The Cooked Seed (2 page)

I agreed.

After a serious discussion, the salon’s hairdressers came up with a style called Esmeralda.

I had no idea what “Esmeralda” meant. They explained that it was Shanghai’s hottest style and that it was inspired by a beautiful Gypsy named Esmeralda in a newly imported foreign movie,
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
.

I rushed to see the movie to make sure that the Esmeralda style
was what I wanted. It was convenient, because the movie theater was located a block from the salon.

I fell in love with Esmeralda. I returned to the salon and requested the style. Seven hours later, the hairdresser announced that my Esmeralda was complete. During the process, I had endured pulling, curling, and blow-drying. The chemicals they used stunk worse than manure. The heated ceramic rollers were heavy on my head. Finally, I was led back to my chair. The moment I saw my reflection in the mirror, I fell out of the chair.

“This is not Esmeralda!” I cried. “It is a basket of seaweed!”

The flight captain’s voice came through the speakers. I didn’t understand what he was saying. I looked around and saw the passengers on my right and left buckling their seat belts. I copied them.

The plane began to descend. I saw a sea of lights outside the window. The beauty stunned me. “Capitalism rots and socialism thrives” was the phrase passing through my mind. Was this the result of rotting?

The plane rattled as it touched the ground. The passengers cheered when we finally came to a stop. One after another, everyone stood, picked up their belongings, and exited.

“Chicago?” I asked the flight attendant.

“No,” she smiled.

“Not Chicago?” I took out my ticket.

“This is Seattle.” She signaled me not to block the way. The rest of her words I couldn’t understand.

I followed the passengers moving toward a big hall. My growing nervousness began to choke me. The hand that held my passport became damp with sweat.

I didn’t feel like I was walking on my own legs. The sound inside my head was louder than the sound outside. It was the noise of a tractor with loose screws going over a bumpy road.

I feared getting caught. I was not the person I had claimed to be—a student ready for an American college. But what choice had I had? I wouldn’t have been issued a passport if I hadn’t lied through my teeth and claimed undying loyalty to the Communist Party. The American
consulate in Shanghai wouldn’t have granted me a visa if I hadn’t cheated and sang my self-introduction in English like a song. I had charged forward like a bleeding bull. I had not had the time to get scared until that moment.

My father was scared to death for me. He didn’t think that I would make it. No one with common sense, or who had anything to lose, would do what I was doing. But I didn’t have anything to lose. I was a caught frog, kicking my last kicks. I jumped the hurdles in front of me.

Off the plane, I went in search of the ladies’ room. All the signs in English confused me. I followed a woman into a room with a sign showing a lady in a skirt. I was glad that it was the right place. There was no waiting line. I looked around to make sure that I was where I thought I was. I entered a stall and closed the door. I had never seen such a spacious and clean toilet room. A roll of paper came into view. It was pure white and soft to the touch. I wondered how much it would cost. I would not use it if I had to pay. I sat down and pulled the paper a few inches. I looked around and listened. No alarm went off. I was not sure if I was allowed to use the paper. I dragged out a foot more, and then another foot.

I put the paper under my nose and smelled a lovely faint scent. Perhaps it was free, I decided. Carefully, I wiped my behind with the paper. It didn’t scratch my buttocks. What an amazing feeling. I grew up with toilet paper that felt like sandpaper. In fact, it was what I had packed in my suitcase—toilet paper made of raw straw.

People with different colored eyes, hair, and skin confirmed that I was no longer in China. I hoped my seaweed hairstyle didn’t offend anybody. I inched forward in the line leading toward the immigration station. I heard the man behind the booth call, “Next!” My heart jumped out of my chest.

I forced myself to step forward. My surroundings started to spin. I was face-to-face with an immigration officer. I wanted to smile and say, “Hello!” but my jaw locked. My mind’s eye kept seeing one image—a
group of peasants trying to haul a Buddha statue made of mud across a river. The Buddha statue was breaking apart and dissolving into the water.

Shaking, I held out my right arm and presented my passport.

The officer was a middle-aged white man with a mustache. A big grin crossed his face as he greeted me with what I later came to learn was “Welcome to America!”

