Chapter 12 Fight to Live

1969-1971

Beijing, Helan Mountains, Ningxia Province, China

Only after I was released from the cowshed did I learn that Yuying had been transferred from the furniture design department to an outdoor manual labor job at the Beijing Lumber Plant where she worked. Her original job was appropriate for Yuying, a graduate of China Central Arts and Crafts Institute. Her new task, however, was to select usable wood from the scraps, an assignment she was given solely because she was the wife of a Monster in the cowshed. Yuying had to work in all kinds of weather, from scorching summers to withering winters. The Red Guards in her plant ordered her to expose “crimes” committed by me and my family in exchange for better treatment. She categorically refused, saying she would rather continue her outdoor job for the rest of her life than tell a lie.

In order to save money to support the family, Yuying rode her old bicycle on the hour-long trip to the lumber plant every day, even in the harshest of weather, hard rain and heavy snow. Often it was dark when she left in the morning and dark when she returned at night. And I was sad to learn that on many evenings, it also stayed dark inside our apartment. In those days, formerly friendly neighbors would gang up on families of the Five Black Breeds to show their scorn for China’s enemies and their offspring. Encouraged by tall Yan, who had been my student and the dunce in the English training class at my Institute, teenagers in our building, wearing Red Guard armbands, frequently broke the electrical switch box outside our door. When lights were on in every window in our neighborhood, our apartment was dark. I was overcome with grief and remorse when I learned of the many ordeals Yuying suffered because she was my wife.

“Often when I came home at night, sometimes pedaling hard against a cold wind, the young Red Guards would throw dirt and stones on me and even douse me with buckets of sewage.” Yuying took out the handkerchief with two roses. I took it from her, gently wiping away her tears. “I’d be soaked to the skin with sweat from my ride and completely sopping on the outside from the sewage. All five flights of the stairway up to our apartment were pitch-black,” she continued.

“When I put down the bike, I’d have to find the keyhole in the dark. After I opened the door and entered our room . . . .” Yuying sighed deeply, then suddenly reached for the handkerchief and put it to her mouth, bursting into tears in my arms.

I held her tightly as sobs shook her body.

After a time, she said, “I’d see . . . ,” and then she couldn’t continue. She lowered her head to hide her tears.

“I, I’d see,” she choked back a sob and tried again. “I’d see Grandaunt holding Dawei, sitting still by the window in the dark. Then I’d hear Dawei’s fearful little voice calling, ‘Mommy, Mommy.’”

Tears spilled down my face. Yuying took off my eyeglasses, and now she used the handkerchief to wipe away my tears. Together, our tears made the two roses look even redder.

“When I struck a match to light the candle, I could see in the dim light the trail of tears on Dawei’s little face as he stretched his arms toward me.” When Yuying told me this, I was flooded with a feeling of helplessness. I couldn’t even protect my own son.

In silence, Yuying and I held each other on our bed for a long time, anguish wracking our hearts. We cried a lot in those days. We were denied so many rights and forms of release and ways of expressing ourselves as human beings. Crying was one of the few we had left.

The Red Guards at my Institute often raided our apartment at night while I was in the cowshed, supposedly to check on whether we were hiding any strangers. They took away our “bourgeois” belongings, and what they couldn’t carry off, they locked in one of our bedrooms. Yuying, Grandaunt, and Dawei had to sleep on the floor because their confiscated beds had spring pads, which made them “bourgeois.” Of course, we continued to be charged rent for that locked room.

After paying for rent, electricity, water, coal, and food, Yuying used the little remaining from her 55 yuan monthly pay on Dawei and me. She was so thrifty that when she bought oranges for Dawei and Grandaunt, she saved all the peels. A big basket of dried orange peels was worth one yuan at Chinese medicinal herb shops. Since I was paid only 12 yuan a month, barely enough to pay for my corn cake meals, Yuying tried to supplement my diet. Once she sent me some sausages, which I never received. She learned later that they were confiscated by the Red Guards. Fried and salty hot peppers were the only thing she was allowed to send me through the cowshed gatekeeper. While I loved corn cakes, a steady diet of them was pretty bland and the peppers made them much better. Whenever I received a big jar of peppers, even the jar was dear to me. I touched it as if I were touching Yuying’s hands and warming her heart.

As the common people suffered, the political power struggles at the top remained brutal and consumed our leaders. The death of millions of innocent people was trivial as long as the proletarian dictatorship prevailed. At the Ninth Party Congress, the first in a dozen years, the great achievements of the Cultural Revolution were affirmed and acclaimed. Mao proclaimed that such revolutions should be repeated every seven or eight years. The Congress denounced Mao’s previous top deputy and heir apparent, Liu Shaoqi, as a traitor yet again, and Lin Biao was formally written into the Constitution as Mao’s designated successor and close comrade-in-arms. Lin, a superior military leader and later Defense Minister, was Mao’s most important ally in the Cultural Revolution. But Lin helped Mao in other ways beyond his control of the military. Lin had earlier compiled Mao’s Little Red Book of quotations to re-educate the People’s Liberation Army and contributed significantly to building Mao’s personality cult.

