I LEFT CHINA in 1997 after a twenty-year career, and was one of the generation who helped push open the heavy door of China’s history. In the 1980s we young people were full of enthusiasm. When we found out that we were being given the opportunity to reform Chinese media, we believed that the party was starting to allow us to use our brains, allowing us to think and talk. However, soon enough the ground was littered with the bodies of many of my intrepid, radical friends, who had become victims of their own political ignorance and daring. Some of them blundered their way into prison, some mysteriously found themselves without a job, while others never recovered from the setbacks and steered well clear of politics thereafter.
Because private meetings could be viewed as illegal, we survivors would often ‘play cards’ together in small groups. There were never any winners or losers. Instead, each card represented one sentence of complaint, and each game a topic. Before parting company, we would remind each other of what game we were supposed to have been playing, so as not to give ourselves away if questioned. Looking back, I suspect there were two reasons why our little group survived. One was connected to our work, the army with its merciless punishments, the police that was a law unto itself, and the ever changing system of government. These were like the magic amulet that monkey Sun Wukong wore on his head, which could be tightened painfully at his master’s command. We all wore such amulets, which constantly rapped a warning on our overheated brains: Don’t enter the minefield. It won’t be just you who gets blown to bits, you’ll also bring down a swathe of friends and family. We were all very aware of this minefield. The second reason we survived was the common ‘defect’ that drew us together. In order to keep an element of personal freedom, none of us was a member of the Communist Party. In those days, no matter how good your work, how popular your programmes or how moving your scripts, non-party members were always treated as ‘backward elements’. Chinese people tend to shoot at the first bird to stick its head into danger, and nobody cared about the popular opinion we had worked so hard to cultivate.
There were four seats at our card table. Three of us managed to escape the minefield with our lives intact, but one very talented man remained. He was the only one of us still forging ahead after all the other heroes of media had fallen. In fact, he was appointed to clear up the battlefield as the gunpowder smoke cleared. He appeared like a Red Cross flag set up on the sidelines, showing the wounded that there was still hope. This man was Flying Fish’s father.
By the time I left China, our little gang of four had collapsed. One had taken early retirement on medical grounds, one had ‘jumped the trough’ and gone into business, and I had cut my losses and gone swimming in bigger seas. Only Flying Fish’s father kept the faith. ‘Nothing is impossible, it’s only people who lack the strength of will!’ he used to say to us. ‘I’m going to lay out a new road to prosperity for Chinese radio and give the people something they can enjoy, instead of this blind, benighted political tool!’ Soon after this, thanks to his startling career successes, he was transferred to the north-east of the country, and put in charge of an organisation directly controlled by the provincial government.
Every time I went back to China I would always listen with respect and admiration to his opinions. ‘You have to believe that there is a way out for China’s media. If politics doesn’t provide a door then we can take the road of culture and economics. The long and ancient Silk Road was never cut off by the multitude of different religions along its length, nor blocked by different languages. Why don’t we draw lessons from this? In the ten years you’ve been away, Xinran, we’ve not only entered the lives of the common people, but also gained a presence in public transport systems. We must follow this up, using economic necessity to brainwash those policy-makers. We have to make them see what ordinary people need to move their lives forward, and what China needs in order to grow culturally.’
To tell the truth, I can count on my fingers the number of people who, after twenty years, are still carrying on the struggle, still full of proud and lofty words and undiminished ardour. Age is generally the excuse for giving up halfway. Parents often worry that their children will never amount to anything, but they are seldom clear why their own abilities fell short of their youthful ambitions. Flying Fish’s father walked his talk. This was truly admirable and made me feel ashamed. Why had I not believed that China’s media could escape the grip of politics? Why had I not remained and thrown myself into the fight alongside him? Was I really one of those people who only delighted in riding the first wave of a new trend, all high ideals but no substance? After I came to this realisation, I dreamed of being able to do something for him and my remaining friends in the media, and longed for an opportunity to prove my respect for them. But what could I, a poor writer living a vagabond existence overseas, do to assist the meteoric rise of his career? Every time I went back to China to visit friends and family, I would always get caught up in an endless parade of gifts, big and small, from people concerned that I was struggling to make my way in foreign climes. They were afraid I was homesick, with no home cooking or familiar clothes to remind me of my hometown, and living in a place with no Chinese home comforts. For my part, I suppose I always looked a bit down and out and shabby. My gifts were always postage stamps, cards or bookmarks, or keepsakes collected from book-signing trips all over the world. ‘A goose feather sent from a thousand li. The gift is light, the feelings sincere.’ I would often use this old saying to assuage my feelings of shabbiness and of somehow being in the wrong.
