Born on 29 June, 1950, I was in a kindergarten for kids of high ranking cadres since 1954 until I entered elementary school in Xiangshan, (Fragrant Mountain) in the suburb of Beijing in 1957. When my father transferred to work in Ministry of Railways I moved to its attached elementary school which my younger brother and sister also attended before we went to middle school. We all spent a happy childhood under our parents’ love and care. I entered a famous middle school for girls in 1963 during that time I fell in love with literature and music. I also joined volleyball and table tennis training. We often discussed the novels just read and went to cinema with classmates at weekends.
In 1966 when the Cultural Revolution started, I was about to graduate from junior middle school and was recommended to take liberal art classes in another famous school. At first I was excited for not going to class but joining the revolution instead. I felt frustrated and depressed when I gradually realized I would never have a chance to study. After experiencing family changes, seeing the teacher being humiliated/tortured and the principal beaten to death, I decided to leave all these forever.
In 1968, I signed up to participate in Heilongjiang production and Construction Corps without my parents’ consent and went to 852 farm in Baoqing County of Heilongjiang province. During the 7 years in “The Great Northeast Wilderness”, I have worked as farmer, tool worker for maintenance and school teacher. In 1974 college entrance examination in China has been resumed but I have been exclude because of my parents still under persecution. So in 1975 I left Northeast farm and went to work in Langfang of Hebei province.
In 1978 I got back to Beijing in my parents efforts and soon married and got a baby girl. To take care of my newborn daughter, I started to work in Beijing Yili Food Company near my home, served as the workshop section chief, the Propaganda Department cadre. After returning to Beijing, my desire to study renewed. I finished all the courses in economic management In busy work and housework. I got bachelor degree and then obtain the title of economist.
In 1990, I worked in the public relations department of Beijing foreign enterprise service company. At the beginning of 90s, the best time of reform and opening up in China, I worked as producer and reporter with CCTV, Beijing TV, CCTV news studio and other news media to co produce a number of thematic films and documentaries to reflect the development of foreign companies in China and the growth of their Chinese staff. At the same time, I edited the company’s internal publication by myself which became a platform for communications among foreign companies and their staff in Beijing.
After retirement in 2008, I began the tours to “see the world” with family and friends. trying to arrange one or two tours to foreign countries and several domestic tours each year in the hope to learn more and make my life more fulfilling in the rest of my life.
Music and the “Great Northeastern Wilderness”
The snowy winter of 1971
That was the snowy winter, in the year of 1971, during the peak of the “Cultural Revolution (CR)”. I was working on a farm in a remote area in the Northeast of China, known as the “Great Northeast Wilderness”.
I received a letter from my younger sister, who told me our father broke his leg while working on the farm he and many of his colleagues were sent to, and he was allowed to go back home in Beijing. She also told me mother too was given the permission to go back home from her farm to take care of father. Now father was OK having undergone a surgery. My heart was in my throat when I began to read the letter, but I was a little relaxed by the time I finished the letter. After all, it was still a pretty good news that both parents were back home now. Ever since I left home for the “great northeast wilderness” in 1968, everybody in my family started to leave home one after another. Now my grandmother had past away, and the remaining five members of the family were sent to five different places. Thanks to a cousin of mine who was temporarily staying in my parents’ apartment, which would otherwise be totally empty after all of us were gone.
Many times I woke up from my dreams, wondering where I was, and where fate would take me. I never told anyone, not even my best friends, about my family’s situation. “Traitor”, “capitalist roader”, “landlord”, and other political hats were put on my parents’ heads, but they were also like a piece of giant rock on my heart. I could hardly breathe. I didn’t know who else around me here on the farm were in a similar situation like mine, but I did know no one would be able to help me.
I would go to bed early at night, trying to find the familiar channel on my transistor radio. It was hard to listen to the official Central Radio Stations on my radio due to its poor reception, but I could clearly hear the Soviet’s stations. One of such stations was of special interest to me. After the startup music piece, it would play classic music continuously. It became the only station I would listen to since I found out its existence. To me, such music was like sounds from the heaven, like clear water from a spring, flowing directly into my thirsty heart. Although I knew neither the titles nor the composers of these music pieces, whenever I heard them during those long winter nights, I felt warmth and light in my heart. From then on, I started to believe, after all, there were still some beautiful things in life.
I was assigned to be a tractor driver. There were six of us in the group and we form three two-person teams to operate an “Oriental Red 54” tractor in three shifts. It might have seemed to others that I was not smart enough to learn new skills, no one in the group would take me as a partner. So I ended up spending most of the time with the group leader, Teng Xueyou, a handsome ShanDong fellow, who had no choice but to take me along.
