THE VILLAGE TEACHER

Sixty-nine-year-old Huang Zhiyuan was a friend of my father's. He grew up in Chengdu, and left home in 1965 for a teaching job at a small village in the mountainous region of Yanting County. In 1984, he became tired of the tough rural life, quit his job, and moved his whole family back to Chendgu. Without a hukou, or a city residential permit, he had a hard time finding a regular job and lived in constant fear of being caught by police. In recent years, as the government gradually phases out the hukou system, Huang's life is changing for the better. He now owns a grocery store and the business is doing fairly well. He visited my family recently. I asked him about his former life as a village schoolteacher.

LIAO YIWU: How did you end up teaching at a rural school far away from home?

HUANG ZHIYUAN: I entered college in 1961 and graduated in 1965, right before the Cultural Revolution. At that time, we were not allowed to choose our future jobs. The decision was made by the university. Since my family ran a small business before the Communist takeover and we were not classifed as the proletariat, I wasn't eligible for a work assignment in provincial government or large state enterprises based in the city. Young people in that era were quite gullible and obedient, especially those of us with questionable family backgrounds. When I heard that the Party entrusted me with the task of using my knowledge and skills to help make a difference in the poor countryside, I accepted with gratitude. I saw my new job assignment as a chance to redeem and cleanse my tainted family history. At the graduation ceremony, I said in a speech that if the Party wanted me to block enemy gunfire with my body, I would dash forward without hesitation. Just to show you how fanatical we were.

LIAO: Your remarks certainly echoed young people's ideals of that era. By the way, as a city guy, it must have been quite a challenge to settle in Yanting.

HUANG: At the beginning, I was quite excited. I felt like I was starting a new chapter in life. My destination was Shanya High School, which was affiliated with Shanya People's Commune in Yanting. So I bid goodbye to my parents, tucked my graduation speech inside the breast pocket of my Mao jacket, and boarded a long-distance bus with two classmates of mine.

About seven hours later, I woke up from a nap and began to see totally different scenery. The bus bounced along on the rutted country road. I had never seen such a shabby road before. It was like in a World War II movie. Around dusk, the bus broke down. The driver got off and checked the engine. He couldn't fix it. So he sent a fellow passenger who was from that area to inform the commune leaders that some city students had arrived. The guy literally ran for over fifteen kilometers to relay the message. About two hours later, a tractor rumbled into our view. It had been sent by the county government. We anxiously jumped on with our luggage. As the tractor lurched forward, I could see the steep cliffs hanging over our head. The lonely moon was high up in the sky. Occasionally, we would encounter a huge piece of rock sticking out, blocking half of the road. The tractor would slow down and scrape past it carefully. Thank heavens, the commune was not too far. Otherwise, I would have suffered a heart attack before I got there.

After the tractor dropped us off near the center of the Shanya Commune, we suddenly found ourselves alone. It was pitch-dark. Electricity was still an inaccessible modern luxury. Mr. Wang, who came to pick us up, said people still used kerosene lamps. There was but one street, with shops on both sides. In the distance, we could see flickering lights coming from one shop. We were told it was the local blacksmith's. The occasional banging and clanking from the shop made the surrounding area seem eerily quiet. It was like walking on the moon.

Like a tour guide, Mr. Wang began to tell us stories about the blacksmith's shop. It was originally a Buddhist temple. Next to the temple was a small hill of rocks. A statue of the Buddha sat on the top. The statue was about eight stories high. For the past hundred years, worshippers had flocked in from hundreds of kilometers away to pay tribute. The village of Shanya was built around that temple. Gradually, as the population grew, the village expanded into a township. After the Communist takeover in 1949, local officials called on people to eliminate any superstitious or religious practices. They converted the temple into a blacksmith's shop. At the time when we arrived, the statue of Buddha was completely neglected, but the temple, or the blacksmith's shop, had become quite busy and prosperous. During planting and harvesting season, the shop would stay open until midnight. Farm tools that needed to be fixed piled up like a small hill.

Anyhow, after we passed the blacksmith's shop, we were right there in front of the commune office compound. The Shanya Commune Party secretary came out to greet us and welcomed us into the commune. One official brought out the kerosene and gas lamps, and within minutes, the conference room was brightly lit. Then the cook came in, carrying our dinners on a huge tray—two plates of sweet potatoes and five huge porcelain bowls filled to the brim with corn porridge. Pickled vegetables floated on the top.