At the end of 2007, there was a sudden shift in China’s political climate. Even ordinary people who spent their lives ‘hiding in a drum of ignorance’ could smell gunpowder on the air. For a time, furious debates took place over whether the Princelings1 and Communist Youth League2 had finally put aside their differences and gained victory over the Shanghai Clique.3 Would the country finally break old taboos and start stringing up corrupt officials and their unscrupulous subordinates, who had emptied the nation’s storehouses and sent their rich pickings overseas? The Cultural Revolution ended thirty years ago, was now the time to settle old scores? Once the foreigners have earned all the money they want, would they close down the factories and take off home? The Chinese Olympic torch was meant to bring such glory, but has been put out several times by anti-Chinese demonstrators. Have we been cheated by our national media? Was the world paying any attention to China at all? Did we still need to cosy up to the West, licking their faces like dogs?
Throughout Chinese history, whether in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the mainland or Singapore, when political winds change, culture and the media are always the first to bear the brunt. Because of this, we have become very sensitive to political moods and our ears prick up far earlier than our peers’ in Western countries. According to inside information from my media colleagues, the Chinese government held a ‘routine’ clean-up operation in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Over 220 local radio stations were closed for ‘rectification’ after being deemed ‘low and vulgar’ and ‘having lost the support of the people’; eighty-four of these are still in a permanent state of limbo. Out of the major national stations, North Star, was forced to undergo a full audit on the grounds that, ‘The flag of individualism is too readily apparent, and there is a tendency to deviate from the principles of the party.’ The audit concluded: ‘This was the biggest case of economic corruption in the media since the founding of the People’s Republic.’ However, not one of the official newspapers reported on this issue, and even smaller local publications that often dare to question the government remained utterly silent. But why, if it was a national-level media rectification campaign, attacking corruption and criminals, was it not reported openly? The open secret clear to any Chinese person was that there must have been a political agenda. The chief criminal in this major case turned out to be none other than Flying Fish’s father, who was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment just as he was on the verge of retirement.
I discussed the case with several friends, but none who knew him believed the charges. ‘He embezzled over ten million yuan from the station’s budget, did he?’ they said. ‘Even if that were the case, how come it didn’t come up in previous financial audits? There is no such thing as a perfect human being, and he probably did make mistakes sometimes, it’s impossible to avoid, but committing a crime, for that you need proof. Where did all the evidence come from? I wonder.’ In today’s China, which still lacks an independent judicial system, when political power turns on an ordinary citizen, ‘if a scapegoat is required, a pretext is never wanting’. But as people in the media, surely we should have had a relatively acute political sense of smell and reliable channels of information? If ordinary people could smell a whiff of political gunpowder, how could he, the president of a provincial-level radio and TV network, not have noticed? Maybe he was insufficiently experienced in politics and naïvely believed he could save his own skin on talent alone? Or had he been given guarantees of safety, and so went cheerfully and light-heartedly to meet the oncoming political storm? Perhaps it was simply his beliefs and zeal that condemned him?
However, I think he knew full well what was coming a long time before the storm hit.
One summer’s day in 2007 I received a call out of the blue from Flying Fish’s father. ‘Xinran, I think you were right, I should send my daughter abroad to study and see the world.’
‘How come you’ve suddenly seen the light?’ I asked. I was a little surprised and unnerved, as many parents only sent their children away if the floodwaters were at the doorstep.
‘When are you next back in China? Soon, I hope?’ He sounded very anxious.
‘You really are a leader, aren’t you! As soon as an idea forms in your head, you expect your underlings to turn it into reality. I’ve got a family too, you know, and China’s a lot of time zones away from here,’ I said, deliberately teasing him.
