Lost Underground, Chapter 4

Li Lu Li  

It’s 1971 and an exceptionally cold winter in this remote area of northwest China called the Great Northwestern Wilderness. This labor farm where I’m now confined is near Mongolia. Chairman Mao started the Cultural Revolution and demanded that each family send at least one child to these labor farms. I volunteered to go to save China, as Mao dictated. All five of my family members have been sent to different places, leaving one by one. That was the plan concocted by Chairman Mao.  

The eldest of three siblings, I am Li Lu Li. My brother is Mu Chen, and our younger sister is Mei Ling. We were born to a family of China’s leaders and intellectuals and attend the best schools in China where we thrive on education. Mao declared government officials and landowners’ enemies of the revolution, causing my parents to endure constant criticism before being taken away from Beijing for re-education.  As the eldest child I felt it my duty to go voluntarily, saving my parents the further heartbreak and agony of choosing. I volunteered to help save China to prove our family’s loyalty to the nation and ease the stress on my imprisoned parents. Because of our family background, I can see no future, there are few choices. I just want to get away from what happened to our family, and others, in Beijing. I must go. 

Like ours, families have been split up and sent as far away from one another as possible. Our house would have been left empty but fortunately after being demobilized from the Red Army my cousin stayed there. A demobilized soldier occupies a highly respected place in our society, and nobody will come to drive him away. Only one child is allowed to remain in the home and not assigned to a work farm. So, my brother claimed that right and decided to stay in our residence with my cousin. That saved us from losing our home.  

I’ve been in this Northwest place since I was 18. My mother was exiled to her hometown where she experienced an intolerable existence. She was the first to leave us. My younger sister Li Mei Ling was sent to another work farm far away from where I am. My father and his colleagues were sent to a Cadre School for re-education where they too work in hard labor. This border area I find myself in is a form of exile, and arriving here the local government has no idea of what to do with us, and we have no idea what we are here for. The production and construction corps have implemented a quasi-military management, and dating is forbidden. A few boys show an interest in me. Not wanting to cause trouble I deflect their attention. 

No one dares to break the taboo. But we are not soldiers. We are young people, and we cannot stop falling in love. The vast majority of love is platonic, with only the instinct of attracting the opposite sex. The conditions here provide no privacy, and most relationships are kept in secret.  

Letters are the only way we can communicate with one another, and those letters are few and far between. Some may have been confiscated, some lost, some never sent. Gossip among the farm workers is another way of knowing what is happening in other parts of China and to our families. But it is hard to know what is true. Everyone hears that we have to be good workers, and faithful to the party line, or our families will be punished. It’s especially hard for families like mine who are watched constantly by spies. Spies could be our neighbors, our friends, and even our own family members. Fortunately for my family, we are all very close and know we can trust one another in spite of the gossip and distance. 

As the eldest child in our family, it has always fallen to me to take care of my brother and sister. I carry all the responsibility my parents expect of their first born. My siblings always relied on me to set a good example.  As children they could play like crickets at dusk, singing and dancing, and enjoying their freedom. They know I’m at the farm, but without communication they have no idea about my life here, and I have no notion of theirs.  

It’s 1974 and the Cultural Revolution is running full steam. All music has been co-opted by the government. Made forbidden, with the exception of revolutionary music. Chairman Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing has declared all classical and western music to be destroyed. To oppose her is punishable by death. Our longtime family friend is a coloratura soprano singing classical opera. She has been forced to learn to sing in Peking Opera style and sing from her face instead of her diaphragm. It has already destroyed her beautiful voice forever. She no longer sings, not even for herself. All sheet music is being burned and musicians are destroying or burying their instruments to hide them. Some musicians copy the sheet music before burning the originals in public. The copies are dipped in wax to look like candles. Some are hidden in staircases. Some are buried in yards in hopes that they can dig them up in the future. 

I watch a grand piano being burned in a courtyard. There is no way to hide such a big instrument. I was on my way to a promising career as a concert pianist when the revolution broke out. My teachers said I was talented, and the road was paved for me. But my dreams were lost with the destruction of those instruments. Nothing is sacred. Spies and the Red Guard are ready to pounce.  

After several years of incarceration in this forsaken wilderness, I heard today from another worker returning from Beijing that my younger siblings are now conducting anti-revolutionary activities in underground salons for young artists and poets. They have an unbridled freedom in Beijing with no adult supervision. Like most young teens they live only for the moment. This will bring big trouble to our entire family if they are caught. I don’t know how much of this is true, but in my heart, I know I need to stay in prison here so the spies’ reports about me won’t endanger them. If they are caught my exemplary behavior might lessen their punishment, and the retaliation put upon our parents.  

