China's Son (16 page)

Suddenly, everyone was talking about college. People gathered in knots, swapping gossip about who would be the most competitive in the tests. The bridge where my friends used to sit and chat about women and gambling was now a forum in which they discussed who the next math or English wizard might be. War stories about some legendary teachers from our high school began to circulate among the people of Yellow Stone.

There was the fat math teacher, Du, with bushy eyebrows and a birthmark as ugly and prominent as a dark cloud on a sunny day. Before the Cultural Revolution, each year on the day prior to the national college exam Mr. Du would call an emergency meeting for all the graduates, flip open a portable blackboard, and show the lengthy solutions to a few complicated math questions he predicted would appear as major score-gainers. He would come in and talk briefly but importantly for ten minutes. The meeting was over when he lit his cigarette.

Nervous students hurriedly jotted down all the details and committed them to memory. Du's track record had been consistent: eight out of ten. Marginal students had been brought to tears when they saw the questions appear on the real exam.

Then there was the history teacher, Mr. Wa, who was no pretty boy either. He looked frighteningly like someone from the Pleistocene age, minus the thick body hair. All he needed to do to give us a living picture of Peking man was to bend his back a little, walk slowly in front of the class, and let his long arms dangle on both sides. His head had only two parts, the forehead and the chin. His eyes gleamed wildly under a steep cliff of a forehead, and his small nose flattened out above a set of teeth so big that he had a hard time closing his mouth. He spoke in a stutter, spattering everything around him with saliva. His voice roared like Peking man's must have done, seemingly unaccustomed to the gentility of evolution.

And then there were the superstudents, who had attended high school before the Cultural Revolution and had a solid foundation in all the subjects. Among them were my cousin Tan and a neighbor by the name of Li. Candidates worked on old college exam questions; these guys breezed through effortlessly. In the eyes of youngsters like me, they were heroes.

As the first national examination drew near, the talk of legends stopped. Everyone watched silently as the candidates nervously awaited their date of trial.

On the first day of the examination, pale students walked toward the test sites, quiet and anxious. Mr. Du called for a meeting. So did the Peking Man. The meetings were open to all. Thousands of students crowded into the high school's open-air gym and listened through crackling loudspeakers to the two legends at work. The atmosphere was as sacred as at a religious event, and hearts were just as pious.

At 9:00 A.M., I put down my books and joined the rest of the crowd to watch the uniformed county police ride into
town on three-wheeled motorcycles, carrying the examination papers. The street was quiet as the police honked their way noisily through the thick crowd.

Hours later, some of that crowd would be winners and many would be losers. I held my head between my hands and sneaked back to my room. I felt weak in the knees just thinking about those poor guys who opened up their papers and registered a blank. One of them could be me. It had definitely been me at midterm. I buried my head hopelessly among my books, then stared out the window.

I was making slow progress. Math, physics, and chemistry were hard.

I was behind a couple of years, and the formulas seemed to have gotten longer since I'd last studied them. The teacher was lecturing on calculus and matrices, while I was still struggling to catch up on geometric equations. I attended the classes. The teacher and the good students treated me as if I didn't exist. Each time I raised my hand, there was an uncomfortable hush in the room. Another stupid question. My math teacher would roll his eyes and reluctantly give me the chance to ask my question. Then he would ask his protégé, the Head, to answer it.

“The Head” was a nickname we gave to the class president, who had a huge, shiny forehead. He was also the school's Communist Youth League president. He was the kind of guy who made exaggerated speeches in public meetings and shouted slogans while parading on National Day. He
walked with a stiff neck and a pair of duck feet. He looked at other lowly classmates with disdain and was considered the biggest snob on campus. He was doing fine among other equally snobbish highfliers until the day he was caught writing a love letter to a girl in class. Now he was in another league, a womanizer and a snob.

When the Head was done, the teacher applauded slowly, nodding and smiling. Another superb performance by his young talent. The teacher himself was distantly cool. He openly avoided talking to me, such a lowly student. Once was enough, but again and again? I quickly lost interest in his class. My mind wandered off on dangerous paths.

Ideas flitted around inside my head about how best to torture such an evil being. It would have been fitting to have him and his protégé tied up, buck naked, to the old pine tree at the school entrance and let them beg for mercy as the chilly sea wind nipped at their skin. I hated them and I hated myself.

One day I went down to our storage room, which was decorated with spiderwebs and housed hundreds of unknown, lethal crawling creatures. Flashlight in hand, I kicked and fumbled among legless, armless pieces of furniture. It was my cave; there were treasures to be explored. I had Grandpa's old gambling lamp in mind. It was a huge, infamous object with ornate bronze designs and had been given to him by his gambling buddy to prevent cheating in the dark. It was put in storage because of its gigantic appetite— it burned a whole bottle of oil a night, and its smoke stained the white mosquito nets black.

I flashed the light around the dark room; in the corner my old friend glistened like a beacon at sea. As I stepped over
cautiously, my big toe caught a round thing that rolled until it hit the wall with a healthy clang. I turned the light onto it, and there, standing on its bottom, was an aged, elegant pot shaped like a short, flat pumpkin. It was Grandpa's liquor jar. It used to sit on his lap and sleep by his pillow. He sipped blissfully from it when it was full and whistled into it when it was empty. It was his other child, the child Grandma didn't have any part of bearing. Nor was it one she approved of.

I scooped up both of Grandpa's legacies and dodged my way out, without ruining too many of the webs guarding the room.

