A Debt Collection Devil （讨债鬼）

A Debt Collection Devil （讨债鬼）

Michael Meng-Hua Ye

September 2003

Mom said that I was a debt collection devil to her.

Before a rigorous proof to be given to this proposition, a definition with some explanation on “Debt Collection Devil (DCD)” is warranted. Of course, this is a Chinese terminology, originally “taozhaigui (討債鬼).”  It can only be used exclusively in intimate relationships.  In a mother-son relationship, for example, not only the mother loves her son and is obligated to deliver, but also owes to her son and even is in debt to her son.  How can this be the case?  It is said that in the endless eternal lives with reincarnations, the mother must have got into a deep debt with her son encountered in one of their previous lives.  

 1946

In the case of my Mom and me, the proposition was proven, mathematically, by contradiction.  Were I not a DCD, the following events could never have happened.  In other words, since the following events actually took place, I must be a DCD.  

 1947

Mom told me I was born with great difficulty.  She craved for meat during the pregnancy, an experience she never had, not even when she was pregnant with any one of my three sisters.  She nearly lost me when she tried to clean a fish at a pond.  As a result, I was born several weeks earlier.  The labor was long and painful - Mom always complained years and years later.  

I was not a physically strong child. I got sick all the time.  Mom had two hobbies:  playing Majiang and seeing Yue opera, both activities that Dad was not fond of.  Just about every time when Mom went out playing Majiang or seeing a Yue opera, she came home to find I had a high fever that Dad blamed on her negligence.

Seeing Dad off to the United States (1948)

I had tonsillitis often and eventually had my tonsils taken out.  Then bronchitis became a frequent thing.  When a little older, severe allergies led to asthma for several decades.  In the worse periods, I recall going to school only for four days in a semester in the second grade.  Overnight, I could not lie down to go to sleep and could breathe only while sitting up.  Mom held me in such a position for countless nights so I could catch some sleep during those periods of asthma attack.  In high school, I sneezed so many times in a class that the teacher was inclined to ask me to leave because my classmates were counting my number of sneezes.  In the second year of high school, I had to go to Beijing for a change to stop the attack. It was not until the “Zhou Dynasty” that it was identified that I was allergic to only dust mite’s droppings and nothing else. 

Qianhua, the youngest of my three older sisters and six years older than me, once took me out to play with a couple of her friends when I was maybe five years old.   They played swings and I stood by watching.  Somehow, one of the swings hit my head and caused bleeding. I did not really feel anything.  Qianhua asked me if I felt any pain and my answer was no.  She was pleased with my answer and said to me: “Tell Mom you don’t feel any pain if she asks!”  They took me to some one’s home, washed my shirt, intending to get rid of the bloody evidence but only making the stained area larger.  When I got home and went upstairs, I yelled: “Mom, Mom!  I don’t feel any pain at all!”  I was mocked for my stupidity for many years since.

Once, after a Soviet movie on a world wrestling champion was shown in theaters, kids in the Nanjing University professor resident compound started wrestling games and I ended up with my left arm broken.  Doctors allowed the arm in a plaster cast for too long and my left arm could not stretch straight after the cast was removed.  It was only after months’ physical therapy, I finally had a relatively normal left arm again. 

I loved to dissemble things, toys or real things such as doors and locks.  I recall once I took down a door on the second floor when I was maybe eight or nine years old.  “Meng-Hua, lunch is ready!” I heard the voice from the dining room downstairs, but could not move for I was holding the falling door on my back.  Spring locks were an all time favorite “toy” of mine.  It was a lot easier to decompose a lock into pieces than to put all parts back to a lock with those balls.  Later when I grew up, I liked to repair things, often unsuccessfully.  Mom said I was a veterinary specialized at treating a sick horse and making it a dead one (病馬醫成死馬).

One may say these are rather normal troubles a boy may have.  Mom might not have agreed.  She said it was so much easier to raise the three daughters, even adding the troubles caused by three daughters together.  Well, she might have a point there because things were getting worse when I kept growing up older.  Mom told me the year when I was five years old was her favorite, but not since. 

