IT HAPPENS ONLY A FEW MONTHS after we have been together. One week Yu Qiwei is out traveling from place to place and then he disappears. No one is able to locate him. The next thing I learn is that he has been arrested, jailed, said to be killed. Yu Shan comes to me and tells me the news.
I am afraid to open the door. The way Yu Shan knocks tells me that something terrible has happened. I stare at Yu Shan's tear-washed face. My mind goes blank-it can't comprehend.
I want to do something but Yu Shan says there is nothing I can do but wait. I say what about the Communist Party? Can the Party save him? She shakes her head, says that the Party is in terrible shape itself. The members have gone underground and have cut off communication for reasons of safety. The warlord-turned-head-of-state, Chiang Kai-shek, has betrayed his commitment to unite Communists. He has ordered a military raid to arrest the Communists. He has proclaimed the Communists his biggest enemy. His order says, If we have to kill a thousand innocents in order to catch one Communist, so be it.
Didn't Yu Qiwei know when the raids would begin? I ask.
Yes, Yu Shan replies. He knew he was on the wanted list. There were signs. For example, the university was forced to dismiss students who were known members of the Communist Party. But my brother had to carry on his work. When the arrests began he tried to move people out of the city into the countryside. He was conducting a secret meeting on a public bus where he was spotted and taken away.
In her early years Yunhe flirted with danger. To her, danger fueled excitement. She enjoyed the moment when she went into the abandoned temple and grabbed the head scarf from Confucius's statue. She enjoyed singing Put Down Your Whip on the streets where she confronted the policemen. She felt that life was filled with meaning when she questioned the policeman in front of the crowd, Are you Chinese? How can you bear it when your mother and sister have been raped and your father and brother have been murdered by the Japanese?
Danger has given her chances to show her character. You are too weak, she later says to her third husband, Tang Na. You hide yourself from reality, you live in fantasy and are ruled by fear. You have never faced danger.
However, in 1931, after Yu Qiwei is arrested, there is a moment when she breaks away from her role as a heroine. Suddenly she is terrified beyond measure. She visits Yu Shan every day to inquire about Yu Qiwei. She waits impatiently. Every day her hope fades a bit. Finally she convinces herself that Yu Qiwei is dead. She begins to tell friends about her despair. Her hot tears pour. She wears a white dress. A white daisy in her hair. She moans. Then she stops going to Yu Shan.
She washes her face, takes her white dress and daisy off. She continues to take classes. She signs up for a course in eighteenth-century tragedies. She takes a new job working in the school cafeteria. After classes and after work she is bored. She goes to the seashore herself. She sits by the ocean under the bright moon. First she looks away and then she returns men's smiles. Then she is busy again.
Months pass before Yu Shan comes to tell her the news: Yu Qiwei has been released with the help of their uncle, David Yu, an influential figure in Chiang Kai-shek's congress. Yu Shan's visit is unannounced. She thought that the news would make Yunhe happy. But she is more than disappointed. Yunhe cracks the door a slit, looks awkward and embarrassed like a kid caught in the act of stealing. She is in her pajamas, her hair messy and lipstick smeared.
Won't you open the door? asks Yu Shan.
It's a mess inside. Still blocking the door, Yunhe suggests, Can I meet you in the teahouse in an hour?
But Yu Shan already sees.
Behind the door there is a young man, Yunhe's new boyfriend, Chao.
Madame Mao doesn't remember Chao. She has erased him from her memory. She remembers that she was lonely without Yu Qiwei, unable to sleep. She was depressed. She didn't expect Yu Qiwei's return. She told herself to move beyond the pain. A heroine's character is to move on. She can't explain Chao.
Yu Qiwei doesn't question her, doesn't confront Chao either. Yunhe never gets a chance to know how Yu Qiwei felt. One day Yu Shan comes with word from her brother.
My brother has left Qingdao for Beijing. The Party needs him to work there.
There is no mention of how Yu Qiwei feels about leaving, about their relationship or future. No words.
For the first time the actress is confused by the role she is playing-a heroine who betrays like a slut.
