Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (50 page)

He, like the other teachers, was accused of all sorts of outlandish crimes; but they were really there because they were graded, and therefore the best, or because some pupils had grudges against them.

I learned in later years that the pupils in my school behaved relatively mildly because, being in the most prestigious school, they were successful and academically inclined.  In the schools which took in wilder boys, there were teachers who were beaten to death.  I witnessed only one beating in my school.  My philosophy teacher had been somewhat dismissive to those who had not done well in her classes, and some of them hated her and now started to accuse her of being 'decadent."  The 'evidence," which reflected the extreme conservatism of the Cultural Revolution, was that she had met her husband on a bus. They got to chatting, and fell in love.  Love arising out of a chance meeting was regarded as a sign of immorality.  The boys took her to an office and 'took revolutionary actions over her' the euphemism for beating somebody up.  Before they started, they called for me especially and made me attend.

"What will she think when she sees you, her pet pupil, there!"

I was considered her favorite because she had praised my work often. But I was also told that I should be there because I had been too soft, and needed 'a lesson in revolution."

When the beating started, I shrank at the back of the ring of pupils who crowded into the small office.  A couple of classmates nudged me to go to the front and join in the hitting.  I ignored them.  In the center my teacher was being kicked around, rolling in agony on the floor, her hair askew.

As she cried out, begging them to stop, the boys who had set upon her said in cold voices, "Now you beg!  Haven't you been ferocious?  Now beg properly!"  They kicked her again, and ordered her to kowtow to them and say "Please spare my life, masters!"  To make someone kowtow and beg was an extreme humiliation.  She sat up and stared blankly ahead: I met her eyes through her knotted hair.  In them I saw agony, desperation, and emptiness.  She was gasping for breath, and her face was ashen gray.  I sneaked out of the room.  Several pupils followed me.  Behind us I could hear people shouting slogans, but their voices were tentative and uncertain.  Many pupils must have been scared.  I walked away swiftly, my heart pounding.  I was afraid I might be caught and beaten myself.  But no one came after me, and I was not condemned afterward.

I did not get into trouble in those days, in spite of my obvious lack of enthusiasm.  Apart from the fact that the Red Guards were loosely organized, I was, according to the 'theory of bloodlines," born bright red, because my father was a high official.  Although I was disapproved of, nobody did anything drastic, except criticize me.

At the time, the Red Guards divided pupils into three categories: 'reds," 'blacks," and 'grays."  The 'reds' were from the families of 'workers, peasants, revolutionary officials, revolutionary officers, and revolutionary martyrs."

The 'blacks' were those with parents classified as 'land

lords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries bad elements, and rightists."  The 'grays' came from ambiguous families such as shop assistants and clerks.  In my year, all pupils ought to have been 'reds' because of the screening in the enrollment.  But the pressure of the Cultural Revolution meant that some villains had to be found.  As a result, more than a dozen became 'grays' or 'blacks."

There was a girl named Ai-ling in my year.  We were old friends, and I had often been to her house and knew her family well.  Her grandfather had been a prominent economist, and her family had been enjoying a very privileged life under the Communists.  Their house was large, elegant, and luxurious, with an exquisite garden much better than my family's apartment.  I was especially attracted by their collection of antiques, in particular the snuff bottles which Ai-ling's grandfather had brought back from England where he had studied at Oxford in the 1930S.

Now, suddenly, Ai-ling became a 'black."  I heard that pupils from her form had raided her house, smashed all the antiques, including the snuff bottles, and beaten her parents and grandfather with the brass buckles of their belts.  The next day when I saw her she was wearing a scarf.  Her classmates had given her a 'yin and yang head."

She had had to have it completely shaved.  She wept with me.  I felt terribly inadequate because I could not find any words to comfort her.

In my own form a meeting was organized by the Red Guards at which we all had to give our family backgrounds so we could be categorized.  I announced 'revolutionary official' with great relief.  Three or four pupils said 'office staff."  In the jargon of the day, this was different from 'officials," who held more senior positions.  The division was unclear, as there was no definition of what 'senior' meant.  Nevertheless, these vague labels had to be used on various forms, all of which had a space for 'family background."  Together with a girl whose father was a shop assistant, the children of 'office staff' were branded as 'grays."  It was announced that they were to be kept under surveillance, sweep the school grounds and clean toilets, bow their heads at all times, and be prepared to be lectured by any Red Guard who cared to address them.  They also had to report their thoughts and behavior every day.

These pupils suddenly looked subdued and shrunken.

Their vigor and enthusiasm, which they had had in abundance up to now, had deserted them.  One gift bent her head and tears streamed down her cheeks.  We had been friends.

After the meeting I went over to her to say something comforting, but when she raised her head I saw resentment, almost hatred, in her eyes. I walked away without a word, and wandered listlessly through the grounds.  It was the end of August.  The Cape jasmine bushes spread their rich fragrance.  It seemed strange there should be any scent at all.

As dusk was descending I was walking back to the dormitory when I saw something flash by a second-floor window of a classroom block about forty yards away.  There was a muffled bang at the foot of the building.  The hazy branches of some orange trees prevented me from seeing what was happening, but people started to run in the direction of the noise.  Out of the confused, suppressed exclamations I made out the message: "Someone has jumped out of the window!"

I instinctively raised my hands to cover my eyes, and ran to my room. I was terribly scared.  My mind's eye fixated on the blurry crooked figure in midair.  Hurriedly I shut the windows, but the noise of people talking nervously about what had happened filtered through the thin glass.

