River Town (26 page)

Adam did it with four classes, and it always divided them evenly. There was a pattern to these divisions—the Party Members and the other students in positions of authority were always in favor of instituting the policy, while the opposing side included more of a fringe element. They wouldn't have been considered a fringe element in an American class, of course, but in Fuling they stood out—some of the quieter students, the ones who seemed slightly removed and had nothing to do with the political organization of the class.

In every case they ended up debating about China without realizing it, which of course was exactly what Adam had wanted. During the last debate, as the arguments grew heated, a student named Rebecca stood up.

He was one of the third-year students who had chosen his English name poorly. He had bristly crew-cut hair and tired eyes, and it was clear that he was intelligent, but he was hopelessly lazy and often
failed examinations. I never saw him associating with other students. In the debate he was opposed to America's adopting the one-child policy, and he quickly made his point.

“In America,” he said, speaking clearly, “the people are used to having more freedom than we have in China. They are very concerned with human rights. Americans would never support the one-child policy, because they would see this as going against their freedom.”

He sat down. An angry murmur ran through the class; for an instant it felt like one of those times when they bowed their heads awkwardly. But then somebody rebutted Rebecca and the moment passed, and the debate concluded without any more comments of the sort.

The next day I finished literature class and Rebecca followed me into the hall. He asked if he could borrow a magazine, and I told him to come with me to my office, where we had stacks of old
Newsweeks
that the Peace Corps had sent us.

We were walking up the stairs when Rebecca spoke again. “I think you must notice that in China there is not as much freedom as in America,” he said. There were students all around us and many of them could speak English. Adam had told me about yesterday's debate, and I knew that must be what was on the young man's mind.

“Let's go into my office,” I said. “I have lots of magazines there.”

I left the door partly open. In the hallway it was too loud for people to hear us, and I assumed that Rebecca must already have a reputation; a closed door would only seem suspicious. But he didn't seem worried about that—he sat down and looked me straight in the eye.

“I often think that our China has many problems,” he said. “There is not enough freedom in China. I think in America you have more freedom.”

It was the first time I had heard a student speak this way, and I wasn't sure how to respond. “I guess I would agree with you,” I said slowly.

His English was not very good and he had to think for the words. After a pause he said, “I very much admire your American freedom.”

“But some people think Americans have too much freedom,” I said. “That is one of the reasons why there is so much crime in America. People have the freedom to own guns, and they can have any strange ideas they want.”

“I think that is not so important,” he said. “The life for most people in America is very good, and the economy is very good, because there is so much freedom.”

“I think that most of your classmates would not agree with you.”

“No!” he nearly shouted. “They are all different. But they say that
I
am not the same—sometimes they say that I am a ‘New Man.' They don't understand why I think this way.”

“Well,” I said. “I guess I agree with your ideas. But I think you probably should be careful.”

“Sometimes I have fear,” he said. “Often I am afraid I can't say what I think.” The crowds in the hall were diminishing, and it was growing quieter, and I was thinking: Why are you still talking so loudly? But it was clear that he had steeled himself for a long time to have this conversation, and he ignored everything else as he stared at me and spoke evenly.

“I don't like this college,” he said. “I don't like the rules, and I don't agree with the ideas of the other students. And I don't like the rules in China.”

“Probably things will be different in the future,” I said. “And already I think they are a little different in places like Beijing and Shanghai.”

“Everything changes too slowly in China,” he said. “I wish I could live in a place like America where you have freedom.”

I knew that this was unlikely but I didn't say it. “Many people think China is changing quickly,” I said. “You might find that it's very different in a few years. I read something about it a week ago.” I picked out a magazine that had an article suggesting the government might reevaluate the Tiananmen protests in the near future. It wasn't much, but I had nothing else to offer Rebecca.

“You might think this is interesting,” I said, handing him the magazine. He took it and thanked me, and then he stared me in the eye again.

“Do you like living in China?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “But probably I don't have the same problems that you have. Sometimes I don't like the political system, but it doesn't affect me very much. There are many other things I like.”

“If I were you,” he said, “I would not like it here at all. I would stay in America.”

That was all he had to say. He stood up, nodded goodbye, and left. On the way out he closed the door to my office.

I sat there alone for a while, thinking about what he had said. He was the only student who was anything like a dissident, and I remembered how I had imagined those figures before coming to Fuling. I had always assumed that they were noble characters—charismatic, intelligent, farsighted, brave. Perhaps that was the way it had been in 1989, and perhaps it was still like that in the bigger cities; but here in Fuling things were very different. My best students—Soddy, Linda, Armstrong, Aumur; the ones who were charismatic, intelligent, farsighted, and brave—those were the ones who had been recruited long ago as Party Members. If you had any talent you played by the rules; being a Party Member was good for your career, and in any case all of the students seemed to think that it was good to be patriotic in the narrow way that they were told to be. The image I had once had of the Chinese dissident had no reality in Fuling.

All I had was Rebecca—he was the only one, and he was a loser. He was a bad student, and he was socially awkward. He had no friends. He had a girl's name. Some of these characteristics had conspired to set him apart, and in his bitterness his ideas had undoubtedly swung even further from the Party line. If there were big changes in China's future, it was hard to imagine them coming from people like Rebecca, or, for that matter, from any of my other students. I realized again that any major developments would happen first in Beijing or Shanghai, and then at some point they would reverberate down to places like Fuling, just as they always had.

Never again did Rebecca speak openly about the subject, but a couple of times I gave him magazines and he always thanked me. On the final exam I graded him higher than I should have. Partly I admired his bravery, but mostly I just felt sorry for him.

