Colors of the Mountain Read online

  Acclaim for Da Chen and

  COLORS OF THE MOUNTAIN

  “A personal story that is crafted with dignity and literary skill…. The narrative voice is clean, spare, precise—often cheerfully poetic, with deft little flashes of imagery coming as surprises.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “A completely engrossing tale filled with memorable moments…. A ‘Chinese’ Angela’s Ashes.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “A remarkable coming-of-age memoir filled with humiliation, revenge, vindication, and, ultimately, pride. Born with the wretched political birthmark of being a landlord’s son, he has looked back at his life without cynicism or self-pity. Colors of the Mountain is a book of great dignity.”

  —Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain

  “Vibrant…. We cannot help but rejoice with him.”

  —Richmond Times-Dispatch

  “The Cultural Revolution has Da Chen in its sights, but the lad dances a Huckleberry scamp down the Dong Jing River. Da Chen is Lu Hsun, returned. Earthy and literate, picaresque and humanist, Chen spins a winning story from bold, golden strands.”

  —Gus Lee, author of China Boy

  “Young Da and his friends managed to be quite merry, and some episodes are downright funny.”

  —Atlantic Monthly

  “A simple tale, bluntly and plainly told, of one youth’s desire to escape the scorched political earth of his home and find a greener future.”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  Da Chen

  COLORS OF THE MOUNTAIN

  Da Chen is a graduate of Columbia University Law School, which he attended on full scholarship. A brush calligrapher of considerable spirituality who also plays the classical bamboo flute, he lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife and two children.

  DEDICATION

  To Grandpa, for your smiling eyes;

  to Grandma, for your big feeding spoon.

  To my mother: you are all things beautiful;

  and my father: you are forever.

  On the wooden door of the old Chen mansion, my grandpa had painted, with powerful strokes, a nostalgic couplet:

  Colors of the mountain will never leave our door

  Sounds of the river will linger forever in our ears

  Throughout Grandpa’s life, Ching Mountain, with its ever-changing colors, was his hope, and the Dong Jing River, with its whispers, thunderous shouts, or—sometimes—just its silence, was his inspiration.

  I WAS BORN in southern China in 1962, in the tiny town of Yellow Stone. They called it the Year of Great Starvation. Chairman Mao had had a parting of the ways with the Soviets, and now they wanted all their loans repaid or there would be blood, a lot of it.

  Mao panicked. He ordered his citizens to cut down on meals and be hungry heroes so he could repay the loans. The superstitious citizens of Yellow Stone still saw the starving ghosts of those who had died during that year chasing around and sobbing for food on the eve of the spring Tomb-Sweeping Festival.

  That year also saw a forbidding drought that made fields throughout China crack like wax. For the first time, the folks of Yellow Stone saw the bottom of the Dong Jing River. Rice plants turned yellow and withered young.

  Dad wanted to give me the name Han, which means drought. But that would have been like naming a boy in Hiroshima Atom Bomb. And since the Chinese believe that their names dictate their fate, I would have probably ended up digging ditches, searching for water in some wasteland. So Dad named me Da, which means prosperity.

  The unfortunate year of my birth left a permanent flaw in my character: I was always hungry. I yearned for food. I could talk, think, and dream about it forever. As an infant, I ate with a large, adult spoon. I would open wide while they shoveled in the porridge. My grandmother said she had never seen an easier baby to feed.

  Ours was a big family, and I was at the bottom. There were a great many people above me, with, at the top, my bald, long-bearded grandpa and my square-faced, large-boned grandma. Dad looked mostly like Grandma, but he had Grandpa’s smiling eyes. Mom seemed very tiny next to my broad-chested dad. Sister Si was the eldest of my siblings, a big girl, who took after Dad in personality and physique. Jin, my brother, had Mom’s elegant features; we still haven’t figured out just who my middle sister, Ke, looks like. Huang, who is a year older than me, grew up to be a tall, thin girl, a beauty with enormous eyes.

