I felt lonely and alone after Pearl left. Living in Nanking became difficult. In order to rid the country of the Japanese and the Communists, the Nationalist government increased taxes. To buy a bag of rice, one had to bring three bags of paper money to the store. Dick wrote repeatedly from the Red Base in Yenan, urging me to join him. Finally I made my decision. I let him know that I was ready to be a “bandit’s wife.” Dick was elated. He prepared me for the hostile, unfertile land and the hardship in Yenan.
“Try to look on the bright side,” Dick encouraged. “After all, the first emperor of China was born here two thousand years ago.”
I told Papa that I would worry about him. He told me not to. Before my departure he went back to Chin-kiang. Even Absalom agreed that Papa was a changed man. To redeem himself, Papa had become absorbed in church work. His devotion enabled Absalom to take longer trips inland. During Absalom’s absence, Papa asked Carpenter Chan to build a stained-glass window featuring Jesus Christ for his church. When the work was completed, it delighted everyone. Every morning the sun shone through the glass. Christ looked as though he was floating on top of clouds.
The stained glass boosted attendance. People loved the “Moving Foreign God.” Sunday-morning service became Papa’s showtime. People told Papa that they liked and felt closer to the image of this particular Jesus Christ. Papa was pleased. He had slightly altered Christ’s features. The stained-glass version of Christ had slanting eyes, a flatter nose, and full lips. The Christ also had large earlobes and browner skin.
“This goes to show you that ideas spring fastest from a well-furnished mind!” Papa said proudly.
My daughter was born in a Yenan cave on a snowy day. I tried to find a good name for her but nothing satisfied me. Dick was filled with joy when he held the baby for the first time. “What a beauty!” he exclaimed. “Instead of my lizard eyes and crooked nose, she has her mother’s features: a Chinese princess’s bright almond eyes, a delicate, straight nose, and fine pink lips! What good fortune!”
Dick had been working with Mao’s inner circle. Mao called Dick his secret weapon. Because of Dick, Mao’s image had slowly changed from that of a guerrilla leader to that of a national hero. Through his propaganda, Dick had convinced the masses that Mao, not Chiang Kai-shek, had been fighting the Japanese.
In 1937, Dick’s agents successfully infiltrated Chiang Kai-shek’s organization. Dick was able to persuade several generals of the Nationalist army to join Mao. One general even arrested Chiang Kai-shek. In history this came to be called the Xian Incident.
Mao’s name began to appear regularly in the headlines. Chiang Kai-shek was pressured to invite Mao to talk peace. Dick turned the occasion into a publicity opportunity. The stories he created about Mao made him into a myth.
Dick worked through the night. He composed Mao’s speeches and set up interviews. He often stayed inside a bomb shelter printing leaflets till dawn. Dick put my English to good use. I translated Mao’s articles and mailed them to outside news agencies. These attracted the attention of Western journalists, who came to Yenan seeking private interviews with Mao.
The town of Yenan was no longer a spot on the map no one could find. Yenan was now the headquarters of the nation’s war against Japan. Mao had become an equal to Chiang Kai-shek.
Mao was so pleased that he wrote a poem and dedicated it to Dick. In Chinese tradition, this was the highest honor. Mao’s poem was titled
“In Contrast to Poet Lu You.” As all know, Lu You, born in 1172, wrote the famous lines “With a mountain-high aim, but an old mortal frame.”
Lake Tongting
Lake Green Grass
Near the mid-autumn night
Unruffled no winds pass
Thirty thousand acres of jade light
Dotted with the leaflike boat of mine
The sky with pure moonbeam overflow
The water surface paved with moonshine
Drinking wine from the River West
Using Dipper as our wine cup
Felicity to share with you my friend
No more talk of the bitter Poet Lu You
Brightness above
Brightness below
While life meant hardship for most people in Yenan, Dick and I lived like royalty. We were given one of the best caves for our home. It had two rooms and faced south and was warmed by the sun. We had meat once a week, while the rest ate yam leaves mixed with millet. At first I enjoyed the luxury and Dick’s new status. People came to him at all hours for instructions. But soon I began to resent the intrusions. Sleep was difficult with so much coming and going. I also had trouble reading and writing by candlelight. Dick’s eyesight was so bad he had to wear thick glasses, which enlarged his pupils to the size of mung beans. When Dick took off his glasses at night, his eyes looked like pigeon eggs bulging from their sockets.
Dick didn’t care about his eyes. He wanted me to be more conscientious about his comrades’ political sensibilities. He asked me to hide my bourgeois habits. My desire for privacy, for instance.
“It is ridiculous to call privacy or basic hygiene and love of nature bourgeois habits,” I protested.
The real fight began with naming our daughter. I preferred Little Pearl, but Dick had another idea. He wanted our daughter to be called New Art. By new Dick meant the proletarian art. To create proletarian art was his job for Mao.
Dick decided to take our argument to Mao, who lived three caves down the slope.
Mao was in the middle of studying the French Revolution, but he received us warmly. When asked his opinion regarding our daughter’s name, Mao thought that neither of our choices was good. He took a brush pen and wrote down his choice in red ink.
Thus Rouge Lin was created. It became our daughter’s official name.
I didn’t like the name. Peace and tranquillity were what I had in mind. In Chinese, Rouge meant revolution. The name was associated with violence and blood.
“That’s what we are fighting with, our blood!” Dick quoted Mao. “All the parents living in Yenan give their children revolutionary names: Red Base, Yenan, Bright Future, and Soldier of Mao. Our next generation must carry on the red flag and Communism until…”
“What?”
“Until the world is rouge-in revolution!”
I could take Yenan’s hardship but not the brainwashing. I resented the fact that I was not allowed to even mention the word God. Dick did everything he could to hide the fact that I was a Christian.
“It could cost my job-worse, my life-if you are not careful,” he warned. He asked me to promise to never mention that I knew any foreigners like Pearl and her family. “In Yenan, who one was is more important than who one is,” Dick said. “You must be pure in order to be trusted.”
My daughter was called Comrade Rouge Lin in kindergarten. Like every other toddler, she had to wear the gray, poorly tailored cotton uniform. After she grew out of it, she passed it on to a younger child. Rouge was taught combat skills the moment she learned to walk. Her first spoken line was “I am a brave soldier.” By the time Rouge was two, she could sing “My Red Army Brother Is Coming Back.” She had no interest in learning “Silent Night.” She thought that I was strange and was closer to her father. When she was four, she won a competition reciting Karl Marx’s famous phrase “Capitalism is a greedy monster.”
Although I told Rouge how I grew up and she knew that Pearl Buck was my best friend, she didn’t know any foreigners and never saw anyone dressed differently from herself. Even the way people cut their hair at the Red Base was the same. Everyone was focused on the revolution and nothing else. Rouge’s world was red and white. One was either a comrade or an enemy. By the time she was eight years old, she was clear about who she was and what she wanted to do with her life. She worshipped Mao and wanted to liberate the poor.
It bothered me when Dick told our ten-year-old daughter that Communists and Christians were enemies.
“Not all Christians believe that China is evil until it accepts God,” I argued. “Pearl Buck, for instance. She is a Christian and she criticizes Christianity’s worst practices.” To prove my point, I read an essay Pearl had published in Southeast Asia Missionary Magazine a few years earlier. In this essay, Pearl pointed out that she had seen missionaries lacking in sympathy for the local people: “So scornful of any civilization except their own, so harsh in their judgments upon one another, so coarse and insensitive among a sensitive and cultivated people that my heart has fairly bled with shame.”
Dick was surprised. “Absalom’s daughter wrote that?”
I nodded.
“That’s unexpected,” he admitted.
“If only Mao could be more open-minded…”
Dick interrupted me and whispered, “My darling wife, you are not in Shanghai or Nanking. Remember, I have rivals. Jealous hearts do murder. Remember your Shakespeare?”
Dick believed that Mao would be more relaxed and allow more freedom when he became sure of his power.
“For now we must unite as one to survive.” Dick turned to Rouge. “No more criticism of the Communist Party, because it will be considered disloyal and a betrayal.”
Rouge’s eyes widened. She nodded seriously. “Baba is right and Mama is wrong,” she said.
“What about your name, Dick?” I challenged. “It definitely doesn’t sound proletarian!”
“My comrades know that Dick is my work name.” My husband smiled.
“What do you mean, work name? Do you have another name?”
“Yes.”
I laughed. “Why don’t I know it? After all, I am your wife.”
“Such is the life of a Communist.” Dick extended his arms and rocked his head from side to side, stretching his neck.
“What is your real name, Baba?” Rouge asked curiously.
“Well, we call it the work name or the current name.”
“So, what is your current name?” I asked.
“Well, it is Xinhua.”
“Xinhua? New China?” I laughed. “I think Old China would fit you better. You come from a background of scholars, landowners, and Capitalists! You studied Shakespeare and Confucius in college! Old China is in your blood! You have Western friends and you speak English!”
“No comment.” Dick was embarrassed.
From the few letters that reached me, I learned that Pearl had settled into a life of sorts in America. Although the United States was in a financial depression, she published and her books sold well. In 1932, she had won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth while still among us. In 1938, she won the Nobel Prize for literature. In her letters, she mentioned her new awards casually. Her tone was no different than when she told me how she admired the American plumbing system, and she never explained how important the awards were. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered that Pearl had become an international celebrity. The subject Pearl asked about most was Rouge. She wanted to know what my daughter’s life was like and if she had friends. She said that she had never realized how fortunate we had been to have each other as childhood playmates.
I wanted so badly to talk to Pearl about my daughter, but I didn’t want to remind her of what she didn’t have with Carol. Instead, I asked Pearl about her writing methods. She replied that her trick was to think like a Chinese farmer. “Before planting, the farmer already knew what, where, and how much to grow, the budget for seeds, fertilizer, animals, and field hands,” she wrote. “In other words, I try to make the best use of my material.”
About her daughter, Pearl reported that American doctors confirmed Carol’s early diagnosis that she would never have a chance to lead a normal life. There was nothing new in this news, but Pearl still sounded devastated. “The conclusion took away any happiness I would have felt in my accomplishments,” she wrote.
She did gain some comfort knowing that the income from her writing enabled her to provide permanent care for Carol. “Since Carol loves music, I made sure that the cottage, which my money helped build, was equipped with a phonograph and a collection of records,” she continued.
She talked about the farmhouse she had bought in Pennsylvania. “It is gigantic by Chinese standards!” she wrote. “I have been renovating the place so that I can adopt more children.”
Pearl and I still talked about Hsu Chih-mo. She let me know that she had finally been able to grieve and move on. “A new man has appeared on the horizon of my lonely love life,” she reported. “But I can’t do anything until my divorce with Lossing is finalized.”
The new man was her editor and publisher, Richard Walsh. Pearl was proud of the fact that they were best friends before they were lovers.
I was so happy for her and wrote to congratulate her. In my letter, I complained about Dick and the Red Base.
To my shock, the letter was intercepted by Communist intelligence agents. It got Dick in trouble.
“I have warned you!” Dick hissed at me. “We Communists don’t trust the Americans! Our enemy is supported by the Americans! Why is it so difficult for you to remember that? Yenan’s security is about Mao’s survival!”
In the past Dick had discouraged me from writing to Pearl. Now I was ordered to stop.
I refused to sign the Communist membership application Dick put in front of me. No matter how many times Dick explained the benefits and the necessity, I wouldn’t pick up the pen.
Finally, after months of struggle, I agreed to sign. I did so out of loyalty to my husband. Without my being a member of the Communist Party, Dick would never gain Mao’s full trust.
My biggest problem was following the Communist Party’s rules. I seemed to always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I would praise the wrong people and criticize the right ones. For example, I remarked that I felt sorry for high-ranking heroes because they had achieved their rank only by killing a great number of people. I also said that all war was wrong. Because of these mistakes, I was ordered to criticize myself in public.
