Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

When I came home that afternoon, I found my father in the kitchen. He had lit a fire in the big cement sink, and was hurling his books into the flames.

This was the first time in my life I had seen him weeping.

It was agonized, broken, and wild, the weeping of a man who was not used to shedding tears. Every now and then, in fits of violent sobs, he stamped his feet on the floor and banged his head against the wall.

I was so frightened that for some time I did not dare to do anything to comfort him. Eventually I put my arms around him and held him from the back, but I did not know what to say. He did not utter a word either. My father had spent every spare penny on his books. They were his life. After the bonfire, I could tell that something had happened to his mind.

He had to go to many denunciation meetings. Mrs. Shau and her group usually got a large number of Rebels from outside to increase the size of the crowd and to lend a hand in the violence. A standard opening was to chant: "Ten thousand years, another ten thousand years, and yet another ten thousand years to our Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Commander, and Great Helmsman Chairman Mao!" Each time the three 'ten thousand's and four 'great's were shouted out, everyone raised their Litfie Red Books in unison. My father would not do this. He said that the 'ten thousand years' was how emperors used to be addressed, and it was unfitting for Chairman Mao, a Communist. This brought down a torrent of hysterical yells and slaps.

At one meeting, all the targets were ordered to kneel and kowtow to a huge portrait of Mao at the back of the platform. While the others did as they were told, my father refused. He said that kneeling and kowtowing were undignified feudal practices which the Communists were committed to eliminating. The Rebels screamed, kicked his knees, and struck him on the head, but he still struggled to stand upright.

"I will not kneel! I will not kowtowl' he said furiously. The enraged crowd demanded, "Bow your head and admit your crimes!" He replied, "I have committed no crime. I will not bend my head!"

Several large young men jumped on him to try to force him down, but as soon as they let go he stood up straight, raised his head, and stared defiantly at the audience. His assailants yanked his hair and pulled his neck. My father struggled fiercely. As the hysterical crowd screamed that he was 'anti-Culttu'al Revolution," he shouted angrily, "What kind of Cultural Revolution is this? There is nothing "cultural" about it! There is only brutality!"

The men who were beating him howled, "The Cultural Revolution is led by Chairman Mao! How dare you oppose it?" My father raised his voice higher: "I do oppose it, even if it is led by Chairman Mao!"

There was total silence.

"Opposing Chairman Mao' was a crime punishable by death. Many people had died simply because they had been accused of it, without any evidence.

The Rebels were stunned to see that my father did not seem to be afraid. After they recovered from their initial shock, they began to beat him again, calling on him to withdraw his blasphemous words. He refused. Enraged, they tied him up and dragged him to the local police, demanding that they arrest him. But the policemen there would not take him. They liked law and order and Party officials, and hated the Rebels. They said they needed permission to arrest an official as senior as my father, and no one had given such an order.

My father was to be beaten up repeatedly. But he stuck to his guns. He was the only person in the compound to behave like this, indeed the only one I knew of at all, and many people, including Rebels, secretly admired him.

Every now and then a complete stranger passing us in the street would murmur stealthily how my father had impressed them. Some boys told my brothers they wanted to have bones as strong as my father's.

After their day's torment, both my parents would come home to my grandmother's nursing hand. By then, she had set aside her resentment of my father, and he had also mellowed toward her. She applied ointment to his wounds, stuck on special poultices to reduce his bruising, and got him to drink potions made with a white powder called bai-yao to help cure his internal injuries.

My parents were under permanent orders to stay at home and wait to be summoned to the next meeting. Going into hiding was out of the question. The whole of China was like a prison. Every house, every street was watched by the people themselves. In this vast land, there was nowhere anyone could hide.

My parents could not go out for relaxation either.

"Relaxation' had become an obsolete concept: books, paintings, musical instruments, sports, cards, chess, teahouses, bars all had disappeared. The parks were desolate, vandalized wastelands in which the flowers and the grass had been uprooted and the tame birds and goldfish killed. Films, plays, and concerts had all been banned: Mme Mao had cleared the stages and the screens for the eight 'revolutionary operas' which she had had a hand in producing, and which were all anyone was allowed to put on. In the provinces, people did not dare to perform even these. One director had been condemned because the makeup he had put on the torn red hero of one of the operas was considered by Mme Mao to be excessive. He was thrown into prison for 'exaggerating the hardship in the revolutionary struggle." We hardly even thought of going out for a walk.

The atmosphere outside was terrifying, with the violent street-corner denunciation meetings and all the sinister wall posters and slogans; people were walking around like zombies, with harsh or cowed expressions on their faces.

What was more, my parents' bruised faces marked them as condemned, and if they went out they ran the risk of being abused.

As an indication of the terror of the day, no one dared to burn or throw away any newspapers. Every front page carried Mao's portrait, and every few lines featured Mao's quotations. These papers had to be treasured and it would bring disaster if anyone saw you disposing of them. Keeping them was also a problem: mice might gnaw into Mao's portrait, or the papers might simply rot either of these would be interpreted as a crime against Mao. Indeed, the first large-scale factional fighting in Chengdu was triggered by some Red Guards accidentally sitting on old newspapers which had Mao's face on them. A schoolfriend of my mother's was hounded to suicide because she wrote "Heartily love Chairman Mao' on a wall poster with one brush stroke inadvertently shorter, making the character 'heartily' look like the one meaning 'sadly."

One day in February 1967, in the depths of this overwhelming terror, my parents had a long conversation which I only came to know about years later. My mother was sitting on the edge of their bed, and my father was in a wicker chair opposite. He told her that he now knew what the Cultural Revolution was really about, and the realization had shattered his whole world. He could see clearly that it had nothing to do with democratization, or with giving ordinary people more say. It was a bloody purge to increase Mao's personal power.

My father talked slowly and deliberately, choosing his words carefully.

"But Chairman Mao has always been so magnanimous," my mother said.

"He even spared Pu Yi.

Why can't he tolerate his comrades-in-arms who fought for a new China with him? How can he be so harsh on them?"

My father said quietly, but intensely, "What was Pu Yi?

He was a war criminal, with no support from the people.

He couldn't do anything. But…" He fell into a meaningful silence. My mother understood him: Mao would not tolerate any possible challenge. Then she asked, "But why all of us, who after all only carry out orders? And why incriminate all these innocent people? And so much destruction and suffering?"