first chapter: the train ride and the mysterious river
The train my family took out of beijing in 1968 was so crowded. The men sat in the alsles, their legs folded up so that they could sit three abreast, folded that way, in the space between two seats. My mother gave up her seat to a pergnant woman and sprawled out on the overhead luggage comparetment, along with the bigger children. My brother, who was five, sat on the floor just in front of a seat, his shoulders nestled against the legs of a pregnant woman. My father found a spot beside the toilet, and he stood there holding me in his arms the whole three days on the train, which took us to get to the town in Sichaun province, our final destination is a small train stop in the town of Longchang. Many years later, when I read Doctor Zivago, the pages of Dr. zivago took the train to Siberia, I found my lost memory.
Natually I do not recall any of this details, since I was only six months old, but my parents told me about the train ride so many times that I can even smell the awful urin, the putrified toilet air every time I see a crowed train in China. I still have nightmares, in which I was trapped in a little room with a hundred other people, foul bodies, all exhaling through their months, with foul breath, and my only hope of survival is to breathe their air. Smells of feces, stale bodies, unwashed breathe and everything begins to smell like urine.
I came from a country that¡¯s so vast, with such majestic countryside, and a palce that bred some of the greatest human beings and civilazation, it also has the cruelest history, especially the history we went through then- the culture revolution, my parents along with thousands other engineers and intellectuals were send to the west part of China to undertake some mysterious grandiose national defense project-the third line construciton( san xian jianshe). They seem not complained about the crouwed treain, or about having nothing to eat for three days except a bowel of stale rice and some water that had to be passed around to make sure on one is dying of thirst. My father carried a bottle of soy-milk and fed me from it when I started crying. There was no room to change my diapers¡ and no one thought to complain about my of this. Now I am amazed at the lack of sanitation and the unhealthy conditions of all kinds that we put up with in China in those days¡ but at time time we just being told that was supposed to be hard and earthy, we were building our country, a new China, to be confortable and easy are bourgeois.
My parents have been loyal Communists since their youth, and their ideal was to build a woerker¡¯s paradise, Mao¡¯s speeches reminds us again and again that the revolution won¡¯t be nice or comfortalbe, revolution is not attending a banquet, it will get more and more cruel and blooding, because our enemies will be merciless.
No one on the train knew where we were going to.
it took us nearly four days to get to the little town-village called Fushun, in Sichuan province. It was all mountainous farms and peasant villages at the time. From there, we took an ox cart to our new home. Simple dormitories have been set up, as well as warehouse and laboratories. Sichuan province, literally means four rivers, regering to the four tributaries of the Yangtze river running through the province, the town next to ours is called Zigong, which has dinosaur follsils and salt mines.
The river that flow in front of our house and next to the factory is called Tuo jiang( river of tuo), it means that it is a stagnant swamp . Along the river, the peasants planted snow peas, and oil califlowers, yellow flowers of rape always remind me of my childhood in the countryside. it turns to be green and leafy when stir fried. The reapeseed can be squeezed to be cooking oil. We use that oil for cooking for many years.
When my family arrived, we do not have even a small dormitory of our own, instead, we were assigned to live in the factory building, in the semi-work room, it was a loft-like hollow room, cold without heating, only small tiny windows at the top. It was so cold in the first winter, I caught pneumonia, my first memory of my life was coughing in a dirty clinic room with coal oven¡..
My father was working on an important project, his lab was the most important one among all the labotories there. He was the chief engineer, and worked three shifts. Sometimes, his lab runs 24hours tests, and we hardly saw him. He got insomnia and couldn¡¯t sleep well. Mom always hushed us to be quiet, otherwise he will be depressed for weeks and be moody.
- posted on 07/22/2009
Maya, good story.
I made some edits and some comments in the parentheses.
maya wrote:
first chapter: The train ride and the mysterious river
The train my family took out of Beijing in 1968 was so crowded. The men sat in the aisles, their legs folded up so that they could sit three abreast, folded that way, in the space between two seats. My mother gave up her seat to a pregnant woman and sprawled out on the overhead luggage compartment (consider revise here to something like "crawled on to the overhead luggage...-ed.), along with the bigger children. My brother, who was five, sat on the floor just in front of a seat, his shoulders nestled against the legs of a pregnant woman. My father found a spot besides the toilet, and he stood there holding me in his arms the whole three days on the train, which took us to get to the town in Sichaun province. Our final destination is a small train stop in the town of Longchang. Many years later, when I read Doctor Zivago, in the pages of Dr. Zivago taking the train to Siberia, I found my lost memory.
