God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [87]
My parents felt very encouraged by the improvement and, as the daily treatment continued, the fog began to dissipate. My grandma prepared a gift so my parents could give it to the doctor.
Liao: What was in the eye drops?
Wen: I have no idea.
Liao: Didn’t your parents tell you the name of the medicine?
Wen: I don’t think my parents knew either.
Liao: How much did your parents pay?
Wen: Not a penny. The doctor said he was doing God’s work.
My eyesight was improving bit by bit as I turned five. Communist troops were approaching the city. We could hear gunfire and booming cannons day and night. There were Nationalist troops in the city. It took the Communists a long time to crush their defenses. Stray bullets would fly over our roof like locusts, smashing many tiles. No one moved around outside.
When the bottle of eye drops was empty, and despite the chaos and dangers, my parents insisted on going to get more. They left early in the morning and were back before dusk, exhausted, distraught. With the Nationalist government about to be defeated, all the foreigners in Chongqing, even the missionaries, had evacuated. By the time my parents got to the hospital, it was deserted. Shooting continued for another three days and then, quite abruptly, stopped. My grandma said the Communist troops had taken the city. There were fireworks. People were dancing and singing. Chongqing was “liberated.”
It was all fate. The founding of the new Communist China robbed me of my sight, but I knew never to say so in public. For the next few years, I could still see light and could see people from their shadows, but gradually I was back in darkness. My parents kept trying to find the cure the foreign doctor had held out to them. Each time they took me to a new Chinese doctor, all he or she would say was that it was too late. My eyeballs were shrinking. If you look at me now, my eye sockets appear to be empty.
In the end, they gave up and heeded the master’s other warning, that I should learn a skill so I could support myself. I was quite smart back then and quite likeable. It turned out I was good with music, and I liked it, so it was decided I should become a blind musician.
The street in front of my house was called Artist Street. Many street musicians and performers—dancers, acrobats, violinists, erhu players, and flautists—liked to gather there. I followed the musicians around and picked up some skills. A next-door neighbor, whom I called Uncle Yuan, taught me how to play the flute. Not long after that, I took erhu lessons from Mr. Li, a blind person who lived down the street. Soon I could perform myself. I was far from being a first-class erhu player or flautist, but I could play some tunes fairly well.
We had to do lots of revolutionary tunes to drum up support for the various national and local political campaigns, such as the war against the Americans in Korea, the Three-Anti movement, campaigns to prevent fire and theft and expose imperialist spies, the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Anti-Rightist campaign, and the Great Leap Forward. We had to do lots of songs, but I learned them very fast. I only needed to rehearse a couple of times and I had them memorized.
There used to be a song to warn people against imperialist spies: “When it is dark, you need to lock the door. If a stranger knocks, you need to ask, you need to think before you talk. You need to open your eyes and perk up your ears because he might be collecting intelligence.” Other songs encouraged people to rally against the counterrevolutionaries and Rightists.
The street committee assigned me to be an erhu player in a small orchestra. I had memorized a thousand tunes and earned several awards. During the famine, people were starving, but the government still sent us out to perform. I was quite young. I didn’t get a salary