Chaos
In 1966, shortly after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, there was a salesman at the Beit Taipingzhuang vegetable market with a very good service attitude, and everyone was willing to line up to buy vegetables from him. Suddenly, one day, he had a white cloth sewn on his chest, on which was neatly written: “Small Business Owner”. At that time will not know what is called “small business owners”. I found out that it was a small business selling vegetables. It is not enough to say that he is a capitalist, that is, he has a bad background and is one of the objects of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The rebels began to invent. One is “flying”, after the General Administration, held by the General Administration, the General Administration to participate in the General Administration “Yan Wang Hall” of the General Assembly to criticize. Xiao Hua of the General Administration and other “Yama”, each person was escorted to the stage by two soldiers in the shape of a jet to criticize the morning. The cruelest thing was to let Xiao Hua’s two daughters watch Xiao Hua’s criticism, who was in our queue.
My uncle was a college student who graduated in 1950 and was assigned to the Changsha Zhengyuan Power Plant, a factory that built locomotives, as an engineer. He made an invention, which was the world’s leading level at that time. “At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, they were called intellectuals who were lower than the prostitutes “old eight” and “stinky old nine”. In the Spring Festival of 1967, they were arrested by the rebels in the street and put in the cowshed. The charge was “reactionary technical authority who follows the capitalist road”. After the end of the movement, the CPPCC in Changsha gave him a member. I asked him: Do you still invent and create? He said he could not. Because the movement delayed his life event, he died at the age of 86, all alone.
He was not only criticized, but also paraded in the streets. Probably the Red Guards of the Iron and Steel Institute used a Jiefang truck and two Red Guards to escort him with a sign that said “Peng Dehuai, an anti-Party activist” and paraded him around Beijing’s North Third Ring Road. I was playing in front of the Beitaipingzhuang compound and saw it.
The Red Guards are getting more and more fucked up, it’s not just a criticism, but a direct killing of people, claiming to break out of the campus to start a revolution. The Red Guards from the Second Affiliated School of Teachers’ University went to the home of the Vice Principal of the Party School of the Ministry of Railways in the morning and killed her directly. She was an old Red Army member, an eighth-grade cadre. In the afternoon went to raid her house. One of them is also from my institution, is the brother of my hair child in kindergarten. A few of us went to see the scene of the raid after dinner, and his brother was burning the raid. We even said hello to him. At that time, his eyes were red and he could not hear. Later, perhaps as retribution, he died in 1970 from a stroke of crohn’s disease.
After dinner in the summer of 1967, I saw a few children of about ten years old chasing and beating an old woman with small feet on the road in front of our compound. One of the children said that she was a landlady and was killed for nothing. But the people passing by, none of the response.
The funniest thing is to shave the yin and yang head. I saw a female compatriot, walking on the road with a little unnatural expression. The hair on the left side of her head was shaved. There was hair on the right side of her head, but it also looked like a dog had been shaved a few pushes, a mess.
My father was also one of those who were beaten up. The rebels in the unit made the capitalists stand on the stage and declare their origins, those with good origins stood and those with bad origins knelt. At first, they did the same thing, but then my father declared his origin: poor peasant. One of the rebels kicked him from behind and said, “Even the poor peasants have to kneel. Then a rebel leader took a pot of ink and a brush and scribbled on the faces of the capitalists one by one. All smeared once, found a problem, the capitalist’s eyes are still white. And again, the capitalist’s eyes were also blackened.
My mother, an elementary school teacher, went to the “May 7 Cadre School” run by the Beijing Education Bureau in Shunyi County, Beijing. This is not bad. Before she left, my mother taught me how to make a fire and cook so that my three brothers would not starve. There are two things I remember very clearly. One was when I rode my bike to see my mother at the May 7 Cadre School. It was said that the May 7 cadre school was so powerful that it could transform people. I went to the school to visit my mother and to see how people were rehabilitated.
One more thing, although I was 14 years old at that time, I learned to cook because of the Cultural Revolution, but I was still playful. Once in the afternoon, I put rice on the fire, and went out to play. After playing for a long time, I remembered to go home. When I pushed the door, there was smoke in several houses. My third brother was still in the house, enduring the smoke attack. I thought, “I don’t know how to put the pot down even though it’s so thick, so I couldn’t help but hit him a few times. He was only seven years old at the time.
