Die Without Offspring (Part I)
Yannie Q. Fan
The lost history we are recovering would give the new meaning to our children,
hopefully it would be enough to be a compass to provide some bearings when our children
chart their own course.
------ Denise Chong
Author of The Concubine's Children
Published by A Penguin Book, Biography
"Die without offspring" was a diabolical and slanderous term, used as a swear word against a family that was not able to follow the ethics of filial obedience by bearing boys to pass on the family name. It was also used to implicate a family that was decapitated by no male successors. My mother had just three daughters, and our family was attacked for this "sin" when my mother was serving a sentence at a prison in the metropolitan area of Hefei where we lived at that time. In contrast, my countryside friend Button Two, her two sisters and their parents did not have any boys, but nobody in their village, Mound Liu, would utter a single word about it. Nevertheless, that family was serving a sentence imposed by an invisible law which relegated families with no male offspring to the position of second-class citizens.
Button Two was the first friend I made when my father, my two sisters and I were assigned to a rural village, Mound Liu, in the winter of 1968. The village was twenty li, or ten kilometers, away from the Changjiang River, a land of rice and fish. It was a remote land and almost three hundred li away from Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, where my mother was imprisoned. The prison where she was completing the term of imprisonment was called a "devil shed" and had been set up by her company, a state-owned enterprise.
It was the period of time referred to as the Cultural Revolution, a political campaign launched by Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, against his imaginary foes. The CRP, or the Common Revolutionary People as they called themselves, from all walks of life founded all kinds of organizations named "Such-and-such Team of Rising in Rebellion." They each held ultimate authority and exercised proletarian dictatorship over authorities as well as anyone who dared act against them at their working units, plants, companies and government organizations at different levels.
Before the revolution broke out in June of 1966, my mother was sent to lead a working team at a textile mill and was later called back. She was then a chief manager at her company. My mother was not pretty at all, nor did she pay much attention to the trifling matters of everyday life, yet people around her were fascinated by her. My father said hundreds of times, "Your mom laughed loudly and happily and couldn't stop until she was choked with tears." My father said that was the reason why he married my mother.
Nothing very terrible had ever occurred to my mother until August of 1968.
Late one afternoon, I came home from school. As usual, rather than finishing our academic schedule, we had been discussing how to replace the traditional text books with a set of proletarian ones. It had been the first time for us to resume our schooling ever since the summer of 1966. During the past two years, all the schools, from the elementary school to the university, were shut down for "making revolution"-criticizing teachers who were carrying on bourgeois teaching methods and materials and fostering bourgeois successors.
Far away from my apartment, my eyes caught sight of a new poster with big characters hanging on the whole front wall of our building, and another huge piece of paper with caricatures was hanging down, blocking our door.
Big character posters were "special weapons," as the CRP called them, made with Chinese hieroglyphics, for criticizing proletarian enemies. My heart started racing: the terrible disaster had fallen on either my father or my mother or both of them.
My father and two sisters were home, waiting for me: My mother had been arrested by the CRP from her company! An "imperial edict" was left by the CRP, accusing her of her crimes: being married to a dissident and, luring common people to walk on capitalist roads. A third verdict was added to her the second day after she started serving her open-ended term: instigating her teenage daughter-that was me-to make reprisals to the Leader of the CRP.
A word of command was left to my father: bedding and some clothes should be sent to my mother. She was sentenced and segregated from us to accept remolding under the supervision of the CRP of her company at a prison, or "devil shed," another term created at that time. The devil shed for my mother was set up at the storage compound of her company located at the edge of the city. Since my father was not allowed to go there in his dissident status, my younger sister and I were sent to our mother at the devil shed.
With my sister sitting on the front handle bar of the bicycle, and a huge package of my mother's daily life items packed on the back, I was on my way to the devil shed.
It was still at rush hour, and my bicycle was like Noah's Ark sailing in the ocean of people. Noah had been going to seek a bright future with tremendous hope and all kinds of lives on board the boat. But what was I going for? Bicycles were buzzing past, and people, like the light posts on both sides of the road, looked so indifferent and cold. I was pedaling to climb up over one summit and then another. I had never pedaled my bicycle so fast: the energy fueling me was the immense anger just waiting to explode like a volcano at the slightest stimulation. While I pedaled, a story that our neighbor, Aunt She, once told me was pounding at my heart like a hammer.
