translated by Wen Huang

 

I HEARD THIS STORY from a former Rightist named Li Wenhan. Li was born in the central province of Hubei. After graduating from high school in 1948, he joined the Communist army. In 1950, one year after the Communists had taken over China, he was sent to fight against the Americans in Korea, where shrapnel from an American bomb broke three ribs on both sides of his chest. Li returned to China for treatment. Upon recovery, he was assigned a job at the Public Security Ministry in Beijing.

Li had grown up in a rich family and his non-proletariat background became a liability under the new government. He was demoted and transferred to the Reform and Reeducation Bureau in Jiuquan. There he became a clerk at the production division. In 1957, Li was labelled a Rightist for writing an article that criticised the inefficiency of his local party officials. He was fired from his government clerkship, and sent to Jiabiangou. In January 1961, the government released all the surviving Rightists from Jiabiangou, allowing most of them to return to their work units. Because Li had been fired, he had nowhere to go. The local government eventually assigned him to work at the Shigong Collective Farm in Anxi County.

At Shigong, Li was responsible for tending a vegetable garden, for which he earned a monthly salary of twenty-four yuan. He stayed there until 1969, when China started preparing for a war against the Soviet Union; then he was transferred to the Xiaowan Collective Farm. Li became a member of Division 14, which was in charge of managing the farm’s livestock. He and I shared a room near a goat pen for three years. Over that period we got to know and trust each other. During the long winter nights he entertained me with many Jiabiangou stories.

Li’s stories stayed with me. In the mid-1970s, I became a high-school teacher in Lanzhou, Gansu’s capital, and lost touch with Li.

     In this world, anything can happen. One day in 1996, I went to visit my former high-school teacher. As I approached the entrance to the school, someone called my name. I turned around and noticed a familiar tall figure – bald and tanned, with well-defined facial features.

Li Wenhan hadn’t changed much, except that the remaining hair at his temples had gone grey. He said he lived in an apartment building near the school. He invited me over, and we downed a bottle of liquor and chatted the whole day.

After the verdict against him was overturned in the late 1970s, he went to work at the Wudaping labour camp in Jiuquan. He was a manager of the production division for more than ten years. When he retired, he and his family moved back to Lanzhou. During our conversation, he abruptly asked me whether I remembered the story of the Shanghai woman.

* * *

She was the wife of a convicted Rightist.

Before National Day on October 1, 1960, all the Rightists at Jiabiangou were transported to Mingshui, in Gaotian County. The Gansu Provincial Reform and Reeducation Bureau planned to convert about 30,000 hectares of wild grassland and desert into farmland.

The project was hastily launched. Winter was fast approaching. Leaders of other camps in the region were sneaky and didn’t send their labourers as planned. In the end, only the Jiabiangou Rightists went – about 1,500 of us. We set up shacks inside two gullies at the foot of Qilian Mountain. We had no wood to build houses, so we simply lived in caves we dug out of the gullies. The smaller caves on the shallow side of a gully were only about one metre high. You had to crawl in through a small opening, and once inside, you could barely sit up straight. Our group was assigned a location in the middle of a gully, so we were able to dig a larger cave. Twenty-one of us moved in together. The ones I remember very well are Wen Daye, Dong Jianyi and Chao Chongwen.

Wen Daye had been the deputy dean of the Provincial Nursing School and a professor at the Lanzhou Medical Academy. He died in Mingshui after eating food unfit for human consumption.

Dong Jianyi died around the same time.

I can still remember the circumstances leading to Wen Daye’s death. It happened in early November. One day, Wen came to me and said, ‘Old Li, I don’t think I can live through this week. I’ve eaten the gluey soup.’

I was stunned by what he had told me. The gluey soup that Wen mentioned was a soup boiled from a weed that the locals called ‘yellow cogon grass’. You’ve probably never heard of it. It grew all over the grassland in tall clusters. Its stalks were long and thick and yellow. Some local peasants told us that they used to eat the seeds to stave off hunger during times of famine. We’d take our bed sheets to the grassland and spread them on the ground. We would cut off clusters of the yellow cogon grass, beat them on the bed sheets to remove the seeds, and rub the seeds between our hands to strip off the husks. Then we’d hold up the bed sheets and shake them slightly so that the husks would blow away in the breeze. The seeds were the size of poppy seeds – we had to be careful not to lose them.

After collecting the seeds, we fried them in a hot pan and stored them in small bags, which we sewed inside our undershirts. We had to hide them well, since camp officials constantly checked up on us and would confiscate the seeds if they found them.

Preparing the seeds for eating was an equally complicated process. We would take a small handful out of the bag and boil them in a pot. This would soon yield a clear, sticky broth – something like thin congee. The broth still wasn’t edible at this stage. We had to stir it rapidly with chopsticks until it cooled off and became a lump of dough. The dough was difficult to stretch – it was like pulling a piece of rubber – and it was hard to break down by chewing. We cut the dough into small pieces, put them in our mouths, and swallowed. The dough had no nutritional value, but it wasn’t poisonous either. It simply filled our stomachs, and gave us a sense of fullness. You’ve probably heard about famine victims in some parts of China swallowing a type of white clay. This was a similar practice. The dough wasn’t digestible, so it would stay in the stomach for several days. Unfortunately, it was also hard to get out of the system. We needed to eat lots of wild vegetables in order to push it out.

We learned that it was lethal for people to drink the sticky broth before it cooled and solidified. If the soup hardened in the stomach, it could glue together whatever else the person had ingested – vegetables, weeds, leaves – into a large, hardened lump, which could get lodged in the intestine. At least thirty Rightists at Jiabiangou and Mingshui died after drinking the soup, including some who swallowed just a small amount of it, thinking a little wouldn’t be harmful.

Wen Daye’s words scared me. I couldn’t help scolding him. ‘Don’t you know that the soup is dangerous?’

‘I was starving. I just couldn’t wait for it to cool down. I took a few gulps.’

‘A few gulps!’

‘Actually,’ he said timidly, ‘I swallowed half a bowl.’

I said I didn’t know how I could help him. He suggested that I find him some castor oil seeds.

It wasn’t a bad idea. Castor oil seeds are a laxative. Maybe the seeds would dissolve the lump. I ran over to the camp clinic. The doctor swore at me and kicked me out.

‘So many of our people are dying of dysentery from eating wild grasses and vegetables,’ he said. ‘They’re shitting out their intestines. Now you ask me for a laxative. Where do you expect me to get it?’

I walked back to the cave, dejected. I couldn’t bear the thought of Wen dying on me.

‘Do you want to live?’ I asked Wen. ‘If so, I’ll dig it out for you.’

