![]() ![]() Why has my father always been so unknowable to me? ![]() “Weren’t you curious?” Had my father felt scared? Had he wanted to reach out and touch his father? Had he cried? What was he thinking? “But didn’t you talk to nai nai or ye ye about it later? Didn’t you ask how many times you went to see him?” I paused. “How should I remember? I was probably only four or five when I went to see him.” “But shouldn’t there be more? What was it like to see your father? What did you two talk about? What was he wearing? Why did you pay so much attention to his hands?” ![]() My father and I were in the car, sixty-four years after my grandfather was imprisoned, twenty-one years after my grandfather’s death, and he squinted as he navigated along a bend, the sun streaking into his eyes. My father sat across from his father, staring at the older man’s hands, which were covered in lines, the dry skin splintering on his knuckles.Īnd then the story ended, or at least my father’s retelling of it did. Rectangular tables were spread against the floor, each one ringed by chairs. Over and over, I’ve tried to envision what it must have been like for my father to enter the facilities, his hand gripping my grandmother’s as they walked into the cavernous hall used for visitation hours. My father only remembers visiting him once. Had he not been a doctor, had his skills been considered less useful, he most likely would have been exiled to a labor camp instead of a juvenile detention center. Once my grandfather had been an esteemed surgeon of the Number Six People’s Hospital in Shanghai, part of the surgical team that performed the first liver transplant in China. Intellectuals such as my grandfather were encouraged to criticize the state as a means of encouraging reform then, swiftly, the tide turned: those who spoke out were imprisoned and labeled as “rightists,” enemies of the state. The Communists had seized control of China in 1949, and by the late ’50s, Chairman Mao, paranoid over losing political power, sought to consolidate his influence, fortifying his vision of Communism through a series of initiatives that would eventually provoke the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Government scrutiny and professional, as well as personal, betrayal had been part of the social landscape for some time. His informant may have even inherited my grandfather’s hospital position. Someone, perhaps a work friend, had reported him. At least, that’s what our family believes. The comment passed along the bureaucratic channels, spread from one colleague upwards until it reached a hospital executive, who deferred to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official. They were the ones who founded Tsinghua University,” he had said during a hospital meeting. “The Americans don’t have bad intentions. His crime was simple: he had spoken out in favor of the United States, an imperialist country, during China’s Hundred Flowers Campaign. He had been arrested for four years already, seized one night by a group of Communist cadres who dragged him out of the bedroom he shared with his wife and two young children. Inside the detention center, my grandfather worked, sentenced to five years as a penitentiary doctor. It was probably around 1962, winter my father was five. That’s how I visualize the scene, at least, a snapshot built from the endless Google searches I’ve waded through. Cracks spidered against the facade of the drab, gray building, its perimeter hemmed in by a chain-link fence, electric spirals wound across the top. Outside of the Shanghai juvenile detention center, my father stood, his hand twined around my grandmother’s. ![]()
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