Red Circle

A Treatment

Based on the book

Red Circle: China & Me 1949 – 2009

By Stephen Songsheng Chen

www.redcircle.me  - www.redcircle2009.com

 

 

Logline: Confront a person with the danger of death, and he will fight to live. –Sunzi (400-460)

It is September 7, 1970 in a train station crowded with intellectuals, teachers, army generals, and artists—scorned by Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China—on their way to do hard labor in a remote north-western province. This is the story of one man, once a respected teacher and translator of English, and how his knowledge of a language other than his own saved him from an unfortunate fate.

Yuying lovingly hands her husband, Songsheng, 30, a handkerchief embroidered with two red roses. “When you see the two red roses, imagine us,” she said. “We will always be together regardless of the distance between us.” They secretly share their last long embrace. Songsheng boards a train crammed to capacity with others like him, and it slowly pulls away from the station in Beijing. 

The old train’s rattling noise overrides scattered conversation laced with questions that have no answers: Where are we going? What kind of labor we will have to do? How long will we have to stay? Along the way through towns and villages, demonstrators wave banners and posters bearing large Chinese characters denouncing the outcasts.

They pass over the Badaling Mountain, site of the Great Wall, and from there prairie and desert seem to stretch endlessly. No sign of life, not even an animal, appears the farther west the train moves, and the colder the temperatures drop.

More than a day later, the train stops at a rustic, dilapidated station in Yinchuan, the provincial capital, and the men get off the train. Songsheng immediately recognizes a man with a tractor-trailer; they put his wooden crate on the trailer and board the tractor. Over a narrow dirt road they soon leave the city, as the route yields to rocks and boulders. The tractor belches smoke and noisily chugs along. Unable to converse against the din, the two men silently admire the beauty of the Helan Mountains and dense virgin forests. Just before dusk, they arrive at the foothills, where dozens of large khaki-colored tents are set up. Workers from the fields slowly return to camp.      

Later, by kerosene lamp, Songsheng joins his fellow laborers in their meager evening meal. His tent mates share their experiences and discuss their fate. “Some say we will have to stay here toiling in the desert until we die,” one man offers. On a simple straw mattress, Songsheng does not sleep his first night.

A bugle call summons laborers for 16-hour days of hard labor, breaking the solid surface of uncultivated alkali flats that stretch for miles. It is strangely peaceful, with a gentle autumn breeze and bright sunlight. Songsheng’s hands turn bloody from broken blisters after just four hours of hard digging. Uncertain about the length of his stay here, the days seem like weeks, the weeks like months.

Spring 1971 arrives, and he misses his family especially for the Spring Festival. Letters from Yuying soften the sting of separation, but do not ease his longing for them.

He receives orders to tend a large flock of sheep on long treks to find green pastures. One evening, with only black-faced sheep as his audience, he rises to his full six-foot stature and begins singing a selection from “Farewell My Concubine,” a classic Chinese Opera. His booming bass voice startles the sheep at first, but they soon resume grazing as Songsheng continues his animated performance.

Midway, he surrenders to frustration and crumbles to the dewy meadow, depressed. Rhetorically he asks, “Will I ever see my beloved parents again? Will I hold my dear wife close to me and watch my sons grow into manhood? Will I learn the fate of my childhood sweetheart? Will I ever again read great literature or see other parts of the world?” Thoughts of suicide overtake his weary mind. He lies down. In and out of restless sleep, he daydreams of happier times in another world.

The year is 1949, following the transfer of Peiping to the Communists, an uncertain time for one of the richest families in the city. In the grand courtyard of the family’s 120-room palace, Songsheng, 10, and his childhood sweetheart, Lifen, 12, rehearse for their first opera performance of “Farewell My Concubine” in full costume and make-up.

Small, exquisite, and charming for her young age, Lifen does well, but Songsheng remains shy about portraying her tender lover before an audience. Lifen asks everyone to leave, including her parents, seasoned opera stars who are directing the scene. Alone, she explains how the touching love scenes must be played and how Songsheng must hold her in preparation for saying good-bye forever.

Later, in the garden amphitheater, before 100 soldiers of the Liberation Army, ending their temporary, peaceful residence in the Chen garden, and guests on a warm autumn evening, fully costumed and face-painted, Lifen and Songsheng perform so well that the cheers and applause drown out their singing. Delighting the audience with such a magnificent performance, they receive several curtain calls. Army Commander Liu proposes toasts to Songsheng’s parents for their generosity. Songsheng hates to see his soldier friends leave.  

As time passes and Songsheng’s love of opera grows, he goes to the parents of Lifen, whom he affectionately calls Uncle Yuan and Auntie Cheng. He tells them he would like to follow his dream of being an opera star and enroll in the National Academy of Theater Arts with Lifen.