One day we were assigned to a task of transporting some timber logs that had been left in the mountains over the years. Our job was to tow these logs out of the mountains and pile them up somewhere to be used in the future. We drove our tractors for several tens of kilometers into the mountains and finally arrived at an open ground in the woods in dusk. We were to spend the next few nights in some shack made by logs and mud. To my surprise, I just realized then that I was the only female among asome five-dozen men all to sleep in the shack. How was I supposed to sleep among all of them?
Among the locals of the “great northeast wilderness”, men and women sleeping in the same room was certainly not unheard of. However, realizing I was a city girl from Beijing, everybody felt something needed to be done for me. So they set up a wood board divide around the corner of the shack, for me to have a secure place to sleep. They also made a separate outdoor toilet for me. At night, although I could enjoy this private “single room” all to myself, I spent a sleepless night with my clothes on, among all those snoring men.
In the next few days we towed the logs out of the woods and piled them up by the roadside, and then put them on the sled hauling to be further towed down from the mountains. The average temperature was about minus 20 to 30 degrees Celsius, and it would drop even further to minus 40 to 50 degrees during a snowstorm. Everybody’s fur hat and eyebrows were covered by thick white frost from breathing. It was hard to tell a man from a woman, let alone recognizing who was who.
My job was to assist Teng to look for timber logs left in the woods. Once a log was found, we would fix a heavy-duty wire rope on it and then use a tractor to tow it out of the woods. This job might seem simple, but it was actually very hard for me as a girl, especially in knee-deep snow. Walking in the snow was hard enough, let alone carrying some heavy-duty wire ropes. Teng asked me to drive the tractor, while he himself took up the job of tying the wire rope on the log. However, driving the tractor in snow-covered woods was not an easy job either. There were many stumps covered by snow. It would be a disaster if the tracks of the tractor got stuck in one of such stumps. To avoid such trouble, Teng decided he would operate the tractor as well as tying the wire rope to the logs all by himself. So he climbed up and down the tractor, ran back and forth between the tractor and the log, while all I could do was watch him do all the work, feeling extremely guilty. Also, for my convenience, Teng asked for the undesirable night shift so that when we were done with our shift, I could have some private time doing my washing and cleaning, in the wee hours when others were all sleeping.
When the sun rose at dawn, it cast golden sunbeams through the woods; the snow on the ground shone brightly. A new day started in the steam and smoke of breakfast cooking. One day, after my night shift, when I was sleeping in the shack, I was woken by a stream of music flowing into my ears through the window. It was the most beautiful theme tune of a violin concerto composed for a legendary love story known to everybody. I looked through the window and saw a young man, playing the violin in the snow. He was so concentrated in his music and playing the piece repeatedly, hardly noticing the subzero cold. I heard this music the first time played by my music teacher years ago, and later I also heard the complete performance of the concerto at a concert held at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Not only did I love the beautiful melody, I also enjoyed the conducting of Mr. Huang at the time. But now, during the CR, this piece of music was criticized as a “poisonous weed”, no one dared to listen to it, let alone playing. To my surprise, I could now hear it, played by a brave young man from the local city of Harbin.
One day, the hunting team brought back some elk meat. Having had no meat for a long time, now we could enjoy a rare treat of a good meal. Before we took off for our night shift, the head cook assured us he would keep some elk meat for us before it was finished by others. Indeed when we were back from our shift at night, we enjoyed a special meal prepared for us by the head cook in the kitchen. When we ate, he was humming some beautiful tunes, while stirring something in a pot on the stove. In the dimly lit kitchen, he was so much into his humming his song; he seemed to have forgotten everything around him. I could not understand a word of the lyrics, possibly because of his heavy ShanDong accent, but the sad melody and the desolate tone of his humming seemed to be telling some tragic story, touching the heart of anyone listening. Years later when the CR was over, I heard the melody again and learned its title, “My shepherd brother”. That night, what I enjoyed the most was not the elk meat, which was smelly and too tough to chew, but the nameless little tune, lovely touching and unforgettable.
Later when I got a chance to go back home in Beijing to see my parents, I spent all my savings to buy an accordion and I brought it back to the farm. Still later when my hardship on the farm was finally over and I was back to Beijing with a stable job, I bought myself a high-quality stereo system. It became my hobby to search everywhere to find all music pieces I loved, and then to quietly enjoy them at home. There will always things in life one would complain about, but in music, I can always find peace and comfort.
Right at this moment, I am listening to the Prelude to the 3rd Act (Pastorale) in opera Carmen. The melody is like a breeze of air, soothing and calming, gently touching my face, and my heart. Let me dedicate this piece of music to my long-passed youth, to the kind people in that time, who helped me, supported me, and consoled my soul.