Confessions An Innocent Life In Communist China – Kang Zhengguo

“Miss Ahlan, let’s dance a rumba,” I suggested, imitating the male lead, and she wriggled and batted her eyelashes at me in response. When I asked her to take off her tunic, she complied with a slow imitation of a striptease, eventually flinging the tunic aside to reveal her tight chemise. Snubbing the men close at hand, she eventually allowed her sister and brother-in-law to arrange a marriage for her with a Uighur wrestling champion in faraway Yili, on the border of Xinjiang and the Soviet Union.

I speculated that she was attracted by her husband’s stardom or that she wanted a change of scene. At any rate, believing that she had left Xi’an, I was surprised to bump into her that day in 1971. She spoke noncommittally about her marriage, saying merely that it meant little to her. She had sent her little blond son to live with her husband, whom she visited only once a year. As we parted, she invited me to call her for a weekend date if I had time and gave me her work phone number and address.

Painfully aware of my lowly status as a recent returnee from the labor camps, I was shielding myself from rejection by keeping my distance from people. I asked her if she wasn’t afraid of tainting her reputation by associating with the likes of me. “You’re underestimating me!” she protested. “I’m glad to have you as a friend, and I don’t care what anybody thinks.” The vehement loyalty in her voice moved me deeply.

I lost touch with her over the following winter. As a member of the peasant construction team I lacked a private mailing address and access to a telephone, to say nothing of the energy for dating. Her job, she told me, was classified work in a tightly sequestered defense research institute on the southern outskirts of Xi’an, and bus transportation into town was highly inconvenient. When I finally found my way to a telephone during my apprenticeship at the Bell Tower Electrical Repair early in the spring of 1972, I called her right away.

Delighted to hear from me, she arranged for us to meet at the Bell Tower bus stop. If I had not taken the initiative, we probably would never have met again after our chance encounter in the street. But I had been desperately lonely and obsessed with the thought of her. As a pariah in the city I craved the comfort of a girlfriend. Yet I could not help imagining what my parents, ever pragmatic, would have said.

“You’ve sunk so low you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” Their voices rang in my ears. “How can you go gallivanting around on dates? Your friends are all a bunch of useless nobodies.” I had chosen to pursue Manli that spring despite the knowledge that she and I had no future together.

Copyright © 2005, 2004 by Kang Zhengguo English translation copyright © 2007 by SusanWilf Introduction copyright © 2007 by Perry Link Originally published in Chinese under the titles Wo De Fan Dong Zhi Shu and Chu Zhongguo Ji All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to permissions, W.

W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kang, Zhengguo. [Wo de fan dong zhi shu. English] Confessions: an innocent life in Communist China / Kang, Zhengguo; translated by Susan Wilf. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN: 978-0-393-06976-1 1. Kang, Zhengguo. 2. Authors, Chinese—20th century—Biography. I. Title. PL2869.N565Z47713 2007 895.1’351—dc22 [B] 2006103103 W. W. Norton & Company. Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com W.

W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London WIT 1kitap1.com/en Opposition is the movement of the Dao. —LAOZI 1kitap1.com/en Contents List of Illustrations Introduction by Perry Link 1 Liberation 2 Silent Garden 3 My Diaries 4 Freshman Year 5 A Glib Confession 6 Emergency Transfer 7 Expulsion 8 The Dregs of Society 9 The Gates of Hell 10 Disaster Strikes 11 Dreams of Freedom 12 Unwelcome Guests 13 Runaway 14 Dr. Zhivago 15 Underground in Xi’an 16 A Chance Encounter 17 Love in an Abandoned Temple 18 Lessons from a Goddess of Love 19 Arrested 20 Prisoner Number Two 21 Interrogation 22 Food Fantasies 23 The Verdict 24 The Holding Cell 25 Induction 26 A Shattered Dream 27 An Overdose of Potatoes 28 Sisyphean Labors 29 The Rope of the Law 30 Stolen Treats 31 Release 32 Homecoming 33 Adopted Son 34 Reincarnation as a Peasant 35 My Adoptive Father 36 A City Slicker in the Countryside 37 A Skillful Mechanic 38 An Old Flame 39 Clock Repairman 40 A Fleeting Idyll 41 Back in the Cooler 42 The Forbidden Radio 43 Father’s Death 44 My Wife 45 A Woman Is the Heart of a Home 46 Thaw 47 A Recurring Nightmare 48 You Can’t Go Home Again 49 A Small World 50 “Aim Your Guns Here” 51 Exodus 52 My Nightmare Comes True 53 Arrested Again 54 Farewell to China 55 Breaking the Silence 56 Epiphany Epilogue My Children Translator’s Note 1kitap1.com/en LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Kang family, 1945 The Kang family, 1960 Kang Zhengguo following his release from detention, 1965 The walls of the Number Two Brickyard The remains of the east kilns in 2004 Grandfather Shuci, Shuzhi, and Zhengguan, 1966 Zhengguan and Zhengguo, 1971 Xinwang Village, ca.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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