As Lin reached these lofty heights, Liu Shaoqi fell from power and became the highest-ranking victim of Mao, who was jealous and vengeful and never liked seeing Liu’s photo as China’s President side by side with his photo as the CCP’s Chairman in the People’s Daily. Liu’s pragmatic approach to economic matters conflicted with Mao’s radicalism, and Mao came to regard Liu as his chief rival. For a brief period after the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, the pragmatists, led by Liu and Deng Xaoping, had operated the levers of government. But Mao used the Cultural Revolution to destroy or banish his enemies, not only Liu and Deng, but also their supporters. He was an absolute master at political infighting and setting factions against each other.

Liu was assailed as China’s biggest Capitalist Roader, followed by Deng Xiaoping. Lin Biao replaced Liu as First Deputy Chairman. Liu was soon placed under house arrest and purged from the party. Then he disappeared. He had actually been removed to a tiny cell in Kaifeng, Henan Province. Tortured, sick with long-term diabetes and then pneumonia, and denied all treatment and medication, Liu died sometime in October 1969, covered in his excrement and vomit. The former president of China was promptly cremated under the name of Liu Weihuang. Cause of death was recorded as “illness” and his occupation listed as “unemployed.” It was years before his family learned of his death and a decade before the Chinese people were told. Of course, no details were provided.

As 1970 unfolded, Mao’s whims and paranoia and the tyrannical acts of the Gang of Four continued to wreak havoc upon China. The Chairman’s latest loony idea was to mobilize the whole nation to “dig deep holes” in preparation for war against the revisionist socialist countries headed by the Soviet Union. The holes, he “reasoned," would also prove useful in times of natural disasters and for storing grain.

All members and friends of the Chen family, even my old father, did our duty and began digging holes at random locations. These large pits started to show up everywhere—on the small lane by our parents’ old house, in front of the office building at our Institute, on hospital grounds, in shopping areas, and even under Tiananmen Square. Cement and bricks were in short supply. Without any research, planning, or technical support, countless holes and tunnels all over China simply collapsed or otherwise became hazards.

The hole on the grounds of our Institute was soon full of stagnant water. The “shore” around it was constantly giving way, expanding the pond. Instead of a shelter to shield people against enemy bombs, it became a refuge for wild birds. The soon- polluted waters stank up the whole area around the Institute and became a breeding ground for swarms of mosquitoes and other insects. We later had to transport many truckloads of dirt to fill in that pond, which became a huge patch of sunflowers. Our Institute spent eight months and tens of thousands of man-hours, and all we got out of it was a bumper crop of sunflower seeds. Nobody seemed to care. Everybody got paid by the government anyway regardless of whether anything was actually accomplished.

China also had real achievements that year. On April 24, it launched its first space satellite, “The East Is Red,” making China the fifth member of the world’s select Space Club. The satellite name refers to the first line of a popular song in China in praise of Mao.

For me, however, the most significant event of 1970 was the birth, two days after the launch, of Yuying’s and my second son, Lei, at the Beijing Friendship Hospital. Yuying had to endure another C-section to give birth to another big boy, almost nine pounds. While we were trying to locate the satellite in the sky and hear it broadcast “The East Is Red” in Yuying’s ward, I decided the first name of our second son would be Lei.

Lei means thunder in Chinese. I saw the satellite as a thunderous statement. But more importantly, I wanted Lei to be a harbinger of the tremendous thunder we needed to shake the chains and shackles off our bodies and our souls, the thunder that brings the dawn. Lei was such a sweet boy. Very rarely did he cry, but when he did, it was truly like thunder. I took that as a good sign.

By that time, the Uselessness of Academic Study theory permeated the whole country. Curiously, however, after 581 days of imprisonment in the cowshed—essentially for being educated—I was allowed to pursue my advanced studies on foundry technologies and development.

I studied as if I were on a mission. The Institute neither encouraged me, an unreformed intellectual, in my efforts nor did it try to stop me. It had to fulfill its quota of translating and publishing research papers to introduce foreign advanced metalworking technologies to China. That was the Ministry’s mandate and mission, and I was helping to do it. As a result, I was one of the leaders in publishing research reports, technical books, and translations. Many of them are still popular and can be Googled on the Internet under my Chinese name.

It took me 17 years of hard work to go from being an English major college student to a foundry researcher and a board director of Beijing Foundry Society. During my first months at the Institute, I forced myself to study basic metalworking technologies and foundry practices, subjects in which I originally had no interest at all. I needed this basic knowledge, however, to do my job effectively. By that time, I had come to believe that I was born to be a literary scholar. I loved language and literature and considered myself a good teacher. I liked to picture myself at a university. I yearned to read great books and maybe someday to write one. I had no intention of becoming a foundry engineer. However, the more I learned and the deeper I got into the subject, the more I became attracted to the field.

