Frog (7 page)

It wasn’t until later that I realised just how terrible the thing I’d done was.

After I fled from the health centre, Gugu slit her left wrist, then dipped her right index finger in the blood and wrote:
I hate Wang Xiaoti! I have always been a Party member, and I will die a Party member!

When Huang Qiuya returned triumphantly to the ward, Gugu’s blood had seeped all the way to the door. Huang shrieked before crumpling to the floor.

Gugu was saved, and placed on probation by the Party. The reason was not that her relationship with Wang Xiaoti remained suspicious, but that she had tried to use suicide to show the Party what she was capable of.

Northeast Gaomi Township enjoyed an unprecedented harvest from its thirty thousand acres of sweet potatoes in the autumn of 1962. After putting us through three abominable years, soil that had refused to grow anything regained its bountiful generosity and its innate ability to nourish. Each acre produced a record of more than ten thousand jin of sweet potatoes that year, and the mere recollection of that year’s crop made me sense a stirring for some reason. A rich yield of sweet potatoes lay beneath the ground. The largest potato unearthed in our village came in at thirty-eight jin. A photo of Yang Lin, the county’s Party secretary, holding it appeared on the front page of
Masses Daily
.

Sweet potatoes are wonderful, truly wonderful. It was not only a bumper crop in terms of quantity, but the potatoes were rich in starches, they cooked up with a perfect texture, and they tasted a bit like chestnuts, delicious with high nutritional value. Sweet potatoes were piled in every family’s yard, wire was strung along every wall to hang slices of drying sweet potatoes. We had enough to eat, finally enough to eat. No more days of eating grass or the bark of trees; the days when people starved to death were gone, never to return. Before long our legs stopped suffering from oedema; the skin around our middle thickened, and our bellies flattened out. A layer of fat began forming under our skin, light returned to our eyes, and our legs no longer ached when we walked; we started to grow, to really grow. At the same time, women’s breasts swelled and their periods returned to normal. Men’s torsos straightened, whiskers reappeared above their lips, their sex drive was reawakened. After two months of eating their fill of sweet potatoes, all the young women in the village were pregnant it seemed. In the early winter of 1963, Northeast Gaomi Township experienced the first baby boom in the history of the People’s Republic. Two thousand eight hundred sixty-eight babies were born that year in the fifty-two villages incorporated in our commune alone. According to Gugu, this crop of babies was known as the ‘sweet potato kids’.

The health centre director had a good heart. He came to see Gugu after she returned home to recuperate from her failed suicide attempt. As the nephew of my maternal grandmother on her husband’s side, he was a shirt-tail relative, what we call ‘melon-vine kin’. He criticised Gugu for being foolish and hoped she could lay down her ideological baggage and return to work. The Party and the people are blessed with bright-seeing eyes, he told her. Under no circumstance would they treat a good person unjustly or make allowances for a bad one. He urged her to trust the organisation and prove her unsullied record through positive actions in order to be reinstated into the Party as quickly as possible. You’re different from Huang Qiuya, he said privately. Her character is essentially bad, while your roots are red and your limbs are straight. Though you have made missteps, if you work hard you can have a bright future.

The director’s words made Gugu cry bitterly once more.

His words made me cry bitterly as well.

Gugu regained her footing in a pool of blood and threw herself into her work as if on fire. At the time, even though every village was equipped with trained midwives, many women chose to have their babies in a health centre. Gugu put aside her resentment and worked closely with Huang Qiuya, in the capacity of both a doctor and a nurse. She might not shut her eyes once for days at a time, caught up in the business of pulling birthing mothers back from the gates of Hell. Over a period of five months, they delivered eight hundred and eighty babies, eighteen by caesarian section, at a time when the procedure was extremely complicated, and the fact that a small commune health centre obstetrics ward dared to even attempt it caused a sensation. Even someone as ambitious and proud as Gugu had to admire Huang Qiuya’s surgical skill. She was in debt to that one-time enemy for her fame in Northeast Gaomi Township as an obstetrician with both local and foreign skills.

