Then a staff member, Li Manyin, raised his hand and was allowed to speak. With his round eyes riveted on me, he asked almost jokingly, "I heard that you were quite thick with an American woman in Pusan. Can you tell us about this special relationship?"
A few men snickered. I got angry and said, "That was a doctor who saved my leg."
Another man put in, "Didn't you hold her hand teaching her how to write Chinese?"
Astounded, I didn't answer, wondering how they had come to know so much. Did my friend Ding Wanlin betray me? That was possible. No, there was nothing worth reporting about my relationship with Dr. Greene. Then where did they get the information?
"Comrade Yu Yuan, please answer the question," said Hao Chaolin. He was presiding over the meeting, though he didn't say much. He must have made sure beforehand that these questions would be brought up.
"She was a doctor in charge of my case," I said. "She had grown up in China, so she treated us well. In fact she was very kind to every patient there."
"But she's an American, isn't she?" the kitchen squad leader asked.
"Yes, she is."
"Didn't you teach her how to write an ancient poem?" another cook said.
"My goodness, this is like a cross-examination! Do you think we were lovers? Ludicrous, I don't even know her first name. I taught her how to write the characters, all right. There was no secret about it. I used the poem as a sample. Commissar Pei told me to remain close to her so that I could get information from her."
"How close?" another man asked.
"Yes, what did she give you?" chipped in a third voice.
"Chocolate bars?"
"Condensed milk?"
"Cereals?"
Some of them chuckled. Chang Ming stepped in, saying with a solemn face, "We shouldn't spend too much time on this. Commissar Pei did want him to keep a friendly relationship with that woman. Comrade Yu Yuan also got some good paper from her for Commissar Pei."
A few cooks hee-hawed. But Ming's words saved my neck, and I couldn't help looking at him gratefully. Though a college graduate, he knew how to deal with these men, who liked and respected him. So his words quieted them down. I noticed a dark shadow cross Chaolin's scabbed face, but he let them move on to the next man.
We had to wrap up the meeting earlier than the other groups because the cooks started working at 3:30 p.m. Before we ended the session, Chaolin proposed a motion – I should turn in my Bible to the higher-ups – which was voted for overwhelmingly. I was the only one who didn't raise his hand, and I couldn't disobey. So my Bible became the source of writing paper at the headquarters.
I was angry at heart. The Communists were good only at maltreating their own people and people close to them. Some of their men had just been murdered in other compounds, but nobody here had bothered to examine the Communists' negligence in organizing opposition to the screening. Instead, they'd begun to discipline their own ranks. In my mind echoed the words of Han Shu, the chief of Compound 72: "History has shown that the Communists always treat their enemies more leniently than their own people. Only by becoming their significant enemies can you survive decently."
12. STAGING A PLAY
Despite the leaders' efforts to organize and inspire the prisoners, the initial enthusiasm for our union in Compound 602 soon faded away and a lot of men turned moody again. Clearly the Communists had lost the battle of the screening – out of twenty thousand Chinese POWs more than fourteen thousand had refused to repatriate, most of them voluntarily but some against their will. To rebuild the comrades' confidence and revive their spirit, a performing arts troupe was formed, a couple of songs were composed, and several entertainments were provided, including poems, cartoons, and music (played mainly on self-made instruments). Then a group of men collaborated on the script for a play, entitled The Dream on Wall Street; it was about how the American capitalists controlled the White House and the Congress, and how they were behind the Korean War, striving to rule the globe. The play consisted of three acts and five scenes. Having read the script, the compound leaders decided to have it staged. To do this, the troupe needed a platform, props, and costumes. But how could they come by those things here?
To my surprise, some men began building an "open-air theater." In front of the barracks was an open field with bumps and sunken areas in it; toward its northern end the ground bulged a little, a foot or two higher than the rest of the field. Each battalion sent over sixty men to level the ground and heap up earth to make a stage, so that all of the audience sitting in the field could see the performance. Within three days a large platform was built out of oil drums, rocks, crates, tent poles, water pipes, and canvas. In spite of the mishmash, the "theater" looked quite impressive, as good as most stages improvised in the countryside back in China, where after the fall harvest villagers would hire troupes to perform for them. I wasn't interested in the play, which was more like a propaganda skit, but I was impressed by the men's ingenuity in staging it. They overcame one difficulty after another and created all the structures and props needed for the performance. They undid flour sacks, washed them clean, dyed them with tincture of Mercurochrome or that of gentian violet, basted them together, and hung the pieces up as curtains. They also used olive green blankets to make Western suits and American officers' uniforms. The battalions sent over some electricians to install lamps. To adjust the intensity of the light to the drama, they managed to control the electric current with an ad hoc resistor – salt water in a junked porcelain sink. Most of the props were made of wood and burlap sacks, variously painted. Drums were improvised out of bottomless oil cans tightly sealed with rain cloth at both ends. Two violins were created as well – the makers used bamboo and wooden boards and unraveled some nylon shoelaces to get the sturdy strands, then twisted them into strings.
The director of the play was Meng Feihan, a man who had lost his right foot. Before joining the Communist army, he had been a college student in Hong Kong. A talented musician and also a composer, he taught the prisoners how to sing more effectively and how to read music. He never seemed to tire of teaching others; three men were busy learning how to compose from him. Though crippled, he was more active than anybody else. Whenever he finished working on a scene, he would be bathed in perspiration. I guessed he hadn't fully recuperated from his injury yet. He was very strict about rehearsals – if one thing wasn't right he would make the actors repeat it again and again until he was satisfied. He insisted that every one of them learn his lines by heart. Yet however stern he was with them, the inmates respected him.
After a week's preparation, the play was ready for the stage. Ming took the role of Harry Truman. He was good at acting and often made people howl with laughter at the rehearsals. Since most of the characters were Caucasians, the actors would have to put on makeup to transform their Asiatic features, but there was no eyebrow pencil or putty or paint available. From Dr. Wang, Ming got some aspirins and exchanged them for makeup with two South Korean guards. They gave him powdered dyestuff, chewing gum, vanishing cream, paraffin wax, and an eyebrow pencil. To prepare the makeup, the actors mixed the colored powder with Vaseline given them by a medic. The gum was used to enlarge their Chinese noses. Two men were assigned to chew it, then to wash the lumps clean; it was not only pliable but also stickier, much better than putty, the conventional material used for this purpose in the theater.