I hesitated for a long time before I started writing this article. I was haunted by a question: What have I done for the university?
In the spring of 1981, when I was an undergraduate student at Peking University, I published a short essay titled “Lake Wei Ming, Listen to Me”, writing about the lakeside scenery and the scourge of the Cultural Revolution that had just passed, as well as my own fears, thoughts and self-exhortation when I was given some freedom of choice. This essay has been broadcast on the radio with music and has also been selected for inclusion in an anthology of modern essays. I have received many letters from readers, and their sincere and frank words have given me warm encouragement.
This time, when former alumni invited me to write about Lake Unmei, I was afraid I would repeat old words and could not start writing until I finished writing “63 Sufferers and the Cultural Revolution at Peking University”. Over the years, I have interviewed thousands of people who experienced the Cultural Revolution and also collected written materials from that time. In the 500,000-word book “The Victims of the Cultural Revolution,” which I completed the year before, 659 victims were recorded from all over the country, arranged in alphabetical order by name, and this one was focused on one school at Peking University.
I never saw the Cultural Revolution at Peking University with my own eyes. However, I was admitted to Peking University after the Cultural Revolution, so I was familiar with the location of the victims’ deaths – most of them were killed on the campus of Peking University, that is, the place of the massacre, which was around Lake Wiming. As I typed one square word after another on my computer keyboard, the places of death to which the words referred would come to life in concrete images.
In 1968, Gong Weitai, a lecturer in the Russian Department, was imprisoned in the first classroom building. He slept on the floor. On November 7, he was subjected to a “struggle” in the department, in which, in addition to “sitting on a jet plane,” i.e., having his arms twisted behind his back with his head bent down like a plane, the students who twisted his arms kicked him in the shoulder. That night, Gong Weitai committed suicide by cutting his artery with a face scraper. The next morning the guards scolded him for not getting up and lifted the covers to see blood flowing all over the floor. A female colleague in the department passed by the door that day and saw that the floor was wet and had just been wiped with a mop, and later realized that the water used to wipe away Gong Weitai’s blood.
When I was a university student in Beijing, I often attended classes in this building, which is referred to as the “First Education” building. When I sat in the window seat, I saw swallows hovering happily outside the window, and I wrote an essay entitled “Chirping”. But I had no idea that human blood had been shed on the floor beneath my feet. I can’t see any written records about it. The Cultural Revolution has just passed three or four years ago, leaving behind a water-washed oblivion.
North of the west gate of Peking University, there is a small quiet lake in the northwest corner of the campus. This small lake is one of the group of lakes in Peking University, but no name, it seems to be the real “unnamed” lake. Located in the “Haidian” (this “sea” is not the sea of the “sea” as it is called today), there are several small lakes on the Peking University campus, and Lake Unmei is the largest of them. There is a large tree on the shore of that small lake with a horizontal branch reaching out to the lake.
In September 1966, when the Red Guards were given free tickets and food and lodging to go around the country in a “revolutionary spree”, Yang Ming’ai hanged herself on the branch. The small lake, the big tree and the branch are still there today, but no one knows Yang Ming Ai’s name anymore.
On the evening of August 27, 1966, the Red Guards of Peking University High School raided his home and took him and his wife Liu Wancai with them to the school grounds of Peking University High School. They beat Chen Yanrong and Liu Wancai with copper headbands, wooden rods and iron bars. At one o’clock in the second half of the night, Chen Yanrong was beaten to death and Liu Wancai was also beaten and bruised. Together with Chen Yanrong, an elderly woman, whose name is still unknown, was also killed.
After the Cultural Revolution, it was standard practice to pay the family 240 yuan for the “rehabilitated” case. Chen Yanrong had six minor children, so Peking University gave his family 2,500 yuan. When his wife got the money, she said, “I’ve never seen so much money in my life.” Then she cried out, “What do I need money for? I want people.”
Where are the people? They were living, breathing people walking, running, and working around Lake Wei Ming. At the lake, they were subjected to “struggle”, beatings, imprisonment, all kinds of humiliation, and psychological destruction and torture. 63 people were killed, accounting for 0.5% of the total population of Peking University at that time. Today, the water of Lake Wei Ming is still the same, but it will never reproduce the figures of the sufferers who were once projected in it.