Huang Qiuya was what was known as an old maid. She’d likely never tasted romance, which might explain why she had such an odd disposition. In her later years, Gugu often spoke to us of her old adversary. For the daughter of a Shanghai capitalist and the graduate of a top university to be sent down to Northeast Gaomi Township to work was a case of ‘a fallen phoenix is not the equal of a common chicken’. And who was the chicken? In a tone of self-ridicule, Gugu answered her own question. That would be me. A chicken that pecked at a phoenix. A chicken that beat a phoenix into submission. She shuddered when she saw me, Gugu said emotionally, like a lizard that’s swallowed a hunk of tar. Everyone was crazy in those days. It was a nightmare. Huang Qiuya was a magnificent obstetrician. She could be beaten bloody in the morning and show up in surgery in the afternoon, so focused and composed that not even an opera being performed right outside the window would have had an effect on her. What a pair of hands she had! Gugu said. With them she could create a flower on a pregnant woman’s abdomen . . . Gugu always enjoyed a hearty laugh at this point; she’d laugh till tears spilled from her eyes.

Gugu’s marital situation had become a family obsession. The grown-ups weren’t the only ones who worried about her; even teenagers like me were deeply concerned. But we didn’t dare broach the subject with Gugu since that made her unhappy.

In the spring of 1966, early on Qingming, grave-sweeping day, Gugu came to the village to perform routine exams on girls who had reached child-bearing age. She was accompanied by the apprentice we knew only by her nickname: Little Lion. Eighteen years old, short and stocky, she had a pug nose surrounded by pimples, eyes too wide for her face and dishevelled hair. When they’d finished their exams, Gugu brought Little Lion home with her for dinner.

Wheat cakes, hard-boiled eggs, yellow onions and fermented bean sauce.

We’d already eaten, so we watched Gugu and Little Lion eat.

The girl was so shy she wouldn’t look us in the eye. Her pimples stood out like red beans.

Seeming to take to the girl, Mother asked her one question after another, moving increasingly close to the marriage question. That’s enough questions, Sister-in-law, Gugu said. You’re not looking for a daughter-in-law, are you?

You must be joking, Mother said. How could a village woman like me aspire that high? Little Lion is on the national payroll. There isn’t one among your nephews who’s worthy of her.

Little Lion’s head drooped lower; her appetite seemed to have left her.

My classmates Wang Gan and Chen Bi came running up at that moment. Wang Gan was so focused on the inside of the house he stepped on a bowl of chicken feed and smashed it.

You clumsy oaf, Mother scolded. Why don’t you look where you’re going!

Wang Gan just rubbed his neck and sniggered like an idiot.

How’s your sister, Wang Gan? Gugu asked. Has she grown some?

About the same.

Tell your father when you get home – she swallowed a bite of wheat cake and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief – that your mother mustn’t have another child. If she tries, her uterus will come right out of her.

Don’t talk to them about women’s health, Mother said.

Why not? Gugu replied. I want them to know how hard it is to be a woman. Half the women in this village have a descended uterus, the other half have inflammations. His mother’s uterus has torn loose and hangs there like a rotten plum. But Wang Jiao wants another son. The next time I see him . . . and you, Chen Bi, your mother isn’t well either —

Mother cut her off and turned to me: Scram, she scolded. You and your knucklehead friends go play outside. I don’t want you goofing around in here.

Out in the lane, Wang Gan said, Xiaopao, you have to treat us to some roasted peanuts.

Why’s that?

Because we have a secret, Chen Bi said.

Tell me, I said.

First treat us to some peanuts.

I don’t have any money.

What do you mean, you don’t have any money? Chen Bi said. You stole a piece of cast-off copper from the state-run farm and sold it for one-twenty. Did you think we didn’t know?

I didn’t steal it, I jumped to my own defence. They threw it away.

Whether you stole it or not doesn’t matter. You did sell it for one-twenty. Your treat, come on. Wang Gan pointed to the swing set next to the threshing square, where people had gathered around an old man who sold roasted peanuts amid the back-and-forth creaks of swings.

After I divided thirty cents’ worth of peanuts into three portions, a dreadfully earnest Wang Gan said, Xiaopao, your aunt is going to marry the county Party secretary to be his second wife.

