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For a school project, my
daughter interviewed Phil Young, a musician and
composer currently residing in the San Francisco Bay
Area, about his talking cat and how he lost it in
the chaos of the Cultural Revolution in  One of my friends
gave me a kitty. It was so cute and looked different
from other cats. He had half a black face, and the
other half white, and a little mustache, a colored
mustache. I named him Hua-Hua, which literally means
“flower-flower.” One thing I soon
found that was unique was his meow. He always made a
kind of very sustained sound, instead of a short
“meow,” he said “eeeeeoowww,” something like that.
Also, the pitch went up and down, too, almost like a
like a baby crying. Also, he used to meow and walk at
the same time, so that would make the pitch bend, like
“oooeeeoooeeee.” I just got this idea,
wow, let me try to make him talk. So I held him like
this.
He was such a good
sport. He would just lie there very peacefully. It
looked like I was just petting him, and I would just
give him a little, tiny bit of pressure. I would hear
the pitch getting higher: “ooooeeee,” like an
instrument. Then I used my right hand to control the
pronunciation, or rhythm. But for other people, nobody
could tell. It just looked like I’m petting him, but
actually I’m doing pitch, bending, and pronunciation.
At the beginning, he
could only say “hao ma” (“are you OK?”) and “wo e le,”
(“I am hungry”). It was half training and half musical
performance. But later, I didn’t have to push too
much. It was almost like a signal. With just a little
touch, the pitch would go up, and the cat would
sustain the sound longer. He could sing one full
octave of notes, and he could say some very complex
sentences. As long as the sound
is from the lips and the shape of the mouth, I could
do it. If it’s from the tip of the tongue, it’s
impossible. Like “ni” (“you”), it’s impossible. So
everything I trained him to say took advantage of what
he could do. Like “wo,” “oh,” “ah.” Sometimes the
consonants were missing, “Mao oo ee,” something like
that. But the pitch, the tone was so accurate, the
good intonation sounded like real Chinese. A friend of my
father’s heard about it. He graduated from a French
university, a guy who believed only science. This
didn’t sound like something scientific. It sounded
like the supernatural. He came over and said “Show
me!” But after hearing just one sentence, he ran out!
The next day, he came
back. He said, “I will pay you 10,000 yuan for the
cat.” I said “No, even if I sell it to you, you would
have to buy me too. Without me, he is only a cat!” One thing he could
say was “Long Live Chairman Mao.” That made big
trouble. A relative of my neighbor, a government
official, visited from far away, Dongbei, the
northeast part of the country. He had heard about this
from my neighbor. This was terrible. It was not funny
for an official. It was like I was making fun of
Chairman Mao! One night, at 12
o’clock midnight, I heard knocking, bam, bam, bam! A
group of Red Guards ran in. “Who’s Yang Zhihua?!”
That’s my name! My father got really scared because he
was considered a “bad element.” He used to own a
factory. That was considered a crime! I said, “I’m
Yang Zhihua.” “Where’s your cat?!”
The cat got really scared, with all the noise and
people. He was hiding somewhere. I had a hard time to
get him. Finally I found him. He was shaking and
trembling, poor cat! One of the Red Guards
said, “Make him say ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’” It was
almost like the end of the world. I thought we might
get killed that night! I got really scared. The cat
was so scared, too, almost too scared to talk! But
still, I got him to say it. The Red Guards got a
kick out of it! Suddenly, the atmosphere, from
so tense, changed completely. Everybody started
to laugh, and then they said, “Let’s go, let’s go.” It
was past, I thought, we are OK now. But this one guy came
back. He wanted to show off. He said, “You know, I
want that cat DEAD. Otherwise your father is going to
be DEAD!” And then he left. My father got really
scared. Even though the cat was almost like a child in
the family, we treated him like a human really, my
father said, “If you don’t do something, they might
come back and kill the cat.” My brother, my sister,
they were so little, they really shouldn’t go through
that kind of horrible thing. So we carried the
cat, and we walked many, many blocks away to an old
building with a dark, empty basement, and let it go.
The cat was really smart. That’s why I think he was
really different from other cats. He really sensed
something. Otherwise, he wouldn’t go, because he was a
member of the family. He very hesitantly walked away.
He stopped a couple of times and kept looking at us.
We were all in tears. We sent food and
water every day, until a couple of months later, he
disappeared and never came back. We never saw him
again. |
