3sensei, i rushed through the story of my great-uncle so i could take my time telling gugu’s story.
she was born on 13 june 1937, the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which is duanyang, the dayof the dragon boat festival. they called her duanyang until she started school, and was then calledwan xin (heart). great-uncle named her, showing respect for local tradition while investing hername with a message. not long after great-uncle’s death, his mother died of natural causes inchengdu. members of the shandong military district launched a large-scale rescue mission to freegugu and her mother from their captivity, and once they were in the liberated zone, gugu wasenrolled in the resistance elementary school and her mother was sent to a factory to make soles forcloth shoes. after liberation, the future for descendants of martyrs like gugu could not have beenbrighter, but her mother hated the idea of leaving her hometown and gugu hated the idea of leavingher. officials at the county level asked her what she would like to do; when she said she’d like tocarry on her father’s work, she was admitted to the prefectural medical school. she graduated at theage of sixteen and was assigned to the township health centre, where she undertook a training coursefor modern birthing methods organised by the county health bureau. gugu forged an unbreakablebond with the sacred work of obstetrics. according to her calculations, from the fourth day of thefourth month of 1953, when she attended her first birth, till the spring of last year, she deliveredaround ten thousand babies, counting two as one when working with someone else. she told you thisin person. i assumed she’d inflated the number somewhat, but there had to have been seven or eightthousand at least. she had seven interns, one of whom she called ‘little lion’, a young womanwhose hair was never combed, who had a flat nose, a square mouth, and a face full of zits. she was sodevoted to gugu that if she’d been told to kill someone, she’d have picked up a knife and done itwithout asking why.
we’ve already seen how, in the spring of 1953, women in my hometown resisted modern birthingmethods, including the old midwives, who spread all sorts of rumours. gugu was only seventeen atthe time, but with her unconventional experience and privileged background, she was already aninfluential young woman who was held in high esteem. admittedly, her good looks played a role inthat. putting aside head, face, nose, and eyes, her teeth alone are worth mention. our water was soheavily fluoridated that everyone, young and old, had black teeth. but after spending her youth in theliberated areas of eastern shandong and drinking spring water, not to mention being taught to brushher teeth by eighth route soldiers, gugu’s teeth were spared of that noxious effect. hers were theenvy of all, especially the girls.
chen bi was the first baby gugu delivered, a fact that caused her a lifetime of regret – her firstought to have been the son or daughter of a revolutionary, not a landlord’s mongrel. but at the time,the necessity to start something new and do away with old birthing methods would not allow her totake such issues into consideration.
when gugu learned that ailian had gone into labour, she jumped on her bicycle (a rarity at thetime), a medical kit over her back, and rushed home, covering the ten li from the health centre to ourvillage in ten minutes. village secretary yuan lian’s wife, who was washing clothes on the bank ofthe jiao river, watched her race across the narrow stone bridge, so scaring a puppy playing on thebridge it fell into the river.
medical kit in hand, gugu burst into ailian’s room, only to find that the old midwife tian guihuawas already attending to her. the old woman, with her pointed mouth and sunken cheeks, was in hersixties; by now, thankfully, this torchbearer for the obstructionists is feeding worms. when guguentered, tian was straddling ailian and pushing down on her bulging belly with all her might. astian was suffering from chronic bronchitis, the sound of her laboured breathing merged with the hog-butchering screams of her pregnant victim, producing a tragically heroic aura in the room. chen e,the landlord, was in the corner on his knees, banging his head in supplication on the floor, over andover, and mumbling incoherently.
as a frequent visitor to chen’s house, i knew its floor plan well. two cramped rooms with hangingeaves faced west. the first thing you encountered after entering was the stove, which was backed bya two-foot-high wall. the sleeping platform, the kang, was behind that low wall. so gugu witnessedthe scene the moment she walked in, and was livid with anger; in her own words, ‘the flames werethirty feet high’. she dropped her medical kit, ran up and, with her left hand on the old woman’s leftarm and her right hand on her right shoulder, yanked her off the kang. the old woman’s head bangedinto the bedpan, splashing its contents all over the floor and filling the air with the smell of urine.
dark blood oozed from a head wound. it wasn’t a serious injury, but you wouldn’t have known thatby her shrieks of agony. most people, hearing such pitiful wails, would go dumb from fright. butthey had no effect on gugu, who had seen a thing or two in her life.
she took her place next to the kang, donned rubber gloves, and spoke sternly to ailian: no morecrying, no more screaming, since neither of those is helpful. listen to me if you want to come out ofthis alive. do exactly as i say. that had the desired effect on ailian, who knew all about gugu’sbackground and her uncommon experiences. you are a little old to be having a child, gugu told her,and the position of the foetus is wrong. babies are supposed to come out headfirst, but yours wants tocome out hand first, his head still inside. in years to come, gugu often teased chen bi by saying hewanted to emerge with an outstretched hand to ask the world for something. to which, chen alwaysremarked: i was begging for food.
it was her first case, and yet she was calm and composed, not a hint of panic, someone whosetechniques produced better than expected results. gugu was a natural genius as a woman’s doctor.
