In all the official media, dinner conversations, and neighborhood gossip, attention was suddenly centered on strange-sounding names, such as “Nee Ke Soong” (Nixon), “Hua Shung Dung” (Washington), and “Mei Guo” (America, or literally, “Beautiful Country”).

  What had happened?

  For all those years of revolution—practically my entire life—Chairman Mao had taught us that America was an “imperialistic paper tiger” that exploited the rest of us, explaining perfectly why we were so poor. So why was Chairman Mao hosting our “paper tiger” enemy as state guests and signing an agreement with them? What was Mao up to? We were all puzzled, even though we were taught never to question the wisdom of our great leaders. Mother was more concerned how this visit would affect our lives. She saw every change as a hopeful sign that Father might be freed so we could have a normal family life again. Being twelve years old, I didn’t see any connection at all. To me, Nixon was just a useless newspaper image, exotic and mysterious. His rotten imperialist country was as abstract and distant to me as the moon, although I admit I was surprised that he didn’t seem that much different from us. As the head of a country that had exploited the rest of the world for decades, he should have been clothed in pure gold. I also half-expected him to have long, sharp teeth and some sort of horns on his head, which would fit his evil “paper tiger” image better.

  “Don’t forget the newspaper,” Mother reminded us every time Ping and I were getting ready to visit Father. “Tell him to read everything. It’s vital that he knows what’s going on right now, especially something that is happening so close to him.”

  Mother meant “close” literally. Nixon’s motorcade went right past Dong Hu Road when his entourage arrived a couple of days earlier, and the “Shanghai Communiqué,” a historic pact to improve relations between the United States and China, was signed in the Jinjiang Hotel, only two blocks away from where Father was detained.

  “So the lao mei have returned,” Father commented calmly, as he stared at the photograph of Premier Zhou Enlai and President Nixon. “I guess they are not so bad after all.”

  I heard a touch of sarcasm in Father’s voice.

  “Why did Dad call them the ‘Good Old Americans,’ as if they were friends?” I asked Mother casually as I swept past her in the kitchen. “It sounded like he knew them before … and even liked them.”

  “Watch what you say,” Mother said, lowering her voice as she stir-fried some shredded cabbage, her face reddened by the rising steam. “You will get into trouble talking like that in public.”

  When she covered her wok, lowered the heat, and turned around, I knew she was upset.

  “An Chu Sun,” she directed her angry voice at Father as if he were there to hear. “Haven’t you learned anything in all these years of detention!? Maybe I shouldn’t send you any more newspapers.”

  “But Mom, he only whispered it. No one heard us!” I defended him. “You know I’m big now and would never say the wrong things outside.”

  Mother stared at me for a while and then nodded her head. She knew she could trust me.

  “You know that your father was a charcoal boy when he was little,” Mother whispered to me even though there was no one nearby. “He used to make deliveries to foreigners, as well as local people, and that included an old American couple. They were nice to him, used to give him food, and taught him English—phrases like ‘thank you’ and ‘good-bye.’ Your father liked Americans. He should be careful with what he says, though. Dong Hu Road #20 is not the place to say whatever you want.”

  Mother didn’t want the Americans to bring Father more political trouble. We had plenty of it already.

  “How about you,” I decided to ask her. “Do you like the Americans?”

  “America is not at all like what they have taught you in school,” Mother answered after a moment of hesitation. “Strictly between you and me, my birth father—your real grandfather—sailed to America many times in the 1930s and 40s and brought home wonderful stories and things. He was a first mate on ocean-going freighters. We were very well-off then.”

  Now, I understood why Mother never contributed her stories to my “bitter-family-past” school reports: She didn’t have any!

  Soon enough, the American delegation was gone, together with all the excitement it brought to our lives. Father still stayed in detention, though, and Mother was disappointed that the “Shanghai Communiqué” didn’t bring the change to our lives that she had hoped. As for me, the Americans’ visit helped me uncover some of my family secrets. Now, I knew we were not always poor. The image of my grandfather on a large ocean-going ship brought America a lot closer to me than the moon. America was part of my family history, but of course I couldn’t tell this to anyone, not even to my own sisters.

  I never thought of America as a “paper tiger” again.

  Chapter XII

  If Winter Comes,

  Can Spring Be Far Behind?

  The following years were sad ones for the country. Our founding fathers passed away one after another, including Chairman Mao, Zhou Enlai, and General Zhu De. They were the people who built and ran the nation. Every day, they instructed us what to do. We were taught to believe that they were the navigators for the Chinese people without whom life couldn’t go on. A popular song at the time captured this feeling:

  Ocean-sailing depends on navigation

  Everything lives because of the sun

  After rain, plants grow

  Mao Zedong’s ideas make our revolution possible.

  Fish have to stay in water

  Flowers come from plants

  People like us rely on the Communist Party …

  Now that our party leaders were gone, we didn’t know how to go on.

