The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up (36 page)

In 1957, Chairman Mao launched his anti-Rightist campaign. Since all the writers and administrators at the publishing house enjoyed pretty close relations, the leadership only singled out a few “Rightists.” Apparently, that didn't satisfy the municipal authorities, which set quotas for every government-run organization. Since the campaign's primary target was intellectuals, the municipal government had specifically allocated a large quota to Guan Dong's company, which had a large number of editors and writers. According to Mao, writers and editors were the most dangerous ones who harbored ill feelings toward the Party. To fulfill the quota, the publishing house reluctantly named two more people who confessed that they had expressed dissatisfaction with the Party in their diaries. Then Guan Dong's boss, Mr. Wang, received a notice from the municipal government that they needed to come up with one more Rightist. If the publishing house didn't name another one, the municipal Party leadership would send a task force to investigate the company. In the end, under pressure from above, Mr. Wang made a plea at a staff meeting: If we still cannot find a Rightist, I will turn myself in since I'm responsible for every decision here. Upon hearing that, Guan Dong became impatient and stood up: You can't do that. You have a large family to support, your parents, your children and grandchildren. If you are labeled a Rightist, all your children will be implicated and their future will be ruined. Why don't you pick me to fill the quota? I don't have children. Mr. Wang asked: What does your wife think? Have you talked with her? Guan Dong answered: I don't need to. In the past, you've been so generous to me when it came to treating my illness. It's a good time for us to pay you back. I'm sure my wife would agree. We are honored that we could do this for you. Mr. Wang said, But you have not done or said anything against the Communist Party. I can't make any accusations against you. Guan Dong hesitated and said: Why don't I say something against the Communist Party now? Since everyone is here, they can testify against me. If this still doesn't work, I can say that as an editor, I used to edit all the articles written by the Rightists and counterrevolutionaries.

LIAO:
That was very altruistic.

LI:
He was a hero for a couple of minutes and ended up paying a hefty price in the next twenty years. Not long after he was labeled a Rightist, he was kicked out of the publishing house and we were sent down to the countryside outside Beijing for reeducation through hard labor. Before our departure, Guan Dong went back to his work unit to say goodbye to his former colleagues. It was barely two months since he had made himself a Rightist, but people seemed to have forgotten all about how it had happened. They all shunned him like he was carrying some infectious disease. A female co-worker used to be Guan Dong's good friend. When they bumped into each other in the courtyard, the woman thought he was going to attack her. She became so frightened, and while running away, she fell into a sewage ditch. The reaction from his former co-workers shocked Guan Dong. His everyday smiles disappeared. After he got home, he downed half a bottle of liquor and passed out. A few hours later, his sleepwalking resumed. This time, he broke the window and jumped out. Fortunately, we lived on the first floor of an apartment building and he didn't kill himself. This latest recurrence made him really depressed for a while. While we were in the countryside, he worked hard in the field all day. Before he went to bed at night, he would tie himself up in bed. He did that brutal thing to himself for many years until we were allowed to move back to Beijing in the late 1970s, after the central government reversed its verdict against him.

LIAO:
Do you have children?

LI:
No, we don't. At the beginning, we were too busy seeking treatment for his illness. After the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, famine hit China. With people dying in the millions, it was senseless for us to even consider having children. After the famine passed and food became relatively abundant in 1964, I told Guan Dong that I wanted to have a baby. But he was worried that his Rightist label could taint the future of his kids.

LIAO:
How did the famine affect you and Guan Dong?

LI:
Many Rightists suffered or died in the famine. Since I worked at a rural hospital, doctors and nurses were allocated more food than ordinary peasants. On top of that, Guan Dong constantly went to harass the county officials for extra food. Since we didn't get to eat meat, our only source of protein was placenta, which I picked up from my hospital. Locals didn't want to touch the stuff for superstitious reasons. We were quite lucky that we survived.

LIAO:
Now that medical conditions have greatly improved, has Guan Dong been able to find a cure for his illness?

LI:
I assume that he could go have the surgery now but he doesn't want to spend the money. He said jokingly that the devil had already inhabited his brain for many years. If the doctor took it out, there would be an empty hole in his brain and he wouldn't like it. What nonsense! He is already in his seventies and he still acts like a kid. We have taken quite a lot of preventive measures. We have a small courtyard house. We always lock the door in the evenings so he can't walk too far in his sleep. Sometimes, he would get up in the middle of the night, shave, and read in his study. One time, I got up quietly and took a peek through the door of the study. Unexpectedly, he began to talk: My dear, what are you doing there? I was so startled. Guess what? He was not sleepwalking, he was awake. He just doesn't sleep that much these days.

