Three Brothers

Memories of My Family

Yan Lianke

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780802148094
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

From the Franz Kafka Prize–winning author. "Full of love, sorrow, and tenderness... a deeply heartfelt account of his family in the 1960s and 70s." —Xiaolu Guo, award-winning author of Nine Continents With lyricism and deep emotion, Yan Lianke chronicles the extraordinary lives of his father and uncles, as well as his own during the Cultural Revolution. Living in a remote village, Yan's parents are so poor that they can only afford to use wheat flour on New Year and festival days, and while Yan dreams of fried scallion buns, and even steals from his father to buy sesame seed cakes. He yearns to leave the village, however he can, and soon novels become an escape. He resolves to become a writer himself after reading on the back of a novel that its author was given leave to remain in the city of Harbin after publishing her book. In the evenings, after finishing back-breaking shifts hauling stones at a cement factory, sometimes sixteen hours long, he sets to work writing. He is ultimately delivered from the drudgery and danger of manual labor by a career in the Army, but he is filled with regrets as he recalls these years of scarcity, turmoil, and poverty. A philosophical portrait of grief, death, home, and fate that gleams with Yan's quick wit and gift for imagery, Three Brothers is a personal portrait of a politically devastating period, and a celebration of the power of the family to hold together even in the harshest circumstances. "This engaging book asks readers to consider the nature of life and death, city versus country, and the impact generations can have on each other." — Winnipeg Free Press

CHAPTER 1

Preliminary Words

In an instant, I finally understood that the function of all the toil and hardship, misfortune and kindness my father’s generation experienced had been to permit them to continue living, to help them secure daily necessities, and to prepare them for the inevitable processes of aging, disease, and death.

On October 1, 2007, as our country was celebrating the National Day holiday, with happiness inundating cities and towns like a raging flood, I received several phone calls urging me to return to my hometown as quickly as possible, as my sixty-nine-year-old Fourth Uncle had abruptly left this world. Hurrying back from Beijing to Song county in Henan province, I realized with a shock that of the four men in my father’s generation—which included three brothers and a cousin—all three brothers had now departed this world, seeking peace and tranquility in another realm.

In the middle of the following night, I knelt down in front of a white spirit tent, keeping vigil over Fourth Uncle’s coffin. Outside, the moon was bright and the stars were sparse. There was only a light breeze and the trees were still. The entire village seemed to have stopped breathing in response to Fourth Uncle’s death. In the ensuing stillness, one of my sisters went up to the coffin to replace an incense stick that had burned down. When she returned, she said, with some embarrassment, “Brother Lianke, you’ve written so many books, why don’t you write one about our family?”

She said, “Our father’s generation have now all passed away. Why don’t you write about the three brothers?”

She said, “You can also write about yourself—about your youth.”

I didn’t immediately respond. Originally I had felt that my writing was completely unrelated to my family and had no relevance to this corner of the world. But at that moment, I happened to be feeling particularly unhappy, hopeless, and confused about my writing. So I decided I absolutely should write something for them—for my father’s generation as well as my siblings and cousins. It didn’t matter if I wrote neither a lot nor particularly well, as long as they knew that I had written something. So I began examining the life and fate of my father’s generation, revisiting my childhood and youth, and researching the historical traces of that period. Finally, I had an epiphany and realized that the function of all the toil and hardship, misfortune and kindness my father’s generation experienced had been to permit them to continue living; to help them secure daily necessities like kindling, rice, oil, and salt; and to prepare them for the inevitable processes of aging, disease, and death. I pondered this for a long time, and ultimately decided to write about how they had lived their lives and how they had confronted death. After careful consideration, I decided that my father’s generation lived like dust in the wind, primarily for the sake of daily necessities, while people today live for the sake of obtaining a piece of land. But who can escape the need to secure daily necessities and to confront aging and disease? Daily necessities and aging—for many of us, these are the forces that are responsible for our arrival to and departure from this world.

What else is there for us to escape, other than them?