The Party secretary raved about the food, which featured three treasures of Shanya: corn, pickled vegetables, and sweet potatoes. The sweet potato, normally stored in a cellar, was the local staple food for half of the year. Since sweet potatoes can cause heartburn, locals ate them with pickled vegetables; pickled Napa cabbage and bok choy balance the unpleasant effect of the potatoes. Later on, I found out that Yanting tops the nation in the number of stomach cancer cases. Medical experts believe it is directly linked to the traditional diet of sweet potatoes and pickled vegetables.

LIAO: On the night of your arrival, the local folks were really genuine and nice.

HUANG: They were flattered by the fact that urban youths were willing to work in isolated areas like theirs. Before we left for the school, the Party secretary said: The mountains are high over here. Life is tough. Changing the world is not as easy as scenes in a movie. Please be prepared to bear hardship.

LIAO: How was the school over there?

HUANG: It wasn't bad. We had more than thirty teachers and half of them had college degrees. We even had veteran teachers who had taught in colleges for many years. They were sent down there in the late 1950s because they had been convicted as Rightists. Despite the fact that we were all graduates of top universities in China, no one complained or felt that we were overqualified to teach at a poor rural school. People were truly passionate about building a new Communist society.

The Shanya High School was started by a local scholar at the end of the Qing dynasty, around 1910. The classroom building and the auditorium took on some of the Western architectural styles. The courtyard houses, which served as dorms for both students and teachers, were built in a traditional Chinese manner with arched eaves. The buildings survived the war against Japan and the civil war against the Nationalists. Not far from the school was a pond with tranquil green water. The pond was hemmed in by mountains and was used for irrigation and as an outdoor swimming pool. There was a big orchard next to the school. The commune put the orchard under the jurisdiction of the school principal, who instructed students and teachers to work on fruit trees in their spare time.

LIAO: You started teaching at the time of the Cultural Revolution, when students in cities were busier beating up their teachers than learning science and history. What about Shanya?

HUANG: Chairman Mao did a great job in spreading the revolution. We were soon caught up in the movement. Initially, I was asked to teach Chinese and math. Soon, all that was permitted to be taught was the chairman's Little Red Book. Chairman Mao's quotes were treated like the words of God. We had to read them three times a day and check out our daily behavior against his teachings. Unfortunately, his quotes were not enough to empower the students to solve problems in math, chemistry, or physics. But nobody dared to say anything. I knew a teacher who specialized in Chinese literature. He liked to teach a classic essay, “The Admiring Qualities of a Pine Tree,” written by a well-known Chinese general. However, when that general lost favor with Mao, that teacher was labeled a counterrevolutionary.

You probably remember a movie released in 1975 about a Maoist agricultural university. There was a scene relating to students taking a college entrance exam. A student applicant, who was an illiterate blacksmith, failed the exams. But a Communist official examined the hands of the blacksmith and said: These are the hands of a proletariat. The calluses on his hands are enough to make him a qualified candidate for the university. Of course, the student was admitted. That movie triggered strong reaction from students in my school. Many believed that they no longer needed to study for college. For farm kids, working and playing in the field was more fun than learning math and physics.

The headmaster, who was raised in a farmer's family, was a practical man. With the revolution going on, he was very glad to change the curriculum, half a day learning Chairman Mao's teachings in classrooms and the other half farming in the field, where he took the lead by carrying buckets of manure on shoulder poles to the field. Students and teachers all followed his example. During the harvesting season, students worked in the field full-time.

The playground in front of the classroom building was turned into a big grinding platform, with horses and donkeys pulling rolling stones to grind and help separate the wheat from the husks. Peasants even moved their windmills over. It was quite a scene. If students were planning a basketball or football match, they had to coordinate with the production team beforehand.

Anyway, of my twenty years of service there, only five were spent in actual teaching. We didn't start our regular curricula until the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping came to power. The nationwide college entrance exam was resumed. Initially, a teacher had to teach all subjects. Later on, when the government required all schools to follow a more challenging curriculum, the school decided to divide the teachers into various groups based on their expertise. I began to focus on physics.

LIAO: At the onset of the Cultural Revolution, many urban students formed all sorts of Red Guard organizations and rebelled against authorities. What was it like in Shanya?

