, and couldn't afford to attract the attention of the police, who might have confiscated my notes and files. Now I am here, and my tattoo has lost its charm; instead, it has become a constant concern. When I was clearing customs in Atlanta two weeks ago, my heart fluttered like a trapped pigeon, afraid that the husky, cheerful-voiced officer might suspect something – that he might lead me into a room and order me to undress. The tattoo could have caused me to be refused entry to the States.

Sometimes when I walk along the streets here, a sudden consternation will overtake me, as though an invisible hand might grip the front of my shirt and pull it out of my belt to reveal my secret to passersby.

However sultry a summer day it is, I won't unbutton my shirt all the way down. When I run a hot bath in the evenings, which I'm very fond of doing and which I think is the best of American amenities, I carefully lock the bathroom, for fear that Karie, my Cambodian-born daughter-in-law, might by chance catch a glimpse of the words on my belly. She knows I fought in Korea and want to write a memoir of that war while I am here. Yet at this stage I don't want to reveal any of its contents to others or I might lose my wind when I take up the pen.

Last Friday as I was napping, Candie, my three-year-old granddaughter, poked at my exposed belly and traced the contour of the words with her finger. She understood the meaning of "U… S…" but not the verb before it. Feeling itchy, I woke up, only to find her tadpole-shaped eyes flickering. She grinned, then pursed her lips, her apple face tightening. Before I could say a word, she spun around and cried, "Mommy, Grandpa has a tattoo on his tummy!"

I jumped out of bed and caught her before she could reach the door. Luckily her mother was not in. "Shh, Candie," I said, putting my finger to my lips. "Don't tell anybody. It's our secret."

"Okay." She smiled as if she had suspected this all along.

That afternoon I took her to Asian Square on Buford Highway and bought her a chunk of hawthorn jelly and a box of taro crackers, for which she gleefully smacked me twice on the cheek. She promised not to breathe a word about my tattoo, not even to her brother, Bobby. But I doubt if she can keep her promise for long. Certainly she will remember seeing it and will rack her little brain trying to unravel the mystery.

My grandson Bobby, a bright boy, is almost seven years old, and I often ask him what he will do when he grows up. Shaking his chubby face, he answers, "Don't know."

"How about being a doctor?" I suggest.

"No, I want to be a scientist or an astronomer."

"An astronomer must spend a lot of time at an observatory, so it's hard for him to keep a family."

His mother's fruity voice breaks in: "Dad, don't press him again."

"I'm not trying to make him do anything. It's just a suggestion."

"He should follow his own interests," my son calls out.

So I shut up. They probably think I'm greedy, eager to see my grandson wallow in wealth. But my wish has nothing to do with money.

From the depths of my heart I believe medicine is a noble, humane profession. If I were born again, I would study medical science devotedly. This thought has been rooted in my mind for five decades. I cannot explain in detail to my son and daughter-in-law why I often urge Bobby to think of becoming a doctor, because the story would involve too much horror and pain. In brief, this desire of mine has been bred by my memories of the wasted lives I saw in Korea and China. Doctors and nurses follow a different set of ethics, which enables them to transcend political nonsense and man-made enmity and to act with compassion and human decency.

In eight or nine months I will go back to China, the land that has raised and nourished me and will retain my bones. Already seventy-three years old, with my wife and daughter and another grandson back home, I won't be coming to the States again. Before I go, I must complete this memoir I have planned to write for more than half of my life. I'm going to do it in English, a language I started learning at the age of fourteen, and I'm going to tell my story in a documentary manner so as to preserve historical accuracy. I hope that someday Candie and Bobby and their parents will read these pages so that they can feel the full weight of the tattoo on my belly. I regard this memoir as the only gift a poor man like me can bequeath his American grandchildren.

Before the Communists came to power in 1949, I was a sophomore at the Huangpu Military Academy, majoring in political education. The school, at that time based in Chengdu, the capital of Szechuan Province, had played a vital part in the Nationalist regime. Chiang Kai-shek had once been its principal, and many of his generals had graduated from it. In some ways, the role of the Huangpu in the Nationalist army was like that of West Point in the American military. The cadets at the Huangpu had been disgusted with the corruption of the Nationalists, so they readily surrendered to the People's Liberation Army when the Communists arrived. The new government disbanded our academy and turned it into a part of the Southwestern University of Military and Political Sciences. We were encouraged to continue our studies and prepare ourselves to serve the new China. The Communists promised to treat us fairly, without any discrimination. Unlike most of my fellow students who specialized in military science, however, I dared not raise my hopes very high, because the political courses I had taken in the old academy were of no use to the People's Liberation Army. I was more likely to be viewed as a backward case, if not a reactionary. At the university, established mainly for reindoctrinating the former Nationalist officers and cadets, we were taught the basic ideas of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong, and we had to write out our personal histories, confess our wrongdoings, and engage in self- and mutual criticism. A few stubborn officers from the old army wouldn't relinquish their former outlook and were punished in the reeducation program – they were imprisoned in a small house at the northeastern corner of our campus. But since I had never resisted the Communists, I felt relatively safe. I didn't learn much in the new school except for some principles of the proletarian revolution.

At graduation the next fall, I was assigned to the 180th Division of the People's Liberation Army, a unit noted for its battle achievements in the war against the Japanese invaders and in the civil war. I was happy because I started as a junior officer at its headquarters garrisoned in Chengdu City, where my mother was living. My father had passed away three years before, and my assignment would enable me to take care of my mother. Besides, I had just become engaged to a girl, a student of fine arts at Szechuan Teachers College, majoring in choreography. Her name was Tao Julan, and she lived in the same city. We planned to get married the next year, preferably in the fall after she graduated. In every direction I turned, life seemed to smile upon me. It was as if all the shadows were lifting. The Communists had brought order to our country and hope to the common people. I had never been so cheerful.