4

“You got in! You got in!” My classmate slammed on his brakes, causing a cloud of dust to rise up around his bicycle. He hopped off and ran into our courtyard, shoving a piece of paper at me.

“You got accepted!”

In June, at the end of high school, the graduating seniors sat down over the course of several days to take the gaokao, the dreaded college entrance examination that determined our future.

“Here are your scores!” my friend said to me. A low score meant I’d have to stay in my village and be a farmer forever—permanently residing in the lowest class. A high score meant college, maybe even in a big city. I always dreamed of a more urban existence. Beijing, with its university life, tall buildings, opulent palaces, and political power, held a definite allure. Plus, college meant government food coupons, a salary, and an immediate bump into a higher social strata. I grabbed the paper and looked over it quickly until my eyes landed on the number.

Of my forty classmates, I’d ranked thirteenth. Not terrible, I thought. Well above the national average. I lowered the paper and considered what this meant for my future. While my classmates had crammed all year for the big test, I was more interested in creating newspapers, sneaking out to the movies, and fighting the electric company. Perhaps I should’ve studied more, but I had scored high enough to get into a four-year college. Each student had to submit a list of three universities, ranked in order of preference. Through a rather mysterious, opaque process, the government assigned a college that determined the destiny of a student. Since the College of International Relations was in Beijing, I had listed it as my top choice of college.

“No, no, no,” my headmaster said to me, taking a pencil and marking through that college’s name. “You’re too much of a troublemaker to go there. Why don’t you become a teacher? It’s nice and safe.”

Later, I realized he was just trying to protect me. Apparently, the College of International Relations, managed by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, was where the intelligence personnel were trained. In other words, it was the Communist Party equivalent of a CIA school. Though I heeded my headmaster’s advice about that particular college, I definitely didn’t want to become a teacher. Teachers were paid very little and weren’t respected. I needed an important job, an impressive title, and a big paycheck. And so I ended up putting law school at the top of my list, journalism second, and management third.

It took several weeks to find out which direction the government had chosen for my life. When the news finally arrived, I was the only student in my class to get into a four-year university. This alone would’ve been a huge honor for most students. However, as I glanced down the form in my excitement, I realized I didn’t get into my first, second, or even third choice of school.

“How could this happen?” I asked my mom through tears. Her health had been gradually deteriorating over the years, which made college all the more important. “I didn’t even list this school as an option!”

“It says they accepted you to study in the English teaching department,” she said, reading over the paper to see what had upset me. Liaocheng Teacher’s College had accepted me, which meant the government was forcing me into the very occupation I didn’t want. “That’s better than being a typical school teacher, right?”

“Barely!” I said. I was too distressed to admit that teaching English was actually more prestigious than teaching other subjects. “I might as well be working in the fields!”

I ran to my room, locked the door, and flung myself facedown on the bed. During my self-imposed exile, I went on a hunger strike.

“What am I going to do?” I cried. Should I stay another year in my village and try to take the exam again? Maybe if I took the exam more seriously, all the extracurricular activities wouldn’t distract me.

Later in the day, I overheard my mother talking with my sister in the yard. “I’m worried about Xiqiu,” she said, her voice full of sorrow and concern.

It seemed like just yesterday when my family was discussing how to afford to send me to school and Qinghua had volunteered to sacrifice her education for mine. She was smart. Would she have done better on the test if she were in my shoes? Maybe my family had bet on the wrong child. But after an entire day of feeling sorry for myself, I realized my dramatic reaction was worrying my parents too much. Finally, I was able to gather myself.

With resolve, I emerged from my room, and said, “I promise you that I’ll go to the teacher’s college, but I won’t stop there. I’ll go on to graduate school. And with a higher degree, I’ll make more money.”

My mom seemed relieved to see my resolve and helped me pack my bags for my journey to Liaocheng City.

“You’ll get to Beijing,” she assured me. “You must simply do it in a different order.”

“When I get there,” I said, as I folded clothes and placed them neatly in my suitcase, “I’ll make sure to take you to Tiananmen Square.”

“I’ll remember your promise,” she said.

