Observing Cheering Spear, I suddenly felt short. Her beauty discouraged me. I tried to ignore my fear.
I took a pen and made some scratches on the paper. Dear Yan, I wrote, and then scratched it. Dear Yan, I wrote, and scratched it again. Selected works of Mao Tse-tung, I wrote. Criticism of revisionists. Yan, how are you? I tore up the paper. The Supervisor did not come.
I had a nightmare that night. Yan had become a faceless figure who wandered the fields of the farm. A sleepless night followed. It rained at dawn. The dropping sound of the rain took me back to Red Fire Farm into Yan’s mosquito net.
After lunch a whistle blew. At the gate we saw Soviet Wong. Behind her were about twenty young men. They marched past the gate. These are the chosen boys, Soviet Wong introduced them. You will be working together in the future. The men had one similar face-big double-lidded eyes, thick eyebrows, Buddha-like nose and mouth. They looked as similar as if made from the same mold. No one said hello. We stood. One man suddenly flushed. Soviet Wong asked him to tell the reason why his face flushed. The young man tried to tackle the question. He scratched the back of his neck. He said it was because he was not used to looking at women. Soviet Wong said, Is your mother a woman? Don’t you dare say that you have never looked her in the eyes before. The man went speechless. Soviet Wong continued, If one has no guilty thoughts, one’s face should not flush. The man who had flushed lowered his head. The redness went down to his neck. The others who were standing next to him gave him pitiful looks. You may weigh my words later, said Soviet Wong.
These young men had been brought to Shanghai to play supporting roles in
Soviet Wong took us to an old building covered with ivy. Behind the huge rusted iron door a heavy smell of mold rushed out. I covered my nose with my hand. Soviet Wong immediately showed irritation. I cannot believe someone who used to be a peasant is afraid of bad smells. Is the smell worse than pig shit in rice paddies? I put down my hand quietly.
One Ounce turned up a dim light. We were in an unused studio with a stage set like a cave and a few rows of benches. Soviet Wong sat us down. We began to read Mao’s talks on the arts again.
I had a hard time concentrating on Mao. My mind kept flying away. For three weeks we had had classes on politics, Mandarin, acting technique and Wu Shu-various kinds of Chinese traditional boxing and fencing. Comrade Jiang Ching was trying to develop something new in China, trying to combine film and opera, although no one knew how to make films work. The result was films with a strong flavor of opera-the makeup, the lighting, the stylized voice and pose. And now it was the proletariat, and in particular women, who were the heroes. People all over China had to see the films, or be labeled reactionaries.
With all the lessons, life seemed full every day. But secretly we had been waiting, waiting to be inspected by the Supervisor. The waiting seemed endless. Sound of Rain showed up once in a while, always delivering a report on the new achievements in the arts: Mao and his Politburo members had just watched and praised Comrade Jiang Ching’s new model opera. Sound of Rain would drop a stack of newspapers and a copy of the opera’s manuscript, asking us to read them and write study reports. We read and wrote. We discussed Mao’s idea of the proletarian arts.
One day we were told that we now had become special material. We were ready to compete for Comrade Jiang Ching’s big assignment.
It was the title role of Red Azalea. Red Azalea was Comrade Jiang Ching’s ideal, her creation, her movie, her dream and her life. If any of us grabbed it, we grabbed the dream of stardom. The story of Red Azalea was a story of passion in the midst of gunfire. It was about how a woman should live, about a proletarian love unto death. To me, it was not only about the past wartime, about history, but it was also about the essence of a true heroine, the essence of Yan, the essence of how I must continue to live my life.
Soviet Wong read through the screenplay. Her tears spattered down on the script. At first I thought that she was moved by the story, then I sensed it was something else. Her sadness did not come from the story but from despair, the despair that she could never be allowed to play the role she desired. She had to teach us to play the role she wanted to play. Her youth and beauty would be wasted on teaching us. She was assigned to teach people she wished to stab. She was tormented and murdered by our growth.