On my sixth birthday, Mom and the housemaid went out to do groceries and I was left home alone.  I locked myself in the kitchen, a separated structure from the living quarter, and indulged myself on my passion on playing with fire.  The kitchen was a typical one in early 1950s in China.  There were two cook ranges, an old fashioned Chinese one that burned dry straw and another contemporary one burning coal.  There was a running water faucet outside but not inside the kitchen.  Inside the kitchen, there was a huge urn holding many gallons of clean water, which could be conveniently reached with a bamboo scoop.  I locked the kitchen door from the inside so that nobody would interfere with my good time playing with fire, knowing it was prohibited.  I took a straw and lit it with the fire in the coal stove and removed it to the straw stove.  That was so much fun!  Fun, yes, but not until the whole pile of straws caught the fire with big flames.  I grabbed the bamboo scoop and tried to put out the fire with the water in the urn.  Without much success, I finally opened the door and asked for help.  Later, I was praised of being smart enough to know my limits.  “You would have burned yourself to death, if you did not open the door,” Mom said.

Then I was sent to Gulou (Drum Building) Kindergarten, which was supposedly the best in existence then.  Attending the kindergarten was not out of any necessity – there were housemaid and grandma at home to take care of me.  It was thought a right, or fashionable, thing to do to expose me to more than just the immediate family circle, I guess.   I remember nothing about this so-called best kindergarten except the winter outfit of mine.  To avoid catching cold, I was forced to wear a pair of cotton filled trousers over a pair of warm, thick pants, a cotton filled vest over a sweater, and a long cotton filled overcoat buttoned on the side like those dresses in Qing dynasty, covering both upper and lower body.  These clothes made me totally immobile, with my two arms being able to stretch out in nearly fixed 45 degree angles. Needless to say, I looked extremely silly.  When I played on a slide one day, my overcoat was caught by something and then the overcoat was ripped off. And so was my dignity.  I feel Mom still owes me on this one even today.

It seemed to be a tradition that kids from professors’ families would have to go to the elementary school attached to Nanjing Teacher’s College for its undisputed reputation. However, it was quite a distance from our home, out of the walking range for a seven- years-old.  So, one of those tricycle rickshaws was arranged to take me to the school every day.  It was about seventeen cents for each trip, a cost considered very high to our family budget. Lunches were delivered to me by housemaid.  Mom was always proud of her choice of the school.  She was especially proud of her choice of the class, with her instinctive judgment on Teacher Si Xia (斯霞), later became a nationally famous elementary teacher.  Looking back, this is very much true.  The school shaped me and defined what I am today, for good or worse.

July 1959

It was just not fair to my three older sisters, now that I am thinking back.  All of them went to a nearby elementary school, notoriously known for its poor quality.

Naturally, following the same tradition of all professors’ families, I should have gone to the middle school attached to Nanjing Teacher’s College, which was a boarding school.  Mom and Dad obviously struggled on making the decision.  My health condition was the key reason, I guess, that made them send me to The 10^th Middle School in Nanjing, also known as Kinling Middle School, often considered as the second best, ten minutes walk from home.  

Signs of future troubles became ever clearer. Looking back, these signs pale other small troubles.  I showed uncommon distance to joining the Communist Youth Pioneer in the elementary school.  Nothing profound, I simply felt embarrassed to perform so I could satisfy certain basic requirements to be qualified.  For example, one necessary condition was for every kid who wished to join to show his/her “political progressiveness,” defined by the Communist Party.  This feeling grew as I grew.  In the middle and high school, it became a conscience decision that I did not want to join the Communist Youth League.  Moreover, I started looking down those who faked his or her “political progressiveness,” just so they could pass the test and be admitted as a member.  

Meanwhile, my diverse interests blossomed.  Just to name a few, I began with making flyable airplane models in elementary school.  Later I got more serious with airplane design.  Aerodynamics became one of my favorite subjects to study.  In middle school, I was one of the key members of a team that made a real manned glider. Overall, Mom was supportive, considering the tight budget the family had.  I envied those kids who could build their own radio set, but was aware that my family could not afford those parts, tools and instruments.

