Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

One young electrician in the team, Day, had been in a high school until the start of the Cultural Revolution, and was considered very well educated. He was a good calligrapher and played several musical instruments beautifully. I was very attracted to him, and in the mornings I would always find him leaning against the door to the electricians'

quarters, waiting to greet me. I found myself doing a lot of calls with him. One early spring day, after finishing a maintenance job, we spent the lunch break leaning against a haystack at the back of the foundry, enjoying the first sunny day of the year. Sparrows were chirping over our heads, fighting for the grains left on the rice plants. The hay gave off an aroma of sunshine and earth. I was overjoyed to discover that Day shared my interest in classical Chinese poetry, and that we could compose poems to each other using the same rhyme sequence, as ancient Chinese poets had done. In my generation, few people understood or liked classical poetry. We were very late back to work that afternoon, but there were no criticisms. The other electricians only gave us meaningful smiles.

Soon Day and I were counting the minutes during our days off from the factory, eager to be back together. We sought every opportunity to be near each other, to brush each other's fingers, to feel the excitement of being close, to smell the smell of each other, and to look for reasons to be hurt or pleased by each other's half-spoken words.

Then I began to hear gossip that Day was unworthy of me. The disapproval was partly caused by the fact that I was considered special. One of the reasons was that I was the only offspring of high officials in the factory, and indeed the only one most of the workers had ever come into contact with. There had been many stories about high officials' children being arrogant and spoiled. I apparently came as a nice surprise, and some workers seemed to feel that no one in the factory could possibly be worthy of me.

They held it against Day that his father had been a Kuomintang officer, and had been in a labor camp. The workers were convinced I had a bright future, and should not be 'dragged into misfortune' by being associated with Day.

Actually, it was purely by chance that Day's father had become a Kuomintang officer. In 1937, he and two friends were on their way to Yan'an to join up with the Communists to fight the Japanese. They had almost reached Yan'an when they were stopped at a Kuomintang roadblock where the officers urged them to join the Kuomintang instead. While the two friends insisted on pressing on to Yan'an, Day's father settled for the Kuomintang, thinking it did not matter which Chinese army he joined, as long as it fought the Japanese. When the civil war re starred he and his two friends ended up on opposite sides. After 1949, he was sent to a labor camp, while his companions became high-ranking officers in the Communist army.

Because of this accident of history, Day was sniped at in the factory for not knowing his place by 'pestering' me, and even for being a social climber. I could see from his drained face and bitter smiles that he was stung by the snide gossip, but he said nothing to me. We had only hinted at our feelings in allusions in our poems. Now he stopped writing poems to me. The confidence with which he had begun our friendship disappeared, and he adopted a subdued and humbled manner toward me in private. In public, he tried to appease the people who disapproved of him by awkwardly trying to show them he really thought nothing of me. At times I felt that he behaved in such an undignified way that I could not help being irritated as well as saddened. Having been brought up in a privileged position, I did not realize that in China dignity was a luxury scarcely available to those who were not privileged. I did not appreciate Day's dilemma, and the fact that he could not show his love for me, for fear of ruining me. Gradually we became alienated.

During the four months of our acquaintance, the word 'love' had never been mentioned by either of us. I had even suppressed it in my mind. One could never let oneself go, because consideration of the vital factor, family background, was ingrained in one's mind. The consequences of being tied to the family of a 'class enemy' like Day's were too serious. Because of the subconscious self-censorship, I never quite fell in love with Day.

During this period my mother had come off the cortisone, and had been receiving treatment with Chinese medicines for her scleroderma. We had been scouring country markets for the weird ingredients prescribed for her tortoiseshell, snake gallbladder, and anteater scales. The doctors recommended that as soon as the weather turned warmer, she should go to see some top-class specialists in Peking for both her womb and the scleroderma. As part compensation for what she had suffered, the authorities offered to send a companion with her. My mother asked if I could go.

We left in April 1972, staying with family friends, whom it was now safe to contact. My mother saw several gynecologists in Peking and Tianjin, who diagnosed a benign tumor in her womb and recommended a hysterectomy.

Meanwhile, they said her bleeding could be controlled if she had plenty of rest and tried to keep cheerful. The dermatologists thought that the scleroderma might be localized, in which case it would not be fatal. My mother followed the doctors' advice and had a hysterectomy the following year. The scleroderma remained localized.

We visited many friends of my parents. Everywhere we went, they were being rehabilitated. Some had just come out of prison. Mao-tai and other treasured liquors flowed freely, as did tears. In almost every family, one or more members had died as a result of the Cultural Revolution.

The eighty-year-old mother of an old friend died after falling off a landing where she had had to sleep, her family having been driven out of their apartment. Another friend struggled to hold back his tears when he set eyes on me.

I reminded him of his daughter, who would have been my age. She had been sent with her school to a godforsaken place on the border with Siberia, where she had become pregnant. Frightened, she consulted a back-street midwife who tied musk around her waist and told her to jump over a wall to get rid of the baby. She died of a violent hemorrhage. Tragic stories cropped up in every household. But we also talked about hope, and looked forward to happier times ahead.

One day we went to see Tung, an old friend of my parents who had just been released from prison. He had been my mother's boss on her march from Manchuria to Sichuan, and had become a bureau chief in the Ministry of Public Security. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution he was accused of being a Russian spy, and of having supervised the installation of tape recorders in Mao's quarters which he had apparently done, under orders. Every word of Mao's was supposed to be so precious it had to be preserved, but Mao spoke a dialect which his secretaries found hard to understand, and in addition they were sometimes sent out of the room. In early 1967 Tung was arrested and sent to the special prison for top people, Qjncheng. He spent five years in chains, in solitary confinement. His legs were like matchsticks, while from the hips up he was terribly bloated. His wife had been forced to denounce him, and had changed the surname of their children from his to hers to demonstrate that they were cutting him off forever. Most of their household things, including his clothes, had been taken away in house raids. As a result of Lin Biao's downfall, Tung's patron, a foe of Lin Biao's, was back in power, and Tung was released from prison.

His wife was summoned back from her camp in the nor them border region to be reunited with him.

On the day of his release, she brought him new clothes.