Aunt She used to be our housekeeper before the revolution broke out and still came once in a while to take care of our house chaos afterwards. She came to help us pack and told me that my mother had been escorted onto a truck by a dozen CRP from her company, then paraded through the streets with a stripe of wooden sign plugged in between her nape and her shirt collar stating the words, "Down with Fan Xiuzhen!" The name was crossed with red paints. That was done for death penalty prisoners when escorted to an execution ground. "They stopped the truck right in front your door and pressed your mother's head down, shouting slogans in the face of your dad and your sisters." Aunt She told me this while gesturing frantically, "Your mom had her period blood then and it was dripping on her legs and staining her pants. I asked them to let her use the bathroom. But they yelled at me 'How dare you ask such a stupid question like that!'" I was so stunned that I grabbed the package of my mother's things from her without uttering a single word.
After big character posters signed by the CRP were seen everywhere in my mother's office and the buildings of her company in June and July and then in August, the site of their revolutionary activities came roaring down our home. The walls on both sides of our front door were also covered with huge posters, which the CRP from both my dad's and mom's companies hung when they came to search our house and confiscate counter-revolutionary documents and bourgeois style living items. I had sensed that sooner or later my father would be taken away for any one of his actions, and that my mother would be "ferreted out" as a "capitalist road guide"-luring her people to go to the capitalist road by running counter to Chairman Mao's instructions.
But I never expected my mother and my family would be insulted and humiliated in such a bloody evil way.
It was getting dark as my sister and I approached the compound. Through the iron wire netting in the dim light, we saw a crowd of kids in front of a small room attached to the monster-huge storage area. The room was used to keep detailed lists and inventories. It was now dark inside and the door was wide open. I knew this was the devil shed for my mother, because the kids were yelling and throwing stones at it. It was the first time they had ever confronted a prisoner, and they were caught up in the hysteria of it.
Someone hollered: "Her girls are here!" as we pushed open the yard gate of the compound. Suddenly, a dozen eyes turned around, shooting at us, and it became suffocatingly silent there for one second. I did not know how long they had been there with their subdued hubbub hanging like a smoke in the air, drifting. But once we arrived on the scene, the commotion exploded like flames until a raging fire of abuse was ablaze-my sister and I became their fresh target to attack and humiliate.
"Die without sons!" "Die without offspring!" They
started surrounding us, shouting the slogans and waving their fists. Suddenly we
became bloody sworn enemies.
I recognized some familiar faces there: they had been our friends not so long ago. These
were kids we had hung around with, had dinner with, and who had slept over at our house
when my mother was their parents' boss. I was gazing at two girls whose trip with me to
Shanghai had been paid for by my mother. They moved their eyes away and kept quiet. The
others kept shouting: "Die without sons! Die without offspring!" I had no idea
how "die without sons" was related to the verdicts dumped on my mother's head:
We did not have any brothers! if we had, the boys in our family still could not pass on my
father's family name because of an unusual situation in our family. My mother had to
change our last names with her maternal name in order to show her Party Organization that
she had broken off with my father who was a dissident at that time. My mother had filed to
divorce my father but did not get approved. We three girls went with my mother to the
court. The judge was sitting in that high chair and looking at his paper while telling my
mother, "With three children between you and your husband, the divorce cannot be
granted by this court." At that time my father was serving his sentence for political
crimes at a state prison farm.
My sister and I did not have any words to battle back with but plunged in instead with the front bicycle wheel. Rocks and dirt were following along after us.
My sister and I squeezed into my mother's devil shed. My mother was sitting under the windowsill leaning against the wall. She was struggling to stand on her feet and pulled us away from the door to avoid the stones flying in from outside. I could not see my mother's face and did not dare to look at her, but fumbled instead in the package I brought to her. My mother closed the door and turned on the light. The small bulb of yellow light was still dim even in that tiny empty room. We started setting up a bed on the concrete floor. It took us seemingly hours trying to put up the mosquito net, but nevertheless we failed. There were no holding points on which to hang the net. While we were struggling with the soft net, the kids were surging in time and time again through the door which did not have a latch. Each time I swept them back and slammed the door, and each time they broke in again. My mother finally stopped me. The kids were flooding in and we were besieged. They started pushing each other into us.
I was older and taller than all the kids there and wondered how they dared act with such vulgarity, even with the provocative glances and gestures from a couple of adults who were standing there all the time with their arms crossed in front of their chests. I felt we were so useless and helpless like animals in a cage trampled and slaughtered by those monsters. Every one of them could show their ugly teeth to terrify us while we were not able to do anything to protect ourselves. When I could no longer restrain myself, I started wrestling with a boy who was pushing others to sit on me. My mother then ceased pleading with them to stop and instead, she pushed us to the door, saying "Go home, go home. It's late." I knew very well that it was perfectly safe on the street. I would hang with my friends outside until midnight and nothing had happened. We were only unsafe with our mother. My sister, at this time, started weeping.