Naturally I do not recall any of the details, since I was only six months old. But my parents told me about the train ride so many times that I can even smell the awful urine smell - the putrefied toilet air every time I see a crowed train in China. I still have nightmares in which I was trapped in a little room with a hundred other people, foul body odors, all exhaling through their mouths with foul breath, and my only hope of survival is to breathe in their air. Smells of feces, stale bodies, unwashed breathe and everything begins to smell like urine. (it's redundant here, consider re-write -ed.) Thirty five years later, I relived the same experience in a jail in NYC.
I came from a country so vast, with such majestic countryside, a place that bred some of the greatest human beings and a great civilization. It also has the cruelest history, especially the history we went through in the 1960s - the Culture Revolution. My parents along with thousands of other engineers and intellectuals were sent to the western part of China to take part in a mysterious grandiose national defense project - the Third Line Construction( san xian jianshe). They never complained about the crowed train, or about having nothing to eat for three days except a bowel of stale rice and some water that had to be passed around to make sure on one is dying of thirst. My father carried a bottle of soy milk and fed me from it when I started to cry. There was no room to change my diapers¡ and no one thought to complain about my of this. (not clear what you are trying to say here -ed.) Now I am amazed at the lack of sanitation and the unhealthy conditions of all kinds that we put up with in China in those days, but at time time they were just told that it was supposed to be hard and earthy (change earthy to maybe exhausting? -ed.). They were building our country, a new China, and to be comfortable and easy is bourgeoisie.
My parents have (change have to past tense maybe? -ed.) been loyal Communists since their youths, and their ideal was to build a worker¡¯s paradise. Chairman Mao¡¯s speeches reminded us again and again that the revolution won¡¯t be nice or comfortable; revolution is not attending a banquet. It will get more and more cruel and bloody because our enemies will be merciless too.
No one on the train knew where we were going. (really? Your parents were not told where to go? -ed.)
It took us nearly four days to finally arrive at the little town-village called Fushun, in Sichuan province. It was all mountainous farms and peasant villages at the time. From there, we took an ox cart to our new home. Simple dormitories have been set up, as well as warehouses and laboratories. Sichuan province, literally means four rivers, regering (? -ed.) to the four tributaries of the Yangtze river running through the province. The town next to ours is called Zigong, which has dinosaur fossils and salt mines. (ending here seems a little abrupt. maybe expand a little to describe zigong -ed.)
The river that flows in front of our house and next to the factory is called Tuo jiang( river of tuo), it means that it is a stagnant swamp. (if a river flows, it can't be a stagnant swamp -ed.) Along the river, the peasants planted snow peas, and oil cauliflowers. Even now yellow flowers of rape (canola? -ed.) always remind me of my childhood in the countryside. When the leaf turns green it's great stir fried. The rapeseed can be squeezed to make cooking oil. We use canola oil for cooking for many years.
When my family arrived, we did not have even a small dormitory of our own. Instead, we were assigned to live in the factory building, in a small room doubled as a living quarter. It was a loft-like hollow room, cold without heating, only small tiny windows at the top. It was so cold in the first winter, I caught pneumonia. My first memory of my life was coughing in a dirty clinic room with coal oven¡..
My father was working on an important project. His lab was the most important one among all the laboratories there. He was the chief engineer, and worked three shifts. Sometimes, his lab ran 24-hour tests, and we hardly saw him. He developed insomnia and couldn¡¯t sleep well. Mom always hushed us to keep quiet, otherwise he would be depressed for weeks and become moody.
- Re: Age of anxietyposted on 07/22/2009
very touching story. especially sympathetic with the little six-month maya on the train. - posted on 12/29/2009
Guangzhou
We moved to guangzhou in the summer of 1983. I went to see chenhong before I left, he was walk with his newly wed wife.
It was a hot summer day.
We moved in a tiny little flat in Guangzhou, and I had to prepare an entrance exam to get into the best high school in town. I spent three months preparing for this exam. The best place to go to was the Guangzhou library. Every day I went there religiously, from tiem tiem they opened the door at 8.30am and I studied English, Math and history, in the afternoon, I'd go home and take a nap , then go back to the library again, till they close at 5pm.
I had no life besides books and books, didn't go to play with other kids. Also we haven't got the local residency card yet, you hve to prove yourself when you are from another province. I have to get in to the best high school in town.
The first barrier was language. the first time I heard Cantonese I thought it was so vulgar, I resented the dialect.
