Red Azalea by Anchee Min

willow in a soft breeze. Her long braids swayed on her back. She looked down at the floor whenever she spoke. She was shy. But she liked to sing. She told me that she was brought up by her grandmother, who used to be an opera singer before the Cultural Revolution. She inherited her voice. Her parents were assigned to work in remote oil fields, because they were intellectuals. They came home once every year on New Year’s Eve. She never got to know her parents much, but she knew all the old operas though she never sang old operas in public. In public she sang “My Motherland,” a popular song since Liberation. Her voice was the platoon’s pride. It helped us to get through the tough labor, through the days we had to get up at five and work in the fields until nine at night.
    She was daring. Dared to decorate her beauty. She tied her braids with colorful strings while the rest of us tied our braids with brown rubber bands. Her femininity mocked us. I watched her and sensed the danger in her boldness. I used to be a head of the Red Guards. I knew the rules. I knew the thin line between right and wrong. I watched Little Green. Her beauty. I wanted to tie my braids with colorful strings every day. But I did not have the guts to show contempt for the rules. I had always been good.
    I had to admit that she was beautiful. But I and all the other female soldiers said she was not. We tied on brownrubber bands. The color of mud, of pig shit, of our minds. Because we believed that a true Communist should never care about the way she looked. The beauty of the soul was what should be cared about. Little Green never argued with anyone. She did not care what we said. She smiled at herself. She looked down on the floor. She smiled, from the heart, at herself, at her colorful string, and was satisfied. No matter how tired she got, Little Green always walked forty-five minutes to a hot-water station and carried back water to wash herself. She cleaned the mud off her fingernails, patiently and gaily. Every evening she washed herself in the net while I lay in my net, watching her, with my pawlike fingernails laid on my thighs.
    Little Green proudly showed me how she used remnants of fabric to make pretty underwear, finely embroidered with flowers, leaves and birds. She hung a string next to the little window between our beds on which she could hang her underwear to dry. In our bare room the string was like an art gallery.
    Little Green upset me. She upset the room, the platoon and the company. She caught our eyes. We could not help looking at her. The good-for-nothings could not take their eyes off her, that creature full of bourgeois allure. I scorned my own desire to display my youth. A nasty desire, I told myself a hundred times. I was seventeen and a half. I admired Little Green’s guts. The guts to redesign the clothes we were issued. She tapered her shirts at the waist; she remade her trousers so that the legs would look longer. She was not embarrassed by her full breasts. In the early evening she would carry the two containers of hot water, her back straight, chest full. She walked towardour room singing. The sky behind her was velvet blue. The half-man, half-monkey male soldiers stared at her when she passed by. She was the Venus of the farm’s evening. I envied and adored her. In June she dared to go without a bra. I hated my bra when I saw her, saw her walking toward me, bosoms bouncing. She made me feel withered without ever having bloomed.
    The days were long, so long. The work was endless. At five in the morning we were cutting the oil-bearing plants. The black seeds rolled on my neck and into my shoes as I laid the plants down. I did not bother to wipe the sweat that was dripping and salted my eyes. I did not have the time. Our platoon was the fastest in the company. We soared like arrows. We advanced across the fields in staircase-shape formation. When we worked, we were sunk into the sea of the plants. We barely straightened