Excerpt
In September 1971, I entered third grade. Dad had come back from the camp on the
mountain and was at another reform camp ten miles away from our town. They made
him dig ditches from morning to night to expand an irrigation system that
eventually failed to work, while continuing to press for more confessions about
my uncle in Taiwan, which had always been China's sworn enemy.
Sometimes I was allowed to visit Dad and bring him food. I would stand on the
edge of the work site, searching for signs of my father among the hundred or so
other people being "reformed." Tired, curious faces would look at me, word would
pass on down the line, then eventually out would come my dad from the ditches,
his back straight, head held high, and a dazzling smile on his face for his son
as he busily dusted off his ragged clothes. I would have nothing to say and
could only look at his blistered hands, while he asked how everybody was and how
my schoolwork was going. Then it was time to leave; if I delayed, the foreman
would chase me off the site with his wooden stick.
Grandpa was suffering all the time now. An expensive medication was bought to
cure him, but he was outraged when he heard its price, since he knew that what
it cost could have bought ... read full excerpt from: Colors of the Mountain ebook
