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You should remember your motherland and send remittances to help build the nation.
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sp; Love, Pearl
I’m sure May will understand my not-so-hidden messages about the craziness of these communes, the ridiculousness of the Great Leap Forward targets, and the fear I feel for Joy.
On July 28, I receive a package from Wah Hong. Inside I find a skirt and a blouse. I cut through the stitching on the collar and find twenty dollars and a short note from May.
I have great faith in my sister, but you must work harder to convince Joy to come home. And you still haven’t told me about Z.G. Has Joy found him?
If I’ve been sending her coded messages—and leaving out things that surely she would notice—then she has sent a note she must have known would upset me. I must “work harder to convince Joy” to leave China, as though I haven’t given up my life to be here, as though I’m not struggling every single day to keep myself strong for the moment I can break through to her? And, of course, there’s the part about Z.G.
I hide the letter with the others I’ve received and write back what I consider to be a chatty missive.
Often when I come home from work, Dun—do you remember the student boarder who lived in the second-floor pavilion?—makes tea for me and we sit in the salon and talk about books. The other day I went to a pawnshop and found one of Mama’s etched glass vases. I bought it, and now it sits on our dressing table. I filled it with roses I cut from our garden and their aroma scents the room.
I don’t write any of the things that would mean nothing to the censors but would wound my sister. She, however, has become impatient with me. Her next note is her shortest:
Have you seen Z.G.? Are you seeing him? Just tell me, because we’ve hurt each other enough.
I stare at the words. I have a feeling my sister wrote this late at night, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been so blunt. This makes me wonder if she’s moved inside, off the screened porch. Is she sleeping in Vern’s bed? In Father Louie’s bed? In my bed? Our house was not large, but it must seem enormous to her now that she’s alone.
Three days later, Z.G. and Joy come to my house with news. The Great Leap Forward is not just about steel and grain, they tell me. All 600 million Chinese must “go all out, aim high, and achieve greater, faster, better, and more economical results in building socialism.” As part of that mandate, Z.G. is being sent back to the countryside to visit several villages. Alarmed, I ask the obvious question.
“Is Joy going with you?”
“Yes, we’re going to the countryside,” Joy answers for him.
I don’t want her going back to the countryside. She can’t go if Z.G. doesn’t go. I turn to him. “You’re famous. You don’t have to do this, do you?”
Z.G. gives me a hard look. “I have a choice,” he says. “All art students and artists must spend three to six months in the countryside, getting the masses to produce art, or spend three to six months working in a factory.”
He goes on to explain that factories have given themselves challenges to manufacture more flashlights, radios, or thermoses in a week than in the usual month. Cotton mills have upped the amount of cloth they will make for the year. Z.G. would rather create art—something that’s at the very core of his being—than lose himself in a factory, where he might never get out.
“I’m trying to look at this as an honor and a privilege, really. The government wants to see a lot of art produced,” Z.G. explains. “To do that, we’ll need extra hands. Those hands are where they’ve always been. In the countryside.”
“But peasants aren’t artists.”
I’m trying to use logic as a way for him not to go to the countryside—and take my daughter with him—but Joy thinks this is a political argument.
“You haven’t seen Z.G. teach,” she says. Her eyes have that same glittering look they get whenever she talks about revolution. She more or less quotes Mao, saying, “As long as we have enthusiasm and determination, we can achieve anything!”
Z.G., as he has since we were young, takes a more pragmatic view. “Taiwan and the United States are allies. They’re trying to create an alliance with Japan and South Korea. Chairman Mao doesn’t like that, and he’s trying to show our power to the world.”
“But how does making a bunch of bad paintings—let alone thousands of cheap flashlights—prove anything to the outside world?”
“Redness, as it has for years now, takes precedence over expertise,” Z.G. answers. “We must think quantity, not quality, if we are to meet this new challenge. As for Joy and me, we’ll start in Green Dragon, where we went last summer. It’s now part of a commune. When we’re done there, we’ll head south to other communes. Then, at the beginning of November, the Artists’ Association wants me to visit this year’s commodities fair in Canton. After that, we’ll come home.” He pauses before adding, “I hope.”
That’s a long time, and I don’t want to be separated from my daughter again.
“Are you sure you want to be away so long?” I ask Joy carefully.
“Oh, Mom, don’t you get it? We’re here to ask you to come with us. Z.G. has received permission for all of us to go.”
Mom. She called me Mom.
“I want to show you everything,” Joy continues. “You should bring your camera so you can take pictures. Please say yes.”
