Red Scarf Girl Read online

  Aunt Xi-wen was really my father’s cousin, but I always called her Aunt. She was at least fifty years old, but she dressed stylishly and wore makeup, so she looked closer to thirty. I knew my classmates did not like her one bit. “What makes her think she’s so wonderful?” they sneered. “Just look at those clothes she got from her sister in America. Look at her makeup. Bourgeois! Disgusting!” I had always disapproved of her too. Chairman Mao taught us that “inner beauty is much more valuable than outward appearance.” How could she ignore what Chairman Mao said? Song Po-po had told me that even Aunt Xi-wen’s youngest son often grumbled about his mother’s behavior.

  Just a few weeks earlier Aunt Xi-wen had complained to the school because some students had climbed into her yard to pick mulberry leaves for their silkworms. This latest affront was too much for the students to bear.

  About twenty of us formed a straggling column. Yin Lan-lan was first in line. She carried the da-zi-bao, and Du Hai, carrying a brush and a bucket of paste, followed her. Behind them two students struck a gong and beat a drum.

  “Let’s go!” Yin Lan-lan waved her arm vigorously, and the group marched off.

  I watched her with interest. Yin Lan-lan had changed a great deal. No longer hesitant and clumsy, she had become vocal, aggressive, and confident. She stood up straight and threw out her chest, whereas before she had always slouched. She and Du Hai had taken the leading roles in this movement. The usual leaders of the class, including me, were holding back for some reason. Yu Jian, chairman of the class and one of the best students, was somewhere in the middle of the line, while I dawdled so that I could be in the back of the group. I didn’t want Aunt Xi-wen to see me. Although I did not approve of her, and although I supported today’s revolutionary action, she was still my relative. But I dared not ask to switch to the other group. I would certainly be criticized for letting my family relationships interfere with my political principles. I had no choice but to go.

  Someone rang the bell. We waited in the narrow passageway outside the door, whispering among ourselves. Before long Aunt Xi-wen came to the door. She was not wearing makeup, and she looked older and less attractive than usual. She seemed taken aback at the sight of us. Her welcoming expression turned into one of nervous surprise.

  Du Hai took the lead. “Down with the bourgeois Jiang Xi-wen! Long live Mao Ze-dong Thought!” he shouted. We repeated the slogans. Then Yin Lan-lan recited, “Our great leader, Chairman Mao, has taught us, ‘Every reactionary is the same; if you do not hit him, he will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish by itself.’” Her voice was loud and forceful. “Today, we proletarian revolutionary young guards have come to revolt against you bourgeoisie. Jiang Xi-wen, this is our da-zi-bao. You are to post it on your door now.” She shook the white paper in front of Aunt Xi-wen’s nose.

  Aunt Xi-wen tried to smile to show her support of the proletarian revolutionary young guards, but the smile froze before it was fully formed. It was hard to tell whether she was smiling or crying.

  “Yes, yes, I will,” she said repeatedly. She took the paste and began to brush it on the door. I could see the brush quivering in her hand. It was an unusually hot and humid day, and with the twenty of us crowded into her entryway, it felt even hotter. Aunt Xi-wen gave the door a few more good swipes of paste before she stopped and wiped the sweat off her forehead. Then she took the da-zi-bao and stuck it to the door, smoothing it out without hesitation in spite of the ink that blacked her hands.

  “Now read it out loud,” Yin Lan-lan shouted as soon as Aunt Xi-wen finished.

  Aunt Xi-wen had not expected this. She gaped at us in alarm. She did not want to read the terrible things written about her, but she did not dare refuse. Her face was ugly with distress. She knew that no one would challenge anything we revolutionaries did to her.

  I did not want her to see me. I bent down and pretended to tie my shoelaces. But I could not block out her voice, dry, hoarse, and trembling: “… refusal to let students pick mulberry leaves was an attack on proletarian students.… The more you try to improve your outward appearance, the filthier your heart becomes.… Your black bourgeois bones are clearly visible to our proletarian eyes.… Remold yourself conscientiously.…” I kept my eyes on my shoelaces and tried not to listen.

