Bend, Not Break Read online

  I arrived at the University of New Mexico safely.

  Although I had made up my mind to leave my life in China behind, those days of captivity that followed my arrival in the United States had drawn me back into painful memories of my childhood. Ones that I had tried hard to forget.

  MOTHER: 1966

  WHEN I WAS little, I thought dragonflies chose to hover just above my family’s garden because they liked to admire its beauty. I was the baby of the family, younger by several years than my sister and four brothers, and we lived together in a grand Shanghai home with our parents, whom I called Shanghai Mama and Papa. We liked to catch the magnificent humming red-orange dragonflies in a net. We would compare the colors of their wings, debating which was most beautiful.

  I assumed that Shanghai was the center of the earth, partly because of my grandfather’s historic maps etched with many shipping lines that fanned out from the Bund, partly because of the city’s sheer enormity and traffic, and partly because it was the only home I knew. We lived on a tree-lined lane in a neighborhood of “little mansions” built by entrepreneurs of the early twentieth century, when Shanghai was known as the “Paris of the East.”

  Our family house was peaceful rather than showy, a three-story and three-section villa connecting to a courtyard with a front gate that opened onto the main street of our neighborhood. Surrounding the complex, a stone wall decorated with an ornate iron fence shielded the serene interior from the unpredictable outside world.

  Curved, handcrafted iron and stone balconies adorned the south facade, letting in warm light on sunny days and offering a panoramic view. Standing there, you could glean something of our lives in the early 1960s: the imposing headquarters of the Soviet Friendship Society looming large amid the boutiques and businesses that lined the city’s famous Nanjing Road. Chairman Mao’s most radical reforms had yet to fully penetrate China’s most cosmopolitan city then; a Hong Kong tailor still made the Western suits that my brothers wore to school. Streetcar Number 24 passed nearby, and my family and I often took it into the heart of the old city, surrounded by swarms of bicyclists commuting to work or school, past ancient bazaars and old ladies selling flowers.

  The front of our house held a traditional Chinese courtyard with a well that offered us crystal clear drinking water. In the backyard, a lovely garden filled with exotic species of flowers, wooden pagodas, and winding stone paths offered itself up to our imagination. This was my father’s scholar garden, a modest version of the symbolic landscapes developed centuries earlier by the educated elite of China, places they went to contemplate and restore their serenity when Europe was still in the Dark Ages. Shanghai Papa taught me that the garden contained plants for each season, and that there was a reason for each plant.

  “There are three friends of winter: the pine tree, the plum blossom, and bamboo,” Shanghai Papa once told me. “Pine trees are strong. They remain happy and green throughout the year. In the unbearable heat of summer and the severe cold of winter, they stand unperturbed.” He plucked a branch and offered it to me. I inhaled the sharp odor.

  “The crimson petals of the plum blossom gleam brilliantly against the white snow,” he continued, pointing to a tree covered in magenta flowers. “The ability to bloom in the midst of misfortune suggests dignity and forbearance under harsh circumstances.”

  Shanghai Papa then walked over to a grove of bamboo. “This is the third friend of winter. Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back from even the most difficult times.”

  I nodded, reaching out to grab a stalk of bamboo and bending it toward me until its leaves tickled my nose. Shanghai Papa smiled and continued. “The Taoists understand that there can be no summer without winter, no ups without downs, no growth without decay. Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. When you are like the three friends of winter, you take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly.” He asked me to memorize that and other Taoist sayings, and was proud when I could recite them in front of our frequent houseguests.

  It was said that Shanghai Papa’s hair was completely silver by the time he was thirty, a confirmation of his wisdom. For a while, I thought that if I painted my hair white I would become wise like him. He was a man of influence. When he spoke, each phrase unfolded like a precious gift. Yet he also had a way of making others laugh, and was unafraid to make jokes at his own expense.

  Shanghai Papa ran a factory that made thread. When he came home at night, he would enter the front gate and call out, “Sweetheart, I’m home!” Shanghai Mama would come running, her footsteps quick and light. I liked to stick my head out from the second-floor balcony to spy on them in the courtyard below, hugging and kissing. Then, when they came walking up the stairs inside the house hand in hand, I would jump on them. They made a game of fighting to see who could catch me first. I never once saw them raise their voices with each other or with us. Theirs was the happiest marriage I have ever known.

  Shanghai Mama was the embodiment of Chinese womanhood, dimpled and pretty with large, gentle eyes and soft skin. She made every visitor, including her own children, feel as though it were a great pleasure that we stayed in her home. I loved her tender embraces. Every morning, she would buy three jasmine flower buds from the market. One she pinned to her blouse. The other two she gave to me and my sister, whom I called Jie Jie (meaning “big sister”), so that we always carried a sweet fragrance with us.

  While my older siblings were off at school, I would spend afternoons with Shanghai Mama in the kitchen. She said that food must appeal to all five senses: aroma, color, texture, taste, and love. I’d hang on to her legs amid the sizzle and steam and chopping sounds as she prepared the traditional dinners we enjoyed each night: four appetizers, one soup, and eight main courses. My favorite dish was crabmeat with ginkgo nuts in mint mango sauce.

