My Name is Number 4 Read online

  “I won’t even have time to warm my seat in my new school,” she scoffed.

  So, after barely two years of proper junior middle-school education, I “graduated” at sixteen. My dream of completing senior middle school and going to university went up in smoke, for I had to join the work force. To make things even more ridiculous, while I and others were “waiting for work,” we were required to report to our school every day, even though there were no classes! We sat around talking and playing cards.

  I was now confronted with a harsh and unexpected reality and it frightened me. How was I going to support myself?

  Since all jobs were filled according to the government’s design, there was no such thing as applying for a position. A graduate of secondary school who did not go to university simply waited until the government assigned him or her a job. Those with connections “used the back door” to land favourable assignments, the most coveted of all being in the army because of its social status and security. Sick at heart, I filled out the official form, at the top of which, of course, was “political fitness,” that is, class background. I also had to list all my siblings, with their ages, occupations and schools.

  But what terrified me most was a new government policy, supposedly designed to relieve the pressure of overpopulation in the cities. One child from each family must move to the countryside and remain there for the rest of his or her life. Students who were the only child in their family were safe, guaranteed a job in the city, and those with siblings already working outside Shanghai had winners’ smiles on their faces. But for my family, the relocation policy meant disaster.

  If the government had wanted to cause conflict in families, it couldn’t have picked a better method. No one born in an urban area would ever voluntarily give up his or her city residency and live in the country, for country living in China was a life of hardship and deprivation. Now, long before we expected, both Number 3 and I had become middle-school “graduates.” Since Number 1 was still at university, Number 2 already had a job in Shanghai and Number 5 had just become a middle-school student, either my older sister or I would have to leave the city and live the harsh life of a peasant until she died.

  How I wished time would stop. I counted every hour until October when the axe would fall on the “graduates” of my year. I reminded myself of Great-Aunt’s optimistic saying that a boat carried by the river’s current would always straighten itself out before it came to the bridge. But I wasn’t so sure. The battles in families intensified as siblings fought like enemies. One of my classmates, who had walked out on her adoptive parents and denounced them as capitalist bloodsuckers, now realized that when she returned to her biological family, where she had siblings, she had given up her “only child” status within her adoptive family for an uncertain future. She feared she would be the one chosen to go to the countryside. She begged forgiveness from her adoptive parents, but they were brokenhearted and refused to take her back.

  I had no one to share my troubles with or to advise me. Great-Aunt never liked to talk over problems; she relied on her homily about the boat. My older brothers had replaced my parents in many ways, but I didn’t want to burden them. Whatever they decided between Number 3 and me would leave one of us bitter and disappointed. Some of my classmates came to school with horror stories of their parents’ suffering, wracked with guilt and indecision when they had to pick one of their children to send away. I desperately missed my father’s guidance, and yet I couldn’t forget Mother’s agony when she had to choose which of her sons would sacrifice his education to support the family.

  The tension in our home grew to be unbearable. No one would discuss our dilemma. More than once I wished that a big fight would break out to clear the air. Maybe family conflict could be helpful at times. But after many years of growing closer together because of the death of our parents and our suffering in political storms, we could not face a clash.

  In mid-October I was called back to the office and confronted by Master Wang, a worker from a nearby refrigeration-equipment factory who was part of the Propaganda Team. He informed me officially that it was time for me to give an answer. Would I or my elder sister be the one to leave Shanghai? I begged him to make an exception for us, saying that both I and Number 3 were needed at home to take care of our baby sister, as we had no parents.

  “As far as I am concerned, all three of you should go,” he shot back. “Children like you, spoiled rotten by your bourgeois parents, ought to be sent away to see the real world. Yes, that is what I am going to recommend.”

  His pen hovered over the official form. I stood there crying, stung by every word and terrified by this threat.

  “I’ll go,” I stammered. “I’ll leave. But please leave my two sisters in Shanghai!”

  “If I agree to that, you’ll go at the first opportunity?”

  “Yes!”

  With that one word, I sealed my fate.

  10. The Gang of Four, claiming to represent Mao’s wishes, was responsible for some of the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution.

  11. In a purge, opponents are removed from their positions and often killed.

  12. A “struggle meeting” was an assembly held to condemn someone publicly and force him or her to admit errors or thought-crimes. Victims were often attacked physically and sometimes beaten to death. The main purpose of such meetings was to terrorize everyone, not just punish the so-called wrongdoers.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Iran to Number 3’s school, more than a kilometre away, frantic to get there before she too was forced to “agree” to go to the countryside. There I signed a paper, witnessed by Number 3’s teacher and a member of her school’s Propaganda Team, saying I was willing to be sent to the countryside.

  As I walked home I felt as if a heavy burden had dropped from my shoulders. Finally the tension that had been oppressing us would be broken. Many would have thought that Number 3 should have been the one to go because she was two years older. Certainly that was what Great-Aunt was hoping for, although she never said a word.