CHAPTER 2

My Era

1. PRIMARY SCHOOL

Historical eras exist because of memory. Some leave tangible traces like knife marks, while others pass by like rain and clouds, detectable only by a faint scent.

I don’t know precisely when I was born or started school. My family was from a poor village in central China, and my parents almost always used the lunar calendar. When they did occasionally mention a date in the Western format, all the other villagers would stare in surprise. In the countryside, time is like a sheet of paper ripped from a Western calendar, and it is only because of certain events that historical time exists at all. These events have identifiable dates, the way the wrinkles on an old person’s forehead chronicle the passage of time.

The reason that particular year existed is because that was when Second Sister and I enrolled together in a school in the village temple.

On that year’s examinations to advance from first to second grade, I scored sixty-one percent on the verbal section and sixty-two percent on the math section. Sixty percent was sufficient to advance to the next grade, so my scores were just enough to push me over the threshold. However, they were low enough to make me feel embarrassed and uncomfortable, and they made it difficult for me to face my parents and fellow villagers. I suspected that the reason my scores were so low was that my second sister, who was in the same grade, had scored quite well. Her verbal and math scores were both in the eighties. Were it not for Second Sister’s high scores, my own wouldn’t have appeared so low.

I began to hate Second Sister.

Taking advantage of my position as the youngest sibling, I began saying bad things about Second Sister in front of our parents. I began hiding her things, making her think they were lost, so that she would search frantically for them. Then, when our parents scolded her and she began to cry, I would feign concern and proceed to help her find the items in question.

The year before I began second grade we had an unusually cold winter. In the middle of the first lunar month, Second Sister lost her book bag and searched for it until she was bathed in sweat. Mother almost beat her, whereupon I painstakingly—yet actually very easily—found it for her at the head of her bed. Seeing her book bag in my hands, Second Sister began to suspect me, but she had no proof of wrongdoing. After she and I had quarreled at some length, she ultimately had no choice but to give me ten cents as a reluctant expression of gratitude.

I used those ten cents to go out and buy myself a sesame-seed cake. To this day, when I recall that cake I ate, I’m overwhelmed by the memory of its delicious fragrance.

Regardless of how tasty the sesame-seed cake was, in the end I still needed to go to school. I was worried that in second grade I would be assigned to the same class as Second Sister again, which would put me under additional pressure. So on the first day of class, I was deliberately late to school. I dawdled for a long time outside the schoolhouse, like a boxer who is afraid of his opponent and doesn’t dare enter the ring, instead waiting hopefully for something unexpected.

And, in fact, something unexpected did happen.

That morning, the sun was shining brightly on the remaining snow, like a mirror reflecting back the light of an entire world. The teacher and students swept up the snow in the school courtyard and then went into the classroom. At the sound of the class bell, there was a brief period of turmoil, and only then did I finally enter the school grounds. At that moment, there appeared a beautiful female teacher enveloped in an intoxicating fragrance. She walked over and asked me my name, and then took me to another classroom, explaining that I had been transferred to her class. She said that Second Sister and I had been assigned to different classrooms in order to help each of us study harder, and hopefully that way we could both advance to the next grade.

At the time, I didn’t know to thank God, nor did I realize that life and fate were so reliant on chance and fortune. I just felt that this teacher, who was able to enter people’s hearts, was delicate and tender, like scenery touched by the changing seasons. At the time, my gratitude to the school for my education burst forth, like a vast, clear light in a child’s heart, almost to the point that it seemed fake. It was as though all the good fortune I would enjoy in life began that day, and all of my misfortune buried at the same time.

As I now pull back the curtain on that period of my life, the first thing I see is the scene that day.

The teacher led me into the classroom and told me to sit in the middle of the first row. Remarkably, the student with whom I was assigned to share a desk was not a boy, nor was it a rural girl. Instead, my desk-mate was a neatly dressed girl with light skin, as plump as a foreign child. If this had been all that was remarkable about her, everything would have been fine. However, as soon as I sat down she used her pencil to draw a line down the middle of our desk, and in the milky-smooth tone of a city girl, she informed me that neither of us could cross that line, and when we were doing our work we mustn’t let our elbows touch.