what her instincts told her, her hands put into practice. women who witnessed her at work or thosewho were her patients absolutely revered and admired her. my mother said to me more than once:
your aunt’s hands are different than other people’s. most people’s hands are cold some of the time,hot at other times, sometimes stiff, and sometimes sweaty. but your aunt’s hands were always thesame, whether in the cold of winter or the heat of summer: soft and cool, not spongy soft, morelike?.?.?.?how can i describe them? my educated elder brother said: like a needle tucked into cotton,supple yet firm? that’s it, mother said. and the coolness of her hands was never icy. i can’t find thewords?.?.?.?again my brother came to her aid: can we call it outer heat and inner coolness, like coolsilk or fine jade? that’s it, mother said, that’s it exactly. all she had to do was lay her hands on a sickperson for that illness to retreat at least 70 per cent. gugu came close to being deified by the womenin our township.
ailian was a lucky woman; she’d been a smart one to begin with. as soon as gugu’s handstouched her belly, she felt a sort of vigour. she often told people she met afterward that gugu had thebearing of a general. compared to her, the woman lying on the floor in a puddle of piss was a clown.
in the inspiration and power derived from her scientific approach and dignified demeanour, ailiansaw brightness and gained the courage to deliver; her gut-wrenching screams and pain were greatlyreduced. she stopped crying and did as gugu said, working in concert with gugu’s movements tobring chen bi safely into the world.
chen wasn’t breathing when he emerged, so gugu held him by his feet and smacked him on theback and chest until he produced a kitten-like cry. how is it the little imp has such a big nose? guguwondered. he looks like one of those americans. she was as happy as she could be, like an artisanwho has just completed the first project. and a smile spread across the face of the exhausted mother.
though gugu was imbued with strong class-consciousness, class and class struggle were completelyforgotten as she helped the infant emerge from the birth canal. her elation constituted the pureessence of happiness.
when he heard that it was a boy, chen e stood up. feeling helpless, he threaded his way back andforth in the narrow space behind the stove, strings of tears dripping like honey from his dried-upeyes. he was incapable of describing the joy he felt. (there were terms like male heir and patriarchalclan, but from a man like him they would have been offensive.)the boy has such a big nose, gugu said, why don’t you just call him chen bi – nose chen?
she was just teasing, but chen e nodded and bowed to her, taking her words as if they constitutedan imperial edict: i thank gugu for favouring him with a name, he said. nose it is. we’ll call himchen bi.
swathed in chen e’s insistent thanks and ailian’s tears of joy, gugu packed up her kit and was onher way out when she spotted tian guihua sitting in the corner against the wall, the broken bedpanon the floor in front of her. she actually appeared to be asleep. gugu could not say when thistransformation had taken place or when her hair-raising shrieks had stopped. she thought the womanmight be dead, but light in her cat-like eyes proved her wrong. waves of anger surged through hermind. what are you hanging around for? she said. i did half the work, the woman said, and you didthe other half. by rights i should get one towel and five eggs, but my head is injured, thanks to you.
for the sake of your mother, i won’t report you to the authorities, but you have to give me your towelto wrap the wound and your five eggs for my health.
that reminded gugu that the old midwives always demanded a fee, and the thought disgusted her.
shame on you! she said through clenched teeth. shame, shame on you! what do you mean, you didhalf the work? if i’d let you finish, there would be two corpses lying on that kang. you witch, youthink a woman’s birth canal is like a hen’s rectum, that all you have to do is squeeze for an egg topop out. you call that a delivery? what it is is murder. and you want to report me? gugu aimed aflying kick on the woman’s chin. you want a towel? and eggs? another kick followed, this one onthe woman’s backside. she then grabbed her medical kit with one hand and the tight bun of hair onthe woman’s head and dragged her out into the yard. chen e followed them out, wanting to makepeace. get your arse back in there! gugu demanded angrily, and take care of your wife!
it was, gugu told me later, the first time she’d ever struck anyone. she’d never thought herselfcapable of such a thing. but she kicked her again. the old woman rolled over and sat up, poundingthe ground with both hands. help! she shrieked. she’s trying to kill me?.?.?.?wan liufu’s banditdaughter is trying to kill me!
evening is when that occurred. the setting sun, a colourful western sky, light breezes. most of thevillagers were taking their dinner out in the streets, rice bowls in hand, and they came trotting over tosee what all the commotion was about. the village party secretary, yuan lian, and brigadecommander lü ya (tooth) was among them. tian guihua was a distant aunt of lü ya, close enoughto be considered family. wan xin, he said to gugu, aren’t you ashamed to hit an old woman?
who did lü ya think he was, scolding me like that, a creep who battered his wife to make hercrawl around the house?
old woman? gugu said. old witch is more like it. a demon! ask her what she was doing here.
i don’t know how many people have died at your hand, but if a woman like me had a gun, she’dhappily put a bullet in your head. gugu pointed her finger at the old woman’s head. she was all ofseventeen at the time. the crowd tittered at her use of ‘a woman like me’.
there was more lü ya wanted to say in tian guihua’s defence, but he was cut short by yuanlian: doctor wan did nothing wrong. old witches who play games with people’s lives deserve to beseverely punished. tian guihua, stop the phoney act. you got off lightly with only being struck. youought to be sent to prison! from now on, doctor wan is to be called when any woman is about tohave a child. tian guihua, if you ever again show up to do what you do, i’ll rip those dog fingersright off your hands!
gugu said that yuan lian was not an educated man, but he could see which way tides ran andknew the importance of justice. he was a good cadre.
