China Witness by Xinran

her. From that moment on, I struggled constantly to be the best at everything I did.
    It was my father who gave me my belief in the Communist Party. I remember once, when I was still very small, seeing my father looking out over the river by our house, deep in thought. I walked over and asked him what he was thinking about. "All sorts of things," he answered. "I'll tell you when you're older."
    "Don't worry," I said to him. "When I get bigger, I'll be a filial son and earn plenty of money to look after you and Granny."
    Father shook his head. "I want more than a filial son," he said seriously. "When you're older, I want you to be a revolutionary, a comrade."
    Though my teachers at school talked a lot about China's national crisis, about the heroes who were working to save the motherland, I didn't really understand much of it, and certainly didn't know what a comrade was, or why it was so important to my father.
    "Comrades struggle together towards a common revolutionary goal," he told me. "Being a comrade is more important than being filial, because a filial son is loyal only to his family, while a comrade is loyal to his motherland."
    "Let me be your comrade, Father! Tell me what you were thinking about just now."
    Father smiled, then thought for a while. "Do you think I'm mad?" he said eventually.
    "Only the local officials say you're mad. Ordinary people say you're a good person, and my teachers and classmates all say you're a good father."
    Father smiled again. "You're sounding more and more like a comrade."
    And then there was Chen Lianshi – my teacher, my surrogate mother almost. It was mainly through her guidance that I became the person I am today. It was through a winter coat that I first came to hear of her.
    One evening, while I was eating dinner, a courier came to tell me that
a big parcel had arrived for me. Hurrying to the post office to pick it up, I immediately saw it was postmarkedChongqing, which was where my father was, though his name wasn't on the parcel. Inside, I found a brand-new herringbone wool coat, but no message. Because it had been the middle of summer when I left home, I'd only brought thin clothes with me. Now, though, the weather had turned cold. A friend of my father's had given me a cotton-padded army coat, but it was too big – so long it reached down to my feet. Afraid of being laughed at, I only used it as a quilt at night. The friend's wife had also given me an old cotton jacket. Though it was warm enough, I was embarrassed to wear it, because I'd just started courting, and what I really wanted was a properly smart winter coat in which to parade up and down the streets of the small county town I was then living in. And now I had one: but who was my mysterious benefactor?
    That evening, I dreamed my mother stood before my bed, her eyes red from crying. "It's so cold outside," she said, "and you've so few warm clothes. Your grandmother used to look after you when you were small, but now, you're all on your own, away from home. Why isn't your father looking after you? Here, try this warm coat I made you. Does it fit?"
    The mother in my dream was so young, so pretty and kind. I buried my head in her warm, comforting chest, then looked up to see her smiling and crying. I began laughing with joy that I had such a beautiful and loving mother. My own laughter woke me, and I realised the whole thing had been just a dream – apart from the coat, which I was still lying under.
    Unable to go back to sleep, I made up a poem in my head:
    I was saved by a lucky star,
In the darkness, I saw a light.
A coat brought me warmth,
And my mother back to me.
    The next day, I wrote to Father, asking him who had sent the coat; he was as surprised to hear about it as me. Much, much later, I finally received a letter telling me that a revolutionary heroine called Chen Lianshi had sent it to me. I began to imagine to myself what the great Chen Lianshi was like, wishing I could have had a mother like her. The