Creativity Prevails
There was a young prisoner who was particularly clever. We could not see outside our cell, but in ways we could replace our eyes with our noses and other senses. Usually before we heard “let in fresh air,” the metal pails with food were put just beside the door. Prisoners would pretty well know what the meal was and especially if it was dry or liquid. We could tell by the sound when the metal pails were set down. We could sense if it was hot or cold by the presence of stream that we didn’t actually see, but could feel or somehow sense. We could tell if it was salty or there was no salt by the subtle smell. We also picked up the slightest clues from everything around us.
The grain depot was near our room, and if at 5-6 o’clock PM we heard sound in the grain depot, we knew that tomorrow morning, we would be eating hushed gaoliangs. Although they tried to take everything from us so we had absolutely nothing, they could not take the use of our minds, our creativity and our imagination where everything could be allowed.
Another example, is that we took a great deal of time to create the game of chess. White and black chess pieces were made with cloth. I learned how to play chess in prison. In those long stupid days, we played all kinds of games, but we had to be careful to play in such a location that the guards could not see. We played chess under the wall side by the door, but out of sight. The prize for winning was a streamed corn bread. If you lost the game you could eat two big bites and then you had to give away the rest to the winner. Of course, the best game of all was outsmarting the guards in any way that we could.
Sometimes we also did foolish stupid things that matched our daily lives. One time we let a man eat ten bowls of maize gruel. We decided that if he could eat all of it, it would be his for free. He sat on the stool so he could defecate while eating. He was so bloated from overeating that at last he could not do it and one bowl of maize gruel remained that he absolutely could not eat.
No cigarettes and no matches were allowed, but we found ways to smoke. When there was a prisoner being taken out for interrogation, he could ask for a time to urinate and then pick up cigarette butts from the W.C. area where the guards had discarded them. Or if a prisoner saw a cigarette butt near by he would pretend to tie has shoelaces in order to pick up the cigarette butt from the ground. Often the interrogator might know this was happening, but generally speaking he did not care or try to prevent it. After all they were used and discarded butts. When the prisoner returned to the prison room, he could use cotton, which was in a quilt to start a fire. The only bad thing was that usually it needed to be new cotton that was without much human sweat. The cotton had to be twisted tightly and rubbed against a brick on the ground with great exertion. If the cotton was dry and became hot, it had to be quickly ripped open so you could blow on it. Sometimes if the cotton was really dry it became hot enough from the friction and would catch on fire.
There was a young male prisoner who I liked very much. His “crime” was from when he was a student in grade two of junior middle school. He and two other schoolmates supposedly took an oath before Jiang Jie Shi who was a deceased president of the Republic of China. Because of this he was cast into prison. His schoolmates were kept in different prison rooms. But they always took advantage of “let in fresh air” time to ingeniously keep in touch with each other. The “let in fresh air” for every room was not at the same time. He was intelligent and nimble, and when returning after the “let in fresh air” time, he always ran ahead in order to grab a little extra food without the others knowing.
I especially needed to thank him for his consideration of me. He stitched underwear for me. He was the one who not long after I arrived became ill, and then soon I was ill. By the time I recovered, it was near early summer. I was only dressed in cotton trousers, and no longer had underwear. In the summer, cotton trousers would be too hot and could not be worn with comfort. He unexpectedly stitched underwear for me using a pillow towel that he had stolen. He drew a thread from the pillow towel, and using a hook and eye from the collar on a Chinese tunic suit, he bent it into a needle. He some how used a sharp broken bowl piece as a scissors for cutting. His completed work let me avoid suffering during the summer heat. (I still have this underwear preserved today.)
With the coming of summer the prison was full of bed bugs and lice. Many prisoners were becoming ill. Soon every cell had to be fumigated with medicine. We were striped stark naked and transferred to another empty prison room. All clothes were put together and the whole room was sprayed with medicine. We were shifted across the courtyard where there were many additional prison rooms. At that time, although I thought I was recovered, I sometimes felt in a daze all day long. I often lay down on the bed and sometimes lost consciousness. One time when I was unconsciousness I felt this boy trimming my fingernails with a broken piece of bowl. Although the room was sprayed with medicine, the bedbugs and lice still not decrease in number. Every night we were bitten by them as we dropped off asleep. Formerly, I did not know why there was a little area and a little area having bit by the bed bugs, now I have known. Every night I appreciated how the bedbugs sucked the prisoner’s blood. Originally after bedbugs took a bite then if must revolve around and return to the same place and took another bite. Therefore bedbugs bite people always in a wide piece. If you move, it runs away immediately, so you cannot discover it. Every night I always lay for ½ hour before falling to sleep and thousands of bedbugs were suddenly stamped out in our country. Somehow it made me feel better and of some useful purpose.