The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China Read online

  Copyright © 1980 by Yuan-tsung Chen

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Chen, Yuan-tsung, 1932-

  The dragon’s village.

  I. Title.

  PZ.C51794Dr 1980 [PR9272.9.C514] 823 79-3315

  eISBN: 978-0-307-83194-1

  v3.1

  To my husband and my son

  For invaluable encouragement and support, I would like to thank Harrison Salisbury and Jay Leyda; for incisive questioning and advice, Wendy Wolf.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  1. To the Sound of Guns

  2. A Glimpse of the Other Side

  3. I Choose My Future

  4. Journey to the Northwest

  5. Cold Welcome in Longxiang

  6. The Women

  7. Meeting

  8. The First Sacrifice

  9. Night Shadows

  10. Criticism and Self-Criticism

  11. The Search

  12. Two Confrontations

  13. In a Grove of Trees

  14. Electioneering

  15. Shattered Jade

  16. By a Grave, in a Wineshop

  17. The Election

  18. Three Deaths

  19. Vacillation

  20. Riding a Tiger

  21. Help from a Broken Shoe

  22. Getting at the Truth

  23. Spring Hunger

  24. Land to the Tiller

  About the Author

  Foreword

  With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 came a redistribution of land—the “land reform.” To millions of Chinese peasants who had labored for centuries in direst poverty, with neither land nor hope, the agrarian revolution meant at last a means for them to support themselves—and hope. It brought to some as well a new revolutionary ardor to sustain them on the further slow and difficult journey that they faced.

  In 1950 I was eighteen years old. I had just gotten my first real job, at the Central Film Bureau in Peking. The following year, I joined many other urban workers—artists, writers, and office workers in the countryside with the peasants, carrying out the land reform. Over the next twenty years we lived and worked for months at a time in villages scattered across the vastness of China.

  This novel is based on my experiences during those years. Like Ling-ling, I went first to Gansu Province, in the Northwest, an area as foreign to me—young and city-bred—as the moon. This is the source of most of the incidents and events described; the characters are people I met, knew, or just glimpsed in passing. They are real people. This story is fiction, but it is true.

  Yuan-tsung Chen

  1

  To the Sound of Guns

  As I look back at it now, the cool unconcern of my family and friends—and I do not exclude myself—was astounding. We were in the middle of a bloody civil war that had paused, but only briefly, to “discuss peace” while each side prepared for the final, furious round. A thin line of Guomindang government troops was dug in on the southern bank of the Yangzi River, braced for the expected onslaught of the Communist-led insurgent army massing on the northern bank. A million men were getting ready to slaughter each other just a few hours’ drive from Shanghai where my aunt and I sat at our well-laid breakfast table waiting to hear my uncle declaim his latest poem.

  My uncle was handsome, well built, and worldly wise. He had married my aunt for her dowry; after twenty years, in spite of—or perhaps because of—civil wars, invasion, and revolution, he had more than tripled our fortunes. Now the problems of meeting the right people and making money were no longer pressing. We lived in a comfortable villa in Shanghai’s old French Concession and he had taken to cultivating his poetic talent.

  He was proud of his lyrics and liked to read them to us after dinner, particularly if we had guests. “I have a new poem,” he would announce at a pause in the conversation, and without waiting for an invitation he would recite it. If it was on the subject of love or beauty he would dedicate it with an Italianate gesture of his outstretched arms to the most attractive lady in the room. If the guests were more numerous than his inspirations, sometimes the same poem would have to suffice for several women in turn.

  As the old Chinese saying has it, “You listen to the man who feeds you.” So my aunt and I—they had adopted me as a child when my parents died—listened and, when we had guests, led the applause.

  My uncle’s muse usually arrived on Sunday mornings before breakfast. My aunt and I would wait in the breakfast room, scanning the newspaper while he took his time muttering and humming to himself in bed. When he joined us he would have his poem jotted down on his scratch pad. But this Sunday morning, in February 1949, he came to the table empty-handed. Inspiration struck only in the middle of breakfast. He halted his chopsticks in midair, the little jade oval of a pigeon’s egg delicately held. Then he gulped the mouthful down, pushed away his bowl, and with a faraway look in his eyes began to tap rhythmically on the table. My aunt motioned me with her hand to continue eating and not disturb him, and soon we were rewarded. With a cry of triumph and satisfaction, he thumped the table with his clenched fist. The poem was born. I can’t remember the beginning, but it ended with the lines:

  We may waver, we may falter, yet we march against the foe Glory to the people armed with pick and hoe!

  The poem so delighted my aunt that she decided then and there to give a special dinner party to introduce it to our friends and acquaintances. “It hits just the right note of democracy,” she said.

  For the next week she was so occupied with preparations for the hastily summoned party that I hardly saw her at all. I ran errands for her but I had no idea what was really in her mind until just before the party when she called me into the sanctum of her dressing room. The air was heavy with the scent of perfumes, and the subdued light hinted at the exchange of intimate confidences, but she asked me abruptly, “Ling-ling, have you read today’s newspaper?”

