Jianqing Zheng: The Dog Years of Reeducation (excerpt)

Star Watching

After graduating from a foreign language school in the Cultural Revolution, we have no choice but to go to the countryside to receive reeducation from the poor and lower-middle peasants. We learn to plow cotton fields, plant rice seedlings by hand, work barehanded, and walk barefoot.

roosters crowing
another day of life
in the village

At night, our life is as flat as our farm work, tasteless as rice and pickled turnips we eat each day. No books to read, no chess to play, no dream to make. Luckily, Pigsy has a semiconductor radio. Lying in bed and smoking cheap cigarettes, we listen to the shortwave radio for comprehension of English. Sometimes we catch a couple of familiar words before we fall asleep.

autumn night
lying on rice stacks
counting stars
 
Lunchtime

Back from the rice paddies for lunch, we slump down on the porch, listless as slugs. Chopsticks stir in bowls to pick out tiny rocks; white rice and brined turnips are as tasteless as day. A greenbottle fly humming like a drunkard wheels down on Pigsy’s rice. Horse chuckles, eyes gloating, “Pigsy, you get a bowl of maggots. Do they taste good?” “Don’t fart, buddy! You want to try some?” Pigsy shouts like vomit and casts rice over Horse. Everyone bursts out laughing: maggots wriggling on Horse’s face.

plain laughter
flavor
of plain life
 
Back from the Cotton Trading Center

I holler at the donkey to trot faster because I want to get back to the village before nightfall, but it does not think my way. The sun retreats its light into embers surrounded by dark clouds, the dirt road is rutty, and the cart rocks me to shuteye. I dream of Mom cooking the pork rib soup I’ve been longing for. The snort shakes me up. Mouth watering, I jump off the cart, unharness the donkey, and lead it into the stable. On my way to my shanty, hunger growls like a cat. The moonrise looks like an empty yellow plate.

autumn night
serenaded
by the cheerful katydids
 
Lotus Picking


A small sampan slides through the dense green of lotus leaves, a girl sitting on the bow picks lotus seedpods by clipping their stems, and another girl stands in the stern, with her long black hair rippling in the breeze, rowing and singing, her lotus-picking song skimming and flapping like a great egret over the dark green lake and then soaring, hovering, flitting and swooping overhead. When the sampan glides to shore, the bird lands back on the shoulder of the rowing girl while lotus leaves whisper in the morning sunshine.


Maostalgia

I lost my voice in the Cultural Revolution after brandishing our great helmsman Mao’s little red book and shouting my heart out for his longevity. Upon graduation from a boarding school of foreign languages, I answered Mao’s call and went to the countryside to rebuild my body for strong bones and muscles. I even mastered the local dialect, excited that I could speak without an accent.

I heard of Mao’s death while picking cotton. I was hungry that afternoon; I cursed the sun for not sinking faster; I cursed the bellman for not striking the bell sooner. A blur in my eyes and tremor, anxiety, and cold sweat all assailed me. At last, the sun set, bloody red, and the long tolling came from the village to drag me out of the fields.

Great Wall tour—
each souvenir stall sells
Chairman Mao badges

~~~~

Author’s Note: In the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), millions of middle school and high school graduates, called the zhiqing or educated youth, were sent to the mountains and countryside to receive reeducation from poor peasants. With a deep conviction that they would play some role in the transformation of rural China, the zhiqing became field hands, never realizing that reeducation was both a physical and psychological challenge . This collection of poetry relives those re-education years in the fields. Half a century has passed, but memories remain as the historical presence of the hard times, each a page of suffering, cheering or dreaming that tus for the reason of not forgetting.

From The Dog Years of Reeducation by Jianqing Zheng (Madville, 2023). Copyright 2023 Jianqing Zheng.

Jianqing Zheng’s books include A Way of Looking (Silver Fish, 2021), a collection of haibun which won the Gerald Cable Book Award. A reeducated youth in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Zheng is a professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University.