I think as long as I can remember, my mother has always been a figure that seemed larger than life.

Family name, Gao (高), meaning tall.

Given name, Cailian (彩莲), meaning brilliant lotus.

She was born in Shanghai in 1963.

She spent her childhood growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China.

 

While not exactly taught in extensive detail in the history books belonging to the canon of the American high school curriculum, the era was one of extensive turmoil and bloody revolution. It was not unlike its more famous French Revolution counterpart — the Reign of Terror (“la Terreur”) (1792-1794).

Whereas the French Terror was characterized by 16,594 official executions by means of the guillotine, which was then praised as a “civilized and humane” means to end a person’s life, the public lynchings of the Chinese Terror were far more indiscriminate, disorderly, and mob-like. The estimated death toll for the Cultural Revolution ranges from three to five million.

A statistic, or a fact to be memorized for a classroom exam — but a vivid reality for at least somebody else in the world.

As tempting as it is to pin the number of fatalities as a sweeping condemnation of Communism as a political entity, only someone who witnessed the violence in person would be able to tell you that the raging fire that fueled all the violence was nothing systematic nor carefully masterminded by secret Communist KGB agents. Rather, the Cultural Revolution was an uncontrollable fervor of spite and repressed anger that struck the average Joe like a viral frenzy, licensed only by rhetoric that validated and encouraged a mass physical assault on all those who were “privileged”.

Neighbors turned on neighbors, employees revolted against employers, landlords were evicted by tenants, and families fractured at their seams. Windows were smashed. Teachers shriveled in fear of their students. Lynchings, beatings, and harassment occurred openly and were applauded on the streets. The world was turned upside down. It was a mob mentality akin to Lord of the Flies or the nightmare of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany.

There is something deeply twisted and sickening that lies dormant at the heart of the human soul.

If millions of honest civilians and good people could be swept by popular wave to join the Nazi movement in one instance in history, I shiver to think of the number of other times this same pattern has repeated elsewhere in the past.

I don’t believe that people are inherently evil.

But none of us are totally immune to that darkness that lurks deep within.

 

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Over the years, I’ve been asked by hundreds of people to tell my story. They want to know my “formula to success”.

It’s usually at a dinner party, over a cup of exotic tea, or at some luxurious summer resort belonging to another aristocrat trying to win extra brownie points with the husband I met in this isekai world. Usually it’s an eclectic mix of sheltered people filled with novelty and curiosity, sometimes laced with subtle jabs at my preposterously humble origins, and other times overflowing with sparkly-eyed admiration I don’t deserve.

Everyone wants to know how it is that an illiterate beggar in a potato sack managed to survive, let alone reach this jealousy-inspiring pedestal in the clouds, where I am fortunate enough to be today.

They expect to hear a gallant story about genius talent, superhuman skills, or pure creative cunning. They’re waiting for the tale of heroic exploits, dashing romance, or tear-evoking bitter-sweetness. Their ears are trained for the romanticization — the ballad that is sung — whether it is the Odyssey, Don Quixote, or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. My admirers want to know how I’ve been able to accomplish something that so many other people fail trying.

When I look up into their expectant, sparkling eyes, their uncalloused hands clutching porcelain teacups, and their minds obviously idealizing adventure and excitement, what am I supposed to say?

There’s nothing romantic about being touched by the Heart of Darkness. There’s nothing romantic about warfare, underground criminal organizations, or poverty. I don’t even like to talk about it, because it’s human nature to avoid topics that make us look ugly and monstrous. There was nothing heroic about living through those early months in this isekai world, where instead I’d be hard pressed to describe our subhuman, disgustingly feral, and desperate lives of constant metaphorical cannibalism as anything close to “human”.

I just happened to survive through it all.

Some people who were unlucky, didn’t — just like some soldiers have their limbs blown off by bombs and some others don’t.

And as a survivor, all you can do is wonder ‘Why me?’ Why not him? Or her? There’s no rhyme or reason to the violence! God is so unfair! Why can’t I have the simple happiness that others take for granted? If only I wasn’t born in this horrible place of irrational suffering, how much happier would my life have been?