  Shanghai Mama loved all six children dearly, and since I was the youngest, I was still small enough to cuddle and kiss. She used to call me her “pearl in the hand,” a Chinese phrase used to refer to that which is most delicate and precious, something that must be kept close to safeguard it from harm. She gave me the nickname that the rest of my family later adopted: Ping-Ping, which means “Little Apple.” At night, though I had a small canopy bed of my own, she would let me fall asleep in a corner of her and Papa’s large rosewood bed.

  It was in the library that I taught myself to write a phonetic form of Chinese known as pinyin at an early age. It is also where Shanghai Papa and his father, my grandfather, cultivated in me a lasting appreciation of ideas—which they said, like books, required proper care. They would easily forgive me if I left a scroll out on the floor; I was just a small child. But returning it to the wrong cubicle was a more serious infraction.

  My brothers teased me that I was a bookworm, but I wasn’t always reading. I also enjoyed the library because it was at tree level and I could look out the windows past the heavy drapes embroidered with cranes, symbolizing peace, to catch a glimpse of the sparrows as they darted in and out of our garden at sunset. I saved kernels of rice for the birds, my wild golden pets, and dreamed of growing wings so that I could fly with them through the clouds and even higher, to the moon. It was said that a woman with a long flowing robe lived there, and I longed to pay her a visit.

  I wanted so much to fly that I wished for it on my eighth birthday, in May of 1966. Shanghai Mama brought out a square cake decorated with green latticework on the sides and covered with roses made of yellow cream. It looked like our garden! I blew hard, but two of the candles stayed lit.

  “You won’t get your wish,” taunted Brother Four, before Shanghai Mama shushed him and told me I could try again. But my brother was right.

  When I look back on that birthday dinner, I s
ee the ink print of a perfect childhood. It was as a member of that family, within those nurturing, loving, and intellectually inspiring arms, that I assumed I would grow up. I don’t know how I could have coped with what happened next if I hadn’t first known the beauty that flows from a child’s simple expectation of love.

  —

  That spring, rain fell in torrents, washing away the spectacularly colored flowers in our garden and the tranquillity of our neighborhood. I didn’t know at the time that the Cultural Revolution was just beginning, and no one in my family anticipated that it would last for the next ten years. It would prove to be the darkest period in modern Chinese history: thirty-six million people were persecuted, and three million were killed or maimed. Chairman Mao was consolidating his grip as the leader of the People’s Republic of China with an ultra-left-wing, anti-intellectual, pro-labor version of Communism fueled by his often out-of-control army of fanatical young people, the Red Guard. In order to seize power, he had elevated an existing student movement to the level of a nationwide campaign. Mao called on not only the youth but also the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers to carry out the task of reforming China by ridding it of corrupting capitalist and intellectual influences.

  Many young Chinese at the time were enthusiastic about the prospect of becoming politically influential at such a young age. With “Little Red Books” filled with Chairman Mao’s quotations in their hands, squads of Red Guards formed and began to go from house to house looking for potential elements of corruption, which often included their own family members. The accusations against their opponents frequently seemed ridiculous to outsiders, yet the punishments the Red Guard exacted could be exceptionally cruel.

  I was too young to understand the political surges that were changing our lives, but I remember noticing strange things happening around that time.

  First, a friendly German man who lived across the street from us left without saying good-bye, as if the rain had washed him away. I had liked him. He used to give me horsey rides on his back, one after another, until he ran out of breath and put me down, huffing and muttering, “Kaputt! Kaputt!”

  I went into his empty house after I found out that he’d gone. The door was unlocked, yet the furniture remained untouched. I saw his favorite armchair, its sagging cushions permanently indented from where he used to sit. It was like looking at a photographic negative, a shadow of a presence. The air seemed thin without the sounds of his Chinese, thickened by a German accent, and his resounding laughter.

  I walked back to our house and found Shanghai Mama. I asked her where the German man had gone. She told me that he was a “foreign devil” and that I should put him out of my mind. The unusual sharpness in her voice scared me so much that I didn’t dare ask any questions about him again.

  Shanghai Mama came home with bad news one afternoon not long after that. She had lost her position as head of our neighborhood committee because she wasn’t a member of the Communist Party. Being part of a well-educated, relatively wealthy merchant-class family was rapidly falling out of favor.

  Communist flags unfurled furiously throughout the city. Pieces of propaganda sailed through the streets like autumn leaves, calling everyone to join the revolution. Posters with big black characters soon covered the real estate of every enclosing wall around our neighborhood. I grew particularly fearful of those with thick red lines painted over a person’s name. One of my brothers explained that these people had been identified as enemies of the state. I overheard them telling one another stories of neighbors being tortured to death. The graphic details made me feel so ill that I had to cover my ears.

  Learning itself came to be labeled “counterrevolutionary.” I was in first grade that spring when Mao closed down all the schools in China. Everyone, old and young, was required to get up each morning and stand outside to salute a picture of Chairman Mao that hung at the end of the lane. From there, the older children headed off to study sessions in school buildings or other gathering places, during which they recited quotes from Mao’s Little Red Book. I was still young enough to stay home.

