Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

We were living in the old landlord's mansion where my father had his office; it had a big garden with Chinese pepper trees, banana groves, and lots of sweet-smelling flowers and subtropical plants, which were looked after by a gardener provided by the government. My father greys his own tomatoes and chiles. He enjoyed this work, but it was also one of his principles that a Communist official should perform physical labor, which had traditionally been looked down on by mandarins.

My father was very affectionate to me. When I began to crawl, he would lie on his stomach to be my 'mountains," and I would climb up and down him.

Soon after I was born my father was promoted to become the governor of the Yibin region, the number-two man in the area, below only the first secretary of the Party. (The Party and the government were formally distinct, but actually inseparable.)

When he had first returned to Yibin, his family and old friends all expected him to help them. In China it was assumed that anyone in a powerful position would look after their relatives. There was a well-known saying: "When a man gets power, even his chickens and dogs rise to heaven." But my father felt that nepotism and favoritism were the slippery slope to corruption, which was the root of all the evils of the old China. He also knew that the local people were watching him to see how the Communism would behave, and that what he did would influence how they regarded communism.

His strictness had already estranged him from his family.

One of his cousins had asked him for a recommendation for a job in the box office at a local cinema. My father told him to go through the official channels. Such behavior was unheard of, and after this no one ever asked him for a favor again. Then something else happened soon after he was appointed governor. One of his older brothers was a tea expert who worked in a tea marketing office. The economy was doing well in the early 1950s, production was expanding, and the local tea board wanted to promote him to manager. All promotions above a certain level had to be cleared by my father. When the recommendation landed on his desk, he vetoed it. His family was incensed, and so was my mother.

"It's not you who is promoting him, it's his management!" she exploded.

"You don't have to help him, but you don't have to block him either!" My father said that his brother was not capable enough and that he would not have been put forward for promotion if he had not been the governor's brother. There was a long tradition of anticipating the wishes of one's superiors, he pointed out.

The tea management board was indignant because my father's action implied that their recommendation had ulterior motives. My father ended up offending everyone, and his brother never spoke to him again.

But my father was unrepentant. He was fighting his own crusade against the old ways, and he insisted on treating everyone by the same criteria. But there was no objective standard for fairness, so he relied on his own instincts, bending over backward to be fair. He did not consult his colleagues, partly because he knew that none of them would ever tell him that a relative of his was undeserving.

His personal moral crusade reached its zenith in 1953 when a civil service ranking system was instituted. All officials and government employees were divided into twenty-six grades. The pay of the lowest grade, Grade 26, was one-twentieth of that of the highest grade. But the real difference lay in the subsidies and perks. The system determined almost everything: from whether one's coat was made of expensive wool or cheap cotton to the size of one's apariment and whether it had an indoor toilet or not.

The grading also determined every official's access to information. A very important part of the Chinese Communist system was that all information was not only very tightly controlled, but highly compatmentalized and rationed, not only to the general public who were told very little but also within the Party.

Although its eventual significance was not apparent, even at the time civil servants could feel that the grading system was going to be crucial to their lives, and they were all nervous about what grade they would get. My father, whose grade had already been set at 11 by higher authorities, was in charge of vetting the rankings proposed for everyone in the Yibin region. These included the husband of his youngest sister, who was his favorite. He demoted him two grades. My mother's department had recommended my mother to be Grade 15; he relegated her to Grade 17.

This grade system is not directly linked to a person's position in the civil service. Individuals could be promoted without necessarily being upgraded. In nearly four decades, my mother was upgraded only twice, in 1962 and 1982; each time she moved up only one grade, and by 1990 she was still Grade 15. With this ranking, in the 1980s, she was not entitled to buy a plane ticket or a 'soft seat' on a train: these can be bought only by officials of Grade 14 and above. So, thanks to my father's actions in 1953, almost forty years later she was one rung too low on the ladder to travel in comfort in her own country. She could not stay in a hotel room which had a private bath, as these were for Grade 13 and above. When she applied to change the electric meter in her apartment to one with a larger capacity, the management of the block told her that only officials of Grade 13 and above were entitled to a bigger meter.

The very acts which infuriated my father's family were deeply appreciated by the local population, and his reputation has endured to this day. One day in 1952 the headmaster of the Number One Middle School mentioned to my father that he was having difficulty finding accommodations for his teachers.

"In that case, take my family's house it's too big for only three people," my father said instantly, in spite of the fact that the three people were his mother, his sister Jun-ying, and a brother who was retarded, and that they all adored the beautiful house with its enchanted garden. The school was delighted; his family less so, although he found them a small house in the middle of town. His mother was not too pleased, but being a gracious and understanding woman, she said nothing.

Not every official was as incorruptible as my father.

Quite soon after taking power, the Communists found themselves facing a crisis. They had attracted the support of millions of people by promising clean government, but some officials began taking bribes or bestowing favors on their families and friends. Others threw extravagant banquets, which is a traditional Chinese indulgence, almost a disease, and a way of both entertaining and showing of fall at the expense, and in the name, of the state, at a time when the government was extremely short of funds; it was trying to reconstruct the shattered economy and also fight a major war in Korea, which was eating up about 50 percent of the budget.

Some officials started embezzling on a large scale. The regime was worried. It sensed that the goodwill which had swept it into power and the discipline and dedication which had ensured its success were eroding. In late 1951 it decided to launch a movement against corruption, waste, and bureaucracy. It was called the "Three Antis Campaign." The government executed some corrupt officials, imprisoned quite a number, and dismissed many others.

Even some veterans of the Communist army who had been involved in large-scale bribery or embezzlement were executed, to set an example. Henceforth, corruption was severely punished, and it became rare among officials for the next couple of decades.

My father was in charge of the campaign in his region.

There were no corrupt senior officials in his area, but he felt it was important to demonstrate that the Communists were keeping their promise to provide clean government.