Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China (11 page)

When the indictment said her father had committed suicide because he feared punishment as a counterrevolutionary, Lin Zhao retorted, “We’ve heard this all before: Everyone who commits suicide does it because they ‘fear punishment’ for their crimes.” When the indictment said she wrote in a “hunger strike letter” that she would sit in prison for the rest of her life and never change her views, Lin Zhao replied, “It’s true. Share it with the heavens and the earth!” When the indictment accused her of “opposing socialism,” she wrote, “If this so-called ‘socialism’ means tyrannizing, persecuting, and humiliating people, then there is absolutely no shame in ‘opposing socialism’ or attacking ‘socialism’!” And when it accused her of “putting up a last-ditch struggle” against the party in prison, she suggested her comments on the indictment might be a fine example of that. On the indictment’s last page, the prosecutors noted they had collected eight volumes of her writings and of witness testimony as evidence against her. Lin Zhao interjected again: “According to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, the ‘law’ is merely the ‘will of the ruler’! Resistance is a crime, struggling for freedom is a crime, demanding human rights is even more of a crime, so what need is there for ‘evidence and witnesses’?”

Lin Zhao also appended to her
People’s Daily
letter a statement she penned after the court sentenced her to twenty years in prison. “This is an extremely reprehensible and shameful judgment, but as a rebel I also take pride in this highest honor,” she wrote, adding that she would “work harder” to live up to the sentence. “Just watch! The court of history will proclaim a verdict for future generations,” she concluded. “You totalitarian rulers and treacherous scoundrels, shameless usurpers of state power and traitors who have brought disaster upon the people, you will become not only the true defendants but also the prosecuted criminals! Justice will prevail! Long live freedom!”

When Hu finished reading the document, the winter sun had begun to rise over the hazy city. From the window of his sister’s apartment, he watched as the first rays of dawn struck the construction cranes scattered across the skyline and the traffic began to build on the capital’s intersecting roadways. Years later, when I asked Hu how he felt that morning, he replied that it was as if he had been exposed to “a level of thinking” he had never encountered before and never imagined existed in his country. He said he felt invigorated, and proud. “I stood at the window, watching the eastern sky get brighter,” he recalled, “and I thought it was extraordinary that a great woman like Lin Zhao once lived in China…. I thought she was a national treasure.”

N
OT LONG AFTER
Hu located the Lin Zhao documents, a friend called with some disturbing news: an agent of the Ministry of State Security had come around asking questions about him. Ever since he lost his job at Xinhua, Hu had assumed the secret police were keeping tabs on him, and he sometimes suspected they were following him or tapping his phone. But now he knew for sure that they were doing…something. It was unnerving, knowing that these shadowy men were making inquiries about him, but having no idea what they planned to do or when they were going to do it. Hu likened it to swallowing an insect and wondering what it was doing inside his body. It was an uncomfortable, sickening feeling. A while later, other friends reported that state security agents had approached them, too, and Hu began to worry he might be arrested at any moment. But it was not prison that frightened him most. It was the possibility that he might not be allowed to finish the documentary, that he would never be able to tell Lin Zhao’s story. He had worked so hard and for so long on the film. He felt like an artist who had finished a lengthy apprenticeship but was told he would die before he could complete his masterpiece. Hu was sure that no one else was doing this research, and he worried that if he were stopped, all the information he had uncovered would be buried again, maybe forever.

The prospect of arrest drove him to work harder and faster. After returning the papers to Gan, Hu had persuaded him to introduce him to Lin Zhao’s cousin, the retired director of the literary institute, and the man gave him the version of the letter that was in Lin Zhao’s handwriting. For months Hu pored over the text, double-checking Gan’s work and trying to recognize words that Gan had been unable to read. The documents were full of new information and new leads, and Hu stepped up and expanded his search for interview subjects. He felt as if he was racing against the police, trying to finish his film before they completed their investigation and took him away. It was nerve-racking but also energizing, and it spurred him on. As he worked on the film, he tried to deepen his understanding of history and political theory, reading as much as he could because he thought that each book he read would be one less volume he would have to take to prison. He told his friends to tell the state security agents to come speak to him directly, and he treated each week that passed without a knock on his door from them as a reprieve, another chance to gather more material and make the documentary better.

Hu also sensed that a natural deadline was approaching. Lin Zhao’s contemporaries were getting old, their memories were fading, and some of the people he wanted to interview had already died or fallen seriously ill. As that generation passed from the scene, their stories, experiences, and insights would be lost, too. Hu believed he was rescuing that history before it was too late. Lin Zhao’s letter reminded him of how much he still didn’t know about her life, and how much he might never know. Did she really ask a foreigner named Arnold to smuggle her writings out of the country, as the indictment alleged? Did she compile a list of senior party leaders to whom she planned to send a protest letter? What else did she write in prison? And why was her sentence changed from twenty years to death?