We started the ‘digging’ practice back at Jiabiangou. The abnormally heavy workload depleted our bodies, and the daily food ration of less than half a kilogram of grain wasn’t enough to subsist on. In order to survive, we filled our stomachs with wheat husks, leaves, and seeds – anything we could find. A lot of what we ate was difficult to digest, and excretion was painful and strenuous.

In my home town, there’s a popular insult: ‘Your hiccup smells like weeds.’ It means the person is acting like a weed-eating animal. At Jiabiangou, we were literally turned into weed-eating animals, our excrement like goat droppings. Often, in the latrine, we’d help each other out. One person would lie on his stomach with his butt in the air. Another would squat behind him, digging. For this we used a special tool – a long wooden spoon made from a red willow twig. If we didn’t have one, we’d use a metal spoon.

When Wen told me he had drunk the soup, his condition had already reached a painful stage: his lower abdomen was bloated like a drum and he couldn’t pass anything. He leaned on a wall, his pants around his ankles. I knelt behind him and began to operate. I poked for a long time without success. I tried to break the hard lump into pieces but failed. Wen was moaning with pain. My tool had caused serious bleeding, but the lump inside his intestines remained intact.

Wen’s stomach grew bigger and bigger. Five days later, the bloating killed him. We wrapped up his body in his quilt and left him outside the cave. That afternoon, the camp authorities sent over a burial team. They loaded him onto a horse-drawn cart and carried him north to a burial site right outside the gully.

Among our cave mates, Dong Jianyi was the only one who refused to touch anything he deemed outside a normal diet. Dong had been a urologist. He grew up in Shanghai and graduated from a medical school there. I knew of him when we were at Jiabiangou, but we’d never spoken to each other. In 1959, before National Day, the camp organised an outing for prisoners to see an exhibition put on by the Jiuquan Reform and Reeducation Bureau to showcase the achievements of the ‘reeducation through labour’ programme. After it was over, we stopped at a restaurant. Dong and I sat at the same table.

We struck up a conversation. He told me that he was the chief physician at a hospital in Shanghai. In 1956, the Communist Party encouraged young professionals from urban areas to settle in the isolated northwestern region. As an idealistic young doctor, Dong volunteered and ended up in Lanzhou. He chaired the Urology Department at the Gansu Provincial People’s Hospital. His wife was also a doctor; she didn’t follow him when he was sent to Lanzhou because she was pregnant at the time. Dong looked like he was in his mid-thirties.

Dong’s scholarly manners left an indelible impression on me. I remember telling a fellow Rightist on the way back to camp that I didn’t think Dong would survive. During our meal, he had chewed his food slowly, and nothing seemed to satisfy him. That person noticed the same thing about Dong – he was too fussy about his food. Others would supplement their limited food rations by combing the fields for wild vegetables, seeds or rats. But Dong considered these things unfit to eat. He only ate the small amount of food supplied by the mess hall.

I didn’t see Dong for quite a long time after our conversation. I thought he had died. But one day he showed up in Mingshui and was assigned to my cave. He told me that he had been hospitalised at a clinic in Jiabiangou for cirrhosis.

At Mingshui, Dong continued to turn down improper food. Our food ration was reduced to a quarter of a kilogram per day. The so-called food was actually a flour bun mixed with vegetables and a bowl of corn gruel. Without protein or nutrients in their diet, many people started to die. The gravity of the situation appalled the camp leaders, who took some special measures to reduce the number of deaths: field work was suspended. During work hours, we were permitted to scout the grassland for weeds, rats or worms. We could also sleep in to save energy. We captured every rat and lizard in and around the camp, and stripped the leaves and bark off every tree. Dong wouldn’t eat any of that. Every day, after having his vegetable bun and corn gruel ration, he’d spend the whole day lying in bed.

‘This isn’t the time to show off your refined taste,’ I told him. ‘Eat whatever you can get your hands on. Survival is what’s most important.’

He turned his back on me and said, ‘Do you think what you’re eating is fit for human consumption?’

Later on, I found out that his wife was responsible for keeping him alive. She came to visit him at Jiabiangou once every two or three months, and would bring him crackers, powdered milk and glucose powder.

Still, a month after his transfer to Mingshui, his health deteriorated. He looked like a skeleton. His sunken eyes resembled dark holes. Soon he was too emaciated to walk. When he needed water, he would slowly crawl to the table in the common area.

One evening in mid-November, I was squatting in front of a makeshift stove, right outside the cave, boiling some perennial roots that I had dug up in the field. Dong appeared at my side. I thought he wanted to try my roots, so I pulled some out with my chopsticks and handed them to him, but he turned away.

‘No, thanks, Li,’ he said. ‘I just want to ask you a favour.’

I asked him what it was.

‘I believe you’ll go back to Lanzhou alive,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt in my mind about it.’

I was puzzled. ‘How do you know? Haven’t you noticed that my face is so swollen I can hardly open my eyes? I can’t even wear shoes because my feet are too swollen. I’m dying.’

I was being honest. By November, almost everyone at Mingshui had succumbed to some starvation-related illness. When we went to bed, we had no idea whether we would wake the next morning. Someone would die every few days. Most people died quietly, in their sleep, without a single moan or any sign of struggle.

In later years, whenever I talked about Jiabiangou, someone would inevitably ask me why we didn’t try to escape. Some people did escape. But most of us stayed. Even in the worst of times, we had high hopes for our leaders. We were under the illusion that some day the Party would realise we had been wrongly convicted and our verdicts would be reversed. We considered ‘reeducation through hard labour’ a test of our loyalty to the Communist Party. If we escaped, it would have meant betrayal of our Party’s trust. We would have regretted it the rest of our lives.

When I told Dong that I didn’t think I would survive the winter, he looked at me with a faintly mischievous smile.

‘Li, I’m sure you’ll live,’ he said. ‘You are a very resourceful person.’

I was taken aback. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I know that someone is secretly supplying you with food. On two occasions Leader Kong came to our cave and asked you to meet him outside. When you returned, you would get into your bed and cover your head with the quilt, but I heard you munching on food.’

I didn’t deny this, because he was right. He had figured out my secret. It started in 1959, when starvation first hit Jiabiangou. People wrote to their families and asked for crackers and parched flour. After careful consideration, I had decided to ingratiate myself with Leader Kong, who was in charge of logistics at Jiabiangou. It was not a high-level position. The job required him to ride a horse-drawn cart to the market in Jiuquan and purchase goods for the camp. Sometimes he’d pick up our mail at the post office. Realising that Kong could be useful, I began to cultivate a relationship with him. One day, I received a package from a friend containing a piece of blue corduroy. I put the package in Kong’s hand.

‘I don’t know what to do with this,’ I told him. ‘Why don’t you take it to your wife so that she can make a jacket out of it?’