  I was standing by her side, and the big, three-leaved mirror reflected the two of us in multiple images. My mind had floated off, daydreaming: “My long, arching eyebrows are my pride.” I bent over and kissed her cheek before answering, “Yes. But what is special in it?”

  “This may be the last dinner party we’ll ever give here.”

  “But the Guomindang and Communist Parties are talking peace now!”

  “That’s just another way of making war. Both are trying to win people over to their side. Several of our friends have been approached by … uh … certain persons. Quite a few are talking to both sides while they make their plans. But today’s newspapers report that everything may come to a head in the next few days.”

  “And Uncle?”

  “He has consulted Mr. Li.”

  “Uncle trusts Mr. Li. He can do what Mr. Li does.”

  “That’s not so simple. Mr. Li has a large family. He doesn’t have to put all his eggs into one basket. It seems that he himself will stay on in the mainland. His younger brother will go to Taiwan to open a branch store. And Third Brother will set up a factory in Hong Kong. But we’re in a different position—there’re only the three of us in the family, and two are helpless women.�
��

  “Auntie, would you be happier if I were a boy?”

  “You still can’t forget the servants’ gossip, can you? When you were little, they used to tease you: ‘Your auntie would be happier if you were a boy. A son can bring glory to his parents.’ So you wanted to show you were as good as any boy. You fought them. When you came home after school, you boasted about how you had jumped higher and run faster or even eaten more than the boys. That’s a child’s world.” She fell silent. “Now, this is a grownup’s world for you, and it’s a man’s world.”

  She stretched out her fingers and for a moment silently contemplated the glittering pink nails.

  “How do you like this nail polish?” she asked, looking at my reflection in the mirror.

  “Perhaps it’s a bit extreme.”

  My aunt considered this for a moment and then silently nodded her head. Then she stoppered the small, pink bottle and put it carefully aside in a drawer filled with other little bottles of various shades of red and pink. Slowly closing the drawer, she thrust another question at me.

  “Young Bob Lu and you are suited to each other. Isn’t that so? If we combine forces with the Lu family we’ll have more bargaining power with both sides. A Communist intermediary has talked to your uncle and tried to persuade him to stay on in Shanghai and carry on the milling business here. But for the moment we don’t say yes and we don’t say no. We are friendly to everyone. Who knows? They may still form a coalition government. However, I would like you to pay special attention tonight to Madame Lu and her son.”

  “Auntie, may I wear my new earrings?”

  “At your age you have no need of artificial embellishments,” she replied with sudden sharpness, standing up and beginning to take off her dressing gown. I knew I was dismissed.

  But just as I was leaving, she called me back. Sitting down again in front of the vanity’s mirrors, she cupped her chin in her hands and looked at me thoughtfully.

  “Auntie, there’s something more you wish to tell me?” I coaxed.

  “You don’t think much of your uncle’s poems, do you? I don’t either.”

  She knew her question puzzled me, as we had always avoided discussing Uncle’s talents. “But it’s his way of relaxing. You know, we’ve gone through hell to establish ourselves in our present position.”

  “Auntie, I’ll do whatever I can to help,” I said, putting my arms around her neck.

  “Sit down.”

  I took a seat on a low hassock.

  Resting her hands on the arms of her chair and looking down at me, she continued: “When you were about six or seven, we nearly lost our business and were on the verge of bankruptcy. I still remember that awful day. Our creditors had set a deadline for us to repay our debts. Your uncle went out to try to raise another loan on a mortgage to save us. I waited and waited, but he didn’t come home. I grew more and more anxious. I wanted desperately to get away from everything. I took you and got on a train for Jiading, half an hour from Shanghai. There was a beautiful old park there, not far from the station. I sat on the grass and you took your shoes off and waded in the shallow water of the pond. You knew nothing of our trouble. You were so happy. You were ‘adventuring.’ You splashed through the water and then climbed up the bank and followed a crooked little path. I got up to follow you to tell you to be careful. But I let you go on adventuring. At the top of the slope was a ruin, the corner of an old fort, overgrown with gnarled old trees, just stumps, their roots exposed among the rocks and rubble. You called me and showed me new shoots of green leaves sprouting from those stumps. I thought it was a happy omen, and I was right.

  “We were lucky. Your uncle got the loan we needed. That was the turning point. But your uncle and I still worked day and night to pay off our debts.”

  “Auntie, you have a good memory.”

  “Not about everything.”

  “But that’s all in the past.”

  “The past? If the Communists take over, they may take everything away from us. They promise not to, but you know what government promises are. They are for the poor, and we are rich. They are polite to us, but behind our backs they still call us ‘bourgeois parasites.’ Parasites!” Auntie smiled disparagingly at the epithet. But soon her dimples disappeared, and heavy lines that I had not seen before on her face appeared. “We must show no fear and we must take necessary precautions. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Auntie.” But in truth I didn’t quite.