A seventeen-year-old girl had attempted suicide.  Before the Cultural Revolution, she had been one of the leaders of the Communist Youth League, and had been a model in studying Chairman Mao's works and learning from Lei Feng.  She had done many good deeds like washing her comrades' clothes and cleaning out toilets, and frequently gave talks to the school about how loyally she followed Mao's teachings.  She was often to be seen strolling deep in conversation with a fellow pupil, with a conscientious and purposeful look on her face, carrying out 'heart-to heart duties with someone who wanted to join the Youth League.  But now, suddenly, she had been categorized as a 'black."  Her father was 'office staff."  He worked for the municipal government, and was a Party member.  But some of her classmates who found her a 'pain," and whose fathers were in higher posts, decided she should be a 'black."  In the last couple of days, she had been put under guard with other 'blacks' and 'grays' and forced to pull grass out of the sports ground.  To humiliate her, her classmates had shaved her beautiful black hair, leaving her head grotesquely bald.  On that evening, the 'reds' in her form had been giving her and the other victims an insulting lecture.

She retorted that she was more loyal to Chairman Mao than they were. The 'reds' slapped her and told her she was not fit to talk about her loyalty to Mao because she was a class enemy.  She ran to the window and threw herself out.

Stunned and scared, the Red Guards rushed her to a hospital.  She did not die, but she was crippled for life.

When I saw her many months later on the street, she was bent over on crutches, her eyes blank.

On the night of her attempted suicide, I could not sleep.

The moment I closed my eyes, an indistinct figure loomed over me, smeared with blood.  I was terrified and shaking.

The next day I asked for sick leave, which was granted.

Home seemed to be the only escape from the horror at school.  I desperately wished I would never have to go out again.

17.  "Do You Want Our Children to Become Blacks" My Parents' Dilemma (August-October 1966)

Home was no relief this time.  My parents seemed distracted, and hardly noticed me.  When Father was not pacing up and down the apartment, he was shut in his study.

Mother threw one waste basketful of crushed paper balls after another into the kitchen stove.  My grandmother also looked as though she was expecting disaster.  Her intense eyes were fixed on my parents, full of anxiety.  Timorously, I watched their moods, too afraid to ask what was wrong.

My parents did not tell me about a conversation they had had some evenings before.  They had been sitting by an open window, outside which a loudspeaker tied to a street lamp was blasting out endless quotations of Mao's, particularly one about all revolutions being violent by definition - 'the savage tumult of one class overthrowing another."  The quotations were chanted again and again in a high pitched shriek that roused fear and, for some, excitement.  Every now and then there were announcements of 'victories' achieved by Red Guards: they had raided more homes of 'class enemies' and 'smashed their dogs' heads."

My father had been looking out at the blazing sunset.

He turned to my mother and said slowly: "I don't understand the Cultural Revolution.  But I am certain that what is happening is terribly wrong.  This revolution cannot be justified by any Marxist or Communist principles.  People have lost their basic rights and protection.  This is unspeakable.  I am a Communist, and I have a duty to stop a worse disaster.  I must write to the Party leadership, to Chairman Mao."

In China there was virtually no channel through which people could voice a grievance, or influence policy, except appealing to the leaders.  In this particular case, only Mao could change the situation. Whatever Father thought, or guessed, about Mao's role, the only thing he could do was to petition him.

My mother's experience told her that complaining was extremely dangerous.  People who had done it, and their families, had suffered vicious retribution.  She was silent for a long time, staring out over the distant burning sky, trying to control her worry, anger, and frustration.

"Why do you want to be a moth that throws itself into the fire?"

she said at last.

My father replied, "This is no ordinary fire.  It concerns the life and death of so many people.  I must do something this time."

My mother said, with exasperation, "All right, you don't care about yourself.  You have no concern for your wife.  I accept that.  But what about our children?  You know what will happen to them once you get into trouble.  Do you want our children to become "blacks"?"

My father said thoughtfully, as though he were trying to persuade himself, "Every man loves his children.  You know that before a tiger is about to jump and kill, he always looks back and makes sure that his cub is all right.  Even a man-eating beast feels that way, let alone a human being. But a Communist has to be more than that.  He has to think about other children.  What about the children of the victims?"

My mother stood up and walked away.  It was no use.

Once she was on her own, she wept bitterly.

Father began to write his letter, tearing up draft after draft.  He had always been a perfectionist, and a letter to Chairman Mao was no small matter.  Not only did he have to formulate exactly what he wanted to say, he had to try to minimize the potential consequences, particularly to his family.  In other words, his criticism must not be seen as a criticism.  He could not afford to offend Mao.

Father had begun thinking about his letter in June.

Waves of scapegoating had claimed several of his colleagues, and he wanted to speak up for them.  But events had kept overtaking his plans. Among other things, there had been more and more signs that he was about to become a victim himself.  One day, my mother saw a prominent wall poster in the center of Chengdu attacking him by name, calling him 'the number-one opponent of the Cultural Revolution in Sichuan."  This was based on two accusations: the previous winter he had resisted printing the article denouncing the Dramas of the Ming Mandarin, which was Mao's original summons for the Cultural Revolution; and he had drafted the "April Document," which opposed persecution and attempted to limit the Cultural Revolution to non-political debate.

When my mother told my father about the poster, he said at once that it was the doing of the provincial Party leaders.  The two things it accused him of were known only to a small circle at the top.  Father felt convinced that they had now made up their minds to scapegoat him, and he knew why.  Students from universities in Chengdu were beginning to direct their offensive at the provincial leaders.

University students were entrusted with more information by the Cultural Revolution Authority than middle-school pupils, and had been told that Mao's real intention was to destroy the 'capitalist-roaders' that is, Communist officials.  The students were generally not high officials' children, as most Communist officials had married only after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 anti so did not have children of university age.  Having no vested interest in the status quo, the students were happy to turn on the officials.