Free Red China Blues (reissue): My Long March from Mao to Now by Jan Wong Page A

member must be modest!” she said.
    We smiled weakly. Even Erica’s fluent Chinese failed her; she didn’t know how to say limerick in Chinese and couldn’t explain it wasn’t meant literally. Wang pinned me against the wall and tried to shove the ping-pong ball back in my pocket. Finally, perspiring with embarrassment, Erica and I managed to escape.
    Just before National Day, on October 1, 1972, my classmates decided to have a party. “Let’s
warn”
Scarlet said, using the verb
to play. My first Chinese college bash!
I thought excitedly. It turned out to be more like a birthday party for four-year-olds. We gathered in one student’s room, under full-strength fluorescent lights. Half a dozen of us – all females — sat demurely in a circle, crunching sunflower seeds and sipping tea. Everyone giggled. Even though I couldn’t see what was so funny, I found myself having a good time. No one had anything as fine as a cassette player, so we had to provide our own entertainment. We went around the circle, browbeating each person into singing operatic arias and revolutionary songs. They were all accomplished singers, a skill drummed into them in nursery school. But when it came my turn, I forgot the words to “O, Canada” the only Canadian song I could muster. Erica, who carried a tune as badly as I did, decided there was safety in numbers. Together we chirped our tuneless way through “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Kumbaya, My Lord,” but neither of us knew how to translate “Kumbaya.” For an encore, we performed a country hoe-down square dance, which needed no translation. Then we all went back to our rooms to study. The next day no one had a hangover.

4
Pyongyang Panty Thief

    (From left) Erica, Luo Ning and Forest Zeng
.

    Striking a pose at Beijing University
.

L earning Chinese was tough at the best of times, but the Cultural Revolution had trashed every existing dictionary and language textbook. My teachers wrote my lessons on the fly, the typist churned them out, and I learned them warm off the mimeograph machine. Like every schoolchild, I memorized the three most famous Maoist homilies: Serve the People, The Foolish Old Man Who Moved Mountains and In Memory of Norman Bethune. I soon was reading Stalin in Chinese. Nobody thought this strange. Mao, who was studying English at the same time, used the
Communist Manifesto
as
his
textbook. No wonder he never learned to speak English. I, on the other hand, became fluent in Maoist lingo. Phrases like “Down with imperialists and all their running dogs” rolled off my tongue. But I couldn’t say, “May I please have a tube of Bright and Glorious toothpaste?”
    By the time I arrived at Beijing University in August 1972, the worst factional fighting of the Cultural Revolution was over. For the moment, the most radical faction, New Beijing University Commune, dominated the school, and two of its most stalwart members, Fu Min and Dai Guifu, became our teachers. Back in 1966, Beijing University had become a battlefield. “It was dangerous just walking around campus,” said Teacher Dai, a soft-spokenbeauty who had helped carry out the reign of terror. “Students used slingshots and catapults to ambush their enemies. People fought each other on the sports field.” Sleep was impossible as loudspeakers blared day and night. Each faction claimed to be the true believers of Maoism and took its own prisoners and fortified its own buildings. But Beijing University was civilized compared to Qinghua University. There, the technically inclined students and faculty made rocket launchers and cannons.
    In the spring of 1968, authorities sent six hundred elite troops from Chairman Mao’s own palace guard to Beijing University. Squads of hand-picked workers called Propaganda Teams of Mao Zedong Thought took over the campus administration. That summer, the faculty and staff were packed off for hard labor at Carp Island Farm in Jiangxi province in the south. Teacher Fu,