Nien Cheng - Life and Death in Shanghai

Several other men and women came into the room, followed by my servants. The man looked at them. The newcomers shook their heads. Evidently they had not got what they wanted from my servants.

The man with the tinted spectacles assumed a severe tone of voice and asked me, ‘Where have you hidden your gold and weapons?’

‘What gold and weapons?’ I was surprised by his question until I remembered the leading article of the People’s Daily. It had accused members of the capitalist class of secreting gold and weapons in order to form a fifth column when foreign powers invaded China.

‘You know what gold and weapons! You had better come clean.’

‘I have no gold or weapons. The Red Guards have been here. They went through the entire house. They did not find any gold or weapons.’

‘You are clever. You hid them. Our Great Leader told us that the class enemies are secreting gold and weapons. He can’t be wrong.’

‘We are going to find the gold and weapons, if you don’t come clean. Then you will be severely punished,’ said their leader. ‘Come along! They must be somewhere in this house.’

I wondered whether they really believed the leading article or whether they just had to appear to believe it. The fact was that soon after the Communist takeover in 1949, possession of firearms was declared illegal. Those who had them had to hand them over to the government and were subject to a house search by the police. The former Kuomintang military and police personnel were arrested and ‘reformed’ in labour camps. Their families all had to move out of their homes. Therefore, it seemed utterly absurd to say some Chinese could still have weapons in their homes in 1966.

However, the Revolutionaries took my servants and me all over the house. They ripped open mattresses, cut the upholstery of the chairs and sofas, removed tiles from the walls of the bathrooms, climbed into the fireplace and poked into the chimney, lifted floorboards, got on to the roof, fished in the water tank under the ceiling and crawled under the floor to examine the pipes. All the while, they watched the facial expression of my servants and myself.

I had lost track of time but darkness had long descended on the city when they decided to dig up the garden. The sky was overcast and it was a dark night. They switched on the lights on the terrace and told Lao Chao to bring his flashlight. When they came to the coalshed, my servants and I were told to move the coal to a corner of the garden they had already searched. The damp ash-covered lawn had been trampled into a sea of mud; all the flowerbeds had been dug up and spades were sunk into the earth around the shrubs. They even pulled plants out of their pots. But they found nothing for nothing was there to be found. The Revolutionaries, my servants and I were all covered with mud, ashes and sweat.

In the end, physical exhaustion got the better of their revolutionary zeal. We were told to go back to the house. They were fuming with rage because they had lost face in not finding anything. I knew that unless I did something to save their face they were going to vent their anger on me. If only I could produce something in the way of gold such as a ring or a bracelet. I remembered my jewellery sealed in Meiping’s study.

‘The Red Guards put my gold rings and bracelets in the sealed room. Perhaps you could open the room and take them and let the Red Guards know,’ I said to the woman.

‘Don’t pretend to be stupid. We are looking for gold bars,’ she said.

We were standing in the hall. The man with the tinted glasses had removed them to reveal bloodshot eyes. He glanced at my servants cowering by the kitchen door and he looked at his fellow Revolutionaries around him. Then he glared at me. Suddenly he shouted, ‘Where have you hidden the gold and weapons?’ and took a step towards me threateningly.

I was so weary that I could hardly stand. Making an effort, I said, ‘There simply aren’t any. If there were, wouldn’t you have found them already?’

The fact he had been proven wrong was intolerable to him. Staring at me with pure hatred, he said, ‘Not necessarily. We did not break open the walls.’

He stood very close to me. I could see every detail of his sneering face. Although I found him extremely repulsive and would have liked to step back a pace or two, I did not move for I did not want him to think I was afraid of him. I simply said slowly, in a normal and friendly voice, ‘You must be reasonable. If I had hidden anything in the walls, I could not have done it alone. I would have needed a plasterer to put the walls back again. All workmen work for State-controlled businesses. They would have to report to their Party Secretary the sort of work they did.’ I was so tired that it was a real effort to speak.

The man was beside himself with rage for I had implied that he was unreasonable. His face turned white and his lips trembled. I could see the bloated veins on his temple. He raised his arm to strike me.

At that very moment, Meiping’s cat Fluffy came through the kitchen door, jumped on the man’s leg from behind and sank his teeth into the flesh of the man’s calf. Screaming with pain, the man hopped wildly on one leg, trying to shake the cat off. The others also tried to grab Fluffy but the agile cat was already out of the house like a streak of lightning through the French windows we had left open when we came in from the garden. We all rushed outside. Fluffy was sitting on his favourite branch of the magnolia tree, out of reach. From this safe perch, Fluffy looked at us and mewed. The wounded man was almost demented. With his trousers torn and blood streaming down the back of his leg, he dashed to the tree and tried to shake it. Fluffy hopped on to a higher branch, turned round to give us all a disdainful glance, ran onto the roof of my neighbour’s house and disappeared into the night.

We came in again. In the drawing room, the man sat down on the sofa the Red Guard had broken and he had slashed not long ago. When I asked Chen Mah for some mercurochrome or iodine, she reminded me that the Red Guards had already poured everything away.

The Revolutionaries were greatly embarrassed by the rather unheroic appearance of their leader who was now wiping his leg with a handkerchief, completely deflated. Tactfully my servants withdrew into the kitchen. I was left there to witness his discomfiture. One of the women pushed me out through the connecting door between the drawing room and the dining room, saying, ‘We don’t need your help or sympathy. You keep a wild animal in the house to attack the Revolutionaries. You will be punished. As for the cat, we will have the neighbourhood committee look for it and put it to death. You are very much mistaken if you think by making your cat bite us we will give up. We are going to look further for the gold and weapons.’ She turned the key in the lock and went round to the hall to lock the other door also. Again, I was incarcerated in the dining room.

Do they really believe I have gold and weapons? I wondered. Or, do they merely have to carry out the order of Chairman Mao to search for them? Surely they had done enough, if it were the latter case.

I heard Lao Chao calling me in a low whisper in the garden. I went to the window and saw him standing outside.

‘The cook has gone to the Film Studio to tell Mei-mei not to come home tonight. Is it all right?’

‘Thank you, Lao Chao. It’s very thoughtful of you. It’s best she is not here.’

Suddenly there was the sound of hammering on the front gate again. Lao Chao hurried away to open it. He came back to tell me that the Red Guards who had first looted my house had come back.

‘Please go to your room and take Chen Mah with you,’ I told him, anticipating more trouble.