The morning was clear: a blue sky, boundless and bright in the early light. We stood huddled in the crisp winter air, waiting to board an old bus, our hearts brimming with the type of excitement only youngsters can know, bodies in big coats jostling up against one another, suppressed giggles rippling through our numbers in waves.
All at once we were tumbling onto the decrepit vehicle and before I knew it I was pressed up against a window, the coach hissing as it pulled away from the school. There were two other coaches still parked up; we were in the first to depart, and as we pulled out onto the road, I felt a sense of exhilaration as though this was what it meant to be free.
It’s strange, isn’t it? The trips you take as a child – the ones which take you beyond the boundaries of your own neighbourhood towards unknown horizons – seem to last forever. It feels as though you have travelled hundreds of miles. Only when you make the same journey as an adult do you understand it was not so far at all.
As I pressed my nose against the cold of the window, the excitable chatter of the other children seemed to blur and grow indistinct. Because of the morning’s winter cold, I was wrapped in jumpers and a thick coat. Gradually, the heat of that rickety old coach and the warmth from all the passengers worked its way into me. The night before, sleep had taken a long time to arrive. My excitement, my anticipation of the day to come, had kept me awake. I’d woken early too – the coach was scheduled to leave some time before school would usually start. I felt tired. The chugging motion of the vehicle was rhythmic, lulling. My head grew heavy.
When I opened my eyes again the scenery had changed. The bus was moving faster now, on a bigger, wider road. We were driving by apartment blocks stacked many storeys high. The multiple lanes of the road were heavy with traffic. It looked different in the light of day, yes, but I recognised it from that night, years before. We were passing through Chang’an Avenue. Before long we could see the rich red of Tiananmen Tower set against a pastel blue sky that seemed to go on forever. We were pressing our faces to the windows, and Chu Hua had to urge quiet. The bus came to a wheezing stop and we all lurched forward. There was a single yelp followed by laughter and then the voice of Chu Hua telling us once again to quieten down.
When we exited the vehicle, we saw soldiers in dull green uniforms, their guns slung over their shoulders. We walked to Tiananmen Square in silence. Only Chu Hua talked. She pointed out the various historical sites, her voice throaty with pride in the crisp cold air. Finally she showed us the Zhongnanhai compound where the most important party officials lived. She spoke of them with the same reverence the religious might use when entering a monastery. We came to the gate of the mausoleum, where a long queue had formed. Workers and peasants selected by their units for this honour were waiting politely alongside regiments of soldiers.
We waited for an hour or so, but again time stretched and elongated, so it felt like an eternity. We began to fidget and whisper in exasperation, so Chu Hua let us eat one of the sandwiches we had packed for the trip. Her gambit worked. Our building impatience was offset by the sound of our collective munching, when suddenly the queue surged forward. We hastily stuffed half-finished sandwiches back into bags in order to press ahead.
It was a little like being on a roller coaster. We’d had to wait for so long that I’d become listless, but when we began to move through the great doors of the building there was a rush of anticipation and excitement, bordering on fear. This was to be one of the most important experiences of my life. My mind began to race. When I laid eyes on the great man, how should I react? What would I feel? I decided then and there that I would feel something incredibly powerful. That his aura of nobility would by some magic transfer itself to me.
As we stepped into the first section, darkness fell, and for a moment we were all as shadows. I could feel the tripping of my heart. Then we crossed into a main chamber flooded with light, and I had to raise my hand to protect my squinting eyes. The long line of people was flowing around a large space; we walked along a strip of orange carpet that ran along the edges of the room. The walls were a soft ochre. At the far wall was a huge marble statue of the Great Helmsman seated on a chair, overlooking the ant-sized figures that were filtering through the chamber. His face was giant, formless and white.
In the middle of the chamber I glimpsed a glass coffin. We were separated from it by thick velvet ropes and some distance; and people were so densely gathered, it was difficult to see past them. I pushed and jostled as the long line continued its rotation of the room. I was afraid I might miss seeing … him altogether. But I pressed underneath someone’s arm and I finally had a clear view.
But I felt nothing.
