The Boat to Redemption (19 page)

N
OBODY BUT
me ever called Huixian a sunflower. The residents of Milltown all called her Little Tiemei.

When she was fourteen, Huixian and some of the girls on the other boats started playing a type of hopscotch called house-jumping.
Crowding around lines of squares drawn in chalk, they giggled as they took turns jumping from square to square, competing
to see who could acquire the most houses.

One day the girls encountered Teacher Song of the district’s propaganda troupe. Song was travelling from town to town and
village to village, searching for an actress to play the part of Li Tiemei, the heroine of the revolutionary opera
Red Lantern
, and to ride in a National Day parade. The authorities had made strict demands: the actress chosen to play Li Tiemei had
to be simple, unaffected and in good health; she should be old enough, but not too old; she had to fit the part, physically
and in spirit; and her thinking was to be progressive. She would be required to stand in an open vehicle, holding a red lantern,
for several hours. A delicate girl would not fit the bill. Song, who was searching the banks of the Golden Sparrow River,
could not have come at a better time, for he had just arrived at the Milltown piers when he spotted the girls playing hopscotch.
He stood to one side watching, mesmerized.

The girls appealed to him as simple and vigorous. They all had dark skin and heavy thighs, their feet were somewhat splayed,
but their eyes were bright, their voices crisp and clear, and they appeared to be in good health. Naturally, he paid particular
attention to their faces. He gave only a passing glance to those like Chunhua, Chunsheng’s little sister, with pointed mouths
and sunken cheeks. People said that Huixian and Yingtao caught his attention at first, and that he kept looking from one to
the other, unable to decide. But the attitude of the two girls, each from different boats, towards an obviously cultured man
they’d never seen before could not have differed more. Song took a red paper lantern out of his bag and asked Yingtao to hold
it up. She was a charming girl, but a bit ill at ease, guarded and shy in the presence of a strange male adult. Nothing he
said could get her to hold the lantern up. She even went so far as to mutter, ‘Who do you think you are? You must be crazy
to want me to hold up a lantern in broad daylight.’ Huixian, on the other hand, was not only confident and unaffected, but,
thanks to her native intelligence, she sized the man up and knew that he was someone special. Instinctively grasping the opportunity,
she straightened out her clothes, smoothed her hair with her hand and a bit of saliva, and held the lantern up high. She smiled
at Teacher Song. ‘Comrade, is this how Li Tiemei would do it?’

Song’s eyes lit up. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘That’s a good pose. A real-life Li Tiemei.’

Yingtao saw her mistake, but too late. The Seagull camera in his hand revealed his identity. He snapped one picture after
another of Huixian holding up the lantern in a variety of poses, each meeting with his approval. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘that’s
the right look and the right pose, just like Li Tiemei.’

I still recall the spectacular National Day parade that year. The theme was the eight revolutionary operas, each represented
by a truck fitted with tractor tyres towing a miniature stage up and
down the banks of the Golden Sparrow River. The important characters from each opera assumed their signature poses, in full
make-up, as they stood in the truck beds. The
Red Lantern
vehicle was given the lead position. Huixian, I recall, was wearing a red padded jacket with a pattern of white flowers;
her hair had been combed into a single long braid, her face was resplendent with dark painted eyebrows and heavily rouged
cheeks. For a whole day, she stood on her truck, posing motionlessly with a red lantern held high over her head. She seemed
somewhat nervous. ‘Pay attention to your expression!’ Song shouted from the street. He wanted her to open her eyes as wide
as possible to display Li Tiemei’s determination to revolt. After blinking a couple of times, Huixian opened her eyes until
they were as round as the mouth of a bronze bell, and that expression seemed to infuse her with greater strength; she held
the lantern as high as her arm would allow, turning it into a torch. ‘Watch that lantern!’ Song shouted. ‘Be careful with
it!’ This incarnation of Li Tiemei neither sang nor acted, but standing all day on a truck holding a red lantern over her
head was no mean task.