Dick was demoted as a result. His temper was no longer containable. Instead of fighting with me, Dick exploded at work. He applied for a transfer to be nearer the fighting. He was eager to join the battles. He wanted to be the first to engage the enemy and the last to retreat. The irony was that it turned out to be good for his career. He earned medals and promotions. His courage earned him the respect of the Communist leadership. He was restored to his former job. Mao welcomed Dick back and praised him as “the Red Prince.”
“Does that mean that Mao is the Red Emperor?” I joked the moment Dick entered the cave.
Dick didn’t find my comment funny, and warned me not to say such things again.
My life, as a fortune-teller had once predicted, was about the constant turning of feng shui, meaning that my fortunes were always changing. My future as a Communist would soon prove the fortune- teller’s wisdom. I had never imagined that there would be a benefit to claiming my background as a beggar. For the family background section in the party’s membership application, I truthfully wrote “Beggars.” This qualified Papa as a proletarian, and that included Rouge and me. If my grandfather hadn’t lost all his money, my father would have inherited his land and become the enemy of the Communists. I would have been denounced and perhaps shot as a spy.
The strain between Dick and me had much to do with the innocent souls Mao murdered at the Red Base. It happened before my eyes. People were arrested in broad daylight, sent away, and disappeared for good. These were young people, former college students. They were independent thinkers-people whom Dick had personally recruited. They had joined Mao to fight the Japanese. Overnight they were labeled as enemies, arrested, denounced, and murdered.
Dick said that my Christian values had ruined me. I told him that he was ruined, not me. Dick refused to see Mao’s flaws and the fact that he had become a bully. Mao had learned from Stalin, a man who murdered whoever disagreed with him. Half of Dick’s friends were detained and questioned and one third executed as traitors.
“How can you sleep at night?” I asked my husband.
Dick encouraged me to make friends with Madame Mao. “She is a better choice than Pearl Buck,” he insisted.
I tried, but I couldn’t get Madame Mao to like me. She was the opposite of Pearl, judgmental and opinionated. Blessed with good looks, she was also flashy, pretentious, and egotistical. As a former actress, she knew her craft. She called herself “Chairman Mao’s humble student” and was proud to be his trophy. She was not shy about her “capital.” Her skin didn’t turn potato brown as the rest of ours did in the desert sun and harsh wind. Her eyebrows were as thin as a shrimp’s feelers. She and Mao made a perfect couple. They both wanted power and fame. Madame Mao loved to say that she was a peacock among hens. By hens, she meant the women of Yenan, and that included me.
My biggest disappointment was that Mao didn’t turn out to be the hero I had expected. Under the guise of a scholar, Mao sold confidence to people. He made the peasant soldiers hear their own voices when he spoke to them.
When I listened to Mao, I watched his eyes. They appeared to be smiling even when he uttered the most violent phrases. Mao had a broad forehead, a rice-patty-shaped face, and a feminine mouth. He never looked people in the eyes when he talked with them. Mao let people observe him. Never once did I hear him answer a question in a straightforward manner, although he encouraged others to do so. Mao was a master when it came to the art of beating around the bush. He even said himself that he enjoyed catching his enemy by surprise, whether in conversation or on the battlefield.
Dick made the best conversational partner for Mao in the inner circle. He and Mao often talked deep into the night. “We simply enjoy each other’s minds,” Dick told me. Yet Dick failed to learn one important lesson, which was that Mao hated to lose.
Dick had yet to find out that Mao wanted absolute power, though he appeared to desire the opposite. Mao repeated the same phrase over and over again to foreign journalists: “My dream is to become a classroom teacher.” He would open his conversation with a Chinese poem and close by reciting Marx or Lenin. People were easily charmed by Mao. His broad knowledge and sharp wit disarmed. Once, Dick helped Mao issue a telegram to the war front. He was shocked that Mao insisted on ending the communiqué with a line from a poem. “Only flies are afraid of winter, so let them freeze and die.”
Dick told me later that when Mao had trouble giving direction during battles or was unsure of his next move, he would telegram poems to his generals. The confused generals would have no choice but to make up their own minds about whether to charge or retreat.
“Such is Mao’s brilliance,” Dick said admiringly.
Dick brought Madame Mao the local singer who wrote the song “Red in the East.” Dick never guessed that one day the tune would become China ’s unofficial national anthem.
I went to listen to “Red in the East” being performed at a weekend party for high-ranking officials. Madame Mao introduced the singer, whose name was Li You-yuan. Li was a peasant dressed in rags with a dirty towel wrapped around his forehead. He was in his forties and had three missing front teeth. Dick did a background check and found that Li was not one hundred percent proletarian, because his family owned a half acre of land.
When Dick reported this to Madame Mao, she said, “If I say Li is a peasant, he will be a peasant.”
The song “Red in the East” was Madame Mao’s birthday gift to her husband.
When the peasant opened his mouth, the listeners’ jaws dropped. Li’s voice was like a goat’s cry.
Mao remained seated, because he had the good sense to trust his wife’s magic-making abilities.
After Li exited the stage, Madame Mao presented her version of “Red in the East.” The singing was performed by the Yenan repertory group conducted by Madame Mao herself.
Red in the East
Rises the sun
China has brought forth Mao Tse-tung
Creating happiness for the people
He is our greatest savior
Li You-yuan didn’t write more than the first line of “Red in the East.” The peasant had no knowledge of the Red Base or its leader, Mao. He hummed the tune to pass the time when he plowed his field. Dick happened to cross his path and heard him singing. Dick foresaw the usefulness of the tune and brought Li to Madame Mao’s attention.
To demonstrate his modesty, Mao rejected Madame Mao’s proposal to list “Red in the East” as a “must-learn song” for the troops.
Madame Mao insisted that it was the people’s wish that Mao be regarded as the rising sun of China.
Madame Mao asked Dick to send me a message. She criticized me as arrogant. I tried to hide my disgust for the sake of Dick.
Madame Mao was unaware that I had some knowledge of her past. Before coming to Yenan, she had been a third-rate movie actress in Shanghai. She had had an affair with a newspaper reporter who happened to be Dick’s friend. At the Red Base, Madame Mao’s past was a stain on an immaculate embroidery. Desperate to get rid of the stain, she behaved like a passionate revolutionary. She invited me to watch her perform a newly learned skill-making yarn out of raw cotton.
I was instructed by Madame Mao to follow her making yarn instead of spending time with my daughter. Sitting next to Madame Mao, I was miserable. She recited her husband’s phrases as she rolled the wheel. “We will never understand peasants if we don’t soak our hands in manure, make yarn out of raw cotton, and sweat in the fields. We won’t be qualified to be a member of the proletarian class until we smell like manure and garlic instead of perfume.”
I did something behind Dick’s back. I bribed the base’s special postman who traveled between Yenan and Shanghai as a merchant. The man smuggled my letters out to Shanghai and then mailed them to Pearl in America using a secret address. In my letters, I reported that I had begun telling Christian stories to Rouge. I told Pearl that my day was brightened when Rouge started to fall in love with “Amazing Grace.”
Like raindrops in the middle of a drought, I received a letter from Pearl. It comforted me and soothed my anxiety, for I had been friendless. Pearl told me that she had been traveling the world and had spent a great deal of time in India, Southeast Asia, and Japan. The line that filled my eyes with tears of happiness was that she was “dying to return to China.”
When Mao defied Stalin and crossed the Yangtze River in pursuit of Chiang Kai-shek in 1948, Dick told me that the Communists would win China. By May 1949 it was a reality. The people had suffered for twelve years: eight years fighting Japan and then four years of civil war. It was hard to believe that the wars were over. Russian and American advisers on both sides had to admit that they had been wrong. Mao believed that there ought to be only one lion on the mountain. He would never share power with Chiang Kai-shek.
The day his capital, Nanking, fell, Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan. Mao would have continued the chase until he captured Chiang Kai-shek if it hadn’t been for the American military forces on the island. Mao was cautious. He didn’t want to be stretched too thin, so he claimed a nation and named it the People’s Republic of China.
I was ordered to pack immediately and move north. Rouge was excited. The fifteen-year-old had never stepped outside of Yenan. She had joined the Communist Youth League the previous year and had been working as a frontier journalist for the Yenan Daily. Several times Rouge had received awards as an Outstanding Comrade and had been given a Mao Medal. Her favorite songs were Soviet anthems and she favored a Lenin jacket.
We were to meet Dick in Peking. Mao had decided to make the city his new capital, and he had its name changed from Peking to Beijing. Also seeing a change were troops from the Eighth and Fourth Army Divisions. Previously under the command of Chiang Kai-shek, they now fell behind Mao and were incorporated into the People’s Liberation Army.
Dick drove an American jeep to pick us up. Although he was dark brown and thin from the stomach ulcers he had developed, he was happy. He told us that the car’s former owner had been Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
The People’s Liberation Army was received joyously by the city residents. Dick’s American jeep was part of the parade when we entered Beijing. The cheering crowd beat drums. Children threw flowers. “Long live Chairman Mao!” they shouted. “Long live the Communist Party of China!”
October 1, 1949, was the day of celebration for the nation. Standing on top of the Gate of Tiananmen, Mao proclaimed China’s independence to the world. He promised freedom and human rights. From that moment on, Mao was regarded as the wisest ruler heaven had ever bestowed on China. Few knew that it was Dick who had negotiated the peaceful transition.
Dick had been secretly working with General Chu, who had guarded Peking for Chiang Kai-shek. Dick had talked General Chu into surrendering. He convinced the man that Chiang Kai-shek had abandoned him. In Dick’s view, further fighting would mean a bloodbath from which Chu would emerge the loser no matter how hard he fought. In Mao’s name, Dick promised General Chu a high-ranking position in the People’s Liberation Army. Dick signed his name on this secret agreement for Mao. The moment General Chu raised the white flag, he would be called the People’s Hero.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when Dick took us to see our new home. It was inside the Forbidden City. We were to occupy one of the palaces. Dick told me that Mao and his wife, along with his vice chairman, his ministers, and their families, had already moved into the Forbidden City.
It took me days to convince myself that my life had really changed. At last, I didn’t have to live in a cave. I no longer had to endure air raids. Food would never again be a problem. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a face I hardly recognized as my own. At age fifty-nine, I was finally able to settle down.
Instead of calling the palaces by their former Imperial names, the Communist housing authority gave them numbers. Our residence used to be called the Palace of Tranquillity; now it was called Building number 19.
I walked around my new home admiring the splendor of the Imperial architecture. The palace was a living work of art. Like a true beauty, she changed her face according to the light. Tremendous arching beams and brick columns reminded me of opera stage sets. Rouge was impressed by the huge wooden gate. She ran from room to room cheering and singing. We had four spacious main rooms and seven utility rooms. There was a roofed hallway to the garden withevergreen trees, luxurious bushes, and wonderfully scented flowers.
“How can we afford to live here?” I asked.
Dick smiled. “It’s free.”
“What do you mean free?”
“I didn’t choose this place,” Dick said. “It was Chairman Mao’s decision.” Looking at my expression, Dick explained, “It’s for Mao’s convenience. He wants me to be near for the sake of business.” He paused, looking at me attentively. “I thought this arrangement would make you happy. How many people in China get to live in a palace like this?”
I would have chosen a place where we could be private. I understood that Dick had no choice. Rouge was to join other children of high-ranking officials attending a private school where she would be taught more Russian than Chinese. The school’s goal was to prepare its graduates for the University of Moscow.
I felt a growing distance from my daughter after she started school. She no longer wanted to pray with me. She threw away the little picture of Jesus I kept in my bathroom. She told me that she had been selected captain of her class. Instead of a hug and a good-bye in the morning, she would raise her right hand to her temple and say, “Salute, comrades!” One day I found a portrait of Mao in my bedroom, replacing my favorite lotus painting. When I protested, Rouge said, “It is for your own good, Mother. You don’t seem to understand what is going on outside our family.”