My new college was situated north of the Yellow River, the longest river in Asia. No matter how beautiful it was, however, it was located right there in Shandong Province, the area I’d never been able to escape all my life.

“I’m Xiqiu,” I said, extending my hand to one of the other male students on the first day of classes. I selected a desk in the middle of the class—close enough to hear my teacher and back far enough to still keep an eye on everything. As I met my new classmates, I learned they were from all over the province. Some seemed excited to be there, others were anxious to get to their studies. The guys, I could tell, were checking out a group of female students who were gathered at the front of the class.

Girls generally made me nervous, so I didn’t introduce myself to them. In China, dating didn’t start as young as it does in other places, because parents wanted their kids to concentrate on learning, not romance. That meant my life had been free from the drama of turbulent high school relationships. I didn’t have much experience talking to women, which was just fine with me. University officials, after they welcomed us to the campus, promptly warned us that dating was frowned upon. In fact, we weren’t supposed to pair up, because it would be a distraction to our academics.

Still, the guys were already evaluating the female contingency of our classroom.

“Who’s that?” a guy to my left asked. He was pointing to a dark-eyed, athletic girl in the second row.

“Oh, that’s Bochun Cai,” his friend responded. “But don’t get your hopes up. I heard she has a crush on a hometown guy who got sent to a different university.”

I didn’t pay attention to all the romantic maneuvering, but I did evaluate our room pretty quickly. Some students immediately introduced themselves to others, while some simply unpacked their backpacks and sat quietly waiting for the teacher. Some were laughing with people they’d apparently already known from high school, while others seemed mortified at being with a group of strangers. Unlike other areas of study, the English students had all of our classes together, so this group of strangers would soon be my circle of friends.

I hope we get along, I thought, as the professor came into our class and smiled.

“Welcome to the English literature department,” he said. He was dressed very casually, like he’d just come from a beach—which, I soon learned, he had. Bryan Harrison was an American teacher from California. He was tall and had a kind face.

“The first thing we’re going to do is to select an English name for each of you,” he said. “This will help you guys familiarize yourself with English names. And it will help me remember who you guys are.”

The students laughed.

“Let’s face it. I won’t be able to remember a roomful of Chinese names. Your names sound just as foreign to me as my name, ‘Bryan,’ sounds to you.”

Everyone giggled at the sound of his name. We wouldn’t call him “Bryan,” of course. Since he was going to give us English names, we’d give him a Chinese name. In China, we acknowledge people’s age in order to revere our teachers. Later, as we got to know him, we’d tease him by stressing the “elder” part, because we knew Americans had an irrational desire to be seen as young. Since he was only in his twenties, we used the Chinese word “Lao,” which was an affectionate but more familiar word. It was more like “Hey, ol’ buddy” than the stuffy terms of respect we had to show our Chinese teachers. Bryan loved his new name, “Lao Wu,” and passed around a hat full of tiny slips of paper that had English names on them. Soon it was my turn to draw one.

“Yo-seph,” I laughed, as the word clumsily fell out of my mouth.

“Joseph,” the teacher corrected me. We hadn’t yet gone over the sound associated with the letter J.

“Yo-yos-yoseph,” I fumbled. “These English names sound ridiculous. I’ll never learn how to pronounce a name like that!”

I passed the hat to the classmate sitting next to me, who drew his piece of paper.

“Bob,” he said, and burst into laughter. These names sounded so foreign to our ears.

“Bob?” I asked. “Now that’s an easy name to say.”

“Want to trade?”

“You’ll be Yoseph?”

“I’ll be Joseph.”

That’s how I went from Xiqiu to Joseph to simply “Bob”—a slip of paper out of a hat and a last-minute trade with my friend. My Chinese name is pronounced “She-Shoe.” Changing from Xiqiu to Bob would definitely help English speakers say my name. Of course, I had no idea that English names had meanings or connotations. Bochun, the girl in the second row, drew her slip of paper and read it aloud, “Hi-dee.”

Everyone giggled. “Heidi,” she said, a little more certainly.

