A Girl Named Faithful Plum (15 page)

“They took me!” Zhongmei shouted, blissfully unconscious of the girls and boys who, having come so close, had not found their names on the list and were walking away dejectedly. She jumped up and down, both hands thrown above her head, not a blade of grass but a girl, triumphant. “My name is here!”

It was only sometime later when she was back at Policeman Li’s house that she remembered the sad faces of those who had turned mournfully away even as Zhongmei expressed her happiness. One of the sad faces, she suddenly realized, had been that of Wang Tianyuan, with her grandmother looking
shocked and grim alongside her. The girl who had been so sure of herself hadn’t been chosen after all. Zhongmei felt sorry. She didn’t want her happiness to come at the cost of somebody else’s happiness. Later, when she lay in her bed at Policeman Li’s house, trying to get to sleep, she remembered something else that in her excitement she had been too busy to notice at the time. Zhongmei summoned up the scene at the display case in her mind’s eye, and she shuddered when she realized that Tianyuan hadn’t just been sad, but that she had also been looking at Zhongmei with hatred in her eyes.

Zhongmei had only gotten a one-way ticket when she came to Beijing, and she didn’t have enough money to go back to Baoquanling for the rest of the summer, so she stayed at the home of Policeman Li, his wife, and their son, Li Guang, for the two months left before the term would begin at the Beijing Dance Academy. It was true what she said about being homesick. She did miss her family. But it was also exciting to have a few weeks in China’s capital, and she used it to visit all the famous places there. Usually she went with Li Guang. He took lots of pictures of her, mostly dressed in her yellow pleated skirt and pink blouse. There she was posing in front of the Forbidden City, the picture of Chairman Mao and the upturned eaves of the imperial halls in the background. There were pictures of her in front of the Temple of Heaven, whose luminous beauty and grandeur left Zhongmei speechless. Li Guang took pictures of her in front of the Confucius Temple and the Lama Temple. She went to the Summer Palace and posed on the prow of the famous marble barge, whose story she had learned at school. It had been the pet project of a long-ago empress of China, named Cixi, who diverted government money intended for a real navy to build this beautiful but useless thing instead. Zhongmei took long walks along the lake in Beihai Park,
where she and Li Guang went out in a rowboat. She learned about Beijing, which had been China’s capital for most of the years since the Ming Dynasty six hundred years before!

She climbed Coal Hill behind the Forbidden City and got a view of the whole vast, incredible complex, which was testimony to the glories of China’s past. The palace grounds stretched out in an immense rectangle surrounded by a high rust-red wall and moat. Ornate guard towers with curved, multilayered red-tile roofs stood at each corner of the complex and within was a splendid network of grand halls and smaller mansions, too many to count. It was magical, a fairy tale come true. Zhongmei had never even imagined anything at once so mighty and beautiful, and she was filled with pride in her country, realizing how great an honor it was to be called to the capital to study at one of its most famous institutions. To be sure, Baoquanling was nothing like this!

Finally the day came for Zhongmei to arrive at the Beijing Dance Academy. It was a crisp, sunny day at the end of August 1978 and, needless to say, Zhongmei was full of happy anticipation as she rode on the back of Policeman Li’s motorcycle on what was now the familiar route to the school. Still, she stopped for a moment at the gate and read the brass plaque identifying the Beijing Wu-dao Xue-yuan, the Beijing Dance Academy, as if to confirm to herself that, yes, she was really going to be a member of that august institution. Just inside the gate was a small brick guardhouse, and Zhongmei saw an elderly man with a wispy white beard, wearing a
rumpled blue Mao suit, standing at the entrance and smiling at her.

“Are you one of the new students?” he said.

“Yes,” said Zhongmei.

“Welcome,” the man said. “My name is Zhou and I’m the night watchman. Everybody calls me Lao Ye, so you can too.” As we’ve seen,
Lao ye
means “grandpa” in Chinese.

“And I’m Little Zhou,” a girl a few years older than Zhongmei said. “No relation to Old Zhou, I mean, Lao Ye, I’m afraid.” Little Zhou said she was a sixth-year student and was there to help the new girls get settled. She led Zhongmei to the dormitory building, which was diagonally across from the main classroom building where the auditions had taken place. “That’s the cafeteria over there,” she said, pointing to a two-story whitewashed building nearby. “And that’s the theater on the other side of the cafeteria. That’s where we have our special shows and competitions.”

The dormitory was a low-ceilinged building with long dark corridors. Little Zhou led Zhongmei up a flight of stairs to the second floor. Zhongmei noticed a sign at the entrance to the corridor—
NO BOYS ALLOWED
. Little Zhou told her that all the first-year girls would share two dormitory rooms. Six girls, Zhongmei included, would be in the first room on the left, marked number one, and Zhongmei took it in at a glance. It had three double-decker bunk beds pressed against the walls, and between them were small metal desks and chests of drawers. Zhongmei had her small suitcase in her hand. It didn’t contain all that much because Zhongmei didn’t have all that
much: a blouse, one pair of blue trousers, one padded suit for winter, two pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, and a pair of cotton shoes, all made by her mother. She had a toothbrush and a plastic comb and the yellow skirt, pink blouse, and green shoes from Zhongqin and Zhongling. It only took a couple of minutes for her to put all of her possessions into the single drawer that Little Zhou said was hers. It was less than half full. She slid her suitcase under the lower berth of the bunk bed that Little Zhou said had been assigned to her.

