Teacher Xiao and Big Wang

Teacher Xiao Xianhe was my extracurricular arts teacher in elementary school. She was in her early thirties at the time, of medium height, neither plump nor thin, with short hair and a brisk, capable appearance. I have seen her name written as Xiao Xianhe – 肖先河, Xiao Xianhe – 肖仙荷with a different character for “xian,” and even Xiao Xianhe 萧仙荷with different surname. I suspect that “肖先河” was a name she adopted during the Cultural Revolution to make her revolutionary credentials clear. “肖仙荷” sounded more like a woman’s name to me, and may have been her real name.

Before the Cultural Revolution, our school was called Lotus Pond Elementary School. After the movement began, it was renamed Red Guard Elementary School. It stood at the northernmost edge of Zhijiang town. One side bordered the old city wall, beyond which lay farmland and low hills. In spring, we could hear frogs croaking in the fields.

Walking north along Little North Street, one crossed a small bridge over a large pond and entered Red Guard Elementary School. After going through the gate and walking several dozen yards to the left, one came to a smaller pond. It had once been filled with lotus blossoms, which was how the school got its original name. Some people believed the name came from the large lotus-filled pond in front of the school. That was possible too. In any case, there were lotus ponds both outside and inside the school.

After the school was renamed Red Guard Elementary School, nobody looked after the ponds, and the lotus flowers gradually became sparse.

Once through the gate, one walked straight ahead, climbed a few steps, and arrived at a courtyard. Facing the courtyard was a tall ancient temple. The other three sides were lined with wooden buildings: classrooms near the entrance, and teachers’ living quarters on the left and right.

Teacher Xiao lived in a room halfway along the right side of the courtyard. Her child was still very young.

At that time, our Chinese classes consisted only of studying quotations from Chairman Mao. Arithmetic classes still taught a few other things. We still had physical education, but music and drawing had disappeared. So Teacher Xiao never actually taught me in a classroom.

There were no longer any athletic teams. Instead, every school had an arts propaganda troupe, whose full name was the “Mao Zedong Thought Arts Propaganda Troupe.” The troupes frequently rehearsed dance numbers and choreographed singing, all of it consisting of revolutionary songs. Teacher Xiao was in charge of the Red Guard Elementary School troupe. She was its leader and coach, although those were not her formal titles.

With the sports teams gone, the arts troupe became the face of the school. As the teacher responsible for it, Teacher Xiao worked extremely hard and had tremendous drive and ability. The teachers in charge of such troupes at the various schools all had to be that way to do the job. Our Red Guard Elementary School and South City Elementary School were the two elementary schools in the county seat, and their arts troupes were the best in the county. Every year, at the countywide elementary-school performance, the two schools competed for first place.

When the troupe won the performance competition and brought honor to the school, Teacher Xiao was the chief person responsible. She received both the glory and the pressure.

Most of the troupe members were girls—pretty students who could sing and dance. They often had to come to school early in the morning to practice posture, singing, and dancing. Sometimes they rehearsed after school in the afternoon as well, always under Teacher Xiao’s direction.

Her child was still very young. During much of the Cultural Revolution, hiring a nanny was considered an act of exploitation. So Teacher Xiao did not dare hire one. She had to care for her child while also leading the troupe. She trained the students in the courtyard for two reasons: there was plenty of room, and it was right outside her door, making it easier to keep an eye on her child.

At the time, I was dull, awkward, and shy, with not a trace of artistic talent. I could not sing, much less dance. I was physically weak and devoted myself to getting stronger, so I liked playing ball, running, swimming, and exercising. I had never thought of joining the arts troupe, and I certainly had no talent for it. I had known Teacher Xiao for years, and we would exchange greetings when we met.

When I was probably in fifth grade, Teacher Xiao once approached me and said she was putting together a dance that needed a male warrior to wave a flag. She thought I would be perfect for the role. I told her I had no artistic talent and did not want to join the troupe. After she mentioned it several times and saw that I was genuinely uninterested, she stopped bringing it up. The matter was forgotten.

In the second half of 1969, the Cultural Revolution entered a relatively stable phase. Because of the Zhenbao Island incident, relations between China and the Soviet Union had become extremely tense. Chairman Mao called for “digging deep tunnels, storing grain everywhere, and not seeking hegemony,” and air-raid shelters began to be dug throughout the country.

