One Man’s Bible

Maybe he belonged to the class that had to be destroyed. Then what class did his deceased parents belong to? His paternal great grandfather wanted to be an official, donated a whole street of properties, but still couldn’t manage to buy himself the black silk hat worn by officials. He went berserk, got up one night and torched everything, including the house he had kept to live in. That was during the Qing Dynasty, before his father was born. His maternal grandmother had mortgaged all the property left by his maternal grandfather, and was financially ruined by the time his mother was born. Neither of his parents had been involved in politics. However, his father’s younger brother had performed a meritorious deed for the new government by stopping a sum of money at the bank from going to Taiwan, and that was how he had earned the title of Democratic Personage. They were all salaried workers, did not want for food and clothing, and lived comfortably, but they also lived in fear of losing their jobs. They had all welcomed the New China, and believed that the new nation would be better than the old one.

After “liberation,” when the great armies of the “Communist bandits”—later called the “Communist Army,” later still called the “Liberation Army,” and then later officially named the “People’s Liberation Army”—entered the city, both his parents felt liberated. Incessant war, bombing, fleeing as refugees and fear of robbery all seemed to have gone forever. His father did not like the old Nationalist government. His father had been a branch manager in a state-run bank, but in his father’s own words, his failure to understand the nepotism and infighting cost him his job. Following that, for a while, he worked as a journalist with a small newspaper, but when it closed down, he could only sell off property in order to survive. He remembered the silver “big heads” in the shoebox under the five-drawer chest getting fewer by the day, and the gold bracelets disappearing from his mother’s wrist. This very shoebox under the five-drawer chest had been used to hide a copy of On the New Democracy, printed on the coarse paper used in Mao Zedong’s border region. The book had been smuggled into the city by his father’s mysterious friend Big Brother Hu. This was the earliest publication he had seen of Mao Zedong’s writings, and it was hidden with the silver dollars.

Big Brother Hu was a teacher in a middle school, and whenever he visited, any children were chased off. However, he quietly looked forward to this talk of “liberation” and deliberately went in and out of his parents’ room. He heard bits that he understood. The fat postmaster, a landlord, said that the Communist bandits advocated sharing property and sharing wives, eating from one pot of food, and rejecting blood ties. He also said they engaged in rampant killings. His parents did not believe the postmaster. His father, laughing, said to his mother, “That maternal cousin of yours,” that is, her father’s maternal cousin, “is a Communist bandit with a pockmarked face, if he’s still alive. …”

This maternal uncle had joined the underground Party in Shanghai long ago, while at university. Afterward, he left home and went off to Jiangxi province to take part in the revolution. Twenty years later this uncle was still alive and he eventually met him. His pockmarked face was not frightening, and, flushed with alcohol, he looked even more heroic. He had a resounding laugh but was asthmatic and said that during those years when he was a guerrilla fighter he couldn’t get tobacco and often dried wild herbs to smoke. This maternal uncle came into the city with the big army, put notices in the newspapers to look for his family, then, through relatives, found out what had happened to this maternal cousin of his. Their meeting had something theatrical to it. His maternal uncle was worried about their not recognizing him, so he wrote in his letter that he could be identified on the railway platform by a white towel tied to the top of a bamboo pole. His soldier aide, a peasant lad from the countryside, was there waving a long bamboo pole over the heads of the thronging crowds. Sweat was pouring off the rim of the lad’s army cap, but, regardless of the heat, he kept it strapped on to hide his scabby head.