The history of my family could be traced all the way back to the First Emperor of Qin (in case you haven’t noticed, Qin, with a pronunciation like cine, is the etymology of the word “China”). When he finally made up his mind to claim the Imperial Seat of All China, a tantalizing ambition which all tribal chiefs and kings before him never attempted nor succeeded, his generals led a grand army of tens of thousands to cross the great river of Yangtze.
The state was shattered, the king imprisoned, gods banished, languages eradicated, values replaced, men executed, women raped, children enslaved.
The sole comfort was that decades later, a hero and compatriot of my forefathers took up arms and overthrew the tyrannical dynasty.
A couple of centuries before God sent Jesus to walk the earth, the First Emperor of Han issued an edict to build a colonial city in the now desolated homestead of my ancestors. His whim was law to the Han people and was carried out without any hesitation or reluctance. Since then, the City of Jiangnan has been sprawling by the right bank of a main tributary of Yangtze, nurturing generations of scholar-ministers, counselors, warriors, artisans, and wisemen.
“A lone mallard sports amid red clouds at dusk, as the river becomes one with the sky in the fall.” A man of letters once extolled.
Like a traditional American town, Jiangnan boasts a bustling Main Street that served as the first nexus of the city and my family. My great-grandfather was a kind gentleman of the Republic of China (ROC). His brother-in-law, an acclaimed banker at the time, once took his young nephew and sole heir to a business trip with the intention of establishing a branch office. On the journey home, a summer thunderstorm, which was not unusual to folks in the region, hit the road. Did the inexperienced driver make a terrible mistake when driving across the bridge? Or was the imported Chevrolet not designed to cope with such extreme operational scenario to begin with? None of these really mattered, as three bodies were recovered from the river days later.
As per Chinese-Han tradition, my great-grandfather, the heavy-hearted new president of the family bank, ordered my grandpa, his eldest son, to be a true son to the mourning widow from the day onwards. He would love, comfort, and honor her till the very end just like her own. A civilian scribe serving in the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Jiangnan Headquarters, grandpa received an unexpected gift from her new mother for lifelong fealty — 3,000 silver pieces (circa $1, 225, 000 in 2022, after inflation adjustment). Making the most of the fortune, grandpa had a brand-new, five-storey department store built right on the Main Street. As time went by, the big family lived happily in a downtown mansion.
By the end of 1940s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) achieved a series of decisive victories in the Chinese Civil War, we moved on from the Qing Empire “semi-feudal/semi-colonial” society/ROC crony capitalist society to the SOCIALIST SOCIETY.
In a socialist society, we did not need character-corrupting private assets (a.k.a. “capitalist tails” that should be swiftly incised so we can timely evolve into decent human beings from the sorry state of apes and monkeys). People were supposed to do their jobs well for the state, in return the state would take care of everything in theory, be it sheltering from the harsh elements or feeding the ever-hungry mouths. According to Marxism–Leninism ideas, the worker class rules a socialist republic. Then with the amendment of Chairman Mao, the New China should be led by the alliance of workers and farmers. Anyhow, the realization of communism is the ultimate goal, an idealistic scenario in which people work for fun (if you don’t want to work at all, fine! Just let some robot or AI do the job as you sip coconut juice on a beach. YOLO!), take whatever they need, (and enjoy unrestricted sex, it’s totally true and obvious but nobody will tell you about it like I just did.)
Chairman Mao said: “[People/States] should live by their own means [, and not by exploiting others].”
The mansion became government property and family members went their separate ways after bidding farewell. The bank and the store were soon to be nationalized as well. The store was rebranded as Women and Children’s Store in the decades to follow. Now if you ever have the opportunity to visit the Main Street of Jiangnan, you may still be able to see the century-old building for yourself, along with classy, seasoned salespeople who enthusiastically greet tourists and showcase expensive Swiss wrist watches, gold necklaces, and cosmetics from France and Japan.
With the founding of the New China, People’s Plaza became the second nexus of Jiangnan and us.
Chairman Mao, with his “revolutionary optimism,” wrote: “We are bold enough to command the Sun and the Moon, ushering in a new Heaven and new Earth.”
Situated in the southeastern corner of the original city, the newly constructed Plaza was second only to its counterpart in Beijing, with four massive lawns for parade crowds and kite-flying kids. To the north, we saw a dais reserved for Chairman Mao and his entourage, should he ever be in the mood to visit. North of the dais we had the City Workers’ Cultural Hall, where residents could watch movies and revolutionary operas, or go roller skating in a warm winter afternoon. To the northwest, we had the City Department Store where the family purchased major household items, from mechanical clock to sewing machine, with banknotes and corresponding rationing coupons. Next to it was the New China Book Store, which I shall elaborate a bit later. Looking West, you may find the grandiose Exhibition Hall for the Everlasting Victory of Mao Zedong Thought while the huge painting of Chairman Mao once watched back at you with a warm smile. The City Post Office Building lay to the southwest, and the Provincial Museum to the south. A similar monument was erected in the center of the Plaza at a later point. The old city wall and moat were turned into an eight-lane avenue that serves its purpose dutifully till this very day.