I studied the bronze castings from the Warring States and the Spring and Autumn periods in the Palace Museum of the Forbidden City. I remembered going with my father to Liulihe Township outside of Beijing, where many bronzes of the Yan State during the Western Zhou Dynasty had been cast. I was a fast learner, especially once I got interested in a subject, and found it exciting to discover how metalworking had developed. Very quickly I learned about casting processes, molds, and dies. What I knew about foreign foundry technologies put to shame the primitive casting production lines in the factories under the Ministry. Indeed, even our ancestors had achieved better results than we were now. We basically still used the outdated sand-casting process to deal with more and more complicated jobs. When I finished my dissertation, “On the Orientation and Emphases of China’s Foundry Industry,” I mailed it to the China Foundry Association.

To my surprise and delight the Association responded with letters to my Institute and me, inviting me to address its annual conference in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. It was a difficult decision for the officers of the Institute’s Revolutionary Committee. On the one hand, they were reluctant to let an “unrehabilitated intellectual” like me go to the conference. On the other hand, this opportunity was an honor to them as leaders of my work unit and to the Institute. After weighing the pros and cons, they allowed me to go and informed me that my normal monthly salary of 55 yuan was resumed. I was thrilled! The idea of my luck turning, even a bit, gave me hope for my future. If I continued to do good work and bring credit to the Institute, perhaps I could make a name for myself in this field and help my nation grow stronger.

On August 25, 1970, right after I read my paper at the China Foundry Society conference, I was approached by my colleague who had accompanied me to Jiaxing. I thought he was going to congratulate me, but, instead, he told me that I must leave the conference ahead of schedule, go back to Beijing, and prepare to go to the May Seventh Labor School near the Helan Mountains in Ningxia Province bordering Mongolia. As if awakening from a dream, I was brought back to cruel reality. I had been so naïve daydreaming about my future. I had no future. I was just a tool, put to use when needed and thrown away when it was not. I didn’t know much about Ningxia, but what I did know wasn’t good. The land was dry, rocky, barren, and uninhabited for good reason. How would I tell my parents and Yuying about being banished to the desolate deserts of the wild northwest?

May Seventh Cadre Schools were a perfect example of the Chinese saying “Advertise wine; sell vinegar.” Despite their high-sounding names, they were nothing more than labor camps for millions of educated Chinese whom the leaders sought to “re-educate” through hard labor. They replaced the cowsheds, which were too hard to manage and were not a legal part of the justice system. Now everything was legal and controlled. All the “students” in these “schools” took only one “class.” It was called hard labor. While most of these camps were called Cadre Schools, a few were designated Labor Schools, and their inmates were treated more harshly. That was the case with my new “school.”

This turn of events was no surprise to Yuying, since she always anticipated bad things happening to me and my family. It was easy for her to pack my big wooden crate. I didn’t have much to pack, and my stuff from the cowshed was all ready to use the second time. Yuying and I went to see my parents with Dawei and Lei, whom my parents would care for while Yuying saw me off.

My mother was quite worried but not Father. To set my mother’s mind at rest, my father pointed to a map of China as he was speaking.

“Look, here is Ningxia. Here are the Helan Mountains. The Yellow River irrigates vast farmlands and benefits millions of people there. As the saying goes, ‘The Yellow River spawns a hundred disasters, but always smiles on Ningxia.’” My father inevitably found something hopeful, even in the most desperate situations.

“Don’t worry about Dawei and Lei,” my mother said as she cuddled the boys on her bed. “We’ll look after them. You must take good care of yourself.” I smiled half-heartedly at my mother and wondered when I would see my parents again.

Because I had been chosen to address the annual conference of the China Foundry Association, I wasn’t part of a large contingent of camp laborers that had left Beijing earlier. I was given a one-way train ticket to Yinchaun, Ningxia Province, leaving September 7, 1970. Yuying and I got up early that day. Grandaunt had already cooked our breakfast. I tied my big wooden crate to the backseat of my bicycle. Yuying and I walked all the way to the Beijing railway station, arriving there early. Yuying bought me some Beijing specialties, candied fruits. We still had a lot to say but didn’t know where to start.

“As Mother said, don’t worry about us. Take good care of yourself.” Yuying repeated variations of this several times.

“As I said, don’t worry about me. Take good care of yourself, our parents, Grandaunt, and especially Dawei and Lei.” I also repeated myself.

“Take this with you.” Yuying took out the handkerchief with two red roses.

“The same handkerchief.” I took hold of it tenderly.

“Yes, the same handkerchief,” Yuying said, “and the same two red roses.”

I softly caressed the roses.

