Dr. Bethune's Children Read online

  One day I found a letter to one of your lovers, a farewell letter, among your papers. It struck me that your accidental death might have been suicide, that you might have cut your own finger intentionally, prematurely ending your life. This absurd idea made me feel uncomfortable, even guilty. But from your letter I knew how much you hated your life, how lonely you were, how tired of the most ancient war in human life, the war of the sexes, which you found tedious. To escape this tedium was probably part of the reason you threw yourself into the Chinese war of resistance against Japan. But the last war of your life brought you even more tedium. You were unhappy with your life. You were unhappy with your body. You were unhappy with your solitude. You had various reasons to commit suicide. I wonder, had you not died in 1939 at the age of forty-nine, what would you have become? Maybe a taciturn and morose old man like the neighbour who looks so much like you?

  A Silence

  Dear Dr. Bethune, you must have heard of Bertrand Russell, a philosopher, a liberal, and a British aristocrat. A travelogue of his I happened to read yesterday allowed me to compare your different experiences in China. During his one-year sojourn in China, in the early 1920s, he lectured in quite a few cities and exerted considerable influence on some Chinese intellectuals. It is said that your great friend went to one of his lectures, but he could hardly have found Russell’s ideas compelling. At that time, inspired by the success of the Bolshevik revolution in our neighbour to the north, radical young Chinese minds like your great friend chose communism over liberalism. Yes, compared with the explosions of the October Revolution, Russell’s wisdom and sympathy seemed to lack vitality. But after three decades of communist dictatorship, especially after the end of the catastrophic Cultural Revolution, liberalism became popular in China in the late 1970s. The children of Dr. Bethune had grown up. We rebelled against the old order, smashing former idols and ripping down the pictures of the great mentors from the classroom walls. We discovered that Marx and Engels had their weaknesses, that Lenin was paranoid and Stalin a mass-murderer. Dear Dr. Bethune, you were not as big a target as these great mentors, so you were spared. We were gentler with you. All we did is take The Little Red Book and throw it away or recycle it like so much scrap paper. After smashing the old idols, we started an insane pursuit of new ones. The spectres of the West flooded in: after Lord Russell came Sartre, Freud, Wittgenstein, and Chomsky, to name only a few. These new Western stars started to reshape our intellects, which had been formed by you and our revolutionary mentors.

  What these new idols brought was a long way from “without any thought of self” and a long way from “utter devotion to others.” Freud taught us about the Oedipus complex, according to which we, the children of Dr. Bethune, were full of instinctual hostility for our spiritual father. So remember, one day we might usurp you. And Sartre told us something even more provocative, that Hell is other people. So wait, why should we devote ourselves to others? And Wittgenstein claimed that language is a game. If so, why should we bother taking “In Memory of Dr. Bethune” so seriously?

  In the travelogue I read yesterday, Russell discusses his visit with Lenin in Moscow, the only time they saw one another. Lenin affirmed the violence of the poor peasants against the kulaks—the rich peasants. His idea that such violence was delightful smashed Russell’s delusion about the first socialist country in human history. Yes, in Lenin’s eyes, revolution is a festival of the oppressed, in other words, a kind of entertainment. From then on, Russell was circumspect about the new totalitarian regime.

  We were not so circumspect. We saw Lenin as a lantern, lighting the way in the night. “The explosions of the October Revolution brought us Marxism and Leninism!” your great friend declared. Yangyang and I liked the metaphor in this quotation. Our great revolutionary mentors were good at creating metaphors to light up our young hearts.

  I remember that, on the way to Graveyard Hill, Yangyang shared with me the metaphors that he had committed to memory. He said that I had only to name a revolutionary mentor, and he would immediately cite the metaphor that great mind had created. Yes, it was Marx who wrote that religion was the opium of the people. And, with Engels, they announced that the spectre of communism was haunting Europe in The Communist Manifesto. Yes, Lenin had said that revolution is the locomotive of history as well as describing the revolution as a festival. Your great friend’s metaphors were even richer and more numerous. All counter-revolutionaries are paper tigers. Revolution is not a dinner party. And so on and so forth. Yangyang’s desire for knowledge was extremely strong. Had he lived to the 1980s, how eager would he have been to read Sartre, Freud, and Wittgenstein as well as Russell and other Western writers.

  What your great friend actually learned from the explosions of the October Revolution was terror. Like Lenin, he was ruthless with his enemies. He knew that denying his enemies space to breathe was the only way to ensure the victory of the revolution. And he had a lot of terrible inventions, such as the public trials. As early as the first soviet in the Jinggang Mountains, long before setting off on the Long March, he was strenuously practicing the public trial as an opportunity to disseminate Red Terror. He knew terror made politics simple. Dear Dr. Bethune, haunted by the Red Terror that your great friend invented, your children had a most peculiar childhood.

  Your great friend was not only ruthless to his enemies but also kept turning friends into enemies. If you had known this, would you have dared befriend him? Had you lived to the years of the Cultural Revolution, your great friend might have turned you overnight from an idol into a spy. You would have been arrested, sent for labour reformation—or even executed. Every revolution is full of turning points, fissures, and surprises. Who knows how the next metaphor might change your status?

