Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (30 page)

Although its eventual significance was not apparent, even at the time civil servants could feel that the grading system was going to be crucial to their lives, and they were all nervous about what grade they would get.  My father, whose grade had already been set at 11 by higher authorities, was in charge of vetting the rankings proposed for everyone in the Yibin region.  These included the husband of his youngest sister, who was his favorite.  He demoted him two grades.  My mother's department had recommended my mother to be Grade 15; he relegated her to Grade 17.

This grade system is not directly linked to a person's position in the civil service.  Individuals could be promoted without necessarily being upgraded.  In nearly four decades, my mother was upgraded only twice, in 1962 and 1982; each time she moved up only one grade, and by 1990 she was still Grade 15.  With this ranking, in the 1980s, she was not entitled to buy a plane ticket or a 'soft seat' on a train: these can be bought only by officials of Grade 14 and above.  So, thanks to my father's actions in 1953, almost forty years later she was one rung too low on the ladder to travel in comfort in her own country.  She could not stay in a hotel room which had a private bath, as these were for Grade 13 and above.  When she applied to change the electric meter in her apartment to one with a larger capacity, the management of the block told her that only officials of Grade 13 and above were entitled to a bigger meter.

The very acts which infuriated my father's family were deeply appreciated by the local population, and his reputation has endured to this day.  One day in 1952 the headmaster of the Number One Middle School mentioned to my father that he was having difficulty finding accommodations for his teachers.

"In that case, take my family's house it's too big for only three people," my father said instantly, in spite of the fact that the three people were his mother, his sister Jun-ying, and a brother who was retarded, and that they all adored the beautiful house with its enchanted garden.  The school was delighted; his family less so, although he found them a small house in the middle of town.  His mother was not too pleased, but being a gracious and understanding woman, she said nothing.

Not every official was as incorruptible as my father.

Quite soon after taking power, the Communists found themselves facing a crisis.  They had attracted the support of millions of people by promising clean government, but some officials began taking bribes or bestowing favors on their families and friends.  Others threw extravagant banquets, which is a traditional Chinese indulgence, almost a disease, and a way of both entertaining and showing of fall at the expense, and in the name, of the state, at a time when the government was extremely short of funds; it was trying to reconstruct the shattered economy and also fight a major war in Korea, which was eating up about 50 percent of the budget.

Some officials started embezzling on a large scale.  The regime was worried.  It sensed that the goodwill which had swept it into power and the discipline and dedication which had ensured its success were eroding.  In late 1951 it decided to launch a movement against corruption, waste, and bureaucracy.  It was called the "Three Antis Campaign."  The government executed some corrupt officials, imprisoned quite a number, and dismissed many others.

Even some veterans of the Communist army who had been involved in large-scale bribery or embezzlement were executed, to set an example. Henceforth, corruption was severely punished, and it became rare among officials for the next couple of decades.

My father was in charge of the campaign in his region.

There were no corrupt senior officials in his area, but he felt it was important to demonstrate that the Communists were keeping their promise to provide clean government.

Every official had to make a self-criticism about any infraction, however minor: for example, if they had used an office telephone to make a personal call, or a piece of official notepaper to write a private letter.  Officials became so scrupulous about using state property that most of them would not even use the ink in their office to write anything except official communications.  When they switched from official business to something personal they changed pens.

There was a puritanical zeal about sticking to these prescriptions.  My father felt that through these minutiae they were creating a new attitude among the Chinese: public property would, for the first time, be strictly separate from private; officials would no longer treat the people's money as their own, or abuse their positions.  Most of the people who worked with my father took this position, and genuinely believed that their painstaking efforts were directly linked to the noble cause of creating a new China.

The Three Antis Campaign was aimed at people in the Party.  But it takes two to make a corrupt transaction, and the corrupters were often outside the Party, especially 'capitalists," factory owners and merchants, who had still hardly been touched.  Old habits were deeply entrenched.

In spring 1952, soon after the Three Antis Campaign got going another, overlapping campaign was started.  This was called the "Five Antis' and was aimed at capitalists.

The five targets were bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of state property, and obtaining economic information through corruption.  Most capitalists were found to have committed one or more of these offences, and the punishment was usually a fine.  The Communists used this campaign to coax and (more often) cow the capitalists, but in such a way as to maximize their usefulness to the economy.

Not many were imprisoned.

These two linked campaigns consolidated mechanisms of control, originally developed in the early days of communism, which were unique to China.  The most important was the 'mass campaign' (qiun-zhongyun-dong), which was conducted by bodies known as 'work teams' (gong-zuo-zu).

Work teams were ad hoc bodies, made up mainly of employees from government offices and headed by senior Party officials.  The central government in Peking would send teams to the provinces to vet the provincial officials and employees.  These, in turn, formed teams which checked up on the next level, where the process was repeated, all the way down to the grass roots.  Normally, no one could become a member of a work team who had not already been vetted in that particular campaign.

Teams were sent to all organizations where the campaign was to be conducted 'to mobilize the people."  There were compulsory meefngs most evenings to study instructions issued by the top authorities.  Team members would talk, lecture, and try to persuade people to stand up and expose suspects.  People were encouraged to place anonymous complaints in boxes provided for the purpose.  The work team would investigate each case.  If the investigation confirmed the charge, or revealed grounds for suspicion, the team would formulate a verdict which was sent up to the next level of authority for approval.

There was no genuine appeal system, although a person who came under suspicion could ask to see the evidence and would usually be allowed to make some sort of defense.