  We lived in an old house that faced the only street in Yellow Stone. Our backyard led to the clear Dong Jing River, zigzagging like a dragon on land. The lush, odd-shaped Ching Mountain stood beyond the endless rice paddies like an ancient giant with a pointed hat, round shoulders, and head bent in gentle slumber.

  We rarely left our house to play because Mom said there were many bad people waiting to hurt us. When I did go out to buy food in the commune’s grocery store a few blocks away, I always walked in the middle, safely flanked by my three sisters as we hurried in and out. Neighborhood boys sometimes threw stones at us, made ugly faces, and called us names. I always wondered why they did that. It was obviously not for fun. My sisters often cried, as we ran and dodged and slammed our door shut behind us.

  I once tried to sneak through our side door and join the kids in the street, but Si caught me by the arm and snatched me back, screaming and kicking. She gave me quite a spanking for breaking the do-not-go-out order. When I asked Mom why we had to hide in our dark house all the time, she said that we were landlords, and that the people outside were poor peasants who had taken our house, lands, and stores. They were making us suffer because the leaders were all bad. There was no fairness, no justice for us. We had to be quiet, stay out of trouble, and wait for better days to come.

  When? I would ask. Someday, when you grow up, she’d answer. That will be a long time from now, I’d say. Mom would nod, her eyes gently studying my face as if looking for an answer herself. Then she’d take me in her arms and hum her favorite tune—a simple melody urging a boy to eat more and grow up faster so that he could help plow the land with his dad and harvest the grain.

  Restricted to the house, I would silently wander into Grandpa’s smoky room and practice calligraphy with him. Some days, when my sisters were in school and Mom was busy, and not watching me, I would wander out and wrestle with the neighborhood boys. This was a lot of fun, and I would come back all dusty, tell Mom I had fallen, and she would make me change my clothes.

  One day when I was about six I stood on the pavement watching a parade of Red Guards carrying their rifles and red flags and shouting slogans when a kid from next door, for no obvious reason, smacked me right on the face and kicked me when I fell. I picked myself up and charged like a bull into my smiling attacker. When he went down, I straddled him and hit him hard on the face and neck. Within half an hour, the Communist party secretary, a thin little man, stormed into our house with the kid’s mother. He started shouting at my mom, demanding to see my father, who was away at labor camp. I hid behind a big chair.

  “What have you been teaching your kids, to fight the world? To fight communism?” He shook his fist at my tiny mom. “I could put you in a labor camp too, if you let one of your kids do this again. Do you hear me?”

  Mom was too busy crying and being nervous. She didn’t answer him right away and the secretary took this as an insult. He slapped her across the face, sending her whirling into a corner. I wanted to jump out from behind the chair and hit him with my fists, but fear held me back. I couldn’t afford to bring any more trouble to our family. After spitting his dark phlegm on our spotless floor, the man stormed out. Mom sat there, crying. I spent the rest of the day watching her hold a wet towel to her face, where the humiliating imprint of his hand remained. She was quiet. She had nothing m
ore to teach me about the cruelty outside.

  Grandpa, who liked to drink a little—to calm his bones, as he put it—saw no future for us. In school, my sisters sat in the back, although, given their height, they should have been in the middle. They couldn’t sing in the choir. They couldn’t perform in the school plays. The kids could beat them, spit on them, and the teachers would not say a thing. Grandpa wished he would die soon in the hope that they might treat us better. Dad said that was nonsense. We were fine the way we were.

