I. The “Liberal Faction” in the Cultural Revolution
“During the Cultural Revolution, people who neither joined the rebellion nor the conservative faction were known as “free agents”. In those days, the university neither attended classes nor admitted new students, so the “free school” had nothing to do, they could sleep every day, go Home to visit their Parents, or travel around the country in tandem, so they really lived a free Life.
This is the only university life in the history of China’s nearly 100 years of university Education, even in the years of the anti-Japanese war beacon, when some universities moved to Chongqing, Kunming, Lanzhou and other cities in the southwest and northwest, still continue to enroll and classes.
The free school started out as a tiny minority. As the “Cultural Revolution” campaign went on for years and years, the martial arts struggle became more and more intense, the storm of factional struggle became more and more fierce, the situation became more and more chaotic, many people gradually lost patience and confidence, and there were more and more escapists.
By the second half of 1968, the labor propaganda team and the military propaganda team entered the school, and the central newspaper published one after another articles emphasizing the leading role of the working class and the need for intellectuals to be honestly re-educated by the workers, peasants and soldiers. The workers’ propaganda team collected weapons and dismantled fortifications at the school, and the students surrendered even the bullets they kept as souvenirs. The days of the Red Guards were over, and the mass organizations disintegrated on their own. The students went back to their classes to participate in the “fight, criticism, and reform” (fight against those in power who followed the capitalist road, criticize the reactionary academic “authorities” of the bourgeoisie, criticize the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all exploiting classes, reform education, reform literature and art, reform (All superstructures that do not fit into the socialist economic base).
Gradually, people became disgusted and tired of the smoky “Cultural Revolution” movement, and began to think about what the “Cultural Revolution” meant to them. Most of the students went to the ranks of the protesters. Everyone wanted to end the abnormal “study” life as soon as possible and embark on the real journey of life.
I entered the ranks of the protesters in the second half of 1967, the year after the Cultural Revolution, when the “fighting group” I was a member of disintegrated. In the midst of the flames of the war, a few girls in my grade and I slipped out of school and took a propaganda bus organized by the masses of a factory and mine to the Daliang Mountains. Through Ebian, Ganluo, all the way to Zhaoge. On the way, the green hills, the peaks rise and fall, the clouds rise in the sun, the primeval forest makes us feast our eyes and hearts.
It was early autumn and the mountains were still a bit cold in the morning and evening. I remember two things most vividly: firstly, the Yi people sleep with a big rooster to keep warm at night; secondly, the wind in the mountains often blew numerous small stones into the air, creating a “rain of bullets” that still hurt.
Later on, the girls of our department also joined together and often went to Du Fu Cao Tang, Wangjiang Park, People’s Park and other scenic spots to play, rowing, and left a lot of valuable photographic photos. In the joyful Time spent, can temporarily forget the social struggle, as well as the overwhelming large-character posters and loud and noisy trombone.
Life in “32111” style
“During the Cultural Revolution, Sichuan’s petroleum sector produced a nationally renowned heroic collective called the “32111” drilling team. They were not afraid to sacrifice to put out the fire when the oil well suddenly erupted, the whole team of six people died heroically, 21 people honorably wounded, was awarded the title of “proletarian revolutionary heroism drilling team” by the Ministry of Petroleum Industry.
We jokingly referred to the boredom of life as the “32111” life: “3” is three meals a day; “2” sleeps twice a day (noon and night); “111” is once a day. “111” is a daily group political study, a physical exercise, and a long walk after dinner. I remember that after dinner groups of students strolled around the campus and then walked out the door to the Jinjiang River. The river was filled with groups of students. One boy was so strong that he threw a pebble across the 70- to 80-meter-wide river, and it flew across the road, bouncing up and hitting the board wall of the wooden house on the other side of the street, making a loud “bang” sound, which drew a lot of scolding from the residents on the other side.
There were also students who broke the grain in the school’s grain field and cooked it at night with homemade “water turtles” to eat.
A boy named Liao often played the erhu in the corridor of his dormitory. Sometimes when I passed by the boys’ dormitory, I would hear the beautiful sound of the erhu. There were songs such as “Two Springs Reflecting the Moon” and “Sickness Chant”, which reflected the mood of everyone at that time, such as complaints, songs and chants. The boy’s erhu got better and better, so people called him “Liao Erhu”.
In this kind of leisure life, everyone has grown fat.
