Little Emperors (26 page)

Number 1 School has its courtyard flag at half-mast and a photo display of Deng's life in one of the new glass display cases near the front gate. As I walk into the courtyard this morning, for the first time in almost a month, the kids are ecstatic to see me. Little Doug charges across the concrete playground, roaring,
“Miiiisss Diiiiiiiiiioooonnnne!”
as he runs, then hugs my legs. Russ jumps out of line during his gym class to shout, “Miss Dionne!” for which he is promptly scolded by his teacher. The Grade Three girls give me big, spontaneous hugs as they walk into class. I am glad to be back.

While I was away, the students covered Unit Nine — the feelings unit — with the substitute. So, to review and to make sure they actually paid attention while tormenting their temporary teacher, I ask each of them, “How do you feel?”

Most of them get it, replying instantly, as if by magic, “I feel happy” or “I feel surprised.”
Hmmm
, I think,
I should have substitutes more often
. The lesson is a snap.

In the Grade Six class, when it comes around to Gerry's turn, he stands and answers, “I feel sad because Deng Xiaoping —” he clutches his throat in a stranglehold, rolls his eyes into the back of his head, and gargles
“— ackackackackackack!”

In Grade Five, Jordan answers, “I feel sad because Deng Xiaoping . . . 
killed
?”

Quite possibly true
, I think. But I correct him and say, “ ‘Died.' Deng Xiaoping
died
.”

Excited by this new word, everyone in the class immediately starts trying it, blurting it out like a chorus of frogs: “Died! Died! Died! Died! Died!”

“Yvonne
died
!” shouts Jessica, laughing and pointing at Yvonne.

“No! You died!” Yvonne yells back.

Jessica asks Connie something in Cantonese, then says to me, “Downstairs —” she points at the floor “— downstairs died!” The old lady who lived a floor below her family's apartment, she is trying to tell me, also recently passed away.

“Jordan saw died!” Jacob yells suddenly. “Jordan saw died!”

I glance over at Jordan. He gulps and nods. He explains in Cantonese to Connie that a few weeks ago he saw a dead body floating in the canal
that winds its way through his neighbourhood. “I was scared!” he tells me in English. “I no go to sleep!”

After the review, I show the classes my photos and souvenirs from Japan. They are most enthralled by the map of Tokyo Disneyland. The Grade Twos amuse themselves by counting the number of washrooms they can see, then triumphantly exclaim, “Miss Dionne! Twenty-one toilets!”

At lunch, Connie and I visit the principals to tell them I am back. After saying hello and chatting a bit, we go to leave the office. On our way out, we spot some newspapers on the office coffee table. “Hey! Maybe we can see the headline!” Connie says, referring to the newspaper that came out the morning after Deng Xiaoping's death.

She flips through the week's papers, each with a black masthead and border around the front page. “Ah! Here it is!” she says, pulling a paper out of the stack. The front page has a quarter-page portrait of Deng and big black Chinese characters. Connie translates them aloud to me: “To All the Party, All the Army, All the People, We Proclaim with Profound Grief That Comrade Deng Xiaoping Has Died.” As Connie translates some of the article for me, the vice-principal comes over and talks to us, to Connie, in a hushed voice.

When Connie and I walk out of the school and past the courtyard's sad, soot-stained flag, I ask her what the vice-principal said. “She was talking about what happens tomorrow, Deng's funeral day,” Connie answers. “Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., all teachers must gather together to listen to the radio. Then everyone must be quiet for three minutes.”

“Will the kids listen to the radio, too?” I ask.

“I don't know. Maybe they will stay in the classroom.”

“Who will look after them while the teachers are listening to the radio?”

“I don't know. Maybe they will stay by themselves.”

I laugh. “Do you think the kids can be quiet for a whole three minutes?”

“I doubt it!”