All I saw was a rather portly old man, dressed in a grey suit, lying on his back. His face looked as though it had been laminated in the same orange hue as the rest of the room. For a few moments, I was certain I was looking at some kind of mannequin; I was sure that this was a fake, a construct shaped from wax that had been used to replace the real body of the deceased leader. For, despite the grandeur of this great orange room and that shiny orange face, he nevertheless looked like a small and unassuming elderly man. He looked … ordinary.
I only had a short window of time to reflect on such impressions before the image of the Chairman was lost and the line filtered onwards, through the exit and into another room. This was a darker room, dimly lit, with a series of black-and-white photographs mounted on walls. Each photo featured men huddled together against a backdrop of mountains or swamplands. These were the faded images from 1934–5, the Long March undertaken by the Red Army, but I didn’t take the time to examine them. I was standing with a group of students from my class; they were describing in excited tones the exhilaration they had felt at being in his presence. I tried to add my own voice to their enthusiasm. I made a casual remark – something along the lines of how seeing Mao in reality was so much better than seeing him on the posters – but it got lost in the general cacophony of adulation and nobody noticed. I felt bereft. I hadn’t been touched by the experience the way the others had. There was something in me that was missing, incapable of feeling what I should have felt.
I wandered off a little way. I stood before one of those black-and-white pictures: a group of faded, exhausted figures trooping over a mountain pass, their rifles slung over their shoulders. They all looked old and tired, and their lives seemed so far away from my own as I stood in the pristine gloom of this modern building. I glanced back towards my school group. I could not make out their features in the soft shadow, but I could see the figure of Chu Hua, taller than the rest, gesturing with her arms, and I could sense the enthusiasm, their animation. I turned back to the faded picture. For a moment it was as though I was in a kind of limbo – an exile from time and place – and the feeling of loneliness was so exquisite that tears welled in my eyes.
I sensed someone standing beside me. I glanced up. Gen was next to me, his dark eyes shining softly, expressionless, as he observed the photo. He had got considerably taller, his jaw had hardened and his face had acquired a sharper and more adult definition. He looked handsome, but in a cold, fastidious sort of way. He brought his hand to his neck, adjusting his tie reflexively, and yet there was nothing out of place in his neat, orderly appearance. He looked down at me, then cast a withering gaze back towards where our schoolmates had gathered.
‘It’s such a crock of shit,’ he said softly. ‘All this weeping and hand-wringing for some backward peasant who refused to take one step into the modern world.’
Although his voice had barely raised above a whisper, it sent a frisson of shock through me. With the exception of my grandmother, I’d never heard anyone speak poorly of Mao, and even she wouldn’t have talked that way in a public place. But more than that, Gen had not spoken in an obscene way, the way my grandmother sometimes did. Instead his words were controlled and contemptuous, and he sounded deeply … intellectual. I remember, despite myself, being impressed. He walked away without another word.
When I got home, the whole corridor was abuzz with activity. Various neighbours came shuffling into our apartment to quiz me in tentative tones laced with wonder. What was it like to lay eyes on him? Was it true that his gaze followed you around the room? Was it the case that his face had grown more youthful with the passing of time? My responses were feasted on, every word hungrily devoured. Even my mother seemed not to begrudge me my moment in the sun. I tried to meet their expectations with my answers.
But the more I talked, the more I tried to give life to the lie, the more degraded I felt. It was as though every word from my mouth became heavier, slower – the sounds petrifying until at last they were foreign objects, brittle and dead, bearing no relation to me. It was like birthing stone. As the minutes became hours, I grew ever more sluggish, ever more exhausted, until that sense of heaviness had seeped into my bones and it was a struggle to raise my head, to push out the next sentence. My mother’s happy smile became taut and rigid, until at one point she gave the soft skin of my belly a hard pinch. ‘Mrs Liu just asked you a question, dear! Pay attention now!’