Zhijiang organized its work units to dig a shelter along South-North Street for an entire year. Each unit was assigned a task, and our teachers took part as well, though we children were too young to participate. In the end, they dug an air-raid shelter more than a kilometer long, over three meters deep, and four or five meters wide. Teacher Xiao’s troupe sometimes went to the construction site to perform for the people digging the shelter.

Before long, construction began on the Xiangqian and Zhiliu railways. This was a major state-organized project. The Xiangqian Railway ran east to west, from Changsha, Hunan to Guiyang, Guizhou. The Zhiliu Railway ran north to south, from Zhijiang (枝江, not 芷江 – my hometown. They have same pronunciation, but different characters), Henan to Liuzhou, Guangxi. The two lines crossed at Huaihua, more than thirty kilometers east of Zhijiang. They were part of what was known as the Third Front construction program.

 

Xiangqian Railway（湘黔铁路）Construction Site 

At the time, the “First Front” consisted of major coastal cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The “Second Front” consisted of inland cities of moderate size, such as Changsha, Nanchang, and Hefei. The “Third Front” referred to small towns and mountainous areas in places such as western Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Sichuan—regions far from the coast but with inland plains and relatively convenient transportation. The government wanted to move major military-industrial enterprises to the Third Front in case of a sudden attack by American imperialism or Soviet revisionism.

The Xiangqian and Zhiliu railways were built entirely by peasants from the areas along the routes, without the participation of the Railway Corps. The laborers who came to Zhijiang were from the counties of Xinshao, Shaodong, Lianyuan, and Xinhua in the old Shaoyang Prefecture, center of Hunan. They lodged in the homes of local residents—under their eaves, beneath their roofs, or in their main halls. Our school also emptied some classrooms to house them.

Their living conditions were extremely poor. They slept on the bare floor, brought their own grain, and cooked for themselves. The food was inadequate, and they sweated heavily every day while finding it difficult to bathe.

Although they were civilian laborers, they were organized and managed along the lines of the Railway Corps. The administrative levels were modeled on the county, commune, and production brigade, but renamed the Xiangqian Railway Construction Corps: the XX Regiment at the county level, the XX Battalion at the commune level, and the XX Company at the brigade level. Each unit had its own red flag, which was planted at the construction site. They had no military uniforms and received none of the benefits of regular troops.

One day, Teacher Xiao suddenly came to me and said she wanted me to perform in a program. It was not a dance but a kuaiban skit（快板）—a comic performance delivered largely in the rhythm of bamboo clappers. It would not be difficult, she said.

I shook my head and told her I could not act and did not agree. So Teacher Xiao went to my mother and asked her to persuade me. My mother urged me to take part, but I still refused. Apart from feeling that acting was not my strength, I did not want to spend time with the affected, delicate girls in the troupe. I thought they would be difficult to deal with. Playing ball on the court was much more straightforward.

This time Teacher Xiao did not give up. She continued to approach my mother. I was puzzled and asked my mother why Teacher Xiao was so determined to have me perform. My mother said that Teacher Xiao wanted me to play a big, burly railway-construction soldier.

I was thin and weak, but I had a large head, a broad face, and was relatively tall. Once I put on clothes, my skinny arms would not show. In Teacher Xiao’s eyes, I was the ideal choice. My mother also pressed me to accept. Unable to refuse any longer, I agreed.

The play was a kuaiban skit about railway construction, somewhat like a comic sketch, except that most of the dialogue was recited in kuaiban rhythm. There were three characters: a company commander, a platoon leader, and a soldier named Big Wang.

The company had three bamboo baskets for carrying earth, a type of tool common in western Hunan called a piaji, or benji in standard Mandarin. There was a large one, a medium one, and a small one. Obviously, one company having only three baskets was not realistic, but a play could not be too realistic.

The three people came into conflict over who would get the large basket. Big Wang got up early and managed to take it first. But the platoon leader later used a little trick to deceive him and take it away. The company commander was even more cunning and eventually tricked the large basket out of the platoon leader’s hands.

In the end, Big Wang was left with the small basket. A large man was forced to carry a basket completely out of proportion to his body, making him look awkward, ridiculous, and hilarious.

Teacher Xiao cast me as Big Wang, my classmate Yang Yu as the platoon leader, and female classmate Ai Hongying as the company commander.

I appeared first as Big Wang. The opening lines I remember went something like this:

Up early at dawn, determined to get the big basket.
Luck was on my side—I reached out and took it.