Guan Dong remains young at heart. In the late 1980s, the government was planning to shut down a well-known youth magazine because the editor published an article that allegedly contravened Party policy. The decision aroused anger from many intellectuals. When Guan Dong heard about it, he put on a T-shirt and ran barefoot to the office of the Party official who had played a key role in the shutdown. Guan Dong sat in the conference room and began to scream and cry. He made quite a commotion in there and drew a large sympathetic crowd. When everyone gathered, he gave a speech on why the Party shouldn't suppress freedom of speech. He was so crazy. Since he was retired and had experienced so much in life, they didn't know what to do about him.

Recently, while he was reading late at night, he came across a magazine article about sleepwalking. He was so excited that he woke me up, and said: Look, it says here that in South America, there is a village for sleepwalkers. People work at night and sleepwalk during the daytime. If tourists visit the village at noon, they will see many people sleeping under the trees or sleepwalking on the street. The village is so quiet. The village will come to life after dusk. The shops are open. People get up and then resume their nightly business. By midnight, the whole village is lit up like daytime. The circus will come in and the whole place is packed with locals and tourists.

LIAO:
I've also heard about that story.

LI:
Guan Dong doesn't believe it's a story. He truly thinks this place exists. He is now collecting materials, hoping he could visit the village before he dies. He says: That is the home for sleepwalkers. If you don't sleepwalk, you are considered a freak. Isn't that great? I assume that Gabriel Garcia Márquez must have visited the place. His book
One Hundred Years of Solitude
is written in such a dreamlike style. Sometimes, in my dreams, I thought I have written lots of great stuff on paper. When I wake up the next day, it is still a piece of blank paper. Nothing has been written down.

LIAO:
It seems that sleepwalking is both a misfortune and a blessing for Guan Dong. In a way, sleepwalking offers him some sort of dreamlike world that he can escape to, I mean, temporarily away from this murky world we live in. A pure and innocent person like Guan Dong deserves to live in heaven.

LI:
Despite all the hardships we have encountered in life, I think Guan Dong has always been living in heaven.

THE MIGRANT WORKER

In recent years, millions of peasants have migrated from the poverty-stricken rural areas to big cities in search of better job opportunities. Many of them end up working on construction sites or at clothing and toy factories. According to a Chinese government statistic, about 114 million rural laborers, known as
min gong,
or “peasant workers,” swarmed into China's major cities in 2003.

In Chengdu, the Nine-Eye Bridge area has the most crowded labor market. The line of job seekers stretches as far as several blocks. On a recent winter morning, I disguised myself as a recruiter and visited the area, hoping to talk and get some stories out of the migrants. However, the trick did not work because nobody had the time to chat. Later that evening, I bumped into Zhao Er on a side street near the New South Gate. Zhao, in his forties, was one of the migrants who took shelter on the street. He came from the northern part of Sichuan. He wouldn't tell me his real name. I heard his shelter mates call him Zhao Er, or Zhao the Second.

LIAO YIWU:
How long have been away from home?

ZHAO ER
: Seven years.

LIAO:
Are you homesick?

ZHAO:
Of course. I have a wife and a bunch of kids.

LIAO:
What do you mean when you say “a bunch of kids”? Don't you guys in the rural areas have to follow the one-child policy?

ZHAO:
Of course we have to abide by the policy. In my village, you have to pay a fine of 3,000 yuan [US$380] if you have an additional child. I don't have no money to pay. What can they do? Not much. It's not like in the old days when officials would penalize the violators by razing their houses or forcing women at childbearing age to have loops inserted into their wombs. Once they put the loop in, it was very hard to get it out. Some desperate peasants used chopsticks but still couldn't pull it out. Since Western countries criticize China for treating women like animals, the local government has stopped the practice, or at least they don't do it openly.

There used to be a well-known comedy skit that made fun of country folks who ran away with their pregnant wives to faraway places so they could breed more kids. That was such an exaggeration. Come to think of it, it takes money to run away. Who is paying for the transportation? Nowadays, it's hard to sneak on and off trains without a ticket. I have three daughters. They were all born in the village. Since I had violated the policy, a family planning official visited my house, which was a dump. It was so dark inside my house, she couldn't see nothing. She tripped over a makeshift stove and became panicked. At that time, my wife was breastfeeding our third daughter. The other two kids seized the official's coattails and begged her for candy. She ran out as fast as she could. After that visit, she never bothered us again.