I remember a few songs, one is “Rebel Song”, the lyrics are to the effect that: loyal to the revolution and loyal to the party, the party is my own parents, who dares to say that the party is not good, immediately told him to see the King of Hell. If you dare to say anything bad about the Party, you’ll tell him to go to hell. Just revolt and get the hell out!
There is also a song, it is said that when the teachers of the Second Affiliated School of Teachers’ University were locked up in the cowshed, the Red Guards asked the music teacher to compose a “thank-you song”: I am a cow, a ghost, a snake, a god, I am guilty, I am guilty, the people are dictating to me, I have to honestly bow my head and confess my sins! The words “bow my head and confess my sins” should be sung in high notes, in quarters of a beat.
There is also a children’s song: I found a penny on the side of the road, handed it to the old man selling popsicles, the old man took the money and gave me three popsicles, I said happily, the old man looking for money!
The school year started in September 1968, directly from the sixth grade to the second grade of junior high school. Quite pleased, no exams. The class teacher, Mr. He, asked us to not take classes, but not to not participate in the “morning request”. According to the teacher’s request, I promised Chairman Mao that I did not miss a single “morning request” during my school years. I showed my infinite loyalty to Chairman Mao. What was even more touching was that the first English class was requested by the teacher. I took my first English class at the request of my teacher. The first lesson was very simple, teaching us to say in English the Chinese words of Long Live Chairman Mao that we wanted to say in our hearts. The whole class was full of “Wolf Raiffe’s front door bubble”. Because I did not go through many years of education, I could not write the English for Long Live Chairman Mao. I remember that my classmates read “Wolf Raiffe” as “Wolf is coming” for the sake of remembering.
What I remember most is the chant of “Morning Invitation”. First of all, the teacher led the chant, and each time the teacher held the Red Book in his hand and recited: First of all, let us wish our great teacher, great leader, great commander-in-chief, great helmsman, the Red Sun of our hearts, Chairman Mao – then all the students also raised their right hands, respectfully and reverently waved the Red Book and shouted Wishing Chairman Mao a long and unbroken life! Then the teacher led the chant to wish Chairman Mao’s close comrade, our Vice Commander Lin. Finally, we roared together: Good health, good health forever!
On another occasion, when the Great Leader’s instruction on “spitting out the old and bringing in the new” was published, the students came to school on their own initiative and the teacher organized us to march to Tiananmen Square. On the way, we were very excited to celebrate the publication of the latest instructions. We felt the song, “Ten million red hearts are beating fiercely, ten million smiling faces welcome the red sun. O, also forgot, it would be night without the red sun. That will symbolize the sun, saying that the sun is about to set in the west can not be, are counter-revolutionary.
Hou Baolin was fought, is heard. The rebels seized Hou Baolin, giving him a high hat, he pulled out a retractable paper hat from his own pocket, force a fling, became old high, than the rebels hat to some high. The rebels told him to kneel down and confess his sins. He slumped to the ground and said, “I get down to show a better attitude.
Suspension of classes
The deeper impression is that the Beijing Exhibition Hall held an exhibition of the results of “breaking the Four Olds”. The antique gold bars copied are too many to count. I also heard that a female Red Guard, although she was only 15 or 16 years old, had a particularly high class consciousness. A capitalist old man was strangled to death face to face with a wire.
Our compound’s neighborhood committee “break the four old” work is more detailed. Because there are no antiques in the courtyard, those small-footed old ladies also have bold words, they said no antiques, but also to revolution; no “four old” but also flowers, birds, fish and insects bourgeois things. One day the neighborhood committee called a meeting with the old ladies to set the task of “breaking the four olds”, and my grandmother also went. The people in the neighborhood committee were basically born in the Qing Dynasty, and could read a few words to become the director. According to the current literacy level is the second or third grade level of elementary school. My grandmother could read novels, and she was considered an intellectual among the old ladies with small feet.
