Lost Underground, Chapter 7
The Generations
FEI FEI
To friends and family, I am called Fei Fei but my full name is Tang Fei Fei. I am the granddaughter of Shuhui and daughter of Li Lu Li; two women who survived Mao Zedong’s reign of terror during his Cultural Revolution. I was born in 1979 shortly after the revolution ended. Mao was dead and China was about to open up to the world under the new leadership of Deng Xiao Ping. I was born during the One Child policy and have no brothers or sisters. So, I am the bearer and keeper of our collective family history and genetic memories. It’s hard to distinguish between those things passed on to us sometimes. I am a child of the digital generation. I thrive on the ability of the internet to give me an eye to see outside of China. Although our government's censorship obstructs and distorts that view.
When I was a little girl, my grandmother read over and over to me the story of Alice in Wonderland. I followed that white rabbit down the rabbit hole to unknown destinations to do scary but wonderful things. Grandma said Alice’s journey was like the rules of chaos and nonsense that governed her world especially during the Cultural Revolution. Like Alice, her children too fell into secret places where they discovered the power of imagination, curiosity, and creativity. That place was the underground salon of the Misty Poets, a place where kids dreamed of freedom risking everything by making forbidden art, poetry, and music.
My grandmother possessed traditional Chinese traits, preferring boys in the family. I often wondered if she was disappointed that I was a girl since she never showed me warmth, and instead stressed obedience. She was a very strict lady demanding my loyalty to family traditions and perseverance to education. Although contrary to tradition she kept her family name when she married. I was afraid of her. Under her care I became a very shy, quiet child and tried my best to be invisible. She was happiest when she was painting, singing, or experimenting with her chemicals. Although I felt she sang out of tune. Over the years, I decided that while she was considered eccentric by traditional Chinese standards, she was actually a very cool person.
My mother and father divorced when I was a child, and I went to live with my grandmother. Her apartment was a three-story cadre dormitory. It was a large apartment with high ceilings. My lasting impression of that apartment was its red wooden floors. It was covered by a patina of wear that I felt witnessed and harbored secrets of the past. I itched to scratch my own pictures and poems into it. As I traced imaginary images onto it my finger warmed the surface releasing some of those secrets.
Listening to grandmother’s stories, I got to peek into her art and her life. Penetrating that rigid veneer revealed a very brave, strong, and smart woman. She was no stranger to hardship and terror. I don’t know how she retained her sanity, especially during the Japanese invasion of China.
Grandmother - XUN SHUHUI
“October 24th, 1937 burns deep in my soul like a piece of hot coal that refuses to extinguish. The Japanese soldiers had entered my own hometown of Chang ‘an. Memories of that fateful day continue to haunt me like reruns of old horror films flickering on a loop. From my hiding place in a small cupboard in our house I watch frozen in fear. Through a crack between the cupboard doors, I see the boots of the Japanese army just inches from my face. I am captive in a front row seat to witness the atrocities forced upon my family and friends. I hear my auntie’s screams as several Japanese soldiers rape her repeatedly and when all were finished with her, they bayonet and kill her. Her baby is taken from her and flung against a wall, and then quartered with their bayonets. A parade of victims is tortured and murdered before my eyes, men, women, and children. The wooden floor is red with a river of blood. It seeps under the cupboard door where I sit quietly in a red pool, watching the sticky fluid creep up into my pant leg as if to threaten that I will be next. The odor of blood and murder saturate my being...along with the shrieking sounds from those being killed and from those who knew they were about to be. In my terror and the fear of being discovered, beads of cold sweat run from my forehead and even into my ears, my eyes, and down my neck and back. Fear’s percussion pounds deep inside my chest, threatening to expose me. The salty taste of tears trickles down the back of my throat while I hold back the need to cough or vomit. The air inside the cupboard grows thin, hot, and sticky and I am trapped there for I don’t know how many hours...or perhaps days? There is no escape, and I am forced to watch silently, feel the thunder, and hear sounds of the bombs only a short distance away. I hear people running and screaming, and the gunshots. And then there are the thuds...the sounds of bodies falling onto our wooden floor...the dead and the nearly dead. And more blood flows under the cupboard doors.