Literature became another passion, Chinese classic and contemporary, foreign classic and contemporary, anything and every thing I could get my hands on.  I was holding three ID cards for Nanjing University Library, one from Dad, another from Mom, and a third from Ronghua, the second older sister.  Mom told me she liked those writings by Guo Moruo, which were so boring to me then.  Like many other youth in China in that era, influenced by Communist Party’s propagandas, I liked those by Lu Xun.  A few years ago, I brought those Lu Xun’s writings I collected in China to the United States and only found he was merely such a pest.  Next time when I go to China, I will buy a set of Guo Moruo’s books, just for Mom’s sake.

I liked music, art, photography, and particularly those of West.  It all started with Ronghua, who brought these into the family, including a violin. Mom allowed me to play a piano, a rare thing around then, at the Kindergarten attached to Nanjing University, where she was serving as the director at that time.

I also fell in love with gardening, aquariums, foreign languages (English, French, German, and Japanese), mathematics, theoretical physics and so on and so forth.  It was hard to find a thing that I did not like during those teenage years.  Mom warned me: “You are not going to digest all these! (贪多嚼不烂)”

Alas, what those literature, art, and music did to a teenager!  By the time I was going to graduate from the high school, I was filled with fantasies about my life.  I wanted an extraordinary one.  To start, I thought I ought to reject the trivial path to go to a university.  I was not alone.  I had quite a few buddies thinking similarly.  We worried the school and our families.  Mom was so upset that she told me many times later, apologetically, that she slapped me once.  I don’t really recall she did it.  Maybe she did.  Maybe, she imagined because she really wanted.

So, while every one else was preparing intensively for the university entrance examinations day and night, I was reading novels, and played in the Purple Mountains and Xuanwu Lakes with my buddies.  Needless to say, my buddies and I did not do well in those examinations.  My scores were not good enough for my first choice, Peking University, to admit me.  I missed for a few points.  Then, Dad thought the second choice, Fudan University, should be a sure thing since my scores were above the required and he knew some one in the admission committee.  This acquaintance of Dad’s turned back and told my father: “You will have to discipline your son better!” He was referring to some comments made by my high school in the secretive dossier on me.  Dad was insulted and hated Fudan from then on.  The third and fourth choices had to do with majoring in airplane design, one of my teenage passions. Ironically, this major was considered as a classified field and my family background was not security cleared for it, a secret criterion to us at that time.   Finally, Jiaotong University in Xi’an, the fifth choice, admitted me. “What a mistake they made!”  Mom said years later.  

Actually, it was not fair for Mom to say that.  In the freshman year, I gave up all my hobbies and focused on study and only study.  I was full of ambition.  I wanted to be a useful person to my motherland and was burning with desires to make some big contributions.  

The real trouble started with Cultural Revolution in 1966.  I could not accept it from day one.  I was on the wrong side from the very beginning, rather proudly being wrong, now that I look back. To make a long story short, I was banned from participating in any activities including classes, being locked up or so-called “separated” without any freedom for nearly a year, regularly denounced university-wide as a Current Counter Revolutionary (现行反革命), and was beaten several times.  Eventually, after two failed escapes, I ended up in Shaanxi Province #1 Prison from February 1969 to April 1971, and was re-educated in a “labor-camp” type of arrangement for another year from 1971 to 1972.   

In the whole period when I lost my freedom, my family was not informed.  In the early period, Mom insisted on sending money to me in hope of get an acknowledgement from me. This way, she would at least know I was alive.   She did not stop mailing money until she was ordered by some “revolutionary authority” to stop.  Of course, I never received any of the money she sent.  Later, when I first visited home after I was release from prison, she showed me all the receipts she kept secretly inside the binding column of a Mao’s quotation book (the famous, or infamous, little red book).  Hey, listen, Jiaotong University, find that money Mom sent to me! 

