A Time of Ghosts. Hok-Pang Tang
as they walked their dogs. Their lives seemed so luxurious. Just the can of three tennis balls used for their game cost half a month’s wages for a Chinese.
Continuing beyond the foreign quarter by ferry and floating down the Pearl River toward the harbor, one came to a stop called “The Repose of the White Flamingo.” There one saw even more important-looking foreigners carrying luggage and passing to and fro. It was a beautiful area, and one of my father’s clients not only lived there but was a big landowner in that district. He once invited our whole family on a cruise. As we drifted through the region, he stated simply, “I own the land as far as the eye can see.” He was indeed a wealthy and powerful man, and was always accompanied by bodyguards.
The most interesting thing for me was a small island filled with red and white flamingos. They flocked in great numbers, and when they rose into the air, half the sky was darkened. Hunting them was not only prohibited by law, but also enforced by an old, pious legend in which an immortal descended from Heaven on the back of a white flamingo, responding to the prayers of the people of the province for help during terrible floods.
It was a very pleasant day as we sailed leisurely among the landlord’s holdings. When we disembarked and wandered on foot, we saw at close hand great pools of fish raised for market. As we came to the beach, the landlord pointed out a man walking on the sand in the distance – a trespasser. He turned to a bodyguard. “Shoot at him and put a scare into him!” he ordered, and the bodyguard opened fire. The man fled in terror, and we continued our walk past pools filled with blooming lotuses.
My father had brought along a friend of his, a fortuneteller who did not say much. When our trip through that land of wealth and power came to an end and we were off the landlord’s estate, the fortuneteller said matter-of-factly to my father, “This man shall die an unnatural death. His fortune shall be lost.” I smirked and thought it very funny. How could bad luck possibly come to such a man? Yet when the Communists came to power, the landlord was arrested and hanged. His body was not permitted burial, and all his estates and possessions were confiscated.
It was in this region, near the Repose of the White Flamingo, that a group of American Christians opened a school amid beautiful farmlands. It was sited on a small peninsula jutting into the Pearl River near the South China Sea, some twenty miles outside of Canton. The buildings were in the Western style, the teaching was Western, and even the teachers, though Chinese, dressed and acted like Westerners. One had to be very wealthy to study there. The principal was a friend of the American ambassador. After the Communists gained control, the Westerners were expelled but the school continued in operation, with some of the old staff even being retained.
I remember passing down the beautiful walkway, overarched with tall bamboos, that stretched from the river beach to the school. The grounds were like a vast college estate. One entered through a very un-Chinese arch, and the most prominent building – the chapel – was topped by a cross.
Under the Communists the school got a new principal. He had been the former principal’s assistant. He ate with a fork instead of chopsticks, and had been educated in America. It was hard to tell by watching him that he was Chinese.
It became my high school.
Our formal studies there took about half a day. We were awakened at 5:30 in the morning, and exercised for half an hour with swimming or long-distance running. Then came breakfast – a thin, tasteless rice porridge that I detested. The wealthy students had better fare – different grades of food for different levels of income, in spite of Communist theory. The porridge was served in a huge, open wooden vat. Though unappetizing, we took a lot because we were hungry. Then we sat down and spooned it into our mouths while peeking across the room at the far more interesting and varied food set before the well-to-do.
After breakfast came the flag salute, daily announcements, and a very boring Communist meeting and lecture. Then we went to our classes. We studied among relics of the school’s past – tables and chairs that had been there for years, but were now rickety and sometimes broken.
The quality of the teaching varied greatly. Some teachers – leftovers from the old school – had studied in Europe or America, and knew what was what. On the other end of the scale was our political science teacher, a very poorly-educated fellow discharged from the army.
We were not taught in Cantonese – our own language – because Mao Tse-Tung, inspired by the ancient Emperor of the Chin Dynasty who unified the Chinese writing system, decided to do the same for the spoken language. All instruction was to be in Mandarin Chinese. That presented considerable difficulty for our instructors, most of whom were Cantonese. They tried to speak Mandarin to us, but it came out strangely distorted and comical. Often we had no idea what they were trying to say.
The students were a mixed lot consisting of easily recognized factions. It was at that time fashionable for foreign-born Chinese in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and England to send their children to China for education, and many of them settled in our school. They stood out from the rest of us by the cut and quality of their clothes and by the many little luxuries they enjoyed. Some even had pornographic magazines. They would ride about the neighborhood streets on their motorcycles, with admiring girls seated behind them. They made up the first faction.
The second faction consisted of farmers’ sons fresh from the countryside, as well as the offspring of ordinary workers. The Communists made special arrangements for such disadvantaged young people to come and study. They were an obvious contrast to the well-heeled foreign born. The country boys had poor manners, bare feet, and wore worn and patched clothing. The one thing the two socially distinct factions had in common was the low quality of their academic achievement. The foreign-born were simply not interested in school, but wanted only to have a good time. They paid others to do their homework and to slip them answers during tests. The farm boys and workers, representing the noble proletariat so venerated by Communism, were accorded class offices, including that of class president.
The third faction comprised children of high military officers. The teachers treated them with a somewhat fearful respect, and passed them as a matter of form, no matter how poor their test results. Their misdeeds were ignored and they were not subject to the punishments inflicted on others. And they had privileges – special rooms, access to information from the central government, and special foreign language classes to prepare them for high roles in the New China.
I belonged to a suspect faction – those of small means whose family histories were considered tainted by non-Communist thought. I was among the poor and common students. I did not belong to any of the social cliques, and was very lonely. It was not that they excluded me, just that I did not fit comfortably with any of them. I felt very out-of-place.
I did my studies and performed well academically, but I hated political science. It was the same dry slogans and tiresome tales repeated over and over again. I simply could not bear it, and finally found relief by inclining my head toward the open schoolbook on my desk while reading novels surreptitiously held on my knees and out of sight of the teacher. Inevitably, however, I was discovered, and was forced to sit erect, at attention, with my hands held behind my back. I was so irritated by this that I rebelled by repeatedly picking at my ears or nose, knowing that it would bother the instructor. In spite my good test results in that class, the teacher gave me bad grades based on my obviously negative attitude.
Afternoons, we were free to exercise or study or participate in this or that group. Most informal clubs were devoted to team sports or music or some such harmless activity, but there was one we all hated intensely – the political group. It was made up exclusively of unpleasant little toadies who considered it their Communist duty to spy on the other students and to report any “anti-revolutionary” attitudes or actions to the school authorities. They were always on the watch, and we learned to choose our words carefully because very little was private. By their reports, students could be expelled and teachers arrested. They were very subtle and quite without conscience. I recall one particularly unpleasant example.
Most of the teachers found their jobs humdrum and boring, and their sentiments rubbed off on the students. The science teacher, however, was an exception. He was very knowledgeable. He obviously liked teaching and enjoyed young people. I caught his enthusiasm, and listened