In response to Huaiyu’s request, I am putting the English version here. As you can see, the beginning is somewhat different. The introduction was for American readers, but it's actually not necessary. It can be embedded in the story itself as I later altered in the Chinese translation.
By the end of 1971, the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution had gone with the air-crash death of Lin Piao, the Chinese Macbeth, whose defeat in the power struggle with Mao, I never imagined at the time, would mark the beginning of China's policy toward the west as my best friend Shangde once casually mentioned.
How could I know? At that time, I was only eighteen, an ordinary lathe operator working in a factory affiliated to Beijing University, where I could get some information about "who would be in and who would be out," for the university was then one of the two political barometers in Beijing, but I was not so interested in politics. I had just fallen in love with a pretty girl, and both of us had just become interested in learning English. We simply shut ourselves up in our own little world of love and learning.
Then came Shangde, a childhood friend of mine whom I had not seen for over two years because he had been working on a state farm in the northeast of China. During those years, all the universities were closed. All we expected was to get a good job in the city, but we had absolutely no freedom to choose where to live or where to work. Everyone was assigned to work in a particular place and was supposed to be a "shining screw that stays forever where the party puts it on the revolutionary machine." Shangde was a year older than I; therefore, he was unfortunate. Somehow, during the first half of the Cultural Revolution, the high school students who graduated in odd numbered years were unlucky compared with those who graduated in even numbered years. Shangde graduated in 1969. He and all his classmates, like the graduates of 1967, were assigned to work on state farms or in the remote countryside. I graduated in 1970. Most of my classmates and I, like the graduates of 1968, were assigned to work in factories in or near Beijing. We considered ourselves very lucky because working in the country was much harder than in the city, and moreover, the farm workers could hardly make both ends meet while we factory workers were basically self-sufficient. If they wanted to come back to the city or to visit their parents, they had to provide enough reasons in order to get the permission. I remember how sincerely my mother and I thanked our great leader Chairman Mao for my good luck. When I saw Shangde again, I wondered whom he should thank.
He was taller but thinner, weaker, and darker than before, and it took me quite a while to figure out what was missing from his face. It looked somewhat bare! Then, I realized that his eyebrows were almost all gone. He did not seem to care at all but casually explained that it might have to do with the poor food and bad water they had on the farm. "Most people lost their hair, but somehow," he joked, "my eyebrows abandoned me first, probably because I knitted them more often than I rubbed my hair on the pillow." I knew he was a knowledge seeker. No matter how exhausted he was after a day's work, he would still read deep into the night by a small lamp in a corner of the camp which was shared with twenty-three other young men, who did nothing after work but play cards, chat, and sleep.
Shangde was permitted to come back to Beijing because his mother had passed away, and his father was sick and needed a nurse at home. This was a common reason for the child to have a break from the tiring and tedious physical labor---that is, if the parent could obtain a medical excuse. Many doctors even made a fortune out of such a social phenomenon. However, Shangde's father was really sick and was really needed at his job. He was the number one academic authority where he worked. By then even Mao had felt the loss and waste of the intellectuals, and so the party's policy about the intellectuals was just beginning to become milder. The administrators were trying to transfer Shangde to where his father worked so that he could take care of his father, who would, in turn, "make more and better contributions to the revolutionary cause."
Whatever the cause was, Shangde was just happy to be back. Besides taking good care of his old father, he spent every minute on his studies. Whenever I visited him, he discussed problems in his studies of mathematics, geometry, physics, history, philosophy, and English with me. Actually, he knew more than I did, and I learned much from him in those discussions. In those years, most young people did not bother to learn any book-knowledge because it seemed useless. Shangde and I read books and did exercises with no purpose whatsoever; just for fun. It was also due to our family influence that we both felt that it would be a waste of our lives if we did not learn something new everyday.
Working in Beijing University, I had access to the library there. Although I was allowed to borrow only five books at a time, it was a great privilege because people outside universities simply had no way to get books. Bookstores everywhere were selling very few books other than the works by Mao, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. As for personal collections of books, most of them had been burned in the early years of the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, Shangde and I made full use of the library of Beijing University. One day, he asked me to borrow some books on hydrography for him. I wondered why he would want to specialize so early, and then he told me his practical purpose.