At one point Mom thought I must have died.  Rumors passed to Mom saying that I founded a reactionary organization, which was being investigated by the central government.  Not to make things worse, nobody in the family could show signs of concern on the Current Counter Revolutionary son.  Mom wanted to cry but knew that would only make things worse.  Over time, she got severe glaucoma. By spring 1971, Dad and Ronghua were very worried about Mom’s condition.  They decided to bring Mom to visit Grandma’s graveyard so Mom could let go and cry as much as she wanted without causing any suspicion.  Mom did.  Her crying shocked other graveyard visitors.  “Who was she crying for?”  “Her mother,” answered Dad and Ronghua. “When did her mother die?” “Ten years ago.”  People sighed: “What a mourning daughter!”  

1971 first visit home after released from prison

Mom said to me afterwards, “The Cultural Revolution was ridiculous, but not every one ended up in prison.  Think about it, why you!” 

1972 in Yangzhou

In 1971, Qianhua left us at age 31.  Mom sobbed, “The four children of mine were like four legs of a table.  Now the table is not right any more with three legs!”  Mom sighed, “How much I have to endure!  I had to experience the Japanese invasion, had my son jailed, had my home burned down, and now to have a daughter of mine die young!”  Dad let me take Mom out of town for a trip to release her pain.  We went to Zhenjiang, crossed Yangtze River, and toured Yangzhou.  It was a rather silent trip.  Neither Mom nor I talked much.  I was not sad, just filled with burning flames of hatred, which could not be put off, not even with the grant river in front of me! 

It came to the age that I should get married.  Dad and Mom also thought marriage might make my life safer. I fully empowered them to find a wife for me with only one condition – that girl must not be a “politically progressive” person.  So they found one for me and the girl and I fell in love and were ready to get married.  Unfortunately, Dad and Mom changed their mind.  The breakup was hasty and senseless.  To avoid complications, Mom took Haitao to Xi’an to guard me from then the new ex-girl friend/fiancée.  From then on, I was destined to go through more troubled marriages.  Mom owes me on this one too.

1974 Mom and Haitao visited me in Han Yuan Dian, Xi’an

In 1978, after months of confrontations with Jiaotong University, I had my counter revolutionary case reversed.  Omitting all details for another story, I was admitted by Nanjing University as a graduate student and later selected by the university to be sent to University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate school under a government scholarship. Mom joked with someone at Nanjing University, “See how much trouble Meng-Hua is going to bring to you this time.  Just look at his track record!”  By then, the proposition of me being a DCD was considered fully established. Mom stated the proposition in a more rigorous way:  “Whoever and wherever gets involved with you, you are going to collect the debts they owed you in their previous lives.”  Mom provided me with ample examples, “Don’t think that I don’t know all the troubles you made in the 10^th Middle and High School and see how much trouble you brought to Yunhua when she helped you get into the high school attached to Peking University.  Then it was Jiaotong University, what a mess you made there!  I gave birth to you, I must owe you the most!”

Well, I hope Mom wea wrong this time in the case of Nanjing University.  I was supposed to return to Nanjing University upon the completion of the Ph.D. program but I did not.  Nobody at Nanjing University should be blamed for my personal decision.  

In 1985, Mom visited me in Arlington, Virginia after Dad passed away.  She looked frail.  Her dark shining black hair turned grey suddenly.  However, to my big surprise, Mom brought the Prison Release Certificate to me, which I considered as one of the most precious documents in my life.  “Mom, but it was too risky!”  I was so excited when I saw it.  Mom was proud of what she did, “Well, is there any one on the earth who knows you better than your mother? (知子莫如母)”  

1986 Mom and Yunhua visited me in Arlington, VA

By the way, Mom thought she knew everything in my life.  Not true.  I will have to balance pros and cons to see if I should tell her everything by now.  If the answer is yes, when and where should I do it?  

It is very comforting to think about reincarnation and eternal life, especially when all debts have been cleared between Mom and I, whether paid or collected.

Mom was an ordinary yet great mom.