After a long period of silence from my family, a letter from my little sister Mei Ling arrived from home, and for the first time I feel a little relieved. I’m elated to hear from her, proving to me that she is alive. I feared she may have been discovered conducting covert activities in the underground salons and may have been killed without my knowledge. But they say, “No news is good news”, so being handed a letter, I expect the worst. My heart is in my throat, and I feel like I’m about to swallow a hot stone. My frostbitten fingers have trouble unfolding the paper.  My eyes scan the letter quickly to assure myself that nobody has died, been murdered, or committed suicide. Many parts of the letter are censored by the government. My sister says that while working on the farm father broke his leg. He was taken to the Railway Hospital and is ok. He also suffered a stroke and is allowed to go back home to Beijing to recover. Mother has been approved by the Revolutionary Committee to return temporarily from her exile to go back to Beijing to take care of him.  

I feel some relief after reading the letter, but the big black censor marks crawling across the page like hungry black worms bring out the worst in my imagination. My heart remains in my throat. However, THIS is the good news. Our parents are together at home in Beijing again, at least until my mother must return to continue her exile.  

It has been several years since leaving for the farm. I’m home again in Beijing for a little while to see my father after his stroke. While here, I visit the underground salons Mei Ling and Mu Chen conduct in our home, but I am not an active participant except for singing along with the music that is playing. Sitting on the couch with salon members we sing “Yesterday” and “Yellow Submarine” again and again. We are all devoted fans of the Beatles. Records of the Brothers Four, Elvis Presley, Paul Simon and other popular music from the west brought by others are collected in the salon.  

During this stay, I bought a brand-new accordion to take back to the farm. I need music to dull the harshness of my conditions on the farm. Because there was no place to spend the meager money the government paid us, I had saved enough for this new purchase. 

Many youths cannot bear the torment of the revolution and take their own lives. For the rest of us music basically saves our lives: singing and listening to western music in secret. Still, I can see and feel the danger of this salon. I’m so afraid my siblings will be caught and punished, and I will be unable to help. 

With sadness I must leave my family and return to the wilderness in the Northwest prison to do penance for crimes never committed.  

My assignment on the farm now is to be a tractor driver on the maintenance platoon. There are six of us in the group. We form three two-person teams to operate an Oriental Red 54 tractor in three shifts. Because I’m a small city girl, others in the group think that I’m not smart enough to learn new skills. No one in the group will take me as a partner. They feel I am ignorant. According to the locals, I work but my work amounts to nothing…I’m worthless, useless. I guess that these masters are not very fond of taking on a stupid apprentice like me. So, I end up spending most of the time with the group leader, Feng Xueyou, a handsome Shandong fellow, who has no choice but to take me along.  

Our crew has received a mission to travel far into the mountains to pull out “trapped mountain trees”. The trees were not transported out as scheduled years ago and the wood has been left fallow and decaying, trapped in the mountains. We have been driving our tractors for several hundreds of miles into the mountains and finally arrive at an open ground in the woods. It’s dusk, and the wind howls in my ears. I watch my breath freeze in midair and land on my collar like frozen jewels. My fantasy is interrupted when I’m told, to my horror, that we are to spend the next few nights in some shacks nearby built of logs and mud.

I realize that on this particular mission I’m the only female among some five-dozen men and we are all to sleep in that shack. How am I supposed to sleep among all of them? 

Going back to our farm quarters hours away is not an option. Unlike the more refined city life in Beijing where men and women keep a proper distance from one another unless they are married, in Northwestern folk customs it’s not uncommon for men and women to live together. Fortunately, everyone in our crew here is aware that I am a city youth from Beijing and that we need to find a solution to this housing dilemma. 

I see large makeshift bunks on both sides of the shack, and most of the luggage has already been laid out. Large smelly oil drums are positioned in the middle aisle, which are used for burning wood for heating. Near the window are crude bunks reserved for our crew. 

After some shouting and cursing, it’s been decided that they will build a partition for me at the far side of the pavilion. Working together, they are creating a “single room” for me on the bunk with some old planks. A wooden board divider around the corner of the shack will provide me a place to sleep with a slight bit of privacy. Feng Xueyou is hanging a sack as a curtain in place of a door. Other crew members are building a small wooden fence for me next to the toilet. 

