Biweekly News VI
December 14, 1998

Dear Parents,

There are more than two weeks before the end of the year. How is your story going? Everybody is swamped with tons of things at this season. Don't give it up. Keep working on it and making a life gift  for your children in the year of 1998. The address you mail you disk is P.O. Box 0584, Oak Park, IL 60303.

Instead of putting out the newsletter of Interview, we are posting a dialogue between parents and Yannie on her story, "Die without Offspring". The newsletter of Interview will be out on the last newsletter date, December 28th, together with the Editorial Team's summary.

Here let's use Susanne's email letter to her play group families as the Introduction for the newsletter.

Have a good holiday season!

Editorial Team

Hey friends,

Here is a new document from Yannie going further into her story about what happened to her during the Cultural Revolution. She also focuses heavily in this document on helping the non-Chinese reader understand the depth of history behind the treatment of girls in the culture (not from the perspective of excusing it, but to help us see how a culture could lose its way on an issue like this and have a nearly impossible time ever finding it: for so many Chinese, the western humanitarian mind set is just completely alien, since the culture has never had a Civil Rights focus at all).

It is about eight pages, so save it and read it when you can. I did the editing (with some help from Kurt, my husband) which was a very rich experience, given that at times, it was almost like doing translation work (that is the really fun part, since it is one-on-one with Yannie, digging into her mind!). I learned lots more about Yannie too.

For all the problems we face as a nation, I once again offered up a silent thanks for our life here, and also for annie, who wants so much to each us the history behind how our girls became our daughters; to help us understand the mystery of how so much good could come from so much pain. More than that, she wants our daughters to understand it as best they can, or at least know where to turn when they begin their inevitable struggle with this. (I might add, and this is still astonishing to me, that Nori, just past three, came downstairs by herself yesterday morning for the first time, found me in the computer room, crawled up in my lap, and said, "Mom, I want you to be from China too. I want your eyes to be China eyes." I was struck dumb for a long oment. And when we went to bed last night, her final question was, "Mom, where are you from?"

When I answered, "I'm from America!" she said, "No, you're from China too.")

I'm so glad we have someone like Yannie helping us prepare for this most unique aspect of our families. And SO glad I have all of you, too.

Much love,

Suzanne

Dialogue 

on "Die without Offspring"

P (Parents): Is the story we read really a true account of your life during the time of the Cultural Revolution?

Y (Yannie): My 15-year-old nephew in Toronto made a comment about my story in an email to me: "There are not that many plots." His mother, my sister (who was the one sitting on the back rack of the bicycle in my story), esitated to have him send that message to me, thinking it would upset me. I told my sister that he was right: There were not many plots there. Nevertheless, while I was writing, all the scenarios, like living plots, came into my mind as though they had happened just yesterday. One interesting (and no doubt psychological) phenomena was that I could recall every word and behavior spoken and acted by everyone in the story, but could not remember the face of the character I called Dark Yellow Teeth with Black Tentacles, whom I confronted in front of  the devil shed locked in my mother at the company's store compound.

Dark Yellow Teeth never came to our home after my mother was released from the devil shed, which gave him back at least a little bit of dignity and respect in my eyes. From my understanding of people like him in a certain cultural and political atmosphere, even if an official apology had been made in front of my mother at a big meeting, where the perpetrators confessed that the deeds they had done were harmful and evil, that would only have occurred under political pressure (there were many policy amendments in those days) but not from their own human consiousness. They would play the same roles and just reassemble themselves in different performances (i.e., political campaigns) once there was some other political atmosphere in the wind. There have been many campaigns in the past half a century in China that certainly have added to the deterioration of traditional Chinese humanity. If Dark Yellow Teeth with Black Tentacles had come to apologize to my mother for what he had done during the Cultural Revolution, every one of his words would be considered by me to be pure cajolery and he would have lost his last bit of sincerity. My mother did not  think so ( she remains the same until today), and would believe everyone's every word -- she was kind and generous to a fault, which was her party's most lofty oracle to every party member, as every emperor of every feudal dynasty had dictated to his subjects in ancient times.

Pragmatically, the only way for people like my parents to survive was to obey. Whether you believed the doctrine or not, you  simply confessed "yes" to it, and reduced yourself to a cowering, shrunken puppet.

