Free The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min Page A

look up in my dictionary. She waited patiently until I located the word.
    “I’d like you to understand that we, the black people of America, used to be slaves.”
    “My dictionary says
slave
means
proletarians
,” I responded.
    “That’s right! Slaves are proletarians!”
    “Unite the world’s proletarians!” I recited. “It’s Mao’s slogan.”
    “Mao who?”
    “Mao Zedong, the founding father of the Communist Party of China.”
    I was shocked that Takisha had no idea who Mao was. I asked if she knew a famous African black who claimed to be the leader of the black slaves of the world, and who came to China in the late 1960s to study guerrilla warfare. Takisha shook her head.
    I got busy with my dictionary. It took a long time to find the words I needed. Takisha looked restless. “The black slave leader wanted to meet Mao in person but was refused,” I finally told Takisha. “In China, Mao was God. Mao was ‘the reddest sun in the universe.’ We worshipped Mao. A quarter of the population on earth. See what I mean? Over a billion people! How could anybody, like that African black, schedule a meeting with God?”
    “So what happened?”
    “Well, the black slave leader took the initiative,” I continued. “To demonstrate his affection for Mao, he pinned a Mao button on his bare chest, took a picture of his bleeding chest and sent the picture to China’s authorities.”
    “Did it work?”
    “You bet!”
    “But it’s terrible!” Takisha cried.
    “I couldn’t pin a Mao button on my bare chest,” I said, “although I loved Mao, too! Anyway, the Communist Party officials liked the story so much that they insisted it be told at schools across the nation. That was how I learned about it. The story convinced us that our leader Chairman Mao was popular in the world.”
    “Did the black guy get to meet Mao in the end?”
    “It was said that Mao was so moved that he received the black slave leader inside his home in the Forbidden City.”
    Takisha had a hard time making me understand that there were differences between African blacks and American blacks.
    “You all fight for the same freedom, don’t you? In China, we consider all blacks our comrades in arms. We were afraid of whites andconsidered them enemies until recently. There were a few exceptions of course. One was the American journalist named Edgar Snow, and the other a Canadian Communist physician, Norman Bethune. Both of them came to China and devoted their lives to our revolution.”
    I asked Takisha to identify America’s friends and foes. “Mao had said that such identification was critical to winning a revolution.” I waited for Takisha’s response, but she blinked her eyes and gave me a confused look.
    “For example, China is friends with North Korea, Albania, and Vietnam,” I said. “Russia used to be our friend, but since the Russians betrayed us, we dropped them.”
    Takisha said that the only famous black leader she knew and admired was Dr. Martin Luther King.
    “I know Martin Luther King!” I said.
    Takisha became excited. “Tell me, please, how did you know our King?”
    “He was in China’s school textbooks,” I replied.
    “Chinese school textbooks? Are you kidding me?”
    “Mao wrote an article supporting Dr. Martin Luther King after he was murdered. Mao protested on behalf of the world’s proletarians. Mao said that Dr. King’s death showed that American society was an evil one.”
    “It is,” Takisha echoed.
    “Believe it or not, Takisha, I grew up shouting, ‘Down with American imperialism!’ but I didn’t know where America was located.”
    “That’s weird,” Takisha said, looking at me.
    “What does
weird
mean?”
    “Well,
weird
means … ‘weird.’ ” Takisha laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry—I was just teasing you.
Weird
is kind of like
strange
, okay?”
    “Okay. Thank you.”
    “You are welcome.” Takisha smiled. “Anyway …”
    “What does
anyway
mean?”
    “Oh, shoot, not