China's Son (15 page)

Dia was one of the guys who warmed up to me after he saw the vacancy left behind by I-Fei. He was a thin fellow
who seemed to jump rather than walk. He had monkey ears and his hair was always a messy lawn that seemed as if it hadn't been mown for ages. He lived in a poor village ten miles west of Yellow Stone and walked to school every morning at sunrise, returning home at about eight each night. He was one of those kids known around the school as walkers to distinguish them from the students who bunked at the school dorm. He was the only person I knew who made thicker and longer tobacco rolls than Yi. And he used old newspaper to roll them. Sometimes when he ran out of old newspaper he would run around school looking for any scrap paper he could find.

This thin little guy carried a large schoolbag with him during the course of the day. Most of the space in it was taken up by the two cold meals he had to carry around, and the rest was divided up equally between books, a bag of foulsmelling homegrown tobacco, and an ugly pipe made from a twig. His nicotine addiction was legendary. He was the only person I knew who smoked before and after each meal and stopped halfway to squeeze in another thick, long tobacco roll.

The more time I spent with Dia, the less I felt like smoking at all. He was a great example of what happens to smokers. At the age of fifteen, he had a chronic cough and spit up sticky green stuff like an old man of ninety. His lungs wheezed loudly through his bony chest, outlined by countable ribs. His teeth were dark in front and back and he had a pale, lifeless look. The only gleam in his eye came from the reflected light of the matches with which he lit his rolls.

“How can you smoke like that?” I asked once, after we became better friends.

“Look who's talking.” Dia stared at me, puzzled. “What's wrong with me?”

“Well, the tobacco and the old newspapers you're using will kill you soon.”

“I'm not dying anytime soon, Da. Grandpa rolled his first roll at the age of four and he's still kicking. He taught Dad to smoke at the age of five and
he's
still breathing. I didn't smoke till seven. The Dias are living legends. We'll live on.”

Every morning he made his first stop at my house, after his ten-mile walk. I treated him to some hot tea. He would sneak to our backyard for a smoke and then reappear refreshed. Then we walked to school together. In the afternoon, he played with me for a while before the long journey home. Some weekends I would offer him my bunk bed so that he could stay for a night. He fought the invitations valiantly, but in the end never refused the offers. When he slept over, we talked about our lives and future late into the night. He wasn't a demanding guest; all he required was a chair to step on so that he could climb to the attic windowsill like a cat and smoke in the open air while staring at the bright stars.

The midterm exams came sooner than I liked. It was the first time I was paying attention to them. It had been a breezy school without serious tests for years. Now that concept was arcane. The good students in class applauded and chatted excitedly about how they were going to review courses and score well. The losers put their heads on the desks and drummed the desktops, hating every word uttered by the good students.

The teacher enthusiastically answered questions the good
students raised, and even threw in a smile or two when it came to the pretty girls in class. But when I raised my hand and asked which English book we would be tested on, the whole class burst into uncontrollable laughter.

It was a big joke. The good students huddled together and laughed. Enjoying my humiliation, the teacher leaned back in his chair.

“What do you think?” he said slowly, tossing the chalk in his hands.

More laughter.

“I don't know.”

“Since when did you become interested in tests? Shouldn't you be in rehearsal at this time of the day?” He looked at his watch, smirking. “For your information, it will be book four that you will be tested on. Are you sure you have book four in your possession?” Continued laughter.

I felt Dia's eyes on me. He was the only one feeling sorry for me.

The rest of them probably thought I was a drunk, just waking up to the glaring sunlight. I was human garbage in their eyes, victimized by changing times, with no idea of how to pull myself out of the hole I had sunk into. The talents I had, playing the flute and violin, were talents of yesterday. Now it was college, and whoever could jump through the hoop and be that lucky one percent to go on to college was the hero of the day. I still stank with yesterday's staleness. Most of them were happy to see me fall on my face, hoping I would break a few bones in the process.

The tests offered scant surprises. I stared at each paper for a good five minutes, scribbled down something, and turned them in. I answered half the questions on the math test with ease, but the rest looked like a foreign language. And I only
did one third of the physics test. History and geography were the hardest subjects to guess on, and whatever English I had mastered from the professor, a secret, was a mere scratch on a pyramid. Chinese was the only subject I excelled in. I had studied classics with my grandpa.

At the end of the week of tests, I felt as if I had gone to the Olympics and ended up sweeping the floor after everyone had left. I was sad, angry, and lost. What was I going to do with my life?

Dia and I found a new spot behind the school wall, where we met and chatted as he polluted his lungs with dark tobacco. He told me the secret of the Dia tobacco. Since his grandpa's time, they had kept a plot of land in their backyard the size of a basketball court, where they grew broad-leaved tobacco. The rich, bitter flavor was attributed to the fact that young Dia each morning watered the plants with the contents of three full night pots used overnight by the men in the Dia household. The thick, smelly piss nourished the young plants and added a special flavor not found with other growers. Thus Dia's brand worked like a double-barreled shotgun, powerful and potent. It remained the only tobacco known to be able to quench their nicotine addiction, not a small feat.

“Have a smoke.” Dia sat down and rolled me a thick one.

“No thanks, not after you told me the piss story.”

“You'll need some sorta smoke for what I gotta tell you.” It sounded bad. I looked into his eyes and he looked down. I took the roll and let him light it for me. Instantly, I felt the potent kick. The Dia piss worked miracles. I spat like a fisherman. “What's the matter?”