‘To tell you the truth, I’d like you to take Flying Fish away with you, and the sooner the better. She’s just finished university, it’s the perfect time.’
When I look back on it now, it was clear he was not telling me the true state of affairs.
Next time I returned to China, I asked him, ‘Several years ago I tried to persuade you to let Flying Fish study overseas, but you said she was too small and weak. How come all of a sudden you can bear to let her go? Are you having trouble with your means of retreat?’ I guessed that he might be in the same situation as Du Zhuang’s father, with the government making things difficult for him.
‘There’re all kinds of reasons,’ he said, plainly reluctant to tell me anything.
‘Best be prepared, just in case something goes wrong, eh,’ I hinted.
‘Xinran, how come you’re saying this as well? What could go wrong? My body’s straight, I’m not afraid of my shadow being crooked. Maybe you’ve become too Westernised?’ he said, rather self-righteously.
‘But what if the sun is crooked?’ My instincts from twenty years of working in China were resurfacing.
‘What does that matter? Even if I get dragged off to prison on some trumped-up charge, I’ll just end up brainwashing the people in prison and the judicial system to my way of thinking. They can’t block off the sky with a single hand the way they used to, not in this day and age,’ he said confidently.
‘So why are you in such a hurry to get your daughter out?’ I said.
‘I’m not going to try to deceive you, it’s not me I’m afraid for if things get a bit rocky, but my daughter; she isn’t strong enough to bear it. Flying Fish has been what you might call autistic since she was small. She’s done a few things that really put the family in a panic. She locked herself in the house once, and wouldn’t open the door to anyone, not even to her mother and me. We shouted at her to open up, then looked through the window. There she was, cowering under the desk, shivering. It seems she’s an amnesiac too, often forgetting where she’s put her school bag. Sometimes she can’t find her keys either; it’s like she’s not all there. This is why we were unwilling to let her leave, we were worried that she wouldn’t be safe. But now we have to place our only daughter in your care, so please keep her safe. First, she has to come back. Whatever happens you can’t let her marry a foreigner. Second, you must treat her with the same loving care as you would your own. Third, she’s very weak, so you mustn’t let her get too agitated.’
When I heard these three conditions my head reeled. As far as caring for Flying Fish as if she were my own daughter, I would do this to the best of my ability. But how could I provide any sort of guarantee that a twenty-three-year-old university graduate would refuse the love of a Western man? And what did he mean by not letting her get too agitated? ‘If I have to treat her as if she’s disabled then the deal’s off. But if she’s not disabled, I’ll help her to have the same experiences as other overseas students.’
For the sake of my long-cherished hope, and to give back some of what I owed my friend, I took Flying Fish to Britain to study a Master’s course. Flying Fish’s mother and father brought her to Beijing so we could travel together. When we were about to board the plane, Flying Fish’s mother told me that her daughter had spent three months packing her bags, right up until late the previous night. In the end, her parents had to do it for her at the hotel. When I heard these words, a question sprang up in my mind. Have I taken on another Du Zhuang? Another Golden Swallow? Another Firewood? I shuddered to think!
By the end of the twelve-hour flight, my worries and concerns had become reality. Flying Fish had virtually no English, she did not know how to wash her clothes or cook, and had zero basic survival skills. Wherever she went she ‘filled the horizon’ with her scattered belongings. It is said that this ability to transform one’s possessions into a rubbish dump is a common feature of only children! However, she was also very kind-hearted and agreeable, and capable of a good level of understanding if interested. She had the gift for independent thought from her father, and a set of firm, unwavering, black and white beliefs. Once her mind was made up, nobody could talk her round. Flying Fish’s amusements were confined to shopping, listening to music and surfing the internet. She said that her home in China had been an empty nest, often without her mother or father. Her world consisted of a little dog and an old lady who waited on her hand and foot. It was only when she went to university that she started to spend time with her parents. They had family weekends together, going on walks and eating at restaurants, discussing the rights and wrongs of human life. Flying Fish always took her father’s side, and they had long, rambling discussions about the future. But her mother, who worked in politics, always took an extreme stance when discussing reality.