One of the most intriguing questions raised by the letter was related to a rumor Hu had heard early in his research—that Mao himself had visited Lin Zhao in prison. Hu had dismissed the idea at first, because it seemed so unlikely. But as he studied Lin Zhao’s letter, he noticed passages in which she described interacting with someone she called “the autocrat.”

Hu assumed Lin Zhao was quoting one of the prison officials until he discovered many other passages in which she clearly used “the autocrat” or “your autocrat” to mean Mao, because she also used his title as chairman of the party’s Central Committee and cited his poetry. She attacked the cruelty of his rule, and wrote of his “horrible, cold, ruthless, mean soul.” Perhaps, Hu thought, Lin Zhao used “the autocrat” to refer to Mao in some places and a prison official in others. But there were also a few sections in which she seemed to merge the two, writing that “the autocrat” was both the chairman of the Central Committee and director of the prison.

Hu knew that Lin Zhao’s mind was not completely sound when she was writing the letter, but the possibility his heroine had faced down Mao was too interesting to ignore. Even if she had suffered a breakdown, Hu reasoned, that didn’t necessarily mean Mao had never toured her prison. Hu consulted scholars who confirmed that Mao often visited Shanghai while Lin Zhao was in prison, and they also noted the Chairman’s notorious predilection for young women. But so much about Mao’s life remained shrouded in official secrecy, and none of them could say for sure if Mao ever toured his prisons.

Hu never solved the mystery and he left it out of his film, but he did uncover one more clue. In the summer of 2001, Ni Jinxiong arranged for him to meet Lin Zhao’s sister, Peng Lingfan. She had returned to Shanghai from the United States for a visit, and though she was nearly seventy, Hu immediately saw the resemblance to the young Lin Zhao he had seen in photos. He explained to Peng that he was making a documentary about her sister, and presented her with a gift, a volume of Lin Zhao’s poetry and writing that he had compiled. But to his surprise, Peng refused to be interviewed. She seemed very nervous, and asked if he was being followed. She also urged him not to make the film, saying it wasn’t safe and suggesting that government agents might arrange for him to be struck by a car if he didn’t abandon the project. Hu pleaded with her to change her mind, arguing that her sister’s story needed to be recorded and shared with the public. When Peng wouldn’t budge, Hu lost his temper, jumping out of his seat and raising his voice, declaring that Lin Zhao’s story wasn’t her family’s personal property but part of the national heritage. Eventually, Peng agreed to answer only two questions. Hu asked if she knew anything about an encounter between Mao and her sister. Peng refused to let him film her answer, but replied that when Lin Zhao was home on medical parole in 1962, she heard her tell their mother that Mao had visited the prison and questioned her. Their mother cut her off, and Peng said she never heard her sister speak of it again.

For his second question, Hu asked about a meeting that Ni had told him about between Peng and the doctor at Lin Zhao’s prison shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Again, Peng wouldn’t let Hu record her answer, but she later published an essay in Hong Kong recounting what the doctor told her:

In the same essay, Peng wrote that Lin Zhao had once been sent to the Shanghai Hospital for the Prevention of Mental Diseases for examination. Later, the director of the hospital, Su Zonghua, a prominent psychiatrist, was accused of trying to protect Lin Zhao by diagnosing her with a mental disorder. After suffering unceasing abuse at the hands of the Red Guards, he committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution in 1970.

Hu eventually tracked down Lin Zhao’s prison doctor, the man Peng had described as “Doctor X.” He was in his nineties, and living on the fourth floor of a new apartment building in Shanghai. But the man was hard of hearing and nearly senile. He said he couldn’t remember anything about Lin Zhao. His wife was there, too, and she recalled only that her husband was once caught with one of Lin Zhao’s poems in his pocket. It was frustrating for Hu to finally find the doctor only to learn it was too late, and it served as another reminder that he was running out of time.

Hu wanted to interview other prison officials but he was worried about pushing his luck. Months had passed since he first learned state security agents were asking questions about him, and he was nervous about doing anything that might provoke them. Instead, he asked a friend who did business with the prison to help. The man knew the officials there well and was confident he could persuade them to be interviewed. But when he went to see the old cadres who ran the prison in the 1960s—now retirees who passed the time playing mah-jongg—they immediately said no. Hu’s cautious attempts to contact court officials and others who had been in positions of power failed as well.