Armed with our new, ridiculous-sounding names, we were on our way to teaching English.

As soon as I got settled into my academic life at college, a few other things fell into place. First, I was appointed classroom monitor, which was an even greater honor at the university level. Second, I was the vice president of the Student Union, which was under the leadership of the Communist Youth League of China. Mostly, that meant I’d be tasked with organizing student activities and recording the other students’ attendance and grades.

Of course, I also decided, once again, to start a newspaper. Not only did I want a platform for all of my many ideas, I loved hearing other people’s ideas and starting campus-wide conversations. I soon approached Heidi with the idea of the paper and asked her to write articles for it.

“Why are you naming it Ugly Stone?” she asked, confused at the title.

I’d selected the quite peculiar name simply to get attention. I could tell by her reaction I’d chosen wisely.

“I could really use a writer like you,” I said. At this point, I hadn’t really hit it off with Heidi. Though she was nice, I was too involved in all of my extracurricular activities to be bothered by the notion of romance.

“How much do you pay?”

“I might be able to get you a free copy of the paper.”

Heidi’s first article was a social critique of a country that still had a lot of potential despite its recent hard times. She named the article something provocative, like “A Starved-to-Death Camel Is Still Bigger Than a Horse.” That article showed me Heidi was a girl who could write political commentary.

Many of the English students didn’t study much. Quite simply, teachers weren’t going to be wealthy, so why spend so much time in the library? Every year, however, the college chose three students from the graduating class to be government officials instead of teachers. I hoped to be one of those students, so I made sure I earned high enough grades to impress the university and created many activities to gain new friends.

Joseph was a trusted ally and friend. As the class monitor, I’d frequently ask him to assist me in various tasks, and he reliably was able to obey orders and perform tasks on time for me. This allowed me to have enough time to plan chess tournaments, dancing parties, and basketball games.

Lao Wu would join us in our sporting activities. He loved to play basketball and baseball, and the students enjoyed hanging out with him during the athletic competitions. He lived in the foreign expert regiment building on campus, so he could easily drop by our activities. And he invited us to stop by his place too. He had an open door policy . . . or as we liked to call it, an open fridge policy. He was the only professor I’d ever known who allowed students to drop by his apartment and grab whatever we wanted from his refrigerator. Once, we dropped by his house when he wasn’t there and helped ourselves to his pantry. We ate all of his bananas, and the next day he pretended to be angry. He was so laidback that we knew he didn’t really mind. College, to me, was less academic and more social.

Of course, more than anything—even free food—I cared about international issues. In fact, I’d promised my parents I’d go beyond this paltry teaching degree. At night, even though I was just beginning college, I’d sit on my bunk bed and read huge textbooks on international relations for hours, preparing for graduate school. I even got hold of a Chinese translation of Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World by Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the man with the famous birthmark. I’d developed an intense appreciation for this world leader because of his systematic reform thinking. The book was a rare opportunity to be able to really read, understand, and process his thoughts. I remember opening the book like an American child might open Christmas presents, eager and anticipating. The first line grabbed me.

“We want to be understood.”

I read in amazement as Gorbachev criticized Soviet society, wrote that the economy couldn’t create useful goods, described the demoralized Soviet people, and claimed the Communist Party propagated dysfunctional social systems.

One beautiful autumn afternoon, I was walking through the campus on my way to class when someone touched my arm. When I looked up, I was surprised to see the president of the university, Zhang Ming.

“So, what do you think of Perestroika?” he asked, glancing at the book I carried.

I stopped in my tracks, intimidated so much I could neither move nor answer. The president was a well-regarded expert on diplomacy. With a forty-year age gap between us, what could I possibly say to him that would matter?

“I know Gorbachev shouldn’t trust Reagan,” I said, trying to sound confident. The Chinese propaganda department had told me all my life that the United States didn’t want China to be great, so I figured this was a safe response.

President Ming’s eyebrows narrowed. “Do you think his democratic socialism would actually work?”