I was certain they would soon find me and do to me what I saw them do to my family members and friends. I don’t recall how or when I came out of the cupboard. I think I must have been in shock because I have no memory of when it all stopped.
FEI FEI
When I was in kindergarten, my mom lived in the center of Beijing in a very tall, very old 14 story apartment building built after the founding of the country. She came to pick me up from my grandmother to stay with her every other weekend when school was out like most kids. By the time we lived there in the early 1980’s it was restored and in very good condition. As a small child I remember climbing up through a dark and narrow stairway one steep step at a time up to her tiny one-bedroom apartment on the top floor. This was my perch from which I could look down on the city and watch the seasons pass. In the summertime Beijing is very hot. The summer light pours into the small windows casting shadows of trees, passing birds, and an occasional cloud. In the fall and winter, it is filled with a cold grayish hue and the shadows of life outside have vanished. It was always warm inside and perfect for my mom and me. Being the only child as a result of the One Child Policy I was afforded a very spoiled and comfortable childhood. Education was prized and I was provided every opportunity unlike the Lost Generation before me who were denied education. Like most of my friends I thrived happily throughout my school years, shielded by my elders from the harsh reality of their lives. Sitting beside my mother I learned more about her own history during the Cultural Revolution. We visited often with my Auntie Mei Ling, and Uncle Mu Chen who taught me their love of pop culture and new things…a lot of new things. They were forward thinkers influenced by western art and literature. From them I learned about luminaries such as Kafka, Dante, Baudelaire, and so many more. I felt that they were ageless and enveloped me in their love.
With encouragement and support from my extended family, I earned my bachelor’s degree at the China University of Science and Law. After graduation I worked in the IT industry for over a decade as an administrator, serving companies such as IBM, HP, and EMC. My family was very proud, and little did I know then that I was in part fulfilling dreams lost amid the nonsense and chaos of the Cultural Revolution.
SHUHUI (GRANDMOTHER)
When I was only 5 years old, my mother and I became destitute when my father died of an opium overdose. Between 1839-60 the British muscled the drug into China to force a trade agreement by enslaving the Chinese with addiction, leading to many overdoses in what were called “The Opium Wars.” My father was president and painting professor at the teacher’s school in Daming during that time. Since his death, as the traditional Chinese daughter I acquiesced to my mother’s every demand.
As a young adult I found menial work in Beijing to help support my mother. She came to the city one day where I was working and as usual, she was determined to have her own way. She dragged me back home where she badgered me once again about just how hard life was for her. “Only you can free me from my struggles. You will marry that rich landowner even though he is very old. I am your mother, and you must do this, so I no longer have to suffer.” Resentful as I was, I remained the dutiful daughter and did as she asked, abandoning all of my dreams to relieve her of further hardship.
After my marriage by comparison to our poverty, we lived a life of luxury. My mother and I were cared for by my wealthy husband and had servants to take care of everything. I lived as a wife and captive to the old man for two interminably miserable years, and during that time, we had one prized boy together. I did my duty and produced a boy for my husband’s family. According to Confucian philosophy, I am inferior to everyone in my family including my young son, who gloried in holding the upper hand above me.
Try as I might, I could not bring myself to love this very spoiled boy child. He became just one more stone around my neck reminding me of my Confucian duty to my husband, my son, and my mother. I am trapped and I’m watching my youth steal away like a thief in the darkness. I hear voices in my head saying, “Save yourself”. I have decided to run away leaving my child, my mother, and my husband behind, giving up my young son and divorcing the old man. I knew that my mother and my son would be well cared for by this old man because the child was a boy. But I will never ever forgive my mother for stealing my entire future.