Like hell! I said.

Once she’s married to him, Chen Bi, said, your family will be in a much better position. Before you know it your brothers and your sister, even you, will be moved into the city, where you’ll get jobs, eat marketable rice, go to college, and become Party cadres. Don’t forget your friends when that happens.

That Little Lion is quite the looker! Wang Gan blurted out.

When the ‘sweet potato kids’ were born, the household heads could register them with the commune and receive coupons for sixteen and a half feet of cotton and two jin of soybean oil. The amounts were doubled for twins. The receivers’ eyes would be moist and their hearts would swell as they gazed upon the gold-coloured oil and the cotton coupons, printed with sweet-smelling ink. What a wonderful new society! Gifts for the newborn. The nation needs people, Mother said. The nation needs workers; it values people.

The masses were grateful for the gifts received and silently vowed to repay the nation with even more children. The wife of the granary watchman, Xiao Shangchun, who was the mother of my classmate Xiao Xiachun, had already given my friend three kid sisters, the youngest still nursing, and she was pregnant again. On my way home from tending our ox, I often saw Xiao Shangchun coming down off the little bridge on his rickety bicycle. He’d put on so much weight his bicycle strained audibly under its burden. Old Xiao, villagers liked to tease, how old are you now? Do you have to go at it every night? No, he’d say with a grin, but I have to labour hard to produce people for the nation.

In late 1965, the population explosion was a source of considerable pressure on the leadership. As the first family-planning policy in New China peaked, the government proposed: One is good, two is just right, three is too many. When the county film unit came to town, before the movie started, family-planning slides went up on the screen. Enlarged images of male and female genitalia produced queer shrieks and wild laughter from the viewers in their seats. We youngsters contributed mightily to the commotion as many young hands – boys and girls – came together on the sly. The birth control propaganda acted like an aphrodisiac. The country drama troupe split into a dozen small teams that went into the villages to perform the short play
Half the Sky
, that criticised favouring boys over girls.

By then Gugu had been promoted to director of the health centre’s obstetrics department and deputy head of the commune’s family-planning steering committee. The Party secretary, Qin Shan, was listed as committee head, but he was a figurehead, leaving the actual responsibilities of leading, organising and implementing family-planning policy for the whole commune to her.

Gugu had put on a bit of weight; her teeth, whose whiteness had been the source of so much envy, had begun to yellow as her work schedule hardly even allowed time to brush her teeth. A male-like hoarseness crept into her voice, as we heard over the loudspeakers on a number of occasions.

Gugu’s announcements invariably opened in the same way: People do what they’re best at and peddle the goods they have. I’ll stay with mine, so today I want to talk to you about family planning . . .

The prestige she’d once enjoyed was on the decline during those days; even village women who had benefited from her counsel and attention began to cool towards her. She worked diligently in the service of family planning, but with meagre results. In the village she became isolated.

One day the county drama troupe came. When the female lead sang out, The times have changed: boys and girls are equal. Wang Gan’s father, Wang Jiao, shouted out from beneath the stage, Bullshit! Equal? How dare you say they’re equal! His outburst was echoed by those around him – catcalls and unfriendly shouts. Then came the missiles – chunks of brick and roof tiles – that were hurled onto the stage, sending the actors scurrying like scared rats. Wang Jiao had finished off a half jin of liquor that day – courage in a bottle – and his wild nature surfaced. Pushing people out of his way, he jumped up onto the stage, wobbling unsteadily as he stated his case with unrestrained gestures: You people can govern heaven and earth, but who says you can govern common people about having kids? Get some twine and sew up women’s openings if you think you’re up to it. That was greeted by roars of laughter, which further energised him; picking up a broken roof tile, he took aim at the bright gas lantern hanging from a railing in front of the screen and hurled it. The lantern went out, leaving the area in darkness. Wang Jiao spent the next two weeks in lockup, but was unrepentant upon his release. If you’re man enough, he railed at just about everyone he met, just try to cut off my dick!