  When Mao died, I saw people, men and women, old and young, weeping with grief as they walked down the streets. I heard that factories were being closed down so workers could prepare mourning services. Farmers put down their sickles and raised money to buy train fare to send one lucky villager to Beijing on their behalf to view our great leader for the last time. Some people even stabbed their own fingers so they could write mourning posters in blood, declaring their red loyalty in both word and color.

  But with his death, some of the competition over who was a true Maoist died down also. Political infighting gave way to emotion and nostalgia. We were no longer brave revolutionary soldiers, but orphaned children, feeling sorry for ourselves and our country. Our national flag flew at half-mast, and monotonous mourning music filled every broad avenue and tiny alley. All we heard and read for weeks were eulogies. Then, came the funeral days when all of China gathered like a large family and stood still and silent, sensing the coming changes for the Middle Kingdom.

  Even though Mao Zedong was supposed to be “the red, red sun in our hearts that never sets,” we knew his death would bring change. We were especially worried about who would succeed him and become the head of our country. When the radio stations stopped broadcasting all their usual programs to report on Mao’s death, we listened closely to every detail: Who visited and consoled the immediate family members, who made eulogy speeches, and who held official meetings afterwards at the Great Hall of the People, for the person who appeared most on the national stage might become our next leader.

  During the mourning period for Chairman Mao, we wore only the colors black and white. We put on black armbands and wore white in our hair as if a member of our immediate family had died. Led by our teachers and surrounded by large portraits draped in black cloth, we read farewells and staged our own versions of mourning services in our classrooms. Our school gathered us all in the playground and held another larger, more formal service, complete with wreaths and banners we had worked on for days.

  It was the saddest time I had ever lived through. I didn’t know that grown men could cry. But they did. Where there was mourning music playing, crowds wept. On my way to and from school, I stopped when I saw local residents gathered around a street corner, watching them cover a wall with black-and-white slogans and posters.

  “Cry for our great leader Chairman Mao Zedong!”

  “Chairman Mao, you will always be the reddest sun in our heart.”

  Some calligraphic characters were the size of a window and the air reeked with the acrid smell of fresh ink.

  “Chairman Mao, why did you leave us? Now, we’re orphans!” an elderly woman wailed, stirring the crowd.

  “Chairman Mao, you gave us our country!”

  “You gave our nation dignity!”

  “Chairman Mao, take us with you!”

  People talked and cried at the same time. I stood in awe as tears streamed down my own cheeks.

  One day, after a memorial service in a local park, I happened to walk behind two elderly women and overheard them talking about how the “yin world” messengers came and collected the leaders of China and those who had served them well. I was terrified and intrigued by the thought that there was a yin world (yin being a dark, cold, life-draining force), and that it had agents who could carry off even the greatest among us. I followed them, listening with chills running down my spine.

  “The yin world messengers are invisible and powerful, you know. See how fast they collected all our great leaders?” one white-haired woman said as she limped along and pointed her walking stick at a Mao portrait in the distance. “They can lift us up with a finger and take us away just like that.”

  “I guess so,” the other answered fearfully. “I know they usually carry people away in batches, one master and a lot of little people—all sharing the same boat, as they say. We never know when it’s our turn.”

  “Speaking of that, did you hear Xiao Ma’s mother-in-law passed away yesterday?”

  “That lucky old woman, she wasn’t even sick. But she got picked to serve our great leader in the yin world.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Why is she better than us? What could she do?”

  “I’ve heard she’s a wonderful cook and came from Chairman Mao’s hometown.”

  “Oh.”

  The limping woman was finally quiet.

  “You never know,” the other continued. “Chairman Mao may still pick more followers … the lucky ones, I mean.”

  From their tone of voice, both of them were extremely envious of that dead woman for her good luck, dying so soon after Chairman Mao.

  I was amazed by the special power Chairman Mao still possessed, even after his death. Could he really choose the people to die for him? My great grandmother once said that I had lucky stars over me. Could Chairman Mao pick me this time to die and follow him? Lots of children fought under him during the Japanese War and the War of Liberation. He called them his hong xiao guei—Little Red Devils. I, myself, was one of his “Little Red Guards” during the Cultural Revolution …

  Suddenly, my lucky stars didn’t seem so lucky anymore. I felt spooked by my own thoughts. I was afraid messengers from the dark world would come and snatch me. Since they were invisible, how could I tell whether or not they were here already to get me? I didn’t want to die, even if it meant having the honor of serving Chairman Mao. I wanted to get away from those two old witches, but my feet and curiosity kept me two steps behind.

  I always knew what yin and yang meant, and yet it had never occurred to me until then that we lived in the bright, warm yang world, and when we passed away, we would go to the dark yin world. In a way, of course, it did mean we could never really die. I liked that idea!

  I was anxious to hear more from the two old women. but much to my disappointment, they fell quiet, so I grew impatient and ran past them. My mind kept on exploring the fascinating ideas of yin and yang for the rest of the trip home.

  What is the yin world like? Is it always dark? Does everyone have to go there when they die? Can people see anything if it is eternally dark? Will Chairman Mao be able to use his loyalists to run a country and start another revolution in that “other world?”