“When you see the two red roses, imagine us. We will always be together regardless of the distance between us,” Yuying added, her eyes filled with tenderness and love.

I put the handkerchief in my inside pocket and after a long embrace and one last look, I boarded the train. It pulled away slowly, and I watched Yuying wave at me until I could no longer see her.

The train was so crowded that there was hardly room to breathe. As soon as the train passed over Badaling Mountain, where the Great Wall was situated, all I could see was continuous prairie and then continuous desert. The Mongolian grasslands were endless, but surprisingly I saw no flocks or herds and not a single human being. The farther west the train went, the colder it became. After 26 hours, the train finally reached Yinchuan.

Dilapidated and rustic, the tiny station didn’t look like the only train station of a provincial capital. But this was far out in the sticks, as they say in America, almost literally a one-horse town. I walked out of the station, carrying my wooden crate. Xiao Ding, whom I knew from my Institute, stood by a tractor and greeted me from afar. He was an employee of the labor camp, not a prisoner. A young man of medium height and quiet demeanor, Xiao Ding was very bright. In the after -work English class I taught at the Institute, he was one of my best students. After he helped me get my wooden crate onto the trailer for me to sit on, he turned the ignition and with a frightful racket and belching smoke, we were off to the camp.

The tractor was a riding-type, walking tractor, a popular means of transportation in the countryside. Its trailer could carry coal, cement, stone, bricks, and a dozen people. Within 10 minutes, we had left the city limits and made our way on a narrow dirt road that ended all too soon. We continued over rough terrain littered with rocks and boulders toward the distant mountains.

“Those are the Helan Mountains,” Xiao Ding said, pointing ahead. “Helan means steed in Mongol.”

“So high,” I exclaimed.

“The peak is more than 3,500 meters high.”

“Wow!”

“Even a brilliant military leader like General Yue Fei couldn’t penetrate these mountains in his battles against the Jurchen army.” Xiao Ding prided himself upon his historical knowledge.

It was hard to talk over the din of the tractor, so we fell into silence for the rest of the trip. I was awed by the beauty of the layered landscape, the lovely desolation, the mountains that really did resemble a herd of wild horses.

Just before dark, we finally reached camp. If I hadn’t seen dozens of large tents on the field, I wouldn’t have believed that this was our “school.” Xiao Ding told me he’d be one of my tent mates, led me into a large khaki-colored tent, found me an empty “bed” in the corner, and prepared a bunch of straw to serve as my mattress. The beds were simply wooden boards supported by four adobe blocks. The tents had a rigid metal framework and metal bars to support the canvas roof. There was no electricity. Each tent had two kerosene lamps, one hanging from the ceiling and one at the entrance.

When my six other tent mates came back from the field, they greeted me warmly. They were all my mates from the Institute cowshed. A resonant, loud and clear trumpet call interrupted our greetings. Xiao Ding told me that meant it was dinner time. All the camp laborers, with our identical aluminum meal boxes and spoons, went to a big dining tent to get our food, then returned to our own tents to eat. All the cooking was done in the open outside the dining tent. My first meal in camp was hoecakes with soy sauce soup. Corn meal was our main staple—steamed or baked in different shapes and called, among many other names, hoecakes and corn pone. Maybe I inherited my taste for corn meal from my father; I just loved it. To my pleasant surprise, the 12 yuan we paid for food each month allowed us to take as many hoecakes as we liked. My tent mates were amazed that I could eat as many as 16 hoecakes at a sitting. To tell the truth, it was corn meal that saved me and supported me through the long and harsh days in the camp. After dinner, each of us was given a wash basin of cold water from the water wagon that we had to ration carefully to be able to brush our teeth and wash both in the evening and the next morning.

Back in the tent on a full stomach, my tent mates told me of their experiences in camp so far. To a person, they felt they were better off than when we were in the cowshed except for the long distance from loved ones and the indeterminate sentence. Every one of us wondered how long we would have to be students at this “school.” Were the rumors true that we had been sent to the desert to work until we died? We didn’t talk long that night. My mates were tired from their long day’s work, and one by one they dropped off to sleep. While all of them were dead to the world on their beds, I hardly slept a wink. The wind drumming on the canvas blew me back to Dawei, Lei, Yuying, Grandaunt, and my parents. I wondered when I would see them next. And then I thought, “What if I never see them again?” My first night in camp was not restful.

My first full day in camp, however, was strangely peaceful. Autumn was gorgeous in the foothills of the Helan Mountains. The sky was so high, the land so wide. The sun was bright and the breeze gentle. Our job was to dig up the salt marsh alkali flats that stretched for miles. They had never before been cultivated, and we were to prepare them for planting. The soil was so hard that one strike of my heavy pick barely made an impression. After four hours of hard digging, my hands were bloody from broken blisters, and I had succeeded in turning over only a few square feet of earth.