Just as my single room is completed, it’s time for everyone to assemble for dinner. Other crews returning to this station learn of my room. I feel the daggers from their eyes pierce my back. I try to look away and turn a blind eye to them. 

Dinner is finished, and tonight I am enjoying the privacy of the quarters all for myself. But I lay fully dressed in my "single room". In spite of the make-shift place of my own, there is no sound barrier and nothing but that ragged curtain to secure my privacy. Noisy snoring reverberates everywhere bouncing off the ceilings and surrounding walls, and sleep escapes me throughout the night. I will spend many more sleepless nights here with all my clothes on, still among all those snoring men just on the other side of the curtain. 

We’ve been out here for several days towing the logs out of the woods. Truck crews sent from various branches are working day and night to pull the wood out of the forest. They place it centrally on the roadside, then lift it onto large sledges, and pull it to the bottom of the mountain for stacking. The average temperature is about minus 4 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and it will drop even further to minus 40 to 58 degrees during the snowstorm. Everybody’s fur hat and eyebrows are covered by thick white frost from one’s own breathing. It’s hard to tell a man from a woman, let alone recognize who is who. 

My job is to be Feng Xueyou’s deputy. We first need to search the snowbanks for wood in the forests and use our hands to dig out one end of the wood from the snow. Then we tie it with a thick wire rope, hang it on the hook behind the tractor, and fix it firmly behind the tractor. One person directs, and the other drives, drags out the wood and puts it on the roadside. This job seems simple, but it is more than difficult for me. The snow in the forest is knee-deep, making it difficult to even take a step. I have no energy and can’t move the wire rope at all, so Feng tells me to drive the car, and he will be my assistant. I open the throttle and pull out. Trouble comes again in the form of tree stumps left buried in the snow. Feng says that we have to be careful to not run over them. If the tractor gets stuck on the tree stumps, we would be in big trouble. Looking at me, he shakes his head ever so slightly. He decides that in order to avoid such mishaps, he will drive, tie the wood, and leap up and down from the tractor all by himself. His head and face are covered with frost. The whole time I can only look at him with enormous guilt. In order to reduce my awkwardness and embarrassment at my situation, Feng Xueyou has asked me to work the night shift with him, so that when we come back in the middle of the night, I can avoid the crowd and wash myself up easily and go to the toilet without worries. 

Feng is a very good person and cares about me very much. He brings me special food when he can find it. I feel at ease with him. He helps me solve problems that I can’t handle. But we have very little time to be alone even though there are only two of us working the night shift. Fortunately, there are no other people in the dormitory during the day. When we are together, we talk about things we cannot discuss in public such as our future. Love was not discussed but we both felt it…secretly. 

This morning, the hunting team brought back a bounty of elk meat. Not having meat for some time now, we are all looking forward to the rare treat of a good meal. Since we were about to take off for our night shift, the head cook assured us he would keep some of the meat for us before it’s all devoured by the rest of the greedy diners.  

Upon our return, to our delight, he prepared a special meal for us. As I savor this luscious meal, I feel my body rewinding and recharging. I warm my hands on a cup of hot water, grateful for the generous soul of the kitchen’s head cook. Our meal is delightfully interrupted by a tune emanating from the kitchen. The cook is humming some beautiful tunes while stirring something on the kitchen stove. From my table I can see into his kitchen lit only by a small kerosene lamp. He is so consumed by his song that he seems to be lost in reverie and has forgotten his shabby surroundings. I can’t understand a word of the lyrics, possibly because of his heavy Shandong accent. His sad melody and the desolate tone of his hum seems to be telling some tragic story, touching the heart of anyone within listening distance. I don’t recognize the tune but I’m suddenly aware that the elk meat is smelly and too tough to chew. But that nameless little tune is lovely, touching, and unforgettable. I carry this gift with me in this desolate land to help me through the harshness of my days and nights.  

Exhausted from the night’s work, I fall into bed before dawn. I wake from my dreams, dazed and not knowing where I am or where fate will take me. I’m so afraid to tell anyone, not even my best friends, about my family’s situation. As former leaders and intellectuals of China, titles of traitor, capitalist, landlord, and other political hats have been placed on my parents’ heads. They feel like giant rocks on my heart. I can barely breathe. I don’t know who else around me on the farm is in a similar family situation. I don’t dare ask. I know no one will be able to help me. 