I was not used to my new role as a revolutionary’s housewife. For security reasons, I was not allowed to share my address with anyone, including Papa. I complained to Dick and said that I missed my father. A month later, Papa was dropped at my door like a package. Although robust in health and glad to see me, Papa described his journey as being “kidnapped.” Mao’s secret agents plucked him from Chin-kiang and brought him to Beijing. Papa was not told where he was going or whom he was going to see. During his stay in the Forbidden City, Papa was reprimanded for trying to exit the gates without permission. He fought with the guards and said that he didn’t want to be a prisoner. Finally Papa begged me to buy him a ticket so that he could return to Chin-kiang. I bought him a ticket and was sad when he didn’t turn his head as he boarded the train. We barely had time to talk and catch up about our lives. I didn’t even get a chance to ask Papa how everyone was doing in Chin-kiang.
I tried to find a way to let Pearl know about my move to Beijing. I assumed that she would know about Mao’s victory. I wondered what she thought about Chiang Kai-shek’s defeat. In a way, Pearl had predicted the outcome during our earlier correspondences. So many had been impressed by Madame Chiang Kai-shek, who had campaigned in America for her husband and succeeded in rallying the public behind her. But Pearl did not believe her claims. Pearl had often said in the past that the Chiangs were in power for themselves. She believed that there was a divide between the Chiangs and the peasants of China. She had said long ago that Mao’s power came from his understanding of the peasants.
Pearl never trusted the Communists. She enjoyed her friendship with Dick and supported my marriage to him because she saw that he loved me. On the other hand, Pearl didn’t like my being brainwashed by Dick. When I mentioned Dick’s worship of Karl Marx in a letter, Pearl wrote back and asked, “Do you know who Karl Marx is? He is this strange little man, long dead, who lived his narrow little life, and somehow managed by the power of his wayward brain to lay hold upon millions of human lives!”
This made sense to me, although nothing I said changed Dick’s mind. With Mao’s victory, Dick had gone further on what I would call a journey of no return.
A party commemorating national independence was next on Mao’s agenda. Dick was put in charge of arranging it. He was grateful that Mao trusted him with the job. He was finally doing what he loved-bringing talented people together. I rarely got to see Dick in daylight. I told myself that I was lucky my husband had not died in battle, and that I should be satisfied our lives were taken care of by the Communist Party. We were given chefs, drivers, doctors, dressmakers, bodyguards, and house cleaners.
I wrote to Pearl the first chance I got. Beijing was a huge city where I could easily melt into the crowd when visiting a post office. I told Pearl that while Dick became an ever more devoted Communist, I remained an independent bourgeois liberal, and worse, I continued to be a Christian. “The changing China excites me and scares me at the same time,” I confessed. “Mao has made himself into a god to the people. I feel like I am losing my husband and daughter to this man. The irony is: I am the person they think mad.”
For the sake of my daughter, I stopped trying to seek out churches in Beijing in which to worship. But even if I wanted to, I could never give up my faith in God. I prayed in the dark. I was on my knees when Dick and Rouge were asleep. I was also determined to keep up my correspondence with Pearl as long as I could.
Dick’s stomach pain worsened and finally he needed surgery. Two thirds of his stomach was removed. He continued to work from his hospital bed. He met with some of the day’s most influential people, from Chiang Kai-shek’s former ministers to famous artists. Dick’s goal was to secure domestic and international legitimacy for Mao. “Chairman Mao must make more friends. At any time, America could use Taiwan as its military base to launch an attack on China,” Dick told Rouge.
As China’s new minister of the Bureau of Culture, Science, and Art, Dick encouraged overseas Chinese to return to their homeland. For the next ten years Dick would write hundreds of letters telling his friends all over the world that “Mao is a wise and merciful leader who recognizes and appreciates talent.”
Among those who returned were intellectuals, scientists, architects, playwrights, novelists, and artists. In the name of the Communist Party, Dick guaranteed their salaries and offered privileged lifestyles and freedom of expression. Dick appointed them as heads of national theaters and universities. Every morning, Dick drove his jeep to pick up the new arrivals. Every evening, he hosted a gay welcoming party.
At one welcoming party, Dick drank too much. The next morning, with puffy, bloodshot eyes, he said, “If Hsu Chih-mo hadn’t died, I would have invited him. He would have enjoyed himself.”
“Hsu Chih-mo would not hide himself like I do,” I responded. “He would have criticized Mao. He would have told Mao to his face that he was an amateur poet.”
“Who are you trying to challenge?” Dick was irritated. “Why are you so cynical all the time?”
“I just question how true China’s freedom of expression is,” I said. “Are you sure that you can keep the promises you have made to so many?”
Dick understood my concern. He could not answer my question, because deep down he knew that “Mao’s will” would be the “nation’s will.”
“You might end up carrying the stone that will eventually smash your own toes,” I said, afraid.
Dick put his arm around my shoulders and said that he agreed with me. “But I must have faith in what I do.”
I rubbed my face against his hand and told him that I understood.
“I must trust that others share my values,” Dick said in a gentle voice.
“You are being naïve.”
“I know, I know,” he cut me off. “Your worries are legitimate but unnecessary.”
“I can see it coming.”
“Willow, you have a wild imagination. Don’t let it drive you crazy.”
“I won’t say this again. Listen, I am your wife, and I know you enough to know that you and Mao are different people.”
“We complement each other.”
“That is not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, darling.”
“Let me finish, will you?” I was upset. “To get his way, Mao will not hesitate to persecute or-dare I say the word?-murder. He’s done it before.”
Dick stood and put some distance between us. “Mao doesn’t own the party,” he said in a firm voice. “Communism is about justice and democracy.”
Dick led me to his room and opened the top drawer in his desk. He took out an envelope. I could tell that the Chinese writing on the envelope was Pearl’s. The stamps showed that the letter had arrived two months ago, and the letter had already been opened. The envelope was empty.
“My privacy has been invaded,” I protested.
“Mao’s internal security agents opened it.”
“Where is the letter?”
“The central bureau has it. They notified me that it was to be confiscated.”
“Why didn’t you speak up for me?”
“You would not be here now if I hadn’t!” Dick almost yelled.
I knew Dick had done his best.
“Look.” Dick pulled more documents from his drawer. “Here is more evidence. I have fought for you not once but repeatedly.”
I had had no idea that I was in so much trouble.
“You are being watched by internal security,” Dick continued. “You are one step from becoming known as an enemy sympathizer. Your friendship with Pearl Buck is seen as a threat to national security. Pearl’s status in America and her public criticism of Mao and the Communist Party have categorized her as an enemy of China.”
“Am I a suspect?”
“What do you think? You were caught passing her information.”
I remembered that in my letters I had shared with Pearl my doubts about Dick’s efforts to recruit people to the Communist cause. I had confided to her that I could never forget what had happened in Yenan in the thirties. Several Shanghai youths Dick had recruited had been arrested as spies and shot. All these years later, their families still wrote to Dick asking for information about their loved ones. Dick put on a mask when talking to them. He had no answers for them. He felt responsible and couldn’t forgive himself no matter how many times he told himself that the murders had been caused by the war with Japan.
I didn’t mean to mail Pearl another letter. I knew it was too dangerous. The political atmosphere had begun to change after Mao’s experiment called the Great Leap Forward. It began in the year 1958 and lasted three years before utterly failing. It forced the entire nation to adopt a communal lifestyle. The result was millions of deaths and a starving nation. By the end of 1962, respect for Mao had faded. There were voices calling for a “competent leader.”
Feeling that his power was threatened, Mao suppressed the growing criticism. Madame Mao opened a national media conference to “clear away the confusion.” Dick was to draft a “battle plan.” The first thing Dick was ordered to do was close China’s door to the outside. He had to personally apologize to foreign journalists and diplomats for canceling their entry visas. “It is temporary,” Dick assured them. “China will be open for business again sooner than you know.”
But when Dick came home he told me that he had little confidence in what he had promised his friends. Mao had no intention of reopening China’s door. It led me to think that mailing the letter would be my last chance to contact Pearl. It would be now or never.
Acting like an undercover agent, I disguised myself as a peasant and dropped my letter in a post office outside Beijing. It was a warm day in April. The sunshine filtered through the clouds. The trees were light green with new leaves. Children wearing red scarves on their necks were singing cheerful songs. I made sure to cover my tracks by taking different buses. On my way back I couldn’t help wiping my tears. I sensed that I might never again hear from Pearl.
Hard as I tried, I could no longer put on a smiling face and maintain a positive attitude. As far as the party was concerned, this meant being politically correct at all times. It grew harder every day. I would attack Dick at home and my anger would spill over.
“Mao robs the lives of innocent people!” I would yell and throw my chopsticks at the wall. “It’s brutality!”
“Sacrifice would be a better word.” My husband hushed me and went to shut the windows.
“Speak to me without your mask, Dick! Tell me, in your heart have you questions, reservations, doubts?”
Dick went silent.
“How can you bear the thought that you have murdered for Mao? You are struggling to justify yourself.”
“Enough, Willow. This is 1963, not 1936! The proletarians rule today. Our Chairman is following in Stalin’s footsteps. One wrong word and you can lose your tongue, if not your head.”
“You haven’t answered my questions.”
“I am tired.”
We sat facing each other for a long time. Our dinner was on the table, but we had no appetite.
“When Mao panics, he gets carried away,” Dick said, taking a deep breath. “He needed to purge the anti-Communist bug.”
“Did he do the right thing ordering the murders of those young people you recruited?”
“At the time, yes. But now, no. The tragedy was the party’s loss. It benefited no one but our enemies.”
“Dick Lin, I have been watching you running around trading on your reputation to get people to return to China. What if Mao changes his mind? What if those people say and do things that end up displeasing and offending Mao? Are you going to be the executioner?”
“It won’t happen.”
“I thought by now that you knew Mao.”
“I do.”
“Then you are evil to follow him.”
“I am riding on the back of a tiger. I will die if I try to get off.”
“What a selfish statement!”
Dick turned away and went to sit in a chair. He cupped his face with his hands. “You have never approved of what I do anyway.”
“You refuse to acknowledge the truth.”
“What truth?”
“There is no Communism but what Mao wants!”
“Comrade Willow.” Dick stood up. “I have never insulted your God, so please stop insulting mine.”
I was arrested at home while washing the dishes. I never expected a postal officer to turn me in. I was denounced and accused of being an American spy. Without a trial, I was thrown in prison. I had seen this happen to others, but I was shocked when it happened to me.
Dick pulled strings. But no one dared to help. My crime was my friendship with Pearl Buck. Dick said that it wasn’t Pearl Buck’s literary success that made her China’s enemy, but her refusal to be the Maos’ friend.
Since taking over China, the Maos had wished that Pearl would give her support to the regime. But Pearl kept her distance. Agents from China repeatedly contacted her hoping that she could do what the American journalists Edgar Snow and Anna Louise Strong had done for China. Although Pearl was friendly with both journalists, she held her own political views. In the late 1950s, when millions of Chinese starved to death during the Great Leap Forward, Pearl criticized Mao. She pointed out a crucial fact that others had ignored: “Mao allowed his people to die of starvation and disease while he helped the North Koreans fight a war against the Americans.”
“Is Pearl Buck a friend or an enemy?” Dick told me Mao had once asked him.
Dick answered truthfully that Pearl Buck loved the Chinese people, but she didn’t believe in Communism.
Mao instructed Dick to work on Pearl Buck. Mao wanted Dick to repeat the success he had achieved when he had talked General Chu into switching sides in 1949. Mao made Pearl Dick’s next challenge. Mao’s order to Dick was clear: “I’d love to gain a Nobel Prize winner as a comrade.”
Behind my back, Dick wrote to Pearl. She didn’t respond, and she didn’t mention Dick’s efforts in any of the letters she wrote to me.
Frustrated, Dick asked Mao why he had to have Pearl Buck.
“There is no comparison between Pearl Buck and Edgar Snow,” Mao replied. “Pearl Buck is read in every country on the world map. Her books have been translated into over a hundred languages! If Edgar Snow is a tank, Pearl Buck is a nuclear bomb.”
Dick failed in his mission because Pearl was too knowledgeable about China to be fooled. Pearl judged Mao by his actions, not by his fancy slogans. “Serve the people with heart and soul” meant nothing to her. Like her father, Absalom, Pearl refused to be bought. The novels she wrote during the 1960s depicted the tragic lives being led under Mao, although she wrote them from across the sea and was only guessing. It seemed that her senses were growing sharper as she aged.