She goes on with Chao, but in the meantime writes to Yu Qiwei. When hearing nothing back she leaves the city, wanders, comes back and leaves again. A year passes. Then a point comes when she can no longer bear it; she sells her belongings and puts herself on the train to Beijing.
I sob like a widow on the train. Passengers bring me hot towels trying to calm me down. After I arrived in Beijing I suddenly lose my courage. I have no face to see Yu Qiwei. I am ashamed of myself.
But I am compelled to move forward, to see him again. Before I left I found out from Yu Shan that Yu Qiwei is the head secretary of the Communist Party of northern China. I manage to locate his headquarters in the library of Beijing University where he holds meetings frequently. I wait for days and finally I "run into" him.
He is with his comrades and I can tell that he is not pleased to see me. I ask if we can schedule a meeting. He makes a date reluctantly.
It is cold and raining. I have been wearing the same pair of wet sandals for days. My feet are soaked and my ankles are covered with mud. We meet in a park. The river is magnificent but frozen. There are no visitors. When I see the familiar figure approaching I try not to cry.
He is still handsome and wears my favorite two-piece blue suit. But the moment he sees me he turns his eyes away. It is awkward but I am determined to try. I force myself to speak, to apologize. I say, there was a mistake. I waited for you.
He doesn't want to hear. He asks what I am doing here.
I don't know myself, I say. What else can I say? It's not my nature to check the water's depth. I believe that I will float somehow. I am nineteen years old. I have been working to support myself. I teach Chinese at an adult night school, I baby-sit and sell theater tickets. I take care of all these things, I figure them out myself and I survive. But I can't figure out what happened to us…
You should not have come to Beijing, he says.
I need to see you, Yu Qiwei. I don't know, I am living with your ghost.
Yunhe, he calls me, calls my name. It makes me weep uncontrollably.
She stands in front of Yu Qiwei. Her eyes are filled with tears. The wind blows and messes her hair. She doesn't touch it, doesn't fix the mess. She looks at him. Take me back.
It is a night she will never forget. They make love as if the world is coming to an end. Both of them try to overcome the blank stare between them. She repeats the familiar ritual. His body tells her that she has been missed. She weeps, takes control of his desire. She explores every trick she knows to please him. The memory comes back. She thinks that she has won. He tells her that he loves her, no one can replace her, that he will always be there when she needs him.
But the truth is always in the shadows. Things are not the same. In the next few days the struggle begins to show. It is seen and heard when she speaks, moves and makes love. It is even in the words she uses: I am strong. Nothing puts me down.
By projecting these words, she deals with the inevitable parting. By yelling those phrases aloud, she survives and prevents herself from being crushed.
Yu Qiwei places her in the university dormitory. No money, no visit. She waits, days, weeks and months. He makes promises but doesn't show up. He is polite but distant and unmoved. She goes out and seeks him. She follows him and finds out that he will not be coming back to her arms-he is seeing another woman.
She spends the whole winter in a cold dorm room. She feels like a homeless dog. She tells herself to wait until spring. Maybe by then Yu Qiwei's ice-cold heart will melt. Maybe he will invite her out, maybe the blossoms of the spring will arouse him, and time will make him realize that he has tortured her enough.
I have tried but I am unable to let go of this feeling. Not after we separate, not after he is remarried, not even after I have married Mao. I can't make peace with him and myself although I accept that this is my fate. Emotionally I can't let go. I can't stand him being possessed by another woman. The burn lasts all my life. It doesn't end after his death, of heart failure at the age of forty-five, in 1958. I don't hide my dislike of his wife, Fan Qing.
When she looks back, she can almost see the reason. The passionate pain of abandonment. Yu Qiwei didn't let her finish her role. He left her to wonder why she didn't play it successfully. He walked out of her show before the curtain was down. It was not her character to accept humiliation. Maybe that's why he let himself slip out, die before she became the ruler of China. Maybe he knew that she wouldn't know how to live with his rejection, that she would make him pay for what he did. And he didn't want to pay what he didn't consider his debt. He was right. She spent her life cashing in the deposits of her disappointments.