Mercifully, the neighbours began to slip back to their own residences. My mother peered at me through narrowed eyes as though I had once again sought to undo her best endeavours – the consequence of some unfathomable sneakiness and malevolence on my part. But I was too tired to try to pacify her, to try to explain. In any event, I didn’t have the words. I was about to head off to bed when I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder. A shiver of anxiety ran through me, for my first thought was that it was yet another neighbour hungry for details. But when I turned, I saw my father there, his mole-like eyes soft in the gloom. At that point he was still taller than me, yet already he seemed reduced. He was a little bent over, his shoulders hunched. He blinked rapidly – five times in succession – and then raised a hand to rub his eyes, the motion awkward, almost apologetic. If my mother was the sun, all heat and fire, perpetually ready to scold, then my father was the moon, a more melancholy presence that would peek out from behind a night-time shroud of cloud every now and again. He leaned into me, a small figure squinting in the dimness, and already in his frame, in his bearing, were the intimations of the old man he was never destined to become.
‘Get your coat, daughter. I want you to take a walk with me,’ he said quietly.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Get your coat.’
We slipped out into the night. The air was frosty, and our breath emerged in plumes of ghostly steam against the dark. We walked in silence. I found it difficult to talk to my father at the best of times, but on the few occasions we were alone together it was excruciating. We walked down a few streets. Eventually we crossed a road into a cemetery. I thought perhaps we might be visiting one of the graves there, but instead we continued on, exiting on the other side. Then we came to a quieter street. There was an empty bus stop illuminated in a melancholy glow. Beyond that, the outline of a large jagged wall. As we got closer, I could make out a scattering of figures gathered there. We got closer still. There must have been at least twenty people. They stood at various places along the wall, leaning in to peer at it. I had never seen anything so strange. I looked at my father questioningly.
‘What are they doing? What are we doing?’
‘It’s called a “memory wall”. And they are … remembering.’
‘Remembering what?’
‘You have heard about the Cultural Revolution at school, right?’
I nodded.
‘Well, there are some things your teachers didn’t tell you. But I think you are old enough to know. During that time, many people were disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’
‘Yes. Taken. Often at night. Workers. Teachers. Engineers. Intellectuals. Some were put in prison. Some were …’
His voice trailed away.
‘Why?’ I asked in a husky syllable.
He unfurled a single small hand. The gesture was both poignant and helpless.
‘I … I don’t know. I think, sometimes, for men who are high up in government, power becomes an end in itself. They want to maintain that power, that control, at all costs. So they seek to control others. To regulate their lives. Sometimes even their thoughts.’
I frowned. I felt that what my father was trying to explain was terribly important. But it was elusive.
‘And these people? This wall?’
‘People put up letters on the wall. Accounts. Stories of what happened to them during the Cultural Revolution. Some were written from within the camps themselves, prisoners who would write clandestine notes to the families they had been separated from. Others are about those men and women who never returned home. Who they were in life. The things they liked to do. Some are poems written for those people. So they … are not forgotten.’
Even for a quiet man, his voice was softer than I had ever heard it. He placed a hand on my shoulder and gently moved me forward.
‘Go see.’
I walked towards the others. Candles had been placed at the bottom of the wall and their soft light illuminated the patches of words and colours that had been pinned tenderly to stone. Some of the men and women stood further back, taking quick glances at certain sections of the wall. I would later come to understand that people stood at a distance so they could make out what was written while others wouldn’t be able to tell which bit of the wall they were reading from. For fear their activities might be seen by government spies.
I, of course, had no such thoughts or anxieties. By that point, I had come to love reading; words were the medium in which I moved most freely, feeling myself as light as air and as distant as the mountains. I slipped into the joy and sadness of those accounts of people who were no more; people who seemed to call out from the wall with silent voices. Accounts of suffering, but also of great love; stories woven into the fabric of stone; the names of those who had gone rendered as eternal as the stars. For some time I was just a presence in the darkness, when all at once I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder, returning me to myself once more. In the arching, flickering glow of the candles, without saying a word, my father motioned me towards a single inscription. I peered at it, reading what had been written there.
I am not a writer, my words are awkward
Lonely rather than beautiful.
In the dark, everything is lost.
But it is there where I see my daughter’s face
For a few moments I pondered the words. And then I realised. I understood. I must have been little more than a baby at the time he was gone. But he had written about me. I felt something fall away, and it almost stole my breath. I turned to my father. He was breathing so quietly but he couldn’t look at me. I turned away because I did not want him to see the tears in my eyes. Very gently, and for a brief moment, he squeezed my hand. It is the only time I remember him ever doing that. We turned and walked back into the night.