But God isn’t so talkative, so we’re left to struggle with our burdens alone as we leave the dead ones behind. Their corpses lay unburied, rotting in a ditch as maggots grow inside them.

I can’t even count the number of friends who I’ve parted from like that.

 

+ + +

 

My mother was the descendant of a nouveau riche family — bourgeoisie.

My great-grandfather, a business tycoon who had newly established himself selling processed pork in the countryside at the rural-urban interface, was sent to and died in a concentration camp in Qinghai (the Siberia of China). His properties and landholdings were confiscated, and my mother’s family was evicted from the mansion they lived in. While fleeing from the Red Guard, my grandmother went into labor in the elevator to give birth to my mother’s youngest sister. My mother’s uncle was lynched in the streets of Shanghai.

My grandparents did everything they could do lie low and blend into the sea of mediocrity. They carefully guarded the secret of their origins and their blood ties to capitalism as they quickly abandoned their assets and pursued a frugal life of poverty. Nonetheless, rumors are bound to circulate and children privy to juicy gossip are likewise cruel to the odd one left out.

My mother was an eldest child. She didn’t have an older brother, so when people ganged up and punched her, she punched them back. She wanted to learn how to fight, so she watched traditional martial artists training students on the city streets and tried to copy their lessons from the shadows. Eventually, the Master noticed her, thought favorably of her tenacity, and took her under his wing as a student. It did not take very much time before she was soon his favorite disciple.

She was only nine years old at the time.

Back then, she used to wake up at four o’clock in the morning to train in the streets of Shanghai before going to school. She developed arms as hard as rock and murderous eyes that pierced with ‘killing intent’. After beating up a small gang of delinquent high schoolers that were terrorizing the neighborhood, people gave her a wide berth, which was exactly what my mother wanted. She exuded a dangerous aura that made people afraid to approach her. The greatest mistake of her youth was that she developed far more enemies than she did friendships.

When my mother was fifteen, all of the animosity that she’d built up recoiled on her like a slingshot. In a series of dramatic events, she was set up by enemies and her knee was irreparably smashed up in an “accident”.

Even as she raised me, a lifetime of joys and sorrows later, my mother walked with a permanent slight limp.

 

+ + +

 

I ended up writing this brief story of my mother’s life because I think it is mostly due to her that I am alive today, and I believe it sheds some light on my past and current identity. The influence that she had on me — and the values that she imparted to me — I think are unique to me as a person.

I’m conscious of the fact that I may appear like the stereotypical Chinese-American, as far as tropes go. However, looks are deceiving. Before I died, I “passed” quite well both in my lives as a man and a woman. Just from looking, you wouldn’t have been able to tell I was transgender, a combination of extremely fortunate East Asian genetics and modern hormone therapy.

But not many people knew that I was raised by a stereotype-breaking mother who was a fanatic about training your reaction time, knowing how to break a fall from two stories high, and being able to run a 5k in less than twenty minutes just because you never knew when one of the Mega Disasters depicted on the History Channel might strike home. She was also obsessed with buying tons of stock in bottled water companies because she was convinced global warming would evaporate all the drinkable water and thus trigger the next World War.

Basically, I thought my mother was insane when I was growing up.

I also don’t have any illusions about femininity or what it means to be a woman.

 

+ + +

 

My mother and I didn’t exactly have the best relationship.

She was somewhat impersonal, and in fact we failed to connect with each other in almost every way. She was harsh, demanding, and highly temperamental. Both of my parents were, in a sense. I think they saw me as a vessel to vicariously experience the successes and accomplishments that they never had the opportunity to in their youth.

Naturally, they had very rigid sense of what kind of person they wanted to shape their “son” to be. My father used to beat me when he caught me trying on my mother’s clothes at the innocent age of six or seven. However, this blip of transgender rebellion was nothing but a side story in the bigger picture of things.