We approach our won ton soup place. “The vice-principal seemed very sad about Deng's death,” Connie says. “Very quiet and serious.” She pauses for a second, then adds, “I guess she must show that because she is the leader of the school.”

“How did you first hear about his death, Connie?” I ask, curious and still fretting over not having been in China that day.

“I heard the next morning. I didn't hear first thing, though. I was riding my bike to work when I saw a man reading a newspaper. I saw the black
and Deng's picture. I asked a man next to me, ‘What's that?' and he told me Deng died. I rode fast to a newspaper shop and bought five copies!”

“How did you feel about it?”

“I felt so excited! Finally, something happened! It is so interesting.”

“Yes! I felt the same way.”

“You know, there is a Chinese saying about people like us . . .” Connie struggles to find the best way to translate it as I open the restaurant door. “It is something like ‘We don't want peace in the world because chaos is more fun, more interesting.' Something like that.”

We sit at our usual table and order our usual bowls of won ton soup. “So I watched the TV all that night,” Connie continues. “They show Deng's whole life story in great detail. The last century of China! He was a very smart man. They also show the Communist Party story. It is so funny.”

“Funny? I don't know if that's the word I'd use . . .”

“No? But it
is
funny. Many old men always changing their minds. For example, Mao and Deng never got along. They had different ideas for China. Mao sent Deng away. When Mao died, everyone in China cried. But now Deng died, and people on TV and radio are saying Mao was wrong and Deng was right. It is so funny!

“But the government is scared,” she whispers as the waitress sets our bowls of soup on the table. “They are scared of what the foreign countries might say about Deng or about what happens next in China without him. They don't want people in China to hear. The Guangzhou TV cut the Hong Kong news many times this week. It is funny when we watch the Hong Kong news and they cut it . . . ‘Oh-oh, here is something the government is scared for us to know!' It is funny because we know they are hiding. We can see it!”

“Yeah. It's okay to hear, ‘In America today.' But the second you hear ‘In China today,' it's zip.
Bmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
,” I say, imitating a TV test signal.

We eat our noodles in silence for a few seconds. Then I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand and ask, “How about the kids? How did they react when they heard the news about Deng?”

Connie glances up at me from her bowl, pops a won ton into her mouth, and laughs. “They were upset. They were upset because they wanted to watch the NBA, and all the TV shows about Deng cut out the NBA games! They wished he died later — after basketball season.”

“I wish he would've died later, too,” I say. “He could've at least waited until I was back in the country!”

“I think he wanted to die later, too. He once said his dream was to stand in Hong Kong when it comes back to China. He said he only wanted to live to see July 1997. Any more was not necessary.”

Today, Tuesday, is Deng's funeral. Some of the other teachers and I discuss it on the shuttle bus down to the teaching centre and our weekly staff meeting. As the bus meanders through narrow streets lined with red flags, we speak in anecdotes and sound bites, bits and pieces of truth or rumour we've collected from various sources.

“Tiananmen Square is blocked off to foreigners and tourists.”

“They aren't letting students into the square. Students aren't allowed to gather together anywhere, whether they're mourning him or not.”

“I heard they had to recruit peasants as mourners for the TV cameras.”

Amanda tells us she was in a taxi on Sunday night with a Cantonese friend, and her friend asked the driver, “So do you think it's true that Deng just died, or has he been dead for months or years and they're just telling people at this time?”

To which the driver answered, “Ha! It doesn't really matter now!”

At the office, just as our meeting finishes at ten o'clock, we hear a strange buzzing. “What's that?” I ask, swinging around in my chair to listen. “Is the laser printer on?”

“Hmm, dunno,” answers Jan, twirling a pen.

Peggy jumps up. “It's the horns for Deng Xiaoping! It's ten o'clock! It's time for the three minutes of silence.”

Three minutes of silence in Guangzhou. This I have to hear.