Once the tough crust was broken, the loam beneath was swarthy and rich. A local farmer, who served as a camp instructor, told us that the toughest part of the job was breaking that hard surface. With the Yellow River nearby, irrigation was not a problem, so all we had to do next spring for a good harvest would be to plough and sow. I felt a much greater sense of purpose after hearing this from the old farmer. Field labor on those salt flats under a hot sun was rough, no doubt about it. We worked up to 16 hours a day, but it was not the end of the world, and I always liked working the earth when I could envision the food it would produce.

A bugle call roused us laborers punctually at 6:30 each morning. We’d get ready for breakfast and fall into formation for denunciation by the camp director. When the bugle calls were repeatedly sounded day or night, it meant that one of Chairman Mao’s “Supreme Instructions” had been delivered by a cavalryman, who had come from a radio station some distance away, and we should assemble immediately. The camp director would read aloud Mao’s instructions, which were often just one or two sentences.

By the end of autumn, it was definitely getting colder, especially after the sun went down. Our tents wouldn’t shield us against winter’s frigid temperatures, icy blasts, and drifting snow. We were ordered to build our own cabins. In contrast with our previous cramped prison cells, our cabin was huge because we had all the land we wanted, lots of loess for making bricks, and unlimited labor. Using rigid metal frames and cross bars, we built the cabin structure and added a thatched roof, which we covered with a thick layer of clay. We mixed mud and water, shoveled it into wooden forms to make bricks, and let them dry in the sun for several days. The adobe bricks were simple, cheap, and durable. To help shield us against the cold, wind, and snow, we laid down a double course of bricks for all walls. Also using the mud bricks, each of us built a large bed, and we had a big camp stove in the center of our cabin to keep us warm. We had a good supply of coal since the labor camp also owned a small coal mine nearby. By recalling some of Yuying’s furniture designs, I built myself a mud brick desk and cabinet. Each one of us enjoyed our own private space with a window close by.

As the 1971 Spring Festival approached, I missed my dear ones more than ever. How much fun I would have with my boys during the holidays if only I could be at home. Images of Dawei and Lei flashed before me continually. I couldn’t put them out of my mind. But, of course, we weren ’t allowed to go back home or receive family visitors. Thankfully, we were allowed to send and receive letters and parcels. I read Yuying’s letters over and over again. They gave me so much to think about and cry about. One thing in abundance in a labor camp is time to think about things. I confess that sometimes I plunged deep into the black hole of loneliness and hopelessness. Being so far from loved ones and feeling incapable of hope was the worst part of camp. I didn’t mind the hard labor or the rough life. But not knowing whether I would ever be released or see my family again was agony. Being utterly helpless to affect my future was torture.

Without any sense of when I would “graduate” from the labor school, the days seemed like months, the months like years. Only hard work made the time seem to go a little faster. I was assigned lots of jobs besides farm work, but most involved digging. We dug coal from a primitive pit without any safety measures. We dug irrigation channels between the Yellow River and our fields. My most interesting job was when I was ordered to learn how to drive an old truck to transport coal from the pit to other labor camps in the region. The regular driver had taken seriously sick. Why they chose me as his replacement defied reason. I had never even driven a car before. I had a full day of instruction and practice. Then the very next day, I was on my way, driving a big truck with a long trailer, fully loaded with coal. My instructor sat beside me only to my first stop and then I was “driving solo.” He told me as long as I didn’t get lost before the next stop, I would be fine because there was nothing to hit in the desert.

Well, there wasn’t anything big to hit in the desert, but there were plenty of boulders and gullies from the spring rains to avoid. Lots of small rocks and cobbles got kicked up, and I had the noisiest, bumpiest ride of my life. I gripped the wheel tightly and constantly scanned the terrain ahead, vigilant for obstacles and hazards. Finally I reached the next camp. When I stopped in front of the camp gate, a fellow came out and asked me what I wanted. I told him I was there to deliver some coal. He looked at me and then the truck as if I were daft and asked me if I was sure of that. I wondered what sort of idiot I was dealing with. Then he asked me where all the coal was. Wondering whether I was in a labor camp or an insane asylum, I pointed over my shoulder and said, “What do you mean by all? It’s right there.” Because of the look on his face, I took a look myself and was astounded. The trailer wasn’t there! Somehow during that bumpy ride across the desert, I had managed to lose it. I had been concentrating so hard on driving and what was in front of me that I never realized what had happened behind me. We found the trailer about two hours back. People had a good laugh over this, and the worst consequence I faced was the teasing I had to put up with when the story got around.

My favorite job, however, was herding a big flock of sheep far from camp. It seemed like an easy job, but actually it was very demanding and arduous. I ate in the wind, slept in the dew, and endured the hardships of long treks in search of green pastures. But I liked it because I could relish the complete solitude. And watching sheep graze and then rest amidst the lush grass was restful in itself. I took a compass, an umbrella, a blanket, a full canteen of water, a bag of salty hoecakes, and a few bottles of strong white liquor. From the first step on my long journeys with the flock, I felt like a free man.

