Chen Shulian's vision was like morphine for the sick. It gave us a reason to bear our present harsh conditions. She portrayed Chairman Mao as the greatest political strategist ever, a man who could out-manoeuvre all his political enemies. She rigidly followed the textbooks. It was uninspiring to me but I felt this was an important class all the same if I wanted to become a true communist of tomorrow. Chen Shulian must have impressed her superiors though, because she became the head teacher of our group the following year.
Our Chinese folk dance class became my favourite class that year. I liked Teacher Chen Yuen's jokes. Sometimes he took students to catch frogs in the rice fields, or cicadas at night with our flashlights. On weekends, we would fry the frogs' legs and cicadas in his room on a small electric burner. His hobby was photography and he often invited some of the students to help him.
But during the first half of that year, Chen Yuen's personality suddenly changed. He joked less. He stopped organising out-of- school activities. He stopped his photography and became withdrawn and sad. I didn't understand and asked if there was anything wrong. His answer was always the same. "Nothing is wrong." Then one day, suddenly, he disappeared. Later we heard that he had been discovered engaging in homosexual activities. He was sent to a pig farm in the countryside to cleanse his filthy mind. Homosexuality in Mao's China was a serious criminal offence.
A year later, just as suddenly, Chen Yuen returned to the school as a carpenter. He had lost his reputation, his teaching job, his wife and his position in society. Most significantly, he had lost face. His association with dance had come to an end. He was now in the lowest class of people in China, and his every move was monitored. He had to write a weekly self-criticism and progress report to the Communist Party Monitoring Committee in our academy. I never saw him smile again.
But Chen Yuen's misfortunes went from bad to worse. One Sunday he was using the big machine saw and lost three of his fingers. There was no compensation and he had to pay all his medical expenses. He couldn't use a saw after that and he ended up cleaning the toilets. His loss of dignity was unbearable to watch, even for a young boy like me.
Chen Yuen's replacement was his former teacher, Ma Lixie. Small, thin and animated, he had an unusually loud voice and a habit of rubbing his palms together at furious speed before demonstrating an exercise, as though this gave him courage or inspiration. I learned so much from Ma Lixie. His demonstrations were of perfection. He taught us a Korean crane dance, encouraged us to learn the essence of the dance, every subtle eye and even hair movement to feel like the bird's feathers. He dared us to think the unthinkable and explore the unexplorable. He dared us to be better than him. "Qi//ng c//hu yu lan e//r s//he//ng yu lan," he would say: the colour green comes from the colour blue, but it is the stronger of the two. He challenged us to be the colour green.
That year I also met a new student, Chong Xiongjun, a tall boy with a spotty face, from one of the outer suburbs of Beijing. He was two years older than me. After lunch one day, he asked me if I'd like to spend one Sunday with his family.
"I would love to, but I don't know if my teacher will let me," I replied.
That afternoon I went to one of our political heads to ask permission to go to Chong Xiongjun's home. He said that my parents would have to write a letter to the academy. The academy couldn't take responsibility if something should happen to me, and even if my parents did give their permission, I would only be allowed to go once a month.
A reply from my parents would probably take at least three weeks by the slow Chinese post.
In the following weeks, I received my parents' reply, written by my second brother Cunyuan. They were excited about me going to the Chongs' home, especially my niang, who was happy that I would have a family close by to go to.
Xiongjun and I set off at eight o'clock the following Sunday morning. It took three different buses to get to Chaoyang district, and it was nearly ten o'clock by the time we arrived at their house. Xiongjun's grandmother was outside waiting for us. She gave him a big hug and told him she missed him so much. Xiongjun called her Lau-Lau. She reminded me of my na-na-she was old, small, with bound feet, poor eyesight and very few teeth. She looked at me and smiled broadly. "You can call me Lau-Lau too!"
The Chongs lived in a row of single-storey concrete apartments, very much like the commune layout in Li Commune, except that the space was wider between each row and the apartments were built with concrete blocks. Even the floor inside was concrete.
The Chongs' apartment had three rooms. The entrance room was used as the kitchen, dining room and living room, and the rooms on each side of the entrance room were the bedrooms. There were no doors between each room; instead they had black cotton curtains. There was no toilet, only one outside the building which was shared by about twenty families.
I soon learned that both of Xiongjun's parents worked at a local glass factory. His father reminded me of my dia, a hard worker and a man of few words. His mother seemed a little younger than her husband and, like my own niang, she was the personality of their family.
We played cards after our tea, a game called "Protecting the Emperor", which at first concerned me a little. I thought it sounded very anti-revolutionary. Then I helped to make dumplings. Xiongjun's mother was surprised. "Look at Cunxin's dumplings. They are so pretty and I bet they will taste good too."
"Ma, if you keep embarrassing my friend, he won't come again!" Xiongjun said.
That day was also the very first time I'd tasted beer. It was room temperature because there was no refrigeration, and my first mouthful was all foam.
"Do you like it?" Xiongjun asked, laughing at me because the beer made me cough.
"Yes, I like it a lot," I replied, but I felt very light-headed after my second glass.
Besides the dumplings and the beer, we also had a dish of freshly caught fish, stewed with soy sauce, vinegar and different spices, cooked until the bones were soft enough to eat. It was delicious. Xiongjun's mother was a good cook and I could tell they had spent a lot of money on this meal. They were clearly in a much better financial position than my family. Here there were two full salaries feeding five people, and plenty of food.
After lunch, his father took us all to the glass factory where he worked. There I saw hundreds of thousands of crystal clear marbles in huge piles, and special machines which heated the glass up and pulled it into thin threads. I loved playing marbles at home and they were expensive to buy, so I asked Xiongjun's father if I could keep one as a souvenir and take it home to show my brothers. Without a word, he went over to talk to the gatekeeper and when he came back I couldn't believe my ears. "You can have a pocketful of them," he told me.
"Really?"
He nodded. I was so excited when I put my hands into the huge pile of glass marbles. My brothers and my friends would be amazed. There would be enough to give one each to my brothers, cousins and even a few to my best friends. I held the shiny balls in my hands and looked at Xiongjun's father again. "Are you sure?"
He nodded once more and smiled. I was beside myself with excitement. It was as though they were balls of gold.
That Sunday with them was the best Sunday I'd had since leaving home. They made me feel like I was a member of their own family. Before I left that day, Xiongjun's mother handed me a small bag of dates. "I hope you like our family. You will come back again, won't you?" she asked sincerely, holding my hand tight.
I nodded excitedly. I only wished I could go home to see my own family on Sundays too.