11-26-2018
Recently, my daughter and I watched a movie called “The Death of Stalin”. She was surprised that I knew the main characters in the movie.
I told her: “In China, we were taught in school to follow Stalin’s Soviet Union and to criticize Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet revisionism. ”
I asked my daughter: “Why did you want to watch this movie?”
My daughter said: “Friends recommended it.”
“History major friends?”
“No, club friends.”
“Recommended to watch for what?”
“Watching nonsensical behavior of high ranking officers in a brain-washed society.”
I thought about the movie we just watched and replied: “A brain-washed society is very scary.”
In a brain-washed society, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China, it was not only high ranking officers were acted nonsensically, but also many average people, such as students against teachers, children against parents, people against people, etc.
This thought brought back memories of my mother reminding me to be careful about what I said in college (1981 – 1985).
In the 80’s, in last century’s China, one of the favorite activities for college students who just came back to school from winter or summer breaks was tasting different homemade foods brought back by roommates from different places.
In my college dorm room 501, in Sichuan Normal University female student building there lived eight classmates who came from Zigong, Mianyang, Ziyang, Chengdu, and Chongqin. We always tasted different homemade foods in our dorm room at the end of each break, foods like pork sausages, salted peanut, sweets, preserved meat, salted eggs etc. I still remember a glass jar of fried small fish, brought by Shan. Shan told us: “The fish was caught by my neighbor. The river in my hometown has lots of small fish, anyone can go to the river and catch small fish easily. ”
When I heard Shan’s story about “Anyone can go to the river to catch small fish easily”, I said to Shan: “your hometown practices real communism!”
Shan’s story touched my heart, when I came home during break, I told my parents: “ I tasted the fried small fish brought from Mianyang by my roommate Shan. There are lots of small fish at Mianyang’s river, anyone can catch them. Mianyang really likes communism.”
Before I went back to school after the break, my mother seriously talked with me: “You should not say ‘Mianyang really likes communism’ any more when you are back to school.”
I was irritated and asked her: “What is wrong with that?”
My mother saw my irritation, she thought a bit and said carefully: “You say ‘Mianyang really likes communism’ implies Zigong doesn’t, this could be interpret as slander against Zigong.”
I would never want to slander against my hometown. So I kept my mother’s reminder in my mind.
My mother experienced “people who bide their time to take revenge” during the Cultural Revolution. She was afraid that my innocent words may trouble me in the future. A mother’s love expressed under a special sensible time. Now, I still felt the deep love from my mother.
The flavor of Shan’s fried fish faded out, The Fort Mountain where the home for my entire schooldays was gone. However, the memory of my mother reminding me to watch my words, in our home on Fort Mountain, is still vivid.
The past few days, I was reading a book about the German invasion of France in World War II by Danielle Steel, from the book I learnt the sad story about French Jewish. When the race, not the words, threatens life, Jewish mothers in France gave up their own children to strangers and hoped their children would be smuggled to safe lands to survive, because those mothers believed there exists a love that is more powerful than a mother’s love.
Today is Thanksgiving, I have lots to be thankful for. The most thankful feeling goes to my mother for her unconditional love to me and to all the mothers who believed there exists a love more powerful than a mother’s love.
Dear Mother（10/25/1928－05/02/2018），I miss you.
(05/06/2017, Mother at ChangPin)