HUANG: It was the same as everywhere else. Students at Shanya High School were divided into two groups: the Young Rebels and the Old Loyalists. Both claimed they were the real defenders of Chairman Mao. The only difference is that the Old Loyalists group also defended the commune leadership, whereas the Young Rebels wanted to kick the leaders out of the office. The two groups engaged in serious armed conflict. The peasants also established their own revolutionary organization, the Red Brigade of Revolutionary Peasants. The peasants' group was more practical. They sided with the Old Loyalist faction and wanted some order. As a result, peasants also got into fights with the Young Rebels group. One day, the Young Rebels blew whistles and gathered everyone on the playground, announcing their decision to ban peasants from using the school playground to grind “capitalistic” grain. The students claimed that the playground was the place for Red Guards to conduct revolutionary military exercises. They also prohibited the use of the auditorium as a grain warehouse, saying that the auditorium was the hall for people to practice the revolutionary dances, not to store corn and wheat. Those decisions were devastating to the peasants. Thousands of them got together and staged a demonstration in front of the school. They uttered their angry curses and surrounded the school for several days. The students clutched Chairman Mao's Little Red Book to their hearts, and sang, nonstop, revolutionary songs such as “It Is Heroic to Make Sacrifices” or “If Necessary, We'll Call on the Sun and the Moon to Make a Better World.”

I have to say that folks in the countryside were honest and simple people. They had no intention of hurting the students. Meanwhile, those students, who were articulate and literate, used quotes from Chairman Mao to engage in verbal war. Peasants were not their match at all, but they didn't want to give in. The confrontation lasted several days. Eventually, the commune government, with leaders installed by the Young Rebels, intervened. They dispatched two special representatives to the commune and issued an order to the peasants: If you dare to attack those young revolutionary rebels, all of you will be labeled as counterrevolutionaries. With those threats from the commune, the peasants gradually dispersed like defeated dogs.

LIAO: Even though your school was so far away from the political centers, you certainly didn't miss any of the “fun” from the Cultural Revolution.

HUANG: One might think isolated regions like Shanya could be spared. It was equally bad. Remember the famous statue of the Buddha I mentioned earlier? The Red Guards blew the statue into pieces with dynamite. Villagers were really scared, believing that disasters were going to befall them. But two years had passed and nothing happened. On the contrary, the blacksmith's shop, which had been converted from a temple, became so prosperous that it expanded into a farm equipment factory, employing ten blacksmiths. In 1968, when the Young Rebels group was locked in a fight with the local peasants, the blacksmiths sided with the peasants and supported the old commune leadership. The Young Rebels called the farm equipment factory a counterrevolutionary citadel. They would organize a huge rally once a week in front of the factory entrance, singing revolutionary songs and shouting slogans. The blacksmiths would stop what they were doing, line up near the factory gate, and stare at those Red Guards with hostility. Their dark, shiny, and bare-muscled arms and the hammers in their hands were quite intimidating.

To the students, the blacksmiths were scarier than those legendary man-eating monsters in old Chinese horror stories. Not long after the peasant–Red Guard conflict started, the head of the Young Rebels, Red Plum Zhang, disappeared without a trace. Students suspected that those blacksmiths had murdered her. Several hundred Red Guards showed up at the factory demanding answers. Some were even armed with guns that they had obtained from the County Public Security Bureau. They surrounded the factory for half a day. The blacksmiths were really mad. They dashed out of the wrought-iron gate and swung their hammers at the Red Guards. Many were hurt. A couple of guys were hit on the head and blood spewed out. It was horrible. Out of desperation, the Red Guards, who outnumbered the blacksmiths, fired several shots to the sky to scare the blacksmiths. They eventually got into the factory and destroyed many machines. One Red Guard shot at a blacksmith and blew one of his ears off. In the end, the Red Guards never found Zhang, nor could they find any evidence against the blacksmiths.

LIAO: What happened to the commune Party secretary?

HUANG: Our Party secretary was a nice and honest man. That was the reason why the peasants and blacksmiths had defended and protected him. He came from a family with three generations of blacksmiths. Even after he was promoted to be the commune Party secretary, he would still sneak back into the farm equipment factory now and then, and pick up his old trade. Soon after we met him, he was labeled a “capitalist road taker” and was publicly humiliated and denounced. One day, the blacksmiths snatched him away from a public denunciation meeting. They hid him inside the factory for over two years. Eventually, when the Red Guards took over the factory, they captured him, moved him to our school campus, and locked him up in the same room as the former school principal. Every day, he and other deposed leaders were forced to run barefoot on the school playground in rain or snow. While they were running, their captors would order them to shout slogans or randomly ask them to stop, or run faster, without any warning. Many of them ended up falling head over heels, and had bruises all over their bodies. One day, the Party secretary couldn't take the torture anymore. He threw a blacksmith's temper tantrum and resisted orders from the Red Guards. The poor guy was beaten up so severely that he became incontinent. The Red Guards still wouldn't let up. Every morning, they would grab him and drag him all the way to a statue of Chairman Mao, forcing him to confess to Mao about his “crimes.” He refused to talk and, later, he bit off the tip of his tongue. He died a couple of months later.

