We were just inside Jingshan Park in Beijing when we heard the singing – loud, rousing and full of fervour – and at the top of a set of stone steps we found them, a choir of mostly older people conducted by a short, bright-eyed woman who waved her baton as if it was a cutlass.
Around the corner, another group was singing and along the wooded path; up the hill we found more, some accompanied by instruments like the yangqin, the erhu or the pipa.
These choirs meet in the park every Sunday afternoon to sing patriotic “red songs” like Ode to the Motherland, Red Sun in the Sky and The East is Red, which was the unofficial anthem of the Cultural Revolution. These songs fell out of favour during the early reform years of the 1980s but they enjoyed a revival in the 1990s and remain popular among older generations.
I was with Lei, a Beijinger who grew up in the shadow of the Drum Tower and seems to know every corner of the city’s parks, temples and hutongs. He was shocked to hear that I had never been to Jingshan Park or climbed to the Wanchun Pavilion at the top of the hill which gives a magnificent view of the Forbidden City below.
READ MORE
After we took in the golden roofs and red painted walls of the old imperial palace to the south, we moved around to look at the Drum and Bell Towers to the north and Beihai Park with its white pagoda to the west. Beihai Park is almost adjacent to Jingshan Park and Lei suggested we take a walk around its lake so he could inspect the ducks and geese.
By the time we left Beihai Park, it was sunset and Lei said we should head back towards the Drum Tower for some soup and dumplings. As we cycled away from the park, we passed a temple set back a little from the road and he motioned for me to stop, pulling over to the kerb to look across at it.
“Did I tell you I had a cousin who died of Covid?” he said.
His cousin, who was in his early 40s, caught the virus for the first time in the weeks after China abandoned its zero-Covid policy at the end of 2022. Almost everyone in China was infected in the surge that followed the lifting of restrictions and Lei’s cousin was one of nearly two million estimated to have died.
“He was unlucky because he had a weak heart before he was infected. But the family blamed his wife,” Lei said.
The couple had been married for only two years but Lei’s cousin was unhappy and already talking about getting a divorce in the months before his death. The family believed that his wife was putting him under pressure to do better at work and that she was forever complaining to him about his shortcomings.
[ In Beijing, a ballet from Mao’s era still brings the house to tearsOpens in new window ]
His parents wanted nothing to do with the widow in the months after her husband’s death, piling hurt and a sense of isolation on top of her grief. One afternoon, she visited the temple Lei and I were looking at and told a monk there about her husband’s death and his family’s hostility towards her.
“He told her my cousin was possessed,” Lei said.
The monk told her that one of her husband’s relations was a criminal who died a violent death in the early 1990s and didn’t complete the normal journey into the afterlife. His restless spirit, lingering on earth, took refuge in her husband’s body and the only way the possession could be resolved was through death.
The widow went to see her husband’s parents and told them what the monk had said to her, including details of where and when the relation had died, a description of his violent end and other information about him. They were sceptical, telling their son’s widow they had never heard such a story, but after she left they got in touch with members of the extended family asking if they knew anything about it.
“A few days later, they called my cousin’s wife. The story checked out, every detail,” Lei said.
After they found out that there had indeed been a criminal in their family who died a violent death around the time of their son’s birth, the parents were reconciled with his widow. They were now able to carry their grief together and instead of being eaten up by rancour, recriminations and guilt, they found some peace.
“What the monk said meant it wasn’t his wife’s fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” Lei said, and we cycled off to our soup and dumplings.
