General Feng has generously lent us one of his army lorries so that my students and I can travel fifty miles into the countryside to put on a play by Tian Boqi.
My students stand debating among themselves – working out and memorizing lines, arguing between each other on particular points of ideology and dialectic – while the driver and I load the backdrops and props into the back of the lorry.
We drive off, the students in the back still arguing ideology, the driver and I in the front. The driver spends the journey explaining to me precisely how much he hates rickshaw drivers, bicyclists, cart drivers and all other road users.
We arrive. Nobody seems to know anything about us. I locate the village stage and we start to set up our backdrops and curtains. The students are still arguing. A few curious children and two dogs turn out to watch them. The dogs start to fight. For the first time Tian Boqi looks nervous. I suggest that perhaps, in their costumes, they could go into the village and invite the people to attend their performance. Their costumes have been designed in the latest German expressionist style. George Grosz bankers, Kandinsky policemen and a landlord who looks like Nosferatu set off into the village. They certainly attract an audience. Tian Boqi, dressed as himself, gives me a triumphal look.
As a curious audience gathers I mix with them, chat with them. I put on my best Mandarin accent and am relieved that they at least understand what I am saying. Hopefully they will be able to understand the actors as well. I explain these young people are from the government.
‘That’s very kind of the emperor. I hope there’s lots of dancing.’
On that inauspicious note the play starts.
It is about a youthful but rather shy peasant boy (played with some disassociation by the young anarchist with the interesting linguistic theories) who is in love with a beautiful young peasant girl, played by Shan Shuang, the revolutionary poetess. She has removed her glasses for the play and is consequently somewhat short-sighted. They want to marry but before they can the Nosferatu-like landlord turns up with a whip and a rich banker. The banker wants to sleep with the girl. The boy tries to explain he and the girl are in love. The landlord starts to whip the boy. The boy cringes and backs away.
This puzzles the audience.
‘Why doesn’t he fight back?’
‘Punch him!’
‘He should get out his sword.’
‘He doesn’t have one.’
The fact that he doesn’t carry a sword clearly baffles the audience, who then start to ask further questions.
‘Where is the king?’
‘Why is there no king or emperor?’
‘I hope there’s going to be a princess who suffers terribly and then gets married. Or commits suicide.’
‘Why is there no music?’
‘Or dancing?’
‘I think,’ ventured one would-be expert, ‘that this is a comedy. That’s why they’re all talking in such funny voices.’
A sigh of understanding goes up from the audience.
On stage the rich banker is trying to drag the young peasant girl away but she starts to fight back and refuses to go with him, while her peasant lad continues to cringe before his betters. The landlord starts to beat her with his whip. Most cruelly.
Which is met with roars of laughter from the audience. The more Nosferatu lashes the damsel and the more she suffers the louder they laugh.
Shan Shuang, the short-sighted revolutionary poetess playing the peasant girl, puts on her glasses to see what on earth is going on. More gales of laughter. She is not amused.
‘Shut up, you ignorant fools. How dare you pollute this revolutionary drama with your coarse laughter. Sit down and learn something, you rural imbeciles.’
This only increases the laughter.
The actors are looking at each other in bewilderment. But the show must go on! The peasant girl, glasses removed, is being dragged offstage by the lascivious banker when suddenly onto the stage springs a Japanese officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, shouting threats that he will massacre every innocent Chinese civilian he finds and waving a large sword around his head.
‘At last, a sword!’
‘Let’s hope the peasant has a sword and can kill him and win the girl.’
But the anarchist/linguist peasant boy continues to cringe. The banker and the landlord run away and the Japanese officer drags the young peasant girl off to do his worst.
‘I shall defile your pure Han flesh with my foul imperialist blade.’
The young peasant, alone on stage, starts to bewail his lot.
There are shouts from the audience of ‘Get after him,’ ‘Fight the bastard,’ and ‘Get your sword out and win back your girl.’
But suddenly onto the stage – he’s obviously worried enough by the audience to have borrowed the Japanese officer’s sword – leaps Tian Boqi, sword in hand, as a young militant revolutionary student dressed – well, dressed as himself.
