XINRAN: You really are a witness to the history of education in the Shihezi Construction Corps!
SUN: Mmm, I watched the children grow up, I watched the school develop from nothing in the Gobi Desert! Still, conditions were much better when I was teaching in the senior school. We even lived in specially built teachers' flats. Two big rooms, only two bedrooms. There was a communal toilet and water room for washing, and the kitchens were cook-stoves built up outside your front door.
XINRAN: And this was in 1994?
SUN: At that time a teacher's wages were only thirty-nine yuan a month.
XINRAN: How much were your wages in 1962?
SUN: Same as all the other teachers: thirty-two yuan wages in the trial period. After a year when you were made permanent you got thirty-six yuan and twelve fen, and after another year when you got on the teachers' pay scale it was thirty-nine, right up to 1995. They didn't give me a pay rise for nearly thirty years. I started work in '62 and got married in '67. And I had four children. But it was the same for everyone back then – nobody thought it was hard. I had to supervise self-study in the classroom every day as well – I couldn't look after my own children. Evening self-study finished at eleven, and then I had to see the boarders safely to bed. I couldn't go home until lights out.
XINRAN: You really didn't think it was hard? Later I want to know your secret. Four children, and overtime on top of that!
SUN: Yes, four children! Coming home every day in the evening, making clothes by lamplight… I made everything myself, I didn't buy shoes, and the children's clothes were old clothes cut down to size. My elder daughter grew fast, so I added a strip to the bottom of her trousers. The next year she'd grown again, and I added another strip. The bottoms of her trousers were like stairs – I'd added three extensions! When she couldn't wear them they were passed on to the next one. I made clothes and shoes for the children every day after work, it felt like I never went to sleep before three o'clock. Anyway, I had a lot of children, I brought it on myself.
XINRAN: You were so eager to excel in your work – why did you have so many children?
SUN: That was eagerness to excel too; whoever had the most was the best. I didn't know that much then, just that I wanted to be better than everybody else!
XINRAN: So you didn't want to lag behind, even in childbearing! But you show no sign of being worn down by the drudgery of four children.
SUN: That's the kind of person I am – I always want to be the best. My work never fell behind, no matter how many children I had or how exhausting the housework was, right up to when I retired in 1995. Just then the Workers' Medical University was opening a branch college. They were running two clinical classes for level-one administrators and directors of rural hospitals aged over thirty-five. These people were the mainstays of village and county hospitals, but because their generation had been sent down to the countryside as school-leavers, they'd missed out on the chance to get a university qualification. It was impossible for them to get promotion, and their pay and conditions were very bad, so as a special consideration, this group were given a chance to do a one-year course leading to a college degree. At that time the college principal was asking around for teachers, and he came to Shihezi. He said he wanted teachers with the best work ethic, who could manage students, so he set his sights on me, begged me. I couldn't hold out against that, so I said I'd sign a year's contract, and at the end of that time both sides could decide. You see if I'm up to it, and I'll see whether I can get used to the job. In the end I worked until 1998. I only stopped when I got a stomach illness.
XINRAN: Could you never slow down a bit? From 1962, when you were twenty-five, to 1998, did you ever slow down?
SUN: I think that after a year of farm work in the corps, no matter how tough things got, it was still a much easier life than that, bending over the yellow earth all day, down to the fields before daybreak and not coming back until dark. To be honest, the year I spent toughening myself up in the corps gave me my work ethic for thirty years of teaching. It made me unusually serious and responsible, so no matter what class I was given, the leaders didn't have to worry. It's all because I have experienced true toil, like the peasants. When I was teaching, no matter how hard or tiring it was, even if I couldn't go home for twenty-four hours at a stretch, you're still inside. Talking to children and teaching schoolchildren doesn't take a lot of strength, does it?
XINRAN: Now can you tell me your secret? And also, how did you meet your husband?
SUN: You ask him, see what he says.
XINRAN: I want to hear what you say. I'm a woman – it's easier for me to listen to a woman telling her stories than a man.
SUN: Really? I sometimes think that way too.
XINRAN: And let's be practical, don't give me all that stuff about 'comrades cherishing the same hopes and ideals'.
SUN: You're really funny! I'll talk if you want to listen. In any case we're old, we don't mind being laughed at. My husband came straight to Xinjiang when he left his old army unit in Nanjing. A whole group of demobilised soldiers were sent over together. He wasn't due to be demobbed, but when he heard that group was going to be sent to Xinjiang on leaving the army, well, he didn't know what it was like in Xinjiang, but he put in a request to go. His arrival coincided with a big army skills competition, and his military skills had been exceptionally good in the army. He used to be in a colour guard that put on displays for visiting senior officers. At the end of that competition he was selected as best in his category. When General He Long came here from the central government they even let him have a photograph taken with him.
XINRAN: Do you still have that photograph?
SUN: No, in the Cultural Revolution they said all sorts of things about He Long. We were afraid, so we threw it away. In 1967 the armed guard units sent him to the school to give military and political training. He visited all the middle and primary schools in turn, and just then he happened to be responsible for primary schools. He was staying in the school office, and that was how we got to know each other.
XINRAN: When did you first take a fancy to him?
SUN: He was doing drill exercises, you know? I often saw him on the training ground. I was still quite young. I thought he was really handsome, so quick-witted and capable, I thought the way he went through his moves was just wonderful.
XINRAN: Just that? It's got to be more than that, surely!
SUN [laughs]: Well… yes, there's more. I had my own requirements for a husband. First, I'm short, so I wanted a tall man; second, my eyes are small, so I wanted a man with big eyes. He matched my requirements rather well. I'd been introduced to a good few men before him. To be honest, we were all quite particular about class background in those days, I was one of the better ones, so I got a good many introductions, but I turned my nose up at all of them. He had an easy, natural bearing, though; tall, with big eyes, very clean and brisk. Our dormitories were only separated by a road. The office was on this side, and the teachers' dormitory was just over there. He spent several months drilling the pupils, our comrades introduced us, and we got together.
XINRAN: Romantic!
SUN: What about your husband?
XINRAN: When you see him later, tell me how you rate him! Once you started living together, did you quarrel? Did you have fights?
SUN: How could we not quarrel? Not so much in the early years; mostly it was after the children came, when we were so busy. He had a bad temper in those days. He'd see the children eating slowly and lose his temper. He always clears his bowl in five minutes, so he insisted that the children finish their food in five minutes too. He wanted the children to do everything extremely quickly, the way they do in an army skills competition. He said it was to help the children's development.
XINRAN: So, has his temper improved a bit?
SUN: Now it's a little better. The children have all grown up. He says that when he was young he didn't understand, he didn't have much to do with the running of the household. I brought up all the children single-handed really – it was very hard. This is why my health is poor. Now he says he wants to make amends for his misdeeds; he does all the housework, I just read the papers and rest. In the morning, as soon as he gets up, he does some tidying. Then he gets our little grandson dressed, gets his food ready, feeds him, and takes him outside to play. When they come in he makes lunch, we have a nap, he takes the child out to play again, and then he makes supper when he comes back. Now he's experienced it for himself, he understands how tough it was for me bringing up four children.
