The Days of Watching Clouds

During the Cultural Revolution, we lived at Zhijiang Teachers’ College, in Muyoupo, about six or seven miles from Zhijiang town. There was no television and nowhere to go to see a movie. Every month or two, the county film unit would come to show a film. It was always either a revolutionary model opera or something like Reconnaissance Across the Yangtze, Tunnel Warfare, or the like. There were only a few films, and after watching them over and over, we could recite the dialogue by heart.

Whenever I thought of Reconnaissance Across the Yangtze, I immediately remembered the line: “It’s not that we’re incompetent—the Communist troops are just too crafty!” And whenever someone mentioned Tunnel Warfare, I could deliver, with perfect seriousness: “All units, attention! Fight independently. After firing one shot, change positions. No firing blanks! Open fire!”

Our favorite children’s magazine, Little Friends, had also ceased publication. At school, the only thing we were taught was to memorize Mao’s “Three Old Articles.” There was no homework, and after school in the afternoon we had nothing to do.

This should have been the wonderful opportunity we children longed for most—a chance to play freely. Tragically, however, many of our friends’ parents had been denounced and struggled against. Some had been sent to prison; others had been sent to “study classes” for reform. Most of our playmates had either left or no longer dared to come outside. There was hardly anyone to play with, and we were not in much of a mood to play anyway. Big-character posters covered the school, and we often saw the names of our friends’ fathers—or our own fathers—marked with red crosses.

With no one outside to play with, we had no choice but to read books and newspapers at home. But apart from Chairman Mao’s writings, almost everything had been banned. Our family had an atlas and a household guidebook that had escaped destruction because they contained no political content. One of the books also included basic agricultural knowledge. I remember reading several weather proverbs that were pleasing to the ear:

“Clouds moving east, no rain in sight.
Clouds moving west, rain in earnest.”

“Morning glow means water for tea;
Evening glow will leave the toad dry.”

“Dark clouds meet the setting sun—
If not today, then tomorrow, rain will come.”

“If the horizon is bright, rain is on its way;
If the sky above is clear, no rain will fall.”

“When the sky looks like fish scales,
Even without rain, the wind will rage.”

After reading them, I went outside to observe the sky. Was it true that “clouds moving east” meant no rain? Did “clouds moving west” really bring heavy rain? Most of the proverbs proved remarkably accurate. They were also so rhythmic and memorable that I learned them by heart.

Zhijiang Teachers’ College had no walls around it. Fields surrounded the school, and there were even plots cultivated by production teams in the middle of the campus. What the farmers talked about most was the weather, because weather was so important to planting and farming. Apart from recalling events from long ago, the elderly teachers at the school also talked mostly about the weather. Discussing the weather was safe. Talking about anything else might get someone into trouble.

On summer evenings, we lay on the grass, on the ping-pong tables where clothes were washed, or beside the piles of grain on the school grounds, gazing up at the sky scattered with stars. The adults told me that this was the Milky Way; on one side was the Cowherd, and on the other was the Weaver Girl. They could meet only once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, and even then they had to remain separated by the Milky Way.

Whenever a shooting star streaked across the sky, the adults would say, “One star falls in heaven, and one person dies on earth.” The two were believed to correspond to each other.

From them I also learned what a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse were. But the local farmers said that a lunar eclipse happened because “the Heavenly Dog was eating the moon.” Everyone had to come outside and bang gongs to drive the dog away, or the moon would be eaten up. Once, when I saw a lunar eclipse, the farmers all came out banging gongs and basins. I watched as the washbasin from our own home was brought outside and beaten wildly until the eclipse ended.

“We sat beside the high stacks of grain, listening to Mother tell stories of the past.”

The scene described in that song was exactly what my childhood had been like. The difference was that my mother had been sent down to the countryside and could not tell me those stories. Instead, it was my uncles and older relatives who told me about the stars and the myths in the sky.

I often wondered: What was really up there? What was on those stars? Which star belonged to me?

Besides reading weather proverbs and listening to stories, I loved going outside to watch the clouds. I observed the direction in which they moved and then predicted the weather to see whether I was right.

