Bai Yang's Memoirs: A Man Who Has Seen Hell and Returned

Author: Bei Yang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-08-01
Features: Taiwan's renowned writer Bei Yang is also hailed as a master of humanities. He began his literary career under the name Guo Yidong in 1950 and started using the pen name Bei Yang to write essays in 1960, exposing the ailments of Chinese culture and the dark side of Taiwanese society. Known as "a man who has seen hell and returned," he attended countless schools throughout his life but never received a diploma from elementary to university, even going so far as to forge one. In his lifetime, he married five wives, and each marriage was accompanied by a series of past events like smoke. He did not know his own birthday, had beaten his stepmother, served in the military, and had face-to-face encounters with both the Jiang family father and son. He attempted suicide multiple times, was expelled from schools and institutions countless times, endured ten years of imprisonment, and was nearly executed in the 1970s... This was a disaster-ridden era, where individual lives were no better than ants. At the same time, it was a of the social life in China that Bei Yang experienced. That is why the living Bei Yang opposed Confucian traditions, feudal monarchy, and the autocracy of scholar-officials. He supported simplified Chinese characters and even more so the romanization of Chinese, often speaking thought-provoking words that reflected his independent thinking and humanistic analysis. Alas! You are an orphan without a mother! Take care of yourself!rdquo; I gradually realized that a stepmother was different from a biological mother, and sorrow and resentment grew in my heart. However, in reality, I was not a lovable boy. I was stubborn, skipped school, had poor grades, and often fought, which generally made me seem unruly and undisciplined. Although I tried to please my stepmother, my personality made it impossible for me to kneel in servitude or say pleasing words. I was also gluttonous and lazy, and to my recollection, no elder truly liked me from the bottom of their hearts. Aside from loving snacks, I also loved buying books. At that time, my favorite reads included the magazine Little Friends and thin children's books like Tales of Cows and Tales of Ghosts, which were unaffordable for a teenager. I once owed nearly two yuan in book money to the Openings Bookstore. At that time, the school meal cost only three yuan a month, and this enormous sum forced me to secretly write to my father in Xuchang, asking him to send money discreetly to pay off my debt. The father, without any empathy for a child's poverty and fear, wrote to the stepmother, blaming me for wasting money and asking her to give me money to settle the debt. During those days, I obsessed over whether my father would write or send money, and how he would do so. My nerves were completely frayed, unable to endure even the slightest sound. One day, the stepmother called me over, smiling and tying a thick hemp rope around one of my legs and stretching my hands behind me. I knew something serious was happening and sensed that my letter to my father had been discovered. I tried to resist, but seeing the stepmother's smile, which didn't seem to hold blame, I secretly hoped that my father hadn't written. When the bamboo cane fell on my head with full force, I couldn't escape. I could only kneel down and wail: "I won't dare anymore! I won't dare again!"rdquo; I didn't know what I wouldn't dare to do anymore, but for an helpless, bound child, the only hope was that the word "won't dare"rdquo; would lessen the pain of the beating. The stepmother withdrew her smile and used another expression that froze my heart: "You're grown up now. You can write to your father, can't you?"rdquo; Then the bamboo cane fell repeatedly, faster than rain, covering my entire body. With my hands tied behind me, I couldn't cover my head, so I buried it under the bed, while my back and calves took the full force of the blows. My wails finally drew the family's attention, and they broke the door open (the stepmother had locked it while beating me), shouting: "Madam, you'll kill him!"rdquo; This time, I finally escaped death, but I couldn't escape the disaster of being an orphan without a mother. Every time school let out, the parents of the children would come to pick them up, but not mine. I was always alone, coming and going by myself. In the morning, I would wake up and sneak into my parents' bedroom. On the bedside table, there was always a copper coin ( money) that my father had left the night before. I would take it and buy breakfast at the street stall. Sometimes, if my father forgot to leave the coin, I would go to school on an empty stomach, and no one would care.