We took turns reading the parts. I saw the other three, Firewood, Little Bell, Bee OhYang, falling out of the race. They were not in touch with the role. They were not feeling the pulse of Red Azalea. Cheering Spear was different. Cheering Spear was approaching the role. She was getting closer, even closer than I. Too close. She put me in danger. She was taking away my hope.
Cheering Spear had been in touch with everything. There was never a moment she had nothing to say; everyone else had their mouths shut and sat nervously. She always had something to say. Things that were useful to advance her future. She said that she admired Soviet Wong, that just being near her made her happy. She did not say this in Soviet Wong’s presence; she said this at meetings, meetings at which the secretary on duty would take notes, which Soviet Wong would get to read later on. Cheering Spear said that she was not even close to being as good-looking and talented as Soviet Wong. Then she would contradict herself and say that she resembled Soviet Wong a great deal, while in fact their looks were as different as an elephant and a pig. Cheering Spear was never ashamed of her flattery.
Soviet Wong did not talk more to her than to the others. But things moved for Cheering Spear. She was put onstage to lead the crowd in the reading of Mao’s new instructions. Cheering Spear became the center of attention. The newspaper and magazine reporters and photographers spoke with Cheering Spear. They interviewed her. They asked who she was and where she was from. Cheering Spear never changed her words. She said, I am Soviet Wong’s student. I am what she made of me. I am the soil and she is the cow who cultivates me. I am her harvest. Cheering Spear did not say anything else; she only said what was useful. The newspaper praised Soviet Wong as an example of the Party’s loyalty.
The race for Red Azalea came down to Cheering Spear and me. Soviet Wong said we must practice hard because the Supervisor from Beijing would soon come to take his pick for Comrade Jiang Ching. Nothing was said about the others. No one told them that their chance was thinner than a thread. Soviet Wong decided to call Cheering Spear candidate A and me candidate B. It was becoming obvious that Soviet Wong preferred her over me. But she had to leave me in the race at least for a while, because it would have been too blatant if she had not. She could not put me aside when it was always Cheering Spear and I who gave the right answers to the questions in class. Our scores had always been close. In Mandarin class we were the only two who were able to get the one- hundred-syllable pronunciation table right. Soviet Wong had to show her fairness, because she represented the Party.
Always in our classes Soviet Wong would be very abstract in what she asked me to do so that I would find it difficult to follow her. Then she told me that I reacted to her teaching too quickly. You have not been really listening to me, she said. You refuse to listen. But I do listen, I said. She was teaching us how to improvise in the character of Red Azalea. What are you wearing? she asked, suddenly pointing at my feet. A pair of self-made straw shoes, I replied, satisfied with my own sharp wit. She smiled almost bitterly. What do the shoes look like? They look like the ones Chairman Mao wore in a photo filmed by our foreign friend Anna Louise in Yanan cave, I said.
Soviet Wong looked even more bitter. She told me to watch Cheering Spear practice. Watch each other, she ordered. Watch carefully. I did watch carefully. Even when I closed my eyes, I could see how Cheering Spear played Red Azalea. Cheering Spear was an ardent performer, an energetic spirit. She exhausted herself. She gave all of herself. She was lavish with her emotions. She had no use for subtlety in performance. She loved to be melodramatic. Soviet Wong asked me to watch, so I watched. I learned what was not working and I knew I would not perform the same way. When Soviet Wong asked me what I had learned for the day, I answered honestly. And I ruined myself. When I realized that I had ruined myself, it was too late.
The air in the studio became chilly. The chilliness penetrated my bones. Soviet Wong suddenly pointed at me and asked me to explain the concept of the proletarian dictatorship over revisionism in art. It did not take me too long to form an answer. In order to discard revisionism, I said, we must exercise the dictatorship over the enemy in our own head first. My voice was clear. The content was from
Soviet Wong picked on me. She picked on me whenever she could, over the smallest things. One day she misplaced a prop-a tea mug-and pointed me out to the class as the one who must have lost it. I told her I had seen