  I had always felt guilty about Great-Aunt’s favouritism toward me and had occasionally hurt her feelings as a result. I wished she would treat us all equally, or show more concern for Number 5, who needed more care. My leaving Shanghai would hurt Great-Aunt deeply, and she would inevitably resent Number 3, but I was also aware that if I stayed and let Number 3 go, my conscience would give me no rest.

  All the way home I tried to think up reasons to persuade Great-Aunt that I should be the one to leave, so she wouldn’t take it out on Number 3. That evening at dinner, when I told my family my decision, I was greeted by silence and bowed heads, then Number 3 began to cry. I didn’t tell them about Master Wang’s threats because I thought I would look stupid. Later I talked to Great-Aunt alone in her room.

  “I should have known it would be you,” she sighed, using her sleeve to wipe away a tear. “Ah Si, the dragon-year girl. If your mother had let me adopt you, you would be considered an only child and you could stay here with me.”

  I told her that Number 3 would not be safe away from home because she was accident-prone. Hadn’t she hurt herself three times in one year in her physical education class? The first time, she had chipped a front tooth; the second ended with five stitches in the chin; the third brought cerebral concussion and a trip to the hospital. How would she survive in the countryside? I argued.

  As usual, reason was lost on Great-Aunt. “A clumsy person will be well taken care of,” she said, “maybe even exempted from physical labour. But who will look after you, Ah Si?”

  Master Wang wasted no time in hustling me out of Shanghai. Two weeks later at a meeting of us middle school “graduates” he gave me two options: I could go to a rubber plantation on Hainan Island in the South China Sea, a place I had heard of but knew nothing about, or to a prison farm, far north of Shanghai in Jiangsu Province.

  “Probably your father the capitalist rubber manufacturer would have loved to see you working i
n a rubber plantation,” he remarked to hoots of laughter from the other girls. “You have forty-eight hours to decide, or I’ll decide for you.”

  Stung by anger and humiliation, what I felt most was panic. What on earth did he mean—a prison farm? As far as I knew, Shanghai graduates were always sent to farms on Chong Ming Island at the mouth of the Yangtze, a four-hour boat trip from the city. And why was I the only student in the school given forty-eight hours to come to a decision?

  Our physical education instructor, Teacher Chen, took me aside and said quietly that the reason I had become the first target was because my name was at the top of the school’s welfare list, so if I was sent away they could save money. She added that if I refused to comply—as some others, backed by their parents, would—my monthly allowance would be cut off immediately. Even worse, Number 3 would not be assigned a job until I left the city. Our household, always short of money, would lose two incomes.

  For the first time in my sixteen years, I wished I had never been born into this world. I called the university and left an urgent message for Number 1 to come home. I needed his counsel badly. That night I told him I thought I should go to Hainan Island, my reason being that since it was tropical I would be spared the expense of winter clothing. Most of all, though, I was terrified at the thought of living with hardened criminals at the other place. While speaking to him, I lost control, where earlier I had refused to shed a single tear at school.

  “Why do they want to send me to a prison farm?” I cried. “What have I done to deserve this?”

  My family kept silent, not knowing what to say, and we all went to bed before dinner.

  The next morning Number 1 asked me to stay at home while he tried to find out more information. My other siblings went out too, leaving me alone with Great-Aunt, who had cried quietly the whole night through. Now she bustled around, pretending to be busy. Watching her, I realized how much I was going to miss her. I wished she would tell me how much she loved me and how she didn’t want me to leave her.

  By lunchtime Number 1 had returned with news. He had visited the Farm Management Bureau of East China Region and talked to a clerk there. The rubber plantation, he said, was in one of the poorest areas in China and had long suffered a devastating outbreak of hepatitis. That was one of the reasons new workers were being recruited. The prison farm was called Da Feng, Big Harvest, and was near the coast of the Yellow Sea. The farm had been set up in the early 1950s to put away political prisoners; later it became a labour camp for other criminals.

  “But they’re all minor offenders, Ah Si,” Number 1 tried to reassure me. “And some of them have been sent there because of their dissolute lifestyle. They won’t harm you so long as you keep away from them.”

  I had learnt from da-zi-bao that “dissolute lifestyle” referred to men who, like my great-grandfather, had had more than one wife, or to those who messed around with others’ spouses. Unmarried people caught “sleeping together” were also in this category.

  I felt only a little better. It seemed that either choice would be hell on earth. Being sixteen was supposed to be like opening the first page to a bright future. To me it was as if someone had shut the book of life in my face.

  I chose the prison farm.

  One week later, Teacher Chen came to our home and brought with her the official notice of my assignment. My departure date was November 20, less than two weeks away. Only after I had left Shanghai would Number 3 be assigned a job, the notice said.

  “Ah Si! I don’t want you to go!” Number 5 cried.

  Everyone, even Great-Aunt, began to cry except me. I kept reminding myself that tears would only make everyone feel worse. Besides, in two weeks, totally alone and cut off, I would have all the time in the world to weep.

