Change the face of China. Catch up with Britain and catch up with America” was the unrealistic slogan. It’s no wonder that the Chinese people warmly embraced a newly released comedy film called Sister Liu. Having experienced the man-made devastation of the late 50s and early 60s, those lucky enough to have survived finally had something to put a smile on their faces.
Strangely parallel to the folk music revival in the west during their tumultuous 1960s, the Chinese movie Sister Liu was based on a well-known traditional folktale, telling the story of a young girl named Sister Liu whose extraordinary singing ability is central to the plot. But instead of this folk revival being a direct expression of the common people as happened in the west, this film was made in the new Communist China as an instrument to further its ideology. As the original version of the folktale’s story line didn’t match Communist ideology any more, the film’s script writers dutifully recreated Sister Liu as a successful fighting singer who dared to laugh at the oppressive landowner and went on to lead a successful campaign against the rich. So art was used to arouse the Chinese people in a time of great trouble, but cleverly the problem was cast within a model of class struggle to deflect any blame away from the government’s disastrous failings.
In the original folktale, Sister Liu’s life ends poetically and tragically. But at the end of the movie she not only survives but finds true love, a fitting reward for someone with true revolutionary spirit. Sister Liu uses her extraordinary singing talent to rebel against the oppressive rich landowner and his like by rallying the poor peasants together around her. The film makes sure that the rich landowner and his false scholar friends are portrayed not just as evil, but also as arrogant and most importantly as ridiculous. It gave the Chinese audience plenty enough to laugh about.
In several scenes in the film, the precious books cherished by the landowner and scholars, and used to build their case for a strong singing competition with Sister Liu and the peasants, are thrown into the river and all intellectuals invited by the landowner for the singing contest are laughed at by the peasants. In another scene when Sister Liu is kidnapped by the landowner and locked away in his mansion, she and the peasant girl servants smash all of the landlord’s porcelain antique collection. While Chinese audiences were enjoying the comedic porcelain smashing scene, few of them could have appreciated the portentous irony that this particular scene and many others in the film such as the wholesale destruction of books of knowledge soon would be repeated in a few years’ time during the Cultural Revolution. And at that time nobody laughed any more.
In the Chinese calendar, 1962 was the year of the third animal to emerge, the honorable Tiger. According to the twelve-year cycle of animals in the Chinese zodiac, people born in the Year of the Tiger are powerful and courageous, full of optimism and determination. At the same time they are deep thinkers, very sensitive and can have great sympathy for people. As a result of these traits, others hold them in high regard and treat them with respect, despite the fact that they can come into conflict with authority or that their generally sound decisions are sometimes arrived at too late. In matters of the heart, Tiger people are often attracted by independent types who are stimulated by their passion and energy, but who can still manage without them. Tiger people need partners who are constant and steady but who quietly pursue their own plans. They are least compatible with Snakes.
In this particular Year of the Tiger, a girl was born to an ordinary family in the county of Juncheng in Shandong, a coastal province situated between Beijing and Shanghai. Composed of vast agricultural fields of garlic, apples, and ginger, Juncheng county was a small, rural jurisdiction, now part of Heze, and far away from any large cities. At that time most of the area was still without electricity. When the sun set, outdoor activity all but ceased, and families retreated into their small houses until the sun rose again the following morning.
The new baby girl was the first child for the couple, and she was later joined by a younger brother and sister. Government-sponsored family planning had yet to be introduced in China, and people could have as many children as they wished. As Mao said, “more people, more power and more ideas”. This attitude had doubled the Chinese population in just 20 years. In any case, the one-child policy introduced in the late 1970s has only been very selectively applied to urban Han Chinese, so rural and ethnic minority couples, then as now, would still have larger families than the outside world would speculate.
Despite living in such a rural agricultural area, the young couple were not peasants working the land. The new mother was actually a 25 year-old singer. To Chinese standards this was a relatively late age to give birth to a first child. The reason of the late-coming baby in this case was due to the mother’s profession as a singer. She sang in the local opera, one of the popular performances in the rural areas. In vast China, different regions have very different dialects or even completely different spoken languages and singing styles as well; thus dozens of local operas have sprung up and have entertained people for thousands of years.
The new baby girl’s mother sang and performed in one of these local opera troupes which was reputedly a good one. At the age of 25 she was still young, but as a local singer, she was unlikely to make a bigger name for herself, even if she harbored such ambitions.
Hers was not a glamorous job and doesn’t compare to modern show business. The performances would take place outdoors for the local peasants, for a proper theater didn’t exist. They tended to follow the lunar and agricultural cycles with performances at major times of the year such as the Moon Festival or during winter when there was not much else to do in the fields. Perhaps the girl’s mother simply decided that starting a family wouldn’t greatly inconvenience her singing career.
In the past when a new baby was born, the parents would look at the Chinese zodiac in some detail to predict the future of the newborn. And certainly a Tiger child would be cause for some good speculation. But the times had changed. The Communist Party was championing atheism over fatalistic superstitious beliefs. There were no gods, no ghosts, no deus ex machina; everything in the future would depend on your self, your hard work, individually and collectively.
The baby girl’s father, Peng Longkun, also was not a peasant but a local Party official. As such, he must believe in what the Party said instead of other traditions. He had a duty to champion atheism. In fact this was his job for Mr. Peng Longkun was in charge of local cultural affairs. In this rural village he was one of a select few people who lived on a small salary granted by the government. As the Chinese would say, he was “eating the food from the Emperor”, a position envied by millions of peasants who spent their uncertain lives toiling away on the land. Peng’s family didn’t have too much to boast about in material terms, but his relative social status gave his family a sense of pride.
Now that the couple had a child, there were no early signs that the Tiger baby would be so special. What it did mean was that the parents had to work even harder to raise their small family. As soon as the young girl could walk, she followed her mother from village to village as she gave performances. At this early age she heard her mother constantly singing at home and frequently in public. As she got a little older, she could already sing along quite admirably. Her mother’s colleagues said that one day she would replace her mother. Indeed she would, but on a much grander scale than anyone in rural Juncheng could have foretold.
As in most places in the world at that time, rural life in China was tranquil and lived on a small scale. There was no particular aspiration for glory or fame beyond mundane existence. This quiet life would not last for very much longer. By the mid 1960s, far away in Beijing the storm clouds of a new revolution were looming. For the Peng family, and countless others all over China, the coming revolution would make their humble life unbearably difficult. And yet, after the storm’s relentless destruction, their daughter would shine all over China.
In late 1962, several hundred kilometers away in the Chinese capital, Beijing, there was a ten-year-old boy. He was born in the Year of the Snake. The Chinese zodiac tradition tells of the animal race across the river ordered by the Jade Emperor. Just after the Dragon had finished in fifth