“The midterm grades are out.” He had a dead man's tone, flat.

“How are ours?” I could feel my heart begging for mercy from the good Buddha.
Make it presentable,
I promised him,
and I'll give you another thousand kowtows this very night.

“Well, mine are terrible.”

“And?”

“Yours are real bad.” Kowtowing wouldn't be necessary anymore. I had hit bottom and I deserved it. I puffed on the bitter smoke. For the first time, I felt good as I inhaled. I felt the rush go to my head; it was comforting, and I was satisfyingly numb. I leaned back on the red dirt wall limply, like a piece of smashed tofu. There wasn't an ounce of strength left in my body.

I was a failure, shaming myself and my family. I should change my last name and never return home to beg for meals anymore. Maybe I would take to the road like Mo Gong and Siang. The burden of failure made me despise myself.

“That's not all,” Dia added, stealing a careful look at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Someone pasted the results of all your exams on the wall outside our classroom. Now the whole school knows.”

“Son of a whore! It must be our principal teacher.” I gritted my teeth and slammed my fists into the soil. Now I was the laughingstock of the whole school. All my enemies, old and new, would be rejoicing over my downfall. Not only
was I the son of a landlord, but I was stupid and lazy. Wise people could forgive the former but not the latter. I had shamed my whole family tree.

My family of tired young farmers would have no patience when the only student in the household came home with disgraceful academic results. They worked their butts off in the fields, callused their hands, bent their young backs, and lost their dream of being young. I had been wasting my time smoking, playing around, and not making use of the great opportunity offered me. It was a sin they couldn't have afforded to commit.

With my head bent and eyes downcast, I stumbled into our dining room. The whole family stopped talking as I entered.

Silence.

I deserved it. I slid into my seat and stared at the tip of my chopsticks, eating carefully so that they didn't clink on the edge of the bowl and anger anyone. I heard myself slurp in the rice. The silence was getting heavier with each passing second.

Dad scooped a big spoonful of green beans into my bowl. It was a good sign. The head of the family had spoken with his action. I stole a look at him. He looked back.

“You broke a record, they say.” I was quiet.

“It's time you do something about it. Your brother here wants to take time off to prepare for the college exam, but the commune won't allow him. Even if they do allow him, we're not sure we could do without his food rations.” He pointed at the rice that was getting cold in my bowl. I stared at it and my guts twisted with guilt and sorrow. I wished I were dead. If I had been the older one, I would have been
out there hustling. I witnessed the hardships my brother and sisters endured every day. They were in their late teens and early twenties. They had no new clothes and no money, just bodies filled with aches and pains such as only older folks should have. But the worst was that they thought they would be forced to be farmers for life, unable to marry anyone else but another farmer, to bear another generation of lowly farmers, on into infinity.

The sun would never rise in their minds. It was modernday slavery on the farm, with the promise of little in return. In contrast, all I did was go to school. And what had I achieved? A shameful performance.

“You have a year and a half to get your act together; the farming tools will all be ready and waiting for you in the pigsty, just in case.” It sounded like probation. No improvement, and I would be condemned to a life sentence on the Communist farm. I looked up at everybody after the sentencing, feeling a load being lifted off my back.

They all wore mixed expressions of reproach and criticism, along with a touch of encouragement and even hope; the whole spectrum. I loved my family.

That night before going to sleep, I asked Mom to wake me at five from the following day on and every day afterward. I promised her that I would use the precious morning hours before breakfast, when my mind was uncluttered, to take a bite out of those unopened books of mine. She nodded thoughtfully, half doubting my sincerity.

I went to my room and knelt before the makeshift shrine to Buddha for a good ten minutes, not knowing what to beg from his benevolence. I was a total mess. Guilt ate away at my soul for goofing off what precious time I had before the
national entrance examinations. I banged my head on the floor, swearing to work hard from then on. In the end, I became dizzy and went to sleep with a big smile on my face.

I was sure that Buddha, my smiling, chubby spiritual light, had heard me this time. I'd banged hard enough.

I figured that with eighteen months left until the national exam, I simply had to use every waking moment of my life for studying. It would be four years' worth of work squeezed into eighteen months. My life was over for the time being.

No friends, no movies, no chatting. No sitting in class passively awaiting the inept teacher to feed you. It had to be a flat-out attack on all the books I hadn't touched. I was going to breathe and live those books.

But which book should I start with? I looked at them, puzzled. I needed a scheme, a method, or I would never beat the competition. Only one out of a hundred made it in. I could easily kiss the books and my life good-bye and say hello to rice paddies.

A big official poster about the new college system was posted conspicuously on the wall of the commune's headquarters. Hundreds of young people traveled miles just to stand before it for hours, half believing what it said in black and white. Some copied it down on a small piece of paper and brought it back for others to see, as if they couldn't trust their memory. Confusion reigned among the people of Yellow Stone.

Only months ago, Chairman Mao had been alive and kicking on his sickbed under the loving care of his young nurses, who saw it as a heroic, patriotic act to mix their business with his pleasure. School was bad and revolution was good. Young people had gotten used to it. They liked it that
way. They beat up the teachers, burned down schools, marched out of classes, and drank and smoked as they saw fit. There were no tests, no grades, no good students, no bad students. They were all bad, therefore all good. Everything was fine because Mao said so.

Now everything was upside down again. The announcement explained nothing. It didn't make any distinction between the children of the politically good and the politically bad families. It said the tests were open to all and that admission into college was based purely on performance.