There were many sad stories like these. Many years after his death, I still remember vividly how he was the night when I arrived in Shanya: his hair was parted on the side, and he looked like those warm and caring Communist characters in old Chinese movies.

In 1969, as chaos began to spread all over China, the central government issued another edict, calling on all Red Guard factions to unite and form revolutionary alliances. The famous quote from Mao at that time was “Learn from workers and peasants.” With that mantra, workers and peasants entered schools and began to help manage the students. Let me tell you, the wind suddenly changed. In Shanya, Red Guard leaders were denounced as gangsters. They were paraded around the commune and humiliated in public meetings. With their leaders gone, the students were easily put under control and their arrogance evaporated. The campus was once again in the hands of local peasants. The playground soon became the harvesting backyard. Several classrooms were turned into pens for pigs or chickens. When school started in the fall, no student registered. Not surprisingly, the peasants, who were given the authority to run our school, encouraged students to do more farmwork. If any faculty ignored their instructions, the peasants would knock on their doors and insist on talking with them until they agreed to obey orders.

LIAO: You have told me a lot about the Cultural Revolution. How hard was it for you to live there?

HUANG: It was tough. In the sixties and seventies, hunger was a daily struggle.

We were put on a ration system. Every adult was given 13.5 kilograms of food per month. It was certainly not enough. To improve the nutritional intake, many of us would get up at midnight to catch frogs in the rice paddies, and boil them. They tasted really fresh.

Many of my students lived on campus because their villages were pretty far away. They brought food from home. The staple food was normally rice with vegetable soup, without meat at all. As a result, many students suffered from malnutrition.

Luckily, there was a cook for teachers. He cooked awful food. Nobody dared to complain because asking for nicely prepared food was not a revolutionary thing to do. Once a week, we could have meat. On Sundays, before dinner, a crowd would gather outside the canteen. Bowls were laid out on the big table and everyone would wait for the cook to dish out the meat. When he did it, all eyes would be focused on the ladle. If someone lingered a little longer, hoping to get some extra morsels, others would immediately boo him away. After getting our share, we would instinctively turn the meat pieces around as if to make sure they were real. Then we would carefully bite a small piece at a time so it could last a little longer.

Because of the gnawing hunger, I developed such an obsession with food. I met my wife because of food. She was brought up in the local village there and used to work in the noodle shop. Each time I went to buy noodles, she would sneak some extra into my bowl. Her bribes really worked. Soon we started dating and then we got married. After the marriage, she began to complain about my food obsession and even my eating habits. She complained that I made too much noise when slurping on noodles. She would say, People can hear you a kilometer away.

LIAO: You were a college graduate and she was an uneducated country girl. How did you end up with her?

HUANG: In those days, college graduates or intellectuals were trampled down as stinky bourgeois. Many people tried to stay away from me for fear of getting into political trouble. I was in my thirties and no girl wanted me. By contrast, she was a well-known beauty in the village and was not short of suitors. We dated secretly for over a year before we made it public. When her dad found out about our relationship, he strongly objected to it. He said his daughter was like a rose planted in the cow's dung. But like the old saying goes: “People with the same stomach make good husbands and wives.”

LIAO: Why did you leave Shanya?

HUANG: The older I got, the more homesick I became. So in 1984, after twenty years of teaching in Shanya, I quit my job and came home. I was forty-five at that time. Because of my resignation, I lost my government pension. When I returned to Chengdu, I found myself without a city hukou; no government agency or schools could hire me. So I became an illegal resident for many years. I took on odd hard-labor jobs to make ends meet. I worked as a porter for at least five years. Then, I drove a flatbed tricycle.

The ones who really suffered were my wife and two kids. My kids couldn't enter any schools. My wife had to pick up some odd jobs. The most unbearable thing is that police constantly visited homes to check on people's hukou. We constantly had to be on the run. It's ironic that this is the city of my birth and I wound up being an illegal alien.

LIAO: Have you read the novels by Li Rui, a writer in Shanxi Province? Peasants in Li's novels love and worship the land they grow up on. Despite the extreme poverty, they choose to stay and make changes there.

HUANG: That was pure propaganda crap. In every regime or dynasty, there are writers who like to fabricate stories to ingratiate themselves with the rulers. Since peasants seldom read novels, whatever you write about them, they won't know.