I have always believed that the biggest mistake China made with modern education was its frenzied focus on memorising information, to the detriment of basic survival skills and the ability to enjoy culture. Education has become a closed-off pipeline. A child spends twelve years crawling through it, and by the time they finally emerge, everything in front of their eyes is black. They have no sense of direction, and no knowledge of life based on their own senses and experiences. They do not know how to enjoy the gifts of nature, and have no idea of how to live, starting with making their three meals a day. I always encourage any girl who stays in my house to collect leaves from all four seasons and make little craft displays. I encourage them to pan-fry, stir-fry, steam and boil all manner of different foods, then tastefully arrange them on plates and in bowls to create a beautiful picture. I encourage them to tidy up after themselves and keep their rooms clean. Any girl who wants to be a mother should start to train herself in mothering skills from an early age, and this organisational ability is one of the mainstays of motherly love.
Flying Fish quickly entered into the small pleasures of our life, and before long autumn leaves had become her passion. She developed a tireless delight in cooking, and cleaning up the kitchen gave her a feeling of achievement. However, her English was still a mental and physical stumbling block that she struggled to overcome. Like the majority of Chinese people, she did not credit the importance of acquiring a feel for language, and believed that she could not open her mouth before memorising a sufficient number of words. Her heavily accented ‘Manchurian English’ left people unable to follow what she was saying, which in turn made her nervous and fearful.
Unusually, Flying Fish’s introverted personality made staying with us a waste of her time. In British homes, she would not utter a word, spending all day on Chinese websites chatting with friends. She said she did not know how to study by herself at home, she could only study in class, so we got her enrolled on an English course at the London International Palace language school. After a few weeks she moved into student accommodation, coming back to us for weekends and holidays. However, I soon discovered that all the friends she made were Japanese and Korean girls, whose English accents were also barely comprehensible. Every day they went window shopping at well-known stores and lunched at restaurants. Her clothes, handbags, even the hats she wore seemed to change every day. When I expressed my concern, Flying Fish said that theirs was the only English she could understand, as the non-standard English of the other European students made it very hard to communicate. Actually, many Chinese students use this as an excuse to hide behind, as the majority of European students are independent, take a pride in their knowledge, and base their world view on practical experience whereas Asian students tend to come from wealthy backgrounds and their conversations revolve around shopping and consuming.
One day, Flying Fish told me in Chinese that the Japanese and Korean girls had taken her to a place where all the lights were pink or light blue, with drawings of naked girls on the toilets. Every karaoke room had a bed, on which were laid out some peculiar objects. When Toby heard my translation his face darkened. ‘They must have visited a sex club, what would she want to go there for? To do what? Does Flying Fish understand about safe sex?’
When I heard Toby’s questions I felt the blood run cold in my veins. I knew nothing about sex clubs. What was the difference between them and places selling sexual services? Were they brothels? Why had she gone there? What had she done? I could already see her parents’ reproaches and the hurt in their eyes.
Toby said, ‘Well, does Flying Fish understand about safe sex or doesn’t she? It’s a lot more important to know about that than language. She’s a Chinese only child, and from what I’ve seen of her parents they’re no baofahu [nouveaux riches]. For all we know, face could be more important than life itself in her family. Does she know how to use contraceptives?’
‘How . . . how should I know?’ My face had gone scarlet, but it seemed like this was a question I should be able to answer.
Later that day, I found a pretext to take Flying Fish out food shopping. When I mentioned the sex club, she said in great surprise, ‘But we didn’t do anything! The Japanese and Korean girls stayed very late, but I left long before that.’
‘Toby asked me if you understood the basics about sex and safe sex? Do you know where to get the things you need for sex?’
Flying Fish burst out laughing. Oh, Xinran, is there anything you can’t find on the internet? I know all about that!’
‘What you see on the internet are just material, physical things. Sexual feelings don’t always equate solely with the physical. Besides, there are people out there who’ll give you a soft drink spiked with some drug, and your “I knows” will soon turn into “don’t knows”!’
Flying Fish gave me one of her looks. ‘How come you’re talking just like my mother? Actually, all Japanese and Koreans have a lot of money, and that wealth gives them a lot of cultural refinement.’
