Oracle Bones (74 page)

Mengxiong—“Dream of a Bear”—is a retired hydrogeologist, and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1946, he performed surveys in the Three Gorges region of the Yangtze; back then, the Kuomintang was preparing to build a dam with the assistance of American engineers. In English it was known as the Yangtze Valley Authority, named after the Tennessee Valley Authority. Mengxiong evaluated the risk of earthquake along potential sites.

At eighty-five, he is still a big man: tall, white-haired, with thick hands that fiddle restlessly while he speaks. We meet in the living room of his small apartment on the Third Ring Road. His wife brings two cups of tea and greets me politely before disappearing into another room. Mengxiong remarks that he is fighting a cold. He looks tired and slightly wary; I sense that this will be a short interview.

He shows me the only photograph that was ever taken of the entire Chen clan. Of all the ways that one can capture a sense of time, the most powerful might be a picture of a big family, and this is particularly true of China in the 1920s. In the Chen family photo, the two parents sit in the center, dressed in
dark robes of silk. The father’s black skullcap is of a style that recalls the days of the Qing dynasty. At his feet, Mengxiong and his youngest sister are dressed in the loose gowns of young children. Mengjia (Dream of Home and Wealth) and his next brother (Dream of a Scholar) wear the traditional long black gowns of Chinese students. Their oldest brother (Dream of a Hero) looks completely different, in tinted glasses and a Western suit and tie. The oldest sister—lipstick, styled hair, well-tailored coat with thin lapels—wouldn’t have looked out of place in an American city. A family in transition; a nation on the move. Dream of the future.
.

MENGXIONG TELLS ME
that in 1957, after his brother had defended traditional Chinese writing, he was labeled a Rightist. The Party sent him to Henan province, where he was to be reformed through labor.

“He spent two or three years there,” Mengxiong says. “I’m not sure exactly what kind of work he did, but I know that he also found a way to do some archaeological research while he was there. I was quite busy during those years. I had a lot of responsibility, which was why the Party didn’t give me a hat. You know what that means?
Dai maozi
—to put the hat on somebody. Once you wore the hat of the Rightists, then you couldn’t work. Fortunately, my job was needed, so they didn’t put a hat on me.”

He continues: “I don’t remember exactly when Mengjia came back. But they didn’t remove his hat until 1963. We didn’t see each other much in those days. In the past, he had always been outgoing, but when he returned he didn’t talk much.”

The old man coughs and takes a sip of tea. We have been chatting for half an hour, mostly about the family and Mengxiong’s research, and this is the first time that he has touched on politics. But now the story wanders off again; he remembers his brother’s broad interests, ranging from the oracle bones to Beijing opera. He talks for a while about the Ming dynasty furniture, and then his face hardens.

“My brother always said that he wanted to donate that collection to the nation,” he says. “But in the end Old Mr. Zhao sold them to the Shanghai Museum. Originally I was friends with him, but not after that. Mengjia wanted that furniture to be donated, not sold. I never talked to Old Mr. Zhao after that.”

In Shanghai, the curator had told me that Lucy Chao initially agreed to give the furniture to the museum in exchange for a relatively small sum of money. But she abruptly withdrew the offer, and the curator believed that Old
Mr. Zhao had convinced her to do so. Later, after Lucy’s death, Old Mr. Zhao made the donation and received a significantly higher amount. I ask Mengxiong why he had done that.

“He’s greedy,” Mengxiong says flatly. He explains that some of Chen Mengjia’s letters and photographs also appeared for sale in Panjiayuan, a local antiquities market. Old Mr. Zhao claimed that a maid had stolen them from the courtyard home, but the incident infuriated Mengxiong. Articles about the dispute appeared in the Beijing press.

The Shanghai museum curator had given me a copy of the letter in which Chen Mengjia had declared his intention to donate the furniture. I have the document in my bag, and I hand it to Mengxiong. The old man puts on glasses. Suddenly the room is very quiet.

“Where did you get this?” he says.

“Ma Chengyuan gave it to me,” I say.

Mengxiong gazes at his brother’s handwriting; the minutes pass slowly. Softly, he reads aloud the date: 1966. That was the year of the suicide. The old man says, “I’ve never seen this letter before. Can I have a copy?”

IN CHINA, PEOPLE
often speak circuitously when confronted with an uncomfortable memory. The narrative emerges loosely, like string falling slack onto the floor; the listener has to imagine how everything connects. Sometimes the most important details are omitted entirely. But when the Chinese do decide to speak openly, their directness can be overpowering. Often, there is no visible emotion: just the simple straight words. And something about seeing his brother’s letter causes Mengxiong to pick up the story and pull it taut. For the next hour he speaks without fatigue.

“Once Mengjia returned from being a Rightist, he just wrote every day,” the old man says. “He wrote constantly about the oracle bones and archaeology. He didn’t seem to care about anything else. There were so many materials left when he died; much of it hadn’t been published.”

He says that Lucy was also writing during those years. But in the summer of 1966, it became impossible to find refuge in work anymore. And Mengjia’s personal history made him a natural target: he had spent years in the United States; he was a collector of antiquities; and he had defended the Chinese characters.