Besides that, in their blood my parents always believed and impressed upon me (my father passed away several years ago) what they thought: "Only the Chinese Communist Party could rescue the Chinese nation -- history has just proved it."

In the modern history of China, ever since the First Opium War (1840-1842), the Chinese territory was fragmented by big western powers and tons of opium were traded into China under humiliating and most-favored-nation treaties, the Chinese nation had gone through numerous bloody foreign invasion wars: the Second Opium War (after the first one, 1856 - 1860), the Eight-power Allied Forces (1900-1901), Sino-Japanese War (raged on for eight long years from 1937-1945), let alone Civil War (1945-1949) and the  wars by various warlords.

All of this ended with Mao Zedong's announcement  "China has finally stood up! Chinese people have arisen!" China had been brought into the world arena under the leadership of Mao, who "pushed the boat along with the current," or moved with the times. For the first time in centuries, Chinese people could  live a peaceful life. Chinese people "remembered the source, Mao the Saint, while drinking water." As a matter of fact, we didn't just remember him but worshipped him, which was the tragedy of China's national history. Everyone was a victim even as they were committing a crime -- Dark Yellow Teeth with Black Tentacles framed my mother but made himself into a political clown, scoffed at and avoided by the people in his company after the Cultural Revolution. What was more, his marriage was destroyed because of his evil deeds.

Youngsters like me at that time could be both victims and criminals. There are things I did for which I still cannot forgive myself to this date. I owe my two closest girl friends a sincere apology which I probably cannot do anything about today.

In the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, I was not a member of the Red Guard, a youth league organization following Mao Zedong's line of "class struggle" to fight the "bourgeoisie intellectuals" at school and the "counter-revolutionary elements" in society. I tried so hard to join the Red Guard by keeping a distance from my two closest girl friends and once even attended an "attack meeting." Together with my other classmates, I shouted slogans at them, including suggestions to torture them physically. One of the two girls died in her thirties after years of emotional depression, leaving her husband and two sons. The other girl, no matter how hard we tried to contact her for our middle school reunions, never once returned a single word. She remains unmarried to this day because of her hatred of humanity's evil nature. I sincerely wish she could read these words coming from the bottom of my heart. But how could I ever be able to do anything for my dead girl friend?

When I trudge back to that time, I cannot shake off the loathing I feel now for myself. I hurt my friends not for protecting so-called Chairman Mao's line but for protecting myself -- I could have easily been the next target in line after my two girl friends, because of my family political background.

But for all the guilty feelings, at the same time I was also guileless and inexperienced -- the lofty ideals of Mao's "class struggle" did not just poison people like my parents, but also people like me -- we were taught to "heighten the awareness of class struggle and not tolerate any negative words against  socialist system. I still remember how I argued with the folks in Mound Liu many times about the magnificence of the "People's Commune" system -- only  by  following the Communist Party, could the peasants improve collectivization and live a well-off life. In fact, it was this system that destroyed the agricultural production capability and dragged 80 percent of one billion people (in rural areas) into poverty at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.

Industrial capability in urban areas was developing sluggishly too. Millions and millions of middle school teenagers, once the revolutionary force in the Cultural Revolution, were driven to remote and disadvantaged areas under Mao's oracle to "accept reeducation from the poor-and-lower-middle peasants." In truth, the real reason was to lessen the job market crisis and keep us from rebelling. I joined this force and went to the countryside.

In fact, I was first assigned to a village in a northern area in Anhui Province, together with my schoolmates -- two girls and three boys in one group. Two months later, my father, after he and my two sisters were assigned to Mound Liu, traveled to my village and "talked" me into going to Mound Liu. He later told me that if he had lost any more time in having me transferred to Mound Liu, some boy would have married me in that poor land and my future would have become dismal. "Look at your boy groupmates' eyes when they came to see you off at the bank of the river, all of them fell in love with you. How I could  not see that?" (Laugh!) What he was not able to see then was that all of us, boys and girls alike, suddenly became like hunted deer.Once any one   left the group,there would be an emotional deluge, for none of us would know what kind of fate would drop on the rest of us.

We learned to endure physical and emotional hardship at a young age. The word endurance can represent the epitome of Chinese culture and civilization. To me endurance is like a sharp sword cruelly chopping down human nature; on the other hand, I have to admit that it could be a psychological therapy, helping people  get through hardship. Otherwise I would have seen many more spiritually and mentally broken people on the street during the Cultural Revolution.

