Sabrina Qiao

Inherited Cartographies

Excerpt

Outside of the Shanghai juvenile detention center, my father stood, his hand twined around my grandmother’s. Cracks spidered against the facade of the drab, gray building, its perimeter hemmed in by a chain-link fence, electric spirals wound across the top. That’s how I visualize the scene, at least, a snapshot built from the endless Google searches I’ve waded through. It was probably around 1962, winter; my father was five. Inside the detention center, my grandfather worked, sentenced to five years as a penitentiary doctor. He had been arrested for four years already, seized one night by a group of Communist cadres who dragged him out of the bedroom he shared with his wife and two young children. His crime was simple: he had spoken out in favor of the United States, an imperialist country, during China’s Hundred Flowers Campaign. “The Americans don’t have bad intentions. They were the ones who founded Tsinghua University,” he had said during a hospital meeting. The comment passed along the bureaucratic channels, spread from one colleague upwards until it reached a hospital executive, who deferred to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official. At least, that’s what our family believes. Someone, perhaps a work friend, had reported him. His informant may have even inherited my grandfather’s hospital position. 

Government scrutiny and professional, as well as personal, betrayal had been part of the social landscape for some time. The Communists had seized control of China in 1949, and by the late ’50s, Chairman Mao, paranoid over losing political power, sought to consolidate his influence, fortifying his vision of Communism through a series of initiatives that would eventually provoke the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Intellectuals such as my grandfather were encouraged to criticize the state as a means of encouraging reform; then, swiftly, the tide turned: those who spoke out were imprisoned and labeled as “rightists,” enemies of the state. 

Once my grandfather had been an esteemed surgeon of the Number Six People’s Hospital in Shanghai, part of the surgical team that performed the first liver transplant in China. Had he not been a doctor, had his skills been considered less useful, he most likely would have been exiled to a labor camp instead of a juvenile detention center.  

My father only remembers visiting him once. Over and over, I’ve tried to envision what it must have been like for my father to enter the facilities, his hand gripping my grandmother’s as they walked into the cavernous hall used for visitation hours. Rectangular tables were spread against the floor, each one ringed by chairs. My father sat across from his father, staring at the older man’s hands, which were covered in lines, the dry skin splintering on his knuckles. 

And then the story ended, or at least my father’s retelling of it did. My father and I were in the car, sixty-four years after my grandfather was imprisoned, twenty-one years after my grandfather’s death, and he squinted as he navigated along a bend, the sun streaking into his eyes. “That’s it?” I asked. “But shouldn’t there be more? What was it like to see your father? What did you two talk about? What was he wearing? Why did you pay so much attention to his hands?”

My father glanced at me. “How should I remember? I was probably only four or five when I went to see him.” 

“But didn’t you talk to nai nai or ye ye about it later? Didn’t you ask how many times you went to see him?” I paused. “Weren’t you curious?” Had my father felt scared? Had he wanted to reach out and touch his father? Had he cried? What was he thinking? 

Why has my father always been so unknowable to me? 

He scoffed. “Who am I supposed to ask about this? Who would want to talk about something like this?” The car paused at a stop light. “You always do this. You ask me to tell you stories and then ask stupid questions. Why are you asking me this?”

I view myself as the family historian, and I have been trying to mold my father into a Scheherazade. When my father falters in his stories, I imagine details to fill in the silences he inherited from his family, from the narratives that were only half told, the white space for which he never found the words. 

“Didn’t you want to know? I mean, what did it feel like to see ye ye there?” 

He flicked on the turn signal. “I don’t know. I forget.” 

Forgetting is my inheritance. My family excels at it. When confronted with a hard question, we say, “I forget,” or “I’m not sure,” or “Why are you asking me this?” Still, I ask. I’ve become greedy for stories, and even though I’m trying to temper my impulses, I struggle to understand how anyone could hear the vivid details of their family’s biography and not wonder what if or how come. But in the car I let the conversation drop. I could sense my father’s agitation through the rhythm his fingers beat on the steering wheel. 

A few weeks later, I broached the topic again. My father was sitting on the couch, one hand embedded in a big bowl of salted nuts. The lights were off, and the blue light of the screen bled onto the high points of his face.

“Dad,” I said, sitting next to him. “Tell me another story about your childhood. Please.”

O

The second time the men came, my father—aged nine—was still in the bedroom, getting dressed. It was early; he hadn’t been awake long, but through the thin walls, he heard the shuffle of feet, the gurgle of the faucet. His cousins were probably getting ready for the day. Most of the adults in the house had already left for work, but he knew his mother, grandmother, and sister would be in the kitchen, drinking tea, eating breakfast. 

Then a knocking started, except it was more of a pounding, multiple rhythms from multiple fists colliding with the front door. All the noise in the apartment stopped. There was the sound of steps, the creak of the door opening, and then my father heard a cascade of feet stomping into the front hall. He peeked out of the bedroom and saw around ten men—gruff, imposing—dressed in the military-style tunics and cotton pants fashionable for the decade. They were wielding drums and gongs, beating the instruments, creating a terrible racket. 

It was 1966 in Shanghai, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution had begun a few months earlier. The Communist Party described it as a people’s revolution, which aimed to liberate society by destroying the “Four Olds”: Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Customs. An inverse caste system had developed: the rich needed to be punished, the poor were to be exalted, and those who came from a middle-class family, those who came from a “rightist” family like my father’s, had to be reformed. 

My father watched the blur of their blue clothing as the men grabbed my grandmother and great-grandmother, pushing them out of the apartment and downstairs into the front yard. He hurried after them, trailed by his sister and cousins. In the middle of the front yard stood two wooden stools. A small crowd of their neighbors had assembled, summoned by the drumming, and now they clustered around the seats, waiting for the pi dou, the “struggle session,” to begin. It was a ritualistic public humiliation meant to instill fear in the audience: today them, tomorrow you. During struggle sessions, onlookers were encouraged to watch, mock, and jeer. Victims sometimes had to wear dunce caps and were forced to bend over at ninety-degree angles. Other times, they were beaten or whipped with belts. And during every session, the Communist cadres would interrogate victims: Do you confess? Do you admit your guilt? Do you admit you’re a class enemy? 

The men forced the two women onto the wooden stools. They wobbled for a moment, struggling to keep balance as the men hung a small sign across each of their necks. On the poster, written in big block characters, were their names and their crimes. Offenses could range from charges such as capitalist, revisionist, revolutionary, Nationalist Party agent, and traitor. Anyone could make an accusation and there was no due process to separate false from true. Neighbors sometimes sold each other out. Students attacked teachers. Children betrayed parents. It wasn’t wise to trust anyone. And it certainly wasn’t wise to make enemies.

About the Author

Sabrina Qiao is a writer, journalist, and Nonfiction MFA candidate. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 and is at work on a memoir about her father, illness, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. She lives in Manhattan and is an avid proponent of the ferry system.