The dense virgin forests that blanketed the Helan Mountains stretched for hundreds of miles. While they were fearsomely dark at night, I didn’t worry about wild animals. Other than the usual small mammals that live in the woods, I never saw anything other than deer, horses, cattle, and goats. I didn’t worry about water because cascading streams and ample springs were everywhere. I had no worries about food. If I had finished my own provisions, I could always find friendly herdsmen and mountain folk who shared what they had with me. In return, I invited them to share some white liquor. They loved it. After a few drinks and our meal, they’d start singing Mongolian folk songs and I’d sing my Peking Opera. Before they departed, they always gave me dried venison and other food.

Strangely enough, it was in this idyllic, wooded setting—the best grasslands were on the edge of or just within the forests—that I first began to fantasize about suicide, although I didn’t call it that in my mind. I would daydream about how I could shape my future after all, right here in the forest. I could just lie down and refuse to get up. I would neither eat nor drink but gradually slip away from life and become at one with the beautiful nature that surrounded me. I spent a few guilty hours thinking of taking control of my destiny in this fashion.

After that experience and my return to camp, I had some serious bouts of depression and, all too often, the thought of suicide would flash before me. It made me—a father, a husband, a son—shiver to even think about it, but I couldn’t put it out of my head. My darkest thoughts and greatest resolve to end my life came one night when I was on flood patrol along the river.

Flood control on the Yellow River was always a critical job. It was even more demanding in the summer of 1971 because of unusually heavy rains for that time of year. Our adobe cabins were severely damaged by the endless torrents that fell from the skies. In our soaked clothing, we patrolled the river banks around the clock. Women worked days while men were on night duty. The water had already risen to the top of the banks. We built levees to prevent the river from overflowing. If they failed, the whole valley and all of our crops would be under water. Different camps were responsible for designated areas, coordinated by a central command. Our camp was assigned the most dangerous spot, near a big bend in the river.

One night I was patrolling that stretch alone, one hand holding a flashlight, the other a gong. If I found any weaknesses in the embankment or noticed the water rising quickly, I was to strike the gong loudly and repeatedly until the emergency team arrived. Blinded by the hard rain pelting my eyeglasses, I gingerly picked my way along the narrow, rugged, slippery path. The strong wind blew the rain onto my face. I raised my hand as a shield against the tempest and managed to lose my grip on the flashlight, which knocked my glasses off as it fell. With my bad eyesight I don’t see well even in the daylight without my glasses. I was absolutely blind in the pitch black night and pouring rain.

I tried to use my feet to feel for the flashlight and lost my balance and fell into a deep ditch. I heard a sickening sound as my left ankle snapped, and then the pain came. My ankle throbbed and, with every beat of my pulse, sent shivers of pain up my leg. I lay in the ditch like a water-soaked log. I had the gong with me, but I dared not hit it. The gong was only for warning about the threat of flooding, not for signaling that a laborer was hurt. I thought about what life might be like without my glasses. Anyone without bad eyesight probably cannot imagine the panic I felt. If I lost those glasses, who knows when or if I could get another pair?

My helpless misery may have touched the heavenly powers. The rain stopped. In the dark, flat on my back in the ditch water, I wished I were dead. My tortured life seemed hopeless and meaningless. Eternal death promised me lasting peace. I was barely conscious, half-awake and half- asleep. I was thinking about how I might actually die before I finally dozed off.

When I next opened my eyes, the sky was suffused with the soft glow of sunrise. As the sun climbed, never had its morning rays over the river seemed so bright and warm. A sharp glint hit my face and, as I turned to find its source, I saw it was my eyeglasses. Along with the flashlight, they were sitting on the other side of the ditch in plain view. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I wouldn’t have to go through the rest of my life half-blind. As small as it might seem, this moment was a turning point in my life.

As I lay in the ditch, considering this turn of events, I thought of a line from Sunzi’s The Art of War: “Confront a person with the danger of death and he will fight to live.” That was what I had to do. I needed to use all my remaining strength and all the tools I had. Necessity was the mother of invention. I would find the way to survive, and in the end, prevail. With my broken ankle dragging, I hobbled and crawled resolutely bit by bit back to camp, one hand holding the flashlight, the other the gong.

At first, the camp director was furious about my missing the whole night of duty and ordered me back to the riverbank immediately. Then he saw my ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. I was allowed to rest and given some painkillers. Xiao Ding helped me with my meals. One old mate massaged my ankle with some sorghum liquor that he lit. He said this helped it penetrate to the pain. I had taught myself acupuncture in the camp and bought a set of acupuncture needles out of my monthly pay. I applied many needles all over my body, but none helped. The pain was non- stop.

