During 1960s and 70s in China, from the book, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea by Fox Butterfield. (Note the difference that you would have seen in a typical Indian context). To die over an unhappy love affair is absolutely worthless. You should plunge yourself into the hot struggle for production and gradually your wounds will be healed. -Advice from the editors of China Youth News to a lovelorn young man jilted by his girl friend. Lili was an exceptionally pretty teen-ager, with smooth white skin , shiny black hair, and delicately carved features. H er father was a senior general in the People s Liberation Army, and she had always led a comfortable life . She went to a special school for children of high cad res , her family had a spacious house, and there was a maid to help with the chores. Until the Cultural Revolution in 1 967 . Then her father was arrested on trumped-up charges of being a capi talist roader. He was taken to a struggle session where he was s houted at, insu lted , and spit on , and then d ragged off to prison where he was tortured to death. Lili s mother, the daughter of a former landlord and a woman unaccustOmed to hard ship, went mad and d ied . Because her father had been branded a trai tor, the familys house was confiscated and Lili was expelled from h igh school . At the age of seventeen Lili was left alone to fend for herself and her younger sister, who was twelve. A mutual friend who recounted Lili s adventures said that her only recourse was to become a beggar, for her only other resources, her clothes , a silk bedspread , her cello, were soon sold off for food . Her younger sister fell ill, probably from eating nothing but boiled cabbage leavings from the market in the city of Hangzhou, where they lived . Lili was desperate. That was w hen the envelopes began to arrive every month with 50 yuan ( $ 3 3 ) inside and no return address . It was more than an average month s wage at the time. At first Lili could not believe it and put the money aside. But, she said , when no one came around knocking at the door, I decided to use the money for my sister. The money continued to come until two years later when Lili made it i nto the army. Because of her good looks and her musical talent, she was put into a military song and dance troupe that traveled around the country entertaining high-level officers . It was only then, during a visit to Peking , that she discovered who her mysterious benefactor was . He was an old friend of her fathers, a general himself, named Cao, who had found out where Lili was and sent the money. Natu rally Lili felt an enormous debt to him and went to see him whenever her ensem ble performed in Peking. There was one slight problem. Cao had a son who was also an army officer, stationed in Sichuan , in the southwest, and Cao very much wan ted Lili to marry him. Cao brought the subject up many times, but Lili had never met the son and she always put Cao off good-natured ly, pleading that she was too young to get married . In fact, Lili did not like the old-fashioned idea of an arranged marriage, which the Communists had formally declared illegal with their progressive family law of 1 9 5 0 , one of their first pieces of legislation after Liberation. But Cao persisted . He got his son transferred up from Sichuan to Peking so Lili could meet him-that only increased the trouble. She didnt like him at all. He was empty-headed and interested in noth ing but his own pleasure , she found. Then old Cao fell ill and Lili got a leave of absence to rush to Peking to be with him in the hospi tal. On his deathbed he pleaded with her to marry his son and let him die a happy man. Lili was distraught. She not only felt a great sense of obligation to Cao, but she was an orphan and had no relatives who could act as go-betweens in the traditional Chinese way to argue her case. Finally she spoke with the son , striking a deal . They would agree in front of Cao to be married , so he could die happily, but she would not marry him. But as soon as Cao was dead , the son rushed all around Peking, Lili related , telling his relatives and friends that they were engaged . Lili ignored him, but he increased the pressure. He tried to kill himself, citing his loss of face when Lili reneged on her pledge. Cao s widow then went to the Party secretary of Lili s army dan u/ei, charging her with improper conduct. She had agreed to the marriage, now she was backing out. Lili s Party leader called her in for investigation and advised her-it was tantamount to an order in the army-to marry the son since she had already commi tted herself. The son proposed what looked like a happy solution . I m losing too much face with things as they are, he said. Why not j ust go with him to the local civil affairs office and register their marriage-the official process for getting married in China today-and then they cou ld forget it. She believed him and went to register. But that n ight he broke into the house where she was staying and , in her view, raped her, since she was unwilling. I left a nice scar bite on his shoulder as she recalled .
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 18:05:43 +0000
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