‘Is there a direct correspondence between being rich and cultural refinement?’ I replied. ‘I don’t think so. Think of all those wealthy Chinese people, dressed from head to foot in designer clothes, who you see bellowing and screeching at each other on the street, or bawling out shop assistants. How many people from other countries look down their noses at us because of them? Spending money like water at such a young age, using their elders’ wealth to satisfy their own extravagance, how does that count as refinement?’
‘Are you prejudiced against Korea? Everyone back home knows that Korea and Japan are the centres of world culture,’ Flying Fish said disapprovingly.
I fell silent. I no longer had any desire to reason with Chinese children on this issue. Korean adverts and Japanese entertainment products are undermining Chinese people’s belief in their own 5,000 years of civilisation, with the childish notion that other people’s things are better than our own. It is like a tiny leaf in front of our eyes that has blocked out much of what is in front of us, limiting our ability to see how a foreign culture has invaded our cultural space, and leaving us even less able to be aware of our ignorance of global culture.
Flying Fish’s father would call me about twice a week to check on the latest developments with his daughter. When I indirectly raised my concerns about her studies and her circle of friends, he said, to my surprise, ‘Xinran, you mustn’t push her. A girl can’t amount to much in life, it’s enough that she marries well. So long as she’s happy and healthy, that’s fine. Our family has plenty of money and just the one daughter; if we don’t give it to her to spend, who’ll spend it? As for her English, if she spends three years in England she’ll get the hang of it, even if she doesn’t study.’
Since Flying Fish’s father had such faith in his daughter, that she could master English without studying, who was I to go looking for trouble? Just as I was starting to let Flying Fish go her own way in her studies, her mother telephoned me one night in April 2008, her voice trembling. ‘Flying Fish’s father is in trouble. Please, whatever you do, don’t tell my daughter anything.’
I immediately made some calls back to China, where it was very early in the morning. A friend of mine told me, ‘Nobody knows anything. Someone at the station phoned me just as I was on my way out to say that Flying Fish’s dad had been taken away, but nobody knew who took him.’
I hung up and woke another media friend who had just gone to sleep after a night shift. ‘It can’t be anything serious, can it?’ he said. ‘I heard that when they took him away yesterday afternoon they were just checking the accounts. It’s hardly going to be anything major, is it? Besides, even if they want to get to him, they can’t let it go too far, can they? It’s not the Cultural Revolution any more, don’t be so neurotic. I’ll ask around tomorrow when I get into work.’
The following day I brought Flying Fish home with me, in an attempt to ensure she did not get wind of what was happening. I phoned China every morning while she was still asleep. However, nobody from the radio station could say with any certainty who had taken him away. Only the soldier on sentry duty and Flying Fish’s father had seen their credentials, and the soldier was not about to say anything. Their guess was that Flying Fish’s father had been taken in for allegations of corruption. Her mother sent me a steady stream of text messages, saying that several waves of people had searched their home, all wearing uniform. Where they came from she couldn’t say, as she was very alarmed and upset, and had not asked to see their identification. She worked in the city government, organising the party hierarchy, and if she could not identify their uniforms then other people would have no chance.
About two weeks later, the Public Prosecutor’s office informed Flying Fish’s mother that her husband had been officially taken in for questioning. But what about the previous two weeks’ detention? It is called shuanggui by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. According to an inside source, shuanggui is a kind of enquiry process or interrogation. Those responsible for the interrogation work in three rotating shifts, to ensure that the person being grilled has no opportunity to sleep in any twenty-four-hour period, the theory being to wear down a person’s defences until they reveal the truth. I do not know how this method of ‘interrogation through torture’ prior to judicial process squares with China’s legal procedures, but it is clearly an inhumane method and a breach of human rights. I was also concerned that Flying Fish’s father, after having declared so boldly that he was going to give the central court and the judiciary a good brainwashing, would not be able to withstand days and nights of questioning without respite. Would he end up confessing to all his ‘crimes’? Two months later, Flying Fish’s father was ‘without delay’ formally arrested.