  I knew one thing for sure: The yin world was too dark for its people to use their red revolution flags and banners. I didn’t see how color would be of any use in pitch blackness.

  When I got home, I bombarded Mother with all my questions.

  “Where in the world did you get these ideas?” she asked, alarmed.

  I told her but she dismissed them as silly.

  “That yin-yang stuff is superstitious nonsense,” she said bluntly. “It’s from the old times. You grew up in the Cultural Revolution. Haven’t you read enough of Chairman Mao’s quotations to know that our world is about the here and now? Those old stories—fortune-telling, dragons, demons, fengshui—they’re not only ridiculous, they’re forbidden. There are no yin-yang worlds!”

  I was speechless. I wanted to ask Mother how then my dying great grandmother could predict the future with her last breath and say things that she didn’t know, like that Mother was having a hard life, even though she had no knowledge at all that Father was imprisoned. I wanted to back up my argument with a Mao quotation, as my teachers taught me to do, but I couldn’t come up with one, for Chairman Mao never believed in ghosts and spirits. The only spirit he believed in was the revolutionary spirit. I suddenly remembered how he told us to sweep “all the ox ghosts and snake gods” into the dustpan. It was useless. Between Mao and Mother, my new-found worlds of yin and yang crumbled and disappeared like the old China itself.

  The old ways were not the only things to change and disappear. The Gang of Four, Chairman Mao’s political confidants and close friends, was arrested, and sent to prison for “political crimes.” Among them was Mao’s own wife! The last ten years of the Cultural Revolution began to be questioned. I was in shock. If Chairman Mao were alive, would he be sent to prison, too? For the first time in my life, I realized that our government, the Communist Party, and even Mao Zedong, were not perfect. They made bad decisions and did wrong, too. I was still too young to connect “the mistakes of the past” everyone was talking about with the persecution of my family, my father’s seven-year detention, the inhuman physical torture, and the loss of my sisters’ (and my) childhoods.

  Now, we cheered our new leader, Deng Xiaoping, an old Communist Party veteran who was himself persecuted for being counter-revolutionary. He returned to the political stage with lots of confidence and energy. His political speeches started to replace Chairman Mao’s quotations on the radio waves and in the newspapers. I was even able to catch a glimpse of him talking in a metal box called television.

  At the time, well-off families in my neighborhood started to buy their own Japanese-made, 9-inch, black-and-white TV sets and enjoy the luxury of private shows right at home. My sisters and I brought our own stools and chairs and joined the crowd gathered in front of a little television, set up by the neighborhood committee at the end of our lane. The reception was bad even in our central city location. Black and white images were often distorted by trembling, sometimes flying, horizontal lines, and voices were swallowed up by high-pitched static, while the grown-ups tried to maneuver an oversized, spider-like antenna into the right position.

  When night fell, we sat and watched “free shows” ranging from serious political newscasts to entertaining dramas, concerts, and TV series that were still a novelty. Children often gathered in the very front with their little stools, savoring their candies, popped rice, and other treats. Women were the loudest spectators: They competed with the TV by cracking roasted melon seeds, exchanging greetings, passing around rumors, and commenting on the shows while the men shared their cigarettes, puffing away quietly in the back. For a while, the whole neighborhood lived harmoniously, like a big family, in front of a communal television set. After years of avoiding each other for fear of saying the wrong thing, sitting, eating, and laughing together with our neighbors felt good. It made us feel as if life was finally getting better.

  But the best news by far came to us in its most dreaded form: a frighteningly official knock at the door. I opened it, and there was Father with all his books and belongings, accompanied by two smiling-faced men. They called Father “Comrade Sun” and were eager to help him with his bags. Mother made a big pot of extra-long noodles to celebrate our family reunion. She said those long noodles would bind us together so Father would never be sent away again. Everybody was happy.

  The Cultural Revolution was over. The multitudes of flapping red flags—the very symbols of the revolution—dissipated like summer clouds. Stripped of its rosy adornment, Shanghai looked strangely naked. Our eyes were used to the sight of flags. They came in strings of little fluttering triangles or rectangles of all sizes, in plain red or decorated with golden stars and tassels, hammers and sickles, or the names of various political groups. They surrounded our buildings, classrooms, and public buses, and decorated our streets and alleys. At the age of six, we swore allegiance under them to join the Little Red Guards. Afterward, we loyally carried them over our shoulders at parades and faithfully stood by them during public gatherings. They were sacred for almost a decade and now they were gone, just like that, and no one complained about their absence at all.

  Mao jackets and caps gradually disappeared, too. The once politically correct colors of red, white, army green, and navy blue lost their popularity. Without fanfare, people quietly put away the revolutionary wardrobes that had been part of their lives for decades. They eagerly began shopping in the unfamiliar territory of fashion. Suddenly, frills, bows, ribbons, suits, tank tops, miniskirts, and high heels became the hottest commodities on the market.