Water shortage was a big problem on the farm where he had worked. People, not to mention the crops, could hardly get enough water from the rain. There were 240 young graduates living in the crowded camps and working with rather primitive tools on the vast wasteland. No wonder the output was always low; many youngsters had to walk two hours everyday just to get to where they worked. Their cisterns were more often than not completely dry. Their tractors were used more often to transport water from a river over two hundred miles away than to work the land. They had tried to dig a well dozens of times before they finally hit a wellhead twenty-five yards below the surface. In order for the well to hold a lot of water, they continued to dig fifteen yards deeper before Shangde persuaded them to stop. They had convenient drinking water now, but before long, it began to taste a little stale because the well was so deep that they could not use up the water in the well by the evening and get fresh water from the well in the morning. "Well, it's indeed a little stale," the party commissar said, "but stale water can strengthen our revolutionary willpower still more!" Thus, thanks to their hard work, they had to drink the "elixir of revolution" every day. Now, only one small tractor went to fetch fresh water from the river every other day for the constant turnover of sick farm workers and the party cadres including, of course, the commissar, whose revolutionary willpower was already so strong that it did not need to be strengthened any more.
Shangde suggested that they should make a wellhead protector and put stones into the well so that the water level might be raised and purified. But the ignorant commissar thought that he was either crazy or that he intended to destroy the hard-dug well.
Now, more than a thousand miles away from the farm, Shangde was still concerned about the Pyrrhic victory of the deep well. He wanted to acquire enough knowledge of hydrography in order to help his friends locate the position for another well. "It's a great pleasure to seek knowledge for its own sake," he said, "but it's a greater pleasure to seek knowledge so as to be able to put it into practice."
Shangde was by no means a bookworm, and our meetings were not merely discussions of book-knowledge. We were both fond of singing songs, telling stories, and doing outdoor activities. One weekend in late spring, he, his girl-friend, my girl-friend, and I pedalled our bikes all the way to the Great Wall. It took us six hours to get there, but we did not feel tired at all. We were singing the old songs that we had learned before the Cultural Revolution and all the foreign songs that we knew. Singing those songs, we experienced the joy of forbidden fruit because they were still regarded as politically incorrect. If we had been caught, we would surely have been criticized or even persecuted. However, since we set off at dawn, as soon as we rode out of the city, we saw almost nobody along the road. So we sang to our hearts' content, one song after another, as if we were flying on the wings of songs. They sounded so much more melodious and beautiful than the songs of Chairman Mao's quotations and those so-called revolutionary songs. We felt that our souls were freed, liberated, emancipated! Before we knew it, we had arrived at the foot of the mountain on which the Great Wall was built.
Back then, the wall had not yet become a tourist attraction. We saw no more than ten other visitors that day, and yet, we did not sing on the wall, not that we were afraid, but that we were intoxicated by the magnificent scenes below and around us. We were all quiet and filled with admiration ...
Suddenly, I said, "I don't know if I should be glad or sad for the Great Wall. On the one hand, it's the only human construction that people can see with the naked eye from the moon. It's our pride, our strength, our wisdom. On the other hand, it was so stupid of the emperors to order such a huge project constructed. So much labor! So little use! The Chinese Maginot line. We would be much better off if we had a strong army rather than the wall. We should be aggressive rather than defensive. It's our shame, our weakness, our stupidity."
I noticed that my girl friend was watching me with admiration and I felt quite pleased with myself.
"I'm afraid I can't agree with you," Shangde said gently, "because we don't really know if the wall was as useless against the attacks of the nomads for two millennia as it was against the guns of the imperialist armies for the last century. I should think the wall was very effective in the past. Although it did not stop Kublai Khan and the Manchus, it did prevent most invaders, such as the Huns and the Tartars. How else could we defend our long borders more effectively? Besides, I don't like the idea of military aggression. It's a shame to be invaded, but it's a bigger shame to invade others."