Gugu had drawn large enthusiastic crowds upon her return home years before. But now, on the rare visit, she was shunned by nearly everyone. Gugu, Mother once asked her, this family-planning business, was it your idea or were you following orders?

What do you mean, my idea? Gugu replied testily. It’s the call of the Party, a directive by Chairman Mao, national policy. Chairman Mao has said: Mankind must control itself, people must learn to embrace viable population growth.

Mother just shook her head. Since the beginning of time, having children has been governed by nature. During the Han dynasty, the Emperor issued an edict that girls were to marry when they reached the age of thirteen. If they were not married, their fathers and elder brothers were held responsible. If women didn’t have children, where would the nation get its soldiers? Every day we hear that America is planning to attack us and that we must liberate Taiwan. If women can’t have babies, where will the soldiers come from? And with no soldiers, who wards off the American attack and who liberates Taiwan?

Don’t bother me with those platitudes, Sister-in-law. Chairman Mao is a bit smarter than you, don’t you think? And Chairman Mao has said: We must control our population! With no organisation and no discipline, at the rate we’re going, mankind is doomed.

Mother was ready: Chairman Mao also said that more numbers means more manpower, and more manpower means more things can be achieved. People are living treasures. The world requires people. He also said: It is wrong to keep rain from falling and to keep women from raising children.

You are putting words into Chairman Mao’s mouth, Sister-in-law, Gugu said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. In olden days, you’d lose your head for falsifying an imperial edict. We’ve never said that women cannot have babies, but that they should not have too many. In other words, planned pregnancies.

How many children a woman bears in her life is controlled by fate, Mother said. Who needs your planning? To me you people are like a blind man lighting a candle, just wasting wax.

As Mother said, Gugu and the others were wasting their effort and money and creating a bad name for themselves. They began by giving free condoms to the heads of women’s associations in every village to pass out to women of childbearing age and ask their husbands to wear them. The condoms wound up in pigpens or were blown up like balloons, some even painted, for children to play with. Gugu and the others went door to door to distribute birth control pills, but met with resistance from women who complained about side effects. Even if they forced them to take pills in front of them, as soon as they left, the women would stick their fingers or chopsticks down their throats to regurgitate the pills. The resistance eventually led to a call for vasectomies.

Word quickly spread throughout the villages that Gugu and Huang Qiuya were the inventors of vasectomies. People even went so far as to say that Huang created the concept, while Gugu put it into practice.

They aren’t normal, two old maids who are green with envy whenever they see a married couple, Xiao Xiachun said assertively, which is why they came up with their plan to make every family childless. He told us that Gugu and Huang had first experimented on young male pigs, then on monkeys, and finally on ten death-row prisoners. When the experiment was called a success, the men had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment. Naturally, it didn’t take us long to discover that Xiao did not know what he was talking about.

Back then, Gugu’s voice often came to us through loudspeakers. Brigade cadres, hear this: In the spirit of the eighth meeting of the commune’s family-planning steering group, all men whose wives have borne them three or more children and any male with a total of three children are to report to the commune health centre to undergo a vasectomy. They will receive a bonus of twenty yuan to help them recuperate and will be given a week off with no deduction of work points.

Men got together to complain. Shit, they griped, you neuter a pig, you castrate a bull, and you geld horses and mules, but since when did they start cutting off a man’s balls? We’re not candidates for palace eunuchs, why go after us? But when the family-planning cadres explained to them that a vasectomy only . . . Well, they glared and they protested: That sounds fine now, but when you put us up on the bed and get us all numb, we doubt you’ll stop with our balls. They’ll probably cut our pricks off at the same time. Then we’ll have to squat to pee, like women.

Good for the women, it was a simple procedure with extremely rare after-effects for the men, but it met with inflexible resistance. Gugu and her helpers prepared a room in the health centre and waited. No one showed up. The county headquarters called daily for a report on numbers, and were openly dissatisfied with Gugu’s lack of progress. The Party secretary called a special meeting, which led to two resolutions: 1) Vasectomies will be performed on males beginning with the commune leadership and spread to Party cadres and regular workers. In the villages, brigade cadres will take the lead, followed by the masses. 2) Men who resist the procedure and those who initiate and spread rumours will be subject to the dictatorship of the proletariat; all those who qualify for vasectomies but refuse to undergo the procedure will have their right to work revoked until they do so; if that doesn’t prevail, their grain ration will be reduced. Cadres who resist will be removed from office, workers who resist will lose their jobs, and Party members who resist will have their membership revoked.

