like a dream. Second Uncle reached out a trembling hand and touched Shenshen's gray hair. He felt love and gratitude overflowing his heart. Holding Second Uncle's hand in her own, Shenshen could not help crying. But this time her tears were happy ones. When she saw that Second Uncle's hair had turned as white as snow at the age of fifty-nine and the lines on his forehead were as deep as if carved by a knife, she knew what he had gone through all these years and her heart melted with love and pity. In short, they lived happily ever after.
But that is a fairy tale. In the real world, the reunion of Shenshen and Second Uncle turned out quite a disaster. Maybe too many years’ separation had killed Shenshen's love for Second Uncle? The old man who came back in the end was so different from the young man she remembered that he was a stranger. No! Worse than a stranger! He was the cause of all her suffering for so many years. She couldn't forget it! She couldn't forgive him!
On the other hand, I don't know if there was any love left in Second Uncle's heart for Shenshen. Perhaps this time it was merely a marriage of convenience for him, and he still bore her grudges because she had betrayed him when things were the most difficult for him. She had put salt on his bleeding wound, adding frost on top of snow. Maybe his love for her died on the salt farm where he was abandoned by the whole world for more than two decades.
Anyway, after they remarried, quarrels broke out day and night. The husband was irritable. The wife was explosive. Both were like smoldering volcanoes ready to erupt. As for the children, who were not children anymore, Little Ox grew up as stubborn as an ox. He had remained loyal to his father all these years. For this, he got himself into trouble and was criticized at his work unit. Once he almost became a counterrevolutionary himself. But nothing could shake his devotion to his old man. While he stuck to his choice as an act of defiance, did he really know his father as a person?
Little Dragon, on the other hand, could not help it that he hated his father. Perhaps because he was too young, he did not remember the evenings his father took us window-shopping or showed us martial arts? All he remembered were Second Uncle's faults and failures.
When he grew up he was bullied by other kids and his father was never there to protect him. Later he was not allowed to join the Communist Youth League, nor could he wear a Red Guard's armband, all because his father was a counterrevolutionary. Shenshen's divorce did not help much. Little Dragon was still called “son of a dog” by his fellow students. Later when he tried to find a job, he did not have a father who could open a “back door” for him. Instead, he was rejected on account of his father's political problems.
So how could he love him? It was all the old man's fault that his life had been miserable! Even though years later Little Dragon found out that it was not his father's fault and that the old man had loved him, it was no use. The resentment had taken root in his heart. The anger in his blood would not listen to reason. It exploded each time a small disagreement occurred between them. Then others in the family would take sides. Words were hurled back and forth like lances. Old wounds were opened up. New cuts were made. It was fortunate that Nainai did not live till the eighties to witness all this.
Seeing this made me wonder about the age-old Chinese metaphor: broken mirror be joined. How could it describe a happy reunion? A broken mirror is broken. When its pieces are joined together, the cracks will still show and the rough edges can cut like razor blades. But for some reason Second Uncle and Shenshen's marriage went on. Maybe there is still hope that someday they will run out of animosity and the whole family will be at peace once again.
7
The Chinese CIA
After we moved into our new home in the western suburb of Beijing in 1957, I soon forgot the troubles Nainai and Second Uncle were having. My life at my parents’ work unit was filled with new thrills as well as new difficulties.
Our new home was located in a huge yard, many times larger than Nainai's compound. People called this place jiguan, which means mechanism. Later I learned that the jiguan we lived in was the Ministry of Investigation under the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. In other words, it was the Chinese CIA.
So of course everything in this big yard was a state secret. I remember once Father called me into his room and warned me that I should never tell a stranger the names of anyone who worked in the big yard or anything else. “For those are all state secrets,” he said with a seriousness in his voice.
That was exciting! That made me proud of my parents! In my imagination I compared them to those brave underground workers whom I saw in movies and heard about in stories. They all had important secrets to keep from the enemies. These secrets they would not reveal even though they were tortured and executed. Only hateful traitors would be afraid and sell out their comrades. As I grew up, I admired those unyielding revolutionary heroes and despised the traitors.
Yet the big yard did not look like the places I saw in the movies: dark, dangerous, filled with instruments of torture and stained by blood. If my memory is reliable, it was quite beautiful. When we first moved in, a few old barracks dating back to the warlord period still existed, testifying to the history of this place. Ancient weeping willows combed the sunshine. Large rose bushes covered with pink flowers stood among evergreen bushes. Cream-colored office buildings were of Russian styles. People called them by nicknames such as Airplane Building and Horseshoe Buildings. Beyond them, the western hills looked almost unreal, just a touch of blue against the blue sky.
Outside the yard were acres and acres of rice and lotus fields. “The red lotus is for seedpod; the white lotus is for roots.” Aunty used to tell me this. As for the lotus leaves, she used them to cover the rice porridge that she cooked over low heat. The porridge she made was light green with a fragrance.
Although it was serene, the big yard was no Peach Blossom Spring, where the people lived in nature without the knowledge of any kind of government. The big yard was guarded by fully armed People's Liberation Army soldiers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Anyone who wanted to come in or go out had to show a pass with their photo. Even children were no exception.
Only we often forgot to bring the passes. When this happened, we would try to slip through the gate, among a crowd, or behind the guards’ backs. Sometimes we succeeded. If we got caught, the soldiers would send us into the reception room, a brick house behind their sentry box. The old man there was very kind. He knew everybody's parents. When we came in, he would ask us how our parents were lately and then ring the bell. This time the soldiers would have to let us go in.
In those days we children were a lot of trouble for the soldiers. If somewhere there was an opening in the fence or a way to climb over the wall, soon the secret information spread out and we all took advantage of it without scruples. Usually these were shortcuts leading to the nearby Summer Palace where we went swimming in summer and ice-skating in winter.
The rest of the year I was in school. In 1957 I became a student in West Garden Elementary School, located just outside the big yard. Most of the students there were from inside the yard. Their parents were government officials who were called revolutionary cadres in China. Others were from a nearby hospital named Chinese Medicine Research Institute. Of the fifty students in my class, few were from workers’ families.
Looking back on it, I think a sense of superiority already existed among students who were from the big yard. But it was vague. Most of us were not as conscious of our parents’ positions as cadres’ children are today. Maybe it was because in the fifties people in China still believed Chairman Mao's teachings: “All our cadres, regardless of their ranks, are servants of the people.” “The people are the masters of the country.” “We should serve the people wholeheartedly.”
I remember once a girl in our class was ridiculed because her father was an ambassador. In Chinese, the word “ambassador” (dashi)