  Say what you will, my aunt knew how to arrange a party. The best cooks from the Xin-Ya Restaurant were hired and our drawing room was redecorated. Aunt’s special chairs, Ming dynasty copies in red-brown teakwood, were brought out; two genuine Song dynasty paintings were hung on the wall. Large lanterns decorated with paintings of classical beauties were hung in the hallway. Uncle’s jade carvings were displayed in cabinets, and brocade covers from Suzhou were put on the cushions.

  The guests were also dressed to honor their hosts. Madame Lu, my prospective mother-in-law, whose husband had made his money as senior Chinese comprador for the British Kailuan Mining Corporation, came in all her glory. Her thin, once beautiful face was meticulously made up, and, as on all gala occasions, she had covered her neck, arms, and fingers with emeralds, pearls, and diamonds. Standing tall and statuesque in the center of the room beneath the chandelier, clad in some dark green patterned brocade that befitted her age, she looked like a Christmas tree decorated with small, glittering lights. The party swirled around her.

  After dinner, we returned to the drawing room. Young Bob Lu, lanky and pale-faced, tagged along at my side with his customary air of world-weariness. Even the wine he had drunk had not made him any merrier.

  “Won’t you have some liqueur?” my aunt asked him as she raised her glass to some guest on the other side of the room and silently formed her lips to convey the word “Cheers!” in English.

  “Why yes, thank you,” Bob Lu replied and turned to ask me, “How about you, Ling-ling?” As I nodded yes he moved to the bar cart with the liqueurs.

  “Ling-ling”—my aunt seized this opportunity to prompt me—“you’ve chatted with him too long. Don’t make yourself an easy conquest.”

  Bob Lu returned with two glasses.

  As my aunt sipped her drink she signaled me almost imperceptibly with a glance towards Madame Lu and two other guests who were with her, a lady and a gentleman, all in animated conversation. The lady was short, plump, and vivacious. She alternately whispered some confidence to Madame Lu and then chuckled at her own witticism. Her husband, lean and withdrawn, stood by her side and now and then added a word which, judging from Madame Lu’s demeanor, evidently carried considerable weight. Gossip was that he had just returned from Peking where he had represented a powerful anti-Chiang Kai-shek faction of the Guomindang in peace talks with the Communists. His wife gaily denied this and insisted that he had just taken a rest cure at a northern resort.

  My aunt had left us, so I asked young Bob to excuse me. “Where and when can we meet alone?” he asked me timidly, tracing circles on the carpet with the toe of his patent leather shoe.

  I hesitated, then replied, “In the small study, in an hour.”

  I crossed the room to reach Madame Lu, squeezing through groups of guests and apologizing as I went. Mr. Chang, a banker, was about to take a glass of vermouth from a servant’s tray when a petite beauty put her folded fan over the top of the glass. We went to the same school; she was two years older and was called by the English name Lily. “Enough,” she said imperiously. “You have more important things to do.”

  “Like entertaining you or doing what all the others are doing: deciding their futures? But I have already decided mine,” he said, looking at her intently. He bowed his head obediently and withdrew his outstretched hand. “I would stay on the mainland if I could be certain that the new government will allow people to dress properly. Did you see that latest picture in the newspapers? All their officials are dressed like tramps, and women are dressed up
exactly like men.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I am,” he said as he ran his hand over his mane of jet black hair. “I simply cannot imagine myself in those baggy trousers. To dress properly is a way of life.”

  The latest political gossip was on everyone’s lips, and I moved through a parliament of opinions as I passed each cluster of people. I caught the words of a longtime friend of my uncle’s, a portly textile manufacturer, the smart Mr. Li. He nodded with quick movements of his head to emphasize his points. “Sure, sure enough. You’re right. The Communists are wooing me now, but they’ll kick me around as soon as they’ve consolidated their power. Sure. No doubt about it. But no matter what I do, I’ll be kicked around by someone. Here at least I’ll be kicked around by Chinese who are my fellow countrymen, even though they are Communists.”

  The gentle old man he spoke to agreed: “For my part I intend to live and die here and be buried on my native soil.”

  “I am old, too,” said Mr. Li. “I tell my sons and daughters that if they want to leave China they can take their share of our property and go ahead. They don’t need to worry about me. I’ll keep my share here. If the Communists nationalize my factories, that’s all right. I have plenty of know-how. I went into industry because I thought China could find salvation through industrialization. I’ll help run things for them.” Mr. Li crossed his arms over his stomach, which curved gently beneath his long grey silk Chinese gown. He was a modern textile manufacturer but he still liked to wear a Chinese-style gown over his Western trousers and leather shoes. This symbolic stand against complete westernization expressed his patriotism.

  “That’s all very well,” his companion concurred, then looked a little skeptical as he continued in a slightly lowered voice, “Are you keeping all your share of the property here?”

  Mr. Li smiled an ambiguous smile but made no answer.

  Among his listeners, one man seemed completely out of place. Humming and grinning at the sense and nonsense he heard around him, the genuine concern and wry regrets, he shifted his feet rhythmically back and forth. His eccentricities were well known and tolerated. He was the best highway engineer in the country.