The dark gray sky roils. A clap of thunder. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. A flash of white light. The sky is alive. The empty black expanse seems to stretch for infinity – not a drop of moonlight in sight. The still air is charged with muted electricity and smells of rainwater and a dull earthiness.
The world is holding its breath.
A clap of thunder. One. Two. Three. Four. A boy counts under his breath, his small body shuddering in the electricity-laden air. A flash of white light. Brown eyes dart anxiously from the dirt path he has walked countless times to the whispering, rustling leaves. On this dark moonless night, the village appears haunted, looming over the boy. The boy knows the storm, knows how to count the beats between the lightning and the thunder, and knows how to anticipate the disaster in the space of a couple of heartbeats.
A clap of thunder. One. Two. Thre-
It’s 1985. Sometime in April.
The boy is a 6th grader from a small village in 太平乡, the Peace and Harmony District in a post-Maoist China. He comes from Village No. 8 out of the 10 in his district. He wonders why his village doesn’t have a name and how many other villages there are out there. How many Village No. 8s are there in China? Is there a world outside of his village? He dreams of villages outside of the small world of No. 8.
It’s 1985. Seven years after Deng Xiao Ping instituted the Open Door Policy. Nine years after Mao Ze Dong drew his last breath. The boy was born into a rapidly changing China. He knows from hearing his parents argue that the state is loosening its grip on their daily lives. For the first time, his family owns their land. He watches his mother grow impossibly thinner, gnawing on tree bark and leaves, starving herself to sell crops for money.
For the first time, his family has money. It’s not much, but it’s theirs. His family can use it to purchase the seeds, the tools, and perhaps, most dangerously, the pesticides, which only came as a liquid. People who have never owned anything possessing money are dangerous.
On this moonless night, the boy walks home from a late-night study session at the Red Flag Middle School, 红旗中学. He tries to distract himself from the thunder and lightning by counting the beats between the clap and the flash. He tries to assure himself that ghosts aren’t real and the rustling is just the wind in the bushes. He tries to convince himself that the air isn’t haunted, but it’s hard when he passes the dark huts at the fringes of his village.
He shudders, terrified of looking at the huts for too long. He knows people live there but Village No. 8 is a ghost town at night. The night closes in on him, and he can hear the ghosts’ voices. The hut at the edge of the village to his left is the house of his teacher; he can hear the ghost of his teacher’s wife humming. He can picture his teacher’s wife, eyes bright and a wide smile, handing out apple slices to the village children. He rolls the imaginary taste of an apple’s tangy explosion under his tongue. He bites down and realizes how empty the sound of molars clipping at empty air sounds. There will be no more apples. His teacher’s wife is dead. She swallowed the liquid pesticides she bought the day before. She can never hand out slices of apples to him ever again.
His eyes sting and he blinks back the tears, wrapping his arms around himself as he trudges on. He ducks his head down. The hut to his right a couple of huts down is the home of his classmate’s sister; he can hear her laughter. If he stares for too long, he’ll see her running around the backyard after his classmate, yelling at him to put on a coat because it’s cold outside. He tries to shut down the mental image of her drinking and drinking the liquid pesticides her ma bought the week before. The wind picks up. The boy shivers and presses on. The hut to the front of him is the hut of his literature teacher; he can hear the patience in his teacher’s voice. The rich Chinese characters spooling out of the hut and into crisp blackness, stories of Tang dynasty battles and Mao’s revolutionary victories. His teacher will never tell another story again; he had washed his last meal down with liquid pesticide.
The boy blinks back tears. He doesn’t understand why ghosts have taken residence in his village in 1985. Villagers whisper about his teacher’s wife, his classmate’s sister, his literature teacher, and four others who have chosen to end their life. Countless farmers are choosing suicide over another harsh day in the village’s 田地, rice paddies. Their method of choice is drinking the liquid pesticides the government has given up control over. The Chinese economy is shifting from a communist one to a capitalist one, spurred on by Deng Xiao Ping’s Open Door Policy. Villagers are free to purchase crop seeds, shovels, and liquid pesticides with their own money. Wealth disparities start emerging even amongst the villagers in Village No. 8. Suddenly villagers who lived a lifetime of owning nothing are split into villagers who owned some things and villagers who owned next to nothing.
Seven villagers commit suicide using liquid pesticides. Seven villagers’ families morph into 僵尸s, zombies who are half alive and half dead, haunted by their grief. Suicide is the answer for those who have never owned anything realizing that they now own so little compared to their neighbors.
37 years later, the boy will tell this story to a student who goes to Dartmouth College. He’ll be far away from the confines of Village No. 8 in suburban Texas. He’ll go on random tangents and the student will have to gently nudge him to get back to the point. He never cries when recounting this story, and sometimes he even laughs about it. But when the student hangs up the phone, she’ll cry and wonder how anyone could have lived through that.
That boy is my dad: Ba.
Thank you for reading A Family and Country’s History Part 1 by Amanda Chen! Stay tuned for more works by Amanda in the future and read more about her here. The second part of A Family and Country’s History is scheduled to be published next Friday, July 1st, 2022.