Zheyi Liu that the movement would end after Mao’s death, but clearly Deng Xiaoping didn’t have same intention. Shifu Wang puffs more smoke rings and says, “He needs time. The elder ones’re still controlling the army. Deng can’t go through all the reformation at once. As soon as the economy got fixed, more jobs would be offered and those kids wouldn’t need to work in the fields anymore.” Shifu Wang’s two sons were sent to the rural countryside last year and neither of them has come back. The government keeps sending away high school graduates but never tells us the time of return.
“Why would they do that?” I ask. “Cuz they want us to get stuck in the fucking place forever,” Boxin says. I’ve always known that day will come, but I’m not ready to go. I’m no longer a student having my routine school life every day, but who am I? A new farmer? An “educated youth” with a “blank identity”? What can I do in the future? All of a sudden, I’m kicked out of school and thrown into the huge and deep society. I feel lost, as if I’m walking in the darkest night with no streetlight. Before I leave for the countryside, I’ve worked in my father’s factory for three months to earn the money to buy a quilt, sheets and other necessities. Boxin and Chopstick are with me. Every early morning, when the ground still retains the coolness of the previous night, we come to the spacious backyard. After the sun rises, we have no shade to hide in. No single cloud in the sky. No hope of refuge from the longest and hottest summer of my life. We swing hammers high in the air, sprinkling sweat on the rusted red bricks. Before the sunset, we pick up the broken bricks and stack them together. Someone from the construction team comes with a steel tape. He measures around each pile and records the numbers in a worn out notebook. On November 1977, we are sent to the YanWan Brigade (now YanWan village) in ZhuRu Commune (now ZhuRu county) at HanYang Community (now HanYang Town). The countryside is nowhere close to the “heaven” on the poster. No electricity and
Our class has more than forty students, and most of us are going to the countryside. Families with more than one child or disabled children can keep one child in the city. I didn’t ask my parents. I know they must have saved the spot for Han, my elder brother. He has terrible eyesight. If my parents didn’t select him, it still wouldn’t be my turn. Hao, my younger brother, would get the spot. I don’t blame my father and mother. Every family is doing the same thing. We don’t have alternatives. Boxin told me last week that his parents had decided to keep his little sister. She was the only girl in the family. Many families have sent away the elder kids to save the younger ones. Chopstick’s sister left last year and it was his turn now. He also has younger siblings in school. Chopstick tells us that we will have “blank identities” after we leave Wuhan. “The government will remove our residence record.” 176