“Do your parents know about your plans?” Uncle Yuan asks.

“Not yet,” Songsheng replies.

“You should tell them right away,” Uncle Yuan says. “You have the world at your feet. Why take a difficult path when a super highway lies ahead of you?”

When Songsheng opens this discussion with his parents later that evening, they are adamant. “Everyone in our family must graduate from college. How could you think of doing otherwise?” asks Mother Fu.

Father Chen shakes his head in disbelief. “Choosing a college major often dictates the course of your remaining years,” he explains. “My father instilled in me the importance of attending Peking University as an essential step toward becoming a responsible and contributing member of society. I want this for you, too.”

In late summer of 1951, the family sells the palace to the government, donates large amounts of money to social welfare, and moves out of the garden compound into a well-kept older 11-room house in the East District. Answering the call of the Chinese Communist Party to become “red capitalists,” Songsheng’s parents work long hours each day at their newly-invested businesses: his father’s tool factory and his mother’s dairy.

In high school, Songsheng enjoys the best times of his youth playing leading roles in an extracurricular drama troupe and frequently gives public performances under the direction of actors in the China Youth Art Theater. Songsheng develops romantic feelings toward the very sweet and beautiful Yuying, his make-up artist.  There is room for happiness even as the times grow more ominous.

In an internal directive, Chairman Mao cracks down on intellectual critics of the Party. An Anti-Rightist Campaign ensues, labeling more than three million people as Rightists, especially those in academia and within his own party. With political turmoil as a backdrop, Lifen enters the Academy to prepare for a career in opera; Songsheng takes qualifying examinations to enroll in the Beijing Foreign Language Institute.

One warm June afternoon in 1957, Songsheng returns home. His mother greets him in the courtyard, smiling, and hands him an envelope. In it he finds a letter of acceptance to the Institute. That night the family celebrates with a meal of dumplings, red wine, and white liquor.

Three months later, Songsheng moves into a student dormitory. The atmosphere is tense. The blare of accusations and screaming of anti-Rightist diatribes over loudspeakers makes concentration on studies and sleeping difficult. Soon Songsheng receives word that his father is named a Rightist. How, he wonders, could my father, such a patriotic citizen, a respected professor, and a successful entrepreneur who has contributed so much to his country be so unjustly marked? What would have happened to me had this announcement been made before I entered the Institute?

His father shows signs of stress: weight loss, hair quickly turning white, withdrawn and quiet. They meet in the courtyard one day, “Son, you know what has happened to me. Just remember, he who is ready to believe is ready to deceive. Your survival depends on not letting your tongue say what your head shall pay for.”

At midnight, Songsheng sees his father writing intently by the dim light of a reading lamp in his study. His mother serves tea but otherwise leaves him alone. Curious, Songsheng approaches his father and asks what he is writing. “It is my self-criticism.” Songsheng offers to write it for him, and, weary, Father Chen relents. Songsheng goes to his room, where he quickly finishes the required self-criticism. He hates the lies he has written about his own father. Tears fall on the finished paper.

As Chairman Mao’s Anti-Rightist Campaign rages on, Songsheng is identified as the son of a Rightist. At 18, he becomes one of the campaign’s millions of innocent victims.

At the start of his studies, classes are cancelled so the students can participate in huge repudiation rallies to which all Rightist-tagged professors and lecturers are forced to attend and endure open criticism. Eventually they are banished from campus and sent to labor camps in the far west of China.

Following Songsheng’s persuasive and well-documented speech about the value of foreign language courses, he faces hundreds of huge posters all over school denouncing him for following in his father’s footsteps, and labeling him dangerous, bourgeois, anti-Red, and degenerate. They condemn him for receiving high marks in English classes. The English Department Party Secretary publicly berates him, “Songsheng can recite sonnets of Shakespeare, but he cannot provide a simple explanation of socialism.”

Four years after their first meeting, Songsheng invites Yuying, his only companion in such difficult times, to the Summer Palace. They enjoy a simple meal in a nearby restaurant, walk around Kunming Lake, and settle there under a large weeping willow tree. Songsheng proposes to Yuying. Through tears of joy, she accepts, and in the glow of a beautiful sunset they share their first kiss. “I will keep my tears for me and give my smiles to you,” she said. Immediately afterward, Yuying moves into the Chen family house and accepts the Chens’ offer to pay for her expenses at the China Central Arts and Crafts Institute.

The Great Famine, which has already claimed tens of millions of lives, continues through 1961. The Chen family manages to buy enough food to survive, supplementing it with wild vegetables from relatives in Father Chen’s home village. As bad as things are, Songsheng’s mother senses something worse is coming.

On May 4, 1962, Songsheng and Yuying go to the Beijing East District marriage registration office to make their union official. It is a marriage by certificate only until they can have a wedding ceremony, according to the tradition of the Chen family.