Kong, whose wife still lived in a rural area of Gangu County, accepted my gift, but he seemed embarrassed. He became sympathetic to my situation.

‘Was this parcel sent by your family?’ he asked. ‘Why don’t they send you food? What we need here is food.’

I was glad he brought it up. ‘Leader Kong,’ I said, ‘I’m still single. My parents are quite old. I didn’t want them to know that I had made a political mistake and that I’m undergoing reeducation here. That’s why I don’t have anyone to send me food.’

My remarks seemed to achieve the desired effect.

‘It’s hard when you don’t get any support from your family,’ he said. ‘But it helps if you have some money to spare.’

I got the hint.

‘What’s the point of having money here?’ I asked deliberately. ‘There’s nothing to buy.’

He patted my shoulder. ‘Not here, perhaps. But we can always find a way to get food in Jiuquan. It’s not that hard. I travel to Jiuquan once or twice a week. Tell me what you want. I can buy food and bring it back to you.’

It was exactly what I wanted to hear. I thanked him profusely.

‘I have to ask you one favour then,’ I said. ‘The day I arrived at Jiabiangou, I had to hand over 1,000 yuan in cash and 300 yuan in government bonds to the treasurer’s office for safekeeping. I can’t withdraw the money now. Can you figure out a way to get it out?’

He thought for a moment. ‘It shouldn’t be difficult,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’

Leader Kong kept his promise. The next day, right before dusk, he called me to his office and said that he had managed to withdraw the money.

‘I told them that your parents are ill and that you need to send money to pay the hospital bills.’

After I received the money, I immediately gave the 300-yuan bond to Leader Kong.

‘I need cash now,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you keep the bond? When it matures, cash it and use it to provide for your family.’

He was quite pleased. Officials of his status earned a monthly salary of forty to fifty yuan, so 300 was a big sum. I pulled out a twenty-yuan note and asked him to buy me some food during his next trip to Jiuquan.

One evening, two days later, after I had gone to bed, Leader Kong called my name from outside the cave. I followed him to a spot on the other side of the courtyard wall. He handed me a package with two oven-baked cakes inside. He told me not to tell anyone about it, and then he disappeared in the darkness. From that point on, I asked Leader Kong to buy me cakes once a week. Our secret deal lasted a whole year. The cakes weren’t too big – probably just a quarter of a kilogram each – but they saved my life. By the time I arrived in Mingshui, I was nearly out of money. My health had started to deteriorate, and I was growing increasingly nervous.

‘I want to ask you a favour,’ Dong began. ‘I received a letter from my wife several days ago. She is coming to see me in a few days. With my current situation being what it is, I don’t think I can wait that long.’

His words surprised me. ‘How can you say that? As far as I can see, you’re doing fine.’

He shook his head. ‘Listen – let me finish. There have been moments in the last few days when my mind has gone completely blank. My consciousness disappears, everything disappears. This is not a good sign.’

‘Maybe you just dozed off.’

‘Trust me; I know the difference between falling asleep and falling into a coma. Listen to what I have to tell you. I wrote back to my wife and told her that I might be transferred soon. I told her to come see me as soon as possible. I also told her that if she couldn’t find me at Mingshui, to look for you.’

‘Dong! What am I supposed to do?’

Dong gave me a bitter smile.

‘Be patient, my friend. I wasn’t planning to tell you about this. I figured I could tough it out the next few days and live to see her, but when I got up this morning I had another round of dizzy spells. I didn’t think I could wait any longer. I have to tell you now.’

‘You miss your wife too much and you are losing your mind.’

He waved his hand at me dismissively. ‘Please, don’t interrupt me. What I’m asking you is simple and I hope you can do it for me. If I die before my wife shows up, would you wrap up my body with my quilt and leave it inside the cave over there? When you see my wife, tell her what happened to me and ask her to ship my body back to Shanghai.’

He looked at me with dark sunken eyes and waited for my answer. I didn’t say anything. My heart tightened. Dong pleaded again.

‘Li, please, I beg you. I don’t want to be buried here. When I decided to move to the northwest, I did so against the strong objections of my wife, parents, and in-laws. I ignored them because I was eager to devote myself to the development of the region. I wish I had listened to my family. I regret so much …’

Dong died three days later.

Unlike several of my cave mates who had died in their sleep, Dong passed away during the day, while he was sitting on his quilt and talking to me. He said his wife was coming soon and that there was a chance that he didn’t have to bother me with his burial. In the middle of a sentence, his head drooped and fell to his knee. That was it.

Honouring his final request, one of my cave mates and I wrapped up Dong’s corpse in his quilt and hid it in a dark corner of the cave. We waited for his wife to come to collect his body.

That’s when events took a strange turn. The morning after Dong’s death, the camp’s director, Liu, appeared with several officials. He yelled at everyone and ordered his subordinates to go through the cave and check for dead bodies. They found Dong and carted him off to a place outside the valley for disposal. Remembering my promise to Dong, I followed the cart and saw where he was being buried.

The next day, we found out why Director Liu had made his sudden appearance. It turned out that several unexpected guests had showed up at Mingshui. They visited a number of the caves and asked the Rightists questions about how they had come to the camp and how much food they were given to eat each day. After the guests left, word got out that the visitors were members of a work team headed by the deputy director of the Central Party Committee’s Supervisory Department. The team was investigating the situation at Jiabiangou and Mingshui. Apparently the massive loss of life at Jiabiangou had attracted the notice of senior leaders.

This stirred up a lot of excitement. We hoped that the investigation would result in our being allowed to leave Mingshui and go home.

Several days passed. Nothing happened. The excitement died down. Actually, the visit did help in one way, which I’ll tell you about later.

Five days after Dong’s death, his wife arrived in Mingshui. Since my bed was near the mouth of the cave, I was the first to hear her calling Dong’s name.

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

‘I’m looking for Dong Jianyi.’

I got up in a hurry and whispered to my cave mates, ‘Dong’s wife is here.’ I called out to the woman: ‘Oh, you must be Dong’s wife. Please come in.’

It was as if the cave was hit by a tornado – everyone got up from bed and scurried around, putting on their pants, tidying up their beds. The woman walked in.

‘I’m from Shanghai. My name is Gu Xiaoyun. I’m here to see Dong Jianyi. Does he live here?’

‘Ye – yes. He does live here. But recently, he …’

To be honest, I wasn’t prepared at all. Dong had been dead for a week. I had assumed that the camp had sent her a death notice and that she had cancelled her trip. I was at a loss.

She must have noticed my anxiety. With a bewildered look, she asked, ‘He isn’t here today?’

I nodded my head ambiguously. I looked at my cave mates, hoping to get some kind of sign from them, but they just looked at me silently. That made me even more nervous.

‘Please,’ I said, ‘please sit down.’

