Covering China

Chen Guangda in the abandoned family yard (Mira Chen)

It was the first morning in the new year of the dragon. Lingnan, a small village in Zhejiang province, was more crowded than usual. Scores of people, mostly men surnamed Chen, were sitting around rickety tables in a yard, drowsing, smoking and drinking tea. Wives and sisters came up with thermoses whenever they noticed that any cup was not full enough. Sunlight leaked through thick clouds, and the yard, formerly the Chen clan’s ancestral temple, seemed less clammy than it really was. Chens scattered in towns and cities had returned for the sake of family reunion. As usual, superfluous speeches by government officials and significant men took up most of the time. After the gathering, a fundraiser to rebuild the ancestral temple was held without advance notice.

Chen Guangda is eighty years old. Heart disease had become a considerable trouble to him in recent years. He had grown puffier and more silent. Sitting among other Chens, he merely stared at his teacup as the men spoke bombastically into the microphone about the past, present and glorious prospects of the Lingnan Village. Yet as soon as any error in the speech was detected, Guangda would immediately raise his voice to rectify it. The speaker would look slightly embarrassed, while the villagers all smiled.

Guangda disapproved of the fundraising, though he did not express his opposition publicly. He thought the financial affairs of the village committee were too opaque, and doubted whether every official was incorruptible enough not to embezzle. He always had too many complaints and criticisms – it was too much for his age and his fellow villagers. He despaired over elections in which he had no idea of what the candidates looked like. He grumbled about eulogies filling up newspapers and magazines. He often used big words like “freedom of speech” or “democracy” when talking with others. “They say that I am reactionary, but I think I’m right.” Guangda said.

The old man’s obstinacy seemed incorrigible. Decades ago he had suffered from imprisonment and labour reform for the same reason. Born in a landlord’s family to a father who had been an officer in Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army, he was defined as “black” for many years in Mao’s China. He had studied Russian at Hangzhou University and stayed there to teach after graduation. Yet the man who had been sorted into “black categories” privately criticized the university’s elections as “meaningless” and its vice-president as “uneducated”. These “devil words” brought him a conviction on charges of “defaming socialism,” and he was put into prison, and later sent to a reform-through-labour farm in Xinjiang.

Guangda returned to his small village after 21 years. His mother had starved to death long ago while he was in the prison. Other older relatives had also died or left the village. He found his only son to be an absolute stranger– a silent farmer who smoked, drank and gambled a lot. Guangda had provided nothing for his son in the past two decades except for a notorious reputation and social humiliation, making it impossible for him to advance his education or get a good job.

They started to live together like other fathers and sons. The silent son never showed resentment toward his father, although his life’s path had veered far off course due to his his father’s conviction. And Guangda, who did not like drunkards and gamblers, seldom rebuked his son for his bad habits. Common language was rare between the two generations. After the son had his own children, and then grandchildren, the old man seemed to be more excluded from the expanding family. He was always removed from the family’s casual talk and laughter, reading newspapers or practicing calligraphy.

Guangda was classified as a “retired teacher” after his rehabilitation, receiving a government pension to live on. “The money was just enough, yet the spare time was too much.” Guangda said. He started to study the village’s history and culture, as well as the clan’s genealogy. He transcribed the old genealogy book that dated from the Qing Dynasty. He drew family trees carefully, and climbed all the hills around the village to search for ancestors’ tombs, marking down their locations and conditions. He collected old photos scattered in the village and tried to figure out who the people were and what their stories might be. After he finished editing the genealogy book, the former teacher signed his Chinese and Russian names neatly in the lower right corner of the title page. He did all of this alone, without help from the family or village. “This is a good way of killing time.” He smiled, “They don’t help me on it. That’s alright. I just enjoy it myself.”

The fellow Chens were not concerned about the old man’s work, just as they did not care about all his complaints about society and politics. They had become too accustomed to that.

“He is always like that.” A middle-aged man whispered to another sitting next to him after the family gathering was over. The two shook their heads. Guangda stood up and left. He walked through narrow lanes and old houses till he reached an abandoned yard with a row dilapidated houses on the side. Guangda spent his childhood here. “When the old grandfathers died, their successors fought heatedly over the ownership of the yard. Finally they decided the best way was just to leave it there. Later one of them burnt some straw here, and the fire brought the houses down. So no one has ever cared about them since.” Guangda said slowly. He gazed at the houses, no expression on his face.