“You’ll sleep in this one,” she said, patting the upper bunk.

Then, having done all she could for the moment, Zhongmei went back downstairs to survey the scene at the entrance. There was a great milling about. Cars pulled up to the front gate and disgorged boys and girls and their families, who carried suitcases through the courtyard and into the dormitory entrance. Zhongmei immediately noticed that most of the girls had larger suitcases than she did, or, in some cases, two suitcases, both larger than her single one. As usual she was the only arrival unaccompanied by a parent or two, a brother or a sister, some grandparents, sometimes entire three-generation families. Despite her excitement, she felt a stab of loneliness, but then she comforted herself with the thought that she too had a family, with four brothers and sisters. These other students didn’t have anything that she didn’t have. It’s just that they had these things closer at hand. At the same time, Baoquanling, which Zhongmei had left three months earlier, seemed so far away it might as well have been on another planet.

Zhongmei went back upstairs and sat on her bed as her
classmates stuffed their clothes into the drawers assigned to them, using up a lot more of the drawer than Zhongmei had. Just when everybody was installed, there was a sudden banging noise as the door flew open and a large woman wearing a regulation gray Mao suit strode into the room, which suddenly went quiet.

“My name is Tsang,” she said, “and I am the administrator of the Beijing Dance Academy. You will call me Tsang Tungzhi”—Comrade Tsang. “Listen carefully. I’m only going to say this once. These are the rules that you will strictly obey. Some of them are the rules of the Ministry of Culture and the school; some of them are my rules. But you must obey all of them, and you will be punished if you don’t.”

The seams of Comrade Tsang’s suit seemed to strain against her stoutness, which gave her a look of great strength. Her voice seemed somehow to be amplified, as if she were speaking through a loudspeaker, though no loudspeaker was present. She had a broad, flat face with puffy eyes and closely cropped hair flecked with gray.

“First,” Comrade Tsang resumed, “no one is allowed to have any money. You will hand over all of the money your parents gave you to me. I will make a record of the amount, and when you need money for any purpose, for clothes or bus fare or personal supplies like toothpaste or soap, you will tell me what you need and I will give you the appropriate amount out of your own funds.”

Zhongmei watched as Comrade Tsang surveyed the room, fixing a brief stare on each girl as if to imprint the rules into
their heads. When Zhongmei felt Comrade Tsang’s eyes reaching her, she swallowed involuntarily.

“Second,” Comrade Tsang resumed, “at no time is anyone allowed to leave the school grounds without permission, except for the time between the end of class on Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening, when you are free to go. If you have family or friends in Beijing, you may stay with them Saturday night, though you must report to me where you are going, and I will give you your bus fare out of your personal funds. Except for these family visits, you must never go anyplace outside the school alone. You must always be accompanied by at least one classmate, even if it’s just to go to Taoranting Park across the street.

“Third, meals are to be taken in the cafeteria and only in the cafeteria. No food can be brought into the school, ever.

“Fourth, from Monday to Saturday, school days, everybody will wake up at six in the morning and will go to bed at nine at night, when the lights will be turned out. Nobody is to leave the dormitory between the hours of bedtime and wake-up. If anybody is caught outside the dormitory at that time, even in another part of the school, that person will be expelled.

“Is that clear?” Comrade Tsang again glared at the girls, who stood in a cluster in the middle of the room.

“Good. You will be orderly and decorous at all times. There will be no loud talking or rough behavior—ever. Every girl will be neat and clean. You will make your own bed in the morning. You will shower in the evening. All shoes are to be
placed under the lower bunk. All clothes are to be placed in the drawers when not being worn. There are to be no clothes, books, shoes, or school supplies left lying around. Also, there is to be no talking after lights-out. You will be sure to go to the toilet before bedtime, because nobody is allowed to go to the toilet during the night. Each of you will be provided with a chamber pot, and, in case of emergency, you will use that to relieve yourself. You will deposit the contents of the chamber pot in the toilet in the morning.

“And,” Comrade Tsang continued, “you will sleep facing the wall. Nobody is allowed to sleep facing out and looking in the direction of the bunks on the other side of the room. This is to discourage talking after hours. I will conduct spot checks on this from time to time, and anybody caught facing out while lying in bed will go to my office to write a self-criticism. Is that clear?”

Six girls nodded obediently, Zhongmei among them. Tsang was the most terrifying human being she had ever encountered.

“Any questions?”

Nobody dared ask a question.

“In that case, it being six in the evening, you will go to dinner in the cafeteria.”

Filing out of the dormitory and across the courtyard, the girls murmured about Tsang and the rules. Zhongmei found herself next to a tall, pretty girl with long braids tied up in red ribbons.

“Hi,” the girl said. “I think we’re allowed to talk to each other now.”

“As long as we do it quietly and with no rough behavior,” Zhongmei said.

The girl smiled. “My name is Xiaolan,” she said. She pronounced it
she-ow-lan
.

“Zhongmei,” said Zhongmei.

“I saw you in the dormitory,” Xiaolan said. “You’re in the bunk opposite mine, but I guess we shouldn’t be looking at each other after we go to bed.”

“Or we’ll have to write a self-criticism,” said Zhongmei.

“But what if somebody just turns over while they’re sleeping?”