I was worried she wouldn’t have the strength to strike her pose the next day, but she was up to the challenge. Li Yuhe and
Granny Li, played by a strapping young man with a small horse lantern and a woman in a coarse apron, also stood in the truck,
clearly at ease. The eyes of everyone along the parade route were on Li Tiemei, on Huixian, who had quickly and cleverly mastered
the pose; she looked the part, just like the propaganda poster of Li Tiemei. People cheered her on; my hands were red from
clapping wildly, even though I spotted a cold sore at the corner of her mouth that her make-up could not hide. It could have
been caused by nerves or simple exhaustion. Worried that the authorities might find that reason to replace her, I shouted
to her and pointed to my mouth to call her attention to the cold sore. Did I really think she could hear me? As it turned
out, I needn’t
have been concerned, since someone had been assigned to look after her. The parade route shifted to Horsebridge on the third
day, but this time they were to ride in a miniature steamboat. The Sunnyside Fleet docked at the piers, where we watched the
performers – male and female, in costume and full make-up – strut their way to the steamboat; we all recognized the skinny
girl among them, and excitedly called out Huixian’s name. She was too focused on tying her red hair band to respond, so the
tugboat crew broadcast her name – Huixian! – over a bullhorn. She lurched and cast a quick glance at the fleet before catching
up with Li Yuhe and Granny Li.

This was Huixian’s moment. She was an overnight sensation. Throngs of people on the banks of the Golden Sparrow River were
witness to the girl’s sudden flowering. People up and down the river were talking about a Little Tiemei who rode past them
on a truck, saying that a golden phoenix had flown out of a chicken coop. The lovable Little Tiemei had actually grown up
under the communal wing of the Sunnyside Fleet. Reactions to this varied on the barges. Sun Ximing and Desheng displayed the
smiling air of people who were responsible for her success, while Yingtao and her family held their own wrists in sadness.
Yingtao often broke out crying for no apparent reason. But my reaction was unique. I don’t know why, but I was deeply troubled.
In the days just before and after National Day, we were often kept so busy loading and offloading cargo that we missed our
chance to watch the parades, and all we saw was the litter left by the trucks on their joyous passage: banners that hadn’t
been taken down, rubbish on the ground, and an occasional abandoned shoe. In my eyes, that litter was all a part of Huixian’s
glory, which was leaving me in its wake. My sunflower had been blown away, chased by the water gourd, which remained on the
water and could never catch something on land.

Keeping up my diary was demanding work. Forced to draw on
what little imagination I possessed, I based my understanding of what was happening to Huixian on what I gleaned from open-air
movies and newspaper clippings. I sometimes daringly dreamed up magnificent scenes and wrote them down in my notebook: ‘A
clear, sunny day. People crowded the Milltown piers under the blazing red sun, in a festive, excited mood to greet Chairman
Mao in their midst. He warmly asked the sunflower—’ What did he ask her? Nothing came to mind, and I didn’t dare keep writing,
since I’d brought our great leader into it; if I wasn’t careful, I might write something that could be interpreted as a counter-revolutionary
slogan. So I turned the page and started a new line, asking the single most important question: ‘Sunflower, oh, Sunflower,
when will you return to the fleet?’

Some time around November, the parades ended and the people playing the roles of Li Yuhe and Granny Li returned to their regular
jobs, he to a farm tools plant, where he repaired tractors, and she to a general store, where she sold soy sauce. But Huixian
did not return. She had been discovered, like a piece of raw jade that many people wanted to cut and polish to produce a fine
jewel. Song, her most ardent promoter, became her teacher, taking on the task of turning her into one of the foremost portrayers
of Li Tiemei.

Huixian’s early training came with the district revolutionary opera troupe, where she was taken under the wing of the renowned
actress Hao Liping. Mother had mentioned this woman in the past, referring to her as the Golden Sparrow District’s version
of Comrade Jiang Qing, the Chairman’s wife. An acknowledged authority, she was the most influential and talented actress in
the troupe, regardless of which heroic role she was cast to sing and dance in; by donning a fake beard, she could even take
on the role of Yang Bailao in
The White-Haired Woman
.