China's remote mountainous regions are hopeless. No matter how much money you invest there, the returns become as intangible as moonlight in water. In many areas, where trees have been cut, the water has become polluted and undrinkable. Under Mao, you couldn't go anywhere without a residential permit. So people were tied to their land, poor and ignorant. Under Deng Xiaoping, the rules are becoming flexible. Those muddy-legged peasants are running faster than us. They go to faraway places in droves to search for better opportunities. Look at Chengdu—there are so many migrant workers. I have bumped into a couple of my former students from Shanya. Some of them are running businesses; others are working at odd jobs. No matter what they do and how well they do, they share one common aspiration: to get the hell out of the countryside.

Speaking of my former students, let me tell you a story. One day, when I was driving my flatbed tricycle near the Mozi Bridge area, I ran into the city police. They cornered me and confiscated my tricycle because I didn't have a permit. I squatted by the side of the road in complete despair. At that moment, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, and saw a chunky young man who addressed me as “Teacher Huang.” I had long forgotten that I had been a teacher. I had no idea who he was.

The chunky guy pulled me into a nightclub nearby. When we started talking, I realized that he was the second son of the commune Party secretary in Shanya. I had been his head teacher for three years. He graduated from junior high in 1980 and was transferred to a different school. He gave me his business card. It said he was a nightclub manager.

The Party secretary's son became nostalgic about the past. He invited me for a couple of drinks and then called his contact at the police station, asking the police to return the confiscated tricycle. That guy certainly had lots of connections. He could drink, too. Not long after we started, he downed a bottle of red wine and was a little tipsy. He offered to get me a girl for what he called “entertainment.” That almost scared the hell out of me. He said to me: Teacher Huang, you are a city guy and my dad was a country bumpkin. Both of you ended up with a similar fate: he was killed by the Red Guards and you ended up on the street. Life is so unfair. As your former student, I have to show you how to enjoy life.

I shook my head hard and told him that in China, we teachers keep our dignity. You students should respect teachers. How could you pull your teacher into a muddy hole like this? He laughed. You were my teacher in school. Outside school, we are friends. Do you remember that you used to offer me all sorts of special treatment? After my dad died, you always let me use your office to do my homework and you shared food with me. It's time for me to pay you back today. I said, I understand your kindness, but moral values are important to me. Your father's spirit would agree that— He burst out laughing and interrupted me: Forget about my father. When a person dies, he is like a flame that has been put out. Before I even had the chance to argue, two young women came up to me, snuggled against me, and offered me a drink. I became so embarrassed that this old face of mine began to blush. When my former student saw my awkwardness, he got up and said: Take your time. I will go get you a prettier one. I want to change the outlook of your generation.

When I finally got rid of the two women and left the room, I saw a crowd gathering at the other end of the corridor, blocking the passageway. I managed to squeeze to the front and found that my former student was beating up a young woman. He grabbed her hair, punched her, and kicked her with his feet and knees. The woman curled up in a fetal position, her body shaking and her face bleeding. Several onlookers tried to stop my former student, but he had the genes of a blacksmith and nobody could subdue him. Sensing that he could kill her, I went up and tried to stop him. But I ended up getting punched in the face.

When he saw the blood coming out of my nose, my former student began to realize that he had hit the wrong person. Sobriety returned somewhat. He explained to me: When I asked this bitch to service you, she thought you are too old for her. No shit. She has slept with hundreds of men and she still thinks she has a fresh pussy. I couldn't bear to hear him talk like that and left right away.

Later on, I didn't even go ask for my tricycle, for fear that the Party secretary's son could find me. One day, I was reading the Huaxi Metropolis Daily and found a report in the social news section about how my former student had been charged with beating up a young woman and forcing her into prostitution. When he was interviewed in the detention center, he was quoted as saying: My former teacher took care of me when I was kid. Now it's time to pay him back. I don't regret staying at the detention center because I did it for him.

LIAO: I have never seen such a loyal student as him.

HUANG: If his father knew about this, he would be turning over in his grave.

LIAO: Have you been back to that school?

HUANG: No. I heard that the Shanya High School has been closed. The classroom buildings have been demolished and the playground is piled with dirt. The school is now turned into farmland. My guess is that the school lacked financial resources and couldn't get qualified teachers to work there. Times have changed. College graduates are no longer as idealistic as we were. They are all looking for high-paying jobs with international companies. Sometimes, I don't know who is right, Old Mao or Old Deng. Is it good to open China's door to the West or is it good to keep it shut?