When Flying Fish’s mother came to visit her daughter in Britain, she told me about her husband’s disappearance. In the beginning, her mobile phone had been a source of information for her. Some calls were from acquaintances sounding her out, wondering whether they were about to be implicated. Some callers, though, tried to trick her into revealing whether her husband had hidden large sums of money at home. Then there were three to five phone calls each day, recommending lawyers with professional legal expertise. However, once her husband had been officially taken in for questioning, her mobile phone became no more than an ornament. All calls ceased, and when she made calls nobody would pick up. People who had previously claimed to be great friends all of a sudden avoided her like the plague, with excuses about business trips or work pressures. Nobody was prepared to stand up and help this isolated wife and daughter. ‘Chinese society, which at one time put so much emphasis on human relations, has been transformed beyond recognition by money, power and personal advancement. Every moment is ruled by the market, it’s a battleground where the victors are kings and losers are bandits,’ she said miserably.
Despite her mother’s opposition, I was determined that Flying Fish should know about her father. She was no longer a child and, besides, I could not keep her in the dark for ever, as rumours and speculation had begun on the internet. The internet is China’s only free media, and words you do not dare speak aloud can be written on the net under a false name. However, in this fractured society, where the legal system is neither healthy nor complete, where morals and culture are in disorder and where dramatic changes take place daily, there is also a saying, ‘The net is a knife that can kill!’ Unsubstantiated rumours can become ‘historical fact’, as the net enters ever deeper into the hearts of the people. Nobody is entirely innocent or able to completely wash clean their ‘internet crimes’. However, I still believe that treating children with honesty is very important.
When we told Flying Fish, she was stunned. ‘It can’t be true, can it? How come nobody told me? I was just saying how come he hasn’t called me for days on end. I want to phone my daddy! Will he have air conditioning? He hates being too hot.’
Her questions left me speechless. Chinese prisoners receiving overseas phone calls in air-conditioned cells? It sounded like her concept of Chinese prisons came from Hollywood movies. I once asked a Chinese police officer about conditions in prisons in 2006. ‘Even today, thirty years after the start of Reform and Opening-up, 80 per cent of Chinese prisons are still places designed to make you feel you’d be better off dead. Otherwise, wouldn’t career criminals, with no other means of support, treat prison as a free hotel?’ he told me.
Flying Fish spent the next few weeks in floods of tears. She was passionately devoted to her father, and had told me on more than one occasion that she wanted to find someone just like him for a husband. She had grown up wrapped in her father’s unfailing protection. She told me of a time when she fell out with some girls in her university dormitory. Her father paid a visit to her head of department to support her, demanding that they put in a personal appearance to ‘ensure fair play’ for his daughter. ‘But now this; has Daddy really committed a crime? Has he let down the country or done something bad to other people?’ she asked.
I told Flying Fish, ‘You must believe in your father, no matter what he has done, whether it’s a crime or a mistake. Your father is a good father, and that is what you should believe in your heart. He has been a good husband to your mother, and has never let your family down in any way. If he has committed some crime against society, that’s in the past now. If he really has wronged other people, that too is also behind him. Your faith in your father is crucial to him and all your family. Moreover, you need to prove yourself a good daughter by helping him stay strong in prison, and helping your mother through this man-made disaster. You must work hard to pass your exams and get onto a Master’s course. You have to prove to the world that you didn’t let yourself go to rack and ruin because of your daddy. You are your father’s daughter, and you must live an honourable and triumphant life for his sake!’
From this point on, Flying Fish’s life was transformed. The harsh reality of the situation dawned upon the once carefree Flying Fish, that in the eyes of other people she had fallen from being a rich family’s little princess to a jailbird’s daughter. Because her family’s assets had been frozen, even money for food began to be tight, and she was forced to change her former lavish spending into frugality. However, English was still her biggest stumbling block. After six months of desperate struggle, she finally got onto a media studies course at Royal Holloway University. But she still believed naïvely that she could master English after only a year-long Master’s degree. She studied very hard, but because of her lack of even basic English, and the fact that her first degree was in Chinese law, a subject very far removed from Western media studies, she could only understand about 30 per cent of what the teachers were saying.
One of her teachers later told me that when he asked her if she understood, she would always nod her head, but when she went on to film or write she never did what she had been asked to do. When the teachers told her to film, she thought it was enough to take the video camera onto the street and film away at random. It took her teachers six months to realise that Flying Fish did not even understand key words like ‘long shot’, ‘focus’, ‘composition’ and ‘frame’. But once she got to grips with the professional vocabulary of her field, she started to catch up with her classmates. I took her to our little cottage in south-west England to help her think about and discuss media topics. I drilled her each day, one shot and one topic at a time. Until finally, she made a very moving short film about mentally handicapped children in Britain.