  But everything wasn’t fine. We had been stripped of all our property. Dad was fired from his teaching job, leaving a family of nine with no income. We relied entirely on a small food ration that went up and down with the harvest each year. A drought could wipe out half a year’s ration and a wet season would rot the young rice in the fields. For months we would have nothing to eat but tree bark and the roots of wild plants. Even a good harvest would only get us through eight to nine months of the year. The remaining months were called “the season where the green and yellow did not meet.” During those months, Dad would be out imploring for a longer grace period on an old loan, and begging to try and borrow more money in order to pay back the debt so that they wouldn’t take away the table and chairs. He had already sold the wooden doors and doorframes inside our house to pay for food. Each door was replaced with makeshift planks of rotten wood. But never a day went by without Mom teaching us that we should have dignity in the face of hardship. She would point out to us which land and storefronts used to be ours, and we would feel quietly proud.

  For those long months when there was no food, we ate anything that came to our table. One year, we ate moldy yams three times a day for four months. Brother Jin summed it up well when he said, “I’m sick of the yams, but I’m afraid they’ll run out.” We learned to live with little and be content with what we had. Even the soupy yams brought laughter to our dining table when everyone was there. But most of the time Dad was away at labor camp, or Grandpa was being detained in the commune jail, waiting for another public humiliation meeting to be held in the market square, where he would be beaten badly.

  Mom taught us to beg Buddha for his protection and help. This was easier than potty training. All you needed to do was wash yourself really clean, button your buttons, get on your knees, and bang your head on the floor before the hidden shrine of the big, fat, smiling Buddha. Ask all you want to ask and you will be answered, Mom told us.

  I followed her to the shrine every day—the shrine that was hidden behind a window curtain in the attic, because religion was not allowed in Communist China. I knelt behind Mom and banged my head on the floor noisily, whispering my small requests. My list grew from two items to many. I asked for Dad not to get beaten by the Red Guards, for Grandpa to be well, for Mom not to cry as much. My last request was always for food—more of it, please.

  GRANDPA LIVED THE life of a mountain cat. He rose with the moon and dozed off in his small, wooden bed when the sun came out. Each midnight he would sneak into the kitchen, boil a pot of water, and brew some green tea. He said he was careful not to make too much noise, but he talked out loud to himself, and often dropped his plate or cup as he fumbled around the dark room. And when he bumped into something, you could hear him curse like a fisherman who has let the big one get away. Then there was his coughing. The foul, cheap tobacco made his lungs scream, and I had to stuff my ears with my thumbs until his nerve-racking coughs faded.

  At midnight Grandpa had his first smoke of the day, then he was ready to start his secretive life as one who deserved, not the light, but darkness.

  Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the commune cadre in charge of landlord reform had set the following rules: Grandpa could not visit his friends, he could not leave town without advance permission, and he was to write a detailed diary of his life every day. This was to be turned in every week. He wasn’t welcome in any public places, could not engage in any political discussions, and should look away if someone spit in his face. If they missed, he was to wipe the spit off the ground. There were more rules, but Grandpa forgot some when he came home to tell us about them.

  When he tried walking the street one day, children in the neighborhood threw rocks at him, and he ran home with bruises all over his face. Dad was mad at him for being so reckless. He could have been beaten to death and no one would have cared. From then on, Grandpa woke up at night and crept out into the deserted street, breathing the air of freedom in darkness. He could have danced, tumbled, or practiced kung fu and no one would have known. He’d come back before sunrise and tell us about his adventures. He’d talk about the addition to the Lius’ backyard, the fight with the Dengs’ mean dog, and the tasty fruits on the Changs’ trees. Not your typical grandfatherly routine.

  That same year, we lost our grandma to ovarian cancer. Grandpa was a changed man. He couldn’t understand the order in which Buddha had called them to wherever dead people went. He had planned on going ahead of Grandma, and had even told her about the burial. Burn me to ashes, he said, and spread them on the farm as fertilizer. There was no will, no inheritance. He couldn’t wait to leave this world. He was still hoping to join his gambling friends in the other one.

  He was like a flimsy candle, flickering in the wind. He slept in short spurts, dozing here and there. And something changed in him. He became more daring, less afraid.