This was the mid-sixties, and it seemed that my subsequent self-awakening—including my self-respect and my understanding of the relationship between men and women, between the city and the countryside, together with my veneration for revolution—all originated in this period. Although I didn’t have to worry about academic pressure from Second Sister that semester, there was another more suffocating source of pressure and excitement. Her surname was Zhang. My meeting this plump city girl, whose parents seemed to have some connection to the revolution and to have been reassigned from Luoyang to the commercial wholesale department in our village, became the first fortuitous occurrence that would shape my destiny. Meeting her was a source of enlightenment and gratitude that to this day I can’t forget.

My new desk-mate was an excellent student, and consistently scored in the nineties on our weekly quizzes. The difference between our scores reflected a long-standing gulf between rural and urban life. It demonstrated that the line she drew on our desk was not only legitimate but even eminently reasonable. And not only was it reasonable, it was effective. I’m not sure whether it was on her account that I began studying hard, or whether I did so out of a country boy’s sense of self-respect and the pitiable modicum of dignity that the contrast between city and countryside bestows. In any event, I began making a secret effort to improve my grades.

Our teacher was tall and slender, but over time her complexion became increasingly sallow. All the students speculated that she probably had hepatitis, which might be contagious. They said that if you got too close to her, you could catch her disease just by breathing the air she exhaled. They said that they had frequently seen her brewing Chinese medicine in her room and also taking some sort of white pills.

In this teacher’s class, the students assigned to sit in the first row would often move to the back of the room to avoid her, but I did not. I actually liked sitting in the first row right under her nose, so that I could look up at her slightly sallow yet still very beautiful melon-shaped face, pay attention as she taught writing and math, and listen as she described what had been fresh and new when she was studying in the teaching college in the city. I never said a word to my desk-mate, nor did I ever cross that border on our desk. However, I liked sitting next to her, and in order to catch up to her academic level and lessen the urban-rural divide that separated us, I not only spent the entire day sitting in front of our sick teacher, but after class I even took my homework to the teacher’s room to ask her some questions.

I also saw her taking medicine. They were, indeed, white pills.

She asked me, “Aren’t you afraid of being infected?”

I shook my head.

She smiled and patted my head. Many years later, when I saw the Indian film The Vagabond, there was a brave youth who was kissed on the cheek by the pretty female lead for his bravery, and after the protagonist traipsed away, he continued nostalgically caressing his cheek for a long time. That scene always reminds me of how, back then, I felt as though I were being blessed by that pretty young teacher, and it was precisely that blessing that helped me improve my studies. On our final exams, my desk-mate scored an average of ninety-four on the verbal and math exams, which was the highest in the class. Meanwhile, I scored a ninety-three, the second highest, higher even than Second Sister’s score.

Just a single point’s difference between my desk-mate’s score and mine.

Studying was not even particularly difficult, and I felt that the one-point difference in our scores was less than the width of the paper people sometimes use for windows in place of glass. I thought that if only I could surpass her and have the highest score in the class, it would be like looking up and gazing toward the east before sunrise. During that year’s summer vacation, I was bored and listless, and every day seemed to last forever. I was anxious for school to begin so I could once again sit in front of that teacher, listening to her lessons. I was waiting for a new exam as though it were a happy marriage.

However, when the first day of school finally came, my teacher was no longer my teacher.

She had been transferred away.

I heard she had gotten married and moved to the city. It appeared that her new husband was an illustrious man, a county-level cadre. Fortunately, however, my desk-mate was still there. When school started, she secretly gave me a notebook with a red cover, which became my most treasured souvenir during that time. This gift whetted my aspiration to surpass her on the next exam, and to this end, I studied hard and always finished my homework on time. Regardless of who was appointed to lead the class, I would work diligently, and whenever there was something useful to my studies, I would tirelessly pursue it. When we had a supplementary class to learn Chairman Mao’s selected quotations, if the teacher asked the students to read a passage, I would recite it from memory. If the teacher asked the students to recite the passage once from memory, I would recite it three or five times.

