Calls Across the Pacific by Zoë S. Roy Page A

communist traitor and I will have a chance to see my mother again, the only family member I have left in this world.”
    Nina also wrote another letter to her mother. When she dropped the envelope into a mailbox, she imagined a pigeon flying first over land and then over ocean. Will it reach my mother this time?
    There was no school during the March Break. Nina spent the week at the Curtis Memorial Library browsing through the shelves of books and periodicals. One afternoon, a note on a bulletin board caught her eye. It was about a group discussion on China being held in the library at that very moment. Nina strode to the room right away. A speaker, who looked to be in his forties, was seated at a large table and was recalling his recent visit to China in front of many listeners.
    â€œSix years ago was the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. The ocean-going freighter I worked on arrived at Nanjing. We stayed at Xiaguan Wharf.”
    The storyteller’s memoir brought Nina and the audience back to that scorching hot day in July of 1966. Guided by several dock workers, a group of Chinese students had boarded the American freighter, the red arm bands on their short sleeves like flames in the sun. The Red Guards asked the crew to go up to the deck and then gave each member a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book in English.
    One of the Red Guards had led a shout of “Long Live Chairman Mao!” The air was hot and humid; sweat poured out of the marine mechanic’s every pore. When he scoured the serious faces of the Red Guards and observed the obedience of the other sailors, he had had to stifle his laughter. A Red Guard had then ordered everyone to open the red books to read Mao’s quotations, from the “core of leadership for our cause is the Chinese Communist Party” to “First, do not fear hardship; and secondly, do not fear death.”
    The voices in both Chinese and English had drifted down the Yangtze River. The mechanic had stared at the red book in his hand, sweat trickling down his cheeks. The sentence, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” had made him feel as if a string of bullets were shooting through his heart. At that moment, dark clouds had cast their shadows over the river, thunderbolts roared, and a drenching rain poured down over the freighter….
    The speaker brought his audience back to the present. “That was the revolutionary education I got from China. I think everybody understands what that threatening power means.” Nina nodded. She understood well the relationship between the dictator’s power and the barrel of a gun. The speaker then suggested added, “Obey the Red Guards if you visit China.”
    â€œI have a question,” a woman asked. “Do you think Nixon’s visit will help slow down the Cultural Revolution?”
    Nina was all ears. She had been seeking an answer to a similar question.
    â€œMaybe. Mao’s willingness to meet with Nixon could be a signal,” answered the speaker. “Any ideas?”
    â€œIt seems ping-pong diplomacy plays well. Nixon’s China game is working, but I’m wondering how the Red Guards will react to his visit,” said another person.
    Nina drew in a breath. “I think, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Mao sanctioned the Red Guards. Later on, he sent them down to the countryside for re-education when he didn’t need them anymore. Maybe many of the Red Guards have already re-examined their radical behaviours and regretted them.”
    More questions came up. The subsequent discussion gave Nina another perspective on American society, where people enjoyed the freedom of expressing their ideas. Before leaving the library, she checked out several books, including Mao and China: From Revolution to Revolution by Stanley Karnow, and Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture by Richard H. Solomon. She hoped she might learn to understand