  Dear Dr. Bethune, forgive me for writing in such a convoluted way. My mind right now is a bit of a mess. This afternoon, I went to the biggest English bookstore here, because I knew from a book review that a new biography of your great friend had just been published. The favourable review predicted that the new revelations in the biography would shock the world. At first, I did not believe it, but after flipping through the chapters, I was indeed shocked. Our great saviour had been turned into the twentieth century’s cruellest tyrant, equal to Hitler and Stalin! Can you accept this version of the truth? I did not buy the book eventually because, disillusioned though I am by the history we lived through, I was still frightened by this version of the truth.

  On the bus home, I noticed that the construction in the park has not been completed. Your statue has not been returned to its place. My cheek resting against the glass, I was in a daze at the changes in the world. Seventy years ago, it was Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow’s work of propaganda for your great friend, which shocked the world with its truth. Now the world needed to experience the opposite view and be shocked in a negative way. The truth you discovered in Edgar Snow’s book brought you, a Canadian surgeon, to China. And the opposite truth made me, a Chinese historian, recollect China’s past in a daze on a bus in a Canadian city.

  When you were living in China, you were out of touch with the world. You could be oblivious to what was going on elsewhere, including the Second World War. Today, no matter where you live, you might be living at the centre of the world. Amazing developments in communications technology have eradicated distance, condensing the globe into a village. Unlike the village in which you were ensconced, this global village includes the entire world. No matter what corner of the village you live in, you can find out about things that are going on all over the world at any moment—even things you don’t want to know about. I was completely unprepared, three years ago, to hear the news that Yangyang’s father had gone missing. But I made the call to my mother. The news disturbed me greatly. It saddens me to this day.

  The day Yinyin and I took the same train for Beijing, Yangyang’s father mentioned on the station platform the last time he had seen me. I felt relieved that he did not say more about i
t. This was another secret in my life I had never told my parents.

  Your great friend, whom Yangyang’s mother called “another boy,” had been dead for a year. I had started second year in high school. At the time, many classic films, both Chinese and Western, blossomed for the second time in local movie theatres like the one in my neighbourhood. One Sunday afternoon, I went alone to the theatre to see Hamlet, with Laurence Olivier, and Yangyang’s father was at the entrance, talking with the projectionist. I found this a bit odd, because films had been Yangyang’s favourite form of entertainment, and I heard that his family hadn’t been to the movies since his death. I wanted to slip behind his father, but it was too late. He saw me, turned towards me, and put his hand on my head. I became his prisoner. And he almost pushed me to a quiet wall.

  I had no idea this could happen and did not know how to react. My body and my facial expression became very stiff.

  Then Yangyang’s father turned my face towards the sun and looked me over with hungry eyes as if conducting a medical examination. There was a fresh cut on his forehead, that he had treated with gentian violet. I was terribly uncomfortable being so close to his face and twisted my head a bit, but Yangyang’s father started to stroke my hair with trembling fingers. This situation took me back to the historic afternoon of your great friend’s death. I thought that Yangyang’s father would soon say, as his wife had said, “if Yangyang were still alive.” And I wanted him to hurry up, say what he wanted to say, and let me take my seat in the theatre. I had heard there was no additional programming before the movie, and I did not want to miss any of the film, not even a little bit. I had been waiting for it for three weeks.

  To my surprise, Yangyang’s father did not say anything at all. He just looked me over and continued to stroke my hair. I do not know how long it lasted. And I did not even hear his breathing. The unexpected silence scared me so much I almost fainted. I did not even know when his hand left my hair.

  I stood there stiffly until the ticket taker asked me in a loud voice whether I was going in. Only then did I find that Yangyang’s father had gone. I rushed inside and sat down just as the movie started. Like all imported films, it was dubbed. The actor who dubbed Olivier’s character of Hamlet had received the best education of all Chinese actors, graduating with a degree in philosophy from the best university in China. And it was said his voice accurately conveyed the conflict in Hamlet’s heart, especially when he asked the question that everybody knows. His voice or maybe that blunt question suddenly changed my feeling for Chinese. How I wished Yangyang could sit by my side and share this linguistic miracle with me.

  Yangyang’s father was sitting in front of me, just three rows away. His frightening silence just now was like a prologue that kept interfering with my appreciation of the movie. I couldn’t help comparing the tragedy in the film with the tragedy in my life. In my real life, the death of a son had left the father living. Which was to say that the tragedy in real life started in the opposite way from the tragedy in the film. A series of questions galloped around in my mind. Would Yangyang’s ghost appear to his father? Would he reveal the secret of his death? Would Yangyang’s father be punished by God for the suicide of his son? To be or not to be? All of a sudden, the question that Hamlet raised in Mandarin resonated through the movie theatre. Cut to ocean waves hitting the rocks. The fury of the sea under Elsinore drowned out Hamlet’s confusion.

  To be or not to be? That blunt question churned within me. I couldn’t help thinking that this question had caused Yangyang terrible confusion as well. But why had he chosen not to be?