When we moved to guangzhou, my mother had only 285 yuan in her pocket, all our family assets in 1983, equivalent to about 50 USD in those days. Then some broken furniture, some books, they had been working for the communist party for nearly 30 years by then, that's all what they got.
I got into one of the best high-school in town. The first day i went to school I were a blue skirt. I had shirt hair. We have to wear school uniform. I didn't like that at all, and you have to buy them, very expensive. And because I didn't understand Cantonese, the teacher had to speak mandarin, the the whole class. The students and teachers resented it. they had to listen to mandarin just because of me? a country girl from nowhere! They made me feel guilty. I became the number one public enemy. There were roughly 40 students in the my class, girls and boys. They resented mandarin, they they thought of me some sort of an an alien. I had to learn cantonese. I taped the radio, and taped the laud woman next door shouting and cursing. I learnt perfect cantonese within three months.
- Re: Age of anxietyposted on 12/29/2009
Ìýã
The cousin who cam e to live with us is my father's brother's daughter. Cousin Defeng works for my family business. - posted on 12/29/2009
д×÷Éó²é censorship in my family
In the beginning year of 2000, I went home and stated to write. I got a secretary to do the typing for me. My brother found out what i was writing about, and he told mom. My parents were so angry with me. They almost want to disown me, I told me to move out to a hotel. I can't hide my angry towards my brother I was packing and ready to go and stay in a hotel... and I said to my parents, I only regret that i have two "intellectual" parents. I regret that parents because they are educated, they try to control what's in my mind, like the communist party try to control the free speech of people.
My brother will never stop making fun of my words and writing, In those days, there was a Chinese male writer who write a sort of erotic literary novel called Feidu, and he left the sexual words in blank, My brother said, why can you learn from him a, and put those words blank. I said he is luckier than me, because his mother and bother doesn't bother what he wrote. His family is illiterate. - posted on 12/29/2009
Unhappiness, endless school test
I don't have much memories of being happy. I wasn't even happy during Chinese new year, as a matter of fact, it probably was the most unhappy days of the whole year. We have to visit all our teacher's home, and show our appreciation and respect for their teaching. But I dislike all of them, None! Like in all the school around the world, the pet students always got better treatment.
another girlfriend i always hang out with, her name is Linbing. I really had no respect for any of my teachers in elementary school. I think they are the worst abusers. we were 7/8 year old children, and had to do homework until midnight. In sixth grade, we had so much home work to do, taht the class started at 7.30 and did not end till 5pm. and then we had to do homework till midnight. Can you imagine that kind of life?
Everyday there was a test, endless tests, at age of 41, I still have continuous nightmares of that horrendous tests.
The play time was some of competition as well. Our parents at the factory were competing with their children's achilvements. We the children were doing well in shcook, the parents would talk and show off at work. 20 years later, when I met those kid's parents, I still can sense their jealousy through their eyes.
I think I had depression and anxiety at a very young age. Anger, restless and lonely. I 'd get low spirits and sickness so often. Everyday, at around 3 in the afternoon, I start to have heaachek and feel my body trembing and got a stomache and low fever. I gone through all the medical test, and the doctor can not diagnose what it was. I was getting sicker and sicker. Now i know it was a sign of chronic depression.
- posted on 12/29/2009
Crazy fang
There was a Mr. Fang, people called him Fang yangren( devil alien), because he always had some out of space fancy ideas. Yang means fancy , but I think it was also his real name. He was a researcher who graduated as the top student from Wuhan University, one of the most elite college in China. He can from some sort of good family, he was smart, can read Dream of Red Chamber and make fascination analysis. He claimed that he had many scientific inventions and can even challenge Lord Newton's gravity theory. People always make fun of him, cause he can not even read the temperature in the laboratory in his research project. The other joke was that he always chase the most beautiful girls in the factory, and of course scared all the women away. For a long time, he could not find a wife, so he married an illiterate peasant girl, that marriage was acutally assigned by the local commune leader. She seemed to be healthy, with a peasant red face. We try to avoid passing by their apppartment, because it was the least desireable place to live, and they are out-caste, and below our class.
The apartment they lived was at a very dark corner, dim light. Fang often squat down at our back yard, and smoke, looking very thoughtful and serious.
everyone thought that he was mad, a nutcase, loony. No one care about they, they were just entertainment on our dinner table.