Dick never shared with Mao his opinion that Pearl Buck was the only Westerner with the ability to write about China’s reality with both humanity and accuracy. Dick never mentioned that he admired Pearl, but I knew he did.
Dick didn’t have the courage to challenge Madame Mao when she declared Pearl’s newest novels attacks on Communism. Madame Mao believed that Pearl was part of the American conspiracy against China. Dick was ordered to encourage China’s propagandists to mount a counterattack. Pearl Buck was labeled a “cultural imperialist.”
Madame Mao set Pearl Buck up as a negative example. She was getting ready to help her husband launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The goal was to secure Mao’s power in China and beyond.
Making his personal passion for destroying his enemies the nation’s obsession was Mao’s greatest talent. Dick said that I was better off in prison. When Rouge visited me in May of 1965, she told me that the outside world had turned upside down. Teenage mobs calling themselves Mao’s Red Guard chanted, “Whatever our enemy embraces, we reject, and whatever our enemy rejects, we embrace.” They sang Mao’s slogans as they attacked people they suspected were anti-Mao.
Rouge was worried about my declining health and the fact that I was not allowed to see a doctor. She prayed with me for the first time in many years. She told me she wanted to learn more about God, but I feared that she had been brainwashed too thoroughly and one day might turn on me. I felt the best way to influence her was through my own example.
Early one morning, I was dragged from my cell. I was told that the Red Guard had taken over the prisons. I was to be beaten to death unless I denounced Pearl Buck.
Thin, rancid rice porridge was all I was fed and there was never enough. Hunger gnawed at my insides. There was no electricity or water. My cell was a dark concrete box without windows. I lost all sense of time. I knew many people had been driven mad that way.
To preserve my sanity, I began singing Christian songs to myself. When I was ordered to stop singing by the prison guards, I changed my methods. I practiced finger calligraphy, recalling sentences from the Bible. Since there was no water available, I wet my index finger in the urine bucket and wrote the words on the concrete surface of the floor as if it were rice paper. I moved from left to right. By the time I reached the lower corner, the top corner was dry and ready for me to write on again.
Time passed without measurement. There was no mirror, so I didn’t know how I looked. One day I noticed strands of my own hair on the floor and realized that my hair had turned white.
Eventually, a prison guard came and led me to another room, where there was a table, chair, and sink. I was given a comb and a toothbrush and was told to make myself presentable.
“You have an assignment,” the guard told me. I was to meet a high-ranking party official.
After I had cleaned up, two men in soldiers’ uniforms escorted me to a car. One of them tied a cloth blindfold over my eyes.
It was a long ride over bumpy roads.
When the blindfold was removed from my eyes, I discovered that we had arrived in front of a military complex. We passed through a narrow entrance. I smelled food cooking. The soldiers led me to a large room where there was a stained carpet, red sofas, and deep-green curtains. There was a basket of bananas on the table.
“Help yourself,” a female attendant said in perfect Mandarin.
I would not have touched anything if I hadn’t been dying of hunger. Like a monkey, I grabbed a banana. Quickly peeling off the skin, I stuffed the banana into my mouth. I was so absorbed in chewing that I didn’t pay attention to anything else. When I reached out for another banana, I noticed a person sitting on the sofa. At first I thought it was a man because she was dressed in a man’s army uniform. She was wearing the green cap with a red star in the front.
“Take your time,” she said.
I froze. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Old friend, have you already forgotten me?” She smiled.
I stared, recognizing the long, bony fingers. “Madame Mao, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s been a long time.” She smiled. “See, I didn’t forget you.”
She offered to shake my hand.
I refused, explaining apologetically that my fingers smelled of urine.
Madame Mao withdrew her hand. “The Chairman sends his greetings. As you can imagine, he’s been very busy. I’d like to work with you toward a solution that will please him.”
“How could I possibly be useful to you?” I said.
“Comrade Willow Yee, I am offering you a great opportunity. You can change your life by proving your loyalty to the Chairman.”
It was hard to figure out the meaning of her words. She looked changed since the first time I had met her in Yenan. Still imposing, the Madame Mao in front of me today had dyed her hair ink black. Her eyes said, “I am powerful.” She kept herself in shape physically, but she was no longer a beauty. Although her eyebrows were still as thin as a shrimp’s feelers, the dark-framed glasses took away her femininity.
“I see that you are hungry,” she said, showing her bright white teeth. “Would you like to start lunch?”
Before I could answer, she clapped her hands.
A door on the far side of the room opened.
“A private banquet has been waiting for you,” Madame Mao said cheerfully, as if we were at a party.
The servants came and lined themselves up against the wall.
Stretching out her arms, Madame Mao took up my hands. “Let’s have a heart-to-heart chat, just the two of us.”
“We are fighting a cultural war with the Western countries led by America,” Madame Mao said dramatically. Her thin lips quivered. She reached out and grabbed my hands again and squeezed them. “We will defeat the American cultural imperialists. We will chase them to the end of the universe. They will have no time to catch their breath!” She shivered as if she was cold.
“Excuse me…” I didn’t know what to say.
She put a hand up in a let-me-finish gesture and continued. “When we succeed, we will take over the Capitalists’ propaganda machine. We will have our voice heard and views printed in the newspapers of the world. Imagine-the New York Times, the London Times. It will be the victory of the proletarians of the world! The Chairman will be so proud of your efforts!”
“I am not quite following you, madame…”
“You eat, eat.” Madame Mao placed a dish of roast duck in front of me.
“I’d like to know my assignment if I may,” I requested.
“Relax, dear comrade.” Madame Mao smiled gleefully. “Believe me, I would not assign you a task that you would be incapable of accomplishing.”
“What is it exactly, then?”
“The assignment is easy: Write two articles. One will be titled ‘The Good Earth Is a Poisonous Plant’ and the other ‘Exploitation: Pearl Buck’s Forty Years of Evildoings in China.’ The subtitle will be ‘Crime Exposed by a Childhood Friend.’”
Although I had no idea what exactly was going on, I sensed that Pearl had done something that had offended Madame Mao personally, over and above her refusal to endorse Mao’s policies for China. Many years later, I would learn that Madame Mao had dreamed of having Pearl Buck write her biography. With The Good Earth being made into a Hollywood movie, Madame Mao had imagined that she could be the next subject for the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. With characteristic confidence, Madame Mao had her agents approach Pearl Buck. The book’s title would be The Red Queen and the character of Madame Mao would have the style and flavor of Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind.
Pearl’s rejection had come quickly. Madame Mao had been in the middle of watching Gone with the Wind for the fourteenth time. She had imagined Vivien Leigh playing her.
Seeds of revenge had sprouted. Madame Mao vowed destruction.
“Besides attacking Chairman Mao through her writings, Pearl Buck has been discovered helping Chinese dissidents escape to America,” Madame Mao told me.
I asked if I could just “digest” her words first.
“I am not asking whether or not you’re willing to do it,” Madame Mao said, raising her chin toward the ceiling. “I am asking for the date you will deliver the weapon.”
I was reunited with my husband and daughter. We were provided with a room in the complex. My punishment if I did not cooperate had been spelled out. Saying no to Madame Mao meant saying yes to the continuing prison sentence and perhaps death. My age had never bothered me before but it did now. My body was tired and sick. I was over seventy and the idea of dying in a cold cell terrified me.
“You should not consider this an act of betrayal,” Dick tried to convince me. “You won’t hurt Pearl if you denounce her. She will understand. She is not in China. It is very likely that you two will never see each other again. Pearl won’t even know that you wrote the criticism.”
“But God will know,” I cried.
“Consider the circumstance,” Dick said. “We must protect our public from Pearl Buck’s influence. Her books have damaged the Communist Party’s reputation worldwide. Pearl is no longer the friend you used to know.”
“Unfortunately, I have read The Good Earth,” I replied. “I read it when it was a handwritten manuscript thirty years ago. Pearl Buck didn’t insult Chinese peasants, as Madame Mao claims. On the contrary, she showed what we were truly like.”
“You are letting your personal feelings get in the way of your political judgment,” Dick warned.
“To hell with my political judgment!”
Rouge came. She sided with me.
Dick was upset. “Nobody says no to Madame Mao.”
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“Make up stories,” Dick suggested. “Lie!”
“I can’t tell the world how evil Pearl and her family were!”
“You have to do it to survive, Willow. You can tell Pearl that you didn’t mean it later.”
I looked at my husband and was overwhelmed by unspeakable sadness. Telling lies had become Dick’s way of life. I wished that I could bend with the wind the way he had.
“I don’t want to teach my daughter a lesson of betrayal by my own example,” I concluded.
Dick pleaded, “Because of you, Rouge is having a hard time finding a man who will marry her, and she’s already passed her thirtieth year!”
The words stabbed me like a knife. I blamed myself for ruining Rouge’s life. So many times my daughter had suffered a broken heart. Young men fell in love with Rouge at first sight, but as soon as they found out that her mother was a people’s enemy, they avoided her like a virus. To pursue Rouge would mean a lifetime of hardship and persecution.
My prison sentence was increased to ten more years and then reduced to five more because I was Dick’s wife. I was sent to a labor prison in a remote province near Tibet. I spent my days working in the fields planting wheat and cotton and my nights scavenging for food and fighting cold, heat, and vermin. Our family was spread out over hundreds of miles. Dick was in the north, Rouge in the south, and I in the southwest. Dick and Rouge took turns visiting me once every three months and during New Year’s. Rouge never complained about the hardship, but the pain was written on her face. She had become a quiet woman, more mature than her peers. After graduating from Beijing University with a degree in medicine, she was not allowed to practice. She worked at a textile factory as a laborer. Dick wouldn’t tell me his punishment, but I learned what it was anyway. He was demoted and sent to an obscure post in the provinces. After a year, Mao called him back. Dick worked hard to regain Mao’s trust.
Rouge and I tried to keep our perspective. We saw that ours was not the only family that suffered. Millions of others shared the same fate. By the end of 1969, the Cultural Revolution was showing itself to be one of the most destructive episodes in China’s long history.
After serving five years in the labor prison I was ordered to go back to where I came from, Chin-kiang. It was considered a continuing punishment. I was ordered to reform through physical labor as long as I lived. I was nearly eighty years old.
Rouge was given the option to stay where she was or come with me. She chose the latter and quit her job. She said that she had barely been earning enough to eat anyway.
We went home on a slow train. My skin was sun-beaten and my back was in constant pain. I couldn’t walk straight. I had injuries to my joints, spinal cord, and legs. But my spirit had not been crushed. I was proud of myself for paying the price for decency-I could honestly say that I had never betrayed God, and that God had never abandoned me.
Dick was given no option but to remain at Mao’s side in Beijing. For fifteen years Dick had been China’s chief propaganda director. He was the ghostwriter for both Mao’s and Madame Mao’s speeches and articles. When he begged for my release so I could join him, Madame Mao answered, quoting her husband’s poem, “Enjoy the beauty of snow while feeling no pity for the flies that freeze.”
I thought Dick had suffered from my absence and had been waiting for me. But I was wrong. One year after I was sent to the labor prison, the party provided him with a young woman one third his age to be his secretary and nurse. In the beginning, Dick was unaware of the trap that had been set for him. By the time he figured it out, he had fallen in love.
Summer in Chin-kiang was hot and humid, like living in a steam bath. Papa came to pick us up at the Chin-kiang station. We hadn’t seen each other for many years. It was amazing that Papa was still alive. He had shrunk in size and was bald and stooped. Our tears fell when we embraced. Rouge was excited to see her grandfather, although she barely knew him.
“I have lost track of your age, Grandpa,” Rouge said. “How old are you exactly?”
“Twenty-nine!” Papa said.
“You must mean ninety-two,” Rouge said.
“You got the joke! Yes, but actually I’m even older,” Papa said, straightening his back to look taller.
“But you do look like twenty-nine!” Rouge said.
