Gao Xingjian - One Man

During the Cultural Revolution, people were "rebelling," whereas before that people were "making revolution." However, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, people avoided talking about rebelling, or simply forgot that part of history. Everyone has become a victim of that great catastrophe known as the Cultural Revolution and has forgotten that before disaster fell upon their own heads, they, too, were to some extent the assailants. The history of the Cultural Revolution is thus being continually revised. It is best that you do not try to write a history, but only to look back upon your own experiences.

At the time, he was impulsive and stupid, and the bitterness of having been duped was like swallowing rat poison. If it had been swallowed, then vomiting should have been able to get rid of it. In theory, it was simple, but repeated vomiting still couldn't completely get rid of it.

Righteous indignation and political gambles, tragedy and farce, heroes and clowns, were created through people being manipulated. Blah! Blah! The high-sounding righteous words, discussion, and vilification, all proclaimed the words of the Party. People lost their own voices, became puppets, and could not escape the big hand behind, which controlled them.

Now, when you hear impassioned speeches, you secretly smile. Slogans calling for revolution and rebellion give you goose bumps, and as soon as heroes or fighters appear, you quickly step aside. All that fervor and righteous indignation should be fed to dogs. You should have fled that arena for baiting animals to tear at one another long ago. It is not for you. Your domain lies only between paper and Pen, writing not as a tool in the hands of others, but simply to speak to yourself.

You strive to collect memories. The reason he went crazy at that time was probably because the illusions he believed in had been shattered, and the imaginary world of books had become taboo. Also, he was young, had nowhere to dissipate his energy, and couldn't find a woman for his body and soul. Sexually frustrated, he simply stirred the water in mud puddles.

The Utopia of the new society, like the new people, was a rewriting of a legend. Now, when you hear people lamenting the destruction of their ideals, you think to yourself that it was a good thing they were destroyed. And whenever you hear anyone loudly proclaiming ideals, you think it is some quack peddling dog-skin bandages again. If someone prattles on and tries to convert you, or preaches to you, you quickly say sure, sure, see you some other time, and, with luck, slip away.

You no longer engage in polemics and prefer to go off to have a beer. Life is irrational; so, must a rationale be formulated for human existence before people can be people? No, you simply narrate, use language to reconstruct the he of that time. From this time and this place you return to that time and that place, using your state of mind at this time and this place to tell of him at that time and that place. Probably this is the significance of this investigation of yours.

He originally had no enemies, so why was it necessary to find them? It is only now that you realize that if there still are enemies, they are dead-and-buried shadows left in your heart by Old Man Mao. And you simply have to walk away from them. There is no need to tilt at shadows, to fritter away the little life that you still have.

Now you are without "isms." A person without "isms" is more like a person. An insect or a plant is without "isms." You, too, have a life and will no longer be manipulated by any "isms," and you prefer to be an onlooker living on the fringes of society. Unavoidably, there will be perspectives, views and tendencies, but, finally, no particular "isms." This is the difference between the you of the present and the he that you are investigating.

The first battle between Red Guards broke out in the main courtyard of the workplace. In the middle of the day, when people were coming out of the building to go to the dining room, a Red Guard from outside came and put up a poster on the courtyard wall. He was stopped by a security guard. Some Red Guards from the work-place came and tore down the poster.

The cocky youth with glasses was surrounded on all sides, but he loudly protested, "Why can't I put it up? Putting up posters has been authorized by Chairman Mao!"

"That's Liu Ping's son trying to overturn the verdict on his father, don't let him get up to mischief!"

A security guard motioned to the gathering crowd and said, "Don't crowd around here, go off and eat!"

"My father's innocent! Comrades!" Shoving aside the guard, the youth held his head high to address the crowd. "Your Party committee has changed the general direction of the struggle away from Chairman Mao's revolutionary line, don't let them hoodwink you! If they aren't up to something underhanded, why are they scared of posters?"

Danian squeezed his way out of the crowd of silent onlookers and said to some Red Guards of the workplace, "Don't let this stinker pose as a Red Guard, take off his armband!"

Holding high his arm with the armband and protecting the arm-band with his other hand, the youth went on to shout, "Comrade Red Guards! Your general direction is wrong! Boot out the Party committee and make revolution, don't be accomplices of the capitalists! All of you comrades who want to make revolution, go look inside the university campuses, they are proletarian rebel territories. You are still under the White Terror out here-"

The youth was pushed back against the wall. He turned to the crowd of onlookers for help but no one dared to come to his rescue.

"Who is your comrade? You turtle grandson of the fuckin' landlord class, how dare you pose as a Red Guard? Take it off!" Danian ordered.

A scuffle broke out for the armband. The youth was strong but could not fend off several people tackling him. First his glasses flew to the ground and were instantly trampled, then his armband was pulled off. This self-assured, confident successor to the revolution was now propped against the wall, cowering, his arms protecting his head. Then, falling on his haunches, he began to wail uncontrollably and was instantly transformed into a miserable pup.

Old Liu was also dragged out, tottering and stumbling, from the building and denounced in the courtyard. But he was an old revolutionary who had experienced a lot in life and did not buckle like his son. Holding his head high, he tried to speak, but, immediately, Red Guards pushed his head to the ground so that his face was covered in dirt and he could do nothing but keep his head down.

Squashed in the crowd, he witnessed in silence what had happened, and in his heart he chose to rebel. He slipped out during worktime and went around the university campuses in the western part of the city. At Peking University, which was thronging with people, among the posters covering the buildings and walls, he saw one by Mao Zedong: "Bombard Their Headquarters-My Poster." When he got back to his workplace office, he was still fired up. Late that night, when nobody was around, he wrote a poster. He did not wait for people to come in for work to collect signatures. He was afraid that by morning, when he was more clear-headed, he might not have the courage. So he had to put up the poster in the middle of the night, while he was still fired up. The masses had to heroically speak out to overturn the verdicts on people branded as anti- Party.

In the empty corridor of the building, some old posters rustled in a draught; this sense of loneliness was probably necessary to support heroic action. The impulse for justice sprang from a sense of tragedy, and he had been thrust into the gambling den, although at the time it was hard to say whether he wanted to gamble. In any case, he thought he had seen an opening and there was something of gambling with life in being a hero.