The kids rushed out and formed a block between my mother and us. "It was your birthday today!" I heard my mother shouting, but the rest of the words were lost, drowned out by the sound of the cursing and stomping feet of the kids demonstrating behind us. It was my seventeenth birthday that exact day! My neck became so stiff-if I turned around and opened my mouth to say anything to my mother, I knew my tears would be pouring up in torrents, for they had been held in for so long. I knew, too, that my tears would taste of bitter salt, for they would be flowing from the debris of my heart.
The kids followed us to the gate, where more stones, dirt and curses were hurled at us. I stopped and threw them a killing look. Then I turned around and pushed my bicycle, with my sister on it, even faster. Still they hurled more and louder curses which seemed like punches to my ears: "Die without sons! Die without offspring!" My sister shouted back, "Chairmen Mao did not say that, he says men and women are equal!" Her words were just followed by cruel, heavy laughter. Nobody could protect us: not my mother, not even Chairman Mao! Never had I wished more than I did at that time that if only I had been born a boy, a man, then nobody would have dared to utter a single dirty word against us. I could have protected my mother, my sister and myself.
Early the next morning, I was there again with steamed buns, eggs and a small jar of milk in my bicycle basket. No kids were there at that time, but a guy looking like a mere skeleton was standing by the receptionist door next to the gate, which was ajar, when I pedaled in.
I had seen this man a couple of times before, and more of his wife and their kids. They stopped by to say thanks to my mother when she had lent them money for their groceries and a seasonal change of clothes. The guy at that time had looked so humble-without my mother's help, his wife would have divorced him for his heavy drinking and smoking habits, which made it difficult for him to take care of his family.
Now all I could see were his dark yellow teeth wide open and his black shirt draped around his shoulders like a cape, the two empty sleeves swinging like two devil's tentacles.
"Why you are here?" he bawled at me. "To deliver breakfast to my mother!" I bit back, having finally found a crevice through which I could throw back the anger that had been boiling since last night. "She would be perfectly fine by eating the same food we eat here." I could sense the humiliating tones in his voice. Fresh milk was scarce at that time; my father had managed to place an order for it just for my mother. "Only if my mother has enough good nutrition will she be able to stand up to your attack!" I threw back at him with my sharp eyes, sharp voice and sharp words.
In a flash, the guy grabbed my bicycle handle while shouting abuse. "You smelly evil girl, how dare you talk back to me like that!" Suddenly, the immense anger that had been looming behind my composure overwhelmed me. I clutched in my hand the "bourgeois style food" as he called, pulled back my bicycle and then let it go so abruptly that he was caught off guard, causing him to pull the bicycle toward himself. He did not take precautions against my action and was crushed by my bicycle. I dashed to my mother who was standing inside the door of the devil shed. The guy had his foot squashed by my bicycle. He limped over and wrestled the food from me, yelling ferociously, "You bitch's bitch, get out of here right now, or I'll lock you in together with your bitch mother!"
Other curses relating to my mother and ancestors, and to human beings' private parts (especially the parts of women), spouted out from his dark yellow teeth and gutter mouth. He was on the verge of smashing me over the head but managed to get himself under control: beating a young girl would make him lose his proletarian sanctity.
My mother forcibly pulled me aside, standing between me and the guy, and appeased him by saying, "You're the Leader of the CRP, just ignore her. Let her take the food back."
He opened the milk jar lid and dumped out the "bourgeois style" foods on the ground and smashed the eggs while still cursing in his vernaculars. "You are provoking your daughter!" He was pointing at my mother's nose with his fingers. That was the third verdict added to my mother's previous two.
Riding home on my bicycle, I burst into tears. How could things have gone so wrong with my family? With me? I asked myself bitterly.
Because my mother was a Capitalist Road Guide who was working against Chairman Mao's line?
She had sacrificed everything to her work without any respect to her own private life. She did not know even one actor-she had no entertainment at all; she found nowhere to buy a needle and a piece of thread-she did not have time to take care of the house chaos; she never remembered her birthday-she, by following Chairman Mao's line, devoted herself whole-heartedly to socialist construction and communist course.
The second question I asked myself: Because my father was dissident?
My farther simply fawned on the CRP.
One day, several weeks before my mother's arrest, the CRP from my mother's company came with a wooden cart to carry off counter-revolutionary documents and bourgeois style living items. My father helped the CRP move out and open all of the boxes and packages so they could be inspected and searched in. He even tried to flatter the CRP by donating a pair of high-heeled red leather sandals. The sandals had been a gift from my mother's friend who was working in Hong Kong then. They turned out to be the only item imported from the outside world in our entire household. I loved them so dearly, not only were they elegant but they were my only treasure in my life -- they had been a present from my mother for my sixteenth birthday, and the only gift I ever remember receiving from her. I had never worn them even once, for they were still a bit loose, and primarily my father and mother had prohibited me from wearing them "because they looked too bourgeois to walk on the street in them." But I had always cherished a dream: some day, like Cinderella, I would wear them someplace.