Our new teacher was a middle-aged man from the countryside, and he never gave quizzes and exams. At that time, I was anticipating an exam in the way a sprinter hunched over at the start line listens for the sound of the starting gun. I was ready to shoot forward like an arrow and seize the first-place prize that was rightfully mine. My opponent was not Second Sister, nor was it my other classmates. It was my desk-mate. She was plump, clean, light-skinned, and had a foreign affect. She had a soft, sweet voice and spoke in very standard Chinese, not the thick dialect those of us from the countryside spoke, nor did she wear the tattered kind of clothing we wore. She had straight and flawless white teeth and was always neatly and elegantly dressed in the sort of clothes that only people from the city could wear.

However, the two of us were separated by only a single point in our exams.

Just one point.

I spent an entire semester working hard to make up this one-point difference.

Finally, it was the end of the semester.

Finally, it was time for another exam.

Finally, the teacher announced that there would be an exam the next day, that students should bring pen and ink, and that they should be sure to get a good night’s sleep beforehand.

I couldn’t sleep at all that night. It was as if I were about to take the traditional Chinese civil service exams. An excitement similar to the hazy feeling of being in love, which I had not yet experienced, accompanied me all night, until it was time to go to school. That morning, the sun outside the classroom was large and round, and when it shone in through the window, it illuminated the classroom in such a way that it resembled a brightly lit pond. The images of bodhisattvas painted on the wooden beams of the temple that housed our school reflected onto the classroom’s ceiling and walls. I glanced at my desk-mate and noticed that she appeared somewhat nervous, as if concerned that I might beat her.

However, I had no choice. I had no alternative but to attempt to leap across this trench separating the city from the countryside.

I placed my pen on the desk.

I placed my draft paper in the upper left-hand corner of the desk.

Finally, the teacher arrived.

He slowly entered, then walked over and stood next to the lectern. He solemnly gazed at us, at our nervous and excited expressions. Then he smiled wanly and said, “For this year’s exams, we will no longer use examination booklets and exercises.”

He said, “Chairman Mao told us, ‘Our educational policy should ensure that those being educated are able to develop themselves morally, intellectually, and physically, and that they become awakened cultural workers within the socialist system.’”

He said, “So that everyone can become awakened cultural workers within the socialist system, we will no longer use exercises and examination booklets.”

He said, “For our exams this year, every student will come up to the lectern and recite several Chairman Mao quotes. Whoever can recite five quotes will advance to the third grade.”

When the teacher finished, the students all stared at him.

Then there was thunderous applause.

However, I didn’t applaud. Instead, I stared at the teacher in confusion, while glancing at my desk-mate. Initially, she also applauded with the other students, but when she saw that I wasn’t clapping, she abruptly stopped.

From that point on, our advancement to the next grade was based solely on our ability to recite Chairman Mao quotes, and I never again had a chance to surpass the girl from the city. To advance to third grade, all I had to do was recite five of Chairman Mao’s quotes, and to advance to fourth grade, I would probably need to recite ten or fifteen. In between, there were two years when nobody advanced, because all middle schools, high schools, and colleges were shut down during the Cultural Revolution. During that period, however, I continued attending elementary school, where I studied language, practiced math, and memorized Chairman Mao’s quotes and poems, as well as his classic essays, “Serve the People,” “In Memory of Norman Bethune,” and “The Foolish Old Man Who Moved Mountains.”

When I look back at that period today, I’m filled with both joy and a happy sorrow. This is bec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also by Yan Lianke
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface: The Home from Which I Walked Away
• Chapter 1: Preliminary Words
• Chapter 2: My Era
• Chapter 3: Missing My Father
• Chapter 4: First Uncle’s Family
• Chapter 5: Fourth Uncle
• Translator’s Note
• Back Cover