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“Like these?” he asks. “They have the bamboo, the vegetables, the junk. No old motors or used electrical conduit though. No one here has access to that kind of gear, but people have salvaged other things.”
He’s right. Plenty of other stuff—broken earthenware jars, a bent bicycle wheel, burlap rice bags—has been collected and saved. I’d always thought people in Chinatown kept all their junk because they’d lived through the Depression; now I see that Hazel’s mother and everyone else were trying to re-create South China. Z.G. has helped me understand something about my life in a purely visual way that I never grasped before.
“Exactly like these,” I say. “I always thought of the garden as my mother’s domain, but she was from Shanghai. Why did she want a South China garden?”
“Maybe the garden was a reflection of the community where she lived, a community filled with South China peasants.”
Once again, he’s right. My mother and Auntie May were Shanghai girls, but my father, grandparents, uncles, and all our neighbors were South China peasants. Even those who’d been in Los Angeles for two or more generations—some of whom were well educated, spoke good English, and dressed like Americans—were still, at heart, South China peasants. Somehow they’d maintained the visual idea of how things should look—the lushness of South China re-created in the desert of Los Angeles. More important, they still had their South China frugality.
“I’m from Shanghai,” Z.G. says, “and May was most definitely a product of Shanghai. You may have these gardens in your blood, but you too are a Shanghai girl.”
He says that with such confidence, and in some ways it makes me happy. I’m glad I decided to talk to him, but I can’t stop thinking about the woman I always believed was my mother. Judging from her garden, she must have had memories of her home village. Either that or her home village was deep, deep inside her soul, as my love for the countryside is in mine through my father Sam. Through my blood parents, I should be a Shanghai girl through and through, as Z.G. says. Instead, I feel connected to the people outside the window: China’s peasants, like the people in Green Dragon Village, like the people in Chinatown, like my father who loved me so much. Now, sitting on the train, I understand in part why I love Tao. He reminds me of my father—not the one sitting across from me in his elegant suit but the one who worried when I was sick, who made special treats for me, who told me bedtime stories.
IN PEKING, Z.G. and I go on excursions to the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, and the Forbidden City. All my life I’ve known about these places from Chinese school and from the photos and pictures my grandfather clipped from magazines to hang on the wall. The sights are beautiful, but I bet they’re a lot more enjoyable in the spring, when it isn’t bitterly cold. At night, we go to parties, where Z.G. teaches me how to distinguish people of importance. “A regular cadre has one fountain pen in his pocket,” he explains at a party in the compound next to the Forbidden City, where the most important members of the Communist Party live and work. “A two-pen cadre is more important. The most powerful carry several pens in their breast pockets. Those are high officials.”
Z.G. seems to know everyone. He has good guan-hsi—connections—which function like a web that links government relationships, family, influence, and power. People are happy to see him, especially the women, who bring him drinks, cover their mouths to hide their giggles when he speaks, and generally act like they’ve never seen a man before. We meet plenty of Americans, who make up the largest group of foreigners in Peking after the Soviet experts. We even attend a couple of parties where Chairman Mao and Premier Chou En-lai circulate through the room. I see them nod to Z.G. a couple of times, but they never come our way. These are people I’ve read about and who have inspired me. They’ve made history and changed a country. As a little girl, I met lots of movie stars when I worked on film sets. I even sat on Clark Gable’s lap once. But none of them have the charisma of China’s leaders. When they walk into a room, the air changes, becoming electric in the true sense of that word—sparkly and powerful. I’m utterly in awe.
It’s all wonderful, but two things disturb me. First—and I know it’s minor—it’s freezing around here. Every party we go to has barely any heat. Sometimes a coal brazier or a rickety radiator that looks about a thousand years old pumps out warmth, but that doesn’t help much in a big hall or in a drafty house that dates to the Ming dynasty. I take to wearing flannel underwear and undershirts beneath the practical wool dresses Z.G. has bought for me, along with a sweater, scarf, hat, and coat. The other thing that gnaws at me is what I guess I’d have to call hypocrisy. We’re supposed to be in a classless society, yet I’m going to parties and banquets with the highest echelon of people in China. It’s exciting to be in a room in the capital with Chairman Mao, but this is a long way from the simplicity—and poverty—of Green Dragon Village, and it doesn’t make sense to me. That’s not to say I’m not having fun. I’m having a great time, but this aspect of China isn’t what I expected.
These conundrums aside, I’m swept up in a whirlwind of sightseeing and parties. I eat steamed dumplings, red dates, and candied crab apples on sticks from street vendors during the day and indulge in course after course at extravagant banquets at night, but nothing tastes as sweet to me as the food did in Green Dragon. And certainly no one is as dear to me as Tao.