My grandmother returned from a morning meeting and conveyed to the three of us the contents of the meeting, the basic spirit is that the revolution should start with ourselves, not to leave a dead end for the “four olds”, to thoroughly “break the four olds”. The flowers, birds and fishes that were kept at home should all be smashed up. My grandmother, my second brother and I, each smashed a few pots of flowers, and in a short time, my father put a few pots of flowers on the drying table to all smashed. At that time, there was a feeling of a complete break with the bourgeoisie.
Dad came home and saw the empty drying table and said helplessly, “Who did this flower piss off? We were laughing, the proletariat had won in my house. At that time, I don’t know why there was so much hatred for flowers and plants, as if there were no flowers and plants, the proletariat would be completely victorious. If there were no flowers and trees on the earth, how would humans survive? That’s how anti-humanity comes about, right?
In 1966, the Chinese government was studying for its secondary school exams. Suddenly the movement came, destroying everything that was “feudalistic”. At first, I didn’t know what “feudal capitalism” was, but later I slowly understood that all the people and things I didn’t like were “feudal capitalism”.
During our intense revision period, we received instructions from our superiors that classes would be suspended and the revolution would not be held. We cheered at that time, the great leader is really good, thought of our hearts. For many years, the school circulated a saying: test, test, the teacher’s magic weapon; points, points students’ life root. This is good, no more exams, the teacher’s magic weapon is gone.
I remember that after the revolutionary suspension of classes, our school was ready for the holidays. The first day of the holiday our sixth grade boys and girls had a martial arts fight. At night, the boys stood on one side and the girls on the other, throwing stones at each other. A stone hit one of my classmates in the eye, causing him to cry in pain. The next day before vacation, parents were called to the school for a parent-teacher conference. This may be the first martial arts fight in the country.
No more exams for what? There were also arrangements. The school bought white paper and ink for writing large-character posters. Students were asked to put up large-character posters for the school. We felt curious and excited. The curiosity was that for many years the students had been bared by the teachers. Now what teacher dignity, all to roll calf.
At that time, I admired my classmate Yang Hongtao. He said that the school had been implementing a revisionist line for more than 20 years and that the lid had to be lifted. He also said that the Beijing Municipal Committee: Deng Tuo, Wu Han, Liao Mosha, the three of them are a family ….. At the beginning of the Beijing Municipal Committee, three bourgeois elements emerged. Later, the bad guys kept appearing, getting bigger and bigger officials, and came out with “Peng Luo Lu Yang” and “61 people traitor group”. Until the discovery of a traitor traitor Liu Shaoqi. Chairman Mao also said to be wary of revisionist elements, that will feel that Chairman Mao is too dangerous, the bad guys are around. Only later did I know that was a descriptive statement, really sweat.
Wanshousi
Our school is called Wanshou Temple Experimental Primary School, the children of the military commission elementary school, aunt Kang Keqing chose the site. It was a temple during the Ming and Qing dynasties and a prison during the Republic of China. There are imperial plaques of several emperors of the Qing Dynasty and an imperial tablet inscribed by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. Once you enter the door in front of the temple is carried by two wangpai. We call it the King’s Bastard carrying a stone monument. There are two more such monuments. But each of them has a pavilion to live in, which we call Wangba Tingzi. These two pavilions were built in front of two temples. The front Wangba pavilion has been locked, I was locked in kindergarten, until after the sixth grade has been locked, and do not know what is written inside.
Manbul building is the main landscape of the temple, there are two floors. At that time, the two-story building is not the concept of today, there are about 20 meters high. There is a stone platform, the center of the above is the Buddha, next to what is the Buddha, can not be named. Why is it called the Ten Thousand Buddha Building? In the back of the Buddha there is a foot-high small grid dense, each grid inside a Buddha, but also colored plastic clay. The front face of the Buddha, the school used reed foil smeared with lime as a fence. It served as the school’s two classrooms and the teacher’s office.
In 1960, I was in the first grade, and I didn’t go to the school movie. A small Buddha was made. At that time, I did not know the value of cultural relics, and only saw it as a gumbo. Get some water and play with the clay. I thought it was fun to make little people. People from the Buddhist Committee even came once.