“That August, the Red Guards started their campaign against old things,” Mengxiong remembers. “I was being struggled against. My oldest son was about nine, and I told him to go over to Mengjia’s home and warn him. Mengjia
had so many old paintings and books and things; I told him to throw them out or hide them. My son returned and said that everything was fine.”

The old man gazes out the window, his thick hands fidgeting.

“I believe it happened that night,” he says softly. “I can’t remember for certain—”

He thinks for a moment. “I’m certain,” he says finally. “That night was the first time Mengjia tried to kill himself. He took sleeping pills, but he didn’t die. They took him to the hospital. The next day I heard the news, and I went to his home. There were Big Character posters on the door, criticizing Mengjia. I entered and realized that the courtyard was already occupied by Red Guards. They were using it as a kind of neighborhood base. And I was captured immediately. ‘Good,’ they said. ‘
Zi tou luowang
. You’ve cast yourself into the net.’

“Mengjia’s wife was there, too, and they seated her and me on chairs in the courtyard. The first thing they did was shave off half our hair. At that time, it was called the Yin-Yang Head, and it was a common punishment. After that, they took off their leather belts and started beating us. First they used this part—”

The old man touches the leather tip of his belt. Then he slides his hand to the buckle. “After a while, they used this part, the metal. That’s when I started bleeding. They were beating me on the head, and I was wearing a white shirt—it was summertime. It turned entirely red with blood. They weren’t beating Lucy on the head like that. After a while, I was getting seriously hurt, and I asked them to let me get some bandages at the local clinic. I explained that otherwise I was going to bleed too much, and I promised to return immediately. Finally, they agreed. But while I was at the clinic, I made a phone call to my work unit, and they immediately sent some people over. They explained that I was a good person, and the Red Guards let me go. On my way home I saw my wife—not the same wife you’ve met, but my wife at the time. I told her to hurry home. That was a terribly dangerous time. That evening you could hear them all night long, knocking on doors and beating people.”

He continues: “Mengjia was in the hospital for a while, but they expelled him because of his background. And I didn’t go back to his home; it just wasn’t possible. After about a week, he killed himself. They had a live-in maid, and I think she was the one who found him. When I heard about it, I couldn’t go to his home, because I was being struggled against. There wasn’t any funeral.”

CHEN MENGXIONG IS
a member of the Communist Party. He was not a member when his brother committed suicide, and he was not a member in 1970, when the government sent him back to the Three Gorges to work at a dam site called Gezhouba. His job, once again, was to evaluate the risk of
earthquake, but this time he performed his task under the Communists instead of the Kuomintang. The Yangtze Valley Authority was but a memory; in New China, nobody would allow an American-inspired name.

Hydrogeologists use a standardized numbered system to indicate earthquake risk, and Chen Mengxiong rated the Gezhouba site as a six. It was a borderline figure: at seven, dams have to be designed with extensive anti-earthquake features. After Mengxiong’s evaluation, the vice-director of the project told him to change the rating to a five. Mengxiong refused, and for a while he worried about possible repercussions. But there were so many other distractions that nobody organized a political campaign against him.

The cadres at Gezhouba followed a strategy known as the “Three Simultaneous.” This involved simultaneous surveying, planning, and construction. In the past, people had viewed these elements in a linear fashion: first you survey, then you plan, finally you build. But none of the old rules applied during the Cultural Revolution, and the cadres believed that surveying, planning, and construction could be performed simultaneously. And so people dug holes while Mengxiong surveyed, and engineers planned while still more holes were being dug. In 1973, Zhou Enlai finally commanded that the project be abandoned. In three years, they had accomplished nothing. Work on the dam wasn’t resumed until Reform and Opening, and it was finally completed in 1988.

That was the same decade that Chen Mengxiong, past the age of seventy, finally joined the Communist Party. He did not become a member out of faith; he joined simply because, in the Ministry of Geology, he had reached a level that required membership. Otherwise he wouldn’t be allowed to attend certain meetings. Like so many Chinese nowadays, Chen Mengxiong’s true politics are those of the pragmatist.

When you look at a photograph of a big family in the 1920s, and see the Qing-style gowns and the Western suits, the bright young faces and the proud old parents, you wonder what the hell happened to all that time and talent.
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MENGXIONG’S STORY DOESN’T
end with his brother’s death. He pauses to sip more tea, and then he continues.

“My wife had problems that year,” he says. “She had a bad class background. Her father was a famous calligrapher, and he had been in the Kuomintang administration. So she always had lots of problems. When the political campaigns started in 1957, I happened to be away for work, and she was alone in Beijing with our child. She was so frightened by the anti-Rightist campaign that she became mentally ill. She spent a year in the hospital, and then she
recovered somewhat. Previously, she had been a physics teacher, but afterward she couldn’t handle that. She joined another work unit.

“In 1966, not long after Mengjia died, her work unit asked her to copy revolutionary songs onto carbon paper. She wrote the lyrics: ‘Ten thousand years to Chairman Mao, ten thousand years, ten thousand years! Ten thousand years to Chairman Mao, ten thousand years, ten thousand years!’ It was the same thing over and over. But she made a mistake on one word. She wrote
wu
instead of
wan
.”

Mengxiong inscribes two characters into my notebook: