Ma Ping
Dramatis Personae
It is customary in China, for the family name (surname) to appear before the given name. Thus Deng Xiaoping, the great politician of recent years, his family were Dengs and his parents gave him the personal name of Xiaoping. I have adopted this method in my own story.
Ma Ping's Family:
Bai Qiang: Ma Ping's and Ma Shipeng's aunt, very strict and concerned about his education. She has been married twice and has four sons, her favourite being Bai Hui (who doesn't come into this story). (As a child, she is known as Li Qiang.)
Li Jiangtao: Bai Qiang’s and Ma Rong’s father and Ma Ping’s maternal grandfather.
Li Jincai: Bai Qiang’s and Ma Rong’s mother and Ma Ping’s maternal grandmother.
Ma Baozhong: Ma Xingjian’s father and Ma Ping’s paternal grandfather.
Ma Hui: Ma Ping's little brother.
Ma Ling: Ma Ping’s favourite sister, fourteen years old, who lives with her parents in the countryside. She loves her brother very much and is an excellent cook.
Ma Lingxia: Ma Xingjian’s mother and Ma Ping’s paternal grandmother.
Ma Ping: an eleven year old Hui (Moslem) boy, who has moved to the tiny city from the poor countryside so that he can receive a good education in the Number One Middle School. His elder brother runs a meatballs restaurant near the centre, and the child is expected to help out when he isn’t studying. He has a phenomenal talent as an artist, which he is just discovering, but he keeps this a secret at the beginning, as he knows his family won’t approve of the time it takes him: they want him to become a scholar or a teacher when he’s older. He wants to be an artist, as much as he understands he wants to become anything. He has a great deal of empathy for others, which is closely connected to his artistic ability.
Ma Rong: Ma Ping’s mother and Bai Qiang’s younger sister. (As a child she is known as Li Rongrong)
Ma Shipeng: Ma Ping’s twenty-two year old brother. He is a kind man, loves his brother very much, and wants to support his education. He is named after his uncle, who died in the Cultural Revolution before he was born and who was also a gifted artist.
Ma Xingjian: Ma Ping’s father. It is hard for the parents to provide the money for their children’s education, but they are determined that Ma Ping will succeed for all of them as he seems, with Ma Hui, to be the cleverest.
An Xueping: Lecturer at Beijing Normal University who visits Guyuan at the end of Part One and becomes a central character in Part Two.
An Zheping: An Xueping's dead son, a musical genius.
Chen Baoqing: a school friend of Ma Ping's at Guyuan Middle School.
Deng Qin: (also known as Teacher Deng) Ma Ping’s English and Chinese/calligraphy teacher in Guyuan (Part One). He is strict and mostly traditional in his methods, which means he uses a lot of recitation, imitation, rote-learning and testing. He is tortured by the memory of his brother who died in the Cultural Revolution for drawing seditious pictures of politicians of the time.
The Ding Family: (Part One)
Ding Fuxin: (see Ding Pengcheng) Ding Pengcheng’s younger brother, the father’s favourite, because he is always top of his class without any apparent effort.
Ding Jie: Ding Pengcheng's aunt (part one). She only comes into the Prologue to Part One.
Ding Li: Ding Pengcheng's grandfather and Yangching's father. He only comes into the prologue in Part One.
Ding Pengcheng: also eleven, who goes to Ma Ping’s school and is in the same grade but not the same class. He is not a clever boy like Ma Ping. He also suffers from being physically unattractive and from a bullying father.
Ding Xiaohua: Ding Yangching's mother.
Ding Yan: Ding Pengcheng’s and Ding Fuxin’s mother. She is rather afraid of her powerful and cold husband and finds it difficult to stick up for her older son against her husband’s frequent unkindnesses.
Ding Yangching: Ding Pengcheng's father. He is strict and devoted to study. He believes that children who don’t succeed are lazy rather than incapable.
Gao Jiangtao - Ma Ping's headmaster in Guyuan (part one). He is a forward-looking educator, and wants things to change in China. His methods are less Confucian, more humanitarian.
Han Yongchun: a teacher in Ma Ping's Xi'an school (part two).
Huang Hongmei: a young helper in the meatballs restaurant, fond of Ma Shipeng, who finds Bai Qiang’s authority rather trying.
Li Peidong: Ma Ping's headteacher (part two).
Ma Li Rui: (no relation to Ma Ping) a beautiful woman whom Ma Ping admires. She has been into the restaurant before this story begins and he wants to draw her very much. Her daughter is called Ma Rui.
Ma Rui: Ma Li Rui's young daughter.
Tian: (known as Little Tian): a friend of Chen Baoqing and Ma Ping at the Guyuan school.
Wang Guoyi: Ma Ping's calligraphy teacher in Xi'an in Part Two.
Wang Qing: Bai Qiang's best friend in Guyuan.
Wu Lian: a teacher at the teachers' college in Guyuan, whose son, Wu Ying is difficult.
Xu Xiaojia: an eighteen year old student at the Xi'an school (Part Two) who tries to take advantage of Ma Ping.
Yang Le: a pretty unhappy woman who comes into the meatballs restaurant occasionally.
Zhang Chen Hui: the Guyuan school-bully (Part One) two grades higher than Ma Ping.
Zhang Luxia: a kind girl at Ma Ping's school in Xi'an in Part Two
Zhao Bin: A nationally famous calligrapher who visits Ma Ping in Xi'an (Part Two).
Prologue: March, 1969
Li Qiang, eleven years old, is sitting on a hollow tree-stump with her younger sister, Li Rongrong, nine, kicking her heels and looking out towards the new day. Both are wrapped in thick, grubby jackets, trousers torn and frayed, scrappy shoes and bright, bobble hats fending off the cold wind of an early morning in this deserted landscape. The sun has just risen above the horizon and in the spring freshness the child can see a long way. There, far below her is where the Ding family lives. There are four of them, the parents and the two children, a boy and a girl. Ding Jie is a nice girl. She has long brown hair and ugly freckles! Mr. Ding is an old man. He has grey hair and shuffles when he walks but he is kind. Rongrong laughed at him last week and he was not even cross with her. He just smiled at her and patted her head. He looked sad. And there, on the right, down towards the valley, old Farmer Ma is goading an ox drawing a cart towards the lower field that leads to his house. His conical hat glints momentarily in the sunlight, and his staff can be heard even at this distance, clacking on the axle. But still the ancient animal only ambles with a lumbering gait, its bones protruding like washer-boards from its haunches. She stares after it, her heels slowing until they are still. She looks out at the valley beyond and the hills which frame it in her vision, sandy, dry and ancient, never-changing, relentless. Little is growing beyond gorse and some wheat on the terraced hills. To the right, the sorghum crop is ruined again, the soil past its ability to yield any more. And there beyond the mountains is The Town, but she’s never been there, and neither has Rongrong. The nearest she’s got was one Spring Festival when fires were lit on the brooding hillsides and people came from all over the area to feast and celebrate and jump over the fires into the new year. Her father swung her onto his shoulders and they marched for hours towards the glow until in the very distance, almost beyond her imagination, were some twinkling lights within grand town-walls.
‘That’s Guyuan!’ said her father, turning to get half a look at her. She sat up and strained her eyes to see.
‘Guyuan? Wow!’
‘What’s it like there?’ she asked.
‘Like?’ He paused. ‘Oh,’ and his normally mild tones took on shadows and secrets, as if the question had released possibilities like birds from cages. Li Qiang felt a frisson of delicious fear in her stomach.
‘Yes, like.’
‘They say that the giant’s relatives live there. They’re smaller of course and look like you and me, but they’re really giants.’
Li Qiang’s eyes grew larger with delight. Her father had told her once about how Dongyue Mountain was originally formed. An old giant was trekking across the vastness of the desert and needed somewhere to rest his weary head, so he built a great pile of earth for a pillow and laid down for a rest, and there he is, sleeping still and who knows when he’s going to wake? She doesn’t know whether it’s true, but it sounds true!
‘I’m hungry,’ says Li Rongrong with a pout. Li Qiang is startled at the interruption.
‘You’re always hungry,’ she comments flatly, her voice suggesting she hears this rather too often to take notice of it, so without looking at her, she stares ahead as the old ox turns slowly into the new field.
‘But I am!’ the child’s tone takes on a whining note, and Li Qiang turns to her then and pushes her sharply off balance so that she falls back into the dry, dusty soil and begins to cry.
‘So is everyone, you selfish little thing! Oh don’t cry. Rongrong, don’t cry.’
Li Qiang jumps down from the sprawled stump and runs behind it to comfort her sister. ‘I’m sorry I pushed you. Of course you’re hungry. It’s just that we all are and it makes us angry. And we have to help our parents. If you go on about being hungry all the time, it makes it harder for them.’
‘Why?’ asks the little girl, looking up trustingly into her sister’s face as she scrambles to her feet with her hand in Li Qiang’s.
‘Because it just does. So, let’s see if there’s anything for breakfast, and if there isn’t, don’t start again, O.K.?’
‘Yes,’ says Li Rongrong, subdued, looking at her elder sibling, and realising for the first time how sad she is, and this new knowledge making her grip her hand more firmly. I’ll never complain again, she says to herself, forcing herself to skip beside her sister. I’ll be a good child and help everyone.
‘Chairman Mao says we must help each other, doesn’t he, Big Sister?’
‘Yes, he does. He’s our Great Leader. He tells us that we must help everyone to make China a great country in the future.’
These words are familiar to both girls, like an incantation, and therefore comforting.
Their mother, Li Jincai, steadies herself as she moves about the tiny kitchen. It is dark and cold and there is so little fuel for the stove again today. She checks the metal canister in the corner and replaces the top with a clatter. Li Jiangtao stands watching her from the door.
‘All used up?’ he says flatly.
Her answer is an almost imperceptible nod. ‘I’ll climb to the well again. Your feet can’t take all that weight.’
He smiles at her kindness.
‘Ask Ma to help you.’
‘I’m always asking him. It’s not right. And anyway, it’s not safe to ask him. Last week, you know what happened to Old Ding. Well, if it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone.’
‘Ding’s family isn’t missing anyone. Yet.’ The word hangs on the air in an accusing silence.
Li Jincai looks at her husband for the first time, a warning in her eyes, and fear in her heart as if to say: 'Don’t say the next part. Please don’t say it. If you say it, it’s true and there’s nothing we can do about it, but if you don’t say it, maybe it isn’t true'.
Her only response is a muted sob and a slight tremor in her throat.
‘Well!’ and she turns away again, placing the wok on the stove, for something to do, rather than to suggest she might use it. She looks into the hemp sack on the floor, and notes again with relief, that there is still a little rice left. And then without being able to stop herself: ‘He’ll come back. After the Revolution. He’ll come back, Brother Tian. They can’t keep him forever. They’ll realise, they’ll know…’ But now, having broken that particular silence, Li Jincai feels trapped in a hollow of misery. ‘Oh!’ she exclaims bitterly, ‘don’t just stand there, getting under my feet, go out and check on our plot again! Maybe there’s something we can salvage.’ Li Jiangtao understands and shuffles across to his wife and squeezes her shoulder gently. She is instantly warmed by his gesture, and feels stronger. She places her hand over his.
And from the hollow gloom of the morning the children arrive back, breathless with excitement. ‘Look, look!’ exclaims Li Qiang. ‘We’ve found a couple of potatoes. They were on the pathway. Farmer Ma must have dropped them when he was taking them across the valley to sell! Can we keep them, can we, can we?’ Li Rongrong, all dimples and eager happiness, jumps up gleefully by her sister’s side.
The parents smile at the children’s ardour, and the relief that today they will eat a meal together as a family should, although when Li Jincai looks at the spoils, she sees that one of the potatoes is rotten and probably inedible.
Across the valley Farmer Ma closes the latch on the wooden gate, enclosing his old ox in the yard. He sighs as he looks at what remains of his land. It used to cover as far as the eye could see in one direction at least, and then it was split up when his sister got married, and then that was taken away when she was found to be a capitalist-roader last year. All that land repossessed and then redistributed to the Number Two collective. Yes, I can see the fairness of it now, although I didn’t at the time, but with those bloody townies camped out now, and having to feed them into the bargain, well, it does seem a bit much. Well, I’m lucky to have any land at all, although of course, it isn’t formally mine anymore, but I was allowed to stay with my family on it, so that’s something. There isn’t enough harvest to keep extra people in potatoes and rice, though, and the sorghum’s crap these days. And those bloody townies really are stupid as well. Fancy them coming all the way from Xi’an as well. But Mao knows best. He has a plan. He says these intellectuals need to be re-educated in the countryside. Well, he must know. But they’re bloody useless here. That idiot yesterday with his ideas for allowing some of the land to lie fallow in rotation sometimes, what the hell does he know? As if we’ve got the land to spare for that. Him and his fancy ideas! I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t some sort of class traitor. That’s why they’re sent here. To show them the real China. That’s what Mao says. And now they’re spending time planting the crops Mao tells them to, but they don’t seem to be growing as well as we all expected. And we still have to feed them. Oh, it’s such a fucking muddle. We’ll just have to work harder.
Our Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao Zedong, will sort it all out for us.
‘Ma Baozhong!’ calls his wife from the hut-door. ‘Are you going to spend the whole morning dreaming? Come on in and get your breakfast.’
He nods at her in reply, and slowly ambles up the pathway to the door, standing his staff against the porchway. His feet are caked in dust and as he removes his thick, worn boots, he cracks them against the brick wall of their small house, and the dust swirls in a cloud around him.
‘Where are our visitors?’ he asks truculently.
‘Most of them went out to dig over Penyang way.’
‘Good bloody riddance. Let’s hope they go missing on the way back.’
‘Now, husband, you know you shouldn’t speak like that. Come on in and I’ll get you some rice.’
Ma Baozhong sighs and takes his place heavily at the wooden table in the centre of the interior. He notes with pleasure that the stove is lit, but also that the stock of fuel is very low. Almost at this thought, with a pair of heavy metal tongs, his wife extracts the unburnt clumps of charred wood from the stove, laying them on the stone floor beside the heater to cool.
‘Where’s Ma Xingjian?’ he asks, looking away from the implications of what he has just witnessed. The child enters the room at that point, pushing through the curtain, and sits down at the table, greeting his parents formally. Ma Xingjian is a skinny boy, whose emaciated little body is surprisingly wiry and strong. His hair is thin and soft, like down still, and sometimes, in a moment of reflection, Ma Lingxia smiles at her memories of his babyhood. When he was born he had a plumage of hair, lustrous and silky-soft. When her sister, who delivered the child, handed him to her, Ma Lingxia thought she had never seen anything as beautiful. Even Ma Shipeng…But anyway, little Xingjian sits upright and eager, looking fresh despite his shabby clothes and grimy hands and face. It’s his eyes of course, his mother realises, as she looks closely at him, his eyes, which shine with the brightness of un-disappointed youth, a life stretching out before him like a golden mu. Lucky that he still doesn’t understand, she thinks gratefully.