Work teams could impose a range of sentences including public criticism, dismissal from one's job, and various forms of surveillance; the maximum sentence they could give was to send a person to the countryside to do physical labor.  Only the most serious cases went to the formal judicial system, which was under the Party's control.  For each of the campaigns, a set of guidelines was issued from the very top, and the work teams had to abide strictly by these.  But when it came down to individual cases, the judgment and even the temperament-of the specific work team could also be important.

In each campaign everyone in the category which had been designated as the target by Peking came under some degree of scrutiny, mostly from their work mates and neighbors rather than the police.  This was a key invention of Mao's to involve the entire population in the machinery of control. Few wrongdoers, according to the regime's criteria, could escape the watchful eyes of the people, especially in a society with an age-old concierge mentality.

But the 'efficiency' was acquired at a tremendous price: because the campaigns operated on very vague criteria, and because of personal vendettas, and even gossip, many innocent people were condemned.

Aunt Jun-ying had been working as a weaver to help support her mother, her retarded brother, and herself.

Every night she worked into the small hours, and her eyes became quite badly damaged from the dim light.  By 1952 she had saved and borrowed enough money to buy two more weaving machines, and had two friends working with her.  Although they divided the income, in theory my aunt was paying them because she owned the machines.  In the Five Antis Campaign anyone employing other people fell under some sort of suspicion.  Even very small businesses like Aunt Jun-ying's, which were in effect cooperatives, came under investigation.  She wanted to ask her friends to leave, but did not want them to feel she was giving them the sack.  But then the two friends told her it would be best if they left.  They were worried that if someone else threw mud at her, she might think it was them.

By the middle of 1953 the Three Antis and Five Antis campaigns had wound down; the capitalists had been brought to heel, and the Kuomintang had been eradicated.

Mass meetings were coming to an end, as officials had come to recognize that much of the information which emerged at them was unreliable. Cases were being examined on an individual basis.

In May 1953 my mother went into hospital to have her third child, who was born on 23 May: a boy called Jinming.  It was the missionary hospital where she had stayed when she was pregnant with me, but the missionaries had now been expelled, as had happened all over China.  My mother had just been given a promotion to head of the Public Affairs Department for the city of Yibin, still working under Mrs.  Ting, who had risen to be Party secretary for the city.  At the time my grandmother was also in the hospital with severe asthma.  And so was I, with a navel infection; my wet-nurse was staying with me in the hospital.  We were being given good treatment, which was free, as we belonged to a family 'in the revolution."  Doctors tended to give the very scarce hospital beds to officials and their families.  There was no public health service for the majority of the population: peasants, for example, had to pay.

My sister and my aunt Jun-ying were staying with friends in the country, so my father was alone at home.  One day Mrs.  Ting came to report on her work.  Afterward she said she had a headache and wanted to lie down.  My father helped her onto one of the beds, and as he did so she pulled him down toward her and tried to kiss and stroke him.  My father backed away at once.

"You must be very exhausted," he said, and immediately left the room. A few moments later he returned, in a very agitated state.  He was carrying a glass of water which he put on the bedside table.

"You must know that I love my wife," he said, and then, before Mrs. Ting had a chance to do anything, he went to the door and closed it behind him.  Under the glass of water he had left a piece of paper with the words "Communist morality."

A few days later my mother left the hospital.  As she and her baby son crossed the threshold of the house, my father said: "We're leaving Yibin the minute we can, for good."

My mother could not imagine what had got into him.  He told her what had happened, and said Mrs.  Ting had been eyeing him for some time. My mother was more shocked than angry.

"But why do you want to leave so urgently?" she asked.

"She's a determined woman," my father said.

"I'm afraid she might try again.  And she is also a vindictive woman. What I am most worried about is that she might try to harm you.  That would be easy, because you work under her."

"Is she that bad?"  my mother replied.

"I' did hear some gossip that when she was in jail under the Kuomintang she seduced the warder, that sort of thing.

But some people like to spread rumors.  Anyway, I'm not surprised she should fancy you," she smiled.

"But do you think she would really turn nasty on me?  She is my best friend here."

"You don't understand there is something called "rage out of being shamed" [nao-xiu-cheng-nu].  I know that is how she is feeling.  I wasn't very tactful.  I must have shamed her.  I'm sorry.  On the spur of the moment I acted on impulse, I'm afraid.  She is a woman who will take revenge."

My mother could visualize exactly how my father might have abruptly rebuffed Mrs.  Ting.  But she could not imagine Mrs.  Ting would be that malicious, nor could she see what disaster Mrs.  Ting could bring down on them.  So my father told her about his predecessor as governor of Yibin, Mr.  Shu.

Mr.  Shu had been a poor peasant who had joined the Red Army on the Long March.  He did not like Mrs.  Ting, and criticized her for being flirtatious.  He also objected to the way she wound her hair into many tiny plaits, which verged on the outrageous for the time.  Several times he said that she should cut her plaits.  She refused, telling him to mind his own business, which only made him redouble his criticisms, making her even more hostile to him.  She decided to take revenge on him, with the help of her husband.

There was a woman working in Mr.  Shu's office who had been the concubine of a Kuomintang official who had fled to Taiwan.  She had been seen trying her charms on Mr.  Shu, who was married, and there was gossip about them having an affair.  Mrs.  Ting got this woman to sign a statement saying that Mr.  Shu had made advances to her and had forced her to have sex with him.  Even though he was the governor, the woman decided the Tings were more fearsome.  Mr.  Shu was charged with using his position to have relations with a former Kuomintang concubine, which was considered inexcusable for a Communist veteran.