FEI FEI
Just prior to the 2000 Expo I watched as tourists began pouring into Beijing.
Thousands of bicycles roam the streets and tourists cross the streets using thick masses of bicycles as shields against the cars that nobody knows how to drive and rules of the road that don’t exist. I watched laborers planting giant trees along the newly poured freeway to hide the poverty in the buildings beside it. These full-grown trees were at least 20 feet high. Two men moved and planted these mature trees without the benefit of machinery. One man used a big wooden tripod that served as a fulcrum while the other man used the lever made of another piece of wood to lift the trees by the root balls bound with cloth into holes dug by a previous pair of laborers using only shovels. But that’s typical of how things were done even though machinery could have relieved the hard labor of the men. It seemed normal at the time, but now I realize it was pure nonsense.
Soon all the western stores and restaurants came…Gucci, Michael Kors, Coach, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonalds and more. The world expo launched the economic boom and made China appear unstoppable.
The young people studied abroad and became highly educated through government support. Between international travel and the internet, our generation to the dismay of the government, formed ideas of our own.
SHUHUI (Grandmother)
1969 and the Cultural Revolution is in full force. Landowners are considered bourgeois and sent to the prison farms for re-education which meant humiliation, beatings, starvation, and torture. Although I had married the wealthy landlord against my will, and divorced him long ago, I’m still held accountable for my mother’s actions that labeled me as a bourgeoisie, and an enemy of the Revolution.
Arriving home from school one afternoon my youngest daughter was terrified to find two women shearing the hair off my head. Through the silence of our screams, I could hear the clip of the shears, and the shouts of the women. “You are an enemy of the Revolution! You are the wife of a landowner! You are an enemy of the Revolution!” They made me kneel in the road in front of my house, on my hands and knees, breathing the dust created by curious passersby hurrying past as if afraid to be caught in this web of intimidation. I watched my dark hair fall without a sound, one clump at a time, onto the ground. The hair mixed with tears covered my face, and when the shearing was finished, I sat silent like a ghost. I watched my daughter’s anguish, her pain, and her humiliation wash over her. Standing frozen in place in horror, she uttered not a sound. Her silent screams pierced my heart, echoed through the house, and reverberated through the aching years of long ago. Upon finishing their barbering, the women pushed past my daughter as if she was invisible. They shoved me further out to the middle of the street and made me sweep the road to add to my humiliation. “Look at your daughter! See the shame you bring to your children?” My daughter remains motionless in fear and her face ashen. I watched my child standing in her own tiny shadow, and in our shared pain. No tears came, only fear, horror, and interestingly, I noticed a strange strength slowly emerge in her bearing. The women left having accomplished one more mission in saving China for Chairman Mao. They were heroes moving on to the next victim, knowing that they themselves could be next.
Later that day, a policeman and a community lady came to our house and ordered me to leave our home immediately to go to a prison farm for my crime. Able to do nothing to defend me, my dear husband took me to the train where he planned to take me to his own hometown to do my penance. When we arrived at the station, we learned he was forbidden to join me on the journey. I boarded alone, never to see my family together again. I brought with me sleeping pills to commit suicide should they insult and humiliate me further. My beloved husband watched helplessly as the train stole away from the station, carrying me with it.
For over a year, I spent my days sitting alone in my little house where I was outcast. The villagers chose to ignore me and treated me like a leper for fear that somehow, they would be painted with the same brush that isolated me, leaving me with nothing and no means of support.
During my exile, the leaders in my village came to my house and happily informed me that my dear husband was dead. A cold stillness enveloped me like an acidulous fog while their words hung suspended in air, skimmed the surface of my consciousness, and paralyzed me. I watched the morning light penetrate the kitchen curtains, splintered into a kaleidoscope of color, spilled onto the windowsill, and then hop-scotched across the jars of water that glittered where seedlings made roots for the spring planting.
