China's Son (9 page)

Dad remained silent.

“It's totally understandable. I would be also if I were you, but please don't be. Just try to treat me as if I'm one of your regular patients.”

Yeah, right. Dad could still feel the pain inflicted on his back where Mon Hai had kicked him for slowing down at another campsite. Mon Hai's father sounded as if he was in critical condition, and if anything happened to him, Dad would be blamed.

“I really wouldn't feel comfortable, cadre.”

“Look at me, Doctor, I also have a heart.” The cadre pulled open his shirt for emphasis. “I apologize for what I have done to you.”

“No, no. There is no need for that.”

“I shouldn't have kicked you.” The man's eyes turned misty. “I'm sorry. I will make it up to you.”

Dad was quiet, watching this bear of a man tearing his guts out.

“Even if I agree to take a look, I wouldn't be able to do so. We are not allowed to leave the campsite.”

“I'll take care of that.”

Dad was told to stay in his cabin the next morning while the rest of the campers rolled out of their beds and headed for the chilly mountain to dig some more hills and fill some more valleys. At nine o'clock, a biker came by and picked Dad up, carrying him to Mon Hai's house a few miles away.

It turned out to be a light stroke. Mon Hai's old man was only sixty-five and in good health. It took Dad about two months to bring him back to where he could walk with only a slight limp.

At the reform camp, Dad hardly had to touch his farming tools. He had been ordered to stay behind and write confessions, but in fact all he did was read his medical books and be taken to see the patient every day. He was allowed to come home for dinner after dark three times a week. The rest of the time he spent at the cadre's cabin, where Mon Hai
would do his drinking and pour out his admiration for Dad. It was there that Dad learned that the good food, liquor, and cigarettes that Mon Hai shared with him all came from the campers, who bribed Mon Hai for lighter work and a guarantee that they would avoid punishment. In one of his drunken states, Mon Hai even revealed that he had occasionally slept with the young wife of a newly branded counterrevolutionary, a camper under his supervision. He further admitted that he slept with the wife at her request because she wanted to ensure that the poor young man would live to see his infant son.

Dad itched to inflict some pain on that son of a whore and offered Mon Hai the use of his needles to cure his drinking addiction, but he refused.

One day Mon Hai was suddenly rushed back from the work site where he spent an hour a week on inspection. Two strong young men took turns carrying him on their backs.

“Chen, come here,” they said to my father. “Mon Hai was hurt.” A rock had rolled down the side of the hill and landed on his waist, bruising him badly before bouncing off into a ditch.

“Doctor, I think I could use some of those needles you got there,” Mon said, looking up in pain from his bed.

“I think so too,” Dad replied.

During the following weeks, Dad gave Mon Hai double the number of treatments necessary. He chose longer, thicker needles and spun them harder, telling Mon that he would improve faster that way. Mon Hai would shake with fear as he watched Dad slowly prepare the needles, wiping them on an alcohol pad. He would squirm in anticipation of the pain until the needles were actually inserted under the skin; then
his hysterical and terrifying screams could be heard for miles around.

Before each session Mon Hai begged for more, and during every session he cursed and rolled in agony. After each of my father's visits, he would shed tears of gratitude. His pain soon disappeared, and Gang Chen openly became known around camp as the Doc.

Dad was discharged from labor camp early that year and received a glorious report on how his anti-Communist way of thinking had improved. The report was signed in big letters by the now-healthy Mon Hai, who ironically was selected by the people of Yellow Stone as an outstanding member of the Communist party. His picture appeared on a wall outside the commune headquarters, only to be washed off a week later by a cold winter rain.

Zhang Tie Shan, an army recruit from north China, wrote a big zero on his college exam paper accompanied by the following words: “To make revolution, one need not answer above questions.”

Instantly he became a hero throughout China, epitomizing the true spirit of the Cultural Revolution. School became chaos. Everyone ran around mindlessly, doing nothing. Teachers could do almost nothing to remedy the situation for fear of being branded stinking intellectuals or counterrevolutionaries.

Our fifth-grade classes were made up of three categories: labor, politics, and self-study. We dug up the playground and turned it into vegetable plots so that young kids could labor under the scorching sun and have empty but healthy minds. We had to bring all the necessary tools to water, weed, and harvest the vegetables, then sell our crop back to the teachers
at a discount, using the money to buy more seeds and plant more vegetables.

In the political science classes, teachers read the newspaper to the students. When we were left to study on our own, the chairs became hurdles. We jumped them and counted the minutes until it was time to go home.

Every day after class, Dad read me classics that we had buried under the pigsty. In the mornings I learned to play the bamboo flute. Dad said a real scholar should know poetry, chess, calligraphy, and music.

The flute was the cheapest thing to study. Dad bought me one from the local market. At sunrise every morning, I got up, pulled the skinny bamboo flute from under my pillow, and tiptoed to the backyard and down the steps that led to the Dong Jing River. I'd wash my face with the refreshing water and postpone my morning bowel movement because it gave me more power as I blew the flute. Each day, I broke the silence of the morning in Yellow Stone, standing by the river and playing innocent folk melodies. The sound bounced off the water, crossed the vast green fields, and ended in a lingering echo as it reached the mountains on the horizon. The occasional mooing from the buffalo told me that at least someone was listening.

One day, Dad came back from a month's stay at a labor camp and rushed to the backyard where I was practicing.

“Son, you play beautifully now,” he said, surprised. He gathered me into his arms and roughed me up excitedly. “I hardly believed my ears as I walked along the fields. I could hear you a mile away from here.”

“Dad, do you really like it?” I asked.

