Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

Marriage did not get my sister out of the countryside, as couples were not automatically granted residence together. Of course, if Specs had been willing to relinquish his city registration, he could easily have settled with my sister, but she could not move to Chengdu with him because she had a country registration. Like tens of millions of couples in China, they lived separately, entitled by regulation to twelve days a year together. Luckily for them, Specs's factory was not working normally, so he could spend a lot of time in Deyang.

After a year in Deyang there was a change in my life: I entered the medical profession. The production brigade to which my team belonged ran a clinic which dealt with simple illnesses. It was funded by all the production teams under the brigade, and treatment was free, but very limited.

There were two doctors. One of them, a young man with a fine, intelligent face, had graduated from the medical school of Deyang County in the fifties, and had come back to work in his native village. The other was middle-aged with a goatee. He had started out as an apprentice to an old country doctor practicing Chinese medicine, and in 1964 he had been sent by the commune to attend a crash course in Western medicine.

At the beginning of 1971, the commune authorities ordered the clinic to take on a 'barefoot doctor." The name came about because the 'doctor' was supposed to live like the peasants, who treasured their shoes too much to wear them in the muddy fields. At the time, there was a big propaganda campaign hailing barefoot doctors as an invention of the Cultural Revolution. My production team jumped at this opportunity to get rid of me: if I worked in the clinic, the brigade, rather than my team, would be responsible for my food and other income.

I had always wanted to be a doctor. The illnesses in my family, particularly the death of my grandmother, had driven home to me how important doctors were. Before I went to Deyang, I had started learning acupuncture from a friend, and I had been studying a book called A Barefoot Doctor's Manual, one of the few printed items allowed in those days.

The propaganda about barefoot doctors was one of Mao's political maneuvers. He had condemned the pre Cultural Revolution Health Ministry for not looking after peasants and concerning itself only with city dwellers, especially Party officials. He also condemned doctors for not wanting to work in the countryside, particularly in the remote areas. But Mao took no responsibility as head of the regime, nor did he order any practical steps to remedy the situation, such as giving instructions to build more hospitals or train more proper doctors, and during the Cultural Revolution the medical situation got worse. The propaganda line about peasants having no doctors was really intended to generate hatred against the pre-Cultural Revolution Party system, and against intellectuals (this category included doctors and nurses).

Mao offered a magic cure to the peasants: 'doctors' who could be turned out en masse barefoot doctors.

"It is not at all necessary to have so much formal training," he said.

"They should mainly learn and raise their standard in practice." On 26 June 1965 he made the remark which became a guideline for health and education: "The more books you read, the more stupid you become." I went to work with absolutely no training.

The clinic was in a large hall on top of a hill about an hour's walk from my cottage. Next door was a shop selling matches, salt, and soy sauce which were all rationed. One of the surgery rooms became my bedroom. My professional duties were left vague.

The only medical book I had ever set eyes on was A Barefoot Doctor's Manual. I studied it avidly. There was no theory in it, just a summary of symptoms, followed by suggested prescriptions. When I sat at my desk, with the other two doctors behind me, all wearing our dusty everyday clothes, it was clear that the sick peasants who came in very sensibly wanted nothing to do with me, an inexperienced eighteen-year-old with some sort of book they could not read, and which was not even very thick. They went straight past me to the other two desks. I felt more relieved than offended. It was not my idea of being a doctor to have to consult a book every time patients described their symptoms, and then to copy down the recommended prescription. Sometimes, in an ironic mood, I would contemplate whether our new leaders Chairman Mao was still beyond questioning would want me as their personal doctor, barefoot or not. But then, I told myself, of course not: barefoot doctors were supposed to 'serve the people, not the officials' in the first place. I settled happily for just being a nurse, doling out medicines on prescription and giving injections, which I had learned to give to my mother for her hemorrhage.

The young doctor who had been to medical school was the one everybody wanted. His prescriptions of Chinese herbs cured many ailments. He was very conscientious, too, visiting patients in their villages and collecting and growing herbs in his spare time. The other doctor, with the goatee, terrified me with his medical nonchalance. He would use the same needle to inject several different patients without any sterilization. And he injected penicillin without testing whether the person was allergic to it, which was extremely dangerous because Chinese penicillin was not pure and could cause serious reactions, even death.

Politely, I offered to do it for him. He smiled, not offended by my interference, and said there had never been any accidents: "The peasants are not like delicate city folk."

I liked the doctors, and they were very kind to me, always helpful when I asked questions. Not surprisingly, they did not see me as a threat. Out in the countryside, it was one's professional skills, rather than political rhetoric, that counted.

I enjoyed living on that hilltop, far away from any village.

Every morning I got up early, strolled along the edge of the hill, and to the rising sun recited lines from an ancient book of verse about acupuncture. Beneath my feet, the fields and cottages began to wake up to the cocks' crowing.

A lonely Venus watched with a pale glow from a sky that was getting brighter every minute. I loved the fragrance of the honeysuckle in the morning breeze, and the big petals of nightshade shaking off pearls of dew. Birds chirped all around, distracting me from my recitations. I would linger for a bit, and then walk back to light my stove for breakfast.

With the help of an anatomical chart and my acupuncture verses, I had a fairly clear idea where on the body I should stick my needles to cure what. I was eager for patients. And I had some enthusiastic volunteers boys from Chengdu who were now living in other villages and who were keen on me. They would walk for hours for an acupuncture session. One young man, rolling up his sleeve to expose an acupuncture point near his elbow, declared with a brave face, "What are men friends for?"

I did not fall in love with any of them, although my resolution to deny myself a boyfriend in order to dedicate myself to my parents and appease my guilt over my grandmother's death was weakening. But I found it difficult to let my heart go, and my upbringing prevented me from having any physical relationship without surrendering my heart. All around me, other boys and girls from the city were leading rather freer lives. But I sat, lonely, on a pedestal. Word got out that I wrote poetry, and that helped keep me there.

The young men all behaved most chivalrously. One gave me a musical instrument called a san-xian, made of a snakeskin bowl with a long handle and three silk strings, which were plucked, and spent days teaching me how to play it. The permitted tunes were all in praise of Mao, and were very limited. But that did not make much difference to me: my ability was even more limited.