“I do?” Papa was pleased. “I feel like twenty-nine, too.”
“I don’t remember your being this short,” I said. “Four feet?”
“I used to be double the height,” replied Papa.
“What made you shrink?” Rouge asked.
“My body knew how to conserve when times were hard.”
Rouge laughed. “I can’t imagine myself shrinking like you.”
“Thirty years in the river east, and then the next thirty years in the river west,” Papa said, reciting Confucius.
“What does that mean?” Rouge asked.
“In the concept of feng shui, it means that there are equal opportunities in the circle of life.”
“What is the secret of your longevity, Grandpa?” Rouge asked.
Papa smiled and whispered, “Having faith.”
“In Buddha?” Rouge teased.
“How dare you forget who I am?” Papa pretended to be upset, but not very convincingly.
“What will our living arrangements be, Papa?” I changed the subject. “Where are we to stay?”
“In the church,” Papa said.
“The Chin-kiang church?”
“Yes, Absalom’s Chin-kiang church.”
“But the Chin-kiang church was not built for people to live in…” I immediately realized the silliness of my statement. Living conditions in China had deteriorated so much that people had turned animal barns into living quarters.
“To many people, it is no longer a church,” Papa explained. “It was the headquarters of the Nationalist troops during the war against Japan. When the Japanese took over, it became a barracks. After the 1949 Liberation, the Communists repossessed it. It has been put into different uses ever since. First it was a military headquarters, and then a utility storage for the new government. During Mao’s People’s Commune movement, it was a public cafeteria. After the communes failed, it was turned into a shelter for the homeless. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards from outside the province took over. They broke my stained-glass windows and painted Mao’s picture over every image of Jesus on every wall. They climbed the roof and knocked down the cross.”
“Are there families living inside now?” I asked.
Papa nodded.
“How many?”
Papa stuck up two of his fingers.
“Two?” Rouge guessed.
“Twenty.”
“Twenty families?”
“Yes, twenty families, one hundred and nine people.”
“How can anybody manage?”
“Oh, we manage, like caged pigeons.”
Memories of Absalom and Carie rushed up at the sight of the Chin-kiang church. I had to stop for a moment to collect myself. The gray structure had faded, but the building looked sound. The stone steps at the entrance were so worn they looked polished.
Although Papa had warned me about the crowded space, I was still shocked when I stepped into the church. I was prepared to see a pigeon cage, but what was in front of me looked like a beehive. There were no windows except those high up near the ceiling where the stained glass had been. These were the only light source for the entire interior. From floor to ceiling, the walls of the church had been divided into wooden, man-sized boxes, like giant wall-to-wall bookshelves, for people to sleep in. One could only lie down inside. To get into the boxes, people used a tangle of rope ladders. Young people and children occupied the top levels, while the old lived on the lower levels. Every inch of space was put to good use. The washing area was dominated by a large sink made from a water pipe about twenty feet long and split open at the top. Ten faucets poured weak streams of water. Below the sink was a slanted open gutter covered by a metal grate. Plumbing pipes and a dragonlike aluminum chimney were suspended in the air by wires. A loft had been built right under the ceiling as a shared storage space. Where the rows of church benches used to be was now a communal dining area. A large wooden table was surrounded by crooked benches. The raised stage where the altar had been was now a kitchen. There was split firewood piled high against the back wall. Baskets of coal spilled their contents. Wooden frames held buckets, pans, and woks. The podium where Absalom had preached now housed a stove. Behind the stage there was a room in which chamber pots were divided by curtains.
“What do you think?” Papa asked.
“Well, what ingenuity!” Rouge remarked.
Trying to ignore the terrible odor from the chamber pot area, I told Papa that I was impressed.
“No windows and it is so hot!” Rouge wiped sweat off her face. Her shirt was drenched.
“Welcome home,” Papa said.
Rouge and I were given one of the larger sleeping boxes. Rouge tried to slide into the narrow space and bumped her head.
Before we had a chance to unpack, the sound of knocking erupted. Papa went to open the door. A group of people rushed in. The men were bare-chested and the women wore thin shirts. They all had wooden slippers on their feet. They called my name excitedly.
“Don’t tell me that you don’t remember me!” said a wrinkled, hunchbacked old lady who grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Lilac?”
“Yes, I am. Are you Willow?” she cried. “How you have aged! Your hair is gray and white! Is this really you? Where have you been? Where is Pearl?”
At the mention of Pearl, I broke down.
“I can’t believe that I have lasted to see you return!” Lilac said. “Here, come meet your aunt Willow!” She turned to her sons. I didn’t recognize the men in front of me, although I knew they must have been Double Luck David and John and their younger brother, Triple Luck Solomon.
“Where is Carpenter Chan?” I asked.
“Oh, he is long dead,” said a toothless man.
“Dead?” I asked, then instantly recognized Carpenter Chan himself.
“Don’t expect an elephant’s ivory teeth to grow in a dog’s mouth.” Lilac slapped her husband’s back. “Since Absalom’s death, Chan is good for nothing.”
“When did Absalom leave?” I asked. “And how were his last days?”
“Old Teacher had a good ending,” Carpenter Chan said.
“Absalom didn’t suffer?”
“No, he didn’t. I was with him until the end. Old Teacher delivered his last sermon and went to lie down. Shortly after, I found him sleeping on his bed, and he was with God.”
A white-haired woman squeezed through the crowd and jumped on me. She scrunched her eyelids together and then stretched them as if trying to open her eyes, but couldn’t. “Guess who I am?” She drew her face so close that I could smell her rotten breath.
I shook my head and said that I couldn’t recognize her.
“I am Soo-ching, the beggar lady!”
“The beggar lady, yes! How are you? What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“I can only see a shadow of you, Willow. I am blind. But I remember your face before you left us.”
“How have you been?”
“I am a believer in Jesus Christ,” Soo-ching said. “How is Pearl? Is she here with you? I am upset that you two no longer visit.”
“Where is Confucius, your son?” I asked.
“You remember him? Good!”
“How could I not? He has such a unique name!”
“He is no longer Confucius,” Soo-ching said. “He changed his name to Vanguard.”
“Vanguard? Why?”
“Confucius is no longer a beggar lady’s boy,” Lilac whispered in my ear. “He has become somebody important.”
“That’s right,” Papa confirmed. “Vanguard was the first person in Chin-kiang to join the Communist Party. He is the town’s boss today.”
“Donkey shit!” Soo-ching coughed up phlegm and shot it at the ground. “I regret naming him Confucius. He doesn’t deserve it. Willow, you’ll see him soon enough.”
“How is your husband, Dick?” everyone asked me.
I hesitated, because I didn’t know how to answer.
“Oh, my father is well,” Rouge answered for me. “He is busy working in Beijing.”
Papa sat down and told me how the town of Chin-kiang had changed over the years. “It is a place of exile,” he began. “The government dumps people back in their hometowns once they can no longer be of benefit.”
Carpenter Chan explained further. “The government seems to think that undesirables should fall back on their native regions and relatives to survive.”
“It saves prison costs,” Papa said. “We had to build all this ourselves.” He waved an arm indicating the inside of the church.
Carpenter Chan smiled. “I am still building it.”
“We are truly under God’s roof now,” Papa said.
“Chan never learned his lesson,” Lilac said. “We could have stayed in Nanking if he had denounced Absalom. I told him that Absalom wouldn’t mind because he was dead. My stubborn husband wouldn’t do it. So we were sent back to Chin-kiang. What can I complain about? The old rule for a woman has always been: Marry a dog, follow the dog; marry a rooster, follow the rooster. But our children’s future was ruined. In Nanking they would have had opportunities, better schools and better jobs. Here in Chin-kiang, my twins work as coolies, and my youngest son is a field hand… They see no brightness in their future.” Lilac began to weep.
“Who is making that racket?” a man’s voice came from above.
I raised my eyes and saw three figures crawling out of the sleeping boxes.
A dark, bearded old man came down a rope. He was followed by two other men. “Damn lousy bones, they won’t stop protesting! This rotten body is falling apart.”
The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place the speaker.
The bearded man approached me. He smiled, mocking. “I bet you’d never guess who we are.”
The other two men echoed, “But we know you and your friend well.”
I searched the corners of memory but could find nothing that would match the images in front of me.
The bearded man sighed. “Twenty years in the national prison must have changed my appearance… Willow, look hard at me. I am Bumpkin Emperor.” He turned around and pointed at the men behind him. “They are my sworn brothers.”
“Bumpkin Emperor? General Lobster and General Crab?”
“Yes, that’s us!” the men cried in unison.
Papa came and put his arm around the men’s shoulders. “They are with us now.”
“What do you mean by ‘with us’?” I asked. “Bumpkin Emperor almost killed Absalom, Pearl, Grace, and their children! Absalom would have sent him to hell!”
“On the contrary, my child, on the contrary.” Papa shook his head. “In fact, it was Absalom’s wish. He made sure that everyone in his church forgave Bumpkin Emperor and his sworn brothers. After all, Christ died for our sins and his Father forgives us.”
“I don’t believe it, Papa.”
“Ask Carpenter Chan.”
“Is it true?” I asked.
“Yes.” Carpenter Chan nodded. “It was indeed Absalom’s wish.”
“To forgive Bumpkin Emperor for what he did?”
“Yes.”
“God is good, God is fair, and God is kind,” Bumpkin Emperor murmured with tears in his eyes.
“Absalom is happy with me in heaven!” Papa sang his words. “I converted the three of them.”
The sound of Sunday service woke me. It took a moment to realize that I was not dreaming. I was inside my sleeping box. I rolled over onto my stomach and stuck my head out to see what was going on. I saw Papa performing a sermon in front of the kitchen stove, which was covered with a white cloth. Papa was dressed in his old minister’s robe, so washed and worn that it looked like a rag, the color no longer black. Papa’s expression was solemn and calm. As he continued speaking, I could hear Absalom in his voice.
I glanced at the door in fear, and I noticed that it was closed and secured with a thick wooden bar.
The hundred and nine residents of the old church listened to Papa quietly. They were either sitting on the benches or on the floor or inside their sleeping boxes.
When Papa finished, people began to sing “Amazing Grace.” Memories of sitting with Carie at her piano rushed back to me. I had never understood the lyrics until now
’Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear,
And Grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that Grace appear,
The hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far,
And Grace will lead me home.
I slid back into my sleeping box. I hadn’t cried when Dick had told me that he had fallen in love with his secretary and had decided to end our marriage. But now I was hit by an emotion that felt like the ocean’s high tide.
Rouge rolled over and hugged me as I sobbed.
“You are home, Mama.” She gently wiped my tears. “We are home.”
The person in charge of my reform was Chin-kiang’s Communist Party boss, Vanguard, formerly known as Confucius, the son of the beggar lady Soo-ching. Vanguard had grown into a squirrel-faced, cross-eyed, middle-aged man with a fat belly. He enjoyed denouncing me so much that he ordered others to do the same.
Vanguard pretended that he did not know me. He spoke Mandarin with a heavy Chin-kiang accent, and he was proud of being an illiterate. Since becoming the party boss, he had banned the worship of God and made it a crime to mention the names of Absalom, Carie, and Pearl.
When Vanguard learned that Pearl had won the Nobel Prize, he saw an opportunity to advance his political career. He invited Mao’s favorite journalists to Chin-kiang to tour the hometown of the notorious American cultural imperialist. The event caught Madame Mao’s attention. Vanguard was summoned to the Forbidden City to be honored as “Chairman Mao’s great foot soldier.” Madame Mao awarded Vanguard with a work of her calligraphy that read, “The hope of launching a cultural atomic bomb on the world’s Capitalism rests on your shoulders.”
Vanguard called me “the evil twin sister of Pearl Buck” and “Chin-kiang’s shame.” He encouraged children to call me scum. He ordered me to clean out the town’s sewage drains and public restrooms daily. Every Friday afternoon I reported to Vanguard to confess my crimes. Depending on my response, Vanguard would either pass or fail me. If he was displeased, he would add more to my workload. He might order me to clean his office, which was the former British Embassy. If he felt I needed further humiliation, he would order me to walk through the town banging a chime with a stick. I was instructed to shout, “Come and see the American running dog!”; “Down with Willow Yee!”; and “Long live the proletarian dictatorship!” Vanguard hated it when I protested by staring at him in silence.