My mind went blank. I tried to breathe. Was the man asking me a question or was it a greeting? Did he mean “Where are you from?” or “How are you?”

I had been studying a book called
English 900 Sentences
. According to the book, “How do you do?” would be the first words you would say when you met someone for the first time. Obviously, this was not what the officer had said. How do I respond? Should I say, “I am very well, thank you, and how are you?” or “I am from China”?

What if it was a greeting? Did I hear “America”? I thought I did. “America” meant “United States,” didn’t it? Did he say, “Why are you in America?”

I could feel the officer’s eyes as they bore into me. I decided to give him my prepared response.

Lifting my chin, I forced a smile. I pushed the words out of my chest the best I could: “Thank you very much!”

The officer took my passport and examined it. “An … ah Q?” he said. “Ah … Q? A … Kee? A … Q?”

On my passport, my first name was spelled “An-Qi.” I had no say in choosing the spelling of my name. The Pinyin spelling system was invented by the Communist government. If the actual name was pronounced “Anchee,” the Pinyin would spell it “An-Qi.” The Communist official in charge of Chinese language reform believed that a foreigner would pronounce “Chee” when he read “Qi.” No Chinese was allowed to spell their name any other way on their passport.

Should I have answered “Yes, I am Ah-Q”? I didn’t think so. “Ah-Q” was the name of a famous Chinese idiot. If it was “Ah-B” or “Ah-C,” I would have gladly answered yes. But I hadn’t come to America to be called an idiot.

The officer spoke again. This time I failed to comprehend anything.
The officer waited for my answer. I heard him say, “Do you understand?” The voice was getting louder. He was losing patience.

The mud Buddha dissolved. The river swallowed it.

The officer looked me up and down with suspicion.

I gathered all my courage and gave another “Thank you very much!”

The officer waved me to move closer. He began to speak rapidly.

Panicking, I shouted, “Thank you very much!”

The man’s smile disappeared. He asked no more questions but took away my passport. He pointed behind his back at a room about twenty feet away with a door that had a large glass window.

My world became soundless. My knees gave way.

I was escorted into a brown-colored room. A lady came. She introduced herself as a translator. She began to speak accented Mandarin. “You don’t speak any English, but you are here for college. How do you explain that, Miss Min?”

I had cheated, I told her. And I was guilty.

“Your papers say you speak fluent English,” the translator continued. “I’d guess that you didn’t fill out those papers yourself, did you? We need to deport you, Miss Min.”

I broke down. “I came to America because I have no future in China. If there hadn’t been so many people in the middle of the night at Huangpu River bund, I would have carried out my suicide. I wouldn’t be here to bother you.”

“I am sorry, Miss Min.” The translator looked away.

“I didn’t have the fortune to die in China,” I cried. “I’ll be as good as dead if you deport me. My airplane ticket alone cost fifteen years of my salary. My family is in debt because of me. I am begging you for an opportunity!”

“Miss Min, you wouldn’t be able to function in this country.” The translator shook her head. “Even if we let you go, you wouldn’t be able to survive in an American college. Do you understand? You will become a burden on our society!”

“I’ll be nobody’s burden. I don’t need much to live. I’m an excellent laborer. I’ll deport myself if I don’t speak English in three months!”

“Miss Min …”

“Oh, please, my feet are on American soil! I might not be able to communicate, but I can draw. I’ll make people understand me. Look, here are pictures of my paintings. I am going to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—”

The translator looked at my paintings with a stone face.

“Help me! I’ll forever be grateful.”

The translator bit her lip. She looked at her watch.

“I am so sorry to bother you.” I wept.

The translator stared at me in silence, then abruptly stepped out of the room.

I was handpicked by Madame Mao’s talent scouts while hoeing weeds in a cotton field. The year was 1976. I was working in a labor camp near the East China Sea. Half of China’s youth had been sent to labor camps in the country. Mao had won the Cultural Revolution. Using the students, calling them the Red Guards, he had successfully eliminated his political opponents. But the youth had started to cause unrest in the cities, so Mao sent them to the countryside. He told us to get “a real education by learning from peasants.”