The story began as a three-page reminiscence of three sisters in Mound Liu where I lived for three years during the Culture Revolution. It was originally written for the Chicago FCC newsletter to address the topic of "girl culture" in China. I asked some FCC parents to read it since the story's scope, once it was written, did not fit the newsletter and did not reach the audience. The parents liked the story but felt confused about its background. Once I started reworking on it, I realized there was nothing for me to do but keep writing. All the memories for the first part (the time before I went to Mound Liu), were rolling thunderously down on me, like the torrents at Niagara Falls. I was sleepless and felt physically exhausted, but emotionally, I was very high and experiencing hectic fevers.

For the second part of the story, the emotional torrents became mitigated just like the waves at Niagara Falls, floating in a wider riverbed -- but still with undercurrents flowing hurriedly forward. I feel I was not able to do justice to the story of what I experienced in Mound Liu. The names of Button One, Two and Six were carved in my mind forever and evoked my recollections for writing the story about girls in Mound Liu. Mound Liu, as a whole, is part of myself. That is the reason why I have been back to it time and again since I left it.

Stricky speaking, the story should not be called autobiograph. The format of autobiography is too rigid and narrow for my life expreience to go throught.

P: Can you imagine going back into that life now?

Y: No, I cannot even think about it. Both emotionally and physically, I could not live a life of just enduring. That was simply too negative. I would be able to live a life armed with the rich knowledge of sociology: the wisdom to understand certain phenomena of history, the generosity to forgive people who got lost in their life journey, and the confidence to conquer my own weakness. Without all these, if I had to go back, I would end up going to some lunatic asylum as my parents' acquaintances did -- it was, after all, such an anti-humanity life in an extremely dark period of time.

P: The story beautifully illustrates the picture of that historical period. Have you ever thought about introducing it to a Chinese audience in the Chinese language?

Y: Linguistically, I felt it was easier to express my emotions in English than in Chinese,  there  was a larger vocabulary  in English than in Chinese of   for me to tell the story. In the meantime, in my sub-consciousness, I had the American audience right there to communicate with as I was working on my story. Politically, the story would not be censored in mainland China nowadays, whereas, sociologically, I feel hesitant to have my kinfolks read the story. The Cultural Revolution was the tragedy of the whole nation, so many families lived through this abyss of misery. Chinese people are so aware of it that many have became a bit indifferent to the hardship. Mine would not be as sensational as others' "life or death" experiences, nor could the story cause as much fascination among a Chinese audience as among an American audience. However, it wouldn't surprise me if in the future, I were to publish my story in my native tongue.

As a matter of fact, I did ask my friend's daughter in China to read the story. The girl is a college student and made a comment about the red leather sandals which were confiscated by the so-called common revolutionary people. She said, "Auntie Fan is a little bit fussy about this. So what? They were just a pair of sandals." Young as she is, the comment shows her lack of understanding of the significance of the sandals. So just imagine what kind of comment would come from the old generation. Her attitude reminds me of an American political cartoon: To a group of people who are sitting on a boat sailing to the other side of the river, a guy standing on the bank is yelling: "Wait! Why not take me?" The boat has been carved on it the words Civil Rights.

This makes me think that there weare two boats sailing at the same time on the two sides of this globe: the figurative boat labeled Civil Rights in the West; and the wooden boat I was in, literally, sailing above submerged rice paddy during a flood that occurred in the summer of my first year in Mound Liu. Struggling in my poor boat to help create a bearable, meaningful collective life according to Mao's dream (as I thought then), the idea of a boat named Civil Rights would never have occurred to me. I had never even heard the term. And if I had, the behavior of those sailing and trying to get into that boat would have seemed almost monstrous to me. How could any individual's rights matter as much as the rights of a whole society that had been so long denied? LLike my friend's daughter, who fails to see the significance of my red sandals being confiscated, I simply did not understand then the value of individual rights.

There is still a big discrepancy between the two societies because of differences in economic development and cultural depth. Honestly, I could not have written my story this way if I had not been living in this culture for over eight years. The most valuable treasure I am in possession of in this country is my freedom to be disenchanted with any oracle, doctrine or saint. It is intoxicating. With this freedom I can contribute something of value to society: a combination of both Chinese culture and the humanitarianism of the New World.