“I can have you tortured, you know,” he threatened constantly.
Vanguard expected me to tell him the details of my relationship with Pearl Buck.
“I want you to trace back all the way to your childhood,” he ordered.
Papa taught me to forget about preserving my dignity. “Speak the wolf’s language!” If he were me, Papa said, he would toy with Vanguard.
I tried, but it didn’t work. Vanguard was determined to please Madame Mao. He didn’t buy my abstractions and empty words. “How dare you try to fool the Communist Party!” he yelled at me.
To pressure me further, Vanguard organized rallies. They took place in the town’s square. The crowd repeated after Vanguard as he shouted, “Confess or be tortured to death!”
While Vanguard pulled my hair back to show the public my “evil features,” I imagined the opera The Butterfly Lovers. I remembered every detail of Pearl and me going to see the performance together with NaiNai. When Vanguard used a whip to beat me, I saw the birds, bees, and dragonflies flying into Absalom’s church. When the blood came and pain burned inside my body, I heard Carie singing her favorite Christmas song, “What Child Is This?”
In my dreams, I visited Pearl in her American home. The furniture I imagined for Pearl was made of red sandalwood in the style of the Chinese Ming dynasty. I saw the pictures on her walls, beautiful Chinese brush paintings and ink calligraphy. Also, I dreamed of Pearl sculpting. It was something she had said that she would love to learn. We used to watch Chin-kiang’s craftsmen making cookie figures out of sugared flour. For three pennies, we bought our favorite colored animals and opera figures. At our playground behind the hills, Pearl once sculpted a mud head using me as a model, and I did one of her. To emphasize our individual characteristics, I made her nose high and she slanted my eyes. Both faces were smiling because we couldn’t help laughing while making them.
I dreamed of Pearl’s play stove, a real one built by Carie’s gardener. It was located behind the hillside. It was there that we cooked real food. Wang Ah-ma taught us to bake yams and roast soybeans and peanuts. I could still hear the sound of Pearl and me chewing beans as if our teeth were made of steel.
Since moving back to Chin-kiang, I had been praying with Papa. Vanguard had no power over my spiritual being. My resistance against the Communists grew stronger. I decided to try to bore the crowd with my confessions, filling and padding them out with Mao quotations, slogans, and self-name-calling. My typical first sentence would be “I was a cat that lost her way before I was guided back home by Chairman Mao’s teaching.” My second sentence would be “Although I have never read a word of The Good Earth, my desire to read the book is absolutely reactionary and criminal.”
After Vanguard’s lectures and criticisms, it was my task to lead the crowd in shouting, “Burn, fire, fry, and roast Willow if she doesn’t surrender!” To amuse myself, I created variations. “Down with Willow Yee” became “Down with the American running dog Willow Yee!” and then “Down with the big liar, big traitor, big bourgeoisie, big snake, and big rotten, assless, slummy, and poisonous spider Willow Yee!” I began to play with the crowd’s breath. I dragged the sentences out as long as I could. I invented slogans to shout as breathing exercises. My favorite only a few could follow: “Long live our great leader, great teacher, great helmsman, great leader Chairman Mao’s great, glorious, and forever correct revolutionary line!”
In the winter, Vanguard conducted a political rally in the former British Embassy’s ballroom. The crowd was ordered to sit on the floor for hours on end. As I confessed, men smoked cigarettes and played cards, while women sewed their clothes and knitted. Old people napped and babies screamed. Vanguard insisted that my confessions were not heartfelt. He concluded that I purposely resisted reform and ought to be further punished.
I was put to work as the town’s slave.
To those who were sympathetic toward me, Vanguard warned, “The word mercy doesn’t exist in our proletarian dictionary!”
When Vanguard decided to lead Chin-kiang to “enter Communism overnight,” he eliminated the use of chamber pots. Everyone was to use the public restrooms, but because restrooms didn’t belong to anyone, no one cleaned them. They became a breeding ground for maggots, flies, and mosquitoes. It became my responsibility to clean them.
I labored day and night. Rouge helped when she could. Her old job as a textile worker had been given to a relative of her boss, and now she worked as a concrete mixer for a construction company. Close to the Chinese New Year in 1970, Rouge was ordered to work both the night and day shifts. I made my rounds of the public restrooms alone. As my tired hands scrubbed the walls of the feces-filled pits, I felt helpless and exhausted. I asked myself, “What is the point of going on?”
I had to restrain myself from crying or I would wake everyone. Papa was asleep. Rouge was working. The shadow of Dick’s secretary-nurse would not leave me alone. I had finally learned her name, Daisy. My mind’s eye saw that she had a full-moon face, big eyes, and a cheery mouth. She and Dick were embracing in the bed that used to be mine.
“Papa,” I called.
No answer.
I got up, climbed down, and landed on the floor. Papa was not in his sleeping box.
I went searching for him. I checked the washing area and the dining area. Passing the stacked firewood and coal buckets, I arrived in the kitchen. I heard a noise over my head. It came from the storage area behind the kitchen. Standing still, I listened carefully. It was the sound of a radio-someone was tuning through the channels.
Like an old monkey, I climbed the rope ladder. My legs were shaking and I was out of breath. I lost my balance and my shoulder hit the storage door.
The radio stopped.
After a long moment of silence, the door opened.
Holding a candle, Bumpkin Emperor stuck his head out. “What are you doing here?”
“I am looking for Papa.”
“He is not here.”
“I heard the sound of a radio. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Can I come in?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Don’t make me wake up everyone,” I threatened.
“I said no.”
“Let me in, please.”
“No.”
“You are hiding something, aren’t you?”
“It’s none of your business…”
“Let me in!”
“Don’t make me push you…”
“Willow!” Papa’s voice came from inside.
Bumpkin Emperor pivoted his body, and I entered.
Papa’s face was lit by candlelight. He was holding a brick-sized box. It was a radio of a fancy make, better than the one Dick had owned. Papa turned the radio dial. Static filled the shadowy room. The scene reminded me of a propaganda film in which criminals gathered in conspiracy. Papa was in his pajamas. He was calm and focused. I had never seen him concentrating like this. He tilted his head to the side as he searched for a signal and listened. I looked around and saw more faces. Besides Bumpkin Emperor and his sworn brothers, there were Carpenter Chan, his sons, and a few others. They all looked nervous but excited.
“What are you listening to?” I asked.
“Sh-sh!” Bumpkin Emperor pushed my head down.
Papa kept adjusting the dial. Finally there was a human voice. Papa was ecstatic. “I got it, I got it!” The signal didn’t last. It turned to static again. Papa kept trying while the others waited patiently. After a long while the signal returned. A voice speaking foreign-accented Mandarin came on. “This is Voice of America broadcasting from the United States.”
The radio had belonged to Bumpkin Emperor. It had been a gift from Chiang Kai-shek when Bumpkin Emperor was at the peak of his power as a warlord. The two men had joined forces against Mao. What made the radio valuable was that it had been made in America for military use. Bumpkin Emperor had donated the radio to the church after Papa had converted him.
Papa no longer felt isolated since he’d mastered the radio. He was obsessed with it. Papa shared the latest world news with carefully selected church members. Life became more bearable, although not better. The Cultural Revolution continued and Mao worship intensified. Food shortages became the worst they’d been since the Great Leap Forward. Vanguard loosened his grip on me in order to catch people who were selling vegetables they grew in their backyards.
One day, a stranger visited me. His name was Chu. Although I didn’t recognize him, I remembered the name. He was the Beijing general Dick had talked into surrendering in 1949. Dick had been proud when he saved the Imperial city and avoided a bloody battle in the streets of Beijing. Dick had negotiated with General Chu. Mao had promised Chu a high-ranking position in the People’s Liberation Army.
The man who stood in front of me was sick and thin. He had wax-yellow skin and sunken eyes. He spoke in a whisper and his words confused me. He said that he had been Dick’s cellmate in prison. He then explained that he was on a medical release from the national prison. I told him that Dick was working for Mao. He said that it was no longer the case.
“What do you mean by ‘cellmate’?” I asked. I hadn’t talked to Dick for two years. I knew nothing about his life.
General Chu produced a wadded paper on which ink letters the size of ants were written.
Dear Willow,
This letter gives me a chance to explain everything, which I consider a blessing.
I am writing from the Southwest Labor Prison near Tibet. You might wonder what I did to offend Mao. Well, again, the story has to do with Pearl Buck. But truly my own ambition is to blame.
Mao summoned me on the evening of May 30, 1969. Madame Mao was there and unusually friendly toward me. Mao didn’t seem to be aware that it was the middle of the night. He was dressed in a white bathrobe. His hair was wet and he was barefoot.
Once I was seated he simply said, “Pearl Buck wants to come to China. Premier Chou En-lai thinks we should make an exception and open the door for her. What do you think?”
Out of the corner of my eye I was aware of Madame Mao’s wooden expression. A slight smile quivered on her lips.
Given all my personal history with Pearl Buck, I marveled at Mao’s audacity. Had he forgotten that you, my wife, had gone to prison because of your refusal to denounce your friend? But I also knew that Mao’s desire for international recognition had only grown stronger over the years. No matter how strong he was at home, his reputation had not kept up abroad. He would do anything to gain the prestige that had eluded him. I saw at once that he was willing to rewrite history if it would fulfill his ends. I wasn’t so sure about his wife.
I sat there sweating in my chair as Mao went on. He asked me to cultivate Pearl Buck and convince her to change her mind about China. “Tell her we now rule a quarter of the human race on earth,” Mao said.
Mao revealed that his intelligence agency had recently reported that Pearl Buck had been a consultant to President John Kennedy. Mao believed that she had the potential to be his bridge to America.
Looking back, my fate was set. Madame Mao was jealous of any female Mao was interested in. She had made secret arrests, tortured, and murdered in order to gain Mao’s affection back.
Unfortunately, my own ambition made me willfully blind. Connecting Mao and Pearl Buck would be the best thing I could do to advance my career. Going down in history tempted me so much that I played with fire. The wind was in my favor, I thought, and I’d be a fool not to ride it. I planned on making a case to back up Chou En-lai’s position.
I translated Pearl’s recent articles on China and carefully edited out her negative comments. But before I submitted the material to Mao, the wind changed its direction. Madame Mao got ahead of me.
As evidence against Pearl, Madame Mao presented parts of her latest novel, Three Daughters of Madame Liang, in which Pearl depicted senseless murders taking place during the Cultural Revolution as if she had witnessed it. The novel amazingly mirrored the truth.
From that moment on, Mao lost interest in Pearl Buck. But Madame Mao was not finished with me. She saw Pearl Buck as a personal threat and was determined to punish anyone with a connection to her. Accusing me of deceiving Mao, Madame Mao had me arrested.
I expected Mao to offer his protection, but he didn’t.
I met General Chu in prison. What a twist of fate! On one hand, I felt guilty because Mao never honored his promises-the terms I negotiated. Once Chu surrendered, he became useless to Mao and was abandoned. Although Chu was granted the title of commanding general of the People’s Liberation Army, it was a paper title only. Chu ended up without the army or his freedom. I felt that I had let the man down. Ending my life in prison almost makes me feel better, because it separates me from Mao.
The Tibetan weather is harsh and the air is thin. We live like rodents in underground holes, which we dug ourselves-talk about digging one’s own grave. However, the dead do not get buried here. The prison doesn’t have enough prisoners to dig the holes to bury them all. Instead, the dead are dragged away and left in the open about a half mile from where we live. When the wind is strong, we can smell the rotten stench. Eventually, Tibetan wolves and buzzards eat what is left.
