eric's Writing Portfolio

My grandpa, a former PLA soldier, wandering a backyard in Fremont, California.

August 1975: the Banqiao Dam in Henan, China, collapsed, causing more than 200,000 civilian casualties. Often compared to the Chornobyl nuclear meltdown, the disaster’s massive collateral damage in Central China was an embarrassment to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and led to a reshuffling of its leadership. 

We were promised greatness, a purpose grand;

We built our dreams, bags of cement in hand,

Of a dam standing up to nature’s torrents,

For our people’s pride and our leader’s warrants.

Through toil and sweat, we strained, 

To feed that loud machine 

Our bodies ached, yet we pushed on with glee,

For pain is the path to modernity.

One comrade slid into the unit’s maw

His screams were crushed by metallic guffaw,

Reduced to paste and shards of bone,

He was our payment for an unpayable loan.

We scooped him up, a pile twitching and warm

And fed it down the chute as a bit of chloroform.

There would be trade-offs, we learned.

Our path was steep, for greatness must be earned.

As time went on, the dam grew into the valley

The shadow of progress cast over our community,

We saw a beacon to light the people’s way

To tame nature and bring a brand-new day.

But gradually, rice became sawdust 

And cabbage turned to grass

There was no one to take the dead

Except the drunkenly desperate.

And there were no dogs left to scavenge 

the dikes flowing with skin and bones.

They spoke of sacrifices to be made,

Of toil that mustn’t fade,

Seeing the duty needed to uphold,

We labored on, doing as we were told

So, with sickly arms and fatigued hearts,

We wiped our wet cheeks, never to part

The machines we operated with revolutionary glee…

One night, the heavens split

And the reservoir filled with its fury.

Our dam bent and groaned;

A crack slithered through it,

As the tides came upon us,

Freed from their entombment, bones flew to the sky

Like missiles trampling our village of molded mud.

I closed my eyes

And went adrift 

With flesh, bones, and bricks.

I swam with the current

Past the valleys and rice patties and villages, 

Past the pandas and cities and colleges

I pushed myself toward greatness, a purpose grand,

And built my dreams, pencils in hand:

Of a life somehow better and free,

Of a life, finally, for me?