When her graduation certificate arrived in the post, she wept and I cried. ‘Xinran, do you know, I worked so, so hard, but I never thought I’d make it. How many people were able to understand me? I don’t know why, but I’ve got a mental and physical phobia of all those letters. As soon as I saw that ever present English I would panic. Whenever I heard people outside my door speaking English, I was afraid. Other students spent their time studying for the course, but I had to learn the basics of life too, starting with my three meals a day and how to live economically. I never escaped from lessons. Even in my dreams I was studying, studying, studying. I’ll be thirty soon, but apart from buying things I wanted, everything else has always been arranged for me by my family. Daddy even used to get someone to do my university homework for me! This is the first major decision I have made by myself since I became an adult, and I did it all by myself. Now Daddy will know that I can live independently, and do things on my own. He won’t be living in fear for me any more. And Mummy will no longer be able to complain that he’s held me back from happiness.’
Her studies over, Flying Fish returned to China, hoping to spend more time with her mother who had endured the political storm alone. After she left, I received a letter from her mother.
Xinran, thank you for helping our family through its darkest hour. Flying Fish’s father still has seventeen years of torment in prison to endure, it could be the rest of his life. I’m nearly sixty, and I don’t know if I will live to see the day when I can sleep beside him again. Please aid us one more time by helping Flying Fish emigrate to Canada. Will you do this for us? It’s enough that I’m here to stand by her father, but the child should be free. Our only daughter has already gone through three years of prison with us, she should not have to serve out the remaining seventeen years of her father’s sentence alongside him. Only when our daughter is happy will her father and I have the strength to live on, waiting, waiting for the day when our whole family can be together once more.
Flying Fish emigrated to Vancouver in early 2011. Soon after, a very thick letter arrived for me in London. The words were written by Flying Fish, who had still not escaped from her fear of English.
My dear Xinran,
Yesterday night I did not sleep a wink. Are you willing to share in my Canadian life and the little world I have just settled into?
Last night after a sleepless night, I recalled the first time I stayed up all night at university in England. I can still remember, I phoned you the next day, I was so excited to have burned the midnight oil! At that time, I had not yet started to think about how many children in China’s countryside lie awake at night because they don’t have enough to eat or clothes to wear. In those schools where there is no place for childhood, how many children stay awake all night for the sake of exams? And how many children of migrant workers stay up all night waiting for a job? I have started to consider these questions now.
I remember you said to me that once I start to think about others, and about whether I have the ability to take responsibility for them, I will have grown up. So, on the flight to Canada, I kept thinking, have I truly grown up?
I once believed that I was one of the lucky ones in our generation of only children. I had my parents’ power network and accumulated wealth. I had a healthy body and passable good looks. I knew about global designer labels and had the power to possess them. But now I know that I am not one of them at all. I have the same university diploma, but none of the knowledge it contains, because my father planned out and managed the entire process of my studies. The ‘society’ we only children live in is a three-channel world, but I only knew how to watch TV and play on my mobile phone, I didn’t know how to use a computer for work or study. I have a loving heart and yearn for a family, yet I am powerless to share my father’s burden or relieve him of his cares now his life has collapsed. I thought that we had no opportunities to be independent or free because we were only children. However, when I was faced with independent living, I realised that I lacked the most basic life skills. I thought that when I reached the right age, everything would fall naturally into place for me. I’ve studied for many years abroad, but to this day I still can’t live independently in an English-speaking world. I spent over a thousand days ‘sightseeing’ in the West, but I didn’t even know that a visa for a family visit requires a letter of invitation from a sponsor, and that it’s not done based on my ‘oral testimony’ . . . It’s all too much, I can’t bear to look back on any of it.
Actually, being an only child has become an excuse for my generation, the excuse of spoiled children over-indulging their own egos. This excuse is like a poison, which sickens our values and our understanding of life. Is there a medicine to cure it? I don’t know. I just hope it’s not too late. This only-child society is already suffering from all kinds of sickness.