We run to the window and slide it open to better hear the steady hum and drone of ships' horns on the Pearl River. Car horns blare uninterrupted — only a slight change from their usual honking and beeping. We stare out the window until the horns stop. It is the noisiest three minutes of silence I have ever heard.

The hotel floor attendants have opened a room next to our office and are watching Deng's funeral on TV. We peek in, and they beckon us to join them. President Jiang Zemin, the new man in charge, is making a speech. The TV reception is wobbly, and one of the attendants is banging the top of the TV trying to fix it. We sit down on the bed to watch.

Jiang's voice cracks with emotion every time he cries out Deng Xiaoping's name. He sobs openly through his words, reaching up behind his black-rimmed glasses with a white handkerchief to mop rolling tears.
It's quite a show. His speech continues on the taxi radio as my cab makes its way along the Pearl River. Jiang's wails of
“Deng Xiaopiiiiing! Deng Xiaopiiiing!”
accompany me all the way to school.

Just before our first class, I ask Connie if she saw the speeches on TV. She tells me she watched it up until the very last minute before hopping on her bike and pedalling furiously to work. As she was cycling to school, she saw a huge black-and-white banner hanging down the front of the Nong Lin Xia department store. It read:
DENG XIAOPING IS IMMORTAL — HE WILL NEVER DIE
!

Later, Gerry stands up at the beginning of his class and, posing like a Beijing opera star and speaking in exaggerated Mandarin, says, “Deng Xiaoping is immortal — he will never die!” He then extends arched fingers toward me and adds, “Miss Dionne is immortal — she will never die!”

All the children laugh as Connie quickly translates.

“Thank you, Gerry,” I say. “Now please sit down.”

He gives us a cheeky grin and gestures toward Connie. In his mock opera voice, he continues, “Miss Connie is immortal — she will never die!”

“Thank you, Gerry!” Connie and I shout, laughing. “Now please sit down!”

He snickers, bows like a diva, and does as he is told.

Late Sunday afternoon, Kerry and I go to the Holiday Inn on Huanshi Lu to visit an Irish friend and get a dose of satellite TV in his hotel apartment. While we watch a rerun of
Friends
, I pick up a copy of
Newsweek
from his coffee table. A cloned sheep stares vacantly on the cover. A yellow banner across the top corner catches my eye. It reads
BLAMING DENG FOR TIANANMEN
.

I flip the magazine open and see a picture of the dead Deng Xiaoping on the contents page. His corpse, with its bright pink lips and blushed cheeks, looks as if it has been done up courtesy of Mary Kay Cosmetics.

This I have to read.

I leaf further through the magazine but soon come to the last page. Where is the story on Deng? I must have missed it. I flip through the pages again, carefully, but there is no Deng to be seen.

Then I notice three loose pages clinging to the magazine's staples, their centre edges rough as if someone has torn them down their spines. “Tom, did you cut out the story on Deng Xiaoping?”

“No.”

A man prepares for the lead female role at an opera theatre in Chengdu, Sichuan Province
.

“Well, where is it?” I mumble to myself, turning back to the contents to check the page number.
Page 12
. Okay. I flip to where
page 12
is supposed to be and find that
page 10
jumps to
page 17
. The story on Deng has been ripped out.

I show Kerry and Tom this bizarre, sloppy work of censorship. “Can you believe this?”

“Oh, my God!” Kerry cries as she leafs through the magazine. “You know, on CNN the other day, they said that Chinese officials were
clamping down on foreign media coverage of Deng's death coming into China, but I didn't think they meant
this
!”

This
being an American magazine printed in English and sold only in China's bigger cities at mainly their largest hotels to a primarily foreign clientele. The chances of the Mainland's masses getting their hands on an incriminating issue of
Newsweek
are slight at best. I imagine a dimly lit room where Chinese customs officers, armed with plastic rulers, spend their days ripping offending articles out of every single
Newsweek
crossing the border. What a colossal, ridiculous effort to keep people ignorant, I think, shaking my head.