P: I just can't understand a culture where a boy is treated differently than a girl.

Y: In the old days, once a girl was grown up she would be married away with a dowry to her husband and live in her in-law's house. Girls' parents could not get anything in return for spending money and energy on their girl children. That is why girls were and still are in some areas in China called "losing-money commodities" or "debt-collectors." Even the girl's family could and still can ask for a "bride-price" as compensation for raising her from a child to the wife of some man. Girls were and are born inferior (specially in remote areas).

Last week, I called my friend Yimao, who now lives in California, to ask for a copyright of her story "Shoes", which is included in her Father's autobiography A Single Tear published by Hodder and Stoughton in Great

Britain. Her dad, Teacher Wu, as I called him 25 years ago at Anhui Teacher's University and still do now, is an eminent scholar of English Literature and lives in Virginia. The following is an episode quoted from "Shoes". Yimao told me her story was nothing but truth.

------

In the years after she got married, Sister Ying gave birth to two girls in a row. When she was lying in for the third time, it happened to be Lunar New Year again. I heard she had given birth to twin girls, and I hurried to visit her on the third day of the festival.

"Let me see your twin babies, Sister Ying, quick!" I started jabbering the moment I entered her room.The room was very dark. She was lying in bed. I went closer and saw she was weeping.

"She is confined. Let her rest." Her mother-in-law came in.

"I'm going, Sister Ying." I left a handful of candies posted by my relatives from Tianjin by her pillow and followed her mother-in-law out. 

"Why is Sister Ying crying?" I asked the moment we were out in the central room.

"Alas, cruel is her fate!" the mother-in-law's eyes reddened. "She already had two little things which had to be given away, and now two more to be fed. For luck, we didn't do it on New Year's Day, but waited till the second and my son threw the two 'debt-collectors' into the river."

…… .

Other girls of the same fate were usually held upside down by the father and drowned in a urine bucket the minute they were born.

------

Yimao (ten years old then and lived in the village for six years) and her family -- father, mother and two brothers -- were assigned to a county close to the county where Mound Liu was located. The custom there was very similar to Mound Liu. Although I never witnessed this cruel behavior in Mound Liu nor the villages around Mound Liu, I heard about it there and remembered seeing dead infants in a public restroom and in garbage dumpsters when my father was in the prison and I was little and "at large." It was against the law a long time ago to kill infants and the person who conducted the deed would be prosecuted.

However, the law was never to be executed strictly -- there was no prosecutor for the case, and a wife would never file a law suit against her husband who usually performed the action. Outside the family, abandoning or even killing a child would be considered a family affair and nobody would be conscientious enough to report it to an authority -- offspring were a household's property, therefore, parents had the privilege to make a decision about their children's fate and even whether they should be allowed to live or die. Thanks to the development of society and humanitarian consciousness and also to the popularization of contraception and abortion (I know there is an avid debate about this topic in America, whereas abortion is legal, protected and practiced by various laws among the Chinese), fewer and fewer "drowning girl-infant" crimes occur nowadays either in urban areas or in remote areas.

P: How can the parents face the prospect of giving up their own flesh and blood?

Y: Let me recall an argument between Peepee Pot and his parents on why he refused to marry the girl picked out by his parents.

PP (Peepee Pot):"I like her." (He even didn't dare to use the word "love" to his high school sweetheart).

D&M (Dad and Mom): "Don't even try to follow in the footsteps of those city dwellers. They love each other to death in the beginning and end up swearing at each other and getting divorced. Their love is like rice in a bowl and will be eaten up some day."

PP: "I just don't know how I can like the girl you have chosen for me."

D&M: "Your dad and mom met each other couple of time before our wedding day. All your dad knew about your mom was that her feet were bound (feudal morality). All your mom knew about your dad was his big appetite

(pragmatical marriage attitude). There was no such a thing as "love".You will like each other when you have children."

PP: "People get married because of their love for each other, not because of the purpose of bearing children."

D&M: "OK. Stop talking nonsense in eight ways. With your 'love', there wouldn't be this family in Mound Liu at all, let alone you, Peepee Pot. We didn't have that 'love' then but we have everything now!"