Apparently, he was writing a paper about his various philosophies on international affairs, and was very interested in conversations that might help him hone his ideas. He’d stopped the right guy. After years of memorizing news clippings, I had an opinion on just about everyone and everything. We stood on the sidewalk and talked in depth about Gorbachev, my palms sweating the entire time. As I shuffled to class after our conversation, I replayed the conversation in my head. Did I say the right things? Did he think I was ignorant?

But the next time I saw him on campus, he noticed me.

“Xiqiu,” he called out. What? The president of the university knew my name? “Drop by my office later. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Afghanistan.”

“Definitely,” I said, with as much poise as I could muster. But as soon as he was out of sight, I ran back to my dorm, scanned over my textbook to make sure I knew everything there was to know about Afghanistan, and went back to knock on the door of his office.

Several assistants worked busily in the reception area. His chief of staff looked at me suspiciously. “How may I help you?”

“President Ming asked me to come by.” Even as I said it, the very notion seemed improbable. Why would someone of such a high status want to confer with me?

The chief-of-staff walked over to an appointment book and glanced over the entries then back at me. “Is he expecting you?”

He walked down the hall, disappeared into the president’s office, and came back with a more welcoming countenance.

“Right this way,” he said, bowing slightly and motioning for me to follow him.

We walked down the hall and came to a perfectly decorated room.

“Your guest has arrived.”

President Ming was sitting behind a large desk. “Please sit,” he said, gesturing to the sofa. He wasn’t a big man, but his dignified presence filled the room. His forehead had a few deep wrinkles, evidence he’d spent his whole life thinking seriously about the issues of the day. I’d heard that he was beaten up pretty badly during the Cultural Revolution and that he’d suffered from health issues ever since. The sofa was made of old elm wood, with a carving of a dragon in the center of the backrest. I moved a red silk pillow and sat down next to his desk.

“Tea?”

I felt stiff and nervous. Why would the university president be interested in my thoughts? But the special treatment was nice. I knew having a good relationship with the university president might mean my future could be brighter. The administration had so much power over the students’ lives and destinies. For example, if I developed a good relationship with the president, perhaps he would select me to work in the capital city in my province.

“I’d love some tea,” I said.

We instantly connected. Even though President Ming was known to be a very sober man, our conversation that day was frequently punctuated with laughter. I was shocked to discover I could hold my own with him, and he seemed to be delighted to have a like-minded conversationalist. I could tell I was helping him hone his own philosophies, but I made sure to defer to him. After all, he was the expert.

From that point on, I became the only student in the college who could walk right into the university president’s office, sit down, and have a conversation. It made me feel very important, and I dreamt of getting a high-paying government job. All of my family’s hopes rested on my shoulders. I wanted to do everything I could to continue to earn favor within the administration.

And if I couldn’t earn it, I’d buy it.

Bribery is an age-old Chinese custom, and it’s especially common during a season called the Moon Festival. The morning of the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar is when the moon is at its most round. That day, during my freshman year, I got up early and rushed through the campus. I didn’t want to run into anyone I knew.

The Moon Festival was one of the most important holidays in China, when families united under the full moon to exchange gifts. Usually, the gifts were “moon cakes,” or delicious round pastries filled with salted egg, lotus seed-green bean, sesame, nuts, sugar, ham, or egg yolk. Interestingly, these moon cakes were also a popular way to bribe government officials—when they weren’t made of baked goods. Some were made of solid gold, while others had money or silver baked into the confection. I bought a very nice moon cake of the bribing variety to make sure the deputy party secretary of the English department took notice of me during this time of gift giving.

Before I left the dorm, I took one last look at the moon cake. It had a lotus flower imprinted on the top and looked quite nice in the beautiful box I’d selected. I carefully shut the box, tucked it under my arm, and headed across campus. Bribery was so common before graduation that students coordinated their calendars to avoid potential awkwardness. Each dorm would have a certain hour to deliver bribes so they wouldn’t run into each other. I didn’t have much money, but my “special” moon cake for the party secretary was worth about twenty dollars. I held the box like it was a bag of money stolen from the bank. After all, I’d never done this before. I approached the administration building, took a deep breath, and scurried up the steps.

