The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China

With the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 came a redistribution of land—the “land reform.” To millions of Chinese peasants who had labored for centuries in direst poverty, with neither land nor hope, the agrarian revolution meant at last a means for them to support themselves—and hope. It brought to some as well a new revolutionary ardor to sustain them on the further slow and difficult journey that they faced.

In 1950 I was eighteen years old. I had just gotten my first real job, at the Central Film Bureau in Peking. The following year, I joined many other urban workers—artists, writers, and office workers in the countryside with the peasants, carrying out the land reform. Over the next twenty years we lived and worked for months at a time in villages scattered across the vastness of China.

This novel is based on my experiences during those years. Like Ling-ling, I went first to Gansu Province, in the Northwest, an area as foreign to me—young and city-bred—as the moon. This is the source of most of the incidents and events described; the characters are people I met, knew, or just glimpsed in passing. They are real people. This story is fiction, but it is true.

Yuan-tsung Chen

1
  

As I look back at it now, the cool unconcern of my family and friends—and I do not exclude myself—was astounding. We were in the middle of a bloody civil war that had paused, but only briefly, to “discuss peace” while each side prepared for the final, furious round. A thin line of Guomindang government troops was dug in on the southern bank of the Yangzi River, braced for the expected onslaught of the Communist-led insurgent army massing on the northern bank. A million men were getting ready to slaughter each other just a few hours' drive from Shanghai where my aunt and I sat at our well-laid breakfast table waiting to hear my uncle declaim his latest poem.

My uncle was handsome, well built, and worldly wise. He had married my aunt for her dowry; after twenty years, in spite of—or perhaps because of—civil wars, invasion, and revolution, he had more than tripled our fortunes. Now the problems of meeting the right people and making money were no longer pressing. We lived in a comfortable villa in Shanghai's old French Concession and he had taken to cultivating his poetic talent.

He was proud of his lyrics and liked to read them to us after dinner, particularly if we had guests. “I have a new poem,” he would announce at a pause in the conversation, and without waiting for an invitation he would recite it. If it was on the subject of love or beauty he would dedicate it
with an Italianate gesture of his outstretched arms to the most attractive lady in the room. If the guests were more numerous than his inspirations, sometimes the same poem would have to suffice for several women in turn.

As the old Chinese saying has it, “You listen to the man who feeds you.” So my aunt and I—they had adopted me as a child when my parents died—listened and, when we had guests, led the applause.

My uncle's muse usually arrived on Sunday mornings before breakfast. My aunt and I would wait in the breakfast room, scanning the newspaper while he took his time muttering and humming to himself in bed. When he joined us he would have his poem jotted down on his scratch pad. But this Sunday morning, in February 1949, he came to the table empty-handed. Inspiration struck only in the middle of breakfast. He halted his chopsticks in midair, the little jade oval of a pigeon's egg delicately held. Then he gulped the mouthful down, pushed away his bowl, and with a faraway look in his eyes began to tap rhythmically on the table. My aunt motioned me with her hand to continue eating and not disturb him, and soon we were rewarded. With a cry of triumph and satisfaction, he thumped the table with his clenched fist. The poem was born. I can't remember the beginning, but it ended with the lines:

The poem so delighted my aunt that she decided then and there to give a special dinner party to introduce it to our friends and acquaintances. “It hits just the right note of democracy,” she said.

For the next week she was so occupied with preparations for the hastily summoned party that I hardly saw her at all. I ran errands for her but I had no idea what was really in her mind until just before the party when she called me into the sanctum of her dressing room. The air was heavy with the scent of perfumes, and the subdued light hinted at the exchange of intimate confidences, but
she asked me abruptly, “Ling-ling, have you read today's newspaper?”

I was standing by her side, and the big, three-leaved mirror reflected the two of us in multiple images. My mind had floated off, daydreaming: “My long, arching eyebrows are my pride.” I bent over and kissed her cheek before answering, “Yes. But what is special in it?”

“This may be the last dinner party we'll ever give here.”

“But the Guomindang and Communist Parties are talking peace now!”

“That's just another way of making war. Both are trying to win people over to their side. Several of our friends have been approached by … uh … certain persons. Quite a few are talking to both sides while they make their plans. But today's newspapers report that everything may come to a head in the next few days.”

“And Uncle?”

“He has consulted Mr. Li.”

“Uncle trusts Mr. Li. He can do what Mr. Li does.”

“That's not so simple. Mr. Li has a large family. He doesn't have to put all his eggs into one basket. It seems that he himself will stay on in the mainland. His younger brother will go to Taiwan to open a branch store. And Third Brother will set up a factory in Hong Kong. But we're in a different position—there're only the three of us in the family, and two are helpless women.”

“Auntie, would you be happier if I were a boy?”

“You still can't forget the servants' gossip, can you? When you were little, they used to tease you: ‘Your auntie would be happier if you were a boy. A son can bring glory to his parents.' So you wanted to show you were as good as any boy. You fought them. When you came home after school, you boasted about how you had jumped higher and run faster or even eaten more than the boys. That's a child's world.” She fell silent. “Now, this is a grownup's world for you, and it's a man's world.”

She stretched out her fingers and for a moment silently contemplated the glittering pink nails.

“How do you like this nail polish?” she asked, looking at my reflection in the mirror.

“Perhaps it's a bit extreme.”

My aunt considered this for a moment and then silently nodded her head. Then she stoppered the small, pink bottle and put it carefully aside in a drawer filled with other little bottles of various shades of red and pink. Slowly closing the drawer, she thrust another question at me.