A Loyal Character Dancer

bearing the character, while making every imaginable gesture of loyalty to Chairman Mao.”
     
    “Then came the movement of the educated youths going to the countryside,” Lihua went on. “Like others, she responded to Mao’s call whole-heartedly. She was only sixteen. Father was concerned. At his insistence, instead of leaving with her schoolmates, she went to a village in Fujian Province, Changle Village, where we had a relative who would look after her, we hoped. Things seemed not to be too bad at first. She wrote back regularly, talking about the necessity of reforming herself through hard labor, planting seeds in the rice paddy, cutting firewood on the hill, plowing with an ox in the rain ... In those years, a lot of young people believed in Mao as if he were a god.”
     
    “Then what happened?”
     
    “She suddenly stopped writing. It was impossible for us to call her. We wrote to the relative, and he said vaguely that she was fine. After a lapse of several months, we got a short letter from her, saying that she was married to Feng Dexiang, and expecting a baby. Father went there. It was a long, difficult trip. When he came back, he was a changed man, totally broken, white-haired, devastated. He did not tell me much. He had cherished high hopes for her.
     
    “We hardly heard from her at all then.” Lihua rubbed his forehead forcefully with one hand, as if in an effort to ignite his memory. “Father blamed himself. Had she remained together with her schoolmates, she, too, might have eventually returned home. This notion sent him to an early grave. And that’s the only time she came back to Shanghai. To attend Father’s funeral.”
     
    “Did she talk to you when she came back?”
     
    “Only a few meaningless words. She was totally changed. I wondered whether Father could have recognized her in her black homespun and white towel hood. How could Heaven have been so unfair to her? She cried her heart out, but talked little to anybody. Not to me. Nor even to somebody like Zhu Xiaoying, her best friend in high school. Zhu came to the funeral and gave us a quilt.”
     
    Chen saw Catherine taking notes.
     
    “Afterwards, she wrote back even less,” Lihua continued in a flat tone. “We learned that she got a job in a commune factory, but that was no iron rice bowl. Then her son died in an accident. Another devastating blow. We got the last letter from her about two years ago.”
     
    “Are there others in Shanghai still in contact with her?”
     
    “No, I don’t think so.”
     
    “How can you be sure?”
     
    “Well, her classmates had a reunion last year. A grand party in the Jin River Hotel, organized and paid for by an upstart who had an invitation card mailed to each classmate, saying that anyone unable to attend could send a family member instead. Wen did not come back for the reunion. So Zhu insisted on my going. I had never been to a five-star hotel before, so I agreed. During the meal, several of her former classmates approached me for information about her. I was not surprised. You should have seen her in high school. So many boys were infatuated with her.”
     
    “Did she have a boyfriend in school?” she asked.
     
    “No, that was unthinkable in those years. As a Red Guard cadre, she was too busy with her revolutionary activities.” Lihua added, “Secret admirers, perhaps, but not boyfriends.”
     
    “Let’s say secret admirers,” Chen said. “Can you name any of them?”
     
    “There were quite a few of them. Some were present at the reunion, too. Some of her schoolmates are down and out. Like Su Shengyi, totally broke. But he was a Red Guard cadre then, and came to our home a lot. He went to the reunion for a free meal, just like me. After a few drinks, he told me how he had admired Wen, his eyes brimming with tears. And Qiao Xiaodong was there too—he’s already in a waiting-for-retirement program, gray-haired, broken-spirited. Qiao had played Li Yuhe in The Story of the Red Lantern. They were in the same district song-and-dance ensemble. How things change.”
     
    “What about the upstart who paid for the reunion?”
     
    “Liu Qing. He entered a university in 1978, became a Wenhui Daily reporter, a published poet, and then started his own business. Now he’s a millionaire with companies in Shanghai and Suzhou.”
     
    “Was Liu also a secret admirer of hers?”
     
    “No, I don’t think so. He did not talk to me, too busy making toasts to other