  “Hey, what’s the matter with you?” Someone pushed me and I realized that it was over.

  On the way back to school everyone joked and laughed at Aunt Xi-wen’s humiliation. “Jiang Ji-li, your aunt really lost face today, didn’t she?” Du Hai shouted. I could feel every classmate staring at me. I raised my head and said loudly, “It serves her right.” I made an effort to laugh and joke along with the others.

  “Look at that!” someone said with surprise. I raised my head. The door of Grandpa Hong’s bookstall had been sealed with several da-zi-bao. It was too far away to read them. All I could make out were a few words from the titles of the posters: “Propagating Feudal, Capitalistic, and Revisionist Ideals”; “Poisoning our Youth.” My mind was full of all the stones I had read there. Now the stories were finished. They were part of the bad system that was going to destroy socialism. I shook my head hard, as if to shake all the evil stories out of my mind.

  “Ji-li, come on. Come to school right now. Someone’s written a da-zi-bao about you. Come on, let’s go.” An Yi dashed into our apartment, full of alarm. She dragged me to my feet and pulled me to the stairs.

  “Wait.” I shook off her grasp. “Hold on. What did you say?”

  “Your name appeared in a da-zi-bao.”

  I could not believe it. “My name? Why? I’m not a teacher. Why would they write a da-zi-bao about me?” I could feel my heart race.

  “I don’t know. But I saw it with my own eyes. Du Hai and Yin Lan-lan and a couple of others were writing it. I couldn’t read it, but I saw your name in the title.” She wheezed heavily and looked at me, wide-eyed.

  We hurried off to the school playground, where the newest da-zi-bao were posted, and searched frantically. “There it is!” Suddenly I caught sight of it.

  The large red characters were like blood on the poster.

  “Let’s Look at the Relationship Between Ke Cheng-li and His Favorite Student, Jiang Ji-li.”

  I suddenly felt dizzy. Relationship? Me? A relationship with a male teacher? The whole world faded before my eyes. The only things I could see were the name Jiang Ji-li and the word relationship. A shaft of evening sunlight flashed on my name. The characters danced before my eyes, growing larger and redder, almost swallowing me up.

  An Yi was shaking me. Her eyes were full of tears and she was staring at me anxiously. I could not speak. I grabbed her arm and we ran out of the school yard.

  We stopped at the back door of a small cigarette shop nearby. An Yi tried to say something, but I wouldn’t let her. We leaned against the wall for a long time without saying a word.

  “Let’s go home.” An Yi touched me softly on the elbow. It was getting dark.

  “You go ahead. I’m going to read the—” The word “da-zi-bao” stuck in my throat.

  An Yi nodded worriedly and left.

  A half-moon brightened the sky, and the school yard was laced with the ghostly shadows of the parasol trees. I picked my way through the shadows and found the da-zi-bao again.

  Now, under the cover of darkness, I could let myself cry. I wiped the tears away with my hand, but the more I wiped, the more they came. I pressed my handkerchief to my face. Finally my eyes cleared enough to see.

  “Ke Cheng-li doesn’t like working-class kids. He only likes rich kids. He made Jiang Ji-li the teacher’s assistant for math class and gave her higher grades, and he also let her win all the math contests and awarded her a lot of notebooks. We have to ask the question, What is the relationship between them after all?”

  The blood rushed into my head. I felt like throwing up. I leaned against the wall and rested my head on it.

  A shadow ap
proached. I tensed and got ready to run. The shadow called out, “Ji-li, it’s me. I came back. I was getting worried.”

  An Yi’s voice made the tears gush out of my eyes again. “Oh, An Yi. How could they say these things? How could they say them? A relationship between Teacher Ke and me? It’s all lies.” My voice was hoarse. “It… it… it’s so unfair. I have never gotten one point, not a single point, that I didn’t deserve. And I spent so much time helping Yin Lan-lan and the others with their arithmetic, and now they go and insult me like this. It’s disgusting. I—” I could not go on. I bit my handkerchief to hold back my sobs.