A sigh of relief sweeps the audience. Another sword on stage. That obviously means there’s going to be a sword fight.
Tian addresses the cringing peasant:
‘Oh ignorant beast of burden, weighed down by the neo-feudal reactionary landlords and bankers of the imperialist and capitalist classes. Quit your craven lackeydom! Cast off your subservient shackles and stir your proud loins, stiffened by the resolve of pure Marxist-Leninist ideology and revolutionary materialism to smash the bourgeois fascist…’
This speech goes on for some time. The audience grows restless.
‘What is all this rubbish?’
‘Why aren’t you running after your girl and saving her?’
‘Who unlocked these lunatics?’
‘Where’s the dancing?’
Tian Boqi, looking more than a bit desperate, raises his voice above them, shouting full into the peasant boy’s face.
‘Break the foul bonds of your reactionary servitude and march with the proud steps of dialectical materialism into the promised land of revolutionary praxis!’
Suddenly the peasant boy leaps to his feet. Tian Boqi’s words and arguments have convinced him at last.
‘Yes, I will avenge myself against the Japanese imperialists, the Western capitalist bankers and the reactionary landlord clique!’ he cries, thrusting his fist to the skies.
An elderly member of the audience has managed to clamber on stage. He starts to complain that the presence of a female actor on stage is a threat to public morals.
Meanwhile another villager has also climbed up and is shouting that these actors are foul Japanese propagandists sent secretly to destroy the morale of the noble Chinese people.
A third mildly tries to point out to everyone that the Japanese, like the Chinese, are a Buddhist people – therefore the ordinary Japanese soldier must be as equally gentle as the ordinary Chinese soldier. They are being driven to these atrocities by their evil Bushido officers.
The stage has become flooded with villagers expressing their various opinions and general outrage at the play and the young hooligans who dared put it on. One old lady particularly unloads her bile on Tian Boqi, who sits by himself on the stage staring manically ahead of himself. A man berates him.
‘To think we wasted time on your stupid play. We could have been in the fields working!’
The other actors have retreated to the lorry.
Gradually the villagers, grumbling and gesticulating, climb down off the stage and, still complaining, walk back into the village, leaving the wrecked stage behind them.
Tian Boqi sits alone. Utterly alone. Utterly humiliated. I go up to him. Sit down beside him.
There is silence. Then Tian speaks.
‘You know what always used to scare me more than anything? That I would never be accepted by the working classes because I was upper class.’
Silence.
I try to comfort him. ‘Look, Tian…’ I say.
‘Fuck off,’ he says.
‘Why are you always so angry?’ I ask him.
He stands up, starts to walk into the village. I follow. The other actors, still bewildered, climb down from the lorry and follow us.
It is when we reach the village square that everything changes.
There are still groups of villagers standing around, complaining about our play. Some are preparing to return to the fields. Old people drink tea in the tea house. Suddenly, into our midst, marches a troupe of young children. Half-starved, dirty-faced, dressed in rags, no more than seven, eight years old. One of the many bands of young parentless children roaming our country. They’re led by a young girl of about ten years old. She has a determined, single-minded look to her.
The villagers make sympathetic noises as they see them.
The children walk to the centre of the square. The eldest steps forwards and addresses us all.
‘All but one of us are from the village of Xiazhuang in Shandong Province. We do not have any parents any longer. They were all killed by the Japanese when they came to our village. We hope you will listen to our story, feel pity for us, and give us some alms so we can continue our journey to safety.’
Everyone falls silent. Gathers round. Stands or sits on walls or benches so they can follow and listen.
Six of the children, with the eldest, stand in a line before us. The seventh, the smallest, only three years old or so, wanders around as the others speak, staring directly at each member of the audience, smiling sweetly, then frowning and moving on to the next. All the six in the line suddenly speak.
‘Listen to our story, dear people.
Listen to what happened to us, dear people.
Listen to what you must do, dear people, if you are to help us.’