But she just stood there, glancing around the cave. She seemed to sense that something was wrong.

‘Are you Li Wenhan? Dong told me in his letter that I could turn to you for help if he was not at Mingshui. I am so glad you’re here.’

I nodded my head again. She went on: ‘Dong told me that he might be transferred to another location soon. He asked me to find him as soon as possible. Has he left already?’

‘He just … stepped out.’

I had no idea what to do. I avoided making eye contact with her. I knelt on the ground and swept my bed so she could sit there.

Dong’s wife put down a big bulging flower-patterned bag, untied the green silk scarf that covered her head and looked at me. She had the typical face of a southern woman, an elegant face, with a full forehead, slightly sunken eyes, and a pointed chin. Dong had told me that his wife was in her thirties, but she looked much younger, like a twenty-five-year-old.

I couldn’t bear to break the news to her. I grabbed a mug, rushed over to give it a quick wash, and attempted to offer her hot water, but the vacuum flask was empty.

‘Please don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘Just sit down and talk to me. Where is Dong? When is he coming back?’

I ignored her question, and called out to my cave mates, ‘Does anyone have any hot water for Big Sister Gu?’

One person gave me his flask, and I poured the water into a mug and sat it on top of a leather suitcase near my bed.

‘Comrade Gu, you don’t mind if we follow the Chinese tradition and call you Big Sister Gu, do you?’ I asked. ‘Dong told me that you’re a couple of years older than I am. You can call me Little Li.’

‘Little Li, do you know where Dong is?’

I made up my mind that I would tell her the truth – I couldn’t hold off any longer. ‘Big Sister Gu, Dong is gone. He’s been gone for about a week.’

To hide my anxiety, I called out to the others. ‘Dong’s been gone for eight days, right?’

Nobody answered me. They simply sat there, watching the woman. I could hear their breathing.

I was afraid that the woman would burst into a loud wail, but she just sat there, motionless, staring at me. Could it be that she didn’t hear me? Did she not understand what I meant by ‘gone’?

‘Big Sister Gu, you understood me, right? Dong passed away a week ago.’

She started to cry. Her wailing came from deep inside her chest. A great sob shook her frame. She covered her face and hunched over her bag. Tears streamed down her hands. Her tears touched our hearts, which had been hardened during the past few months by the massive number of deaths in the camp. We had forgotten what it was like to be sad. Her crying softened our hearts.

That poor woman! When her husband was incarcerated at Jiabiangou, she had travelled thousands of miles every three months to see him. Do you know how hard it was to travel in those days from Shanghai to Jiabiangou and Mingshui? She had to transfer from train to bus three or four times.

     It took her at least six days. Why? It was the emotional bond between a husband and a wife. She looked forward to their reunion when he finished his sentence. Now all her hopes and anticipation were dashed. The woman from Shanghai had endured all sorts of hardship and crossed half of the country, only to find out that her husband had died.

The thought of it made me weep. I could tell that other Rightists in my cave were also quietly shedding tears.

I waited patiently until her grief, anger and disappointment had poured out. Finally I said, ‘Big Sister Gu, please stop crying and try to restrain your grief. You should take care of your own health because you need to make it back to Shanghai.’

My words were useless. Her weeping again turned into a wail.

‘Big Sister Gu, let me explain the situation to you. Dong entrusted me with a couple of things.’

She straightened her body and her wailing stopped. She turned to me, her sobs like hiccups. I told her that Dong had died peacefully, and that we had dressed him in a new woollen jacket we had found in his suitcase. I also told her that we had buried him in the cemetery. What I didn’t tell her was that Dong had asked to have his body shipped back to Shanghai.

She sat there for a long time, just crying. When she finally stopped, she opened up her flower-patterned bag and pulled out several packages. She spread them on my bed.

‘Little Li, I bought these two shirts in Shanghai. They were for Dong. I won’t have any use for them. Why don’t you keep them as a gift?’

She started crying again. Between sobs, she held a sweater up in her hands.

‘I knitted it all by myself, stitch by stitch. I think I’m going to take it home with me.’

Then she pointed at food she had taken from her handbag – cookies, dried minced pork and cakes – and raised her voice: ‘Everyone, please help yourself to snacks.’

Under normal circumstances, a mob would have gathered, expecting to get a piece of cracker or a cigarette. But that day everyone sat on their beds, behaving in a civilised way. One person, assuming a noble tone, went so far as to say, ‘We’re fine. I don’t particularly care for sweet food, anyway.’

‘Don’t you need the food for your trip back to Shanghai?’ one man asked.

‘I don’t need much,’ she said. ‘A couple of cookies will last me. If I’m hungry, I can always buy food on the train. You don’t have anywhere to buy food.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m going to help myself.’ He walked over, picked up two cookies and stuffed them in his mouth. He chewed a couple of times and then started coughing, and tears trickled down his cheeks. Another Rightist laughed.

‘Try not to kill yourself with a cookie.’

The man managed to gobble it down, wiped his tears and quipped, ‘If I choked to death, my wife would sue Big Sister Gu.’

Everybody laughed. A faint smile flashed across the woman’s face, and one by one, people came over to the food. Those too weak to walk crawled over and reached their dirt-stained hands into the snack bags. The food disappeared fast and a few minutes later only crumbs were left. I was deeply embarrassed at my cave mates’ desperate and impolite behaviour, and apologised to Dong’s wife.

‘Big Sister Gu, we’re too hungry to mind our manners.’

‘I don’t blame them.’

After the food was gone, everyone went back to their beds. The Shanghai woman spoke up again.

‘Big brothers, you were all Dong’s friends, and I’m grateful to you for helping him out. But I have one more favour to ask you.’

Everybody quieted down and looked at her. ‘Can any of you take me to his burial site? If possible, I’d like you to help me open up his grave so I can take one final look at him. Then I’d like to ship his body back to his home town.’

‘Of course,’ someone responded immediately. ‘It shouldn’t be difficult. The pit is shallow and I don’t think it will take much effort to dig him up.’

My heart jumped to my throat.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘We can’t touch Dong’s grave.’

‘Why not?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Think about it,’ I said. ‘He was buried a week ago. The flesh may have started to decay, but the body is still relatively intact. How do you expect to dig it out and ship it back? Will the railway authorities allow you to do that? Transporting a body is no easy matter. It’s not like shipping a dead dog.’

‘What am I going to do?’ ‘If you really want to move him,’ I said, ‘wait a couple of years. Then you can take all the remaining bones back with you.’

The woman was silent for a few minutes.

‘Are you sure there is no other way? If not, I will follow your advice and come back later; perhaps on the third anniversary of his death.’