In the temple behind the first Wangba Pavilion, there were several painted figures made of gumbo, with green faces and fangs. I only remember one god holding a pair of steel whips in his hand, none of which can be named, probably guarding the Ten Thousand Buddha Building at the back.
Because of the Manbul building on the stage put a lot of scriptures and other books, a few students naughty, the reed foil hollowed a hole into it, take out a lot of scriptures, and finally thrown everywhere. I also picked up a land deed, a hardcover, like a matchbox pulling. That will not know is a cultural relic, lost, to put now is also worth two money. The Buddhist committee took away the scriptures.
When the Cultural Revolution came, it took the life of the clay Bodhisattva. It was not our students, but Red Guards from other schools who came to break the Four Olds. I guess they came to break the Four Olds with wooden sticks, so the stone monument could not be smashed, and the imperial monument of Qianlong was preserved. But all the painted clay Bodhisattvas were smashed to pieces. Two or three hundred years of cultural relics were lost. At that time, I thought, “Good job! Otherwise, it would have been scary.
“Several years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Wanshou Temple was designated as a cultural relics protection unit in Beijing. Due to the Red Guards’ “breaking of the Four Olds”, all the clay Bodhisattvas were not there. Those clay Bodhisattvas could not be restored, so they had to be replaced by something else. When we first entered the gate, there seemed to be two generals, but now they are also gone. When you go inside, the clay Bodhisattva in the temple after the first Wangba Pavilion (in fact, the turtle is the dragon’s son) is gone, and a bell was invited from Dazhong Temple to fill the empty house.
Manbulu was originally the main place of the temple, because all the clay Bodhisattva was smashed, so for decades never open to the public. It may also be the main reason why it cannot become a national cultural relics protection conservation unit. In the back building, there is a pagoda forest, there are more than a dozen hosts buried there after they died, and each host a pagoda. There are also a dozen cypress trees about 200 years old. There are also a few birds on the trees that I can’t name. The feathers are black, the tail is scissor-shaped, larger than the swallow. Some people say it is a robin. Once the “Four Olds” came, the pagoda forest, cypress trees and robin birds were all gone.
The east side of Wanshou Temple is now blocked with a wall. At that time, there was a courtyard, which was quite big. Because of the begonia trees, we called it Begonia Courtyard. There were dormitories for two classes of boys and girls, a teacher’s dormitory for our grade, and a washroom. There were also several rows of meditation rooms where young monks lived. Many residents came in during the Cultural Revolution and became permanent residents.
A few years ago, Wanshou Temple tried to take it back, and after several years of trying, it was finally abandoned. They keep saying that the house is an ancestral one. Wanshou Temple also has a plaque, six imperial plaques of the emperor, and originally wanted to make a restaurant in the empty room on the east side of the temple, with two large quadrangles. Use the imperial plaque to solicit guests, please a piece of the imperial plaque 1 million, and then because of these years against wastefulness will stop.
At the end of 1966, some students in our school formed the Red Guard. In order to strengthen their courage, they used a brush to write “Rebellion is justified” on a slab of stone in a house on the east side of the rockery. Nearly fifty years of wind and rain have passed, but it is still clear. The park organized several times to clean the staff, but it did not work. Now still “rebellion is justified”? People who don’t know also think it was written by a monk.
Red Guards
“During the Cultural Revolution, rebel groups were formed. In my school, there were two grades and more than 200 students and teachers. The teachers set up an organization called “Dongfang Hong”; the students’ organization was called “Red Guard Corps”. One day, when the teachers’ organization “Dongfang Hong” met, I shouted out the window: Down with “Dongfang Hong”! After the meeting, the physical education teacher questioned what I had just shouted? After the meeting, the gym teacher questioned me about what I had just shouted, and I thought, no, “Down with “Dongfang Hong” is a reactionary slogan. In those days, you had to be careful what you said. If you don’t get it right, you’ll become a counter-revolutionary, be criticized and sentenced to jail, and never turn over a new leaf. I was so frightened that I never dared to shout “Down with the East” again. This time, I understood that there is this advantage to having a revolutionary name.
