Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

Jin-ming dealt in other black-market goods as well. His enthusiasm for science had not waned. At the time, the only black market dealing in scientific goods in Chengdu traded in semi-conductor radio parts: this branch of industry was in favor because it 'spread Chairman Mao's words."

Jin-ming bought parts and made his own radios, which he sold at good prices. He bought more parts for his real purpose: testing various theories in physics which had been nagging him.

To get money for his experiments, he even dealt in Mao badges. Many factories had stopped normal production to produce aluminum badges with Mao's head on them.

Collecting of any kind, including stamps and paintings, had been banned as a 'bourgeois habit." So people's instinct for collecting turned to this sanctioned object although they could only deal in it clandestinely. Jin-ming made a small fortune. Litfie did the Great Helmsman know that even the image of his head had become a piece of property for capitalist speculation, the very activity he had tried so hard to stamp out.

There were repeated clamp downs Often truckloads of Rebels would arrive, seal off the streets, and grab anyone who looked suspicious. Sometimes they sent spies who pretended to be browsing. Then a whistle would blow and they would swoop on the dealers. Those who were caught had their belongings confiscated. They were usually beaten. One regular punishment was 'bloodletting' stabbing them in the buttocks. Some were tortured, and all were threatened with double punishment if they did not stop. But most came back, again and again.

My second brother, Xiao-her, was twelve at the beginning of 1967. Having nothing to do, he soon found himself involved in a street gang. Virtually nonexistent before the Cultural Revolution, these were now flourishing. A gang was called a 'dock," and its leader the 'helmsman." Everyone else was a 'brother," and had a nickname, usually with some connection with animals: "Thin Dog' if a boy was thin; "Gray Wolf' if he had a lock of gray hair. Xiao-her was called "Black Hoof' because part of his name, her, means 'black," and also because he was dark, and was swift at running errands, which was one of his duties, as he was younger than most of the gang members.

At first the gangsters treated him as a revered guest, because they had rarely known any high officials' children.

Gang members tended to come from poor families, and had often been school dropouts before the Cultural Revolution. Their families were not targets of the revolution, and they were not interested in it, either.

Some boys sought to imitate the ways of the high officials' children, disregarding the fact that the high officials had been toppled. In their Red Guard days, the high officials' children favored old Communist army uniforms, as they were the only people who had access to these through their parents. Some street boys got the old gear through black-market trading, or dyed their clothes green. But they lacked the haughty air of the elite, and their green was often not quite the right shade. They were sneered at by high officials' children, as well as by their own friends, as 'pseuds."

Later the high officials' children switched to wearing dark-blue jackets and trousers. Although most of the population was wearing blue at the time, theirs was a particular shade, and it was also unusual to wear the same color top and bottom. After they had made this their distinguishing sign, boys and girls from other backgrounds had to avoid it, if they did not want to be treated as pseuds. The same went for a certain kind of shoes: black cord uppers with white plastic soles and a white plastic band showing in between.

Some gang members invented their own style. They wore many layers of shirts under an outer garment, and turned out all their collars. The more collars you named out, the smarter you were considered to be. Often Xiao-her wore six or seven shirts under his jacket and two even in the boiling summer heat. Jogging pants always had to show under their shortened trousers. They also wore white sneakers without laces, and sported army caps, with cardboard strips tucked inside to make the peaks stick up so they looked imposing.

One of the main ways in which Xiao-her's 'brothers' occupied their empty days was stealing. Whatever they got, their haul had to be handed over to the helmsman to be divided up evenly among them. Xiao-her was too afraid to steal anything, but his brothers gave him his share without demur.

Theft was extremely widespread during the Cultural Revolution, particularly pick pocketing and stealing bicycles. Most people I knew had their pockets picked at least once. For me, shopping trips often involved either losing my own purse or seeing someone yelling because their purse had been stolen. The police, who had split into factions, exercised only token surveillance.

When foreigners first came to China in large numbers in the 1970s, many were impressed by the 'moral cleanliness' of the society: a discarded sock would follow its owner a thousand miles from Peking to Guangzhou, cleaned and folded and placed in his hotel room. The visitors did not realize that only foreigners and Chinese under close surveillance received such attention, or that no one would dare to steal from foreigners, because taking even a handkerchief was likely to be punished by death. The clean folded sock bore no relation to the real state of society: it was just part of the regime's theater.

Xiao-her's brothers were also obsessed with chasing gifts. The twelve- and thirteen-year-olds like Xiao-her were often too shy to go after gifts themselves, so they became the older boys' messengers, delivering their error fiddled love letters. Xiao-her would knock on a door, praying that it would be opened by the girl herself and not her father or brother, who was sure to slap him across the head. Sometimes, when fear got the upper hand, he would slip the letter under the door.

When a girl rejected a proposal, Xiao-her and other younger boys became the tool of revenge of the spurned lover, making noises outside her house and firing catapults at her window. When the girl came out, they spat at her, swore at her, shook their middle fingers at her, and yelled dirty words which they did not fully understand. Abusive Chinese terms for women are rather graphic: 'shuffle' (for the shape of her genitals), 'horse saddle' (for the image of being mounted), over spilling oil lamp' ('too frequent' discharge), and 'worn-out shoes' (much 'used').

Some girls tried to find protectors in the gangs, and the more capable ones became helms women themselves. The girls who became involved in this male world sported their own picturesque sobriquets, like "Dewy Black Peony," "Broken Wine Vessel,"

"Snake Enchantress."

The third major occupation of the gangs was fighting, at the slightest provocation. Xiao-her was very excited by the fights, but much to his regret, he was endowed with what he called 'a cowardly disposition." He would run away at the first sign that a battle was turning ugly. Thanks to his lack of bravado, he survived intact while many boys were injured, even killed, in these pointless exchanges.

One afternoon, he and some of his brothers were loitering about as usual when a member of the gang rushed over and said the home of a brother had just been raided by another dock, and this brother had been subjected to a 'bloodletting." They went back to their own 'dockyard' to collect their weapons sticks, bricks, knives, wire whips, and cudgels. Xiao-her tucked a three-section cudgel into his leather belt. They ran to the house where the incident had occurred, but found that their enemies had gone and their wounded brother had been taken to a hospital by his family. Xiao-her's helmsman wrote a letter, peppered with errors, throwing down the gauntlet to the other gang, and Xiao-her was charged with delivering it.