I adopted a deliberate, serious tone. ‘Three years is not long enough. It takes a long time for a body to decay. On the other hand, what’s the rush? As the Chinese saying goes, “Burial brings peace to the deceased”.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I trust you. I’ll come back in a few years. But can you take me to his grave today so I can take a look at him before I go?’

It was the last thing I wanted to hear. My mind raced as I tried to figure out how to respond.

‘Big Sister Gu, it’s probably not a good idea to visit Dong’s grave.’

‘Why?’ She looked stunned.

I avoided her gaze and stammered.

‘No particular reason. It’s just – it’s only a small mound of dirt. What’s there to see?’

Her face turned grim and her voice hardened.

‘Little Li, I’ve come thousands of miles to see him …’

‘We probably won’t be able to find his grave,’ I said.

‘How come?’ she asked.

I didn’t know how to answer her questions. She looked suspicious. She had seen through me. My stammer became more pronounced.

‘Th–th–the graves are scattered all over the grassland. It’s really hard to figure out where Dong was buried.’

‘Didn’t you just tell me that you buried Dong yourself? It’s only been a few days. How could you not remember where it is?’

Damn. I should have been more careful about what I said. Now I was entangled in a web of lies.

‘Big Sister Gu,’ I said, ‘when I said “we”, I was actually referring to members of the burial team, not me or anybody living in this cave. When a person dies, we carry the body outside. The burial team comes in a horse-drawn cart and takes it to the burial site. We don’t go ourselves. We’re all starving here – we don’t even have the strength to walk, let alone carry a dead body.’

Upon hearing my explanation, she paused for a second and then said, ‘Little Li, I need to identify Dong’s grave. If I don’t know where he is buried, how am I supposed to bring his bones back in the future? All you need to do is to take me to the cemetery. I will search the graves one by one.’

‘You won’t be able to find it. All the graves look the same.’

‘Don’t they have gravestones?’

‘Gravestones? What do you think this is? A cemetery for Communist martyrs?’

‘No gravestones?’ She was almost screaming. ‘How can they do this to us? If relatives of the dead come to pay tribute, where do they go? This is inhumane and cruel.’

‘That’s out of my control,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Listen, what I just told you is not completely accurate. Members of the burial team tie a small label on the body, with the person’s name and unit number written on it.’

‘What’s the point? The corpse is buried six feet under. Relatives can’t dig up every grave and look for the labels, can they?’

‘I don’t think that’s their intention. Officials use the labels for the sole purpose of collecting statistics, so they can put the numbers on a chart and submit it to the government. Providing convenient corpse identification to the relatives of a Rightist is not their job.’

She started crying again.

‘Looks like I won’t be able to see Dong.’

Seeing that I wasn’t exactly being helpful, Chao Chongwen stepped in.

‘What do you mean we can’t locate his grave? Why don’t we take her to the Supervisory and Disciplinary Department? They’re in charge of burials; they must have a record of where Dong is buried.’

The other cave mates murmured in agreement: ‘Good idea. Take her to the Supervisory and Disciplinary Department.’

The woman wiped her tears and waited for me to answer.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you to the administrative office.’

I led the woman down a circuitous path through the gully. We walked for ten minutes before I pointed to another valley about a kilometre or so away.

‘The offices are over there,’ I said. I watched her until she reached the valley and then I walked back to the cave. I heard Chao Chongwen’s loud cursing before I entered.

‘Li is such a bastard,’ he said.

Chao came from the central province of Shanxi. When he joined the Communist Party underground movement in 1946, he was only seventeen years old. After the Communist victory, he became a manager of political education at the Gansu Provincial Transportation Company. Chao was hot-tempered. Anytime he didn’t like the way something was going in the Party, he would air his views at the next meeting, cursing and swearing. He claimed that he was singled out and convicted as a Rightist because he was constantly criticising the Party secretary.

‘What’s that about?’ I asked him. ‘What’d I do to offend you?’

Chao grabbed me and unleashed a torrent of angry words.

‘You’re lucky that I didn’t do anything besides swear at you. Bastard! How dare you talk like that? Dong’s poor wife was crying and begging you to take her to his burial site, but you put on airs and wouldn’t do it. What a jerk – it’s only a few steps away! You claimed not to know where Dong had been buried, but on the day his corpse was taken away, didn’t you follow the cart? I remember you telling the officials that you wanted to mark Dong’s grave because his wife was coming soon. Now that his wife is here, you say you don’t know where he is. What’s your motive?’

I held back until he finished.

‘Why don’t you shut your stinking trap,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise you had such a dirty mouth. To tell you the truth, when the woman was here, I was worried that your big mouth could get us into trouble.’

‘What were you afraid of? That I might reveal your true intentions? You were mad because she didn’t give you the sweater she knitted.’

This incensed me.

‘You don’t know shit,’ I said. ‘There was a good reason I didn’t want to take her to the cemetery. Two days ago, when I went to dig pepper-plant roots, I found Dong’s body lying abandoned, stark naked on the grassland. Someone had dug up the body and stolen his new clothes, probably to trade them with the local villagers for food. Even his quilt and blanket were gone. I remember I told you when he died that we shouldn’t have dressed him up in new clothes and wrapped him up in such a nice quilt.’

‘Is that true?’ Chao’s eyes widened.

‘Yes, and it gets worse. There were huge holes in Dong’s buttocks and thigh area, where his flesh had been hacked off.’

Chao couldn’t believe it.

‘Go see for yourself if you don’t believe me,’ I said. ‘The flesh was also sliced from his calves.’

‘Who did this? What bastard perpetrated this heartless deed?’ Chao turned to Wei Changhai. ‘Did you have anything to do with this?’

Wei Changhai had just been released from solitary confinement for cutting flesh from dead bodies. During his incarceration, camp guards had tied his arms behind his back. The rope had almost cut off his blood supply. When he heard Chao’s accusation, Wei’s face reddened, but he yelled back: ‘Don’t blame me, Old Chao – I’m innocent. I’ve stolen flesh before and I admitted it. In the past few days, my arms have been so swollen that I haven’t even stepped out of the cave. How could I manage to do something like that?’

‘Who could it be then?’ said Chao. ‘Aii, humans here have turned into animals. Even a tiger won’t eat his own cub. Men eating other men – how can we call ourselves human beings?’

Everyone was silent. I was still fuming.

‘You asked about my motives. Right now, the corpse is just lying out there in the open, frozen stiff. I just don’t think his wife will be able to take the sight of the body.’

Chao looked at me, and was silent for a while.

‘Oh well,’ he finally said. ‘I guess I shouldn’t have sent her to the administrative office.’

It was almost dusk. The sunset cast a shadow over the gullies. There was only a narrow strip of sunshine visible on the cliff across from our cave. We streamed out to the mess hall, gulped down our ladle of vegetable broth and went to bed early to conserve energy. But before I fell asleep, I heard the rustling of the dry grass curtain again.