This actress, this Hao Liping, was not favourably disposed towards Huixian; her assessment of the girl was diametrically
opposed to that of Teacher Song and others. Finding her anything but simple and natural, she criticized her voice as substandard
and found her work ethic wanting. She said Huixian butchered every song she attempted, modifying it to suit herself. After
trying her best to mould the new student, she took Huixian to see Song and told him to take her back. ‘She has plenty of pluck,’
she said, ‘but not an artistic cell in her body. She’s ambitious, but has no future.’

Though not convinced that Hao Liping was being fair, Song was forced to call together a group of artistic individuals in the
district to evaluate Huixian’s potential. The results were less than ideal. She had, they concluded, a natural talent for
striking the right pose, but her flaws became immediately apparent when she began to sing and act. Disappointed but not ready
to let that be the end of it, Song transferred Huixian to a travelling propaganda troupe attached to the cultural centre,
of which he was in charge. Having her under his direct supervision, he assumed it would be smooth sailing. It was an unmitigated
disaster. The other girls had grown up in the troupe and formed a perfect chorus line. If a line of poplar trees was called
for, all it took was an eye signal for them to stand tall and straight; if they formed a flower garden, as soon as the plum
blossom opened, the apricot and the peach, the Chinese rose, the primrose and the other flowers bloomed in perfect sequence,
without a hint of dispute. But not Huixian. On stage, if all the others were poplars, she was a weeping willow; if she was
a lotus, she insisted on blooming before the plum blossom. The bad habit of always wanting to do things her way, which we’d
fostered in the fleet, resurfaced. In her mind, when she was on stage, she was the only one the audience was watching. The
director, knowing she didn’t fit in, placed her in the least conspicuous spot in a dance. Predictably unhappy with this arrangement,
she would impulsively work her way to the front to show the audience that her role was the most important one.
Her fellow performers quickly ran out of patience, complaining that she was incapable of getting anything right, which then
took the shine off their reputation. Whatever they did when she was on stage was a waste of effort; she was ruining their
chances of winning prizes in competitions. What could she do, besides hold up a red lantern, they asked. If the leaders of
the troupe were interested in training her, they should wait till the next time there was a parade and let her enjoy the limelight
by standing there holding her red lantern.

Chairman Mao once said that persistence triumphs. Huixian persisted with her work in the troupe for some time, but in the
end, a single blossom stands no chance against the jealousy of a garden of flowers. She persisted, but triumph eluded her
in the end.

Snow fell during the New Year’s Festival of the third year. A thin layer of ice formed in the shallows of the river, and the
air turned cold on the barges. Piles of snow kept the temperature low on the banks. Huixian returned. She was wearing her
hair in the style of dancers in the city, with a round bun tied with a sky-blue satin band. An army overcoat hid her developing
body from view. Though it was too big for her, it gave her a unique look; it was obvious that the red sweater and white scarf
underneath were what she wanted people to notice. The way she was dressed reminded me a little of my mother. Was that the
style of revolutionary romanticism? I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, whether it pleased or concerned me. One thing I was
sure of was that it was too early for her to have such an affected look.

The impressive manner in which Huixian came home masked the frustration, the dashed hopes we’d heard about. Zhao Chuntang
himself went to fetch her in a newly purchased Jeep. She arrived in town not via the piers but via the highway. She stepped
down off the Jeep, a girl proudly returning home in glory. But there was an
inside story, a behind-the-scenes detail, which became a hot topic of discussion among the population. I heard lots of stories,
the most believable of which was that the authorities were especially fond of this Milltown Little Tiemei, who was regularly
invited to attend banquets and such. Older comrades doted on her and were reluctant to see her go. But she was simply too
young for many of the things required of her, and too inexperienced. Better to send her home to grow and to train out of the
limelight. Many of the leading officials, including Bureau Chief Liu, spoke on her behalf, informing people in the General
Affairs Building that Huixian had a bright future, and entrusting the grassroots organization not only to look after her,
but to mentor and educate her.

So Huixian returned, but not to the Sunnyside Fleet. Milltown was her new home.