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Then something happens which prompts me to write to May. I worry that sending so much mail to Wah Hong will alert the authorities. That said, May needs to hear this.
March 20, 1958
Dear May,
Today is Joy’s twentieth birthday. I invited her to celebrate at our home. I even asked Cook to make some of our favorite dishes from the old days—steamed eel, shrimp with water chestnuts, and eight-treasures vegetables. But the whole thing was a disaster. You and I always loved our house, but it doesn’t look like it once did. These past months, as I’ve written before, I’ve bought some of our old furniture at pawnshops. Every time I find something, I’m filled with the sense that I’m righting things. But the way Joy looked at it all? It made me feel very poor in spirit. And what was I thinking when I asked Cook to make dinner? Our meal was overcooked and tasteless. How can a mediocre dinner in our old dining room compete with the banquets Joy has been attending?
Again, I have to tell you she looks good. She’s been taken to the best seamstress in the city. This woman is no Madame Garnett, but what she’s made for Joy is far more elegant than the usual clothing I see on the street. Maybe she can still experience a little of the Shanghai
we loved, or at least what’s left of it.
It’s only been a little over a month, but I keep waiting for the moment Joy will say, “Mom, take me home.” We’re a long way from that, I’m afraid. It doesn’t help that I think she’s in love. She hasn’t told me much about this Tao, but when she speaks of him a pretty pinkness comes to her cheeks and her eyes shine. The best I can say is that Joy and I have come to an uneasy truce.
Love, Pearl
Again, I don’t write about Z.G. I don’t tell May how carefully he held on to Joy’s elbow as he walked her through my house. A couple of times, she looked like she was going to flee—when she saw the grime in the kitchen I haven’t yet had a chance to clean, when she saw the posters of my sister and me in our bedroom, when she met Cook. I saw Z.G.’s knuckles turn white as he held her in place. I wonder what he said to her before and then after they left.
I don’t receive a response from May to my last two letters. Have they been held up? Am I to be arrested? Has May been too busy to write? Or has she been worn down by grief, mourning, and guilt? I know what that’s like. I wait a month and then write a short note:
Is everything all right? Have you received my letters? In case you haven’t, I found Joy and I’m sorry about Vern. Please write as soon as possible.
And then I wait for a response. I don’t receive one, which means I don’t have to write to May about the poster of Joy, which would, in turn, lead back to Z.G. I don’t have to write about the day when Joy visited unannounced and by herself for the first time either. I looked out the window and there she was, staring at the first rose to bloom along the fence. I was extremely pleased to see her, convinced that Joy had experienced a sea change. I made tea, and we sat in the salon. Joy’s coming here was her way of reaching out, I’m sure of it, and yet she only made small talk. She told me that she’d reported to the police station and the block committee in Z.G.’s neighborhood. “It wasn’t a big deal,” she said. She’d also gone to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission and had been given the same special coupons that I’m entitled to receive. “But I don’t need them,” she said with a shrug. “I can get whatever I want at Z.G.’s house.”
As she spoke, I wanted to cry, because sometimes it’s just so damn hard to be a mother. We have to wait and wait and wait for our children to open their hearts to us. And if that doesn’t work, we have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally.
I have my worries, but life continues elsewhere. Z.G. has a new poster, which shows Mao—as the Chairman himself asked to be painted, according to Joy—in simple trousers and a white shirt unbuttoned at the neck against a plain background. He looks like a benevolent god—of and for the people. I honestly can’t go anywhere or do anything without seeing his face. He’s literally everywhere—on the sides of buildings, in restaurants, in private homes. I’m told that 40 million copies of this poster have been sold across the country. In any other part of the world, this would make Z.G. an extremely wealthy man. Here, it earns him privilege and party (Party!) invitations for him and Joy.
And still no letter from May. Do I write another note to her or stop writing completely for a while? I don’t know where or what the problem is. In case there’s been an issue with the content of my letters, I decide to write something pro-political about the Great Leap Forward. I’m still careful, but that’s easy. All I have to do is echo the enthusiasm I hear on loudspeakers, see on posters, or read in the newspapers. May and I are sisters. I expect her to look for hidden meanings in my words.
May 15, 1958
Dear May,
Chairman Mao, our Supreme Leader, is leading us into wonderful times. He has come up with a slogan that we all joyously repeat: Hard work for a few years, happiness for a thousand. You remember how people used to starve in China? Now China will be a land of abundance and wealth. Other nations will no longer look down on us. We will accomplish this with help from “two generals”: agriculture and steel. If we all work hard, soon everyone will dress in satins and silks. We’ll live in skyscrapers—with heating, air-conditioning, telephones, and elevators. We’ll have leisure time to spend with our families.