The Shanghai woman had returned. I fumbled for matches and lit the kerosene lamp. The weak light cast by the lantern flickered on her face. She looked pale.

‘Little Li,’ she said, ‘I had to come back to ask you for your help.’ As she spoke, tears welled in her eyes. I told her to sit and calm herself.

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Did you find anyone?’

She wiped the tears from her face and sat down on the edge of my bed. I squatted down opposite her. It was tiring to stand inside a cave. The overhead rock was low and we had to bend our heads. She told me that she did meet someone at the Supervisory and Disciplinary Department. The official had flipped through the death registry and confirmed that Dong had been dead for seven days. But he had no record of Dong’s burial location. The official then referred her to a person named Duan Yunrui, a member of the burial team. Duan said he was only responsible for registering the names of the deceased and noting the time of their death. He didn’t go to the cemetery himself. Duan took her to look for the other members of the burial team. One had died after eating unsanitary food and another one was hospitalised at the camp clinic. The rest of the team were too weak to walk and couldn’t leave their caves.

The newly formed burial team had no idea where Dong was buried. The Shanghai woman stayed inside the administrative office building for a long time, sobbing. She told the official that she wouldn’t return to Shanghai until she could find her husband’s body. The official was infuriated.

‘If you don’t want to leave, fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll find a cave for you. You can live there as long as you want.’

The woman continued to cry.

‘Where do you work in Shanghai?’ the official asked her. ‘I’m going to write to the Public Security Department in your company, asking them to send someone to take you back. You’re one of those spoiled city women. Your husband committed counter-revolutionary crimes and was sent here for reeducation. Instead of severing your ties with him, you have the gall to come all the way here to make trouble. You’re clearly siding with our enemies – this is an act of protest against our government and against the dictatorship of the proletariat. We are going to notify your company and urge them to educate and discipline you.’

Upon hearing this, the woman became very quiet and left the office. In a way, I was relieved to find out that she hadn’t learned the truth about Dong’s body.

‘What can I do to help?’ I said. 
     Her request remained the same. ‘Can you take me to the burial site tomorrow morning and help me look for Dong’s grave?’
     ‘How are we going to find it? There are hundreds of graves over there. Some have been levelled by wind.’ 
     ‘I don’t care – even if it means that I have to dig up every single grave.’

‘That’s impossible. For one, you’re not strong enough. Besides, it’s not appropriate for you to dig up other people’s graves just for the sake of finding your husband.’

‘Do you have a better idea?’ She was sobbing again.

‘There is no easy way,’ I answered coldly. ‘If we can’t find him, we just have to give up. You’ve travelled all the way here and you’ve done your duty as a wife. The important thing is that Dong can rest in peace, since he is already buried. You should consider that you’re not the only one who has this problem. I suggest you just try to make do in our cave tonight, and then catch an early train back to Shanghai tomorrow morning.’

She was still sobbing inconsolably, but I ignored her. I tidied my bed and offered it to her. I figured, as Dong’s friend, offering my bed to his wife was the least I could do. I grabbed a long coat, went over and squeezed into bed with another Rightist.

Several hours passed. I raised my head and saw that she was still sitting on my bed. Maybe she didn’t want to touch my dirty quilt and sheets. It had been three years since I had washed them. They were covered with lice and were disgusting just to look at. I heard her crying.

I don’t know whether she slept or not. When I woke up the next morning, she was still sitting there, except she had covered herself with my quilt. Even though it wasn’t yet the dead of winter, the temperature at night had already dropped to minus-eighteen degrees Celsius. We didn’t have a stove. We hadn’t even seen one for three years. We used a heavy curtain woven from dried grass to cover the cave entrance and ward off the cold air.

That morning I went to our group leader, obtained an extra food coupon, and bought breakfast for her – two vegetable buns.

She took the buns from my hand and put them on the suitcase next to the bed.

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said. As she spoke, she started crying again. ‘Little Li, could you take me to Dong’s grave? I won’t be able to eat unless I find him. Dong, in his letter, said that I could depend on you for anything. I’m sure you know where he is buried. You told me yesterday that you went to bury him, but then you denied it. Why don’t you want to take me to see him?’

I didn’t know what to say. If I didn’t tell her the truth, she would be grief-stricken and keep crying, which was tearing my heart apart. But I was afraid that if I did tell her the truth, she would be devastated. The more I told her not to cry, the louder her crying became. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned around and walked out of the cave. Maybe if I ignored her completely she would give up.

I stayed in a different cave for the whole day, thinking that she might have left. At sunset, I went back. She was still sitting there on the edge of my bed, sobbing. The vegetable buns were perched on top of the suitcase, dry and shrivelled. Someone had put a cup of water in front of her. She hadn’t taken a sip. I got her another guest supper from the mess hall – half a bowl of sludgy vegetable soup – and handed it to her. ‘I know it doesn’t taste good, but you need to eat something.’ Again, she refused the food. More tears.

When night came, she was still sitting there. I watched her from a nearby bed, worried that she might do something stupid. The lights went out after midnight. I could no longer see her face. I dozed off amid the sounds of her intermittent sobbing.

The third morning after the woman arrived at Mingshui, I woke up and found the sun beaming through the gaps in the curtain and onto her body. She was still sitting there, motionless like a clay statue. Her eyes were swollen like walnuts.

My nerves were jangled. I called Chao out of the cave.

‘What are we going to do about her?’ I asked him. ‘She hasn’t touched any food or water for two days. I hope she doesn’t die here.’

Chao waved his hands in the air dismissively. ‘We’ve been suffering from starvation for over two years and we’re still alive. I don’t think two days without food will kill her.’

‘But we can’t just leave her crying like this. What if she …’

I didn’t finish the sentence. Chao looked up at the sky and said, ‘What else can we do? Not much. Why don’t you just take her to the grave site? You can let her take a look, and have it over with.’

‘No, no, no. I can’t. What if she dies of grief after seeing what happened to Dong’s body?’

Chao lost his patience. ‘You worry too much. What the hell are we supposed to do?’

Seeing that he was becoming impatient, I proposed a new idea. ‘Why don’t you try one more time to persuade her to return to Shanghai? She doesn’t trust me anymore. Maybe she’ll listen to you.’

Chao agreed. ‘I can’t promise anything. I’ll certainly try.’