- posted on 12/29/2009
The boy who killed himself
Guoping was my childhood friend, he was about 5 yrs older than me, the same age as my brother. His mother was the headmaster of my junior high school, a tough loud voiced woman, very dominering She had short heart, short fat sturdy. Guoping was her second son, besides 3 other boys and the youngest was a girl. She was strict, if the boys did not listen to her, she'd make them kneeel down ont he wahboard, really bumny washboard. and used belt to whip them. She was a tyrant. Guoping was a super smart kid, also very rebellious, sensitave and intelligent.
.... - posted on 12/30/2009
A-bing
I have a cousin named A-Bing. She was my uncle's adopted daughter. My uncle jianxiu and untie could not have children. So they adopted two. A-bing was the younger sister. She was a very sweet beautiful girl. In the summer of 1982, I spent the whole summer at my uncle's home. I and a-Bing shared the same bed. She is very clean and organized, she taught me sewing, design clothes, ride bicycle with me, she held my hand wherever we go. She would show off to our neighbors that she has a cute little cousin. - posted on 01/17/2010
A sick kid
When I was only 100 days old, my parents took a photo of me that was probably the happiest picture in my life. I was a beautiful kid with big eyes. My parents were always so proud of me and talk about it a lot. How did I smile, how I made silly noise, very intelligent from the beginning. But I got pneumonia when I was one year old. I got sick almost every month. Around 7, I got a very strange sickness, I had fever in the afternoon. I got so sick, and the more I stayed inside home, the sicker I become. I did not know that being confined at home, I start to get childhood depression and anxiety. Every week, I would go the clinic to have a shot. In those days, it was a very expensive shot, I guess it was some kind of anti-bacteria. my grandparents form Thailand brought to us.
The clinic was always filled with children, who seemed to be sick often. Most of the time when the kids had emergencies, they¡¯d go the this clinic on a bicycles or a truck. I remember my father once wrapped me in the blanked and we rode to town in a military truck with many other peasants, I still remember how windy that day was¡I was shaking in his arms¡
I had a lot of severe toothaches, lot of cavities so I had to take painkillers. My mother used to give me treatments with Chinese herbs. One time, my father had this silly Chinese remedy, used when he was a kid. He boiled very hot sesame oil, he might think the cavities were caused by some kind of worms¡ the oil smelled wonderfully. He asked me to lean over the pan for an hour, saying that the aromatic oil will attract the bacteria out¡ so silly..
We did not have any candies, I ate raw or brown sugar, even that was very hard to find. When I was 6, I got mumps, big swollen gland in my neck. swelling all around to my neck. Kids laughed at me and called me de-tao-bue, which means big fat pig faced girl. In those days, the doctor use dog-skin plaster to cure that, it stucked to my jaw, it was so painful because when you took it off, you even took all the facial hair off.
The memories of that filthy hospital was dreadful. In year 2000, I went back there again, the smell, the gloomy faces, it was so unpleasant. These days, when I think of hell it¡¯s pretty much like that.
- posted on 01/18/2010
Jane Eyre's kindergarten
There was a nursery but it was like the orphanage in Jane Eyre. Once a while, in the afternoon, we'd have fruits. The nannies are not professional; quite a few of them are almost illiterate. They are the wives of the "cadres". The nannies would give you one apple, won't cut it for you. If you don't finish it, you will be punished. They will throw ugly words towards you. They kept saying I was spoiled because I ate slowly. But it was only because I had bad teeth. They often forced you to finish the meal in 15 to 20 minutes. Quite often the old staled rice and food just choked me, I remember that I vomit quite often after each meal. If you couldn't finish on time, they will take the food away, and you will be hungry all day long. The nanny would shove the food with a big spoon into my mouth. I do not understand why people have so much hatred towards each other in those days.
The nannies played favorites; they picked up the kids whose parents were fitters or cutters and give them special attention. We had a dancing class, the favorite kids got to dance on the stage and sing, and all the others were just listening. That¡¯s why even though I dreamt everyday to be a ballerina, but I never ever was on stage while I was in China.
We had swings and a couple of limited activity toys. But play was organized like in the military, all in a line. I refused to accept the system. I tried to escape once. I went through the backdoor of the canteen and begged the cook let me get out. I let me hide behind the woodpile. Another time, I led 3 other kids to escape with me, that was my first time realized that I had some kind of leadership, or had the ability to form a cult group. Of course we were found out and got severe punishment. We knelt in front the kids and nannies of the whole kindergarten, about more than 100 of them. And we were forbidden to have afternoon cookies and fruits for a whole week.
Please paste HTML code and press Enter.
(c) 2010 Maya Chilam Foundation