I used to hate my parents. They literally hammered, shamed, forged, and molded me into the shape they thought benefited me best according to their values.

I went to a nice university that any Chinese-American parent could brag about, had an extremely impressive scholastic resume, played three musical instruments, and my mother was adamant about me being good enough at sports to get a scholarship (which I did). Ironically, I even had a girlfriend, because back then, I was the perfect dutiful little plastic Asian child who would do anything to please “his” parents.

I mean, obviously eventually everything imploded and fragmented to pieces, or else you wouldn’t have the current me today. However, as I’ve gotten older and more mature, it’s difficult not to appreciate the things they’ve given me: my education, my abilities, my practical skills, the life lessons, and subconscious values.

It was thanks to those that my life and financial situation didn’t totally collapse as they do for many young transgender people when they initially cut the line from their family and social support. My life on Earth was really fortunate in a sense. The things that kept me alive during those horrible pre-transition years in the real world were the very things I used to cry about when my mother screamed at me while flinging chopsticks at 1:00 AM on a school night.

Your perspective changes as you age. In the end, my parents had given me much of the groundwork I built my future happiness on. Before I died, I was happy. I was really really happy. So many things ended up working out for the better.

Even if it was an incredibly tenuous way to get there.

 

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If I had to pick one lesson that my mother tried to beat into me the most, it would be a Chinese expression: 《坚苦卓绝》

Translating idioms is always challenging, but the meaning of this one is “persisting despite the hardships”.

It may seem unremarkable and cliche, but there are bits of this that are lost in translation. “Hardship” (艰苦) in Chinese always had a stronger connotation to me than its English counterpart. In fact, I’d be more inclined to liken it towards “Suffering”, with far more graphic imagery.

My mother always believed in using “Suffering” to grow stronger.

To persevere. To survive.

 

The reason why I speak of this is that sometimes I used to think of that idiom when I was in my darkest times. Skills and knowledge and talents are frankly overrated. That is my honest opinion. Book smarts mean so preciously little in the brutish reality of the world, and people who count on their textbook knowledge too much are often in for a rude awakening.

“Boil the river water to kill the germs!” You might think, but it turns out that firewood is nearly as expensive as bread in a city where everyone sends their kids out to scour the countryside for free wood (and to sell for extra cash too).

“Invent some gunpowder and monetize it!” You might suggest, but it’s quite difficult to do when you’re literally starving and you barely have enough energy for your next meal.

“Convince a wealthy person you’re really smart!” You might propose… but hahahaha. You try it for me.

Modern knowledge wasn’t as useful to to me in this isekai world amidst my poverty as I had hoped. It doesn’t feed you, stop you from being raped, or protect you from beaten up because someone really likes your new shoes.

Of all things that I brought with me into this the Heart of Darkness, I believe it was singularly my mother’s tenacity that saved me where I would have otherwise died.

 

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What is tenacity?

Tenacity is the willingness to discard your humanity in order for the right to live.

Tenacity is the determination to search through foul-smelling trash for your next meal.

Tenacity is the eagerness to drink water laden with sewage because you’re dying of thirst.

Tenacity is the resolve to fight with a small child over a piece of bread and then wrestle it away.

Tenacity is the heartlessness to flee and abandon your friend when she’s being raped by gangsters.

Tenacity is the audacity to steal the coat off of a crippled old homeless man because you’re freezing in the snow.

Tenacity is the pain of offering your virginity to a drunk man and then stealing his wallet as he drifts asleep.

Tenacity is suffering. Tenacity is suffering and suffering and suffering. The suffering is endless.

If you give up on tenacity, then you die.

Is it a worthwhile exchange?

 

This was the true nature of the Heart of Darkness and the Belly of the Whale, and also the reason why I won’t write about it.

I don’t pretend to put out the illusion that I’m a good person. I don’t believe I have the right to say that anymore.

I spent three, four… five… seven months in that nightmare of a world. When I came out, I wasn’t quite ever the same.

I had scars, and you are welcome to judge me for them.

 

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