Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

After this florid letter went off, my mother sent me to see the chief manager of the bureau, a Mr. Hui. He had been a colleague of hers, and had been very fond of me when I was a baby. My mother knew he still had a soft spot for me. The day after I went to see him, a board meeting of his bureau was convened to discuss my case. The board consisted of some twenty directors, all of whom had to meet to make any decision, however trivial. Mr. Hui managed to convince them that I should be given a chance to use my English, and they wrote a formal letter to my university.

Although my department had given me a hard time, they needed teachers, and in January 19771 became an assistant lecturer in English at Sichuan University. I had mixed feelings about working there, as I would have to live on the campus, under the eyes of political supervisors and ambitious and jealous colleagues. Worse, I soon learned that I was not to have anything to do with my profession for a year. A week after my appointment I was sent to the countryside on the outskirts of Chengdu, as part of my 'reeducation' program.

I labored in the fields and sat through endless tedious meetings. Boredom, dissatisfaction, and the pressure put on me for not having a fiance at the advanced age of twenty-five helped push me into infatuations with a couple of men. One of them I had never met, but he wrote me beautiful letters. I fell out of love the moment I set eyes on him. The other, Hou, had actually been a Rebel leader.

He was a kind of product of the times: brilliant and unscrupulous. I was dazzled by his charm.

Hou was detained in the summer of 1977 when a campaign started to apprehend 'the followers of the Gang of Four." These were defined as the 'heads of the Rebels' and anyone who had engaged in criminal violence, which was vaguely described as including torture, murder, and destruction or looting of state property. The campaign petered out within months. The main reason was that Mao was not repudiated, nor was the Cultural Revolution as such. Anyone who had done evil simply claimed that they had acted out of loyalty to Mao. There were no clear criteria to judge criminality either, except in the case of the most blatant murderers and torturers. So many had been involved in house raids, in destroying historical sites, antiques, and books, and in the factional fighting. The greatest horror of the Cultural Revolution the crushing repression which had driven hundreds of thousands of people to mental breakdown, suicide, and death was carried out by the population collectively. Almost everyone, including young children, had participated in brutal denunciation meetings. Many had lent a hand in beating the victims. What was more, victims had often become victimizers, and vice versa.

There was also no independent legal system to investigate and to judge. Party officials decided who was to be punished and who was not. Personal feelings were often the decisive factor. Some Rebels were rightly punished. Some got rough justice. Others were let off lightly. Of my father's main persecutors, nothing happened to Zuo, and Mrs Shau was simply transferred to a slightly less desirable job.

The Tings had been detained since 1970, but were not now brought to justice because the Party had not issued criteria by which they could be judged. The only thing that happened to them was having to sit through nonviolent meetings at which victims could "speak bitterness" against them. My mother spoke at one such mass meeting about how the couple had persecuted my father. The Tings were to remain in detention without trial until 1982, when Mr. Ting was given twenty years' imprisonment and Mrs. Ting seventeen.

Hou, over whose detention I had lost much sleep, was soon set free. But the bitter emotions reawakened in those brief days of reckoning had killed whatever feeling I had for him. Although I was never to know his exact responsibility, it was clear that as a mass Red Guard leader in the most savage years he could not possibly have been guiltless.

I still could not make myself hate him personally, but I was no longer sorry for him. I hoped that justice would be done to him, and to all those who deserved it.

When would that day come? Could justice ever be done?

And could this be achieved without more bitterness and animosity being stirred up, given that there was so much steam already? All around me, factions that had fought bloody wars against each other now cohabited under the same roof. Capitalist-roaders were obliged to work side by side with former Rebels who had denounced and tormented them. The country was still in a state of extreme tension. When, if ever, would we be rid of the nightmare cast by Mao?

In July 1977 Deng Xiaoping was rehabilitated again and made deputy to Hua Guofeng. Every speech by Deng was a blast of fresh air. Political campaigns were to end. Political 'studies' were 'exorbitant taxes and levies' and must be stopped. Party policies must be based on reality, not dogma. And most importantly, it was wrong to follow every word of Mao's to the letter. Deng was changing China's course. Then I started to suffer from anxiety: I so feared that this new future might never come to pass.

In the new spirit of Deng, the end of my sentence in the commune came in December 1977, one month short of the original one-year schedule. This difference of a mere month thrilled me beyond reason. When I got back to Chengdu, the university was about to hold belated entrance examinations for 1977, the first proper examinations since 1966. Deng had declared that university entrance must be through academic exams, not the back door. The autumn term had had to be postponed because of the need to prepare the population for the change from Mao's policies.

I was sent to the mountains of northern Sichuan to interview applicants for my department. I went willingly. It was on this trip, traveling from county to county on the meandering dusty roads, all on my own, that a thought first occurred to me: how wonderful it would be to go and study in the West!

A few years before, a friend of mine had told me a story.

He had originally come to 'the motherland' from Hong Kong in 1964, but had not been allowed out again until 1973, when, in the openness following Nixon's visit, he was permitted to go and see his family. On his first night in Hong Kong, he heard his niece on the phone to Tokyo arranging a weekend there. His apparently inconsequential story had become a permanent source of perturbation to me. This freedom to see the world, a freedom I could not dream of, tormented me. Because it had been impossible, my desire to go abroad had always remained firmly imprisoned in my subconscious. There had been odd scholarships to the West at some other universities in the past, but, of course, the candidates had all been chosen by the authorities, and Party membership was a prerequisite.

I had no chance, being neither a Party member nor trusted by my department, even if a scholarship were to fall from heaven onto my university. But now it began to bud somewhere in my mind that since exams were back, and China was shedding its Maoist straitjacket, I might have a chance.

Hardly had I begun to dream this than I forced myself to kill the idea, I was so afraid of the inevitable disappointment.

When I came back from my trip, I heard that my department had been given a scholarship for a young or middleaged teacher to go to the West. And they had decided on someone else.

It was Professor Lo who told me the devastafng news.

She was in her early seventies and walked unsteadily with a stick, but was nonetheless perky and almost impetuously quick in every other way. She spoke English rapidly, as if she was impatient to get out all the things she knew. She had lived in the United States for about thirty years. Her father had been a Kuomintang high court judge, and had wanted to give her a Western upbringing. In America she had taken the name Lucy, and had fallen in love with an American student called Luke. They planned to get married, but when they told Luke's mother, she said, "Lucy, I like you very much. But what would your children look like? It would be very difficult… '