Party Secretary Qin Shan made a personal address over the PA system in which he said that family planning was an issue of paramount importance to the national economy and the people’s livelihood, and that commune departments and production brigades were to attach the greatest importance to it. Qualified male cadres and Party members were to lead the way in undergoing the procedure to set a positive example for the masses. Then, abruptly changing to a more relaxed, everyday tone, Qin said: Comrades, take me for instance. My wife has already undergone a hysterectomy due to an illness, but in order to allay men’s fears, I plan to have a vasectomy performed on me tomorrow morning.

In his address, Secretary Qin asked the Communist Youth League, the Women’s Association and school authorities to get behind the campaign and publicise it aggressively in order to reach peak participation. As in previous movements, Teacher Xue, the school’s most talented literary figure, composed a clapper-talk lyric, which we quickly memorised. Then, organised into groups of four and armed with homemade paper or tin-plate megaphones, we went up onto rooftops and climbed trees to spread the word:

Commune comrades be not afraid,

Commune comrades be not delayed.

Vasectomies are the simplest things,

No gelding attempts will ever be made.

The tiniest cut, half an inch long,

Fifteen minutes, you can’t go wrong.

No blood and no sweat,

Back to work that day, just as strong.

Over that special spring, according to Gugu, a total of 648 vasectomies were performed at the commune, only 310 by her hand alone. All that was really needed, she said, was a clear explanation of the rationale behind the policy; then, with the senior personnel taking the lead, followed by men at every level, the masses would respond reasonably. The majority of procedures she personally performed were on village cadres and organisational heads who came willingly. Only two cases involved troublesome men who were openly hostile and required coercion. One was our village carter Wang Jiao, the other was Xiao Shangchun, the granary watchman.

Wang Jiao, whose family background was politically ideal, acted with reactionary arrogance. He was no sooner released from detention than he began to rant that anyone who tried to force him into undergoing a vasectomy would know what it meant to see a knife go in clean and come out red. My friend Wang Gan, who had fallen hard for Gugu’s assistant, Little Lion, was on Gugu’s side emotionally. He tried to get his father to get a vasectomy, for which he was rewarded with two resounding slaps. Wang Gan fled from his house, his father on his heels, whip in hand. When they reached the pond at the head of the village, a coarse argument bridged the water.

Wang Jiao: You fucking dog, how dare you try to get your father to have a vasectomy!

Wang Gan: I’m a fucking dog? Okay, I’m a fucking dog!

Wang Jiao stopped to think. Calling his son names was the same as calling himself those same names. He renewed the chase; father and son began circling the pond, like turning a millstone. The curious stopped to look and added fuel to the generational fire with provocative shouts and raucous laughter.

One day Wang Gan stole a deadly sabre from his house and turned it over to the village’s branch secretary, Yuan Lian, telling him it was a lethal weapon that his father had said he’d use on anybody who tried to make him have a vasectomy. Yuan Lian did not waste a minute, running off to the commune with the sabre to report to Party Secretary Qin Shan and my aunt. He’s not on our side, Qin roared as he pounded his desk. Sabotaging our family-planning campaign is a counter-revolutionary act! Letting Wang Jiao get away with this will make our job harder, Gugu said. You’re right, Qin agreed, knowing that village males in line to get vasectomies were watching to see what happened with Wang Jiao.

Arrest the hoodlum, Qin ordered.

Ning Yao (Waist) from commune security, pistol on his belt, led a group consisting of the Party secretary, the Women’s League chairwoman, the militia commander and four of his men; they burst unannounced into Wang’s yard.

Wang’s wife was on a stool in the shade of a tree, a nursing infant in her arms, making a braid out of grass. She threw her handiwork down at the sight of the intruders, sat down on the ground, and wailed.