In the past Dick had discouraged me from writing to Pearl. Now I was ordered to stop.
I refused to sign the Communist membership application Dick put in front of me. No matter how many times Dick explained the benefits and the necessity, I wouldn’t pick up the pen.
Finally, after months of struggle, I agreed to sign. I did so out of loyalty to my husband. Without my being a member of the Communist Party, Dick would never gain Mao’s full trust.
My biggest problem was following the Communist Party’s rules. I seemed to always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. I would praise the wrong people and criticize the right ones. For example, I remarked that I felt sorry for high-ranking heroes because they had achieved their rank only by killing a great number of people. I also said that all war was wrong. Because of these mistakes, I was ordered to criticize myself in public.
Dick was demoted as a result. His temper was no longer containable. Instead of fighting with me, Dick exploded at work. He applied for a transfer to be nearer the fighting. He was eager to join the battles. He wanted to be the first to engage the enemy and the last to retreat. The irony was that it turned out to be good for his career. He earned medals and promotions. His courage earned him the respect of the Communist leadership. He was restored to his former job. Mao welcomed Dick back and praised him as “the Red Prince.”
“Does that mean that Mao is the Red Emperor?” I joked the moment Dick entered the cave.
Dick didn’t find my comment funny, and warned me not to say such things again.
My life, as a fortune-teller had once predicted, was about the constant turning of feng shui, meaning that my fortunes were always changing. My future as a Communist would soon prove the fortune- teller’s wisdom. I had never imagined that there would be a benefit to claiming my background as a beggar. For the family background section in the party’s membership application, I truthfully wrote “Beggars.” This qualified Papa as a proletarian, and that included Rouge and me. If my grandfather hadn’t lost all his money, my father would have inherited his land and become the enemy of the Communists. I would have been denounced and perhaps shot as a spy.
The strain between Dick and me had much to do with the innocent souls Mao murdered at the Red Base. It happened before my eyes. People were arrested in broad daylight, sent away, and disappeared for good. These were young people, former college students. They were independent thinkers-people whom Dick had personally recruited. They had joined Mao to fight the Japanese. Overnight they were labeled as enemies, arrested, denounced, and murdered.
Dick said that my Christian values had ruined me. I told him that he was ruined, not me. Dick refused to see Mao’s flaws and the fact that he had become a bully. Mao had learned from Stalin, a man who murdered whoever disagreed with him. Half of Dick’s friends were detained and questioned and one third executed as traitors.
“How can you sleep at night?” I asked my husband.
Dick encouraged me to make friends with Madame Mao. “She is a better choice than Pearl Buck,” he insisted.
I tried, but I couldn’t get Madame Mao to like me. She was the opposite of Pearl, judgmental and opinionated. Blessed with good looks, she was also flashy, pretentious, and egotistical. As a former actress, she knew her craft. She called herself “Chairman Mao’s humble student” and was proud to be his trophy. She was not shy about her “capital.” Her skin didn’t turn potato brown as the rest of ours did in the desert sun and harsh wind. Her eyebrows were as thin as a shrimp’s feelers. She and Mao made a perfect couple. They both wanted power and fame. Madame Mao loved to say that she was a peacock among hens. By hens, she meant the women of Yenan, and that included me.
My biggest disappointment was that Mao didn’t turn out to be the hero I had expected. Under the guise of a scholar, Mao sold confidence to people. He made the peasant soldiers hear their own voices when he spoke to them.
When I listened to Mao, I watched his eyes. They appeared to be smiling even when he uttered the most violent phrases. Mao had a broad forehead, a rice-patty-shaped face, and a feminine mouth. He never looked people in the eyes when he talked with them. Mao let people observe him. Never once did I hear him answer a question in a straightforward manner, although he encouraged others to do so. Mao was a master when it came to the art of beating around the bush. He even said himself that he enjoyed catching his enemy by surprise, whether in conversation or on the battlefield.
Dick made the best conversational partner for Mao in the inner circle. He and Mao often talked deep into the night. “We simply enjoy each other’s minds,” Dick told me. Yet Dick failed to learn one important lesson, which was that Mao hated to lose.
Dick had yet to find out that Mao wanted absolute power, though he appeared to desire the opposite. Mao repeated the same phrase over and over again to foreign journalists: “My dream is to become a classroom teacher.” He would open his conversation with a Chinese poem and close by reciting Marx or Lenin. People were easily charmed by Mao. His broad knowledge and sharp wit disarmed. Once, Dick helped Mao issue a telegram to the war front. He was shocked that Mao insisted on ending the communiqué with a line from a poem. “Only flies are afraid of winter, so let them freeze and die.”
Dick told me later that when Mao had trouble giving direction during battles or was unsure of his next move, he would telegram poems to his generals. The confused generals would have no choice but to make up their own minds about whether to charge or retreat.
“Such is Mao’s brilliance,” Dick said admiringly.
Dick brought Madame Mao the local singer who wrote the song “Red in the East.” Dick never guessed that one day the tune would become China ’s unofficial national anthem.
I went to listen to “Red in the East” being performed at a weekend party for high-ranking officials. Madame Mao introduced the singer, whose name was Li You-yuan. Li was a peasant dressed in rags with a dirty towel wrapped around his forehead. He was in his forties and had three missing front teeth. Dick did a background check and found that Li was not one hundred percent proletarian, because his family owned a half acre of land.
When Dick reported this to Madame Mao, she said, “If I say Li is a peasant, he will be a peasant.”
The song “Red in the East” was Madame Mao’s birthday gift to her husband.
When the peasant opened his mouth, the listeners’ jaws dropped. Li’s voice was like a goat’s cry.
Mao remained seated, because he had the good sense to trust his wife’s magic-making abilities.
After Li exited the stage, Madame Mao presented her version of “Red in the East.” The singing was performed by the Yenan repertory group conducted by Madame Mao herself.
Red in the East
Rises the sun
China has brought forth Mao Tse-tung
Creating happiness for the people
He is our greatest savior
Li You-yuan didn’t write more than the first line of “Red in the East.” The peasant had no knowledge of the Red Base or its leader, Mao. He hummed the tune to pass the time when he plowed his field. Dick happened to cross his path and heard him singing. Dick foresaw the usefulness of the tune and brought Li to Madame Mao’s attention.
To demonstrate his modesty, Mao rejected Madame Mao’s proposal to list “Red in the East” as a “must-learn song” for the troops.
Madame Mao insisted that it was the people’s wish that Mao be regarded as the rising sun of China.
Madame Mao asked Dick to send me a message. She criticized me as arrogant. I tried to hide my disgust for the sake of Dick.
Madame Mao was unaware that I had some knowledge of her past. Before coming to Yenan, she had been a third-rate movie actress in Shanghai. She had had an affair with a newspaper reporter who happened to be Dick’s friend. At the Red Base, Madame Mao’s past was a stain on an immaculate embroidery. Desperate to get rid of the stain, she behaved like a passionate revolutionary. She invited me to watch her perform a newly learned skill-making yarn out of raw cotton.