The toughest task for me was going to the toilet. Using my crutch, I could manage to get there, but squatting was tough. I had to crouch down and rise up several times. Even in the cold air, sweat poured from me because of the intolerable pain. After Xiao Ding talked to the camp director a few times, he finally got permission to use the tractor to take me to the central labor camp, which had a clinic.

Although small, the clinic was staffed with top-ranked doctors and nurses, most of whom were camp laborers from well-known hospitals in Beijing and other cities. An X-ray confirmed that my ankle was indeed broken—in two places. With the long delay before treatment, my foot was seriously infected and inflamed. Doctor Liu, an old surgeon, took me immediately into the operating room, not to set the bone, but to drain the pus and blood from the swollen area. He told me that he took three cups of foul liquid from me and that if I had waited a few more days to see him, I might not have survived the blood poisoning.

With my ankle treated and after a few days' rest, I was soon eager to return to camp. My ankle was in a plaster cast, but with a crutch I could walk without too much pain. The clinic beds were in short supply. I asked Doctor Liu to discharge me. He replied that he would be able to do that soon.

The next Sunday morning, a bright, breezy day in early September; I was told that I was being transferred to my camp. A nurse directed me to a truck outside the clinic entrance. Doctor Liu was already in the cab.

“Climb in. You need to see someone before you go.”

“Who?” I asked.

“An old friend of yours,” Doctor Liu replied with a mischievous grin and said no more.

After about 30 minutes, we stopped in front of a hospital, entered through its broad doors, and took the stairs to the third floor, where two soldiers stood guard in front of the entrance.

“I am Doctor Liu. We have an appointment with the Commander.”

“Yes. He is expecting you,” one guard said and opened the door.

We followed a long corridor to the room at its end. The door was open.

“Look, Commander, at who I am bringing to see you.” Doctor Liu nudged me into the room ahead of him.

It was a big room. On the bed lay an old man with a scraggly beard and deep eyes, pale but brimming with vigor.

“Are you the son of Professor Chen?” the old man on the bed asked.

“Professor Chen?” I was not used to this form of address.

“Yes. Professor Pinzhi Chen,” he confirmed.

“Yes, I am his son,” I confirmed.

“Do you know Mr. Zhang Hanchen?” he asked.

“Yes, I know him very well,” I replied.

“In that case, you should know me.” He seemed to be enjoying his game.

I drew a blank. Who was this wizened old man who knew my father and Uncle Zhang? “Could you give me a hint please?” I asked.

“Your garden, 1949.” He smiled broadly.

“Oh my God! Commander Liu!” I ditched my crutch and staggered toward my old friend.

“Hold it, young man. The Commander can’t afford any excitement in his condition, ” Doctor Liu said quickly.

“Never mind. Never mind. Come here, ‘Overlord’,” the old man said as he shook my hand.

“Overlord?” Doctor Liu asked with a quizzical look.

“Yes, Songsheng performed ‘Farewell My Concubine’ for my troops before we decamped from the garden of his parents’ mansion,” the old man explained. “Come here, sit by me,” he said and motioned to me.

“I never expected to see you here, Commander.” I was thrilled.

“I am no longer a commander. Call me Uncle Liu.” The old man turned to Doctor Liu. “Doctor, with your permission, could Songsheng and I have lunch together in my room?”

“Let me see what I can do.” Doctor Liu walked out of the room.

Commander Liu and I had a long conversation. So many strange and bad things had happened to both of us in the past 20 years. Commander Liu had waged a victorious campaign against Kuomintang troops in south China and fought bravely against the US Army in Korea. He had been wounded in combat eight times. As brilliant as he was in battle, he was naïve when it came to politics and got pulled into an Army power struggle. Framed as a key opponent of Qiu Huizuo, one of Lin Biao’s Four Favorites, he was relieved of his duties, terribly persecuted, and sent to a labor camp next to ours.

“Good news. Lunch will be served in your room right away,” Doctor Liu said as he walked into the room. “Bad news. No white liquor as usual. You must be well prepared for your big operation tomorrow.”

“What operation?” I asked.

“A subtotal gastrectomy,” Doctor Liu said.

“No big deal. Just cutting out part of my stomach. I’m more worried about having to toast you with tea at lunch instead of some good strong liquor.”

It was a wonderful lunch all the way around, the food, the companionship, the good spirits (even without the liquor), and the fond memories of that remarkable time in our garden.

Afterward, the Commander said, “Tell me some more news now. Where is your concubine these days?”

“She was a famous Peking Opera actress until the troupes were banned. She got married and had a daughter.” I told him just about all I knew of Lifen.

“In Beijing?”

“No. I don’t even know where she is now.” I had lost contact with Lifen years before.

“You must tell your parents that I still owe them rent for all the time my troops spent in your garden.” The old man grew serious.

“What are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the rent for the garden. Your parents refused to discuss it with me, so I asked Hanchen to take care of it. Years later, when I met him, he told me that your parents wouldn’t talk to him about it either.”