The eldest girl steps forwards.
‘Listen to my story, dear people. I am Su. My father was a shepherd.
One night he was out in the fields tending a sick sheep while the rest of us were all at home.
Suddenly, into the house, into the candlelight, he staggers in.
Blood is running from his head.
“Help me,” he says, “these soldiers attacked me.”
He falls. My mother and we children cry out. Neighbours rush in to see what has happened. But as they do there are other cries from elsewhere in the village.
Screams, shouts, the sounds of guns.’
She steps back. A young boy steps forwards.
‘Listen to my story, dear people. My name is Park.
I am asleep. Suddenly my mother leaps up.
Someone has set light to our house. The thatch roof is burning. Bits of burning straw fall upon us.
My father rushes to the door.
Standing outside – I can see him in the light of the flames – is a Japanese soldier.
He forces his bayonet into my father.
All the rest the family are pressing out, scared of the flames. He bayonets them all.
I escape through a hole in the back wall of the house.
I see flames all about me in the village. Hear screams. I run into the darkness.’
He steps back. A girl slightly older than him, quite nervous, moves forwards.
‘Listen to my story, dear people. My name is Jiang.
Soldiers come into my house.
They are rough, shouting. They shoot my daddy.
Then grab all the rest of us, even my old gran, and pull and tug us towards the centre of the village.
All around us are the flames from all the burning houses. Shouts and screams.
And in the centre of the village I see all the villagers being herded,
surrounded by the soldiers with their swords and bayonets,
and just at that moment I trip, and the soldiers behind me tread over me without seeing me,
trample me.
My family walk on surrounded by soldiers.
Dear people, what do I do?
Do I run on to join my dear family,
my dear sisters and brothers and mother and gran,
or do I run into the darkness?’
For a second the girl hesitates. A stricken look comes over her face.
‘I leave them. I leave my family. I run away into darkness.’
Lost in the horror of the moment, Jiang hesitates, then remembers herself, steps back into the line. A boy slightly older than her steps forwards. He has a slight limp.
‘Listen to my story, dear people. My name is Ma.
The soldiers drive my whole family out of our home, beat us with their rifle butts, then drive us towards the centre of the village
where like sheep we are driven into a group of all the villagers.
We are surrounded by soldiers aiming their guns and bayonets at us.
The soldiers are drinking.
Drunk and singing.
They see my eldest sister and drag her out
and before us all, dear people,
they defile and shame and then bayonet her.
They all start to fire their guns into us.
People started stumbling and pushing and falling and screaming
I fall over
then all sorts of people, people bleeding, people screaming, people writhing
start falling on me
and above me, through the bodies,
I hear the fire continuing until it stops
and there is silence,
and then I hear the soldiers start to walk among the people killing those still alive.
I am beneath three grown-ups and I lie very still and they miss me.
I lie there for hours, not moving, peoples’ blood running all over me,
sticking and hardening all over me,
the bodies on top of me are very heavy but when I can hear no more,
when there is silence,
at last, very slowly dear people, I start to push my way out from underneath my village.
The last man I get out from underneath is my uncle. I can’t see any soldiers. I run away.’
I stand there and listen to their stories. The hair on my head rises. Though it is not warm I start to sweat. I breathe with difficulty. All around me is that terrible silence which occurs in a play when every single member of the audience is rapt, entrapped in each syllable and word that is uttered.
But the most haunting, disorientating aspect of the children’s performance is the behaviour of the youngest child, the toddler. She continues walking round and round the audience, looking into the face of each adult, her face momentarily lighting with recognition, smiling with delight, only for it to relapse into a frown, almost a scowl, as she turns and walks on to the next.
The children having finished their various stories, Su, the eldest, starts to speak. She tells us how they, the surviving children, hid in a cave they used to play in before the soldiers came. They wondered whether they should return to the village. They all thought that was too dangerous. So they had to set off. The soldiers came from where the sun rose so they set off to where it set. They walked and walked and when they came to villages they told their story and begged for food and shelter. They became travellers.