Once, Beijing 123 Middle School held a debate after dinner, and the tannoy was buzzing. My house was only one building away from 123, and the sound of the loudspeaker made it impossible for people to sleep. At that time, the Red Guards only cared about picking up pens as swords and guns and concentrated their firepower on fighting the gangs, not caring whether the people could rest or not. The Red Guards who had been debating with the foreign schools said they were carrying out the revolutionary line of Chairman Mao, while the other side was a royalist, carrying out the reactionary line of the bourgeoisie. Until dawn, the debate did not come to a conclusion.
Later, a female Red Guard from another school raised her arms and shouted slogans, but she made a mistake and probably wanted to shout: Down with Liu Shaoqi! Defend Chairman Mao! The slogan turned out to be wrong, and became: Defend Liu Shaoqi! Down with Chairman Mao! It became a veritable counter-revolutionary slogan. Immediately, the debate was changed to a criticism meeting. I heard the female Red Guards crying and sobbing to make a review. Who was carrying out Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line was revealed through a night of debate.
The fight against capitalists in our school was only conducted once. Later, people saw that such things were too absurd, so they did not fight again. In the summer of 1966, a few 12-year-old kids in the fifth grade organized a fight against the head teacher. The school principal, a military colonel, did not participate in the Cultural Revolution, so he was not criticized. It was only the head teacher who suffered. She stood respectfully on the stage for the whole morning of the criticism meeting. The saying at that time was: bow your head and confess your sins. Those kids didn’t know what capitalism and revisionism meant, so they asked the director to explain the crime of taking the capitalist road and how the school was turned into a hotbed of revisionism.
After the meeting a kid to the director, wiped out too much snot and said: director lend me 20 cents, I take the car home. This incident was told by my classmate who was the director’s son-in-law. The director looked at the children after all, let the teacher send these students home. After that, there was no more criticism meeting.
Others
I was seven years old in 1960, in the first grade, and I didn’t see any starvation in my eyes, but I had a lot of “leaf protein” in my stomach. I remember that Mr. Ma climbed up the white fruit tree in our school to beat the leaves, and our class was led by our class teacher, Ms. Qi Shujuan, to pick up the leaves, put them in sacks, and send them to the dining room, where they were made into black nests by our dining room uncle and sent to our table. The elegant and nice name of leaf protein was given. At first, it was bitter and astringent, hard to swallow, and few people ate it. Later, the catering uncle thought of a way to put some saccharin in it, before people eat, and do not eat hungry ah. At that time, there is no complaint, thought that school are eating leaf protein.
Now there is a saying that no one should suffer than a child. I was seven years old, so I should be considered a child, right? But I had never heard the saying that you can’t suffer a child. The actual practice was to share the pain and suffering. The bitter days of eating leaf protein ended at the end of the year. Thankfully, we survived and did not die of hunger! We did thank Chairman Mao in those days for keeping us alive. This is what people usually say, it is Chairman Mao gave us a second life, the first thing to thank is his old man, followed by parents.
At that time, a lot of people had their heads in the sand. My parents gave birth to me is the closest person, but some people do not think so, they think that father and mother is not as close as Chairman Mao. One of my comrades, his parents were killed alive by the rebels in front of him. He said to us, “If anyone says anything bad about the initiators of the Cultural Revolution, I won’t agree.
“The “lineage theory” contributed to the development of the Cultural Revolution. The brother of one of my classmates was a male fourth-grade student, one of the four most beautiful men in Beijing, and he joined the Xicheng picket, or “Western Picket” for short. He said that the power of the “Western Picket” is even greater than that of the Xicheng Public Security Bureau.
The “lineage theory” is not only between classes, but also within the “proletariat”. The sons and daughters of the revolutionary cadres (now called the Red Generation) and the sons and daughters of the workers were also in opposing camps. Beijingers still remember a worker’s son who lived in Xinjiekou, nicknamed Little Bastard. According to the sons of the revolutionary cadres, he was a hooligan, and a hooligan who deserved to die. They had a few fights and were injured but not killed. However, it was the Ge Ganzi who killed the little bastard. Because of the chaos of that time, I have not heard of anyone being sentenced. Probably it was not settled. I also heard that there was a “four-three faction”, a faction of cadres’ sons; and a “four-four faction”, a faction of workers’ sons. It is also a deadlock. Both wanted to prove that they were organizations that faithfully implemented Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line; the other was a royalist party.