LIAO:
If you were so poor, why did you keep having children?

ZHAO:
I am penniless. I have no luck with money at all. That's my fate. But my dick is not willing to accept fate. That stuff down there is the only hard spot in my body. The more seeds I plant, the more likely it is that I can change my fate and fortune. Also, unlike you city folks, we peasants don't have money to go visit the nightclubs. In the evenings, when it's dark and boring, we have nothing else to do except to pin our wives down and go “nightclubbing.” If you are not extra careful, accidents will happen. Your wife's stomach will get big again. Who do I blame? My wife badly wanted a son. The more she wanted a son, the more damn daughters she bred.

LIAO:
Do you save money to send home?

ZHAO:
Yes, I used to send money regularly. But I haven't done that for over half a year now.

LIAO:
Without the money, what are your wife and kids supposed to do at home?

ZHAO:
They have to figure out their own ways to survive. My wife knows the township pretty well. When times are hard, she drags the kids along, begging from door to door. She probably gets more income than I do. Children in the countryside are not born with silver spoons in their mouths. When they get to the ages of two to three and start to walk steadily on their own, they begin helping out with household chores or go out begging for food. I find that kids growing up in rich families are more difficult to raise. They look damn healthy and fat, but end up in hospitals every other day. My kids, on the contrary, never get sick. They are tempered by wind and rain. They are just like young trees. When you just leave them alone, every time you turn around, they get a bit taller.

LIAO:
As a father, how can you be so guilt-free about this?

ZHAO:
I can't even take care of myself. Life at home might be hard but at least they have a home. I have to sleep on the street. Look at these folks around me here. They're all much younger. I'm an old fart and have to put up with a lot of crap here. This location is close to the Nine-Eye Bridge Labor Market. I need to be there early tomorrow. If I'm lucky, I can probably get a job with a restaurant nearby. Early in the day, I was planning to look for a construction job. Construction is hard work, but the pay is slightly better. When my stomach gets empty and the cold air moves in, all I crave is a restaurant job where I can get a bowl of hot noodles for free. Over there, near the funeral home, there is a noodle place run by a plump lady. She charges three yuan per bowl of noodles, with free refills on the noodles, not the sauce. Once, I was so starved that I ended up eating seven bowls of noodles!

LIAO:
Sounds like you are more attached to your noodles than to your own daughters.

ZHAO:
Hey buddy, can you spare a couple of yuan so I can get a bowl of noodles?

LIAO:
Here is ten yuan. Be quiet and don't make any fuss. Otherwise, the other guys will come asking for money from me. By the way, do you always sleep on the street like this?

ZHAO:
You can't call this “sleeping on the street.” This is a rainproof plastic tent. Down here, I'm sleeping on a waterproof sheet. When I put a quilt on top of the sheet, it's like sleeping on a comfortable bed. Being frugal can save me from future starvation.

I lived on the street when I first arrived in the city. Later on, I started a tricycle business and had money to share an apartment with a couple of other guys. Then, after several of my tricycles were confiscated, I went broke. I couldn't afford the rent. I thought of getting a cheap five-yuan hostel room early this evening, but by the time I got there, the place was full.

LIAO:
Where is this place? Why is it so cheap?

ZHAO:
Near the Nine-Eyed Bridge. There are a bunch of plastic tents and some shabby houses. During daytime, it is a market. Vendors use the tents as stalls for their merchandise. In the evening, the tents are converted into bedrooms, with all sides sealed. For a bigger tent, you can squeeze seven or eight people in there. In the wintertime, when bodies are crammed in together, you get pretty warm. Sometimes, it's so warm that you sweat simply by blowing a fart. Each day, before dusk, the owner will stand outside the tent to collect money and get as many people in one tent as possible. Her favorite saying is a spoof on an old quote from Chairman Mao: “We come together from all corners of the earth, united by a common goal of starting a Communist revolution.” She changed it to: “We are all travelers, coming from all corners of the earth. For one common goal of making money; we are now squeezed together.” Even that damn place was fully occupied tonight. Last week, I got a nice paid spot deep inside a shabby building. But around midnight, I got up to take a dump. When I returned, I found the spot had been taken. I tried hard to squeeze in but got kicked out by seven or eight pairs of feet. I was so mad. So I wrapped myself in a quilt and sat by the door until morning. Sleeping over here is not bad at all. At least it's spacious. If this were summer, it would be even better.

