But for most the real reason was personal advantage. This was the obligatory step to becoming an officer; and when an officer was discharged he automatically became a 'state official," with a secure salary, prestige, and power, not to mention a city registration. A private had to go back to his village and become a peasant again. Every year before discharge time there would be stories of suicides, breakdowns, and depressions.

One evening Xiao-her was sitting with about a thousand soldiers and officers, and the officers' families, watching an open-air movie.

Suddenly submachine-gun fire crackled out, followed by a huge explosion. The audience scattered, screaming.

The shots came from a guard who was about to be discharged and sent back to his village, having failed to get into the Party and thus to be promoted to officer grade.

First he shot dead the commissar of his company, whom he held responsible for blocking his promotion, and then he fired at random into the crowd, tossing a hand grenade.

Five more people were killed, all women and children from officers' families. Over a dozen were wounded. He then fled into a residential block, where he was besieged by fellow soldiers, who shouted at him through megaphones to surrender. But the moment the guard fired out of the window, they broke and ran, to the amusement of the hundreds of excited onlookers. Finally, a special unit arrived. After a fierce exchange of fire, they broke into the apartment and found the guard had committed suicide.

Like everyone else around him, Xiao-her wanted to get into the Party. It was not such a matter of life and death for him as for the peasant soldiers, since he knew he would not have to go to the countryside after his military career.

The rule was that you went back to where you came from, so he would automatically be given a job in Chengdu whether he was a Party member or not. But the job would be better if he was a Party member. He would also have more access to information, which was important to him, since China at the time was an intellectual desert, with almost nothing to read apart from the crudest propaganda.

Besides these practical considerations, par was never absent. For many people, joining the Party was rather like taking out an insurance policy. Party membership meant you were less distrusted, and this sense of relative security was very comforting. What was more, in an extremely political environment like the one Xiao-her was in, if he did not want to join the Party it would be noted in his personal file and suspicion would follow him: "Why does he not want to join the Party?" To apply and not be accepted was also likely to give rise to suspicion: "Why was he not accepted? There must be something wrong with him."

Xiao-her had been reading Marxist classics with genuine interest they were the only books available, and he needed something to satisfy his intellectual thirst. Because the Communist Party charter stated that studying Marxism-Leninism was the first qualification for being a Party member, he thought he could combine his interest with practical gain. But neither his bosses nor his comrades were impressed. In fact, they felt shown up because, coming mostly from peasant backgrounds and being semiliterate, they could not understand Marx. Xiao-her was criticized for being arrogant and cutting himself off from the masses. If he wanted to join the Party, he would have to find another way.

The most important thing, he soon realized, was to please his immediate bosses. The next was to please his comrades. In addition to being popular and working hard at his job, he had to 'serve the people' in the most literal sense.

Unlike most armies, which assign unpleasant and menial tasks to the lower ranks, the Chinese army operated by waiting for people to volunteer for jobs like fetching water for morning ablutions and sweeping the grounds. Reveille was at 6:30 a.m.; the 'honored task' of getting up before this fell to those who aspired to join the Party. And there were so many of them they fought each other for the brooms. In order to secure a broom, people got up earlier and earlier. One morning Xiao-her heard someone sweeping the grounds just after 4 a.m.

There were other important chores, and the one which counted most was helping to produce food. The basic food allowance was very small, even for officers. There was meat only once a week. So every company had to grow its own grain and vegetables and raise its own pigs. At harvest time the company commissar would often deliver pep talks: "Comrades, now is the time of testing by the Party! We must finish the whole field by this evening! Yes, the work needs ten times the manpower we have. But every one of us revolutionary fighters can do the job of ten men!

Communist Party members must take a leading role. For those who want to join the Party, this is the best time to prove yourselves! Those who have passed the test will be able to join the Party on the battlefield at the end of the day!"

Party members did have to work hard to fulfill their 'leading role," but it was the aspiring applicants who really had to exert themselves. On one occasion, Xiao-her became so exhausted that he collapsed in the middle of a field. While the new members who had earned 'battlefield enrollment' raised their right fists and gave the standard pledge 'to fight all my life for the glorious Communist cause," Xiao-her was taken to a hospital, where he had to stay for days.

The most direct path to Party was raising pigs. The company had several dozen of these and they occupied an unequaled place in the hearts of the soldiers; officers and men alike would hang around the pigsty, observing, commenting, and willing the animals to grow. If the pigs were doing well, the swine herds were the darlings of the company, and there were many contestants for this profession.

Xiao-her became a full-time swineherd. It was hard, filthy work, not to mention the psychological pressure.

Every night he and his colleagues took turns to get up in the small hours to give the pigs an extra feed. When a sow produced piglets they kept watch night after night in case she crushed them. Precious soybeans were carefully picked, washed, ground, strained, made into 'soybean milk," and lovingly fed to the mother to stimulate her milk.

Life in the air force was very unlike what Xiao-her had imagined. Producing food took up more than a third of the entire time he was in the military. At the end of a year's arduous pig raising, Xiao-her was accepted into the Party.

Like many others, he put his feet up and began to take it easy.

After membership in the Party, everyone's ambition was to become an officer; whatever advantage the former brought, the latter doubled it. Getting to be an officer depended on being picked by one's superiors, so the key was never to displease them. One day Xiao-her was summoned to see one of the college's political commissars.

Xiao-her was on tenterhooks, not knowing whether he was in for some unexpected good fortune or total disaster. The commissar, a plump man in his fifties with puffy eyes and a loud, commanding voice, looked exceedingly benign as he lit up a cigarette and asked Xiao-her about his family background, age, and state of health. He also asked whether he had a fiance to which Xiao-her replied that he did not. It struck Xiao-her as a good sign that the man was being so personal. The commissar went on to praise him: "You have studied Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought conscientiously. You have worked hard. The masses have a good impression of you. Of course, you must keep on being modest; modesty makes you progress," and so on. By the time the commissar stubbed out his cigarette, Xiao-her thought his promotion was in his pocket.

The commissar lit a second cigarette and began to tell a story about a fire in a cotton mill, and about a woman spinner who had been severely burned dashing back in to rescue 'state property." In fact, all her limbs had had to be amputated, so that there was only a head and a torso left, although, the commissar stressed, her face had not been destroyed, or more important her ability to produce babies. She was, said the commissar, a heroine, and was going to be publicized on a grand scale in the press. The Party would like to grant all her wishes, and she had said that she wanted to marry an air force officer. Xiao-her was young, handsome, unattached, and could be made an officer at any time… Xiao-her sympathized with the lady, but marrying her was another matter. But how could he refuse the commissar? He could not produce any convincing reasons. Love? Love was supposed to be bound up with 'class feelings," and who could deserve more class feelings than a Communist heroine? Saying he did not know her would not get him off the hook either. Many marriages in China had been the result of an arrangement by the Party. As a Party member, particularly one hoping to become an officer, Xiao-her was supposed to say: "I resolutely obey the Party's decision!" He bitterly regretted having said he had no fiance. His mind was racing to think of a way to say no tactfully as the commissar went on about the advantages: immediate promotion to officer, publicity as a hero, a fulltime nurse, and a large allowance for life.