Active participation in the “Cultural Revolution” and the elimination of capital and the promotion of nothing was the strong voice of those days. At that time, Chairman Mao called on us to carry out a big series of unions and let the red flag float all over the sky. This was a good idea, as the Great Cascade not only answered the call, but also had a good time. It cost nothing to get on the train, and there were local institutions in other places to receive.
My classmate Hu Xiangcheng got four tandem train tickets and gave me two. He let his neighbor Chen Zhenyang go, and I gave one to my brother. Before going each person made a Red Guard armband. Also engraved a chapter of the Red Guard Rebel Corps. I heard that the caucus must bring the Red Guard chapter, otherwise the local government does not receive.
We left at the end of December 1966, with Zhou Enlai’s instructions to stop the caucus being broadcast over the loudspeaker repeatedly. The journey to Guangzhou took five days and six nights. Because the caucus was to be stopped, people were trying their best to squeeze into the car. There were people on the luggage racks, under the chairs, and in the aisles. Later, when we arrived at Zhuzhou, the toilets were also crowded with people.
When we arrived in Guangzhou, we did three revolutionary actions first. First, I went to Zhongshan University to read the big-character posters. I don’t remember exactly what I was reading. The second was to go to Sanyuanli, to visit the site of the peasant anti-imperialist movement at that time. The third is to visit the tomb of the martyrs of Huanghuagang. Then it was play, play nearly a month. Accommodation is not money, carriage fee is not money. A day of food costs 30 cents. I brought 20 yuan “huge money”, a month of time simply can not be spent. I was always chewing sugar cane, purple-skinned sugar cane 5 cents a catty, green-skinned sugar cane 3 cents a catty. I accidentally found a kiosk selling Chen Pi Plum. Later, I called Chen Zhen Yang as Chen Pi Mei. When buying Chen Pi Plum, I said buy Chen Zhen Yang.
In the early 1970s, the third battalion of our regiment went to the construction of Beijing Bayi firing range, and Vice President Wang Hongwen often went to Bayi firing range to shoot targets. Once he received Deputy Battalion Commander Duan, who led the 3rd Battalion, and shook hands with him. Duan deputy battalion commander thought it was tainted with immortality, did not wash his hands for a week, and shook hands with whoever he saw, saying it was for everyone to share. At that time, it was not considered foolish. Consider it an honor. After Wang Hongwen was arrested, I don’t know if the skin of the handshake was scraped off.
During the “Cultural Revolution” decade, universities did not enroll students, only workers, peasants and soldiers. My group went to the university in Baoding is comrade Yu Long, he will be the fourth grade culture. Algebra, trigonometric functions, etc. may have heard, but did not learn. Only after enrolling in cramming, probably with half a year of cramming time, will not be so much right. The main thing is to have a good father. His father was originally the head of my regiment, and then went to the division as deputy chief of staff. Yu Long’s entrance exam also scored some points, better than “Mr. White Paper” Zhang Tiesheng. After graduation, Yu Long returned to the regiment and soon wrote a letter to the regiment’s party committee to implement the intellectuals’ policy, the central meaning of which was to give him a salary increase from administrative grade 23 to grade 22 or even higher.
During the campaign against the right-leaning reversal wind, a leading comrade behaved very actively. He seized a poem that he considered counter-revolutionary and criticized it at the staff meeting of his unit. He said that the counter-revolution was very arrogant, saying that “the wildfire cannot be burned out and the spring breeze blows again”, which is obviously a counter-revolutionary attempt to revive. He also asked, “Who wrote this? His secretary said: Bai Juyi. He said, bring him here. The secretary took a look and felt that he was talking more and more unlike the words, and immediately gestured for him to stop. Because there is no very clear gesture, made a pause action of playing basketball. Our comrade leader misunderstood and said: playing basketball to go? That also has to get him back.
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