Mumbai: Churchill once described Russia as an enigma wrapped in a riddle. China is many times more complex and enigmatic. At the best of times its politics are opaque and the observer has to spot and interpret the occasional wisps of smoke that emanate from Beijing’s heavily guarded Zhongnanhai, where the Communist elite resides.
In 1960 Wu Han, the deputy Mayor of Beijing and a well-known writer wrote an article commending Hai Rui. Hai Rui was renowned for his honesty but was imprisoned because he criticized the capriciousness of the Emperor. He later adapted this to an opera “Hai Rui Dismissed From Office”, which opened in Beijing in 1961 to rapturous response from notables like Mao Zedong.
But as critics started seeing it as an allegory to Marshal Peng Dehuai’s criticism of Mao during the 1959 Lushan Conference, in which Peng's criticism of Mao's Great Leap Forward led Mao to purge Peng. According to the critics’ interpretation, Hai Rui was Peng, and the Ming Emperor was Mao. Mao soon removed Wu Han from his job, and attacked his immediate superior Peng Zhen, who in turn was a close associate of President Liu Shaoqi. The attack on the play was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution that convulsed China and cost millions their lives.
At that time the writing of the article by a senior party functionary, and its transformation as a popular opera were wisps of smoke that most observers missed. But when the orchestrated attack by critics began, the world began to take notice. Something was afoot in China? But few predicted the convulsion that was to follow. In 2010 I visited the island of Hainan in China. Tropical Hainan is a favorite winter resort of the Chinese and now increasingly of Russians seeking escape from the darkness and icy whiteness of their winters. But to me Hainan had entirely another special meaning. It was where the Ming era Minister Hai Rui was buried. But my hosts in Hainan seemed or feigned ignorance of Hai Rui. Obviously, there was no official line out on him and they were understandably reticent.
One evening in Xiamen last month I viewed “Coming Home” a 2014 Chinese drama film directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Chen Daoming and Gong Li. The movie also signaled the coming together of Zhang with his long estranged muse, the legendary actress, Gong Li. Gong Li, a superb actor and an exquisite beauty transformed herself into a middle aged and tired wife bringing up a teenaged daughter amidst the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. The story is based on a novel by Yan Geling "The Criminal Lu Yanshi".
While the action opens during the 10-year Cultural Revolution, its main male character, Lu Yanshi, played by Chen Daoming, is a political “rightist” who is already in jail. In total, he spends 20 years there. When he finally comes home his wife, Feng Wanyu, played by Gong Li, has crumpled under the weight of multiple tragedies that affect not only her husband but also her daughter and herself, and she is in a state of traumatized forgetfulness. Her husband stands by her.
It is always a joy to behold Gong Li. She has an incandescent beauty, which lights up the screen. She can tell a story of an entire lifetime of waiting and suffering by the mere flicker of her eyelids. Even a slight spread of the lips towards a smile can express the joy of momentary recollection and recognition. In this movie Gong Li goes from middle age to old age and only she can carry it off with grace and dignity, as she portrays a wife who in the waiting for her imprisoned husband loses what she treasures the most - her memory of him. It is caused by the trauma of a daughter betraying her father to the State.
Chen Daoming plays the husband, Lu Yanshi, who the party imprisons. His expressive face conveys the pain and anguish only a husband can experience by the loss of mind of a dearly loved one.
As Zhang explains: “Coming Home” examines history and society itself. In a developing country like China, of course we Chinese people are constantly fighting against all kinds of disasters. Natural disasters, man-made disasters, you know, all kinds of disasters. But we, the Chinese people, are going to keep fighting.”
“Our material lives are much better compared to 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but what this film is trying to say is” that family love is essential to surviving “whatever material poverty or political disasters or natural disasters may befall. You can survive everything."
My two Chinese escorts, both much too young to have experienced the Cultural Revolution and the Big Brother state that turned not only neighbors against each other but tore families apart. Young Chinese are experiencing an unprecedented prosperity and a life free of the pain and fright their parents or grandparents were enveloped by. They only have a vague sense of what happened. The movie hall was not exactly overflowing, but the audience was mainly young, who were viewing the past for the first time. It then devolved on my Indian fellow traveler, Ambassador TCA Rangachari, a fluent Mandarin speaker and one who served in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution years to bring the two youngsters up to date on the halcyon times China lived through.
I saw much more in the movie. I saw a new wisp of smoke and it was drawing patterns in my imagination. Does this herald another loosening up of public discourse in China and re-interpretation of recent history? “Coming Home” with its implicit criticism of Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution bares skeletons in cupboards long kept locked. Is there more to “Coming Home” and does it herald the coming of more?