I live on leaves, earthworms, and mice. Before summer ends, the leaves and earthworms will be gone. We have stripped the trees of bark and eaten the rough fiber. Now those trees have died. We don’t have enough energy to catch mice. I have begun eating “suicide seeds.” This is a kind of grass seed that one slowly dies from. At least it cures the hunger. I’ve been constipated for weeks. My belly hurts so much that I pass out from time to time. You would never imagine the scene: cellmates helping each other scoop the shit from each other’s rear ends with bare fingers. It is a bloody business.
Chu was my partner. He hadn’t shit for nine days. I used a chopstick and tried to break the stool and scoop it out with a spoon. But his stool was as hard as a rock. He was in terrible pain. His stomach swelled like a big balloon. Another cellmate was from Shanghai, a doctor. Yesterday he died of constipation. He was only thirty-seven years old.
People here don’t count on waking up when they go to sleep. Strangely, most people die quietly in their sleep. Like the end of a burning candle, the flame flickers and is swallowed by eternal darkness. Each night I think of you. I regret deserting you for Daisy. She reported my complaining to Madame Mao. My foolish pillow talk! Near the end, before I went to prison, she admitted that she was Madame Mao’s spy. I knew Daisy kept a diary, but I didn’t know it would be used as a weapon against me. I thought I was on top of the world when I said to her, “Human beings make mistakes. Mao is a human being. He makes mistakes.” Daisy received a promotion for reporting my comment. Before my arrest, Mao invited me to accompany him to Russia. He made me believe that I was his most trusted man.
There was never a hint that I was to be punished. Then all of a sudden, Madame Mao told me that Mao was upset with me. Next I was stripped of my Party membership. I was to go to prison because I was no longer a comrade but a reactionary. Mao wouldn’t answer my calls or letters.
I know I have hurt you by my disloyalty. I have stayed away as you wished. I am writing this letter because I believe that I won’t last much longer. My belly is larger than a pregnant woman’s. I am chewed up by remorse and shame. I deserve Hell. I don’t expect myself to live beyond the New Year. There is no mail and almost no one gets out alive. In case Chu succeeds in getting out and this letter reaches you, I want you to know that I still love you and have always loved you, even when I was a foolish man.
Dick
My only thought was to see Dick before it was too late. I didn’t bother asking Vanguard for permission to leave because I knew he wouldn’t agree. Rouge bought the ticket, and I left Chin-kiang by train the next day. It was a standing-only ticket because I didn’t have enough money to buy a seat. For the next seventy-two hours, I stood during the day and managed to rest at night, curled up next to urine-soaked newspapers.
After the train, I traveled on foot. It took me two weeks to reach the prison camp. Then they made me wait for days before I was told the truth, that Dick had already died. He had been punished for stealing food. The story was that Dick hadn’t reported the death of another prisoner so that he could claim the dead man’s share of food. Dick slept with the corpse until the stink of rotting flesh gave him away. After that, the prison guards starved Dick and he died.
I wept imagining Dick sleeping with a corpse. I asked that I be allowed to identify Dick’s remains, but I was refused. I went to the prison headquarters and put on a hunger strike. After a week, I was taken to the open graveyard Dick had described in his letter.
As Dick had written, none were buried. Bodies and bones were everywhere. The smell was horrible. I stumbled from body to body looking for my husband. It was almost impossible to recognize any of the dead. I refused to give up. Hours later, I found him. Dick was naked. I recognized him by a scar I remembered. The flesh on his body had been torn by vultures and chewed on by wild dogs.
I fainted. When I woke up, I struggled to remember Dick’s face as I had known him. I did not want to remember him like this. I went and found a local peasant who owned a donkey. I paid him to bring me a bucket of gasoline and some firewood. I borrowed a rusty old shovel and dug a ditch. I dragged what was left of my husband to the ditch and piled the wood on him and poured the gasoline over that. I set this on fire. Afterward, I collected Dick’s bones, but they were too big to fit inside my bag. I had to abandon most of them. I never imagined Dick would end like this.
After I returned to Chin-kiang, Papa performed a memorial for Dick. We invited only the people we trusted who had known Dick. I meant to invite General Chu, but he was nowhere to be found. He had gone into hiding. Papa said that prison life must have made Chu cautious and distrustful. “Let’s remember him as a loyal friend to Dick.”
“What’s important is that Chu risked his life to deliver Father’s letter,” Rouge said.
“God must have guided General Chu,” Papa agreed.
I remembered Chu’s words. He felt blessed to be the messenger because he believed that he would soon join Dick. He believed that finding me would be the best gift he could offer to his friend.
I burned Dick’s writing, which I had saved over the years. Dick would have liked me to do that. He had worshipped Mao and Communism with all his heart. It was what Dick had believed.
I saved Dick’s last letter for Pearl, although I had no idea if we would ever see each other again. A reunion with my friend was becoming harder and harder to imagine. Today’s Chinese children knew Americans only as enemies, and things seemed to be getting worse. I wondered whether Pearl would be amused or horrified at the fact that Mao had considered converting her into a proletarian.
Papa was a master when it came to tricking the authorities. “Mao fought guerrilla style and won China,” Papa said to his congregation. “We stand the same chance to save souls for God if we follow his example.”
I warned Papa that he was asking for trouble.
“I have an advantage over Mao,” Papa replied with confidence. “I have the radio.”
I was worried. “You will end up in prison.”
“That already happened before you came home.” Papa stuck up three fingers. “Three times I was in and out of that filthy place. What more can the authorities do to a century-old man?”
Papa reminded me more and more of Absalom. He attended births, marriages, and funerals. He fooled the government spies with the language he used. He commenced each ceremony the traditional way and then turned it into a Christian event without anyone being the wiser-even when an agent was in the crowd. Papa started each sermon with Mao’s Quotation Book in his hand. He would begin with “We are people from all walks of life” and conclude by reciting from the Bible, “He that had gathered much had nothing over; and he that had gathered little had no lack.”
Papa developed a language only his Christian congregation understood. He referred to God as “the Cloud-walker,” punishment in hell as being “handpicked by Karl Marx,” the Bible as “the Quotation Book,” and salvation as “the revolutionary mission.”
During the celebration on China’s twenty-second National Independence Day, Papa was arrested for the fourth time for spreading poisonous thoughts. Papa confessed quickly to avoid torture. He denounced himself and made promises to the authorities, but he had no intention of keeping them.
He came home quoting a Chinese saying: “A hero is someone who doesn’t swim against the current.”
Papa forgave himself in God’s name. He called his lies strategies to avoid unnecessary sacrifices. Using himself as an example, he taught his congregation how to deal with the authorities. Once, Papa pretended to have a nervous breakdown. He claimed that he suffered flashbacks from the time when he was “poisoned” by Absalom. At public rallies Papa pointed at himself and shouted, “Down with Absalom’s number-one running dog!” This caused stifled laughter to ripple through the crowd.
When ordered to criticize himself, Papa said, “My hands would be busy picking your pockets if Absalom hadn’t introduced me to Jesus Christ.”
Vanguard tried to stop Papa. “How dare you praise that American cultural imperialist!” he yelled.
“Down with Absalom!” Papa shouted back as he punched his fists into the air. “I salute Comrade Vanguard!” Turning toward Mao’s portrait on the wall, he bowed deeply. “I’ll confess more to you, Chairman Mao!”
“More confessions!” the crowd cheered. “More confessions!”
Papa carried on. “Chairman Mao teaches us that ‘we must educate the masses by exposing what our enemy has done.’ Now, let me tell you what Jesus Christ has done.”
I learned from Papa not to “swim against the current.” I still felt hurt when children called me evil, but I no longer felt guilty. My true healing started when I began to help Papa with his guerrilla church.
To his amazement, Papa started to receive shocking confessions. Although he did not share them with me at first, eventually he did. I learned that Carpenter Chan had confessed that he had been a secret member of the Communist Party and Vanguard had been his leader. Carpenter Chan joined the party in 1949 believing that Mao and the Communists represented the poor. Carpenter Chan’s assigned task was to report on Papa. However, Chan became troubled when he realized how flawed and power-hungry Vanguard was. As the years went by, Carpenter Chan became convinced that Vanguard was a false prophet and Mao a false God.
My childhood memories were like splendid Imperial Palaces where I wandered and lingered. Often I imagined that Pearl and I were reunited. That scene was my favorite daydream. I felt closest to God when thinking about Pearl. I considered such moments like opening gifts from heaven.
Unlike me, my daughter, Rouge, was a realist, especially after her father’s death. Memories weren’t the same to her as they were to me. She chose to forget over remembering.
I would live with Rouge until she was in her forties and finally married. My son-in-law was a hardware-factory technician who had lost his wife to illness. The man struggled to raise his two young daughters. I was pleased when Rouge married him and adopted both girls. A year later Rouge gave birth to her own baby girl. My favorite activity was taking my granddaughters to visit the places where Pearl and I used to play hide-and-seek. I enjoyed the sunshine and the gentle rolling scenery, especially when the wind blew softly, brushing against my face. During such moments, I forgot how old I was. I felt like a girl again until one of my granddaughters started singing Carie’s favorite song and I realized that she wasn’t Pearl. That’s when I wondered if Pearl was still alive.
The day before Chinese New Year’s Eve in 1971, Papa came with a surprise.
“Pearl Buck will speak on Voice of America!” Papa could barely contain his excitement.
So, she was alive! I got down on my knees and thanked God. It had been thirty-seven years since I had last seen her. I was white-haired and imagined her to be the same.
It was no use when Papa advised people not to come.
“It’s an enemy radio station,” Papa warned. “You will be considered a traitor if caught listening. You will be arrested and sent to prison.”
The day was carefully planned. The secret gathering would be disguised as a Chinese New Year’s banquet.
I was surprised when Vanguard and his assistant, nicknamed Catfish, walked into the church moments before the broadcast.
“Secretary Vanguard, welcome, and please join us,” Papa greeted the two with a smile.
I pulled Papa aside and whispered in his ear, “Have you lost your mind?”
Papa ignored me. He took out his radio and began to set it up.
“Bring out the best wine for our boss,” Papa said.
People started to crawl out of their sleeping boxes and climb down the ropes. Carpenter Chan and Lilac came to stand near Papa. Behind them were Bumpkin Emperor and his sworn brothers.
The hallway and the dining area soon became crowded.
Papa poured wine and made sure that Vanguard and Catfish had the largest share. He poured an inch into the other glasses, but filled theirs to the top. Papa made a toast. “Let’s drink to demonstrate our loyalty to Chairman Mao!”
Vanguard had to drink all of his wine. Papa waited until Vanguard’s glass was empty before he refilled it and toasted to Mao’s health. Glasses were emptied and refilled again. Papa’s third toast was to the victory of the Cultural Revolution. The fourth full glass and toast were for Vanguard’s continued success in leading Chin-kiang into Communism.
When Vanguard slipped from the chair onto the floor, his face was the color of a rooster’s comb. Catfish was still awake, but Papa ignored him and changed the radio’s channel. The church filled with the sound of Voice of America.
We listened intently.
In Mandarin the host introduced Pearl S. Buck.
I stopped breathing when I heard a female voice say in Chin-kiang-accented Mandarin, “Happy Chinese New Year! I am Pearl Sydenstricker Buck.”
The first reaction was that no one could believe their ears. We all thought that it was our imagination.
As the conversation continued, the reality sank in.
“It’s her! It’s our Pearl!” Jumping for joy, we screamed and hugged each other.
“Happy New Year to you too, Pearl!” Papa said. He was smiling, but tears streamed down his cheeks.
It was as if she had never left China. Her accent hadn’t changed. Her tone was gentle and clear. She began to tell us about her life. We had little understanding of the events she was talking about, such as the Great Depression and the Vietnam War. But it didn’t matter. We were gathered to hear her voice. The fact that she was alive filled me with happiness.
Pearl talked about her books, including her translation of All Men Are Brothers. She mentioned that The Good Earth had been made into an American movie. “Although it’s a wonderful movie,” she said, “I am afraid that you wouldn’t like it, because all the Chinese characters are played by Western actors. They all have high noses and speak English.” She said that she lived in Pennsylvania and had adopted eight children, most of them of Asian descent.
We wept when Pearl said that she wanted to visit China.
