Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

My grandmother hugged my four-year-old brother Xiao-fang and wept. I said I wanted to go with my mother to the station. There was no lime to wait for a bus, so we jumped into a tricycle taxi.

I was fearfid and confused. My mother did not explain what was happening. She looked strained and preoccupied, deep in her thoughts. When I asked her what was going on, she said briefly that I would know in time, and left it at that. I assumed she thought it was too complicated to explain, and I was used to being told I was too young to know certain things. I could also tell that my mother was busy sizing up the situation and planning her next moves, and I did not want to distract her. What I did not know was that she was battling to comprehend the confused situation herself.

We sat in the tricycle taxi silent and tense, my hand in hers. My mother kept glancing over her shoulder: she knew the authorities would not want her to get to Peking, and had only let me come with her so I could be a witness in case anything happened. At the station she bought a 'hard-seat' ticket for the next train to Peking. It was not due until dawn, so we sat down on a bench in the waiting room, a kind of shed with no walls.

I huddled up against her to wait for the long hours to pass. Silently, we gazed at the darkness descending over the cement ground of the square in front of the station. A few feeble bare bulbs on top of wooden lampposts were shedding a pale light, reflected in the puddles of water left over from a heavy thunderstorm that morning. I felt chilly in my summer blouse. My mother wrapped her raincoat around me. As the night dragged on, she told me to go to sleep. Exhausted, I dozed off with my head on her lap.

I was awakened by a movement of her knees. I lifted my head and saw two people in hooded raincoats standing in front of us. They were arguing about something in low voices. In my muddled state, I could not work out what they were saying. I could not even tell whether they were men or women. I vaguely heard my mother say, in a calm, restrained voice, "I will shout for the Red Guards." The gray-hooded raincoats fell silent. They whispered to each other and then walked away, obviously not wanting to attract attention.

At dawn, my mother got on the train to Peking.

Years later she told me that the two people were women she knew, junior officials from my father's depasiment.

They told her the authorities had ruled that her going to Peking was an 'anti-Party' act. She quoted the Party charter, which said that it was the right of any Party member to appeal to the leaders. When the emissaries indicated that they had men wailing in a car who could seize her by force, my mother said that if they did she would shout for help from the Red Guards around the station and tell them they were trying to stop her going to Peking to see Chairman Mao. I asked her how she could be sure the Red Guards would help her rather than the pursuers.

"Suppose they denounced you to the Red Guards as a class enemy who was trying to escape?" Mother smiled and said, "I calculated that they would not take the risk. I was prepared to gamble everything. I had no alternative."

In Peking my mother took my father's letter to a 'grievance office." Chinese rulers throughout history, having never permitted an independent legal system, had set up offices where ordinary people could lodge grievances against their bosses, and the Communists inherited this tradition. When during the Cultural Revolution it began to look as though Communist bosses were losing their power, many people who had been persecuted by them in the past flooded into Peking to appeal. But the Cultural Revolution Authority soon made it clear that 'class enemies' were not allowed to complain, even against 'capitalist-roaders." If they tried to do so they would be doubly punished.

Few cases concerning senior officials like my father were presented to the grievance office, so my mother received special attention. She was also one of the very few spouses of victims who had the courage to go and appeal in Peking, as they were under pressure to 'draw a line' between themselves and those accused rather than invite trouble by speaking up for the victims. My mother was received almost immediately by Vice-Premier Tao Zhu, who was the head of the Central Department of Public Affairs and one of the leaders of the Cultural Revolution at the time.

She gave him my father's letter, and pleaded with him to order the Sichuan authorities to release my father.

A couple of weeks later, Tao Zhu saw her again. He gave her a letter which said my father had acted in a perfectly constitutional manner and in concert with the Sichuan party leadership, and should be released at once. Tao had not investigated the case. He took my mother's word, because what had happened to my father was a common occurrence: Party officials all over China were choosing scapegoats in their panic to save their own skins. Tao gave her the letter directly rather than sending it through normal Party channels, knowing they were in disarray.

Tao Zhu showed he understood and agreed with the other concerns in my father's letter: the epidemic of scape goating and the widespread random violence. My mother could see he wanted to control the situation. As it happened, because of this, he himself was soon to be condemned as 'the third biggest capitalist-roader," after Lin Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

Meanwhile, my mother hand-copied Tao Zhu's letter, mailed the copy to my grandmother and asked her to show it to my father's deparunent and to tell them that she would return only after they released my father. My mother was worried that if she returned to Sichuan the authorities there might arrest her, seize the letter and not release my father. She felt that, on balance, her best bet was to stay in Peking, where she could continue to exercise pressure.

My grandmother passed on my mother's hand-copied text of Tao Zhu's letter. But the provincial authorities said the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and that they were just protecting my father. They insisted that my mother must come back and stop her individualistic meddling.

Officials came to our apartment several times to try to persuade my grandmother to go to Peking and bring my mother back. One said to her, "I'm really thinking of your daughter. Why persist in misunderstanding the Party? The Party was only trying to protect your son-in-law. Your daughter would not listen to the Party and went to Peking.

I'm worried for her that if she does not come back, she will be regarded as anti-Party. And you know how serious that is. Being her mother, you must do what is best for her. The Party has promised that as long as she comes back and makes a self-criticism, she will be forgiven."

The thought that her daughter was in trouble brought my grandmother to the verge of collapse. After several such sessions, she was wavering. Then one day her mind was made up for her: she was told that my father was having a nervous breakdown, and only when my mother came home would they send him to a hospital.

The Party gave my grandmother two tickets, one for herself and one for Xiao-fang, and they set off to Peking, thirty-six hours away by train. As soon as my mother heard the news, she sent a telegram to tell my father's department she was on her way, and started making arrangements to return home. She arrived back with my grandmother and Xiao-fang in the second week of October.

During her absence, the whole of September, I had stayed at home to keep my grandmother company. I could see that she was consumed by worry, but I did not know what was going on. Where was my father? Was he under arrest, or was he being protected? Was my family in trouble or not? I did not know no one said anything.

I could stay at home because the Red Guards never exercised the rigorous control the Party did. Besides, I had a sort of 'patron' in the Red Guards, Geng, my gauche fifteen-year-old boss, who had made no effort to summon me back to the school. But at the end of September he telephoned to urge me to get back before I October, National Day, or I would never be able to join the Red Guards.