But instead, on the cart that day, the red sandals were carried away with the other items. Under the wheels of the cart, my dream to wear them someday like Cinderella was crushed.
The question I asked myself as I examined my personality at that time hurt me even more. I had my father's quick temper but not his sophistication. I never remained meek and mild like my mother but acted "far too cocky," as our across-yard neighbor said to my mother.
This family lived across the back yard from us in the apartment complex, which was rehabbed from an old clothing factory. Our back window faced their front door. The couple had five daughters called "Five Camellias." The names were from a movie with five beautiful girls. Because of their father's position as Leader of the CRP, the former harassment this family had experienced over their lack of male offspring ceased during the Cultural Revolution. I asked myself: "Is their mother so fierce and tough? Has their father pledged his loyalty to Chairman Mao's line, so that the iron fist of Proletarian Dictatorship has had mercy on them?"
But, no matter how pretentious my father was nor how compliant my mother was toward the CRP, my parents could not save us at all. My tit-for-tat struggles against the CRP just made our family more ravaged. I wished my two sisters and myself could have been like the Five Camellias living under some safe and peaceful shelter, but I just did not like that family at all. How and where could we find protection?
My 17-year-old brain was wrestling too hard to do it any more. I knew only too well that I had to be prepared to wrestle with teenage hooligans in my apartment complex. My youngest sister told us "the bad boys are throwing stones at our door and windows." Our apartment had been attacked the night before when we were sent to our mother. The hooligans would be ganging up on us in different groups every day until they felt too bored to be jeering at us or throwing stones and garbage at our apartment any more.
I started pedaling faster, distracting thoughts just like other bicycles kept chasing
me.
I was not at all like my parents, acting pious to the CRP and their leader. My mother
believed that someday she would be proved to be innocent and loyal to her Communist Party
and to Chairman Mao's line. I felt annoyed that my mother and father pleaded guilty by
acting so humble to those impudent scoundrels, and in my naiveté I believed that if we
had confronted them, our family would not have been put through this misery.
I started cursing Dark Yellow Teeth with Black Tentacles: "You ungrateful, evil person, your kids are still wearing clothes and eating food my mother donated to you. I really look down upon you like dog shit." My sisters and I started calling him that name from then on.
I was totally thrown in the dark: why did he requite my mother's kindness with his cruel words and actions? I became aware of that "why" only when I was grown up and "educated" by the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution was the poisonous soil within which all the evil spirits could be nourished to grow and to attack people of good will, even the children became its victims, my sisters and I, and the kids who shouted the slogans -- we had lost each other as good friends ever since that night my sister and I were attacked at devil shed. Dark Yellow Teeth with Black Tentacles' evil spirit simply was like an arrow stained with cultural revolution poison that almost killed my mother. In doing so, although he didn't know it at the time, he was destroying his own family. I knew all this only eight years later when the revolution was over. His wife, who had divorced him by then, turned out to be a witness to this fact. She came to my wedding part at my mother's invitation and told me that the only way her ex-husband could rescue himself and show the other CRP that he was not on my mother's side "was to strike your mother down into the dust deeply."
I felt ironic about myself: At my age, "flower age" as Aunt She said, girls
were supposedly pursued by young men, but I had to be grappling with little kids and
listening to the dirty words spouting out from rogues like Dark Yellow Teeth, and swearing
back at them. I was wondering if talking to me, those schoolmates, who were a couple of
years older than I, would be stuttering or blushing when they found out that the girl they
had a penchant for turned out to be a rough shrew
whose vocabulary was just full of profanities.
We were not allowed to "take half a step into the gate" to see our mother as Dark Yellow Teeth announced when he chased me away from my mother that morning, nor were we allowed to make phone calls, until four months later the day before we set out for Mound Liu at the end of 1968.
My father was a dissident but was deprived of high official authority and could not be as dangerous as my mother, who was not a dissident but remained at a relatively high official status. She was dangerous to socialist enterprises and needed to remold her ideology under the supervision of revolutionary common people while my father, my two sisters and I were accepting re-education to correct our subjective world by following the peasants' instruction in daily life and hard labors. Mao Zedong had taught that everyone should be educated by workers, peasants and army soldiers to march on the socialist road-constructing our country while enjoying our lives equally in political status and wealth.
We started packing and our leaving date was right then and there while my mother was
still held in that devil shed. I felt ambivalent. I was so ready in my guts to leave this
city full of evil turmoil, yet I felt torn apart leaving my mother here, leaving
everything I had been with for seventeen years. But many times, I just felt apathetic.
There was an enormous piece of desert in my heart.