ON THE DAY of the national art competition—sponsored by the Artists’ Association and the China Art Gallery, both of which are government controlled—Z.G. and I attend the opening party. Artists from around China and from all backgrounds have submitted entries for the best New Year’s painting. We enter the gallery just as the head judge makes his opening remarks. As I listen, I see that Chairman Mao is here, as are several other important political figures. A few smile our way, but as usual the Chairman gives us only a curt nod.
“Today we’re looking for the best painting to celebrate the coming new year,” the judge addresses the crowd. “If your work is selected, the masses will hang it on the walls of their homes, factories, and collectives. You’ll be serving the people in the best way by inspiring them to help build the road from socialism to communism. To the judges, I remind you that old habits and feudal taste have no place in the New China. Fantasy, superstition, and other reactionary elements won’t be tolerated. But remember, the masses don’t want to see history on their walls at the New Year either!” With that confusing message, he invites everyone to enjoy the exhibition.
Z.G. stops at every painting. He asks what I think of it, and then he tells me if I’m right or wrong. He clearly sees things I don’t and understands their deeper meanings in ways I can’t fathom. We pause at a picture titled The Great Victory of the People’s War of Liberation. I tell Z.G. that it should encourage people to reminisce about their joy and celebration at that time.
“Yes,” Z.G. agrees, “but is it a proper New Year’s pi
cture? The Ministry of Culture tells artists to show politics and history in our work, but as the judge just said, the masses don’t want to see those things in their New Year’s posters. They long for the old styles, which will call to mind their hopes for good luck, prosperity, and new sons, as well as their moral and religious principles.”
“But the judge also said—”
“That we should avoid traditional subjects.” He leans in and whispers in my ear. “That instruction must come from Chairman Mao. It’s up to us to decipher what he wants while keeping him from losing face. If he loses face, many people suffer.”
I draw back, shocked that Z.G. would say such a thing in public. I’m glad that the crowd is noisy and that no one could have heard him.
He drifts away, and I continue through the exhibition. I see how Mao’s desires and Z.G.’s suggestion of their meaning have been captured by different artists. Some have chosen to send a political message through images from the past: door gods in military dress or goddesses in peasant clothes. Others have ignored politics and history entirely, focusing instead on good-luck symbols.
I come to Tao’s painting, which Z.G. submitted. The style looks childlike next to that of the professional artists. It shows peasants harvesting rice. The colors are bright but flat, with little or no perspective. Nevertheless, there’s something very much alive about the image. I can almost feel myself in Green Dragon’s fields, the hot sun above me and the smell of the earth filling my nostrils.
Z.G. has several entries. My favorite shows a young Mao, wearing a long scholar’s gown, striding across a field with peasants and soldiers behind him, almost like a god leading his followers. The hills around the Green Dragon Village Collective form the background. I’m sure the Chairman will like it, and I wonder if the judges will too.
I catch up to Z.G., who stands before a painting titled An Abundant Harvest of Food Crops. “You’ve seen most of the entries,” he says. “Which one will Chairman Mao want to see win?”
Before I have a chance to answer, a commotion erupts across the gallery, where the judges have clustered around one picture. We hurry over, joining others who want to see what’s so disturbing.
“This could have been painted twenty years ago,” one of the judges complains. “The pose … The colors … This is not Socialist Realism.”
“The artist has been tainted by foreign elements,” another adds roughly. “Our great Chairman has told us that art must be analyzed and divided into fragrant flowers and feudal dregs. This is the dregs.”
“The roses are redolent of capitalist ideology,” a third judge criticizes. “Do you see the way she has one hand behind her head? We all know what that means. She’s selling herself, beckoning us with her bad ways, just like a prostitute.”
With disgusted grunts, the judges move on. As the crowd disperses, I edge forward. The painting is of a young peasant woman standing in a field of roses, holding a basket filled with her pickings, and tucking one of the blooms behind her right ear. Who is the central figure? Me! Z.G. has painted me! All those times I saw him with his sketchbook on the edge of the fields at the Green Dragon Village Collective, he was drawing me. Just as with Z.G.’s Mao portrait, this one is a mixture of fact and fantasy. I’m wearing Kumei’s clothes—a yellow blouse and light blue trousers—as I often did in Green Dragon, but my hair is longer and braided in the style of so many country girls. I stand in a field of pink roses. I never saw a single rose in Green Dragon.
“You look like your mother,” Z.G. says in a soft voice.
I blush. Auntie May has always been considered beautiful. I’ve never thought of myself that way, but looking at the painting, I can’t help wondering.
