Just Know, I Never Did

Older friend.  Haven’t seen her in years.  I think the last time we were having lamb in Yinchun.  She looked great.  She has a stern confidence, earned through hardship and it feels well burnished, and appropriate, talking with her. 

She has a friend who is apparently a singer who also works with the police.  I am inclined to imagine the first lady.  Not Melania, but Liyuan.  Ms. Peng was a soldier and a singer though she hasn’t in years since she’s been a public figure.  This person also looked rather strong for her years.  Their friendship was an old one going back to a time in Lanzhou when they grew up together. 

And the topic, moved swiftly and I focused and followed along fairly well into what became a story, suddenly about the Cultural Revolution.  “The red guards came to our compound and shouted my father’s name:  down with Zhang, down with Zhang. I was sixteen.  I had to take care of myself.  He warned me if they said I committed suicide, just know, I never did.”

And I recalled how common such stories were and how close at hand that insanity felt in 1993 and how very far away it feels now, that everyone who has memories of that time is necessarily now at least fifty or so, rather than when it merely required an age of thirty to be cognizant of that dark time’s specter. 

Certainly these ladies spun the horror into a something, which made them stronger.  This can only be preferred to being overwhelmed by grief and doubt.  But why aren’t more contemporary young people fascinated with that time and what it really meant?  Something tells me it is still pending.

Thursday, 2/23/17