Two months later, Songsheng graduates from Beijing Foreign Languages Institute after five years of study, labor, hunger, discrimination, solitude, and one anti-Rightist campaign after another. As her gift for his graduation, Auntie Cheng invites him to perform “Farewell My Concubine” with her. To his great surprise, she informs him it will be her final performance as an opera star. She sees the day coming when Chairman Mao will close the curtain on this great expression of the Chinese culture, and she decides to retire on a high note. The performance is emotionally charged for Songsheng.

Songsheng and Yuying formalize their vows in a simple ceremony in a restaurant with only family in attendance. Five days later, they go their separate ways: Yuying to Xingtai to continue work with the Four Cleanups Movement, essentially witch hunts against China’s citizens; and Songsheng to Xi’an, one of China’s oldest cities, to teach English to 56 engineers and technicians from the Metalworking Ministry for six months. Later he and Yuying reunite there for a month-long honeymoon.

In March 1966, Chairman Mao formally launches the Cultural Revolution, and by May, he calls on the whole country to bring down representatives of the bourgeoisie. Instantly, big-character posters denounce Songsheng as a Dutiful Son of the Bourgeoisie, marking him as an enemy.

Destruction inspired by the Cultural Revolution is widespread. People everywhere burn books, art, photographs, keepsakes, even furniture; they follow orders to watch the destruction of their own treasures. Shops and buildings are ransacked; scenes around the city resemble the chaos of war. Red Guards beat people of all ages on the streets.

In the midst of these horrible happenings, Yuying gives birth to their first son, Dawei. Upon arriving at home, Songsheng registers shock when he sees his father’s study in disarray, with books and paintings all over the floor. “These most likely belong on the forbidden list. We must burn them before it is too late,” Father Chen says anxiously.

“The scrolls are antiques, aren’t they?” Songsheng asks.

“They are the works of calligraphers now marked as traitors who slaughtered peasants.”

Songsheng offers to handle the disposition of his father’s treasures.

“Wait until tomorrow,” Father Chen says. “I need to have you do another job tonight.” He removes a leather pouch from a desk drawer, unties the red silk cord, and opens the pouch, slowly spilling 20 silver coins onto the desk. “Your grandfather gave these to me when I set off to Peking in 1918. I know you have heard the story many times before.”

“Yes,” says Songsheng, “I wish I had a silver coin for every time I heard it. It truly inspires me.”

Father Chen tells how he used the original 20 coins but replaced them. Silence envelopes father and son, as they ponder old memories. Finally, Father Chen scoops up the silver coins and hands them to Songsheng. “I managed to save these silver coins from my first year of teaching in 1925. Your mother and I do not plan to leave any money to your or your siblings. Your education is the best wealth we could ever give you.” He instructs Songsheng to throw away the silver coins.

Songsheng cannot believe what he hears. His father insists that he carry out his order immediately. “Silver and gold are on the forbidden list, and the Party sees them as a threat of revenge by counterrevolutionaries,” Father Chen says. “We cannot hide them here or anywhere, for fear of bringing trouble to others.”

Songsheng walks three miles to the moat of the Forbidden City in total darkness, save for dim light of occasional street lamps. There, in silence, he slips the silver coins into the moat and returns home.

In August 1966, Chairman Mao receives millions of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square to demonstrate support of their revolutionary activities. From then on, Red Guards are vengeful in their acts of vandalism and violence across the country.

As Songsheng arrives at the Institute, a Red Guard captain informs him that Red Guards are at his parents’ house, ready to sweep away everything on the forbidden list. Guards immediately transport him to the house. Upon arrival, other Red Guards stand in front of the house. Captain Wang orders Songsheng to warn his parents to obey all of their commands.

Songsheng finds his parents already confined to one part of the house, and Yuying and Dawei to another. After relating the captain’s warnings, he goes to Yuying but cannot join her and their son. In all rooms, he hears Red Guards questioning family members: “Where are you hiding guns? Where is the gold? Where are your silver coins?”

Songsheng assures the guards they are not hiding anything. He peers through a window and watches as Red Guards take antiques and furniture to the courtyard and register them in a notebook. When darkness falls, all but a few of the guards leave. Songsheng, Yuying, and Dawei remain confined to their room. No one sleeps that night.

The next day, a large group of Red Guards assemble in the courtyard, reciting Mao’s quotations. “Chairman Mao taught us, ‘Revolution is not a dinner party….Or writing an essay…Or painting a picture’…” Against the loud chanting, a scowling Captain Wang and his aides, brandishing their wide leather belts with heavy buckles, approach the parents’ room. In the courtyard, Red Guards set fire to pictures, paintings, and books. Smoke billows throughout the house.

