Jung Chang - Wild Swans - Three Daughters of China

My father replied, "Maybe Chairman Mao feels he could not achieve his goal without turning the whole place upside down. He has always been thorough and he has never been fainthearted about casualties."

After a charged pause, my father went on: "This cannot be a revolution in any sense of the term. To secure personal power at such cost to the country and the people has to be wrong. In fact, I think it is criminal."

My mother scented disaster. After reasoning like this, her husband had to act. As she expected, he said, "I am going to write a letter to Chairman Mao."

My mother dropped her head into her hands.

"What's the use?" she burst out.

"How could you possibly imagine Chairman Mao would listen to you? Why do you want to destroy yourself- and for nothing? Don't count on me to take it to Peking this time!"

My father leaned over and kissed her.

"I wasn't thinking about your delivering it. I'm going to post it." Then he lifted her head and looked into her eyes. In a tone of despair he said, 'what else can I do? what alternatives do I have? I must speak up. It might help. And I must do it even if just for my conscience."

"Why is your conscience so important?" my mother said.

"More than your children? Do you want them to become "blacks"?"

There was a long pause. Then my father said hesitantly, "I suppose you must divorce me and bring up the children your way." Silence fell between them again, making her think that perhaps he had not made up his mind about writing the letter, because he was aware of its consequences. It would surely be catastrophic.

Days passed. In late February, an airplane flew low over Chengdu spreading thousands of sparkling sheets which floated down out of the leaden sky. On them was printed a copy of a letter dated 17 February and signed by the Central Military Committee, the top body of senior army men. The letter told the Rebels to desist from their violent actions. Although it did not condemn the Cultural Revolution directly, it was obviously trying to halt it. A colleague showed the leaflet to my mother. My parents had a surge of hope. Perhaps China 's old and much-respected marshals were going to intervene. There was a big demonstration through the streets of central Chengdu in support of the marshals' call.

The leaflets were the result of upheavals behind closed doors in Peking. In late January Mao had for the first time called on the army to support the Rebels. Most of the top military leaders except Defense Minister Lin Biao were furious. On 14 and 16 February, they held two long meetings with political leaders. Mao himself stayed away, as did Lin Biao, his deputy. Zhou Enlai presided. The marshals joined forces with Politburo members who had not yet been purged. These marshals had been the commanders of the Communist army, veterans of the Long March, and heroes of the revolution. They condemned the Cultural Revolution for persecuting innocent people and destabilizing the country. One of the vice-premiers, Tan Zhenlin, burst out in a fury, "I've followed Chairman Mao all my life. Now I'm not following him anymore!" Immediately after these meetings the marshals began to take steps to try to stop the violence. Because it was particularly bad in Sichuan, they issued the letter of 17 February especially for the province.

Zhou Enlai declined to throw his weight behind the majority, and stuck with Mao. The personality cult had endowed Mao with demonic power. Retribution against the opposition was swift. Mao stage-managed mob attacks on the dissident Politburo members and military commanders, who were subjected to house raids and brutal denunciation meetings. When Mao gave the word to punish the marshals, the army did not make a move to support them.

This single feeble attempt to stand up to Mao and his Cultural Revolution was termed the "February Adverse Current." The regime released a selective account of it to generate more intense violence against the capitalistroaders.

The February meetings were a turning point for Mao.

He saw that virtually everyone opposed his policies. This led to the total discarding in all but name of the Party.

The Politburo was effectively replaced by the Cultural Revolution Authority. Lin Biao soon began to purge commanders loyal to the marshals, and the role of the Central Military Committee was taken over by his personal office, which he controlled through his wife. Mao's cabal now was like a medieval court, structured around wives, cousins, and fawning courtiers. Mao sent delegates to the provinces to organize "Revolutionary Committees," which were to be the new instruments of his personal power, replacing the Party system all the way down to the grass roots.

In Sichuan, Mao's delegates turned out to be my parents' old acquaintances, the Tings. After my family had left Yibin, the Tings had practically taken control of the region. Mr. Ting had become its Party secretary; Mrs. Ting was Party chief of the city of Yibin, the capital.

The Tings had used their positions to engage in endless persecutions and personal vendettas. One involved a man who had been Mrs. Ting's bodyguard in the early 1950s.

She had tried to seduce him several times, and one day she complained about having stomach trouble and got the young man to massage her abdomen. Then she guided his hand down to her private parts. The bodyguard immediately pulled his hand back and walked away. Mrs. Ting accused him of trying to rape her and had him sentenced to three years in a labor camp.

An anonymous letter exposing the whole affair reached the Sichuan Party Committee, which ordered an investigation. Being the defendants, the Tings were not supposed to see this letter, but a crony of theirs showed it to them.

They got every member of the Yibin government to write a report on some issue or other in order to check their handwriting. They were never able to identify the author, but the investigation came to nothing.

In Yibin, officials and ordinary people alike were terrified of the Tings. The recurrent political campaigns and the quota system provided ideal opportunities for them to engage in victimization.

In 1959 the Tings got rid of the governor of Yibin, the man who had succeeded my father in 1953. He was a veteran of the Long March, and was very popular, which made the Tings'envious. He was called "Straw Sandal Li' because he always wore peasant's sandals a sign that he wanted to keep close to his roots in the soil. Indeed, during the Great Leap Forward, he showed little alacrity in forcing the peasants to produce steel, and in 1959 he spoke up about the famine. The Tings denounced him as a 'rightist opportunist' and had him demoted to purchasing agent for the canteen of a brewery. He died in the famine, although his job should have meant he had a better opportunity to fill his stomach than most. The autopsy showed there was only straw in his stomach. He had remained an honest man to his death.

Another case, also in 1959, involved a doctor whom the Tings condemned as a class enemy because he made a truthful diagnosis of hunger victims and the famine was officially unmentionable.

There were scores of cases like these so many that people risked their lives to write to the provincial authorities to denounce the Tings. In 1962, when the moderates had the upper hand in the central government, they launched a nationwide investigation into the previous campaigns and rehabilitated many of the victims. A team was formed by the Sichuan government to investigate the Tings, who were found guilty of gross abuse of power.

They were sacked and detained, and in 1965 General Secretary Deng Xiaoping signed an order expelling them from the Party.

When the Cultural Revolution started, the Tings somehow escaped and got to Peking, where they appealed to the Cultural Revolution Authority. They presented themselves as heroes upholding 'class struggle," for which, they claimed, they had been persecuted by the old Party authorities. My mother actually bumped into them once at the grievance office. They asked her warmly for her address in Peking. She declined to give it to them.