Chapter 162: You Must Learn Chinese

The night school’s bell was a discarded rail end, hung from a elm branch outside the cooperative’s entrance; striking it with a hammer sent its sound two li away. Every day after the sun sank behind the Helan Mountains, the settlement’s dogs barked first, then the bell rang—dong, dong-dong—slow and steady, like a patient hand knocking at every door.

First out the door were the children. They carried coarse cloth schoolbags issued by the cooperative, clutching slate and chalk, running while shoving the last bite of potato into their mouths. Then came the women, untying their aprons and slapping them twice, tucking stray hairs behind their ears, walking in small groups toward the cooperative. Last came the men, just back from the mine or irrigation district, still in their work clothes, coal dust and mud specks clinging to their sleeves, but they had washed their hands—everyone scrubbed their hands clean before entering the classroom, because the teacher had said books feared dirt.

The night school classroom was the cooperative’s main hall. By day, the counter sold salt and cloth; by night, the counter was moved to the wall’s corner, a few long benches set up, and it became a classroom. The blackboard was a door panel planed smooth and painted with soot; the chalk was handmade from lime; the textbooks were oil-printed, on rough paper, the characters sometimes blurred into smudges, but every page was worn thin from handling. The air in the classroom was a mix—kerosene lamp smoke, the rust smell from the mine, the sheepy odor in the women’s hair, the sweet-sour tang of curdled milk the children chewed. Yet somehow, blended together, the smells were not unpleasant.

Old Bater came to night school only after winter set in. He was nearly fifty, having spent his life as a herdsman-slave in the Kereyid tribe’s old encampment. Two years ago, when the base liberated the Kereyids, he received sheep and pastureland, and married a Tangut widow who had fled from Western Xia; his life had finally settled. He had no intention of attending night school—what use were these twisted characters at his age? Could they feed him? But last month, the cooperative received a batch of feed grinders, hand-cranked, iron shells with copper plaques engraved with several lines of Han characters. The cooperative cadres said the machine could replace three hay-cutters, but before operating it, you had to read the manual—and the manual was written in Han characters. If you couldn’t read it, you weren’t allowed to touch it. Old Bater circled the grinder three times, then squatted beside it and asked the cadre: “What does it say?” The cadre read it aloud: “Turn the crank three times to preheat, then feed evenly. Never feed before turning the crank. Damage from violating operating procedures must be compensated at full value.”

After hearing it, Old Bater fell silent for a moment, stood up, brushed the dirt off his knees, and walked straight to the night school registration desk. With his rough fingers dipped in ink, he pressed his thumbprint onto the enrollment form.

On the first lesson, he sat in the back row. The classroom was packed; there weren’t enough benches, so some squatted against the wall, others sat directly on the floor. The teacher was a young woman from Jiangnan, surnamed Lin, early twenties, with two short braids. Her Mongolian still carried a Jiangnan accent, soft and lilting—she said “worker” as “gong ren,” and the students laughed; she laughed too, then kept teaching. On the blackboard, she wrote a large Han character, pronounced it in Mongolian: “Gong.” Then beside it, she drew a small figure bending over work, holding a hammer. “The top horizontal stroke is heaven, the bottom is earth, the vertical stroke is the man standing between them.” Her finger traced from the figure’s head to its feet. “The one who works—the man standing between heaven and earth. This character is ‘gong.’”

Old Bater stared at the character a long time. He had never stood between heaven and earth. He had knelt before the Kereyid, before Wang Han’s tax collectors, before every man on horseback who looked down on him. He didn’t know if he could ever belong to this character. He lowered his head and, with chalk in his hand, clumsily traced a “gong” on his slate. His fingers were too thick; the chalk felt like a needle in his grip. The character was crooked, the gap between the top and bottom strokes wide enough to fit a fist. He flipped the slate over and traced again. Turned it back, traced again. On the third try, the chalk snapped in two. He froze, holding the broken half, unsure what to do. Teacher Lin walked over, pulled a fresh piece of chalk from her pocket, and pressed it into his hand. “Grandpa, it’s fine. Everyone’s like this on the first day. When I learned Mongolian in Jiangnan, I called milk tea ‘sheep dung’—I was even dumber than you.” Old Bater didn’t understand the joke about “sheep dung,” but he understood “it’s fine.” He clenched the new chalk and kept tracing.

The second lesson taught “liberation.” This word had no direct Mongolian equivalent; the base’s new Mongolian script had coined a compound meaning “untying ropes.” Teacher Lin drew a man bound by ropes, then a hand untying them. “Untie the ropes, stand up, walk on your own.” She turned to face the faces before her—old and young, Mongol and Tangut, young men still streaked with coal dust from the mine, middle-aged women holding sleeping children while taking notes. “Liberation,” she said, “isn’t given to you. It’s you who untie the ropes yourself.”