Suddenly terrible screams come from the parents’ room and continue far into the evening. Yuying holds Songsheng tightly to prevent him from going to his parents’ rescue. Before the Red Guards leave, Songsheng catches a glimpse of his parents being moved to the kitchen. He sees that his mother’s long hair is sheared close to the scalp. His father’s white shirt is soaked in blood. They move in great pain. No moon or stars. No sound except intermittent moaning from the kitchen, deep and low.

At dawn, as Songsheng gazes across the courtyard, he sees the silhouette of a slowly moving figure stretching in the kitchen, practicing Tai Chi. Songsheng’s heart quickens as his father raises both of his arms slowly yet firmly. They signal that they are still alive!

At noon the next day, Songsheng and Yuying receive orders to leave the house immediately. They take only the clothes on their backs and empty pockets. Homeless, penniless on the mean streets of a desperate city under siege.

At age 27, Songsheng is sentenced to the cowshed in the basement of an office building. He shares the cramped room with six others; it is dark, dank, and stuffy. The floor is littered with straw for his bed; he receives nothing to drink or eat. His greatest fear is being separated from his family.

For more than 19 months, Songsheng endures regular torture and humiliation, performs dirty and heavy work for a reduced salary, and has no communication with his family for months. Surprisingly he is released. His reunion with family is joyous. In the next year, they welcome their second son, Lei. The joy does not last long. After presenting a paper at a business conference, he receives orders to leave the conference early, return to Beijing, and leave by train to a labor camp near Mongolia.

Songsheng wakes up, dabbing his eyes with the rose-embroidered handkerchief. “Yuying,” he whispers. A guard from the labor camp orders Songsheng to report to the commander’s quarters. There, he receives instructions to board a train to Beijing but offers no reason for the transfer. Songsheng anxiously travels for hours, “fearing the wolf in front and the tiger behind.” Upon arrival, a gentleman greets him and takes him to an office building in Beijing’s western suburbs.

An old man instructs Songsheng to keep his important mission confidential: translating English materials for Chairman Mao, including Richard Nixon’s book, Six Crises, in preparation for the American president’s first visit to China.  

Newly plucked from a desert hell, Songsheng reunites with Yuying and their two sons, and later Grandaunt and his parents.

In time, the doors open to fulfill his father’s prediction: a highway of opportunity for the master of English. Songsheng travels to the United States in 1981 and starts using Stephen as his first name. He works with major corporations to establish business and trade relations between the two great countries, including the first US-China joint venture, Beijing Jeep. From 1991, he starts his own businesses in China, becoming a welcomed “red capitalist” and completing unfulfilled dreams of his father in the stunning cycle.

On a trip to Hong Kong, a stunningly beautiful young woman approaches Stephen. He feels inexplicably drawn to her. She introduces herself simply as Melody, a journalist interested in writing a personal profile on him.

Over time and infrequent meetings, they grow to admire each other, but always in the back of his mind, she and her natural sweet fragrance reminds him of some other time in his life. Finally, he shares the story of his life, his childhood sweetheart, and their opera performance.

“What was her name?” Melody asks. When Stephen says “Lifen,” Melody bolts for the bathroom, later explaining her reaction was due to stomach cramps.

The next morning, Melody asks him if he hates the Red Guards who ransacked his family’s home and burned their treasures.

“I used to, but then I realized that most of them were deceived and misled, caught up in the craziness of the Cultural Revolution.” He confesses, however, to not being able to forgive the captain and guards who beat his parents. Melody hangs her head.

In early 2009, Stephen and Yuying return to Beijing. He receives a cell phone call from Melody, asking him to come to her house. Melody, wearing a black armband, opens the door. She cries uncontrollably. “My mother died,” she finally says.

To Stephen’s great astonishment, he sees gorgeous framed photographs of Auntie Cheng and Lifen. “Pointing to Lifen’s photograph, Melody says, “That is my mother.” She tells him about her plans for a memorial service. “I want you to perform ‘Farewell My Concubine’ with me as a tribute to my mother and grandmother.” 

Memories of his last days with Lifen rush back. “May I put my daughter in your care if anything happens to me?” she asks. Stephen turns to Melody. “Let us fulfill your mother’s wish. From now on, I would love for you to be Yuying’s and my daughter.” She remains silent and promises to call him again. 

The next day, Melody takes Stephen to a sanitarium to visit an old man, wasting away. He is her father, the same Captain Wang who, briefly with the Red Guards, beat Stephen’s parents and stole some of their precious artifacts.

 Later in the week, following an emotional performance at the memorial service, through tears, Melody thanks the audience for coming. Behind the curtain, she turns and leaves without saying a word to Stephen. When he leaves, he discovers an envelope containing an unsigned note:                           

Absence is to love what wind is to fire.

It puts out the small and inflames the great.