  In August 1966, a frenzy of excitement swept the country as Mao eliminated train fares and invited millions of Chinese to travel to Beijing to see him speak in Tian An Men Square. My brothers were excited and applied to make the trip. But Mao’s army was conducting background checks that extended back for three generations. If you received verification that your family tree was “clean”—that you were descended from three generations of workers, farmers, or soldiers—then you were given a red band to put on your arm, a moss green military uniform, a cap with a single red star, and the status that Tian An Men went along with being a Red Guard.

  “We’re dirty,” my brothers complained over dinner when they were denied.

  “See, you should have listened to Mama and bathed every day,” I teased. Shanghai Mama often chased after my mud-stained brothers at bedtime, trying to get them to wash up.

  “You don’t understand,” my third brother said, shaking his head.

  “Well, I’m just glad we are all home safe,” Shanghai Papa spoke firmly, urging us to eat our dinner. That may have been one of our last meals together as a family.

  Communist Party meetings were held in homes all over the city. Later that week, our iron gates swung open and people poured into our courtyard. Shanghai Papa escorted them into the ballroom on the ground floor. Some were neighbors, but most of them I didn’t recognize. At first, my brothers, sister, and I took it all for fun, buzzing about like bees. Then the talking started. It went on and on as people dozed off sitting in our sofas or propped up against the walls.

  I lost interest until Shanghai Papa took the microphone in his hand and started talking. I cannot remember his words, but I know that he was saying something in his wise and careful manner about himself and our family.

  “Revisionist!” someone in the audience shouted at Shanghai Papa rudely.

  The room went quiet. Shanghai Papa searched the room until his eyes locked onto the person who had spoken out against him. I was shocked when Papa thanked him, saying he was grateful for the man’s feedback. Shanghai Mama immediately found me and led me upstairs to my room, telling me this conversation wasn’t meant for my little ears.

  Red Guards appeared at the doorway to our home the next day, commanding my brothers to go with them. They were attending study groups and struggle sessions sometimes not coming home at night. Shanghai Papa was arrested. Only then did I become frightened for the first time.

  I never imagined that they might come after me next.

  —

  It was later that summer. I was sitting on the floor of my grandfather’s library. A column of small drawers, like the ones in traditional Chinese medicine cabinets, extended floor to ceiling from the library’s mahogany wall. Numbered and meticulously stacked in these drawers were picture books, stories illustrated in fine ink on long and narrow sheets of rice paper protected by silk covers. Shanghai Papa said they were special because they were hand drawn, with only a few copies made of each edition. I knew how to open and close the accordion folds carefully so as not to damage the books. I loved to touch the beautiful pictures and trace my index finger over the dense and delicate black ink strokes.

  Outside, the streets of Shanghai, which were often foggy during the summer, wore a thick coat of hazy drizzle. I paged through a story about the Monkey King, the infamous trickster of Chinese mythology who could fly thousands of miles across the clouds. I imagined the Monkey King hopping off the page and, with a naughty grin, handing me a peach he had stolen.

  Suddenly, I heard a crash echoing from the courtyard below. Next came the heavy beating of boots entering our home, and then voices from the living room on the ground floor. Soon I could hear shouting, then my mother’s voice, soft but broken. She and I were the only ones home.

  I threw my book onto the floor and ran to the library door. The sound
of my mother’s pleading was almost buried under quarrelsome shouts, the smashing of broken glass, and the cracking of furniture.

  “Where is she?” a young male voice demanded. “Where did you hide her?”

  “She—she is so little . . .” my mother murmured, breaking into sobs.

  I rushed out of the library to the top of the staircase and poked my head through the banister to see what was happening.

  “She’s upstairs!” a teenage boy cried, spotting me and pointing me out to the others.

  Oh, no—they want to catch me, I thought. My legs barely obeyed my panicked mind as I scampered for a hiding place. I ran directly back into the library, the safest and most comforting place I’d ever known.

  But there was no escape. The invaders made their way up the stairs too quickly—four boys and one girl, all teenagers, all members of Mao’s Red Guard. They wore matching oversized moss green uniforms, red armbands, and olive-colored caps adorned with a simple red star. Two of them held lit cigarettes between their fingers. They backed me into a corner of the library and surrounded me in a half circle.

  The boy who had spotted me spoke first. “You are not a resident of Shanghai. You can’t live here.” He stepped forward to grab me by the shoulders. “Come on—follow us,” he said close to my ear, adopting a gentler tone. “We will take you to Nanjing. It is the city of your registry residence because you were born there.”

  I felt more and more confused. No one had ever told me that I’d been born in Nanjing. I had lived in this house my entire life and didn’t know any other home. I took a step back, and the female guard slammed me backward into a mahogany cabinet.

  “Come with us this minute,” the girl ordered, grabbing my right arm with a firm grip, her face flush with excitement. Then her eyes narrowed even further. “Let me tell you,” she said, turning her head toward my mama, who had followed the guards upstairs. “This woman is not your mother.”