Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

My father was in the countryside trying to galvanize support for the state monopoly program. He had just been upgraded to Grade 10 and promoted to deputy director of the Public Affairs Department for the whole of Sichuan.

One of its major functions was to keep a running check on public opinion: How did the people feel about a particular policy? What complaints did they have? Since peasants formed the overwhelming majority of the population, he was often in the countryside finding out their views and feelings. Like my mother, he believed passionately in his work, which was to keep the Party and the government in touch with the people.

On the seventh day after my mother gave birth, one of his colleagues sent a car to the hospital to bring her home.

It was accepted that, if the husband was away, the Party organization was responsible for taking care of his wife.

My mother gratefully accepted the lift, as 'home' was half an hour's walk away. When my father came back a few days later, he reprimanded his colleague. The rules stipulated that my mother could ride in an official car only when my father was in it. Using a car when he was not there would be seen as nepotism, he said. My father's colleague said he had authorized the car because my mother had just been through a serious operation which had left her extremely weak. But a rule is a rule, replied my father. My mother found it hard to take this puritanical rigidity once again. This was the second time my father had attacked her immediately after a difficult birth. Why was he not there to take her home, she asked, so they would not have to break the rules? He had been tied up with his work, he said, which was important. My mother understood his dedication she was dedicated herself. But she was also bitterly disappointed.

Two days after he was born my new brother, Xiao-bei, developed eczema. My mother thought this was because she had not eaten any boiled green olives during the summer, when she was too busy working. The Chinese believe that olives get rid of body heat that otherwise comes out in heat bumps. For several months Xiao-her's hands had to be tied to the railings of his cot to prevent him from scratching himself. When he was six months old he was sent to a dermatology hospital. At this point my grandmother had to rush to Jinzhou as her mother was ill.

Xiao-her's nurse was a country girl from Yibin, with luxuriant long black hair and flirtatious eyes. She had accidentally killed her own baby she had been breast-feeding it lying down, had fallen asleep, and had smothered it. She had gone to see my aunt Jun-ying via a family connection and begged her to give her a recommendation to my family.

She wanted to go to a big city and have fun. My aunt gave her a reference, in spite of the opposition of some local women who said she only wanted to get to Chengdu to be rid of her husband. Jun-ying, though unmarried, was far from being jealous of other people's pleasure, especially sexual pleasure; in fact, she was always delighted for them. She was full of understanding and tolerant of human foibles, and quite un-judgmental.

Within a few months the nurse was alleged to be having an affair with an undertaker in the compound. My parents considered such things private matters, and turned a blind eye.

When my brother went into the skin hospital, the wet nurse went with him. The Communists had largely eliminated venereal disease, but there were still some VD patients in one of the wards, and one day the wet-nurse was spotted in bed with a patient in that ward. The hospital told my mother and suggested it would be unsafe for the nurse to continue breast-feeding Xiao-her. My mother asked her to leave. After that, Xiao-her was cared for by my wet-nurse and the wet-nurse who looked after my other brother, Jin-ming, who had now joined us from Yibin.

At the end of 1954 Jin-ming's nurse had written to my mother saying she would like to come and live with us, as she had been having trouble with her husband, who had become a heavy drinker and was beating her up. My mother had not seen Jin-ming for eighteen months, since he was a month old. But his arrival was terribly distressing.

For a long time he would not let her touch him, and the only person he would call "Mother' was his nurse.

My father also found it difficult to strike up a close relationship with Jin-ming, but he was very close to me.

He would crawl on the floor and let me ride on his back.

Usually he put some flowers in his collar for me to smell.

If he forgot, I would point at the garden and make commanding noises, indicating that some should be brought instantly. He would often kiss me on the cheek. Once, when he had not shaved, I wrinkled up my face and complained, "Old beard, old beard!" at the top of my voice. I called him Old Beard (lao hu-zi) for months. He kissed me more gingerly after that. I loved to toddle in and out of offices and play with the officials. I used to chase after them and call them by special names I invented for them, and recite nursery rhymes to them. Before I was three I was known as "Little Diplomat."

I think my popularity was really due to the fact that the officials welcomed a break and a bit of fun, which I provided with my childish chattiness. I was very plump, too, and they all liked sitting me on their laps and pinching and squeezing me.

When I was a little over three years old my siblings and I were all sent away to different boarding nurseries. I could not understand why I was being taken away from home, and kicked and tore the ribbon in my hair in protest. In the nursery I deliberately created trouble for the teachers and used to pour my milk into my desk every day, following it with my cod-liver-oil capsules. We had to take a long siesta after lunch, during which I would tell frightening stories, which I had made up, to the other children in the big dormitory. I was soon found out and punished by being made to sit on the doorstep.

The reason we were in the nurseries was that there was no one to look after us. One day in July 1955, my mother and the 800 employees in the Eastern District were all told they had to stay on the premises until further notice. A new political campaign had started this time to uncover 'hidden counterrevolution ari Everyone was to be thoroughly checked.

My mother and her colleagues accepted the order with out question. They had been leading a regimented life anyway. Besides, it seemed natural for the Party to want to check on its members in order to ensure that the new society was stable. Like most of her comrades, my mother's desire to devote herself to the cause overrode any wish to grumble about the strictness of the measure.

After a week, almost all her colleagues were cleared and allowed to go out freely. My mother was one of the few exceptions. She was told that certain things in her past were not yet clarified. She had to move out of her own bedroom and sleep in a room in a different part of the office building. Before that she was allowed a few days at home to make arrangements for her family as, she was told, she might be confined for quite a long time.

The new campaign had been triggered by Mao's reaction to the behavior of some Communist writers, notably the prominent author Hu Feng. They did not necessarily disagree with Mao ideologically, but they betrayed an element of independence and an ability to think for themselves which he found unacceptable. He feared that any independent thinking might lead to less than total obedience to him. He insisted that the new China had to act and think as one, and that stringent measures were needed to hold the country together, or it might disintegrate. He had a number of leading writers arrested and labeled them a 'counterrevolutionary conspiracy," a terrifying accusation, as 'counterrevolutionary' activity carried the harshest punishment, including the death sentence.