  An Yi kept silent for a while. She walked beside me with her hand tightly clasping my shoulder. “There were a lot of da-zi-bao about my mom, too,” she said at last in a soft voice. “They said she was a monster and a class enemy.”

  I stopped. I was afraid to look at her. Her hand squeezed my shoulder, and I felt her sobbing quietly.

  We stood together like that for a long time, in the darkness and the silence.

  THE RED SUCCESSORS

  When Mom and Dad heard about the da-zi-bao, they immediately suggested that I stay home from school for a few days. Since there were no classes, other students were staying home too. Nobody would connect my absence with the da-zi-bao.

  As it turned out, I came down with a fever and stayed home for ten days.

  I lay in bed all day and watched Grandma and Song Po-po work around the house. I was too tired and too depressed to do any more than watch them and watch a patch of sunlight as it moved across the room. As the fever subsided, I began to feel better, but Grandma said I should stay home a few more days to make sure I was completely well. For the first time in my life I was happy to miss school.

  Both Song Po-po and Grandma tried their best to cheer me up. Song Po-po combed my hair and made me treats. Grandma sat by my bed, took out my stamp collection, and tried to get me to take an interest in it. Finally, Grandma bought some lovely soft gray wool for me and taught me how to knit a sweater for Dad. I worked on it every day while the others were in school, but slowly, with many pauses, while I stared out the window.

  Why would anyone say such terrible things about me? Why did Yin Lan-lan and Du Hai hate me? What had I ever done to hurt them? I asked myself these questions again and again, but I never found an answer.

  Every day An Yi came to visit me, sometimes bringing me a bowl of sweet green bean soup from her grandmother. Every day she told me what was happening at school. Classes had started again. They were studying Chairman Mao’s latest directives and related documents from the Central Committee. There would be one more month of school before graduation. An Yi said that not many of our classmates had seen the da-zi-bao about me. And there were now so many da-zi-bao, posted one on top of another, that no one was likely to find mine.

  Red Guards were everywhere. Since the newspapers had praised them as the pioneers of the Cultural Revolution, every high school and college had organized Red Guards to rebel against the old system. When the Central Committee had announced that Red Guards could travel free to other provinces to “establish revolutionary ties” with other Red Guards, An Yi told me, our entire school had gone into an uproar. Most of the students had never been out of Shanghai, so this was terribly exciting news. A large crowd of students from our school had gathered outside the school committee offices and shouted nonstop: “We—want—to be—Red Guards! We—want—to establish—revolutionary ties!” Only college and high school students were allowed to be Red Guards, but our school district had finally granted our school permission to establish the Red Successors. Just as the name indicated, the Red Successors were the next generation of revolutionaries, and when they were old enough, they would become Red Guards. Ten Red Successors were to be elected from each class. An Yi brought me a note from Teacher Gu saying she hoped I was feeling better and would come back to school for the election on Saturday.

  Friday afternoon a thunderstorm struck. The darkness gathered until I could not see my book. The first flash of lightning drew me to the window as the downpour began. I sat on a porcelain stool, leaning my forehead against the cool windowpane. The torrent overflowed the gutters, and a curtain of rainwater leaped off the roof. Wind-blown spray blurred the window. The alley was washed clean. Dirt and trash were swept away by the flood. I stared at the downpour and pictured all the da-zi-bao in the school yard. I opened the window and shivered with delight as the clean chill air swept over me.

  A blast soaked my face and I laughed. From behind me a hand reached out to pull the window shut. Grandma smiled down at me. She knew exactly what I was thinking. She gently wrapped my robe around my shoulders. I lay contentedly in her arms as the rain washed away my humiliation and shame.

  By morning the storm had passed.

  When we got to school, we found that all the da-zi-bao were gone. Sodden fragments littered the school yard, with only a few torn and illegible remnants dangling on the ropes. The paper with my name on it had disappeared. I sighed with relief and went to class feeling better than I had in a long time.