I’m delighted when our work ends before dawn, so I can take out my transistor radio and search for the stations familiar to me. Prior to my captivity here I was trained to be a concert pianist. I memorized complicated classical music of Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, and Ravel. But here in this wilderness I have only my old transistor radio. My little radio does not perform well. The broadcasts from the Central Radio station have poor sound and horribly static reception. Our farm is relatively close to the Soviet Union, so I can clearly hear the broadcast from there. One of these stations never fails to excite me. After the opening song “How Vast Our Motherland Is,” the music plays non-stop…playing classical music continuously. Since I discovered its existence, it is the only station I want to listen to…the only station. To me, such music is like sounds emanating from the heavens. Each piece seems to come from nature, like clear water from a spring, flowing directly into my thirsty heart. Although I know neither the titles nor the composers of these music pieces, whenever I hear them these long cold winter nights become warm and bright. I can feel the warmth and light flow deep down inside myself. This music makes me believe there is still beauty in the world.   

Listening to my radio I found my mind drifting to times leading up to Mao’s onslaught of the Cultural Revolution.  

I was a very young teen back then and I knew of several of the salons for young intellectuals. These early salon gatherings were open and known. The members were cautious about publicizing their activities to avoid the possibility of punishment by the government who insisted on revolutionary music only. The Red Guard stood by to enforce Mao’s policies.  

A close friend and salon member, who was well known to the authorities then, was often followed and his actions were recorded. After visiting friends in Paris, he came back with a Beatles album and other western music. He often played it on his portable player in the salons. He took his friends on a boat ride and in the middle of the lake next to the Summer Palace, he blasted western music from a player and the music traveled across the water reaching the ears of the police. He was arrested on several charges but among the most serious was a charge of bringing subversive music to China. He was captured and thrown into prison. Starvation, filth, diseases, beatings, and hard labor filled his days and nights. Most die of some disease or malnutrition, and many from suicide. I feared for his life. 

During this time, my boyfriend and his friends were older than me and already famous artists, writers, musicians, and leading figures in a famous literary salon called the Sun Brigade. The sounds of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and other popular western music reverberated throughout their salon.  

Usually immersed in classical music, I was at first resistant to pop music of any kind. I felt confused when I first heard the albums played for us. But then the beat! The beat! The beat brought a static energy into the room I had never felt before. The strangeness tilted my whole being out of balance. I felt like a gyroscope spinning on a very taut string, balancing precariously in the air, then flying up with the beat, then down with the beat, landing on that string again and again while still spinning. My ears were accustomed to melodic voices of the Italians, and these performers were singing in a style I had never heard before. The more I listened, the more I began to understand. They were singing in English, and I was feeling the beat of their souls, direct and close to the lives of real people singing about their struggles and hopes for a better world. I was hearing the voice of the people and a different kind of folk music. The loud raucous beat of the Beatles was the pulse of life itself full of freedom and variety. My emotions surged as if I were drunk. I joined the others and played the songs on an old accordion, while singing “Hey Jude”. We couldn’t help but step into a new kind of music that would change our lives forever.  

The unnerving static on my radio and a voice that crackled a “Good Evening” to their listeners interrupted my reveries and pummeled me back to the monotony of life in the wilderness.   

I thought I’d become accustomed to the routine of night work and sleep out of pure exhaustion. But tonight, like so many others, I’m wide awake and too frightened to sleep. I watch the night become day and witness nature in all her glory. As the sun rises at dawn, it casts golden sunbeams through the woods, and the snow on the ground sparkles like tiny diamonds. These new days start in the steam and smoke of breakfast cooking, and I fall asleep knowing that I needn’t go with the others and instead, wait for evening to work with Feng.  

One memorable night, after my night shift, I fell asleep in the shack out of sheer exhaustion. From a ragged crack in the walI a stream of music washes over and awakens me. It is the most beautiful theme of a violin concerto composed for a legendary love story known to everybody. Squinting through the finger of light that penetrates the wall, I watch a young man, playing the violin in the snow. He is concentrating on his music and playing the piece repeatedly, hardly noticing the subzero cold. I remember hearing this music first played by my music teacher years ago. Later I also heard the complete performance of the concerto at a concert held at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. But now, during the Cultural Revolution, this piece of music was criticized as a “poisonous weed”, no one dared to listen to it, let alone play it.  

Hearing the forbidden music here in the loneliness of the Great Northern Wilderness, I’m awestruck. The music played by this brave young man from the local city of Harbin feels like the angels have come to rescue me from all my cares. It reverberates through the emptiness of the wilderness, the sounds bounce off the snow, race along the sunbeams then back up into the sky, and ricochets into the center of my being, slowing only as it pierces my soul with a warmth I cannot describe.  