In 1998, a two-volume history of Peking University was prepared for the centennial celebration. I noticed that only the names of the full professors who were persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution were printed in the book, not even the associate professors, not to mention the young faculty members and the ordinary staff and cooks. (The history of Beijing Agricultural University contains the names of 30 victims of the Cultural Revolution, including students who were assistant professors. The longer history of Tsinghua University, however, does not even include the names of full professors.) I asked the editor of Peking University Press about this. The editor laughed bitterly and said that just like that, people still came to the office to pester me to remove the Cultural Revolution section from the existing university history.
Contrasting with this arrogance was the silence of the victims.
In 1999, one of my classmates told me that Mr. Yu Weichao of the History Department was teaching “Archaeology of the Qin and Han Dynasties” in a large classroom, and many students were listening to the lecture, and they all saw that he was missing his fingers. “He was the director of the Chinese History Museum at that time. He was then director of the Chinese History Museum, and I immediately wrote to him at the museum, hoping to learn more about his Cultural Revolution experience.
I never received a reply from him, nor did I receive a letter that was returned by the post office.
Five people in the history department of Peking University “committed suicide” during the Cultural Revolution. I use quotation marks because I don’t think they were “suicides” as they are usually called, but rather they were murdered by the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Yu Weichao was subjected to “struggle” at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in June 1966 and committed suicide twice. The first time he was electrocuted and his index fingers were burned. The second time he was lying on the track and the locomotive shoveled him off the track. He survived and became one of the top executives in Chinese history after the Cultural Revolution.
I certainly would not have lectured him on the importance of history writing, nor would I have told him that if the history of the Cultural Revolution was not written in the history department of Peking University, let alone elsewhere. His lost fingers apparently reminded him of his Cultural Revolution experience every day as well. But even he is secretive about the history of the Cultural Revolution. What is the reason for this? I really wanted to ask him about it, rather than guessing it myself. But I have not been able to find his phone number, and I am unlikely to find it again – he passed away in 2004.
The lake of Peking University is named Unnamed. The name of the lake literally means never named, but this “unnamed” becomes the name of the lake. From the point of view of naming, this is not a chic way. But the unconfronted recent history of Peking University cannot be treated in this way, and cannot always remain unconfronted.
A world history book says about the ancient Asian civilizations that India is a religious country and China is a historical country. This statement is probably too brief. However, ancient Chinese civilization did leave behind many history books. Indeed, in the Chinese tradition, in addition to recording what happened, history writing also took on tasks that may not have been performed by other civilizations, one of the most prominent aspects of which was the articulation of moral principles and benchmarks of right and wrong.
Because of this, history writing is also more positive and constructive. I think that the writing of the history of the Cultural Revolution may be particularly relevant to contemporary people in this regard. This work is about confronting history and recording the truth, as well as about the moral self-help of society.
In the 1990s, the beautiful Sackler Archaeological Museum was built inside the west gate of Peking University. There I saw stone tools from ancient times, glistening behind glass and in soft light. But I also know that on May 16, 1968, on this residential site, opposite the “Democracy Building” and “Foreign Languages Building”, which are at right angles to each other, two more walls were built to form the “Prison Reform Compound The “Prison Reform Compound” was built to hold more than 200 “cattle and snakes” at Peking University.
Because those imprisoned were not considered human, this campus prison was commonly known as the “cowshed”, and every unit in the country was established. This large “cowshed” existed for ten months and contained prison rules and various penalties. Xu Xiliang, a professor of English, was born and raised in the United States as an overseas Chinese and did not speak Mandarin fluently. One day he failed to recite the quotations of Mao Zedong and was punished by kneeling with a board on his head and a bowl of water on top of it.
Zhu Guangqian, another professor of Spanish language history, was in “reform through labor” one day when a guard called him over and threw him a rope, saying: “Old man, are you tired of living? Hang yourself. Or, you can use scissors and knives.” Five people were also persecuted to death in the Hispanic Department during the Cultural Revolution.
Stone Age artifacts should be treasured, but the history of the Cultural Revolution, such as the “cowshed,” should also be documented, and the list of victims of the Cultural Revolution should be preserved permanently in a museum for all to see. In this era of unprecedented scientific and technological development, human life and dignity should also be given the highest status ever.
Today, the list of the three million people killed by Hitler has been put in the solemn museum and in the computer database on the Internet, and the one million three hundred and forty thousand names of those killed by Stalin have been engraved on computer discs and on a large number of small memorials scattered all over the world.
I don’t think dignified BYU people would agree that the names of the BYU victims are inferior and need not be commemorated, and can be washed away like water.
Recent Comments