  One evening, soon after we were married, Yinyin and I were strolling in a grove in Tiantan Park when I remembered meeting Yangyang’s father at the entrance to the movie theatre. I asked Yinyin if she still remembered the scar on his forehead. She said yes, very clearly. She explained to me what had happened. That evening over dinner, Yangyang’s mother and father had had another argument about who was responsible for Yangyang’s death. Yangyang’s mother claimed that the beating his father had given him was a decisive factor behind his suicide. And Yangyang’s father insisted that Yangyang’s mother had spoiled him, weakening his spirit so much that he could not withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Once again, their argument ended in violence when Yangyang’s mother picked up a pair of scissors and struck at her husband’s forehead. Rushing into the bedroom, the father used gauze to stanch the blood and gentian violet to disinfect the wound. He then went out without saying anything and didn’t come back for three hours. Yinyin had no idea he had gone to the movie theatre.

  “They were always fighting about how Yangyang’s father had beaten his son,” Yinyin said. “Do you know why Yangyang got beaten that day?” That was the only time she ever asked about Yangyang’s past. I didn’t want to talk about that day, the day we went to Graveyard Hill.

  After a silence, I shook my head and said, “I don’t know.”

  I don’t know why I had to lie to Yinyin. For Yangyang? For his father or for his mother? Or for some other reason? I just don’t know.

  A Chinese Class

  Dear Dr. Bethune, the first time I chatted with Bob, he told me that it was you who had stimulated his imagination about China and his interest in China when he was a child. And he dreamed that one day, like you, he might go to China to live, to work. He even dreamed of studying Chinese. I remember at the time I almost responded by saying “you are a child of Dr. Bethune.” But I didn’t say anything. I did not want to have to explain everything we children of Dr. Bethune experienced, which he might never understand.

  Having been to China three times, Bob has realized some parts of his dream. But he has never had the opportunity to formally study Chinese. He knows six Chinese phrases, including nihao (hello); xiexie (thank you), which he mispronounces shieshie; zaijian (goodbye), which he mispronounces zhaijian; and henhao (good). All of which are basic words. No wonder he knows them. Even xiaojie (Miss), which he knows and mispronounces as shaoji, is nothing special. Of course, Bob could not know that in the old regime, this term xiaojie was an honorific, while in the new society, it took on a negative meaning as a relic of the exploiting class. And later still, in the era of reform and opening, it went through another semantic shift and acquired a new meaning which some people consider an honorific and others demeaning.

  Many Westerners are familiar with those basic Chinese words. They might appear in a simple travel guide or as the first lesson in a Chinese language text. When they came out of Bob’s mouth, I wasn’t surprised. But Bob knows another word which confused me greatly, because it is much more difficult than the previous five. The first time I heard him use this word, I was sure there must be a special story behind it.

  This special story turned out to have two parts, which were separated by half a century.

  When he was young, Bob borrowed a book called Folk Songs of the World from his uncle. He learned all of the songs in the book, including one Chinese song. He sang the first line for me with feeling and in a powerful voice. “That’s a song all Chinese people can sing,” I told Bob. “It was originally a song from the period of the resistance against the Japanese. When the Communist Party took control of China, it became our national anthem, though it was temporarily abandoned during the Cultural Revolution.” (That will give you an idea, dear Dr. Bethune, about how thoroughly the Cultural Revolution broke with the past: that even our national anthem was discarded when its lyricist was imprisoned as a counter-revolutionary.)

  Bob was proud to say he still remembered the name of the song was Qilai (Arise! or Stand Up!). Qilai is also the first word in the song and the only word that was not translated into English. And it was in fact the first Chinese word in Bob’s vocabulary and the most obscure. Very few people who only know six Chinese words would know this one.

  Bob told me he was shaken from the start by the majestic rhythm of that song. “It is so powerful,” he said, closing h
is right hand into a fist and shaking it around in the air. “Such a powerful song. It’s no surprise that the Chinese people ended up winning that war.”

  Bob’s understanding of this Chinese song narrowed the distance between us.

  His expression suddenly turned stern. “But you Chinese people do not take your national anthem seriously enough.”

  I didn’t know where this comment was coming from, and I said so.

  To explain, Bob related an experience on his second trip to China when, on the last evening, the first Chinese word he had ever encountered was given a new and special meaning in a surprising context.

  “It was in Guangzhou,” Bob said seriously. His tour group was booked into the White Swan Hotel on the bank of the Pearl River, then the most luxuriant hotel in China. In the middle of the night, Bob returned from the bar and was getting ready for bed when the doorbell rang. He looked through the peephole in the door and saw two scantily clad Chinese ladies standing uncomfortably outside his door. He opened the door a crack and asked what the problem was. Those two Chinese women quickly squeezed in, laughed, and asked him if he needed special room service. Bob happened to have such a need. Chinese women were a part of his China dream, the most deeply hidden part, in fact. I remember he once asked me about your relationship to Chinese women, a secret he claimed to be extremely curious about.

  Bob recalled that they could speak good English and were obviously well-educated. Moreover, they were naughty and lively, making a deep impression on Bob. The price they quoted Bob found flattering and affordable. “China is a hospitable country,” Bob said, regretting that he had come too late and was leaving too soon.