At this point Su, the eldest girl, walks forwards to where the young sweet-faced toddler is still searching from adult face to adult face. I note that Tian Boqi especially stares at the toddler with terrified fascination.
‘And so, dear people, we come to the story of the last of us,’ she says. ‘This tiny infant came to us when we were in a forest. She just walked up to us. She smiles a lot but speaks very little, but when she came to us I asked her what her name was and she said she could not remember. So we called her Lim, which means “From the Woods”. One night, when she and I were talking, she said she wanted to find her parents. She knew they were somewhere. So everywhere we go, every village we come into and speak to, she wanders among you, searching for her parents.’
The toddler is standing near me, looking into a farmer’s face. I see something. Something terrible. Fear. Insecurity. She is doing what any lost child of that age would do – she is using the one tool of communication God has given her, her smile, to desperately win affection and nourishment and love. To somehow conjure up her forgotten, mysterious parents in the faces of those she looks so earnestly into. But always as she looks some distant ghost memory of her actual parents returns, her smile hesitates. and disappointed she turns smiling to the next.
Su picks her up and cuddles her. Su looks up.
‘But now, dear people, she has her parents, her family again. She has us children.’
Su, carrying the toddler, returns to the line. They all speak.
‘You all listened to us, dear people.
You all listened to what happened to us, dear people.
Listen now to what you must do if you are going to help us, dear people.’
One by one the children speak.
‘One day I want there to be a knock at the door. I am terrified. I fear another soldier. I go to the door. I open it. It is a soldier. But it is not a Japanese soldier with blood on his sword, it is a Chinese soldier.
“Hello, little one,” he says, “I have come to protect you.”
He is strong. He is proud. He smiles at us.
He does not shout or rave. He has a gentle voice.
He leans down and he lifts me up with his strong hands and hugs me. “Hello, dear Jiang,” he says.
He says that he and all the other Chinese soldiers have come to rescue us.
That they will take us back to our villages and we will be safe and happy.’
‘And so, dear people,’ says Su, facing the people, ‘we ask you all to do what you can to support our brave Chinese soldiers so that one day we can all return to our village.’
From the mouths of babes. They bow to us.
There is applause for this performance. Warm feelings for the children are expressed by the villagers. An elderly man, obviously the person used to speaking for the village, steps forwards. He thanks them emotionally for what they have said. He says the whole village has sympathy for their suffering. Congratulates them on their courage and on the truths they have spoken. He says all Chinese people must be patriots and fight for their country.
The villagers then take the children to the temple where they have swiftly organized food for them and a place for them to spend the night.
Which leaves my would-be playwrights. Each one has been deeply moved by what they have just seen. The walls of class have been torn down. Tian Boqi sits alone by himself, tears pouring down his face. Then he gets up and moves over to his classmates.
‘We have all been fools,’ he admits. ‘We must talk among ourselves, debate, so that we too can write drama which can move and motivate people like those children moved us.’
They do talk among themselves. Not in the way they used to – with sharp tones of point scoring and egotism – but more quietly, more warmly and respectfully, listening to each other, starting to construct things together.
I have a sudden thought. It is obvious I am not needed any longer by my students. They will decide for themselves what they will do and how they will do it. I follow the villagers to the temple.
The children are seated around a table being served and feted by the villagers. It is a beautiful sight. I go up to the elderly man who had spoken for the village. I apologize to him for my behaviour, for the behaviour of my students. For inflicting that play on the village. I say that the children have taught us how we should write plays, that we have learnt our lesson.
He looks at me and smiles wryly.
‘I watched your face while your students were making their play. I saw what you were about. You were using our village to teach your students a lesson.’
I smile. I think.
‘Perhaps,’ I say, ‘perhaps my students could at some time come and talk with the villagers. That they could bring their new plays down here and perform them before the people and then listen to the peoples’ comments. They are young, they need their advice.’
‘I could discuss it with the people,’ says the old man. ‘Explain things.’
‘I would be very grateful for that. But,’ I say, ‘that is not the real reason why I came to talk to you.’