LIAO:
How did you end up in the city? Do you own any land at home?

ZHAO:
No, I don't. About ten years ago, my parents' family was allotted a small piece of farmland. When I got married, the village didn't have any land left. Even if we had, we wouldn't be able to make money on the crops. The local government levied all sort of taxes. Many young people left the village to search for jobs in cities. I did the same thing. I got my first job at a coal mine, not far away from my village.

LIAO:
Were you employed by a township-run coal company?

ZHAO:
No. I worked for a small privately owned coal company, which piggybacked on the state mines. If the state company dug coal from one side of the mountain, my boss would secretly dig from the other side. The whole mountain looked like a beehive, with all sorts of holes. The local government was aware of our illegal mining activities but turned a blind eye. Most county officials took bribes from the private company owners.

We would normally dig a tunnel with a tiny entrance. We had to crawl inside with a basket on our back. The coal mine was shaped like a wine bottle. As you went down the tunnel, the place got bigger. It was always pitch-dark down there.

LIAO:
Didn't you guys have cap lamps and a pneumatic coal pick?

ZHAO:
We were illegal miners and didn't have fancy equipment like that. We simply tied a flashlight to our heads. As for the pneumatic coal pick, we couldn't use it at all. Once you plugged it in, the vibrating noise was too loud. It was dangerous because the vibrations could cause the mine to collapse. The structure of the coal mine was made of cheap wood sticks—any type of shaking could topple it. Nowadays, you hear a lot about people dying inside mines. I know exactly what has caused the accidents. There is no safety protection. Those private mine owners are brutal bastards. They never care for workers' safety. I worked for the coal company, on and off, for three years. My daily salary was about two or three yuan. My face was smeared with so much coal dust. As time went by, the dust seeped into the skin around my neck and the back of my ears. I couldn't get it off. It wouldn't help even if I tried to rub the skin off. I was tired all the time. Sometimes, when I got home, I fell asleep while eating.

LIAO:
Why did you leave?

ZHAO:
In the 1980s, I could pretty much make ends meet by working in the mine. However, in the mid-1990s, everything became so expensive, but our salary remained the same. Sometimes, I worked seven days a week and the money I got couldn't even buy enough food for my family. On top of that, county officials also charged us all sorts of fees. We worked our asses off only to fatten the pockets of those bastards. Then several state coal companies in the region went bankrupt because they had bad management. The laid-off state workers clenched their teeth with hatred each time they saw us. They felt that we had stolen their jobs. We were worried that those angry state workers could become desperate and block the entrance of our coal mine. We could all be dead inside. Aiya, as a result, many of us fled. In my village, many young guys moved to the cities to work on construction jobs; many women worked as nannies. Some women became whores. I don't blame those poor women. Luckily, my wife had three kids, otherwise, she would also be turned into a whore. Two months ago, I ran into a shoeshine woman near the Nine-Eye Bridge. It was getting dark but she was still busy peddling her service: “shoeshine, shoeshine.” She somehow looked familiar. I went up closer and found out that she was the wife of my fellow villager, Dog Mouth Zhang. It turned out that she was polishing “yellow shoes.”

LIAO:
What's that?

ZHAO:
It's the code name for prostitution. Those women will come out in the evenings and look for clients in the name of polishing their shoes. Once a guy stops and shows some interest, she will start polishing his shoes first, and then reaches up to fondle his ankle, while haggling over the price. For fifty yuan [US$6.40], she is willing to offer a full service. Of course, if a chick is young with full breasts, the transaction is easier. An older woman will have a hard time. My friend, Dog Mouth Zhang's wife, is almost thirty and has several kids. Her boobs sag to her waist! She will be lucky if she can sell herself for twenty yuan.

In this area, the young, pretty, and slick-tongued chicks go pick up clients at nightclubs. The older and ugly ones conduct their businesses at hair salons, or on the street. Let me tell you, those hookers from the countryside are picking up new things very fast. Shortly after they arrive in the city, they begin to drop their accents and speak standard Mandarin, powder their faces, and flirt by swinging their little butts. Some hookers even pay money to buy a fake college degree. Having a college degree can get them a rich guy. Then they will make up lies by saying that they hope to earn more money so they can change to a new career that matches their degree. So much bullshit!