My girl friend was now watching him with admiration. Deep inside, I felt that he was right, but I would not admit it before my girl.
"Well, as you said we don't really know how effective the wall was," I argued, "We need to check all the history books if we want any convincing conclusions. What we don't need to check is your last point. It's rather like Ah Q's philosophy, isn't it?" (A fictional figure by Lu Hsun, Ah Q is the typical Chinese who always consoles himself by thinking that he has been spiritually superior to the man who has physically humiliated him.)
"Indeed, I shall conduct a study of the Great Wall and write a treatise one day." Shangde answered, "As for Ah Q, he's only trying to balance himself psychologically. Whenever he has a chance, he'd physically humiliate others, too. But I do believe in non-violence. I don't think there's any teaching greater than 'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.'"
"So you've turned into a Christian?" I asked, "Do you really believe in God? An old man with a white beard sitting above the ninth sky?"
"Well, that's just some people's imagination or personification of God." He said, "For me, God is good, truth, beauty, or the Way, the logos, the natural as well as the social law that we human beings have been trying to recognize. Whatever you call it, it is there. We all have the desire and capacity to know it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be different from other animals."
The girls had lost interest, and they went ahead to take pictures of each other and of us. I, however, found the topic fascinating. My father was a Christian, but he had never talked about Christianity to me. When I learned the theory of evolution in the primary school, I was rather ashamed of him for his being so "superstitious." Once I even tried in my innocent way to persuade him that there was no God. I asked him, "Dad, would you please take me to where God is and let me play with Him?" He smiled and said, "God is not a being to play with, child." But he never explained why. When I grew up, I understood that he did not want to cause any trouble. Although the constitution of China allowed the citizens the freedom of religious beliefs, to spread any religion outside a church or a temple was illegal, and its punishment was severe, especially during the Cultural Revolution. However, I had secretly read my father's bible and was longing to discuss it with somebody. This was actually the first time that we had touched on the topic, and naturally, we went deep into it until the girls urged us to take pictures with them.
Then, we walked down the wall into the forest nearby and started our picnic. While we were taking out the food, Shangde was suddenly gone. We waited, shouted, and looked for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. Just when we were getting really anxious, he appeared before us as mysteriously as he disappeared. He was carrying a pot of water and some dry pine branches and needles. We did not know that he had a pot with him, and we wondered where he got the water. He smiled and winked mysteriously and said, "From the book on hydrography you lent me." I understood that he had put his newly learned knowledge into practice. The girls did not know what he meant and did not bother to ask. They just put the pot on three stones and made a fire. Soon, the water was bubbling. The sausages he brought and the mushrooms he had just gathered smelt so inviting! It was the most delicious picnic that I ever had.
After the meal, each of us told a story. I made mine up, and they unanimously hailed it as the best. It opened with the mysterious death of a young man whom we all knew and closed with Lin Piao's air-crash after his conspiracy against Mao had been exposed. Finally, Shangde made a casual comment: "All of our stories depend on the plot, without which they wouldn't be attractive at all. But a real man of letters can simply describe this forest and hold your attention." Little did I understand at the time the truth in his words, of which a college professor tried a whole semester to convince my classmates nine years later.
Shangde put out the fire and holding something in his right hand, he approached his girl-friend in a manner as if something mysterious and mischievous was imminent. His facial expression was serious. He commanded in a scary voice, "Give me your hand."
"Why?" She hesitated.
"Don't ask. Just give me your hand!"
She reluctantly stretched out her right hand to him. His left hand grasped her wrist firmly, and suddenly, Shangde put his right palm onto hers. She screamed as if she was in great pain, and she shook off her hand and shouted, "Ouch, it's burning hot! You hurt me!"
"No, I didn't." Shangde said calmly, "You hurt yourself with your mind. You see, it's only some embers. A little warm, that's all. I've been holding them all the time. Why don't I feel them burning hot as you did?"
"I don't know," she whined.
"You should," he said, "It's psychology."
"You're being mysterious today," she countered.
"It's nothing to be mysterious for only a day," he said, "but it would be wonderful if one could be mysterious all his life."
To be continued