‘No?’
‘It’s about the children. I am from the government. Now I know that the government, among good people, is very often disliked. Distrusted. And quite rightly. It takes often, it rarely gives back. It can do very bad things.’
He again smiles wryly at me.
‘Have you spoken to the children?’ I ask.
‘We have spoken to Su, their leader, yes,’ he says.
‘It is my job within the government to put on plays that will arouse, move the people towards supporting the government in their fight against the Japanese. That is why I want my students to write good plays. War is a horrible thing, but we must learn to defeat the Japanese. We, the Chinese people, must defeat the Japanese.’
He looks at me without expression. I continue.
‘I know a man who writes poems and songs for children. He wrote the “Fox’s Fur Coat” which a lot of children sing.’
‘Ah, I’ve heard that song.’
‘He also writes plays for children to perform. The thing is, these children perform a play. They perform a wonderful play. But my friend has wisdom and knowledge which will help them perform even better plays. He has money so that they can be safe and secure in their lives, so that they can buy costumes and swords, so that they can have time to develop more plays of their own, perhaps perform some of his. Do you know what these children are doing tomorrow, where they are going?’
‘We have arranged with them to stay with us for several days while they go to nearby villages each day and perform their play. They can eat here each evening and sleep safely.’
‘It’s just that I think, instead of perpetually wandering, these children need some sort of permanent security, a home. We can give it to them.’
He looks at me and smiles.
‘You need to talk to young Miss Su. She’s the boss.’
I thank him.
After she’s finished feasting I talk to Miss Su. She is sceptical. She likes the way they work now. Artistic freedom, eh! But she agrees to meet Lao Xiang, talk things over with him. I think Lao Xiang is exactly the right person for her to talk things over with.
I congratulate her on her performance and walk away.
*
One thing I have not explained to you is the anxiety I felt when I first saw that raggle-taggle string of children enter the village. How I minutely scanned each individual face. Any one of them might have been one of my children, all of my children, cast adrift, helpless on the tides of war. But none of them were my children.
I return to the students who are intensely debating future plays and productions. They are talking about writing their next play collectively – dividing up the scenes and speeches among themselves. The lorry is reloaded with the remnants of our props and backdrops. Still talking, the students pile into the back. Except one. Tian Boqi. He looks at me.
‘I want to talk to you.’
We both climb into the cab with the driver and set off.
Tian turns and looks at me with that intensity he always stares at people with. I have learnt that he is not always trying to intimidate people when using it, it is his habitual look.
‘You asked me why I am always so angry.’
‘I did.’
‘I will try to explain.
By the way, I apologize for the appalling way I have treated you in the past. Especially my comments on the Manchus. They were unforgiveable.’
‘Let’s deal with the present,’ I say.
‘My anger,’ he says. ‘I was brought up in Tianjin. A typical bourgeois merchant family. Wealthy. I had the best education. But I found the bourgeois life sterile, lifeless, squalid. I could not bear it. My whole country was falling to pieces – starvation, civil war, exploitation – while people lived like this! At university I became a Marxist-Leninist, joined the Communist Party. Various of my plays were performed in Shanghai, Beijing. They were praised. Probably, from what I know now, they were not very good.