But that morning, after Chao and I had breakfast and returned to the cave, something else happened. We found that another of our cave mates was dead. He had been an accountant at the Provincial Commerce Department. Several days before, I had seen him in the latrine. He was squatting over a toilet pit. After he was done, he couldn’t summon enough strength to stand up. I helped him up, but he was too weak to tie his pants. An emaciated person feels cold all the time. He was wearing a pair of summer pants on top of a pair of cotton-padded pants on top of a pair of woollen long johns. That morning, as everyone was getting up for breakfast, someone noticed that he was still lying there, with his head covered by the quilt. He didn’t respond to questions, so the neighbour left him there. When he came back, he saw that the accountant hadn’t moved. He pulled the quilt off and found that the body was already stiff. The man must have died sometime during the night.

It was only another death. By then, we were all used to it. One cave mate said nonchalantly that we should just take care of it after breakfast. When someone died, several volunteers who were still physically strong would pitch in to handle the corpse. Chao and I were among the ‘strong’ helpers. We opened the accountant’s suitcase, dug out a clean shirt and a pair of pants, and put them on him. We wrapped up his body in his quilt and then dragged it to a vacant spot outside the cave.

The task left us panting. We sat down in the sun to catch our breath. I saw the woman standing outside the cave entrance, staring at us. Her ashen face was stricken with horror. The sight of death must have scared her. She stopped weeping. I nudged Chao to go talk with her, and tell her to return to Shanghai.

It didn’t take long. Three or four minutes later, Chao came back from the cave.

‘Li,’ he said, ‘it didn’t work. The woman won’t listen to me. She thinks we’re conspiring against her and trying to stop her from seeing her husband. She’s going to go find Dong herself.’

As Chao and I were talking, the woman stepped out of the cave. Her right hand shielded her eyes from the soft winter sun, which looked to me like the face of a jaundiced patient. She glanced in our direction, turned around and walked north.

‘Hey,’ I shouted. ‘Where are you going?’

She ignored me and continued walking. I caught up with her and blocked her way.

The woman stopped and stared at me with a reproachful look. She walked around me and kept going. Seeing this, Chao yelled at me from behind, ‘Li, don’t stop her. If she’s that stubborn, let her go. She’ll give up if she can’t find it.’

I hesitated for a second, and then said to the woman, ‘If you don’t want to listen to my advice, go ahead, but don’t go in that direction. Most of the dead are buried on the south side of the gullies, in the direction of the administration offices that you visited.’

She looked back at me, turned around and walked toward the south end.

As she was walking away, Chao whispered to me, ‘Is Dong’s grave in that direction?’

I shook my head: ‘No.’

Chao’s face distorted with anger.

‘Why did you send her the wrong way? Are you trying to harm her?’

‘What do you expect me to do?’ I said.

None of us expected the Shanghai woman to be gone very long. After all, the graves were scattered all over without any marks or names. But by noon, she hadn’t returned. By sunset, there was still no sign of her. We went to eat dinner. Darkness seeped into the gully. She was still nowhere to be seen. I worried that something might have happened to her.

‘Let’s go look for her,’ I said to Chao. ‘I hope she hasn’t run into any wolves.’

We saw hardly any wolves when we first arrived at Mingshui, but as time went by they started coming in packs, even before it got dark. They were not at all afraid of humans. The corpses fattened those wolves. Their fur became shiny and healthy.

Chao and I walked south. As we passed the mess hall, we saw a small figure moving toward us.

‘Is that you, Big Sister Gu?’ I called out.

She froze.

‘What’s taken you so long? Aren’t you worried about wolves? If anything happens to you, I’ll have to take the blame.’

She was silent.

We walked back to the cave together.

‘Did you locate Dong’s grave?’ I asked. Again, silence.

I had brought the two vegetable buns in my pocket. I didn’t leave them on top of the suitcase because I didn’t want others to snatch them while we were gone. She didn’t touch the food. She simply gulped down a cup of water and lay down on my bed. She looked exhausted.

At dawn on the fourth day, I got up as usual and brought back a bowl of corn gruel from the mess hall.

‘Please have some, and then go home. Stop wasting your time here.’

‘Li, would it be possible for me to get a shovel?’

‘What do you need that for?’

‘When I was there yesterday,’ she said in a soft, hoarse voice, ‘I noticed some bricks placed on top of the graves, with people’s names written on them. I dug up two of the graves with my hands. They were shallow – only a couple of feet deep. I’m going to use a shovel and try to dig them all up. I promise I will restore the graves to their original states after I’m done.’

The stubbornness of the woman touched me. My eyes moistened.

‘Okay, Big Sister, but eat your breakfast. I will take you to see Dong, I promise. I won’t lie to you anymore.’

After we came out of the cave, she faltered, but then she got up and started wobbling along.

We headed north that day. We had hardly stepped out of the gully before we started seeing exposed bodies lying on the sand dunes. The graves were all supposed to be in the basin area, farther north from the gullies. But members of the burial team simply dug a shallow hole in the wide stretch of sand dunes and dumped the corpses there. Since the burial was hastily done, the corpses were easily exposed. Tattered rags and human hair fluttered in the cold, sweeping wind.

I signalled to Chao, hoping he could take the woman away for a while. He nodded and took her arm. I dashed over to Dong’s body, and scooped sand over him, covering him as much as I could. I had barely covered his legs before I was sweating and out of breath. I realised I was too emaciated to bury him. The woman walked toward me. I pretended I was digging around and called out to her. ‘Come and see if this is Dong,’ I said. ‘I think it looks like him.’ To tell the truth, I began to worry that she might not be able to recognise her husband. Dong had been a young, good-looking man, tall with smooth, pale skin. He had looked sharp in his grey Mao suit. 
     There was no vestige of that left. His body lay naked on the ground like a debarked tree, dry and stark. His brownish skin was like parched kraft paper pasted onto his bones. He had been dead for only nine days, but his body looked like a mummy excavated from an ancient grave. Two pieces of flesh had been slashed off from his buttocks and the bloodstained bones underneath were exposed.

The woman bent down and examined the corpse closely. Then she fell to her knees, let out a loud scream, and sprawled over the body. After her initial burst of energy, her body lay motionless. For a whole minute she was silent. I was scared, worried that she might have choked on her tears and passed out. Chao and I stepped forward and tried to pull her up. Her body jerked violently. Strange gurgling sounds spurted out of her throat, then she began a sharp keening.

She shook the cadaver, raised her head, and screamed at the top of her lungs, ‘Dong Jianyi!’

Her piercing cry rang out several more times, echoing in the gullies.

Chao and I stood there, waiting for her to stop. Half an hour passed. Chao and I became restless.

‘Big Sister Gu, it’s time to go.’

We bent down and tried to pull her away, but her hands wouldn’t let go of the cadaver. We had to force her hands apart and separate her from the body.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘that’s enough. Let go of him. It’s not sanitary to keep clinging to him like that. Go. Let me bury him.’

‘Don’t touch him!’ She suddenly howled at me. ‘I’m taking him with me. I’m taking him to Shanghai.’