It didn’t take long for us to realize that we were in hell. We thought we were growing rice to support Vietnam, but we could barely grow enough to feed ourselves. The salt-saturated land was hostile. We worked eighteen hours a day during planting seasons. There were a hundred thousand youth between seventeen and twenty-five in the camps near the East China Sea. The Communist Party ruled with an iron fist. Harsh punishment, including execution, applied to those who dared disobey the rules. There were no weekends, holidays, sick days, or dating. We lived in army-style barracks without showers or toilets. We worked like slaves. Since childhood we had been taught that we owed our lives to the Communist Party.

Like a package, I was shipped to the Shanghai Film Studio. I was to be trained to play a leading role in Madame Mao’s propaganda movies, although I knew nothing about acting. I was chosen only because my looks matched Madame Mao’s image of a proletarian heroine. I had a weather-beaten face and a muscled body capable of carrying hundreds of pounds of manure. I froze the moment I heard the sound of a camera rolling, but I tried hard so that I could escape the labor camp.

The nation suffered a double shock in 1976. Chairman Mao died on September 9. When we were still deep in our grief, Madame Mao was overthrown. My status changed in a heartbeat. I was considered “Madame Mao’s trash”—guilty by association. My “proletarian beauty” was “evidence of Madame Mao’s taste and evil doing.”

How could I be disloyal to Mao if I was loyal to Madame Mao? I had never had any say in life. My school textbooks taught me to admire those who died for the cause of Communism. People jumped off buildings, hanged themselves, drank pesticide, drowned in rivers, took sleeping pills, and cut wrists just to prove their loyalty to Mao.

I discovered that killing myself was more complicated than I had thought. I felt undeserving of death, because I was not guilty. It was not my fault that Madame Mao had picked me. She wanted “a piece of a white paper on which to paint any color she liked.” All I did was follow orders. I was even taught how to drink water “in the proletarian style” at the Shanghai Film Studio.

“No, you’re drinking the water incorrectly, Comrade Min,” my instructor yelled. “Your pinkie is up, and that’s Miss Bourgeois. You must grab the cup, gulp the water down in one breath, and wipe your mouth with both of your sleeves!”

I had no talent for acting. The camera assistant had to pin the corner of my costume down to hide my trembling. My back was soaked with sweat at the sound of “Action!” I kept picturing myself being shipped back to the labor camp.

I couldn’t sleep. I remembered the freezing winter at the labor camp when I woke up to discover that a mother rat had given birth by my feet. I dreaded the taste of the salt water from the man-made pond. I brushed my teeth with water that carried living organisms in the bottom of my mug. My fingernails and toenails were stained brown from chemical fertilizers. Fungus and infections made my skin crack. The infection spread between my toes and caused them to bleed. The skin on my face peeled off along the sweat lines on each side of my nose.

The manure pit was where we did our personal business. I had to squat on a wet wooden board. It took me a week to figure out how to balance like an acrobat while taking a shit. I had to swing both arms behind my back in order to keep mosquitoes from attacking—the kind of mosquitoes with needle-sharp mouths that could shoot through sturdy canvas. If I fell, below me in the pit swarmed millions of maggots.

I didn’t fear hardship but the permanence of it. I could endure carrying a hundred pounds of manure balanced across my shoulders from a bamboo pole with two buckets hung by rope. I walked in knee-deep
water across countless rice paddies. I worked day and night shifts. I was proud of the calluses developing between my neck and shoulders. Then an accident injured my spinal cord—a rotten bucket rope broke and I lost my balance and fell into the canal. From then on I was unable to bend my back. I had to kneel in the muddy waters to continue planting rice.

As the guilty one, I was ordered to attend public rallies denouncing Madame Mao. The former first lady’s victims marched onstage, giving their accounts of the torture they had endured. Nobody mentioned Mao. His wife was held solely responsible for the millions of deaths during the Cultural Revolution. She was sentenced to death.

I watched the trial on television. Madame Mao delivered her last performance like the heroine in her propaganda opera. Waving both arms in the air, she shouted, “I am Mao’s dog! Mao asked me to bite, I bit!”