  The diary he was required to turn in became cynical and sarcastic, filled with complicated puns and metaphors that confused the cadre, who had never gone to school. When the cadre told him to stop writing that way, Grandpa suggested that if he couldn’t read what was written, then maybe it was time someone else did. The cadre slapped him across the face a couple of times and threw him out of the office. Back home, Grandpa laughed when he told us the story, wiping his face with a cold towel. He considered he’d won a victory.

  He once slipped out of the house when we weren’t watching and went to the market square to buy some bananas. He dawdled along, stopping at fruit stands and vegetable counters, having a grand time. He wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. People had spit in his face. Smiling, he wiped off the spittle. They had beaten him, and he’d been able to get up and ask for more.

  He finally came to a banana stand and fished out twenty fens for two bananas. As he was paying for them, the cadre came up behind him.

  “What are you doing here, you dirty landlord?” the cadre said.

  “Oh, it’s you. I’m doing what you are doing.” Grandpa smiled.

  “Let’s see if you can do what I’m doing now,” the cadre said, slapping Grandpa so hard that he fell down on the muddy ground. Rolling in the dirt, he struggled to get to his knees, but he kept slipping. The cadre just watched him. A large crowd had gathered, but no one offered to help the old man. They threw rotten vegetables and rocks at him. Grandpa got less sympathy than a street rat being beaten by a gang of wild children.

  Just as Grandpa steadied himself, the cadre kicked his head and brought him down again. This time he was quiet. His thin, hunched body stirred a little. His hands reached out. He wanted to get up, but he couldn’t. He moaned weakly and stared at the crowd. The people dispersed and the cadre sauntered off like a hero.

  A kind old woman came to our house and told my dad what had happened. Dad quickly found Grandpa and carried him home on his back. Grandpa was in bed for two weeks, and before he was fully recovered, the cadre ordered him to go to a construction site to watch the lumber at night. Every night at nine, he would bundle up in his torn cotton coat, a cane in one hand and a lamp in the other. I’d stand by the door and watch him disappear into the darkness. We all worried about him, but he was as happy as a monkey. He couldn’t wait to go to work. He wanted to walk the new frontier, watch the stars twinkle, and enjoy the sunrise.

  One morning, he came back limping badly. Grandpa wasn’t one to fake illness. He had tripped over a rock and had fallen while chasing a bunch of hooligans trying to steal the lumber. A doctor gave written testimony a
nd the cadre temporarily let him off night duty.

  When summer came, Grandpa was ordered to chase the birds, thousands of them, off the fields that were strewn with seeds. By then, he was getting weaker and weaker every day. His lungs were failing, his kidneys were failing, and so was his liver.

  On a bad day, when every organ in his body seemed to be aching and liquor couldn’t ease the pain, Grandpa asked Dad to write an excuse; I ran with it to the cadre’s office. The cadre glanced at it and asked me how serious it was. I said Grandpa could die. The cadre pounded his desk, which startled me, and said that maybe I could go in his place. I said I would be happy to. So that was the deal.

  The next day, I waited at our door for Grandpa’s friend, a fellow landlord, to come pick me up. Mr. Gong wasn’t really a landlord. Dad said he had only owned a little bit of land, but had been unluckily mislabeled. He had been jailed, and looked like a shell of a man, with high cheekbones, a tall forehead, and a black beard. He had kind but shifty eyes, which Dad said was from the fear he felt. When he arrived, I followed ten yards behind him. I was afraid of being seen with a landlord. I was only seven, and had a long life before me. The kids might start throwing stones. They could do anything they wanted and no one would defend us. Landlords were open game. We separated and walked quietly at the edge of the street.

  The field we were to watch was five miles away from the town of Yellow Stone. The Dong Jing River slithered like a serpent along the fields. The mountains on the horizon blurred in the summer heat. The insects sang their songs, hidden among the rice plants. The soil smelled like summer. The young seeds were spread over ten acres in the middle of nowhere. The commune was growing rice for the next season, and had sowed the seeds as soon as the ripened rice was harvested and the field plowed.