Those Bright Eyes
Returning to the workers’ village after thirty years away, my heart beat like a happy little drum.
I walked into the familiar old club building. Smoke hung thick in the air, and the sharp smell of tobacco was almost suffocating. The place was crowded. Some people were playing mahjong, some cards, and others stood in circles watching games of Chinese chess. No one noticed me come in.
I went upstairs. It was quieter there. Several men and women from the factory were chatting. My sudden appearance as a “fake foreign devil” surprised and delighted them.
“Master Ye? When did you get back?”
“Wow! So many years, and you haven’t changed much!”
They all spoke at once, firing exclamation marks and question marks at me until I could hardly answer.
When I left all those years ago, these workers had been educated youths sent down to the countryside and later recalled. After all the blossoms and falls of time, they were now fathers and mothers themselves.
As we talked, I noticed a pair of bright eyes watching me from the far end of the table. I looked carefully. It was a tall woman with a round face. She seemed familiar, yet not familiar.
I talked about my experiences after going to America—the sour, sweet, bitter, and spicy tastes of life all mixed together. I mentioned that in recent years Los Angeles had even opened Yunnan crossing-the-bridge rice-noodle restaurants. Everyone listened with great interest.
I kept noticing those bright eyes. She still said nothing, but listened intently, as though everything I said were new and strange. Whenever our eyes met, a small smile appeared on her face.
When our eyes met once more, she finally spoke.
“Master Ye, do you still remember me?” she asked, smiling shyly.
I searched the web of memory.
The quick-tongued Sichuan girl nearby—ah, she should be called a Sichuan auntie by now—shouted out, “She’s Xiao Jin! Master Dai’s daughter—the barber, Master Dai!”
“Oh! Now I remember.”
I patted my graying forehead, embarrassed by my forgetfulness.
“Xiao Jin, how is your father?”
“My father’s retired and at home. Come visit us,” Xiao Jin said cheerfully.
Xiao Jin had been a clever, lively child studying at the factory’s elementary school for workers’ children. I often went to the school to help teach the children dances. When May Day approached and the factory organized a cultural performance, I coached the third-graders in a dance to “The Golden Mountain of Beijing.” Xiao Jin learned quickly and danced with great spirit. When she turned her neck during the performance and flashed those watery bright eyes, the parents applauded enthusiastically.
One rainy season the whole factory went into the hills to plant trees, and I was with students from the children’s school. Xiao Jin asked me question after question all along the way. If I knew the answer, I told her. If I did not, I went home and looked it up in One Hundred Thousand Whys before answering her later.
I thought she was a lovable child—curious, eager to learn, and always trying to improve.
Then came the central government’s instructions on “preparing for war and preparing against famine.” Vice Chairman Lin issued orders that all members of the five black categories in the cities—landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, and Rightists—were to be sent to the countryside for supervision and reform by poor and lower-middle peasants.
Several families in our factory were ordered to leave.
I heard that before Liberation, Xiao Jin’s mother had once been a prostitute. At some point she had also quarreled with the wife of the Party branch secretary. Naturally, at a mass meeting she was criticized as a “bad element” who “refused to reform” and became one of those selected for rustication.
Xiao Jin’s father was a barber who lived by his own labor. He was already old and often ill. Their only child at home was a young daughter not yet grown.
But in an era when the string of “class struggle” was stretched so tight, what leader would dare loosen it by pleading for them?
Master Dai had no choice. Angry and helpless, he left with his wife and daughter.
They were sent to a Jingpo mountain area along the Lancang River.
On the day they left, the factory provided a large truck. I saw Xiao Jin sitting sadly on top of their luggage. Those bright eyes were wet with tears.
She was leaving the classmates she saw every day. She was leaving the school she loved. She was going to a distant, unfamiliar place. Her heart must have been filled with fear and sorrow.
This child had grown up under the red flag and was at precisely the age when she needed sunlight and rain, yet suddenly, because of her mother, she was subjected to society’s discrimination.
I felt sorrow for that innocent little girl. At the instant she waved to me from the truck, I bit my lip tightly.
Two years later, I left China. Eventually I became what I jokingly call a “fake foreign devil.”
Now, returning after all those years and seeing Xiao Jin grown into a graceful young woman, I was very happy. One evening when I had some time, I went to Master Dai’s home.
“Master Ye, have some tea,” Xiao Jin said, making me a cup of Longjing.
I noticed that the hot-water bottle was white and had an electric cord. It was no longer the old kind with a glass vacuum liner inside a bamboo shell. Times had changed, and the life of Kunming workers had changed greatly too.
Master Dai had certainly aged. He wore a hearing aid and moved slowly with the frailty of old age before sitting down. His face showed surprise and pleasure.
“You had it best,” he said. “You flew far away. Life in America must be happy.”
He told me that when the three of them arrived along the Lancang River, they knew nobody in the Jingpo village. They had lived in the city all their lives and did not know how to farm.
Fortunately, local cadres gave them some consideration. He continued doing what he knew best—cutting hair for adults and children in the village and earning work points.
After Deng Xiaoping came to power and policies were corrected, they were allowed to return to the factory. By then his health was poor, so he could only sweep the auditorium and clean the toilets. When Xiao Jin graduated from middle school, he retired early so that she could take his place at the factory.
I looked around the room. Xiao Jin seemed to understand what I was wondering about.
“My mother passed away a long time ago,” she said calmly.
The Sichuan woman had told me that while working, Xiao Jin also studied through television university. She had graduated and was preparing to take the examination for an accounting credential. She had a boyfriend from her work group who had also studied at television university.
“Xiao Jin, when are you going to invite me to eat wedding candy?” I joked.
“In the Year of the Dragon, Master Ye,” she said after the slightest hesitation. Then, openly and naturally, she added, “Come back.”
Those bright eyes flashed once—clear, beautiful, and full of light.