big lesson for Chinese zhishi fenzi—those with a college education and beyond—who had been rather outspoken and rebellious since the turn of the century. After the campaign, people began to watch what they said, even among close friends and family members.
In olden days there was a saying, “Diseases go in by the mouth and disasters come out of the mouth.” Now all of a sudden people discovered that it held a great deal of wisdom. Words wrongly said or said to the wrong people were time bombs, hanging over one's head, quietly ticking away. When they exploded, they'd blow one's hopes, happiness, career, and family all to pieces.
Was this why after the Anti-Right Movement, fewer friends came to visit Third Aunt on weekends? When they came, the veranda was no longer such a comfortable place for them. They much preferred to have tea inside Third Aunt's room. Third Aunt was a quiet person even before the campaign. Afterwards she was a silent person, who devoted herself to her work and her flowers. By and by, handsome young men no longer came to visit her. She did not seem to mind it. For instead of going out to meet new people, she just stayed home and remained single.
After the campaign was over, we moved out of Nainai's house. Father told Nainai his work unit had given him an apartment right next to where he and Mother worked. While this was true, it probably was not the whole truth. Today as I look back on it, it seems obvious that after the Anti-Right Movement, the political atmosphere had changed. It was no longer appropriate for Father and Mother, who were both Communist Party members, to live in Nainai's house.
The political pressure was invisible, but if someone were foolish enough to ignore it, the consequences could be very serious. As Confucius put it, “A person without foresight will have to deal with emergencies.” My parents were wise. They knew what they had to do, yet they did not want to hurt Nainai's feelings. So Father came up with such an excuse.
Nainai accepted the excuse, saying now winter was coming, it would indeed be more convenient if we lived at my parents’ work unit. She did not press us to stay. On the contrary, she made it easy for Father to leave. Years later when I reflected on this, it occurred to me that Nainai probably knew quite well why my parents had to move out. For unlike the other old women, she read newspapers everyday. Though she never talked about politics, she was not ignorant about the larger world. Yet she seemed unaware of it. That was my Nainai, who never embarrassed anyone.
After we moved out, though Father took us back to visit Nainai on weekends, Nainai's perfectly happy days were over. On the one hand, she missed us. On the other hand, she worried about Second Uncle. In a few years, the news that came from him went from bad to worse.
When Second Uncle first arrived at the salt farm that was a labor camp on the bank of Bohai Sea, he worked extremely hard, as if he were not a scholar but someone who had been doing physical labor all his life. He hoped that in this way he would convince the leaders that he had reformed himself, so they would allow him to go back to his family in Beijing. But in those years it was not easy for a Rightist to make a good impression on anyone, least of all the leaders at the labor camp. Thus four years passed and his unremitting efforts met with little success.
Then in 1962, one morning suddenly all Chinese newspapers reported on the front page that the Nationalists in Taiwan declared that they were going to fight their way back to the mainland. The editorials even warned people against a third world war, because if in China the Communists and the Nationalists were to fight, the Russians and the Americans would get involved. A world war could be triggered and atom bombs used. Quickly the whole country was mobilized. Old people and children were sent away from big cities. The army and young people were ready to fight.
Such preparation for war upset Second Uncle. He became extremely anxious. All the horrid scenes he had witnessed and the dreadful stories he had heard in the early forties when he traveled from Beijing to the southwest came to life in front of his eyes.
Bombs rained down from the sky. Fire shot up and engulfed homes. People burned to death in it, their bodies as black as charcoal. Those who escaped from the ocean of fire ran away, in a human torrent. Suddenly a hail of bullets came from nowhere, cutting people down like reeds. The wounded were robbed and left there to die. Women were raped, children abandoned . . .
If a war broke out while he was so far away from Beijing, how would Nainai, Shenshen, and the boys cope with all this? Second Uncle dared not think any further. For several nights he couldn't close his eyes. Too much apprehension made him forget that he should be cautious. He wrote a letter to Shenshen, discussing what they should do in case there was a war.
The letter never reached Shenshen. It was intercepted by the political workers at the labor camp. They opened it and read it, as if they had never heard of the 1954 Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which stipulated that the secrecy of private letters of Chinese citizens was protected by law. Or maybe they thought Second Uncle, being a Rightist, was not a citizen anymore. The letter became evidence of Second Uncle's yearning for the Nationalists to come back. Thus the conclusion: he was a hidden counterrevolutionary.
When the verdict was read to Second Uncle, he did not know whether he should laugh or wail. He wanted to shout at the top of his voice that the war was exactly what he had dreaded and if he could, he would do anything on earth to prevent it. But he knew it would be in vain. Who would believe his words now? He, a counterrevolutionary as well as a Rightist!
“Of course he tells lies! Of course he wants the Nationalists to come back! In his sleep, he must be dreaming of his lost paradise. When he is awake, he is secretly planning crimes: putting poison into food at a cafeteria, blowing up a crowded department store, setting fire to a hospital ... A counterrevolutionary is a monster who enjoys killing innocent people!” This was what people everywhere in China thought of a counterrevolutionary in the early sixties. How could he convince people that he was different? Not if he had a hundred mouths all over his body. Even if he jumped into the Yellow River, he could not wash himself clean.
Life's logic sometimes is absurd. Second Uncle's concern for his family soon made him a man without a family. When the bad news reached Beijing, Shenshen shut herself in her room and cried. But the next day when she came out, she was calm. She went straight to the district court and asked for a divorce. As this was considered a revolutionary act, the court soon approved it and gave her the custody of her two children. She did this of her own free will. Nobody put pressure on her. Yet everybody knew that if she did not divorce her counterrevolutionary husband, she and her children would have no future. By then, she had given up all hope that someday Second Uncle would come back to Beijing as an innocent man.
But Second Uncle did come back to Beijing an innocent man in 1980. In his file, the official conclusion said it was a mistake to label him a Rightist in 1957 and likewise it was another mistake to label him a counterrevolutionary in 1962. Just a couple of mistakes. In 1980, all seemed so simple. Yet in the past, it was so hopelessly complicated. It took the Party twenty-two years to declare that it had made a couple of mistakes about Second Uncle. How many twenty-two years does one have in life?
When Second Uncle returned to Beijing, he remarried Shenshen, who had never moved out of Nainai's house. Throughout all the years, she had remained true to him. Moreover, she had brought up the two boys all by herself. If this happened in old China, people would build a chastity gateway for her and the entire neighborhood would be honored. Nowadays chastity gateways are out of the question. Yet anyone who knew about Second Uncle and Shenshen felt very happy for them.
Traditionally, we Chinese loved da tuan yuan, grand happy endings, to our stories. Tragedy was not to our taste. Thus I would like to say that the reunion of Second Uncle and Shenshen after twenty-two years was blissful. So blissful that it would move a stony statue to tears.
Little Ox and Little Dragon rushed forward to embrace their father. With tears in their eyes they told the old man that they had loved him secretly through all these years.