The subject seemed to upset him. I said, “Oh, Commander Liu, I mean Uncle Liu, let it go. That’s 25 years ago. It’s done and gone. What remains are the good times, the good memories, and the good friends.”

“You are right,” he sighed. “Even if I do want to pay your parents, what would I use for money?”

Doctor Liu suggested it was time to leave.

“Uncle Liu, you are always my hero.” I reluctantly bade him good-bye. “You always triumphed on the battlefield. May your next victory be in the operating room tomorrow.”

"Don’t worry,” the old man said, fully at ease. “Like we said on the battlefield, every bullet has its billet. I’ll be fine. I still owe you some rounds of sorghum liquor, your father’s favorite.”

“I’ll anticipate that day with great pleasure,” I said.

As we made our way back to the truck, Doctor Liu told me that he was a member of the surgery team for Commander Liu. The word from Beijing’s upper levels had come down to the Central Camp to give the commander the highest level of care possible. His life must be saved.

I was warmly welcomed back by my camp mates, managers, and even the director. Word had obviously circulated about my visit with Commander Liu. I felt flattered but a little uneasy. The director called me to his office and handed me a stack of my mail.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew Commander Liu?” he asked.

“I had no idea such a small matter was of any importance.”

“Small?” He apparently disagreed. “It’s a big matter. From now on, just let me know if you need any help.”

Back in my cabin, I couldn’t wait to open Yuying’s letters. To my pleasant surprise, she mailed me a photo of her, Dawei, and Lei. My heart melted when I saw how fast my two sons were growing up. Their big eyes were looking at me as if to say, “Come back home, Daddy.” Yuying’s letter was as warm as her smile in the photo. Holding the photo and her letter, I was so ashamed of my selfishness in contemplating the foolish idea of suicide.

In September, everyone turned to harvesting. The workday started early and ended late every day. We worked before breakfast and after dinner, but no one complained. We were so excited to see and enjoy the fruits of our long, hard labor—fresh corn and all kinds of other vegetables, melons, and rice. We harvested bumper crops, which richly improved the meals that we now ate at long tables in the newly built dining hall. The usual two dishes for lunch and dinner became four dishes and included stewed lamb, other meats, and fish. My Peking Opera singing was an indispensable part of the celebration. In my whole life, I have never devoured so much lamb, drunk so much liquor, and sung so much Peking Opera.

Soon we had even more to be happy about: white liquor and red wines were served at every dinner. We were no longer assigned new jobs. The senior laborers, former high-ranking government officials and army officers, gathered in the camp dining hall for closed meetings several days in a row. By the end of September, the camp was rife with rumors, some simply beyond belief. The wildest was that Lin Biao, Mao’s second in command and constitutional successor, Mao’s “best student” and most prominent cheerleader, had tried to assassinate Mao and was killed! Before long, everyone was assembled in the dining hall. The camp director read us the latest CCP Red Letter Documents about Lin Biao’s Anti-Party Criminal Gang. The Party Central Committee printed these important decrees and edicts in red, hence the name. This time, the documents were so long that it took a whole week for all of us to study them.

The official story was that Lin Biao had tried and failed to assassinate Mao. On September 13, 1971, Lin, his family, and some top aides tried to escape to Russia, but their airplane ran out of gas and crashed in Mongolia with no survivors. Of course, that was only one version of the event, and over the years I have heard many others. But who could have predicted that such a hero of China would come to such an end?

The whole camp turned into one big happy place. We had our own harvest festival with plenty to celebrate beyond the bountiful results of our labor. Most of the camp administrators were army veterans who resented being assigned to a labor camp in the Western desert. With Lin Biao and his cronies dead or purged, their futures were suddenly brighter. At least the faction that sent them into virtual exile was no longer in power.

One day in early November, the camp director summoned me, saying he had something urgent to tell me. I was frightened half to death as I entered his office.

“Sit down, please,” he greeted me from behind his desk.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked, uneasy with his politeness.

“No. No. I am now officially informing you that you must go back to Beijing immediately.”

“Has something happened to my family?” I was petrified.

“No. No.” He held up his hands. “The order comes from high above, and it is top secret,” he whispered.

“How soon must I leave?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “My chauffeur will drive you to the train station. Here are your train ticket and an evaluation letter from the school. And this is a note that Commander Liu wanted you to deliver to your parents. You will be met at the Beijing train station.”

The next day, November 5, 1971, I left camp on my way to Beijing without a clue as to why I was being called back. What new names or campaigns would I face now? What came after the cowshed and the labor camp? I thought back to the last day I was in Beijing: September 7, 1970. I was scared of being sent to Ningxia, not knowing what to expect. Here I was 424 days later, on my way back to Beijing, fearful of what awaited me. At least I’d be 1,500 kilometers closer to my loved ones.