I can’t grow grain, but every day before and after work I join my neighbors in creating steel. We are happy not to be paid, because we are building the nation. Each block has at least one blast furnace made from gray brick. The comrades in our old house all agreed to take our last radiator to our street’s furnace. Oh, May, you should see me. Three nights a week I work the bellows to keep the furnace going. Can you imagine me smelting iron? That’s how strong I am for the People’s Republic of China. When I’m not at the bellows, I walk the streets with my eyes down, looking for old nails, rusty cogs, and any piece of metal that has been overlooked by others. Chairman Mao says steel is the marshal of industry!
I don’t write that when it comes time to pour what we’ve melted onto pallets it doesn’t look at all like the steel I’ve seen being made in news-reels. Instead, it comes out in dull, red, sandy blobs. When it dries, it looks like cakes of nui-shi-ge-da—cow turds. I can’t imagine what anyone will use it for. Certainly not to make tractors, girders, or textile machines, because it won’t be strong enough. So, as far as I can tell, it’s all a waste of time, energy, and sweat—and all without remuneration, which, if I said that aloud, would cause me to be struggled against by the boarders and the block committee for being too capitalistic in my thinking.
The biggest news is that last month the first people’s commune opened. It has 40,000 people! Chairman Mao says, “The people’s commune is great!” I have not been to the countryside and can only rely on Chairman Mao’s mouth to tell me what his eyes have seen. He says that in the countryside bags of grain reach the sky. Yes, we are on the way to outgrowing the United States. Soon China will be exporting grain to you!
Love, Pearl
Finally a letter arrives, and it’s not in response to my news about the Great Leap Forward. It’s dated March 1, and May must have sent it upon receiving my letter saying that Joy had returned to Shanghai. A good part of it has been blacked out. What’s left are mostly questions for which not only May but apparently the censors and Superintendent Wu would like to know the answers. “Where has Joy been all this time? If Joy isn’t staying with you, then where is she living? Who bought her clothes? Was it this Tao you mentioned? I don’t like the sound of that. She is not a girl to be bought for a few yards of fabric.” This line more than any other tells me May has no understanding of what’s happening behind the Bamboo Curtain. There are no bad girls anymore. Then she asks the question I’ve been expecting for some time. “Have you found Z.G.? It will be difficult for you, but you must try to find him. We were all good friends once. He must help us.”
I read this last part several times. Pathetic jealousy burbles in me, but how can I be jealous—now, after all these years? I’m here to do whatever I can to get my daughter to remember who and what she is, but a part of me still dwells on petty things from twenty years ago. I think back on all the letters I’ve received from May since I arrived in Shanghai. Has she asked about Z.G. before? No, but his presence has been in every letter she’s written: “Do you see anyone from the past? What of the friends we knew back then?” How many times have I ignored her questions, blocking them out even more blackly than the censors? Sure, I’ve written back here and there: so-and-so died during the war, was a hero, was shot, or escaped … But never once have I written about Z.G. Why? A bitter place inside me kept that secret. Has this been my revenge for May’s part in Sam’s death? How can it be, when I now know she was not at fault?
None of us is perfect. I’m not the good woman I always believed myself to be. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t write back, because I could say things that would really hurt her. Ever since Joy came to visit me by herself, she and Z.G. have been taking me out to dinner once a week. I could tell May that just last night Z.G., Joy, and I had a meal of stewed crab with clear soup, duck triplet, and Mandarin fish—all Shanghai delicacies—at a restaurant on the Bund. I could write about how beautiful Joy looked and how the tension between us seems to be lifting, but that Z.G. stared at me in my red dress that May herself loved so long ago. I could write that sometimes the three of us go for walks in the Yu Yuan Garden. Or that we’ve worked together at the backyard furnaces either in my neighborhood or in Z.G.’s. We’ve been having a nice time, and I don’t want to break the spell by sharing it with my sister. But while I may not be perfect, I can’t not write to my sister. That would be brutal and unnecessary, and she would worry too much. Again, though, I stick to politics.
June 20, 1958
Dear May,
It’s been almost three months since the first people’s commune opened. A commune is made when several collectives or villages are brought together to share in the work and the profits. Now communes are everywhere! Some have 4,000 members, some as many as 50,000. We Shanghainese are helping our comrades in the countryside. We’ve always sent our nightsoil on barges to farmers. Now we all wait for those moments in the day when we can add what comes out of our bodies to the building of socialism and the attainment of our targets. What indescribable happiness, excitement, and pride we feel when the nightsoil barges leave the Bund and head upriver to the communes.
The steel the people have produced has given Chairman Mao great confidence in our abilities. First we were to overtake Britain in steel production in fifteen, then seven, then five years. Now we’re to do it in two years! At the same time, he’s announced we’ll double our grain harvest. Chairman Mao says that communes are the gateway to Heaven. China will be able to leapfrog over socialism and go straight to communism. I wish you were here to see all the changes. You’d be laughing and crying with happiness at the same time.
How fortunate Joy never feels homesick for the land of her birth. She relishes the land of her blood. She understands that true free thought comes when everyone obeys the commune. Her heart brims with idealism.