  During the time I was home, summer had arrived. The windows of the classroom were all open, and the fragrance from the oleander bushes outside filled the air, heavy, rich, and warm. The classroom itself looked nicer. All the da-zi-bao had been taken down and replaced by other things. A big color poster, at least six feet by three feet, hung in the middle of the back wall. It showed a big red flag with Chairman Mao’s picture and a long line of people marching under the flag. On the right side of the room, the slogan LONG LIVE THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION covered almost the entire wall. I was cheered by the revolutionary atmosphere.

  Teacher Gu walked in, and the election for the Red Successors began.

  I lowered my head and pretended to check my nails. I wanted everyone to see that I did not care if I was not chosen. My parents and Grandma had warned me against disappointment, so I was prepared. And anyway, the Red Successors were not nearly as glorious as the Red Guards.

  Yu Jian, the chairman of our class, was the first one nominated. Then I heard my name called. My heart raced and I held my breath. I could hardly believe it. I was nominated! After everything that had happened, I was still regarded as somebody in the class! Now I could admit it to myself: I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted to win this election.

  I looked gratefully at the student who had nominated me.

  Teacher Gu was about to write the names of all the candidates on the blackboard when Yin Lan-lan raised her hand. “When the Red Guards were elected at my sister’s school, the class status of the candidates was taken into account. Shouldn’t we do the same?”

  “Right! Those who don’t have good class backgrounds shouldn’t be elected,” somebody else agreed.

  My heart fell. Class status. There was that phrase again.

  At a loss for anything to say, I turned around and looked at Yu Jian.

  Yu Jian stood up without hesitation. “My class status is office worker. But before Liberation my father used to be an apprentice. He had to work at the shop counter when he was in his teens, and he suffered all kinds of exploitation by the owner. My father is a member of the Communist Party now, and my mother will join pretty soon.” All hands were raised to elect him a Red Successor.

  It was my turn now. My mind was blank. I did not know what to say. I stood up slowly, the back of ray blouse suddenly soaked with sweat.

  “My class status is also office worker. My father is an actor.…” I stumbled, trying to remember what Yu Jian had said. “He… is not a Party member, and neither is my mother. And… I don’t know what else.” I sat down.

  “Jiang Ji-li, what is your father’s class status?” a loud voice asked.

  I slowly stood back up and looked around. Du Hai was staring at me. He sat sideways, one arm resting on the desk behind him.

  “My father’s class status…?” I did not see what Du Hai meant at first. “You mean what did my grandfather do? I don’t know
. I only know that he died when my father was seven.”

  There was a trace of a grin on Du Hai’s face. He stood up lazily and faced the class.

  “I know what her grandfather was.” He paused dramatically, sweeping his eyes across the class. “He was a—LANDLORD.”

  “Landlord!” The whole class erupted.

  “What’s more, her father is a—RIGHTIST.”

  “Rightist!” The class was in pandemonium.

  I was numb. Landlord! One of the bloodsuckers who exploited the farmers! The number-one enemies, the worst of the “Five Black Categories,” even worse than criminals or counterrevolutionaries! My grandfather? And Dad, a rightist? One of the reactionary intellectuals who attacked the Parry and socialism? No, I could not believe it.

  “You’re lying! You don’t know anything!” I retorted.

  “Of course I know.” Du Hai smirked openly. “My mother is the Neighborhood Party Committee Secretary. She knows everything.”

  I could say nothing now. Through my tears I could see everyone staring at me. I wished I had never been born. I pushed the desk out of my way and ran out of the classroom.

  Outside, it was so bright that I could barely see. Shading my eyes with my hand, I jumped blindly into the dazzling sunshine and ran home.

  Grandma was frightened by the tears streaming down my face. “What happened, sweetie? Are you hurt?” She put her spatula down and grasped my hand, asking again and again.

  At first I couldn’t answer. Finally, still sobbing, I managed to tell her what had happened.