I stayed awake all night because it was my father’s birthday. I set the table and filled it with dishes for dinner with him, everything made by my own hands. Not one dish was ready-made, a birthday banquet especially for him. I took pictures of it, and will make them into a birthday card to send to him. I hope to prove to him from this that I have grown up. I hope that when he gets it, my imprisoned father will no longer worry about my naïvety. I hope my mother in her loneliness will stop fretting about how I live once she sees my ability to cook.
I looked at what I had created, sniffed and tasted the dishes on the table, but all the time I was crying, thinking of the three years without my father’s voice, over a thousand days and nights. How many of those nights did I get through without tears? Precious few. Do you still remember when you planned that project for me? You made me use everything in that tiny student dormitory, photos, shoes, the wardrobe, food and all the rest to tell a story in photographs, my father’s story. I asked you, ‘Can shoes be connected to Daddy?’ You said, ‘Of course they can. For example, buying shoes with your father? Have you done that? When he first saw those shoes what did your father say? You haven’t been shoe-shopping with him? Then have a guess, what would he say? Choose three pairs of shoes and arrange them together, like a family out for a stroll, who’s in front, who’s behind, why?’ Yesterday, I thought up another exercise, and that was when I realised that your system had helped me to put the memories of my family in order, to expand my understanding of my father and my awareness of the incompleteness of my life, for there are only two pairs of shoes in our family that are free to stroll together. Your system has helped me to escape the confusion and lost feeling of being without a father, and the fear that comes from a lack of self-confidence. Thank you!
I visited Daddy in prison when I went back to China. They’d shaved his head, so he had lost his old elegant style with his head of tousled, unruly hair. As he forced himself to gather his spirits to chat and laugh with me, I saw the pain he had been made to suffer. The faith and goals he spent his whole life chasing had led to him spending his old age in a world living cheek by jowl with hooligans, bandits and murderers. I know that both our hearts were weeping and bleeding, but we were sending each other strength and smiles.
When I was about to leave, my father’s lawyer told me, ‘Live well, child. Your father has paid with his own imprisonment so you and your mother can have security for the rest of your lives, as he secured the family home and savings for you. I urged him to liquidate everything in exchange for a reduced sentence, but your father said that if he could keep both you and your mother safe through his personal sacrifice then it would all be worth it, because you were his only reason to live.’
Xinran, the day Daddy comes out of prison will be my wedding day. No man who fails to understand this can ever become my husband. Can you understand this?
Could I understand? Yes. But the price of this wish is too high, the time too long and the pain too great.
How do you view the Yao Jiaxin incident? Why is Chinese society debating him (a post-80s man) so fiercely?
Although I don’t understand how he could bring himself to do such a vicious thing, I don’t think there’s anything bad about condemning what he did. At the end of the day it’s two young lives, two families. One thing I do believe is that he must regret it very much. What I find harder to accept is that there seems to be a very strong sense of self-righteousness in our society now. People are indifferent to life most of the time, but then some issue comes up and as long as it touches a nerve everyone cries out, ‘Let him die!’ The law has its own rules. I’m not saying that he should get a reduced sentence or lenient treatment, but what I thought at the time was, this too is a young life, here too was once a complete family. While I do feel angry, I feel a much stronger sense of regret. When I see the way my contemporaries on the internet are not just cursing him, but wanting to shoot him dead on the spot, a shiver of fear goes through me. I really don’t like it when one person is held responsible for everything when something goes wrong. They think he’s guilty of every imaginable crime, but they don’t stop for a moment to consider why he would do such a thing. Is it a problem of education? Is it a problem with public attitudes? Is it a failure of the social system? After all, he’s so young, why would he do something so awful?
1 The Princelings are officials who obtained important government posts through their connections to the ruling elite. In post-1949 China, this term is mostly applied to the descendants of those who held power in the military sphere. Currently, it is used to refer to the children or dependants of high-ranking officials, and represented by President Xi Jinping.
2 The Communist Youth League is the largest faction within the Communist Party to oppose the Princelings, and is headed by the previous president, Hu Jintao.
3 The Shanghai Clique drew its support from former president Jiang Zemin, but its power is now on the wane.