“The details of my youth have become more and more clear to me as I have aged.” We could hear that Pearl’s voice was full of emotion. “When I close my eyes, I see Chin-kiang’s hills and fields at dawn and dusk, in sunshine and in moonlight, in summer green and winter snow.” She said she missed the Chinese New Year’s celebration the most. “I would be having a banquet with my friends right now if I were among them. As we all know, to be Chinese means one lives to eat.”
The host asked Pearl to describe a typical scene in Chin-kiang for the world’s listeners.
She paused for a moment and then replied, “A typical scene would be the mist over the big pond under the weeping willows. There would be frail clouds in the sky, and the water would shine silver. Against this background, I would see a great white heron standing on one stalk of a leg.”
I let my tears flow as I imagined the smile on my friend’s face.
Pearl went on. “My American friends often praise Chinese artists for their vivid imaginations, but no, let me tell you, the artist only puts down what he sees. I grew up and spent forty years of my life enjoying such scenery. It is the China I know and the China I continue to live in within my mind.”
Catfish grew terrified as he listened. He was not drunk and was aware of the consequences. He slapped Vanguard’s face and splashed water over him. “Boss! Wake up! We must go!”
Like a pile of wet mud, Vanguard did not move.
“We are trapped!” Catfish became hysterical. He turned to Papa and threatened, “I’m going to report this!”
“Go ahead!” Papa said. “Don’t forget to mention that Vanguard supported us and that is why he was here with us. He was so excited to listen to Voice of America and Pearl Buck that he got drunk to celebrate. Everyone in this building saw him do it.”
Although Vanguard confiscated Papa’s radio, he lost his position. He was replaced by Carpenter Chan, who was appointed the new Communist Party secretary of Chin-kiang. Carpenter Chan didn’t want the job, but Papa convinced him to accept the position. Papa believed that God’s work needed information and intelligence. “I’d appreciate it if you could get me the monthly Communist Party newsletter, the Internal Reference.”
Papa’s wisdom paid off. The Internal Reference forecast the changes in China’s political weather. Papa devoured every issue. He analyzed and looked for traces of change, especially in Mao’s attitude toward the United States.
In July 1971, Papa noticed a stamp-sized announcement that Mao was to receive a special guest from America, a man named Henry Kissinger.
“Mao’s pot is cooking!” Papa said to Carpenter Chan.
Three months later Papa learned that China had been accepted as a member of the United Nations.
“A deal is in the works,” Papa predicted.
Papa and Chan became the first in town to figure out that America’s President Nixon was about to visit China. Through the Internal Reference, Papa and Carpenter Chan also learned that there were two powerful factions within China’s Communist Party. One was called the Wife Party, Madame Mao’s faction, which Mao trusted to carry on his Cultural Revolution. The other was the Premier Party, led by Premier Chou En-lai, which Mao trusted to manage the country. Both factions competed for Mao’s favor.
The battle between the two intensified when Nixon’s visit was announced publicly. A group of investigators came to Chin-kiang. We had no idea that it had to do with the fact that Nixon had selected Pearl Buck to accompany him to China. It was only later that we learned the momentous news.
By candlelight Papa conducted discussions with his guerrilla-church members. “The world’s attention will be focused on Nixon when he comes,” Papa said, his eyes glowing and every wrinkle dancing. “Imagine, our Pearl introducing Nixon to Mao in perfect Mandarin and Mao to Nixon in American English!”
The question seemed to be: Would Madame Mao let it happen? Would she stand for another woman taking over the role she believed she was entitled to?
“Hundreds of cameras will be clicking and flashing,” Papa continued.
“Madame Mao will be jealous of Pearl standing between Mao and Nixon.”
“There is another possibility,” Carpenter Chan said. “Mao might show interest in Pearl, like he did with the wife of Philippine president Marcos. I saw the documentary in which Mao kissed the lady’s hand.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if Mao was charmed by the blue-eyed Pearl. I imagined Pearl dressed up. She would look like Carie, beautiful and elegant. Mao would ask questions in his native Hunanese, and Pearl would answer in the same tune. As far as I knew, Pearl was fluent in many Chinese dialects besides Mandarin. It would only be natural for Mao to extend an invitation to Pearl to visit him in private, as he had with so many famous Chinese actresses, poets, and novelists.
“Perhaps Mao will offer Pearl a personal tour of the Forbidden City,”
Papa imagined. “I can see the two strolling together down the Imperial Long Corridor, where the Last Empress, Tsu Hsi, walked every day after dinner. Mao would share his knowledge of Chinese history.”
“Mao might suggest visiting the Great Wall,” Carpenter Chan added. “He and Pearl would be carried by the palanquin bearers.”
Lilac nodded. “Certainly Mao would propose dinner at the Imperial Summer Palace.”
“Yes,” Papa agreed. “The dishes would be given names after Mao’s poems. Crabs with ginger and wine would be called Taking Down the Capital Nanking. Roasted duck with wheat pancakes would be called Autumn Uprising Triumph.”
“Hot red pepper with fried frog legs would be called The Birth of the People’s Republic.” Bumpkin Emperor and his sworn brothers drooled.
The pictures continued to scroll through my mind. Pearl might win Mao’s heart if she presented to him her translation of All Men Are Brothers, a favorite of Mao’s. He would assume that Pearl shared his passion for the peasant heroes.
I could hear Mao call Pearl “My comrade!” Mao would forget his age, his toothaches, his sore eyes and stiff joints. He would take Pearl’s hand and tell her that it was All Men Are Brothers that had inspired him to become a revolutionary. To earn her affection, he would want Pearl to know how he became the modern emperor of China. He would expect her to share the story with Nixon.
“People, only the people, are the creators of history.” Carpenter Chan mimicked Mao’s famous quotation. “Pearl would be flattered.”
“I don’t think so,” Lilac disagreed. “Pearl wouldn’t like Mao at all.”
“Pearl is lucky that Mao still hasn’t read The Good Earth,” I said. “If he had, he would know that Pearl will never be his comrade. Nothing Mao says or does will change Pearl’s view. And I believe that Pearl would disappoint Mao as well. Mao would discover that although Pearl spoke his language and knew his culture, she could never worship him like the rest of China. Pearl would see his flaws. She could be Mao’s nightmare.”
“We’ll see,” Papa said. “Wine might bring alive the poet in Mao. He could pick up a brush pen and write Pearl a calligraphy couplet as a gift. Pearl might demonstrate her appreciation by recognizing the rhythm in which Mao composed, and she would sound out the phrases in ancient Chinese.”
“Mao would ask Pearl to stay for late-night tea,” said Bumpkin Emperor, nodding.
“Pearl would refuse,” Rouge said. “And she would say, ‘President Nixon is waiting for me.’”
“The rejection would be worse than Nixon dropping a nuclear bomb on China,” everyone agreed.
The town of Chin-kiang was to be given a task of national importance. As the party boss, Carpenter Chan started to receive messages from his superiors. The first was from Premier Chou En-lai, instructing him to prepare for Pearl Buck’s homecoming.
“Get ready to show the town to America’s President Nixon,” the message read.
The second message contradicted the first. It ordered the town to cooperate with Madame Mao’s investigators. “It is time to reveal Pearl Buck and her parents’ crimes against China and the Chinese people,” that message read.
Believing that it would be an opportunity to get back on top, Vanguard exposed the underground Christian church. “Absalom’s ghost is not only alive but active in turning people against Mao and Communism,” he claimed.
The Communist newspaper, the People’s Daily, published an article titled “The Nobel Prize Winner Makes Her Living Insulting China.” Carpenter Chan told us that Madame Mao had barred Chin-kiang from receiving the American guests.
Secretly, Carpenter Chan took back the confiscated radio. He and Papa tuned in to Voice of America for the latest news. Between the lines, they learned that Nixon’s delegation would depart from the United States for China in a week, and that the Chinese authorities had refused Pearl Buck entrance.
Carpenter Chan composed a petition signed by everyone in town and sent it to Premier Chou En-lai.
“Pearl Buck grew up in Chin-kiang,” the petition pleaded. “It is her right to visit her mother’s grave and our duty as her neighbors and friends to see her wish granted.”
Never before had the entire town been united in one common goal. It was not Pearl Buck’s visit that we were fighting for, but our own lives and our children’s future. Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, those whose paths had crossed Absalom’s and Carie’s had been denounced and made to suffer. The major events had happened years ago, but our memories were still fresh. Some people had been affected more directly than others, but all had stories to tell. I remembered that the teenage mob that called itself Mao’s Red Guard had even come to Beijing to “clear Pearl Buck’s evil influence.” They knew that I had delivered letters to Pearl from Hsu Chih-mo. They took me out of the prison to attend a public rally, where the teens hung a wooden board around my neck that read, pimp. The crowd demanded that I confess Hsu Chih-mo and Pearl Buck’s relationship. Pearl’s former students were terrorized. They were forced to inform on me. One pointed out to the crowd that I was Pearl’s best friend and Carie’s adopted daughter. Other students recalled that I was the one who had tried to steal Hsu Chih-mo from Pearl Buck.
The Red Guard located Absalom’s grave near Chin-kiang and vandalized it. They smashed the stone-carving tablet honoring Absalom’s lifelong service to God. The Red Guard also sought Carie’s grave. It was Lilac who removed the tombstone to a different location. The grave the Red Guard destroyed was not Carie’s.
Lilac’s sons were ordered to change names. Double Luck David and John were now Down with Christ and War on God. Triple Luck Solomon’s new name was Mao’s Loyalist.
When the Red Guard ordered Bumpkin Emperor and his sworn brothers to smash a ceramic figure of Christ, the former warlords exploded. They took the anti-Christ boards off their necks and smashed them instead. When they were locked up, they escaped into the mountains.
Papa took the risk of protecting Absalom’s hand-drawn pictures of Jesus Christ. He hid them behind the wall-sized portrait of Mao. When Carpenter Chan and his workmen learned that the Red Guard had decided to burn the church, they transformed the church into an “Education Museum” in which Mao’s head was painted on every surface. The sculptures of Christ and the saints were boxed and caged and captioned “The Negative Teachers.” The boxes were put on display for criticism. To prevent the sculptures from being defiled, the workmen wrapped them in red ribbons with slogans like “Long Live Chairman Mao!” and “Salute to Madame Mao!” written on them.
What pained Papa the most was when members withdrew from the congregation. Although Papa understood that people did it under pressure and out of fear, he couldn’t help feeling defeated. He threatened people with “going to hell,” although he was appalled by their response: “Hell will be a better place than where we are.”
For years Chin-kiang was considered an area severely infected by a “Christian plague.” It was decided that the town needed a deep cleaning. Although Vanguard set himself as an example for denouncing Christianity, few followed him. People called Vanguard “the Chin-kiang Judas.” The police discovered that Bibles were hidden inside the covers of Mao’s books and clay figures of Christ were hidden inside rice bags. Christmas songs were heard during the Chinese New Year, and flowers by Carie’s grave never failed to blossom in spring. Children who woke up in the middle of the night to relieve themselves would find themselves tripping over their parents, on their knees praying in the dark. Despite his age, Papa made his rounds rain or shine when there was no place safe to worship God.
Age finally took its toll on Papa. He collapsed one day as he went from house to house, visiting members of his congregation. Rouge and I rushed to his side. When he woke up, he told me that he had met Absalom.
“Old Teacher still rode his donkey,” Papa said.
“Did you ask him if he was pleased with your work?” I asked, teasing.
“I did.”
“What was the reply?” Rouge was curious.
Papa took a few deep breaths before he answered, “Absalom cried, which was rather out of character. It was about Pearl.”
“Pearl?”
“Absalom regretted that he never got the time to be a good father to Pearl.”
“What was your response?” both Rouge and I asked.
“I told him that he should be proud, because she carried on his work-that we all heard her on Voice of America.”
A week later, Papa stopped breathing. Like a ripe melon, Papa hung happily on his vine before dropping to the ground. He went to sit under the tree outside the converted church building and looked like he had just fallen asleep with his chin on his chest.