 

IN THE MIDDLE OF JUNE
, the sinus infection moved into my right ear and broke the eardrum. It happened quickly—one afternoon I began to feel pressure building in my ear, and by dinner it was painful and soon it was unbearable. The entire right side of my head throbbed with the pain, but there was nothing to do except wait for the pressure to break the eardrum.

It was impossible to sleep, and the pain was too distracting for reading. Painkillers did nothing; finally all I could do was sit on my couch and watch television. There was a music program with elaborate floor shows and I watched that for a while, and then there was a show where small children wearing lots of makeup danced and did tumbling routines. There were always programs like that on television—the Chinese love children intensely, and at almost any hour of the day you could find a channel where a pack of them were grinning and bouncing across a stage.

When it got late there was only one station left, and in preparation for the return of Hong Kong they showed a movie about the Opium Wars. The pain in my ear was growing even more intense, and in my bitterness I consciously made things worse by watching the movie closely and scribbling quotes onto a pad of paper. The movie had English subtitles, which made it easier to take notes from the dialogue: “These foreigners are really avaricious” “These treaties are not only humiliating but unequal” “But the foreigners have evil designs” “Foreigners invade us only for gains” “Foreigners have insatiable lusts” “Frankly, we can bluff to foreigners” “Why? Why are they so arrogant?”

The foreigners were British and at the end of the film they looted the Summer Palace. There was an auction and an ugly red-bearded Brit held up a scroll and said, “This is the oldest Chinese painting.” He asked for one pound, but nobody responded. After the auction they burned down the palace.

The movie finished just after one o'clock in the morning and there was nothing else on television. I went outside and walked around campus for a while. The walking was a better distraction than watching a movie about the Opium Wars. The temperature was perfect, and everything was quiet, and stars flickered above the dark profile of White Flat Mountain. I knew that this was not a high point of my experience in China, but it was a pleasant evening and that was worth something.

Finally after another hour I was able to fall asleep. In the morning I awoke with my eardrum broken and my pillow covered with blood. But my head didn't hurt anymore, and I was able to take the long trip back to the Peace Corps headquarters in Chengdu—three hours by fast boat, four hours by bus. I visited the staff medical officer, who cleaned out my ear, and then I rested for five days, sitting in the teahouse at Chengdu's
People's Park. When my health improved, I went back to Fuling for the end of the term. The main consequence was that for a month I couldn't hear anything out of my right ear, except for a constant ringing sound. For a while the ringing was annoying, but soon I realized that it was better than listening to all the honking. If you have to be half-deaf somewhere, you might as well be half-deaf in Fuling.

 

ON JUNE 30
, all classes were canceled for Hong Kong's return. The countdown sign was moved to a prominent spot along the college road, and red banners were hung from the dormitories. Colored lights and lanterns decorated the hallways of the teaching building.

My classes were finished. Adam had left early; I would go in two days, after grading my final exams.

At four o'clock, the students filed into their classrooms to watch television. There were special programs until two o'clock the next morning, and the students were scheduled to watch ten consecutive hours of television. They were excited and the teaching building was full of laughter.

At nine o'clock, fireworks exploded above the city and the students ran shouting onto the breezeway to watch. The Wu River pulsed with streaks of red and yellow, the sound booming across the valley. Everything in Fuling was illuminated—the shops, the apartment windows, the long riverside road—and it seemed that the city was burning on the hills beside the rivers.

There were groups of children wandering around campus, the way they always did on holidays, and some boys came up to see me in my office. I was grading papers and they were led by Wang Xuesong, the eight-year-old who lived in the apartment across from mine. One of my more memorable conversations in Fuling was on another occasion when I asked Wang Xuesong who China's enemies were.

“England,” he responded quickly.

“Why?”

“Because of the Opium Wars. They stole Hong Kong from our China.”

I asked him if there were any enemies besides England, and again he answered immediately.

“Japan. Because of the Nanjing Massacre.”

“Are there any others?”

“Portugal.”

I asked him why, and this time he had to think for a moment.

“Because they took Guangzhou.”

I let the mistake slide, assuming that he meant Macau. I asked him one more question.

“Who are China's friends?”

He furrowed his brow and cocked his head to one side. “I don't know,” he said at last, shrugging.

On the night of Hong Kong's return, Wang Xuesong and the other boys bounced on the furniture in my office, chattering excitedly. I gave them some foreign stamps I had lying around, and we talked about Hong Kong. I told them I had lived in England for two years, which seemed to impress them—somehow I had survived.

At half past eleven, a few of my first-year students stopped by my office to chat. They had become my favorites—at the beginning of the year they were painfully shy, but they were enthusiastic and the classes were always enjoyable. I didn't feel quite as much distance as I did with the third-year students, probably because the first-years were at a much lower level and my expectations weren't so high. When students studied Shakespeare, and studied it well, it was difficult to understand why they couldn't seem to overcome the simple fact that their teacher was a foreigner.

I had named the first-year students, which made them especially appealing. Some of them had been named after friends and family; often I put relatives together when I assigned group work, so that my sister Angela could work with my grandmother Doria, while my other sister Amy could be with Connor and Heidi, who were her children. The rest had names I simply liked: Puck, Anfernee, Miranda, Latoya, Ariel, Mike D, Ophelia, MCA. In that sense they were a very diverse group—much different from your standard class in Fuling, in which so many of them had similar backgrounds and similar ideas. It seemed inevitable that students named Latoya and Ophelia would have vastly different opinions about virtually everything; or at least that was my fantasy, because diversity was something about America that I missed. In particular, it was strange to live in a place where everybody was the same race. For a year I
hadn't seen a black person. But in my first-year class I had Latoya and Anfernee, who were better than nothing. And mostly I liked calling role at the start of class, saying names that were both exotic and familiar.