“Like it? I love it. I think with a little tuning here and
there, you're ready to perform in an amateur troupe somewhere and eventually graduate to a professional one.”

“Do you want me to be a professional?”

“Well, school is doing nothing now, not with that Zhangsomething guy in fashion. It's wonderful that you have a skill. You have an edge over others.”

From then on I practiced even harder—much to the annoyance of my family—and I began to hang around the rehearsal hall of our commune's performing group. In the evenings, I would invite my friends to come with me to the rehearsals at the commune. They went and clung to the windows for a glimpse of the young and pretty actresses and laughed their heads off when those pretty things teased each other and giggled in singsong voices.

There was an outstanding, arrogant flutist in the troupe from Putien City who was paid to be the music director of the orchestra. He was a woodwind expert and could even play the French horn. Every morning he demanded at least five precious eggs. For lunch, half a chicken. And for dinner, lots of pork and another five eggs. He said playing the French horn and the flute used up all his energy and he needed the nutrients. Hungry kids actually trooped by to sniff his French horn, which smelled like eggs.

I copied his techniques and replayed the music by ear. At Yi's, my friends would listen to my flute and smoke in silence.

As my interest in music grew, I became fascinated with the violin.

The first time I heard one, I was picking grains of rice from the muddy rice fields under a summer sun. The commune
had set up a crackling loudspeaker at the edge of the fields and played a simple violin solo through it. The music was supposed to cheer the farmers, and I fell head over heels in love with it. It was sensuous and tender and caressed my soul in a way that no instrument had done before. I stood there holding the dripping rice, lost in the beauty of the music.

“Go to work,” a farmer's voice behind me urged. She was the opposite of what a violin was. I bent down again and went on working, the melody resonating deep in my soul.

I wanted to learn that instrument, but how?

Once again, Dad came through like a champ. This time he contacted a young man named Soong, originally from the city of Putien. He was the son of a Christian dentist who had died in jail, and he had taken over his father's old practice. The family had been labeled counterrevolutionaries because of their dogged belief in God and had been sent to live in exile in Heng Tang, a tiny village near Yellow Stone.

Dad had heard of Soong on one of his visits to a patient who was a neighbor of Soong's and who had complained often about the strange, foreign music the young man played at night.

Having met with Soong, Dad reported that the young man had readily agreed to teach me the basics if I was willing to walk there every day during the summer vacation.

The fifth grade finished without the expected finals and report cards. Everyone graduated. But whether I was going to high school remained a mystery. Politics was in; grades were out. My fate stood undecided, wavering in the wind like a blade of grass along the Dong Jing River.

Heng Tang was nestled at the foot of Hu Gong Mountain. When the sky was overcast, the village floated like a mirage
among the clouds. When it rained, it totally disappeared. During the summer, it was hidden under the thick foliage of persimmon trees, but in spring the village blossomed like a wild garden.

I finally arrived at Mr. Soong's dental office, in an old temple at the edge of the village.

“Da, right?” Soong greeted me warmly, taking off his surgical mask.

He had just finished with a teary-eyed young boy who was being comforted by his mom.

“Mr. Soong. How did you know it was me?”

“The violin.” He smiled and revealed the whitest teeth I had ever seen. I supposed it came with the business.

I smiled back, hiding my teeth, regretting not having brushed them again before coming. I studied him as he washed his hands and hung up his white coat. He was in his twenties, fair-skinned and good-looking, with long hair that touched his collar. He wore a pair of tight bell-bottom trousers and a silk shirt. A city dude to the bone.

“A barefooted violinist?” he said, smiling at me. “Let's see what you've got there.”

I took out the violin and he plucked a few notes on it, adjusted the pegs, redid the bridge, tightened the bow, then cradled it between his neck and shoulder. He closed his eyes and a soothing melody flowed out of my instrument. His fingers ran quickly along the strings, up and down, and the bow jumped, making curt sounds. I was amazed at his skill and was falling in love with the music when he stopped suddenly.

“You got a great violin here.” He put it down carefully. “Smoke?” I shook my head.

“Want to be an artist?” I nodded, not knowing where he was heading.

“Then take one.” He threw me a filtered cigarette and lit it for me with a lighter. I puffed on it and inhaled deeply. “I'm no teacher. Don't call me
Teacher
or anything, but I could use a friend like you.” He looked out his small window, then at a pile of dentures lying on his messy desk. “It's boring here. In fact, if you want to be a dentist, I can teach you that as well. I have plenty of time on my hands and all these teeth need to be filed to fit into patients' mouths.”

“I'll do the violin first,” I replied, “but I can help with your work during my break.”

“No need, I was joking.”

It didn't take me long to like him.

The next few days I spent walking around his office, holding my violin between my shoulder and neck and practicing bowing. It was a painful experience that made my neck swell and left my shoulder raw, but he kept saying I was making progress. He showed me pictures of stone busts of Beethoven and Mozart and told me stories about them, amazing stories.

I practiced constantly and was making fast progress, which Mom and Dad noticed with considerable pride. To thank Soong, Mom would sometimes ask me to bring fruit and meat to him, and Dad sent him cartons of cigarettes and liquor, gifts given him by his acupuncture patients. Soong would cook the food I brought and ask me to stay for dinner, then send me home on his bike in the evening. Sometimes, when his mother was visiting his brothers, I'd bring a lot of food and stay over for the weekend. There would be no violin lessons or any other music during those times. We would go hunting.

Near the end of the summer, Soong said, “Da, there isn't much I can teach you anymore. From here on, you have to
practice and just figure it out for yourself. Besides, school is starting soon, right?”