One morning I overheard the village women’s gossip that my two youngest children were holding secret meetings under the government’s radar. Young artists, poets, and musicians were gathering in our home to learn about western art and culture. In these underground salons they were risking their lives to search for freedom. Most parents at that time would forbid such activities from their homes for fear of reprisal from the government. Condoning such activity could mean the death and torture of all participants and family members.
I knew what freedom means and I knew first-hand what it means to have it stolen. I approved of those activities in our home because for me freedom is worth more than life itself. The salon provided the young people shelter for their minds and hearts from injustices foisted upon the people of China. These young people carry the seeds of freedom and justice into the future. Regardless of the risk those seeds must be planted and germinated wherever the seeds land.
FEI FEI
My husband and I were both college graduates, soccer fans, and dated through the internet. Fan gatherings brought us together and we fell in love. I married Lei Yun in 2013. From our home in Beijing, we dreamed about living in the West for years, but it wasn’t financially viable.
But the Covid pandemic in 2020 changed everything. They used our phones to track mandatory daily Covid tests. A negative test turned our phone screen green, meaning we were allowed to go outside our home. A positive test turned our screens red meaning we could not leave our home. Anyone on the street could ask to see our phone and if caught defying the order with a red screen, they could call the police and send us to jail. It was the last straw on top of so many government policies severely infringing on our freedoms. The days of captivity in our homes felt like an eternity.
My grandmother’s stories play in my head over and over again. I am in awe of the courage she had to muster throughout her entire life to survive. Relinquishing her son to save herself had to be hard. I met him only once and yes, he was the spoiled male child, a product of the One Child Policy. He was arrogant and boastful.
I see grandmother’s life reflected in my own face and like her, I too face abandoning everything and everyone. I fear for our future and our lives because of my outspoken husband’s work on his social media. The government is coming after him because of his political perspectives and it will only be a matter of time.
We took time carefully planning an escape. In 2023 we made a break for Canada because of a friendlier immigration policy among the western countries. Would my grandmother and her children have left China to escape the oppression if they had the chance?
LEI YUN
I am so fortunate to be an integral part of my wife Fei Fei’s family. Through them I learned the hidden history of China and the horror of the Cultural Revolution. I also learned about the beauty they found among the ruins of their culture.
Born after the Cultural Revolution, I grew up in the Northeast of China, a great distance from Beijing and a sharp contrast. The Northeast is an important industrial area with a prevailing factory culture and a weak sense of clan or family. People are highly dependent on the government system, and most people will actively cooperate with national policies without question. Our society is driven by the Communist Party, and we are considered the children of China as opposed to children of a natural family unit. The government’s One Child policy was quite successfully enforced there. I went to kindergarten and first grade in the township where I was born. In my primary school class, there were fifty or sixty people in the class, and there were only four or five people who were not an Only Child. In elementary school, the American TV series "Growing Pains" was very popular in China, and I loved watching it, so I was full of longing for Western education methods.
The economic conditions and cultural entertainment in the Northeast were not comparable to the sophistication of Beijing. My family eventually moved to the city where I studied Chinese Language and Literature at Dalian University.
Moving to Beijing as a young adult, I lived as a “Beijing Drifter” in a basement for a time. Completely invisible to the sun, it was cheap, and less than ten square meters. The government does not allow people to move without permission and permits particularly in Beijing. Outsiders need to apply for a residence permit. Many people from outside of Beijing lived without permission in these basements. Having no household registration as required in Beijing and no stable housing, temporary residents are considered Beijing Drifters. Beijing had neighborhoods with large numbers of drifters where rental housing was cheap. After Xi came to power, the government stepped up evictions resulting in massive, forced evictions, making Beijing even less tolerant of outside workers.
My first job was as a newspaper reporter for a metropolitan paper. Moving to Beijing I became a "Beijing Drifter", entering the gaming industry, doing industry reporting and media operations for companies such as Tencent. In 2018, I quit my job and started to specialize in my own very successful self-publishing media, which consists of writing film and TV reviews, music reviews, and reviews of popularity focused on the first three decades of China's reform and opening up. The government constantly monitored and watched my activities.
