The Stinking Old Ninth (A Tale Of The Coal Capital)

Chapter One – The FirstDebut **Chinese: Chu chu mao lu** During the Chinese CulturalRevolution, there were "Nine Black Categories". Theywere: Landlords, rich farmers, anti-revolutionaries, bad influences, right-wingers, traitors, spies, capitalistroaders and (ninth) intellectuals. Thefirst eight were classenemies. The last one, intellectuals, were identified as the‘stinking old ninth’, who was only one step away from the class enemies. Auniversity graduate, no doubt, was an intellectual. So, I was aStinking Old Ninth. In July 1962, I completed Gao kao, the national universityentrance examination. In August, I received an admission noticefrom a teacher’s university in Shenyang, the largest city in theNortheast. I was given a place in the foreign languages departmentto major in English. Our class was small. There were only twentystudents. The students in our class were mostly around 18 or 19 yearsold. But I was already 21 - two or three years older than myclassmates. They humorously called me Lao Da Ge (old elderbrother). I was older than my classmates not because I had gone toschool late, but because I played professional basketball for twoyears. In 1962, I quit the basketball team, took the nationaluniversity entrance examination and satisfactorily became auniversity student. I was very happy and proud of myself to be auniversity student. A university was the first step on the ladderto an iron rice bowl; once admitted by a university, the studentswere guaranteed to have jobs. That’s one of the benefits ofsocialism. The length of schooling was four years, so I should havegraduated in August 1966. During the four years, every day I would look forward to theday when I could graduate. I was eager to get a job and make moneyto support my family. In the spring of 1966, on the eve of mygraduation, I was very happy and was full of hope for my future.But to my dismay, in May 1966, Mao Zedong launched the GreatCultural Revolution. It broke in like the mountain torrents rushingdown with a terrifying force. With the advent of the movement, schools were thrown intogreat confusion and classes were suspended. I was not able tograduate from school on schedule and had to stay for two more yearsdue to the revolution (before the Great Culture Revolution, all theuniversities in China were boarding schools). So, altogether, I hadbeen in the university for six years - four years to study and twoyears during the Cultural Revolution. By the first half of 1968, the Revolution Committee (newschool leadership) had been set up. In August I left the school atlast. By then I was already in my late twenties. According to theChinese traditional marriage standard, I had already become a BigSingle man and had gone into the “abandoned group” or “difficultgroup”. I was assigned to a middle school affiliated to an opencoalmine in the city of Fushen, which was known as the CoalCapital. The city was worthy of the name. Everywhere you could seeheaps of coal. Everything was covered with coal dust. The houses,the water in the streams, the roads and the trees all wereblackened. Even the sky was overcast. The dogs, the cats, and thebirds flying in the sky were black. If a person put on a cleanwhite shirt in the morning, the collar of it would become black inthe evening. People’s faces always looked dusty. The school was close to the administrative building of theopen coal mine - a white, five-storey building known as Da BaiLou（bigwhite building. It was said that the open coalmine was the largestof its kind in the whole country. People would proudly call theopen coal mine ‘Ten Li Coal Sea’. Li is the Chinese unit of length.One Li is half a kilometre. So, ten Lis is fivekilometres. The middle school was small with only a few rows ofone-storey houses as students’ classrooms. Before those houses,there was a tract of open space. That was the sports ground. It wassurrounded on three sides by vegetable plots. A small wood wasabout five hundred meters from the back of our school. An earthroad passed the gate. The headmaster introduced me at a teaching and administrativestaff meeting. I stood at the front of the room. “Comrades,” the headmaster said. “I would like to introduce anew teacher to you…” A peal of applause interrupted the headmaster.He stopped for a moment, then continued. “This young man is from ateacher university. He is the first university student we have. Heis an English major. At the moment, English is not taught in ourschool. But in the future, it might be. Though English is thelanguage of our worst enemy, it is important. He is a new teacherand unfamiliar with our school. I hope that every one of youwelcomes him warmly and helps him.” After the headmaster made the introduction, I took my seat.As soon as I sat down, a woman teacher with red cheeks patted me onmy shoulder and whispered, “Are you married?” I shook my head and blushed. Then the woman teacher with red cheeks whispered to a groupof teachers. “So, he is a Da Guang Gun (Big Bachelor)!” they commented incontempt. Since then, Da Guang Gun had become mynickname. “Da Guang Gun!” A cross-eyed teacher would make fun of meevery time he met me. “You don’t look very well. You didn’t have agood sleep last night, did you? Do you often suffer from insomnia?You must be missing the company of a woman. Ha…ha… It’s a greatpleasure to have a woman to hug!” He would then grin cheekily atme. I would get exasperated, but I would feel too embarrassed toflare up. I would swallow my anger reluctantly and walk away in ahuff. One day, inthe office, a group of middle aged woman-teachers gatheredtogether, whispering. I knew they were talking about me as theykept steeling glances at me. They were discussing something aboutme enthusiastically. Perhaps prompted by a suddenly impulse, theysaid they were going to introduce me to a girl. The womanteacher with red cheeks said in high spirits to me, “Tell us whatkind of girl you like. We’ll see whether we can find one girl foryou.” I flushed.Just at that moment, the cross-eyed teacher said loudly to thewoman teachers, “Dear ladies, before you help somebody find agirlfriend, you should first understand the person thoroughly. Sofar as I know, this somebody looks honest, but he is especiallygood at doing ‘underground work’…” “What do you mean by underground work?” the woman teacher withred cheeks asked. “I mean that some young men look honest but have an inglorioushistory. For example, he had done it with a girl in the dark woods.That’s what it means to do underground work! It must have been agreat pleasure to do it with a girl in the dark woods, wasn’t it?”the cross-eyed teacher mocked. The group ofwoman teachers immediately fell silent and looked at mesuspiciously. They apparently began to doubt my honesty. Was this adegenerate young man? Had this man really had illicit s*x with agirl before graduation from a university? If he had, he was nodifferent from a hoodlum. Who was willing to introduce a nice girlto a hoodlum? The cross-eyedteacher had known my secret. He openly dug up my unsavoury past,not only to humiliate me publicly, but also show off his quickaccess to information. I hung my head in shame. What the cross-eyedteacher said was true. I did do it with a girl in the dark woodsbefore I graduated from my Alma Mater, a teaching university and inthe process, offended the school discipline. For that, I wasseriously punished by the school authority. This disgracefulexperience of mine had been recorded into my file. In China, everyperson had a file. No matter where he went, it was forever withhim. No doubt, one of the school leaders of the middle school hadread my file and revealed my romantic story to the cross-eyedteacher. Just as aChinese proverb goes, good news never goes beyond the gate, whilebad news spread far and wide. The fact that I did it with a girlsecretly was without a doubt bad news. So, it spread quicklythrough the school and I became well known immediately. Chinesepeople consider it most disgraceful to have illicit s*x with awoman. It was most immoral. The person who had illicit s*x wasthought of as a hoodlum. The hoodlum would be cast aside,discriminated against and ridiculed by people. But it was a painfulexperience of mine. I was full of tears and regret. I could neverforget it.