Ye wondered how they dared to come onto Radar Peak. This was a restricted military zone, and the guards were authorized to warn intruders only once before shooting. The guard saw that Ye was puzzled and explained that they had just received orders that Red Coast Base’s security rating had been reduced. The locals were allowed onto Radar Peak as long as they stayed outside the base. Several local peasants had already come yesterday to bring vegetables.
One of the children took out a worn-out middle school physics textbook. His hands were dirty and cracked like tree bark. In a thick Northeastern accent, he asked a simple physics question: The textbook said that a body in free fall is under constant acceleration but will always reach a terminal velocity. They had been thinking about this for several nights and could not understand why.
“You walked all this way just to ask this?” Ye asked.
“Teacher Ye, don’t you know that they’ve restarted the exam?” the girl said excitedly.
“The exam?”
“The National College Entrance Exam! Whoever studies hard and gets the best score gets to go to college! It began two years ago. Didn’t you know?”
“There’s no need for recommendations anymore?”
“No. Anyone can take the exam. Even the children of the Five Black Categories in the village can take it.”[35]
Ye was stunned. This change left her with mixed feelings. Only after a while did she realize that the children were still waiting with their books held up. She hurriedly answered their question, explaining that it was due to air resistance reaching equilibrium against the force of gravity. Then she promised that if they encountered any difficulties in their studies in the future, they could always come to her for help.
Three days later, seven children came to seek Ye. In addition to the three who had come last time, there were four more from villages located even farther away. The third time, fifteen children came to find her, and even a teacher at a small-town high school came along.
Because there was a shortage of teachers, he had to teach physics, math, and chemistry, and he came to ask Ye for some help on teaching. The man was over fifty years old, and his face was already full of wrinkles. He was very nervous in front of Ye, and spilled books everywhere. After they left the gatehouse, Ye heard him say to the students: “Children, that was a scientist. A real, bona fide scientist!”
After that, children would come to her for tutoring every few days. Sometimes there were so many of them that the gatehouse couldn’t accommodate them all. With the permission of the officers in charge of base security, the guards would escort them to the cafeteria. There, Ye put up a small blackboard and taught the children.
It was dark by the time Ye got off work on the eve of Chinese New Year, 1980. Most people at the base had already left Radar Peak for the three-day holiday, and it was quiet everywhere. Ye returned to her room. This was once the home of her and Yang Weining, but now it was empty, her only companion the unborn child within her. In the night outside, the cold wind of the Greater Khingan Mountains screamed, carrying with it the faint sound of firecrackers going off in the village of Qijiatun. Loneliness pressed down on Ye like a giant hand, and she felt herself being crushed; compressed until she was so small that she disappeared into an invisible corner of the universe….
Just then, someone knocked on her door. When she opened it, Ye first saw the guard, and then, behind him, the fire of several pine branch torches flickering in the cold wind. The torches were held aloft by a crowd of children, their faces bright red from the cold, and icicles hung from their hats. When they came into her room, they seemed to bring the cold air in with them. Two of the boys, thinly dressed, had suffered the most. They had taken off their thick coats and wrapped them around something that they carried in their arms. Unwrapping the coats revealed a large pot, the fermented cabbage and pork dumplings inside still steaming hot.
That year, eight months after she sent her signal toward the sun, Ye went into labor. Because the baby was malpositioned and her body was weak, the base clinic couldn’t handle her case and had to send her to the nearest town hospital.
This became one of the hardest times in Ye’s life. After enduring a great deal of pain and losing a large amount of blood, she sank into a coma. Through a blur she could only see three hot, blinding suns slowly orbiting around her, cruelly roasting her body. This state lasted for some time, and she hazily thought it was probably the end for her. It was her hell. The fire of the three suns would torment her and burn her forever. This was punishment for her betrayal, the betrayal that exceeded all others. She sank into terror: not for her, but for her unborn child—was the child still in her? Or had she already been born into this hell to suffer eternally with her?
She didn’t know how much time had passed. Gradually the three suns moved farther away. After a certain distance, they suddenly shrank and turned into crystalline flying stars. The air around her cooled, and her pain lessened. She finally awoke.
Ye heard a cry next to her. Turning her head with great effort, she saw the baby’s pink, wet, little face.
The doctor told Ye that she had lost more than 2,000 ml of blood. Dozens of peasants from Qijiatun had come to donate blood to her. Many of the peasants had children who Ye had tutored, but most had no connection to her at all, having only heard her name from the children and their parents. Without them, she would certainly have died.
Ye’s living situation became a problem after the birth of her child. The difficult birth had damaged her health. It was impossible for her to stay at the base with the baby all by herself, and she had no relatives who could help. Just then, an old couple living in Qijiatun came to talk to the base leaders and explained that they could take Ye and her baby home with them and take care of them. The old man used to be a hunter and also gathered some herbs for traditional medicine. Later, after the forest around the area was lost to logging, the couple had turned to farming, but people still called him Hunter Qi out of habit. They had two sons and two daughters. The daughters were married and had moved out. One of the sons was a soldier away from home, and the other was married and lived with them. The daughter-in-law had also just given birth.
Ye still hadn’t been rehabilitated politically, and the base leadership was unsure about this suggested solution. But in the end, there was no other way, and so they allowed the couple to take Ye and the baby home from the hospital on a sled.
Ye lived for more than half a year with this peasant family in the Greater Khingan Mountains. She was so weak after giving birth that her milk did not come in. During this time, the baby girl, Yang Dong, was breastfed by all the women of the village. The one who nursed her the most was Hunter Qi’s daughter-in-law, called Feng. Feng had the strong, solid frame of the women of the Northeast. She ate sorghum every day, and her large breasts were full of milk even though she was feeding two babies at the same time. Other nursing women in Qijiatun also came to feed Yang Dong. They liked her, saying that the baby had the same clever air as her mother.
Gradually, Hunter Qi’s home became the gathering place for all the women of the village. Old and young, matrons and maidens, they all liked to stop by when they had nothing else going on. They admired Ye and were curious about her, and she found that she had many women’s topics to discuss with them.
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