As for the literate prisoners, the instructors taught them mainly through telling heroic stories and explicating lines of ancient poetry. I didn't join them very often in the story sessions, which were usually held between noon and two o'clock, when the guards were relaxing or napping. But I was impressed by the number of talents among us. One man, Yiwen, transcribed from memory chapter after chapter of the Russian novel How the Steel Was Tempered, and also The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; another man, Minshen, could recite most of the pieces from the classical anthology Three

Hundred Tang Poems; another fellow, whose name I cannot recall, knew dozens of folk songs and taught others how to sing them; a man with only one eye left, who had been a political instructor of a machine-gun company, even wrote a booklet on the history of the Chinese Communist Party. But I was most impressed by my young friend Shanmin.

Shanmin was sixteen and had been an artillery fire-direction man before he was captured. Although illiterate, he was quick at learning things and had good eyesight, so his battalion had trained him to observe the enemy's positions. He often climbed to hilltops alone, carrying a twelve-power telescope, a pistol, and a two-watt walkie-talkie that weighed thirty-five pounds. One day a senior officer in the U.S. Twenty-fifth Division announced to his men that he would give a week's leave to anyone who caught an enemy soldier alive. So a lot of GIs went out hunting for Chinese orderlies and stragglers. They would cut a telephone wire, wait for a repairman to appear, and catch him. They also ambushed cooks going to the front to deliver meals and hot water. A black GI spotted Shanmin, who was busy reporting to the commander of a mortar battery from the crest of a hill. The black man knocked him out from behind, threw him on his shoulder, and carried him down to their headquarters to claim his vacation. Because he had left behind Shanmin's pistol and walkie-talkie, his superior at first couldn't believe that this fifteen-year-old was a soldier. But the telescope with a coordinate axis and numerals on it helped them identify him. They didn't beat the petrified boy; instead they tied him to the side of a tank heading for their rear base. He was frozen half dead, unable to speak, when they got there.

Now after a year's imprisonment, Shanmin was bonier than before, like a bundle of firewood, but he had grown taller, to almost five feet four. He looked younger than his age, as though in his early teens, and had a pallid face and large sensitive eyes. Often underfed, he was languid most of the time, lying with his hands clasped behind his head. When he walked he seemed too tired to lift his feet. However, he came to life with the study movement. He was bright and spared no effort in learning how to read. He enjoyed the story sessions immensely and simply worshiped the raconteurs. I liked seeing his enchanted smile, which was innocent and heartfelt, revealing his crowded teeth. From the first day when we became shed mates, he had been fascinated by my reading Stars and Stripes. He once asked me, "Is it hard to learn American words?"

"No, Chinese is harder," I replied.

"How many years have you studied the foreign language?"

"More than ten years."

"Ah, if only I could be so well learned."

"Of course you can. Besides, I'm not as knowledgeable as you think."

"I hope I'll go to school when we're back in our country again."

His words saddened me. At such a tender age, he shouldn't have been here. His parents had lived in the countryside in Henan Province and had been too poor to send him to school, so he had joined the army and ended in Korea. He had three younger brothers and one elder sister, he told me. None of them had any schooling.

Shanmin never asked me to teach him anything, as though such a request would offend me or diminish his respect for me. One day in late July I offered to give him lessons individually. He was overjoyed and said he would be my student all his life. From then on I taught him ten words a day and also the ways phrases and sentences are formed. He had a remarkable memory and never forgot what he had learned. I soon noticed that his appetite for knowledge was quite voracious, though he seldom showed it. One night I overheard him murmur the words "combustion" and "momentum," which I had taught him that afternoon. As I knew him better, I began to add two or three idioms a day. I also taught him multiplication and division. Having served as a fire-direction man, he had a little rudimentary arithmetic, but his knowledge was fragmentary. In just two days he memorized the entire multiplication table. His ability astonished me and made me wonder what he could have accomplished had he had the opportunity to attend school and college. I told him to keep a diary, and he wrote it dutifully every day, sometimes three or four sentences and sometimes a long paragraph. I would check the homework and correct the errors. I also taught him how to use an abacus, which we had made by stringing together some broad beans and then dividing all the strings horizontally with a split chopstick.

He helped me whenever possible. He'd clean mud off my shoes, wash my clothes, and sometimes pour hot water into my mug. He made no secret of his respect and affection for me. He also resoled my shoes with four strips of rubber cut from a discarded tire; he had learned to do this from a prisoner who had been a street cobbler. I enjoyed teaching him; it made me feel like a more useful man.

The other inmates were all fond of Shanmin too, treating him like a younger brother. I don't mean the prisoners were all kindhearted. No, many of them were hardened by the miserable life they had led and were almost unfamiliar and uncomfortable with tender feelings. Quite a few, whose paths I avoided crossing, were plain scoundrels. Yet Shanmin had such a lovable nature that no one could help being brotherly to him. In the beginning his jacket had been too long, almost reaching his knees like an overcoat. A bearded man, whose place on the plank bed was next to Shanmin's, cut the bottom of the jacket with a razor and hemstitched it for him. Weiming, a round-headed fellow from Canton Province, came across a half-filled, soft-covered notebook while cleaning the GIs' quarters, and brought it back for Shanmin. He wrote on the first page, "Little Brother: May wisdom always accompany you!" Another man gave him a used pencil, which the boy cherished so much that he never left it anywhere except in his pocket. When the pencil was worn down to an inch, another man folded a piece of tinplate into a short pipe for him so that Shanmin could insert the stub into "the cap" and continue to use it. During his imprisonment on Cheju, for the progress he achieved in his study he received two medals: a pair of large stars made of iron sheet and coated with red paint.

One day by chance I found him smoking. He stood outside the kitchen and looked silly with a cigarette clamped between his cracked lips, two coils of smoke dangling under his snub nose. Like all the others, he was given a pack of cigarettes a week. I went up to him and said, "Stub it out! You're too young for that."

He obeyed me and lifted his foot, scraping the tip of the cigarette against his rubber sole, but he looked hurt, his eyes misting. I softened and said, "I'm not a meanie, Shanmin. Tobacco will damage your lungs, which are still tender. If you were over eighteen, I wouldn't interfere."

"I understand."

"You don't want to become a consumptive, do you?"

"Uh-uh."

"You still want to study with me?"

"Of course I do."

"Then you mustn't start smoking now."

"I won't light a cigarette again."

He kept his promise. From then on, whenever he was allocated a pack, he would exchange it for food or stationery with others. The inmates all smoked the same kind of cigarettes that had no brand. On one side of the white pack was printed three scarlet words: LIBERTY, JUSTICE, PEACE; on the other side was the moon half hidden in the clouds. Cigarettes were a kind of currency among the prisoners. Sometimes Shanmin gave a few to others, and this made them like him more.