Wild Ginger - Anchee Min [48]
When I broke the news to my parents, they were quiet. They weren't sure if it was a good idea for me to become engaged at eighteen. I explained that our love was strong. Finally my parents granted me silent permission. When Evergreen started to receive "congratulation" candies from the neighbors he cautioned me to "be careful of Wild Ginger." I couldn't think of Wild Ginger as dangerous, so didn't take his words too seriously.
"She might not mean to harm you," Evergreen warned, "but she is insane."
"Well, she needs time to heal, and after all we are the cause of her pain."
"I don't think that we should blame ourselves for her misery," Evergreen disagreed. "She had made it clear at the very beginning, to both of us, that being a Maoist was more important to her than being human. I was not what she wanted. To make a bad joke—you picked up her leftovers."
I didn't want to argue with Evergreen. I believed that Wild Ginger loved Evergreen. It was a part of herself that she couldn't understand, didn't know what to do with. I had taken advantage of her confusion. I was the thief. I was prepared to face Wild Ginger's rage one day. I needed that combat; I needed her to slap me in the face. It would be a kindness, forgiveness, and blessing.
20
"We're organizing a Mao quotation-singing rally!" Wild Ginger's voice came through a loudspeaker. "The Cultural Revolution is in its seventh year, and the struggle between the proletarian class and the bourgeois class has intensified ever more significantly. Defending Maoism and demonstrating the proletarian class's strength is not only important but absolutely necessary. We must sing loud, louder, and louder the Mao quotation songs. We must promote hard, harder, and hardest the ideas of Maoism! The rally will be held in the Shanghai Acrobatics Stadium!"
The city was mobilized. Hot Pepper led a thousand-member team and distributed leaflets at every street corner. People were ordered to put down whatever they were doing to join the event. The factories, labor collectives, and schools were required by the city committee to send a delegation of singers to the rally.
As the executive producer, Wild Ginger selected the delegations and scheduled their auditions. She discussed her ideas with the orchestra, stage designers, and technicians on sound, lights, and props. She conducted the practices, rehearsals, and run-throughs. On the surface her energy seemed inexhaustible, but I could tell beneath her smiling face she was falling apart. There was a detectable nervousness in her voice. People who worked with her talked about her unpredictable outbursts and mood swings. The way she shouted and yelled for no particular reason. Her habit of smashing things. Her use of profanity.
Although Evergreen and I had no interest in joining the rally, our names were called and we had no choice but to go to the Acrobatics Stadium for practice.
The practice was a three-week, daylong commitment involving fifteen thousand people from over five hundred work units. Each group was called to stand up and sing until Wild Ginger gave her approval. Some groups were good. The Shanghai Garrison was disciplined, with a tradition of singing, and had obviously been practicing. But the peasant groups were lousy. They were sent by the commune and had hardly sung in their lives. They