I learned from my wife’s extended family the intimate details of the underground salons, the prison farms, and how they managed to survive. We lived with my mother-in-law who taught me about the music that saved their lives. In her small kitchen she made the most delicious food, while passing on her family history. With her dainty hands she rolled out the soft white dough she made, then cut them round with a cookie cutter. We all took our turn at stuffing the dough rounds with minced pork, ginger, wine, celery, and other aromatic ingredients. Each memory was tucked neatly into her history, the same way we tucked the filling into the dumpling dough. The steam rising from the stove as they cooked coaxed more memories from her for us to preserve.
A whistling tea kettle made its own music, while an accordion stood mute in a corner, but not forgotten, as she told of her brother-in-law who was imprisoned for bringing the Beatles music to China. In 1970, he was arrested and given a death sentence by firing squad. The order was signed twice during his imprisonment. After 7 years of imprisonment and a series of chaotic events, he was finally released due to the intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai. I captured that story in my own article for publication “The Beatles in China During the Cultural Revolution”.
FEI FEI
Lei Yun and his friends are a part of the Neo-Cultural Revolution. This term was coined by our generation and is popular among dissidents. It refers to the period after Xi Jinping came to power, during which cultural regulation has been intensified and the space for free speech on public platforms has been severely restricted. Film and television promote his agenda leading to an ideological confrontation with the West. Specific measures include banning influential figures on social media; producing new mainstream films; and supporting nationalist influencers.
The government also encourages students to report teachers and citizens, to report "public intellectuals," leading to a wave of denunciations. Many foreign companies have been accused of insulting China just because they used fashion models with small eyes. A Chinese company was accused of being pro-Japanese because their bottle caps resembled the Japanese flag. Some university professors have been exposed by students for expressing historical and political views that differ from those of the government. Nonsense and chaos rear their ugly heads once again and we fear history repeating itself.
LEI YUN
Since the start of the 2019 epidemic, we slowly realized that our private information was being monitored, each of us are required to use a QR code to go in and out of all kinds of public places, even back to our homes, and as time pushed on this didn't get better, it got worse, our personal information was being watched, our human rights were being trampled on, and up through 2022 we were forced to be locked up in our homes even though our community saw no COVID. In my opinion there was no reason to inhibit our freedom, and being forced to be locked up in our small apartments was the last straw. No one knows when you will regain your freedom, and the feeling of being locked up for another 5 days after 5 days with a notice to do it again and again is a desperate feeling, and even though we were released from the ban after 25 days, that combined with the threat that I might be arrested for my social media views made me determined to take my wife and leave China to find freedom while knowing that we will never be able to return.
All our worldly goods were contained in two large suitcases that we carried on our journey from China, to Japan, and to the United States before heading to our final destination in Canada. Everything else and everyone else had to be left behind and abandoned. A rented SUV and driver carried us from the airport to the suburbs of Seattle where a friend hosted us so we could rest for a few days before heading safely to Canada to make a new home.
FEI FEI
I’m reminded once again of the story of Alice and her journey of discovery and amazement. In the chill and darkness of the evening, we each push one heavy suitcase up a strange steep driveway to a home we’ve never been to, belonging to a woman we’ve never met but only heard about. I heard crickets singing under the light of the moon, and the gravel crunching under my feet rolling me slightly backwards with each step forward. I was unsure of my English, exhausted, and totally disoriented. Objects around me seemed to magnify, then diminish. Brilliant colors flashed behind my eyes and as quickly, faded. Weary from our long and frantic journey, I was relieved to hear our host would take us immediately to our room so we could unwind and finally sleep. I laid my head on a cool white pillow, my body enveloped in warm down comforters, and I followed the shadow of a rabbit quietly leading us from our land of chaos and nonsense to a land of promise and freedom that my grandmother and my mother had only dreamed of.