‘I largely lost contact with my family. They did not approve of me, I did not approve of them. Harsh words were spoken on occasion. Then came the war. As you know Tianjin was one of the first places to be invaded. When I heard I froze. My family! My blood! In danger! I jumped on a train. The train stopped several miles before Tianjin. The Japanese had bombed the track. I jumped off, started walking. I passed people fleeing who said “Do not go there! It is terrible.” I ignored them. It was dark. I entered the city. Moved from doorpost to alleyway, keeping in the shadows. There was screaming, fires, drunkenness. I managed to avoid the Japanese. In the morning I reached my family’s apartment block. I went in. Everything seemed normal. I ran up the large marble staircase to my parents’ apartment. I walked to the door. It was open. I walked in. My family. My grandmother, my father, my mother, my three young sisters and my two younger brothers, several of the servants, all dead, lying there, soaked in blood – shot, bayoneted, their flesh shredded and hacked. Unspeakable obscenities done to my mother and three young sisters. And I had not been there. Why had I not been there? Why had I not been there? If an eldest son was not there to defend his family…? I was so angry. Angry with myself. Angry with everything. Angry with everyone except my family. Lao She, for a while I was so angry I could not think. Then I covered them up. What should I do? Above all I wanted revenge. Should I try and bury them? Give them honourable funerals? How?!? I’d be butchered in the streets. I must have revenge, even if it meant abandoning them. I knew I must think. Calmly, rationally. I must escape. Wait for night. Flee and join the army to kill the bastards. But then I had another thought. Money. My father had a safe. I knew the combination because I had spied on him once when I was a boy. I went to it. They had only been bent on murder and mayhem. It was untouched. So I opened it, took out the money.
‘That evening, I slipped out of the city, made it to Shanghai. Went straight to the head of my Communist cell. Gave him the money. Said I wanted a gun. So I could join the fight. Join the guerrillas.
‘“No,” he said.
‘“What?” I said. “What do you mean? I am going to fight like a devil. I’m going to kill every Japanese dog I meet. Make them pay for the murder of my poor family.”
‘“No,” he said. “Tian Boqi, you are far too valuable to the party, the Chinese people, as a playwright, as a propagandist. Anyone can fight, anyone can die. You must write, you must set peoples’ hearts alight. You must make them want to fight and die.”
‘I felt so disgusted with myself. Hiding behind my pen. But he was right. I had to write, no matter how angry I felt with myself. So that was what I did. But my anger remained – til today. We have decided – we, the writers in your class – that we must write as those children spoke. To the heart. With action and emotion. And with hope.’
‘Don’t forget the dancing,’ I add.
‘And the swords,’ he adds.
‘You could try sub-machine guns on occasion,’ I add.
Silence falls. Our lorry arrives at Wuhan.
Feng Yuxiang is waiting for us. When I tell him what happened his eyes twinkle.
‘I always knew you were the man for the job.’
He drives off with the lorry driver.
But someone else has also been awaiting our arrival. My companion and fellow writer Lao Xiang. I must tell him about the children, but first he has something to get off his chest.
He watches my students disembark from the lorry. Notes their quietness, their cooperation as they pick up their props and stage sets to carry them into the university. He addresses them in an unusually restrained manner.
‘Had any of you fuckers ever met a peasant before today?’
They do not answer him.
‘I’ll tell you something. Something you must never forget. Just because you’re an intellectual doesn’t mean you’re in any way intelligent. Most intellectuals are unbelievably stupid. I’ve met peasants who are way more intelligent than anyone here. And I include myself and Lao She in that. Do you know how much intelligence it takes to repair a water pump? The intricacy of the mechanism – all the parts of which you have to make yourself? The complexity of holding in your head the exact water levels of all the different water courses in your irrigation system, so that if you shut down the water wheel to repair the pump all the surrounding fields do not flood? Every single farmer has to hold that knowledge in his head. Could you ever fit a red-hot iron tyre around a wooden cartwheel? A cartwheel is a most fragile and complex construction of many pieces of wood, and you have to adjudge precisely when that iron tyre is hot enough to be placed around the wooden rim so that when it cools and contracts it snatches every part of that wooden wheel in on itself so it forms a rock-hard wheel. A farmer must be able to look at a field of growing corn and know precisely where it is flourishing, where it is failing, because he knows the precise history of that field – and know exactly what he must do to cultivate those parts which are failing. You try being a farmer sometime – wankers – you wouldn’t even get past the first blade of grass.
‘Always remember: poor people are smarter than rich people. They have to be smarter, because that is the only way they can survive. They don’t have rich daddies to bail them out every time they fuck up.’
With that we all go home.
When I reach my room, with dawn breaking, I look out of my window. On a branch of the red persimmon tree growing in my courtyard I see a first scarlet blossom breaking.