PeePee Pot was defeated and followed his parent's ideals by marrying the girl they chose for him.

Marriage between a husband and a wife, especially in disadvantaged circumstances like Peepee Pot's parents, starts not from a romantic love, but from the common life mission: a family clan's reproduction. If there is a concept of romance, it is at most mutual appreciation. The child, specifically a boy, is the glue of a marriage. A wife would feel guilty if she was not able to bear a son for her husband (or even got divorced by her husband),  while a husband would be accused of not showing filial obedience to his ancestors -- he would not have a son to whom he could pass down the family property and family name, and on whom the aged ones in the family could depend. A decision to give up a child is based on the benefit of the husband (having a son tp pass on the family property and name), wife (save the marriage) and the life fortune in common  ( supporting old-aged ones including themsleves), which cannot be influenced by any emotion, nor by western humanitarian ideas. That concept has never been fully interpreted in Chinese cultural understanding.

P: Did you experience domestic violence in Mound Liu since the marriage was built upon family clan reproduction  as opposed to love?

Y: I never witnessed any abuses, husband to wife, parent to child. The folks in Mound Liu were surprised to see my father spank my two sisters and asked me, "Where has you city folks' civilization gone?" They lived a life of "husband sings, wife echoes." When there were conflicts between a husband and wife, every couple just followed what Grandma Second stated: "Living together with anybody must involve daily compromises." They eyed common life goal. Once a girl was married to her husband, her life mission was to bear offspring for the family. She was like a rice paddy producing rice: the more boys she bore the more valuable she would be to her husband and the family clan. With the instatement of family-planning law in the seventies in China, women, especially in the rural areas, have been facing more challenges: of the two (and no more than three) children allotted to her, she has to bear at least one boy, the boy she owes her husband and family, the boy who

will support her in her old age.

My husband has three brothers. When they heard that I gave birth to a boy, one of his younger brothers half jokingly said, "Well, well, then we don't have to worry if our wives would be able to bear boys or not. Our old mother now has a grandson saved up here already." He made this comment in spite of the fact that nobody in my husband's big family would expect that this boy could support them when they were old. The tradition on child-bearing and child-rearing has been in place for thousands of years. Even I myself, together with my parents and sisters, felt proud when I bore a son (laugh!).

Traditionally and pragmatically, boys are superior to girls especially in the rural areas; politically, more than two children is not legitimate (in urban cities, a stricter policy is still there: one family one child). That girls are given away is naturally the option for the couples who are wanting boys. I hear time and again this comment about child-bearing: Bearing a child is the easiest thing in the world. Keep trying until a boy is born. Grandma Second's tragedy is not just history but is still alive in remote areas in China.

P: How did you get the opportunity to be accepted by a university?

Y: I was recruited by the university through special status. There was a certain quota in the recruiting list for the youngsters "who come from dissident families and could be educated", and I was in that status. Because of my parents' political situation, young men and girls like me rarely had chances to accept higher education. I was lucky to get picked because of  my conscientious attitude toward accepting the reeducation from peasants and as well as  the new trend toward proletarian humanitarianism at that time.

I still remember at the farewell party before I left for the states, one of the department heads at my school (where I was a lecturer) said to me in a sincere way: "Don't forget how you stepped into a university's gate (Mao Zedong's charity) and how you got the opportunity to go abroad (Deng Xiaoping's bounty of open-door policy)."

What I cannot forget about is the comment from a parent after he read my story. He said: "I was listening to the Beatles and fighting with people who wouldn't let me in the gate of Disney World because I was a teenage boy wearing shoulder-length hair. In the meantime on the other side of the world, you were struggling to survive."

Yes, there are always some miracles there. In spite of the tremendous differences   there were thirty years ago, you Americans and we Chinese are together trying to understand a certain atmosphere in a period of time, out of which comes one common goal: to help our children with special personal experiences grow up healthily. If one day some our children utter a phrase like "Oh, it was like that!" then my sleepless nights and hectic fevers, which I experienced when I was working on the story, would all be made worthwhile, and my contentment would be complete.

There is a Chinese ancient poem going like this: Mountains are high, rivers are long. Is  anything impossible?  Let's cherish  beautiful hopes for our children and work hard together with them for their happy life.