China Witness

Still astonished at this scene of poverty, I first went to greet Jingguan's wife, who lay in a comatose state in a reclining chair. I put my hand gently on her forehead, and said, 'Hello, Auntie.'

***

JINGGUAN: It's no use talking to her. She's not conscious, and can't do anything.

XINRAN: Yes, I can see that, but I believe it's right to say hello to her, and maybe, somehow, my respect for her will get through. [As a Chinese person, I know I must ask first about her condition, to show that I care in a Chinese way – though Western readers may think my questions intrusive.] Does she seem to react to light? Is it possible she may gradually wake up?

JINGGUAN: She can't do anything, even if you wave your hand across her open eyes she doesn't react.

XINRAN: You look after her very well.

JINGGUAN: Thirty years ago she had high blood pressure, and twenty years ago she got a cerebral thrombosis. Ten years ago she became paralysed, and eight years ago she became doubly incontinent and lost the power of speech… the children help me look after their mother.

***

I can see from his body language that he is worried about what my reaction will be to his circumstances and the surroundings.

***

XINRAN: What a good thing you've got children to help. You're lucky in that respect. Your house is so clean, and there's absolutely none of that smell that so many old people's houses have.

JINGGUAN: That's the most difficult thing to deal with. Sometimes in the night, I get up at two or three o'clock to relieve myself, and she's wet through and groaning to herself. When I've changed her and cleaned her up, she stops groaning.

XINRAN: So she has a certain amount of feeling?

JINGGUAN: I think she does, but of course she can't say anything.

XINRAN: So she has no feeling in her arms and legs?

JINGGUAN: Absolutely none at all. When the doctors give her an injection, she doesn't react at all.

XINRAN: And she doesn't have any bedsores?

JINGGUAN: No, her skin is fine.

XINRAN: That's a tough thing to achieve. Coma victims often get bedsores, don't they, since they're not moving or turning over. Can she swallow when she has food?

JINGGUAN: No, she can't, so we use a stomach tube, and a masher to liquidise the food, and get it directly into her stomach with the tube.

XINRAN: That's hard work, I really admire you all.

JINGGUAN: Any family would do the same.

XINRAN: Not necessarily. It's true that our custom is to care for our elderly, but reports of the old being neglected are common too, aren't they? Does she get work insurance and medical insurance now?

JINGGUAN: She gets 850 yuan a month.

XINRAN: Well, that's a good thing. Otherwise someone as sick as this can drag the whole family down with them.

JINGGUAN: Yes, that's true.

XINRAN: Is that a photograph of the whole family?

JINGGUAN: That was at the Spring Festival in 1959. That's our eldest daughter, that's the second, that's the elder son, he's retired now. The fourth, the youngest boy, hadn't been born yet.

XINRAN: And that photo must have been taken during the Cultural Revolution. You're all wearing Chairman Mao badges.

JINGGUAN: It was at the end of 1970, taken just before the eldest became a soldier.

XINRAN: And that one looks like a group of cadres.

JINGGUAN: They're the senior cadres of the Public Security Bureau in 1986; we were at a senior cadres symposium.

XINRAN: Is that your wife? How old is she now? jingguan: Seventy-two. That was our fiftieth wedding anniversary. She couldn't hold her head up, or eat, she couldn't understand anything, but we had our picture taken together, on 28 October 2002.

XINRAN: You said you were born in 1931, sir. May I ask you if you still remember your parents and grandparents, and what memories you have of your childhood?

JINGGUAN: My family moved to Zhengzhou in the twenty-first year of the reign of the Emperor Qianlong, over two hundred years ago. Before Liberation, I went with my grandfather to visit the original family grave, and it was all written on the gravestone, right down to my generation, the tenth. Our forebears were rich. It was the last generations that fell on hard times. If you want to live, you need money, at least enough for food and clothing, and my father and grandfather both had this failing – they had a bellyful of knowledge, but couldn't earn a living, and in the end they starved to death.

I think my grandfather was born in 1886, when the family still had about a hundred mu [21] of land. They lived well. Zhengzhou had no foreign schools in those days, so he went to an old-style private school, and graduated from Kaifeng Normal University. And my grandfather was a dreamer, the couplet pasted on either side of his gate read: 'All pursuits are lowly. Only studying is exalted.' He had no idea how to earn money – he only knew how to study – so if someone was ill, he sold land; if someone got married, he sold land, until finally, when I was at an age to remember things, there was only forty mu left.

XINRAN: How did he meet his wife?

JINGGUAN: In those days, the parents arranged it, and whatever they decreed, you obeyed. Before Liberation, almost 100 per cent of marriages in Zhengzhou were arranged.

XINRAN: And when it got to your parents?

JINGGUAN: The same. The matchmaker knew the girl's and the boy's families, and spoke to both sides. The adults came to an agreement, then the young people were married. When my grandparents got married, my paternal grandfather's family probably still had seventy or eighty mu of land left. My maternal grandfather didn't have as much, but he was good at making money, and in disaster years they had enough to eat and drink. My other grandfather just had his bellyful of learning, and that couldn't feed them. When my father had finished lower middle school, he milled grain in the slack season, and tilled the fields in the busy season. In a disaster year, they starved.

XINRAN: Have you ever told your children about this?

JINGGUAN: No.

XINRAN: Why not?

JINGGUAN: What would be the point? It's all about hard work and dire poverty, and my children have grown up in ease and comfort. The flavour of their lives has just been different.

XINRAN: Well, are you willing to tell me about it?

JINGGUAN: Yes, I'll waffle on a bit, if you're happy to listen to me rehashing that stale old business.

As I said, I was born in 1931. The first things I remember are from about 1938, when I was six or seven. After the Spring Festival, I began at an old-style private school. Do you know what that is? One teacher takes on three or four pupils and, to start with, you just studied the Three Character Classic every day: 'People at birth are naturally good.' Then we went on to study the Book of One Hundred Surnames: 'Zhao, Qian, Sun, Li'. After two years of that, I went to 'foreign school', what today would be the first grade of primary school. By then, we were poor. I struggled on for four years, and then left without completing primary school.