As a kid, I frequented the New China Book Store to browse and purchase children’s picture books. These are similar to Mangas in Japan, but with a dimension roughly equivalent of A6, we only got one picture per page, with caption containing relevant descriptions and dialogues. Before I entered high school, I managed to accumulate a personal library of dozens of books, covering topics ranging from old Chinese history to heroism in Anti-Japan War to model workers who dedicated their lives to the socialist cause. It was a pity that mom gave all of them to a cousin.
Chairman Mao said: “Women can shoulder half of Heaven’s weight [whilst men do the rest].”
When it comes to the third nexus of the family, it really depends on our identities. Allow me to introduce the most admirable woman in my life — my dear mom. Mom was the eldest of four girls and two boys. Owing to low literacy and gender inequality, most of her female peers at the time had no given name but only their own surnames and the surnames of their husband (completed with the placeholder shi indicating their submissive roles in both families. The character is thi in today’s Vietnamese female names or like ko in today’s Japanese female names, but thanks to Chairman Mao we no longer have shi in any Chinese name and Chinese women no longer take men’s names into their own). But mom had her own two-character given name, with the auspicious meaning of “docile belle.”
[If you] don’t say the right name, then [you] don’t say anything right.
Confucius
Mom graduated from the sole all-girl’s high school of Jiangnan, where she learned to read, write, sing, and calculate with an abacus (so-called home economics). Her original life plan was to be a good wife while helping out with family business as well as the business of her future husband. But along with millions of Chinese, her life trajectory was transformed by Chairman Mao as well. Carrying out the noble mission of taking care of other family members, she earned the unprecedented opportunity to work in the Jiangnan Railway Bureau and ended up as an accountant in the Jiangnan Railway Station for four decades.
Jiangnan Railway Station sits in what was then considered as the southeastern suburb. All sorts of buildings and facilities were built around it as I grew up. In a true socialist country, giving meaningful names to places was pointless, so ordinal numbers were used instead. Thus, I was born in a typical terraced shack in the 3rd Railway Community, which is in the southwest of the station. Walk for several minutes to the west, I’d arrive at my primary school and high school, as well as the public bathhouse.
In 1960s, Mainland Chinese citizens received few material privileges. Our shack had wooden plank walls and ceiling, with lime-mixed soil above the red brick foundation in lieu of the floor. Mom did what she could to enrich our living environment: Every few months she would rearrange the ROC-era furniture to give us pleasant surprises. She also covered the planks with old newspaper. Later on, when she had extra letter writing paper from work, she’d cover the newspaper as well to brighten the rooms. As Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s Richest, had much success with his plastic flower plants, she used those fake yet vivid flowers to decorate our home with refreshing colors. She washed them along with the glass vases whenever they caught too much dust and soot.
Our shack had electricity, but no plumbing at all. For cooking and heating purposes, we used inconvenient honeycomb coal stoves. As mom shouldered the role of breadwinner and was fully occupied from Monday to Saturday, grandma willing shouldered most of the house chores. She and I took buckets of water from a public faucet of the Community, kept it in a man-sized urn, and used alum to accelerate the coagulation of impurities. One constantly smelled sulfur in the cold, damp fall and winter. In the summer, water outage was commonplace by day, and power blackouts constantly ruined the mood at long nights.
Jiangnan, Jiangnan, smelly and dirty. No water at noon, no light but the moon.
Popular limerick at the time
Nevertheless, mom purchased a fluorescent light to replace the dim light bulb (one of the direct consequences of the undervoltage grid). She also leveraged her guan’xi, or ties, with cargo owners to bring fresh fruits to the dinner table once in a while, complementing grandma‘s braised pork belly in brown sauce and spiced corned eggs. On Sundays, she did her share of needlework, making fancy sweaters and pillar cases, even tailoring new clothes out of quality fabrics from worn-out garments. Occasionally, I could hear her happily singing folk songs in a sweet, soothing voice.
In sharp contrast, our spiritual life was way better off. We did not have to go all the way to the City Workers’ Cultural Hall — Taking a 15-minute walk to the northeast, we reached the Railway Auditorium to enjoy blockbusters like Tunnel War, Battle on Shangganling Mountain, and Landmine Warfare, all for a symbolic fee — a dime or two. Occasionally, we would have the luxury to watch foreign movies such as Lenin in 1918 and The Flower Girl. On New Year’s Day, Chinese New Year (btw if you don’t like observing the CHINESE New Year, I suppose you have better things to do, like masturbating/go f**k yourself, than rebranding it), and National Day, everyone would be anxious to relish their favorite revolutionary operas. These were the brainchildren of Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao‘s wife, “student, and comrade in arms.”
Watching movie was the favorite pastime of my dad. He used to arrive at the auditorium half an hour earlier, with Reference News under his arm. Once when he was comfortably reading the newspaper in the seat and waiting for the movie to start, an angry worker in his 30s came forward, asking him to “give back his seat.” It turned out that dad had carelessly misread the printed date on the movie ticket.