  When we had all calmed down a bit, Teacher Chen pointed out that the notice contained a number of rules and regulations. First and most important, I had to terminate my city hu-kou, the most vital thing I had next to life itself, so that my residence could be transferred to the prison farm. In China at that time only about 20 percent of the population had urban hu-kou and thus enjoyed better food and other supplies, because the city industries provided more than three-fifths of the nation’s revenue, not to mention the fact that Shanghai was one of only three cities directly under the central government. Beijing and Tianjin were the others. Even my younger sister was aware that if the Shanghainese had to tighten their belts, farmers were starving. Once I lost my hu-kou I could never get it back again. It was the symbol of exile.

  Second, the winter was cold there, the notice said. There was no indoor heating system. Bring warm clothes and extra bedding.

  Early next morning I left home, glad to escape the funereal silence. I turned in my hu-kou and ration coupons at the local police station and was issued food coupons valid anywhere in the country along with special certificates for a pair of rubber shoes, one cotton-blend blanket, and a mosquito net, and for raw cotton and fabric to make clothes and bedding.

  When I got home, Number 2 was waiting for me. We sat down at the dinner table and he handed me one hundred yuan, a king’s ransom, more money than any of us had ever seen in our lives.

  “I borrowed it from my factory,” he said, “so you can buy anything you need or want.”

  I was moved to tears. It would take him years to pay back such a huge sum. I didn’t know how to thank him. And at the same time, staring at the money through tear-filled eyes, I realized with an awful finality that I was going away from my family, from the apartment where I was born and raised, for the rest of my life.

  “Don’t cry, Ah Si,” he said. “Everything will be all right. Come on, Number 1 is waiting to take you to the stores.”

  Throughout the shopping trip with my eldest brother I hardly paid attention as he led me through crowded stores and purchased cotton ticking and cloth to make winter clothing. But as we passed one store window what caught my eye, of all things, was a pair of colourful nylon socks, smooth and stretchy and looking like they would fit comfortably. After years of wearing socks mended so often that I had to wear shoes at least a size too large, they seemed to me the height of luxury. I asked Number 1 to buy me a pair. He bought me two.

  Mother used to say that “far away relatives are not as dear as close neighbours,” and she was absolutely right, for our neighbours pitched in to help me prepare for my exile. Mrs. Yan was burning the midnight oil making my padded coat and pants.

  “The farm is called Da Feng, isn’t it?” she said. “It must be bloody cold there!” She thought Da Feng meant Big Wind because feng, meaning wind, sounds the same as feng, for harvest.

  Ying-ying’s mother’s support was also practical. She gave me two rolls of high-quality toilet paper, white as snow and soft as cotton, which she had bought in the special Overseas Chinese store before the Cultural Revolution. She told me that when I had my period, if I had to walk a lot I should wrap this tissue around the rough sanitary paper.

  Great-Aunt kept herself busy all the time, so busy she said she didn’t have time to talk to me. That was typical. Whenever she was sad or angry, silence was her response. She sat in front of the coal stove hour after hour, day after day, roasting flour in a wok, stirring it carefully so it wouldn’t burn. Roast flour was cheap and handy, and when mixed with boiled water it swelled up and filled the stomach. If a little sugar was added, it became a treat. But the procedure took tremendous time and patience and I was shocked to see how much Great-Aunt had prepared for me. She had used up all her food coupons, plus some she had borrowed from neighbours, to buy the flour. That too was typical.

  In the following days and at nights as we lay side by side, I waited for Great-Aunt to tell me to watch out for myself because I would be alone, and that she would miss me. I yearned for her to say that somehow we would make do without my welfare stipend or a job for Number 3 and that I wouldn’t have to leave home after all.

  By that point in my life, I should have known that hope itself was a fantasy.<
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  PART TWO

  DA FENG PRISON FARM

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After an overnight passage on the ship, The East Is Red, Number 8, a flaking hulk crammed with miserable teenagers, I climbed aboard a decrepit bus to begin the long ride north of the Yangtze River to the prison farm. The fields around the city of Nangtong in Jiangsu Province soon fell away behind our convoy and we entered a flat and not quite believable landscape, swept by wind so strong it forced its way around the edges of the windows into the buses. For kilometre after kilometre there was not a tree, a building or a human being to be seen under the grey November sky. Raised in one of the country’s largest cities, I had never seen a street empty of people, not even in the middle of the night. I was no expert in country living, but in the countryside surrounding Qingyang, where, before Father’s operation, we had travelled every year to visit Grandfather, I had always seen farmers working in fields divided by narrow paddy dikes, or walking the dirt roads. There, even in winter, the densely populated land was green and the air heavy with humidity and the rich odours of growing plants. This emptiness could mean only one thing: the soil was no good for farming.

  “House, house!” someone yelled from the front of the bus. We had been rattling along for five hours. Through the dust-coated window I saw a cluster of thatch-roofed buildings. The bus turned off the road and bumped through a village on a rutted track. It turned onto a wider road blanketed with white powder. The unfamiliar substance also covered the fields, and seemed like a permanent feature.