But I wasn't well fit for hard labor. I once left the camp with fifty men to dig ditches in the South Korean army's training base, where recruits were drilled before they were shipped to the Korean mainland. The work was exhausting, though once in a while you could be lucky enough to find a turnip or a sweet potato left in the fields. That morning we set off at eight and dug away for a whole day with only a half-hour break for the midday meal. It drizzled in the afternoon; few of us had brought our rain ponchos, and by the time we returned in the evening, most of us were drenched. I couldn't get up the next morning, aching all over, and remained sick for several days. The doctor forbade me to join the ditch diggers again. My bad leg, not having fully recovered from the injury yet, couldn't stand the long hours of work. Oddly enough, this experience made me see that some of the "artists" stayed in the barracks for artistic creation perhaps because they wanted to shun physical labor, from which only officers and the disabled could be exempted. This realization instilled into me some contempt for those able-bodied shirkers.

Being an interpreter, I was regarded as an officer by the Americans and the prisoners, who literally called me "Officer Interpreter." So the inmates didn't like my joining them in their work, as if I was a nuisance to them. My bad leg wasn't strong enough for me to carry anything heavier than sixty pounds; this made me a poor hand when we unloaded a ship or truck. Some men often poked fun at me, though good-naturedly, saying they didn't need a scholar around when they were slaving away. But I wasn't a total weakling in their eyes. We had arm-wrestled several times, and I could beat many of them.

The work I liked best was shoveling, which could tone my muscles without overstraining my injured leg. At first, when I used a shovel, I would drip with sweat and have a sore back and hot, swollen hands in the evening. But gradually I adopted a rhythm when shoveling dirt or sand or gravel. I could apply a shovel with a swing of my upper body like a skilled laborer. Whenever there was shoveling to do, I would volunteer to go. Sometimes they took me and sometimes they didn't. Wet mud was much harder to shovel, but because so many hands were available, we would tie a rope to the shaft of a shovel, just above its scoop, and have two men pull at both ends of the rope to help the shoveler lift a pile of mud. This rhythmical group shoveling could be fun if you were teamed with the right men, with whom you could swap jokes.

Behind our kitchen sat a grinding stone, at which we often crushed grain to groats. I would volunteer to rotate the stone by pushing a long rod attached to it. I liked this work very much because it could exercise both of my legs and, working alone, I didn't have to hurry. Most people wouldn't toil at the grinding stone and some called it a donkey's job, so I often did the grinding. At times when I was done, the cooks would give me something to eat, a bowl of pea soup or a piece of dried fish, which made the work more rewarding. Gradually I could see that some men thought of me as an eccentric – they wondered why an officer, a college graduate, would condescend to labor like themselves. I never explained why, just saying I enjoyed it.

There was another advantage in doing some physical work. An educated man like me tended to be accused of having deliberately separated himself from others. If I often worked with my hands, few people could say I had put on airs. In fact, the battalion leaders praised me several times for my integration with our men. They mistook my voluntary labor for an educational task I had imposed on myself, like the kind of education the Party had always called on intellectuals to undergo conscientiously.

One evening my friends Shanmin and Weiming returned from the GIs' quarters, where they had been detailed to plant grass. They told me excitedly that they had eaten their fill in that barracks, where they had come upon a trash can stuffed with cartons that still contained half-eaten bread, roast beef, carrots, and sliced cucumber. "What's this, do you know? Lard or soap?" Weiming showed me a yellowish chunk, the size of a matchbox.

"Cheese," I said. "It's very nutritious, made from milk."

"Damn, we should've taken all the leftovers back," he said to Shanmin. He stroked his belly, on which slanted a scar like a giant centipede. His navel was huge and cavernous.

Shanmin told me, "There were many cubes of this cheese in the trash can. We weren't sure if it was edible."

"We tried it," said Weiming, "but couldn't swallow it, so we didn't bring the rest with us."

"Men, you left behind the best stuff." I was salivating a little.

So he gave me the cheese, which I put into my mouth, chewing with relish, though it was stale. They were both amazed. "You have a diplomat's stomach and can eat anything," said Weiming, smiling and shaking his round head.

29. A SURPRISE

One day in mid-January, two hundred men from our compound were sent to unload a large cargo ship at the wharf. I went with them. We carried sacks and bundles to the shore and piled them on the ground so that they could be transported to the warehouses near the camp later on. For lunch we were each given a hard roll and an apple, so we were happy about the work. There was no wind, and the ocean looked placid and somewhat opalescent, wavelets flickering in sunlight. Though it was wintertime, it was quite warm.

Interpreter Peng, the officer from Taiwan, accompanied the two squads of GIs guarding us. He was a quiet man and seldom spoke a word unless he had to. His English was mannered, slightly British. He seemed lonesome. For a whole day he continually read a dog-eared book under a willow and didn't mix much with the GIs. At the end of the work, we formed up for him to do the head count. He directed ten of us at a time to step aside to join those he had already counted. Done with the last batch of us, he found one man was missing. He demanded that every squad leader conduct a roll call to see who was absent.

Shanmin tugged my sleeve and whispered, "Weiming's not here." I was taken aback; but convinced that our friend would never escape alone, I reported his absence to Interpreter Peng.

Meanwhile Sergeant Harris, the commander of the two squads escorting us, was enraged. And we were worried too, looking around for Weiming. Then I caught sight of his back in the wattle bushes over a hundred yards away. I had heard that he suffered loose bowels these days, and I thought he might be having a movement, so I pointed him out. Interpreter Peng saw Weiming too. "He's there," he told the sergeant.

"Goddammit!" Harris shouted at Weiming, "What are you doing over there? Get your big ass back here." His breath smelled awful, like underarm odor, though he chewed gum constantly.

Weiming didn't respond, as if he had heard nothing. I broke in, "He's suffering from dysentery recently. Let me go get him back." Without waiting for permission I strode away toward the bushes.

The sergeant followed me; so did Officer Peng. When we reached the bushes, Weiming still didn't budge, his naked posterior in clear view.

"Are you deaf?" Harris yelled at him.

Still there was no response. The sergeant stepped over and pulled Weiming's ear from behind, but the squatting man made no sound, as if lost in concentrating on his business. Harris walked around and pinched his cheek; still Weiming didn't say a word, though he winced this time. The sergeant seized his hair and yanked; Weiming shuffled forward a few steps, revealing two dark turds on the sand. At the sight of the solid feces, Harris flew into a rage. He kicked Weiming's backside ferociously and sent him up to his feet. Without wiping himself, Weiming pulled up his pants while the sergeant battered him with his rifle butt.