Those are the only lines I still remember.

The dialogue was all catchy kuaiban verse. Teacher Xiao stood below the stage, tapping the rim of a drum with a drumstick to produce the rhythm. We recited our lines onstage to that beat.

At the first rehearsal, once I stepped onto the stage, I had no idea where to put my hands or where to look. There was one scene in particular in which I had a heart-to-heart conversation with Ai Hongying, the company commander, while sitting very close to her.

She was a girl, and very pretty—probably the prettiest girl in the school. At that time, of course, there was no such thing as a “school beauty,” because that was considered a bourgeois concept. In those days, boys and girls did not speak to one another. I was so nervous that I kept my head down and stared at the floor.

Teacher Xiao repeatedly told me to raise my head and look at “Company Commander” Ai Hongying. I did raise my head, but I still could not bring myself to look directly at her. I do not know whether Teacher Xiao failed to notice or noticed and decided not to interfere. In any case, I somehow got through it.

Once the play was more or less ready, we began going out to perform.

In those days there was no television, and the only films available were Tunnel Warfare（地道战）, Fighting South and North（南征北战）, and the model operas. Cultural life was desperately impoverished. Whenever an arts troupe performed, it was the biggest entertainment event for ordinary people. The troupes mostly sang revolutionary songs, usually in the form of choreographed singing or dancing. Yet people still came eagerly to watch.

Our first performance was at the Zhijiang County Auditorium.

That day, the eight-hundred-seat auditorium was almost full. I had never performed onstage before. When I stepped out and saw the sea of heads below me, I panicked. I could only look straight ahead, afraid that looking down would make me even more nervous.

Teacher Xiao reminded me from below the stage and fed me lines at crucial moments. Ai Hongying and Yang Yu, meanwhile, were veteran members of the arts troupe, seasoned performers. Their composure gradually helped me calm down. In the end, we made it through without any major mishap.

There had been no small-sketch-style kuaiban plays like ours during the Cultural Revolution. The plot rose and fell, and it was lively and funny. My two classmates had genuine performance experience and played their roles convincingly. My own rawness, clumsiness, and shyness should have been fatal flaws, but they may have happened to suit Big Wang’s honest, simple-minded, inarticulate nature.

The audience responded enthusiastically, and the program became very popular.

For Teacher Xiao, putting on a slightly comic, genuinely funny kuaiban play on a stage crowded with revolutionary songs and dances involved political risk. Casting a complete novice like me was another dangerous gamble, because the performance could easily have failed. Yet it succeeded.

I could not help admiring Teacher Xiao’s courage, judgment, and ability to rehearse and direct a performance.

From then on, Teacher Xiao took us to all kinds of performances. We appeared many times at the county auditorium, and we also performed on the stage in the school courtyard for the railway laborers living nearby.

Because there was virtually no entertainment in those days, even a low-level amateur program like ours drew a packed audience every time. Before long, most of the residents of Zhijiang and most of the railway laborers living around the town had seen our performance. Some had seen it more than once.

Sometimes, when I walked along the streets of Zhijiang, someone would shout at me:

“Big Wang!”

Without realizing it, I had become a little famous.

We performed the program for a little over a year, until the roadbed work on the Xiangqian and Zhiliu railways was largely completed and the laborers gradually returned home. We soon graduated from elementary school and entered Zhijiang School, which had just resumed classes.

After that, I rarely saw Teacher Xiao again. Following high school, I was sent to the countryside, then took the college entrance examination, went to work, and eventually left China. I never saw her again.

Several years later, Teacher Xiao staged the same kuaiban play once more. Some people remembered me as the original Big Wang and came to tell me about it.

About ten years ago, when I returned to my hometown and wanted to invite some of my former teachers to dinner, I thought of Teacher Xiao. I asked around and was told that she had retired long ago, left Zhijiang, and gone to live with her child. I was also told that she had developed facial paralysis and no longer wanted to see people.

How could someone as fine as Teacher Xiao have developed facial paralysis? She had always been fiercely proud and had insisted on showing everyone only her best side. Naturally, she would not want to be seen with a paralyzed face. I understood, and decided not to disturb her.

The house where Teacher Xiao had lived was still there. It was now part of the Confucian Temple, a nationally protected cultural heritage site.

I went to visit the temple. The stage where we had once performed was there but teacher Xiao was gone. The house stood empty, leaving behind only a few unforgettable memories.

 

Written in 2019