Susan Barker - The Incarnations

‘The high school entrance exams have been abolished!’ Long March snaps. ‘The education system is being reformed. The teachers have been teaching the revisionist anti-Party line for long enough!’

You stand on the stage in the auditorium in front of hundreds of girls. Your hair has been shorn like a boy’s and you wear a PLA jacket over your uniform. You look very military and tough as you hold a loudspeaker to your mouth and say, ‘We have it on good authority that there are Ox Demons and Snake Ghosts on the faculty of our school.’

There are outraged gasps. Fearful murmurs. Confusion. Ox Demons and Snake Ghosts are spirits from folktales and myths that assume human form and do mischief. Do you really believe that our teachers are evil spirits?

‘Many of our teachers are counter-revolutionaries,’ you say, ‘pretending to support the Party while indoctrinating us with the anti-Party line. The education system must be reformed to weed these bad elements out. Until the Cultural Revolution Committee decides upon the next course of action, all teachers have been suspended.’

The whispers of hundreds of girls sweep through the auditorium, as though your words are a strong breeze rustling the leaves of a tree. ‘The teachers are suspended?’ ‘What about exams?’ ‘What’s the Cultural Revolution?’

‘Class time will now be devoted to revolutionary activities,’ you say through the crackling loudspeaker. ‘Every student is to give her blood, sweat and tears to the Cultural Revolution!’

Long March strides towards you on the stage and you hand the loudspeaker over to her. ‘The black-category students, with rightist, landlord or capitalist blood lineage will not participate in the revolutionary activities!’ she says. ‘The black-category students will be segregated to the back of every classroom. They will study the collected works of Mao Zedong. They will write self-criticisms and reform their thinking!’

Standing beside Long March, you nod as though in agreement. You nod as though our segregation is fair and right.

Our classroom becomes a Big-character Poster production line. Black ink smudges the faces and hands of nearly every student as they use calligraphy brushes to make posters denouncing our former teachers. Red Star has been appointed a ‘Big-character Poster Inspector’ and Ying Le’s poster does not meet her standards.

‘“Teacher Zhao Must Evict Any Thoughts that Contradict the Party Line from Her Heart. .”’ Red Star reads scornfully. ‘What’s this meant to be? A love poem?’

‘But I can’t think of any anti-Party crimes Teacher Zhao has committed,’ Ying Le says honestly. ‘She was a dedicated Communist.’

‘Stop thinking like an intellectual and think like a rebel,’ Red Star scolds. ‘Teacher Zhao deceived us into thinking she was a loyal Communist when really she was teaching us her revisionist curriculum!’

Ying Le bows her head. She wants to be a doctor, not a rebel. Red Star snatches the calligraphy brush from her and scrawls, ‘Teacher Zhao Must Be Torn Limb from Limb for Challenging the Doctrine of Chairman Mao!’

‘There!’ she says. ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, and you, Dr Ying , better hurry up and learn which end goes bang. Or I’ll put you at the back of class with those Stinking Rightists over there.’ Red Star looks over at the black-category students, and catches me looking up from my desk. ‘Who gave you permission to look at me?’ she snaps. ‘Take your beady little capitalist eyes off me!’

I bury my head back in my exercise book.

Industriously Study Mao Zedong Thought, as Mao Zedong Thought is the Sole Criterion of Truth .

Long March has ordered us to write this ten thousand times without mistakes, and I have just completed my hundredth line. If Mao Zedong Thought is the sole criterion of truth, I think, then what about the five thousand years of civilization before Chairman Mao? For five thousand years was everything false ? Of course, I keep my doubts to myself.

‘Women hold up half the sky. Women are as revolutionary as men. We of the Beijing No. 104 Middle School for Girls reject femininity. We will roll up our sleeves and spit and curse! We won’t bathe or wash our clothes. Soap is bourgeois! The sweat of the masses is revolutionary! We will breed dirt under our fingernails and behind our ears! We will emancipate ourselves from the shackles of our sex!’

Waving scissors above her head, Little Miao lectures us from the teaching platform. Miao has no problem ‘rejecting femininity’, as for years Miao has been as aggressive, foul-mouthed and unwashed as the roughest of boys. Shopkeepers call her ‘young man’, and children in the street call her ‘Elder Brother’. Proud to be a tomboy, Little Miao never corrects their mistake. And now, scissors in hand, she intends for the rest of us to ‘reject femininity’ too.

The long-haired girls go to Little Miao and she turns them into short-haired girls, one by one, hacking with the scissors, steely-eyed, as though hair itself is the enemy. The ‘revolutionary haircuts’ are awful, but who dares complain? Little Miao holds up every severed pigtail and we cheer as though they are enemy scalps. When it is my turn, Little Miao is vicious with me.

‘Times have changed, Daughter of a Rightist!’ she shouts, cutting away. ‘From now on, haircuts must be short, practical and revolutionary!’ When her scissors have done their worst, she shoves me off the teaching platform. ‘Not so pretty now, eh? Go weep some capitalist tears over your lovely bourgeois locks!’ she calls after me.

But Little Miao is wrong. I couldn’t care less about my hair. The only person who cares is you. As I go back to my desk, I catch you staring at my short and stubbly head with sad, sentimental eyes.

I want to laugh in your face. My hair is the least of my problems right now.

In July, Teacher Zhao shuffles back into class to go on trial for her counter-revolutionary crimes and we see she has lost weight and now has more salt than pepper in her hair. As Teacher Zhao stands before us in her thick spectacles and chalk-dusty Mao jacket, patched and patched again, I remember her passionate teachings about Communism and can’t shake the conviction that Teacher Zhao is a loyal Maoist from my mind.

‘Comrades!’ Long March yells. ‘Teacher Zhao is a traitor to the People’s Republic, and opposed to the correct policy of our Great Leader Chairman Mao! This meeting, on 16 July 1966, is to denounce Teacher Zhao and her anti-Party teachings. But before we start, let’s give Teacher Zhao a chance to confess her crimes.’

Confronted by the fury of her former students, Teacher Zhao is shaking. But she speaks with her chin up, righteous and strong. ‘Comrades,’ she begins, ‘I am the daughter of poor peasants. My family background is revolutionary. My father fought the Japanese devils in the Eighth Route Army. My brother fought the American running dogs in the Korean War. I live a humble spinster’s life, devoted to the teaching and practice of Communism. I am not opposed to the Party, and I have never committed any crime. Therefore I have nothing to confess. Long live Chairman Mao! ’

‘Class Enemy Zhao!’ Long March shouts. ‘You are in contempt of the People’s Court! You must assume the correct attitude of repentance and confess!’

‘Down with Teacher Zhao!’ Red Star chants. ‘No leniency to those who won’t confess!’

The rest of the class chants with Red Star, banging on desk lids and scaring Teacher Zhao out of her wits. When the chanting stops, Long March reads Teacher Zhao her crimes — the findings of the Cultural Revolution Committee’s investigation into her teaching and conduct: ‘1. Teacher Zhao is a loyal running dog of the Nationalists. 2. Teacher Zhao is a Nationalist spy. 3. Teacher Zhao is part of the plot to overthrow the Communist Party by taking over the military.’