A young miner in the second row suddenly spoke. His name was Batu; he had once been a mine slave at the Western Xia Helan Mountain mine, arriving with the migration wave last year, now operating the hoist in the mining area, a technical model worker of the Mining Corps. He said: “Teacher Lin, when I carried ore underground, there was a rope tied around my waist by the nobles, to keep me from running. Later, I cut it myself.” He paused, pointed at the character on the board. “This character—I recognize it. It’s the rope I cut.”

The classroom fell silent for a moment. Then the middle-aged woman holding her child suddenly began to clap. The applause was sparse—steppe people weren’t used to clapping—but her clapping drew others, until even Old Bater, sitting in the back row, placed his slate on his knees and clumsily clapped with both rough hands.

Night school taught literacy, but not only literacy. The last half-hour of each lesson was newspaper reading. Teacher Lin would spread out the newly arrived Self-Rescue Newspaper, read the headline aloud in Mongolian, then write a few key words on the board and guide everyone in recognizing them. Today’s headline: “Autumn Harvest in the Hetao Irrigation District Exceeds Fifty Million Jin.” She wrote four Han characters on the board: “five,” “thousand,” “ten thousand,” “jin.” Pointing to “ten thousand,” she said: “This is ‘wan.’ Ten thousand means all the grain sacks in your cooperative, stacked to fill an entire warehouse.” An old herdsman muttered below: “How much is ten thousand?” Someone nudged him: “It’s more than all the sheep you’ve ever herded, plus all your father ever herded.” The old herdsman opened his mouth, then closed it. He began to sense that these twisted characters held things he had never known.

A month later, Old Bater passed the literacy exam. It was simple—recognize fifty Han characters, write his own name, read a simple cooperative notice. On the day he received his certificate, he turned the oil-printed slip over and over, then went home and pasted it in the most visible spot on his wall—where the Buddha statue had once stood, brought from Western Xia, its face blackened by smoke. He took down the statue and put it in a wooden chest. After pasting the certificate, he stepped back, felt it wasn’t enough, bought a sheet of red paper from the cooperative, and had his son write a line on it, which he pasted beside the certificate. His son had written: “My father is a qualified literacy graduate.” Old Bater didn’t recognize the words “graduate,” but he recognized “father.”

Deeper changes unfolded that winter in every factory and mine. The hoist operator manuals were written in Han characters, the maintenance regulations were in Han characters, the shift handover logs were in Han characters. Those who couldn’t read could only do manual labor; only those who could read became technicians. Technicians earned double the work points of laborers; their children got priority admission to the Military-Political University; technicians could exchange for half a jin more sugar at the cooperative. Batu was the first young miner in the area to learn how to read the manual. He spent two months devouring the entire Steam Hoist Operating Procedures—whenever he met an unfamiliar character, he asked a technician, wrote it down in his notebook, copied it repeatedly until he memorized it. Two months later, the mine received a new steam water pump. Before the technician could even calibrate it, Batu opened the manual himself, studied the diagrams, and spent half a day assembling, starting, and draining the pump. The mine director stood by, watching the entire process without saying a word. The next day, Batu was appointed deputy technical team leader of the mine.

Batu sent word of this news to his uncle still in Western Xia. The message was short—just one sentence—but his uncle later read it aloud to over a dozen men underground, half of whom crossed the Helan Mountains that winter. “I’m no longer called Batu here. I’m Comrade Batu.”

Old Bater’s story continued in another direction. After receiving his literacy certificate, he voluntarily signed up for the cooperative’s “Herder Literacy Promoter” training. He thought if Teacher Lin could teach him, he could teach others. When he first stood before the blackboard, twenty-odd herders sat before him, just as illiterate as he had been months ago. His fingers were still thick, the chalk still felt like a needle in his grip—but the first character he wrote was a straight, upright “gong.”

He turned to face them and spoke one sentence. He wasn’t good at grand speeches, so he spoke of himself: “I once thought characters belonged to the masters. Later I learned the masters kept us from learning them because they feared we’d realize we were human. Today I teach you your first character—this one, pronounced ‘gong.’ I am a worker. You are herders. We are all men standing between heaven and earth.”

Teacher Lin stood at the back of the classroom. She did not clap. But her eyes shone. In the base’s Night School Teacher Training Manual, there was a line, said to have been personally added by the Chief Political Commissar when compiling the textbooks. She had never fully understood it before—but now she understood: “Literacy is not about stuffing characters into the mind. It is about pulling people up from the ground.”