“What are you doing with those things?” Mom asked. She had been standing by the door waiting for me.

“Well, I decided to study by myself in my room in the evenings, so I need a good lamp for light and a teapot.” I clutched my two treasures.

Anything for my studies. Mom could have objected, but she didn't. She knew my ways of tackling a problem. If I danced around something long enough, I would eventually give it my total attention. Mom was a little goddess that the big god had sent into our lives. She understood my vices and tried to forgive me as much as her limited powers allowed her.

That night after dinner I officially locked my door, lit my big lamp, and filled up the old jar with dark, steaming tea. I made sure a night pot stood by, prepared to take a larger than usual output. I was ready to burn.

But as I picked up physics, I thought about chemistry. When I leafed through chemistry, the math book screamed for my attention. I fought the temptation of the green English book, which by now had become my favorite, and there were the books on history, geology, and philosophy moaning and groaning at the bottom of the pile like stepchildren.

Only Chinese history was a given. My midterm results in that subject put me legitimately at the top of the class. I juggled all these books like parts on an assembly line, finally dropping them and resting my head in the cradle of my hands.

Finally, I settled for the English book. I was showing decent progress, I was told. There were the usual vocabulary, grammar, drills, tests, and conversations. These simple conversations were silly but thought-provoking. I often wondered why Englishmen greeted each other with phrases like “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” and “Good night.” Simply “good” everything. If I walked around the dirt street of Yellow Stone and greeted people with the “good” formula, they would think I was crazy. Some might even knock my teeth out and ban me from the town forever. Those folks were content asking each other, “Have you had breakfast [or lunch or dinner] yet?” After all, nothing was “good” about a day till your stomach was filled.

I was awakened by Mom's knock on the door. It was five in the morning and I was in my bed, my English book still on my desk. The lamp had used up the whole bottle of oil. The teapot was empty. I had no recollection of undressing myself or putting the light out.

“How did I go to sleep last night?” I asked Mom, whose face was now inside my door.

“Dad saw your light still on at two and found you asleep with your face on the book.” I must have drifted off. “No more irregular hours like that. You are going to ruin your health.”

“But, Mom, I need to study longer hours to catch up.”

“You won't catch up that way. You need to have a good, healthy schedule.” Such intense conversation made my head
throb. I slipped under the warm quilt and had another fifteen minutes in bed before I kicked off the blanket and splashed my face with icy water from the river.

One afternoon, as I was on my way to Professor Wei's house, the rain began to penetrate the thick foliage that covered the narrow road.

It was so loud and urgent, it sounded as if a machine gun were spraying the leaves with bullets. It saved me the trouble of bending down in the river to wet my hair. I combed my mop with my hands as I saw the thick clouds gathering on the western horizon. A storm was coming.

I skidded along the wet road and was happy to finally arrive at Professor Wei's door. It had been left open, and as I ran upstairs I could hear her voice coming from the secondfloor window. She waved to me. I smiled back.

Not surprisingly, the dog was standing in the rain, greeting me with his mean dark glare. He dug his back feet firmly into the ground, as if warming up to attack me. He gave a throaty rumble, a weak threat that I had gotten used to, and blocked my way. There was something different in his eyes that day, a knowing look. I checked the second-floor window for help. Professor Wei was gone. It was just me and the dog, and he had the upper hand. I wished I had a rifle. The spot between his eyes looked very tempting.

He sniffed my thoughts and shook his head in defiance. Water splashed all over me. I shook my own head. Not as much water. The cunning animal was enjoying seeing me get drenched by the storm. He wanted to see me chilled, sneezing, then on the floor begging for mercy, at which time he would walk over and sink his teeth into a juicy part of me. A dinner in the rain was better than no dinner at all.

Sudden lightning cleaved the dark sky, followed immediately
by deafening thunder no more than half a mile away. The loud sound brought me to my knees. I closed my eyes and plugged my ears with my thumbs, waiting for the imminent attack from both the thunder and the dog, but nothing happened. The thunder trailed down to spasmodic firecracker mutterings and vanished. I opened my eyes and saw the dog crawling in the mud toward his house, his tail tucked between his legs.

At that moment, I lost all respect for the animal and wanted to shoot myself for having put up with his cruel, unfair treatment.

Professor Wei greeted me with a dry towel as I sauntered toward the door like a real man for the first time, fearless and dignified. I could feel the weak look in the dog's eyes now that he had been brought to his knees by the thunder. I had withstood the uproar. I took the towel and gave my head a good drying. Professor Wei found me a T-shirt and I was once again comfortable. But no feeling surpassed the sweetness of winning. That dog was forever crossed off my fear list. It was, after all, a man's world out there, pal.

“You look happy today,” Professor Wei said, rather surprised.

“Thank you, I'm happy to be here,” I said in English.

“Maybe you know something already,” she said in Chinese.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I heard from my friend in Putien that for the next college examination, if you choose English as your major, you don't have to take tests in science or math at all.”

“Is that right?” I pinched my thigh, almost jumping out of the seat.

I tried to imagine life without math, chemistry, and
physics. It would be like a honeymoon forever. I felt like standing up and singing an aria.

“Oh, but why?”

“Well, the government lacks English majors in all the major universities. I think you should shoot for a college in, say, Beijing.” Beijing! Only the best went there.
Yes, ma'am, whatever you say!

“You think I am going to be that good?”

“You will be if you work hard. You have shown tremendous progress.”

“Really?”

“I am going to cram you until you are full.”

Cram me, please. I never felt emptier.