The books also explained how to predict weather by observing changes in animal behavior. Ants moving house, swallows flying low, and fish coming to the surface were all signs that rain was approaching.

Before rain, ants would form long lines and carry their eggs and belongings from low ground to higher ground. Low-lying places would collect water, while the higher ground would remain above the flood. Swallows flew low because, before rain, small insects could not fly very high; if swallows wanted to eat them, they too had to fly low. Before rain, air pressure fell and the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water decreased, so fish came to the surface to breathe.

Before rain, the little animals became busy—and so did I.

About two miles from us was an airfield built during the War of Resistance against Japan. The Flying Tigers, led by the American General Claire Lee Chennault, had once taken off from there to fight Japanese aircraft. At that time, they had been stationed in Muyoupo. The house in which we lived had once been occupied by American pilots.

After the war, however, the airfield was abandoned. Only occasionally did small planes arrive to spray pesticides or conduct surveys. Once their work was finished, they would leave again.

Beside the airfield stood a small three-story building. It had originally served as the airport control tower, but later became the county weather station. Every afternoon at seven o’clock, a large balloon was released there, with an instrument suspended beneath it. The instrument collected atmospheric data and transmitted it back to the weather station.

Even during the Cultural Revolution, the balloon was released every day. Perhaps this was required by the slogan “Seize the revolution and promote production.”

In the summer, I sometimes went with my friends to the weather station to watch the balloon launch. First, the workers filled the balloon with helium. Slowly, it swelled into a great sphere four or five meters high. Then they attached a large instrument beneath it.

At exactly seven o’clock, the balloon rose into the sky.

Against the evening glow, it climbed rapidly, while the instrument emitted a blinking red light. After a few minutes, all we could see was the balloon, now no bigger than an ant, and the faint red light on the instrument. Before long, the balloon blended into the richly colored sunset. Only then would we turn and slowly make our way home, still looking back at it.

Zhijiang town was three or four miles from the weather station. At that time, the Red Guards in town went into the streets to put up big-character posters, denounce people who had taken the capitalist road, and even fight armed battles. Every day we heard the sounds of gongs and drums, gunfire, and slogans. People were killed from time to time.

The weather station, however, stood alone beside the broad and quiet airfield. It released its balloons without concern for the world and quietly issued its weather forecasts.

In town, we saw the cruelty of people toward one another. The changes in the human heart were more unpredictable than the shifting winds and clouds of nature. On that peaceful airfield, by contrast, we saw communication and harmony between human beings and nature. It gave me a rare happiness in those years.

Sometimes I thought how wonderful it would be to become a meteorologist—to release balloons every day and watch the clouds every day. That was, by any measure, my “lofty ideal” at the time.

Every evening before ten o’clock, the county radio station broadcast the weather forecast from the weather station as the final program of the day. I always listened intently to see whether its forecast agreed with mine. Whenever my own prediction proved correct, I would remain happy for a long time.

By watching clouds and observing unusual changes in animal behavior, I often managed to make fairly accurate twenty-four-hour weather forecasts. Later, I developed the habit of looking up at the sky whenever I went out, to decide whether I needed to bring an umbrella.

My favorite moments were after a rainstorm, when the sky cleared and I walked across the airfield. The green mountains looked freshly washed, a rainbow arched overhead, dewdrops sparkled, and the air was wonderfully clean.

The memories of my childhood include not only the great sheets of big-character posters, the denounced “capitalist roaders,” and the gunfire of armed struggles. They also include the three-story weather station, the balloons drifting upward, the ever-changing clouds, the starry sky crossed by shooting stars, the little animals bustling about before rain, and the children’s rhyme:

“The sun comes out, and then the rain falls—
The emperor’s old father is marrying off all his daughters.”

Later, I went to university. Gradually, I became busier and busier. I read more and more books, and watched the clouds less and less. Reading earned me a degree, a green card, nearsightedness, and a perpetually foggy head. Yet I still felt that something was missing.

What was missing were those days of watching clouds.

Today, when we are always rushing about and exhausted in both body and mind, I want to say:

My friend, how few chances life gives us to be idle.

Come—let’s go watch the clouds.

Written in 2008