God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [37]
Dr. Sun was clearly well known in these parts; he was greeted like a lost brother as we entered the courtyard house of one of his assistants at about nine o’clock, the group sitting around the fire jumping at once to their feet and rushing to surround him. The owner of the house helped unload the bags of donated clothing we had brought with us. It was around midnight by the time the clothing had been distributed, the villagers had left, and we were left to soak our feet in basins of hot water set before the fire. Neither of us was sleepy, so we talked:
Liao Yiwu: It seems so surreal, sitting here with you, in this remote mountain village. It’s so quiet and beautiful. When we first met, you told me you were born in the city of Nanjing. How did you end up in Yunnan province?
Dr. Sun: Both my grandparents and parents were herbal doctors. They used to run one of the oldest and most reputable hospitals in town and made quite a lot of money. They purchased lots of farmland as investments. When the Communists came, the world was turned upside down. My family became the target of persecution—members of the evil exploiting class. Their hospital was confiscated; so was their farmland. But they were well known for their medical skills, so they were considered valuable for local senior Communist officials. As a result, they escaped execution. It was hard being born into a family with such a murky political background. I was constantly taunted in school and banned from participating in many school activities.
In 1975, when I was in junior high school, I signed up as a volunteer and came to Xishuangbanna at the southern tip of Yunnan, about as far south as you can go. I joined a state farm. I was the youngest worker but lied about my age. I wanted to get out of Nanjing, get away from my family, to disappear.
You know, Xishuangbanna has many different ethnic groups. The Dai people form the largest group; then there are the Hani, the Lagu, Bulang, Yao, Yi, Wa, and the Bai. It is easy to disappear here. I was assigned to Jinghong Commune, which was close to the border with Myanmar and Thailand and consisted of many Dai villages.
Living so far from the city, I thought I could get away from Mao’s political campaigns. I was wrong. It was the same everywhere, but about ten years behind the cities. While major cities had shifted their focus of political attack from former landlords to intellectuals and government officials, the leaders in my commune were still holding public condemnation meetings against the landlords. The day I arrived, I met a young fellow, a Dai. He seemed nice. He even climbed trees like a monkey to get fruit for us urbanites. We didn’t know he was the son of a rich landowner until the local militia beat him up. He was beaten up a lot.
My disappointment with society and my doubts about Communism started there, I think. The older I got, the more reactionary I became. I came to realize that all those political slogans—“People are masters of the country,” “The Party is always great, glorious, and correct”—were utter nonsense.
One day in 1976, as I was harvesting bananas, the farm’s loudspeakers began blaring mourning music, and the announcer’s deep voice said our great leader, Chairman Mao, had passed away. I kind of laughed and thought how we used to chant “long live, long live” every day, and then he dropped dead, just like everyone else. What great news! Of course, I didn’t share these feelings with any of the others.
Later, I was assigned to work at the farm’s clinic. In 1977, when China resumed the university entrance exam system, I passed all the tests and was enrolled in Beijing Medical University. Five years later, after I obtained my MD, I got a job at a hospital affiliated with the Suzhou Medical College, close to Shanghai. I became a surgeon, working in the ER department. I handled all sorts of terrible cases—ruptured livers, disembowelments, severe head injuries, severed limbs. That was where I honed my surgical skills.