The Acrobats
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2007
1
34
42
Trip End
Jul 04, 2008
Kaifeng,
China
Monday, March 10, 2008
Once you spend enough time in China, you "stop being surprised that you're surprised," as my friend Jackie puts it. He's Chinese and most days he's surprised at the circumstances he finds himself in. But that might be more because he's in charge of keeping us alive and receives phone calls when we're being interrogated by the PLA or when we need to talk to the Chinese police. Like Jackie though, I've reached the point where I have stopped being surprised about the ridiculousness of my life. But more often than not, China floors me in the most unexpected ways.
The things that surprise me the most in China are always the people I find myself surrounded by. Most of the time, I exist in strange relationships that are sustained by the mere repetition of physical and wordless contact since my Chinese skills still leave much to be desired. It will be a long, long time before I can hash out the dirty details of the Cultural Revolution with the old women on the corner. Or so I thought. For obvious reasons, the person's name below has been changed.
Ever since I was little, I've had an amazing knack for falling into bodies of water. Luckily though, that hasn't happened in China, but my cell phone decided to get in on the act and the other day, it found itself at the bottom of Longting Lake. On a quest for a new phone, I dragged Freddie Mercury around with me all day hopping from one China Mobile to another. While China's bureaucratic ways were bouncing us around (No no, you can't buy a SIM card at this China Mobile, you need to go to this one. Oh, they sent you here? Well, we need a Xeroxed copy of your ID card. No, we don't have a Xerox machine. You need to go to this other China Mobile, etc etc) we started talking about family.
As it turns out, Freddie Mercury's family just isn't any old Chinese family - it was an acrobatic circus family.
"Well I told you my family was a large circus," he said as the Xerox machine light streaked across his face.
"Yeah, but I thought you meant that it was large and crazy," I said incredulously. "You're shitting me, right? A real circus?"
"A real circus. They travelled all over China," Freddie continued, with a smile that didn't quite assure me he wasn't joking.
"Is your family still a circus?" I asked, completely stone-faced as I tried to read his face for the signs of a joke.
"No, they were dismissed," he whispered.
"Dismissed?" I asked, "What does that mean?"
"They were on the wrong side of the Cultural Revolution and when their side lost, their enemies dismissed them," he said as his eyes looked up from the hulk of a xerox machine. There was no joke on his face.
Freddie's family circus was based in Henan with his mother as the key player in the ensemble. She won several contortionist competitions and was one of the best in the province. When things started to get rough and sides had to be chosen, Freddie Mercury's family made their decision. They were not going to be a part of the Communist Party. Staying together as a circus family, they also created a militia to fight Mao and the devastation from the Cultural Revolution. Freddie's father joined the militia and quickly became one of its commanders. After joining the militia, Freddie's father met the circus' key player - Freddie's mother, and that is how his family story came to be.
I weighed my options. Could I ask point blank the questions I've wanted to ask for so long or did I have to tip toe around the issue? Despite living here for over half a year, I'm still figuring out how to work my way around China's more sensitive recent past.
"Did anything bad happen besides the circus' dismissal?" I asked, deciding to plunge right in.
"My cousin, who is three years younger than my father, threw a grenade into a group of people," he said, looking forward and not making eye contact. "Do you know about the students? The university students? They were the worst ones. They would carry around the little red book and they could do whatever they wanted. They didn't pay for anything for years. They could go on the trains, go to restaurants, hotels, stores - they didn't pay for any of it. People were too scared of them."
"Did anything happen to your cousin?"
"He spent a year in jail, but they had to finally release him."
"Why?" I asked, completely bewildered at the response. I've heard a lot of things about China in the Cultural Revolution and letting off suspected agitators is not one of them.
"They didn't have enough evidence. Everybody knew that he threw the grenade into the crowd, but nobody actually saw it."
Freddie Mercury continued to tell me things about his family. How people would carry around guns and distrust people. How his grandfather starved to death when he was 80 because of the horrible economic policies of the Great Leap Forward.
"So it's not just you, but your whole family has never been a part of the Communist Party...and with reason," I mumbled, rolling over everything he was telling me.
"Haha no. We've never liked them," he said as I looked at him and thought about every conversation we've had where he distinctly separated himself from the CCP.
"So, when you guys get together do you sit around and talk about the circus and how your cousin threw that grenade?" I said, thinking about how when I visit my grandpa he'll muse over stories and memories from World War II.
"Oh yeah. We eat a big meal at the table and then everyone talks about the circus and the Cultural Revolution. It's what we do."
"Were you in the circus then?"
"No, I can't even do a flip."
