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“Yes,” Suchee acknowledged, “and perhaps for that reason he is looking for a new wife.”
“Miaoshan?”
Suchee chortled. “Tang Dan is old enough to be Miaoshan’s father.”
“Which would only show his strength and virility in the village.”
“And that is why he has asked me to marry him?”
Hulan was not surprised by the news. “How many times have you said no?”
“He asked me for the first time five years ago, just as Miaoshan finished middle school. I considered it. Tang Dan is a wealthy man in our county. Our lands would have been consolidated. I thought this would give Miaoshan a better opportunity to continue her education. You always said that an education was important for women. Remember how you taught me my first characters? Then, after the Cultural Revolution, people came to our village with a new campaign. It wasn’t the usual political campaign that we had all grown so accustomed to. No, this time it was a campaign to educate women. Shaoyi encouraged me and I was one of the first women from our county to join. We began with Chinese, but very soon they introduced us to English ABCs. The government said it was important for us to learn the foreigner’s language as well as our own. I thought, if this is so, our country must truly be changing. And if it is changing, then Miaoshan must be a new kind of girl for our new country.”
All this seemed very far off the track, but Hulan let Suchee continue for now.
“Very few children in this area go on to high school, because they’re needed on the land,” Suchee said “But Miaoshan was never much for physical work, and my place is so small that I really didn’t need her help every day. Of course, I could have used her hands for watering, but she complained so that I thought she was just like her father. She was born to be a scholar, not a peasant. For her ninth-grade year she was one of only two children from our village accepted to high school. She accomplished that on her own. We didn’t need Tang Dan for help, but this didn’t stop him from asking if we needed it. Four years later, when Miaoshan graduated, I once again considered accepting Tang Dan’s proposal. I don’t know if you can understand this, Hulan. When I say he is wealthy, it may not seem so to you by your counting, but he is the first man in our county to become a millionaire.”
Hulan told Suchee that Siang had said her father wasn’t a millionaire.
“Tang Dan isn’t going to discuss his business affairs with his daughter,” Suchee insisted.
“But he would with you.”
Suchee grunted. “I have been alone here for many years. I have relied on no one. I have raised and slaughtered animals. I have bought my own seed and tilled my soil. I have hired people to help me during harvest, but I have sold all of my produce myself. Tang Dan and I understood each other.”
“So you discussed his money?” Hulan asked skeptically.
“Liu Hulan, look around you. There is nothing here but hard work. Oh, people can go to the village and watch television in the café. Some people, like Tang Dan, even have their own television sets. But what do half-naked American girls bouncing their big breasts in their bi ji nis have to do with me?” Hulan understood that Suchee was talking about Baywatch, a show very popular in China for its bikini-clad actresses. “For young people like Miaoshan, Tsai Bing, and Siang, they see a paradise that they want to be a part of. For old people like me, I think it only makes people dream of things they can never have.”
“You’re not old.”
Suchee frowned and said, “We are the same age, yes, but look at you. You are just starting your life. I am ending mine.”
Hulan could have denied all this; instead she asked, “What about Tang Dan?”
“For many years—since his wife’s death and Shaoyi’s death—we have met. It has only been talk, and most of that has been about our regrets. Tang Dan and I grew up in the same area, but our lives were almost as different as yours and mine. Even though we had both been born after Liberation, our families had held on to old ways and customs, as was the case in the countryside. As a boy he was well fed and spoiled. As a girl I was seen as merely a visitor to our family home. My father treated me very badly. I wasn’t given food or a place to sleep in the house. My mother could do nothing about it, because she had been sold to my father by her father for only a few
yuan during a famine. When the Cultural Revolution came, everything changed.”
Having heard Siang’s version of these events, Hulan listened carefully for any discrepancies, but the story was still the same. Tang Dan’s family had been destroyed, and he’d spent years in a labor camp.
“But for me those early years of the Cultural Revolution were glorious,” Suchee continued. “I couldn’t imagine being so happy. I was sent to the Red Soil Farm to teach people like you. I was away from the suffocation of the village. I was fed. I remember how the city kids complained about the food, but that was the first time in my life that I’d had three meals in a day, and that happened every day, week after week, month after month. Then everything changed again. By the end of the Cultural Revolution, I was married to someone with a bad record and Tang Dan had his own black mark. So for the first time Tang Dan and I had something very much in common.”
Suchee described their lives. The birth of children. The cycling of the seasons. The famines and droughts. The deaths of their spouses. And the never-ending drudgery of eking a living from the soil. But unlike Suchee’s farm, Tang Dan’s land had flourished beneath his hard work. “I try to keep up with my land,” she explained. “The soil is good, but it’s hard for me to do the watering alone. Since he got rich, Tang Dan has been able to hire many men to help him with his watering and caring.”
All this hadn’t stopped the villagers from gossiping about the Tangs. “They said the Tang family hid its gold and only dug it up again when they knew it was safe. What nonsense!” Suchee sniffed indignantly. “I saw him work. The Tsai family saw him work. His wealth comes from his own efforts, but it is something that he doesn’t discuss, not even with his own daughter.” Suchee hesitated, then added, “Especially with his own daughter.”
“Why?”
“For two reasons. First, like so many young people in our village, she has become greedy for the outside world. Tang Dan doesn’t want to pay for such foolishness! And second, he has been negotiating with a family for almost two years now over a bride price and dowry. He doesn’t want to pay more than he has to.”
So many of these customs were outdated, even forbidden, but that didn’t stop them from persisting in the countryside far from the watchful eyes of the central government.
“You would have married Tang Dan for love or because he was rich?” Hulan asked.
“Love? I have great respect for Tang Dan and I would have done my woman duty, but the only reason I would have married him was because I thought he would send Miaoshan to English teacher’s school or maybe to Beijing University.”
Taken aback by this revelation, Hulan asked, “Could she have qualified?”