The deputy party secretary’s office was located at the end of a long corridor, and I looked at the floor as I shuffled down the hall. I didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone. When I came to his office, I paused as I looked at the door. Was I really going to do this? Was I going to offer a bribe?

Ever since I was a little boy, I talked to myself when I was anxious, and I did so now, without forethought. “Oh, you aren’t worth anything,” I said. “Why would you think you could get ahead this way? You’re just a peasant, so why fight destiny?”

“Is someone out there?” a voice said from beyond the door. I assumed it was an assistant who must’ve heard my mumbling. As I opened the door, I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d planned on seeing the party secretary and handing him my moon cake with a wink or some sort of sign. I wanted him to know that my moon cake was more than just a moon cake.

However, since the deputy party secretary was nowhere to be seen, I had a wrinkle in my plans. I couldn’t very well introduce myself to the assistant, explain that this was a special moon cake bribe, and leave. Absent any sort of plan, I simply said, “Hello. Here’s a moon cake.”

Only after I handed him the cake did I realize he was not an assistant after all. Apparently, the deputy party secretary shared an office with a deputy dean who believed the moon cake was for him. And so, to my everlasting humiliation, he took the cake, thanked me, and I left.

I had just bribed the wrong person.

Even though that didn’t turn out well, I still hoped the administration would look favorably upon me when the time came. I didn’t want to be a teacher, no matter how much the government seemed to be forcing me down that path. If they selected me when I was a senior, I could be a government official and make enough money to help my family, justify my sister’s educational sacrifice, and get my mother good medical care.

One day, however, a school official with a very sober face came into my dorm with a cable.

“Xiqiu,” he said. “May I come in?”

I slowly opened the door. I could tell by his softer voice that this was not about school business. “Your mother has been admitted to the hospital and has lost consciousness. She’s in critical condition,” he said.

I didn’t move. Did I hear him correctly? Was the death of my mother, the event I had feared all of my life, actually imminent? Fear and grief seized me, but I managed to stand up, grab my backpack, and run out the door. First I took a bus, then a train, and then I walked. I had to travel fourteen hours to get home and every minute I was desperately hoping I could see my mother before she died.

“You made it,” my father told me when I got there. Immediately, I felt relief. I could tell by my father’s slumped shoulders and heavy countenance that I didn’t have long. “We told her you were coming, and I think she was just holding on to see you.”

When I walked into her hospital room, she was unconscious.

“Mom!” I called out. “I’m here. Mom!” Her eyes didn’t open, but then her hand squeezed mine ever so slightly.

“Mom?” I said, taking her hands in mine. “It’s me, Xiqiu. I’m back. I’m here.”

I could tell she was listening. “I’ve been studying well,” I said. “And I can’t wait to take you to Tiananmen Square.”

She didn’t respond.

“Mom?”

It was too late for any real conversation, and I felt helpless. Her life was slipping away too quickly for any last sentiments.

Then, to my surprise, she opened her mouth, just barely, and mustered up the last remaining energy she’d expend on earth to spell out a word.

“P-i-a-n-y-i.”

My childhood nickname. No one had called me that in so long. My mother used to call me in for dinner from the persimmon trees by shouting “Pianyi!” She used it when talking to me soothingly before we all went to bed. She used it when reprimanding me for mischief. She used the word, “cheap,” as a talisman against the poverty that had so defined our lives.

But that was the last time I’d hear it come from her mouth. After she spelled out my name, she breathed her last.

“Mom?” I said one last time, but she never answered. She had lived fifty-seven years.

My sister and I spent a little more time with her body before we called out to the others that she’d died. Afterward, we all left the hospital and went home. It was the same little house I remembered from my childhood, but it felt oddly vacant without my mother’s presence. There was the courtyard, the sitting room, the stove on which many aromatic meals had been made. And yes, there was the kang, the place she’d spent so much of her life. My little shovel was propped up beside her bed.

When I saw that shovel, I wept. Next to the kang was a hole in the floor. I’d dug it so gradually—cough by cough—over her many years of infirmity, I was surprised when I really looked at the hole.

It was three feet deep.