‘How?’ I said sarcastically. ‘Are you going to carry him on the train?’

‘I will cremate him and take the ashes with me,’ she replied.

It wasn’t a bad idea, but it wasn’t possible because there was no firewood around. Dried camel thorns and achnatherum plants were everywhere, but there was no way they could sustain a fire that would generate enough heat to cremate a body.

‘Are there any villages nearby?’ she asked.

‘The Mingshui People’s Commune is about four or five kilometres away,’ I answered. She asked if I could go with her and buy some firewood from the local peasants. She didn’t care how much it cost.

Seeing how determined she was, I decided to drag my swollen feet and take her there, while Chao went back to the camp. We walked for about two hours before we saw a peasant. He sold us three bundles of firewood. The woman asked the peasant if he would accept money to help her cremate her dead husband. The peasant turned down what he called ‘a spooky and inauspicious job’. But he sent us to two villagers who agreed to do it. They hired an ox cart, and we all got on. On the way to the cemetery, we stopped at a small village store to get kerosene.

The villagers arranged the firewood in a pile, soaked it with kerosene, and then carefully placed Dong’s body on top. They lit the pyre. The flames shot high. Soon the wood collapsed, and something terrifying happened: Dong’s body sat up. As the wood ran out, we poured the rest of the kerosene onto the fire. Plumes of black smoke rose into the clear winter sky. Soon, all that remained among the ashes was a pile of bones. The leg bones were long, like charred wooden sticks.

‘Why don’t you take some of the tiny bones and bring them home,’ I suggested. ‘You can bury the rest over here.’

‘No,’ said the woman. ‘I’m taking everything home.’

She untied her headscarf, spread it on the ground, and tried to lump all the bones together. But the fabric of the scarf was so thin it was almost transparent.

‘There’s really no need to carry every piece home,’ I said. ‘Even in a crematorium, they only give you part of the ashes, enough to fill an urn. Also, when you get on the train, the conductor will find out and kick you off.’

She wouldn’t listen. ‘I’ll wrap them up with a sweater.’

The woman carried all the bones back to the cave, and took a sweater out of her bag and wrapped it around the scarf. But the sweater was too small and no matter how many times she tried to adjust it, some of Dong’s bones still stuck out. I rummaged through my suitcase and found a green military blanket, a souvenir from the Korean War, left behind by an American soldier. I unfolded the blanket and showed her the ‘Made in USA’ label. I told her that I had had the blanket for more than nine years and couldn’t bear to use it or trade it for food. The blanket memorialised an important period in my life – a time of glory.

The woman accepted the blanket. Since it meant so much to me, she said that she would wash it after she got home and send it back to me.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘The way things are going here, I’ll be six feet under by the time it arrives. Just keep it at your place. If I can get out of here alive and have the opportunity to visit Shanghai one day, I will get it from you then.’

She took my words seriously.

‘Let me give you my home address,’ she said, and jotted it down in my notebook.

Early the next morning, I walked with her out of the gullies and pointed south, in the direction of a small train station. I stood there for a long time, watching her as she walked away. She was small and the big bundle towered over her. It was late November. The cold desert wind was blowing. She was wearing her green headscarf. The tail end of the scarf was swirling in the wind, like the tail of a little cat.

I thought about what I had jokingly told her the previous night. Some day, if heaven had mercy on me and removed this crushing political baggage from my shoulders and made me a free man again, I would visit Shanghai. It wasn’t that I really wanted the blanket back. I wanted to see that woman again. She left a deep impression on me.

In December 1960, the Rightists at Jiabiangou were in a life-threatening situation, and to get warm, we burned all of our papers and notebooks, including the one containing the woman’s address in Shanghai.

* * *

As you know, I was labelled a Rightist because of some of my articles. After the government reversed its verdict against me in the late 1970s, I became restless and picked up my writing again. I published several articles analysing China’s reform-through-labour system. Instead of getting me into trouble, one article won an award from the Ministry of Justice. The award ceremony took place in Shanghai.

On the last day I was in town, I had an afternoon all to myself. I went shopping along Huaihai Road, one of the main thoroughfares in Shanghai. Colourful shops lined the street and the pavement teemed with people. I was looking to buy clothes for my wife, but I didn’t see anything I liked.

I came across a large sign embossed with the words elizabeth western suit – a name brand since 1942. That foreign name, ‘Elizabeth’, sounded so familiar. I paused in the middle of the street, trying to figure out where I had heard it. Then I remembered – the woman from Shanghai told me that her parents had owned a store before the collectivisation movement began. It was called Elizabeth. Her family lived in a small western-style building behind the store.

A wave of excitement swept through me as I walked inside. The store wasn’t big, and it was packed with customers. I nudged my way toward a male sales clerk, who seemed to be in his late thirties. I waited patiently until he was done with his customers and then approached him.

‘Sir,’ I asked, ‘do you know if the former store owner’s name was Gu?’

The sales clerk looked confused.

‘What store owner? Our store is state-owned.’

‘I meant early on,’ I explained, ‘in the 1950s, right after the Communist victory. Was this store owned by a person called Gu?’

I could tell he was surprised.

‘Why are you asking me this? How am I supposed to know?’

I asked if there were any old folks around who might know something about the store’s history.

‘You can go upstairs and ask our accountant,’ he said. ‘He might know.’

Following the sales clerk’s direction, I walked along a corridor and went up to the second floor. Inside a small cluttered room, I found a man who appeared to be in his sixties. When I explained to him the reason for my visit, he told me that the owner before the collectivisation movement used to be Mr Zhu, not Gu.

‘Could there be another store with the same name?’

‘No,’ said the man, with confidence. ‘There isn’t any other store called Elizabeth. I have been in this business for many years. I know all the old brand-name suit stores in Shanghai.’

‘Is there a western-style house at the back? The owner’s daughter told me that her family lived in the house.’

The old man shook his head.

‘No, there never has been, as far as I remember, and I’ve been with this store for more than twenty years. But wait …’

He stopped shaking his head, and changed his tone.

‘Are you talking about the store on Nanjing Road, the Victoria Western Suit store? The former owner’s name was Gu. There is a western-style building at the back.’

‘Are you sure? I think she told me it was Elizabeth, the name of an English queen.’

‘I’m sure that’s the one you’re thinking of. If you want to look for the Gu family, go to the Victoria store. Both Victoria and Elizabeth are the names of English queens. You must have confused them. Time messes up people’s memories.’

The old man gave me directions to the Victoria Western Suit store. I walked a couple of blocks on the crowded Huaihai Road and then stopped. I decided to give up my search for Dong’s wife. What if she had moved away to another city? What if she had already left this world? Wouldn’t that be too disappointing to bear?