It’s spring. The flowers are peeking through the ground. Spring reminds me of my childhood and my grandmother. I was her favorite grandchild. She knew I loved sweets. Even during the leanest of times, she managed to tuck away a piece of something sweet just for me. It was our secret. I remember her face being close to mine, smiling while crossing my palm with the sweet treasure. She encouraged all of us to study. Before Mao shut down all the schools, she reminded me to do my best and take advantage of the education afforded only to families like ours. We were all good students making the highest marks because of her love and support. But I see no future now and I realize there is no opportunity for further education. My only solution is to try to learn by myself on the farm. 

I’m disheartened with memories of better times and the isolation from my family is killing me. Nothing seems promising even with the onslaught of spring bursting forth everywhere. The climate has changed. The earth is damp and as the sun begins to warm it, steam starts to rise. Combined with the new fertilizers made from human and animal waste the air is pungent and heavy. The mosquitoes are thick as clouds swarming all over us. They are literally eating us alive. My arms and legs are blanketed with them, and I am bloodied from head to toe. There is no escape from the black mass seething with these menacing and carnivorous bugs.  

In summer we find some respite from these attacks of nature by seeking shelter in any place we can find. Visitors from other farms are able to visit us during warmer weather. Within the great piles of hay awaiting pick up, girls and boys fall in love and some in pure lust. There is nowhere to go for privacy but the haystacks. Finding an empty haystack is near impossible. They are mostly “occupied”. Finding love in the haystacks doubles as a hideaway from mosquito attacks.  

It’s 1977 and I am home in Beijing for good. With the death of Chairman Mao, the Cultural Revolution has finally come to an end. I had saved almost all my money during those 7 years on the farm, with the exception of the purchase of a brand-new accordion when I visited my father during his recovery from his stroke. It literally saved my sanity. I played it nearly every day after work with others who also had musical instruments. I even gave music lessons while on the farm. It gave us something to do to take our cares away, if only for a while.   

The accordion is home with me now. But I no longer play it. I just look at it every day, remembering how important it was to my survival. My accordion sits like a sentinel bearing witness to my life. Silent and undisturbed it often fills the room with distant sounds echoing from the past. I don’t need to play it anymore.  

After 7 years of imprisonment for playing Beatles music, my old friend from the Sun Brigade salon visited me today.  He spotted the accordion and began to play it. It comes alive, singing once again, but this time at the hands of a master musician. Finishing, he places it back into its cradle and the accordion stands mute once again. 

I just bought a high-quality stereo system. My hobby now is to search everywhere I can think of to find all of the music I love, and I enjoy them in solitude at home. There will always be things in life I can complain about, but in music, I can always find peace and comfort. Right at this moment, I’m listening to Prelude to the 3rd Act (Pastorale) in the opera Carmen. The melody is like a breeze of air, soothing and calming, gently touching my face, and my heart. Let me dedicate this piece of music to my long-passed youth, to the kind people in that time, who helped me, supported me, and consoled my soul.   

It’s 2018 and I’m in America with my two siblings, two Asian American friends and our long-lost friend Genghis Sung. We are gathered on San Francisco’s pier 41 awaiting the ferry boat that will take us to the Angel Island Immigration Station. During my youth I could only imagine what America was like and at times even doubted that such a country could exist. Yet, here I am, thrilled to be among old friends and new, about to learn about our ancestors’ journey to America. From the frigid water in San Francisco Bay to Angel Island, and a bumpy ride on an open bus, the sounds of the island greet us. Squawking gulls, and overgrown vines scratching against the sides of the bus is a kind of music of its own. I’m happy to be in this land of freedom. Approaching the Immigration Station, we are greeted by a large contemporary Public Artwork symbolizing liberty and justice for all. We ascend the wooden staircase into the immigration station in cadence with the ghostly footsteps of our ancestors as they are corralled into the facility.  

The station is closed to the public today. We are special guests. The caretaker has arranged for us to look through the artifacts. With our fingers we trace the outlines of the poems etched on the walls by the early Chinese captives awaiting American freedom. I feel deep loneliness, uncertainty, and anxiety in the poetry. An eerie feeling sends a chill down my spine. This place was a prison where the Chinese immigrants were held. My mind flashes back for a moment to my own captivity.  

As we descend the stairway and embark on our ferry ride back to San Francisco, I am reminded how these waters carried some to new dreams in America, and some deported back to where they came from. My heart aches for those shattered dreams. 

On the open waters of San Francisco Bay, I watch my siblings inhale the fragrance of freedom. I am so grateful for this moment, and the music of our laughter.