In the face of the upcoming graduation assignment, will soon embark on the workplace, and professional knowledge has not learned much, we can not help but anxious. So began to catch up on the knowledge of radio. The class was specially organized to find books and engraved out for everyone to use. Almost everyone started to install radios. A few students and I met in a radio store in the suburbs of Sanwayo to buy diodes, transistors, resistors, capacitors, speakers and other components for the process. I also bought a plastic case, some students are their own three-layer board to do the radio case.
Radio installed, debugging technology does not work, and several of us girls went to the home of a radio teacher for advice. After repeated debugging, received a lot of program signals, some efforts were not in vain, we all experienced the joy of success. I installed the radio has never lost, later I became a teacher, but also use this radio as teaching aids, to explain to students about radio knowledge.
When I was bored, I started practicing my writing and copying classical poems, something I did not have time to do in the past, which made my writing skills improve greatly. After I became a Family man, my husband was extremely appreciative of my writing, and when we went out for meetings and filled out various forms, I signed and registered them. I consider myself an average Writer, but finally have a fan.
Some girls are so handy that they buy their own cloth, cut it out, and sew clothes by hand, so I also tried to learn the craft of tailoring. After working with a sewing machine, I was able to type various styles of clothes for my daughter and dress her up. This is also one of the little gains of that free life.
Three: “Dedication” activities
After the Labor Propaganda Team entered the school, it carried out the activity of “three loyalties and four infinite loyalties” and offered loyalty to the great leader Chairman Mao. Three loyalties are: loyalty to Chairman Mao, loyalty to Mao Zedong Thought, and loyalty to Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line of the proletariat. The four infinite is: infinite worship, infinite love, infinite faith and infinite loyalty to Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong Thought and Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line of the proletariat.
First of all, the school carries out the “morning request” and “evening report” ceremony. That is, every morning and evening, stand in line in front of the portrait of Chairman Mao, recite the quotations of Chairman Mao, and wish Chairman Mao a long and prosperous life. For this reason, each dormitory posted the portrait of Chairman Mao, “a piece of red”, on the door, above the portrait of Chairman Mao are to paste a large red “loyalty”. We also used red paper to cut the head of Chairman Mao and the head of Ma En-Leisi.
I still remember the “Evening Debriefing” was held in small groups, and our group gathered in one of the boys’ dormitories, holding the red book “Quotations from Chairman Mao” and waving it while chanting: “To the great leader Chairman Mao, longevity and prosperity! Longevity to all! To the health of Vice Chairman Lin! Forever healthy!” And then the recitation of a few paragraphs of Chairman Mao’s quotations together ended.
I heard that in some units in special counties, the toast to Vice Chairman Lin was followed by: To Premier Zhou with a red face! Red-faced! To Comrade Jiang Qing who will never get sick! Never get sick! It was fun for everyone to hear. At that time, we had begun to be a bit impious about the sacred political movement.
Stores also carried out “loyalty” activities. When you went to the street to buy something, the salesman had to recite a quote from Chairman Mao, and then you had to return a quote before the goods were sold to you. I heard that an old woman on the street to play a pound of soy sauce, the salesman recited a quotation to her: “to save the revolution.” The old lady did not know the reason, so she said, “Then I only buy half a pound.” Without explanation, the salesman continued to recite: “Be frugal and make a revolution.” The old lady said, “Then I’ll buy two taels.” The salesman still recited: “To save and make a revolution.” The old lady finally couldn’t help but get angry: “I’ll buy two taels, and I’m not saving?” This was a real joke circulating in Chengdu at that time.
Soon, we heard that the northeast region began to popular “jump loyalty dance”, the streets, men and women, young and old have to dance, and even in some train stations, passengers are not allowed to dance loyalty dance on board. We were surprised when the wind of “dancing with the word “soon spread to Chengdu and into the school. The girls in each class learned to dance first, and then taught the boys to dance. In my class, there were 5 girls, and 27 boys were taught to dance.
On December 26th, the 75th birthday of Chairman Mao, the whole school had a morning invitation in front of the statue of Chairman Mao, and then the “Zhongzhi Dance” was performed in different departments. Everyone gathered in the large playground, in neat formation, dancing with the song “beloved Chairman Mao, the red sun in our hearts”. Thousands of students danced beautifully to “dedicate their loyalty”, which was a spectacular sight.
Another part of the “dedication” event was the street parade to hail the release of Chairman Mao’s latest instructions (also known as the supreme instructions). These latest instructions were often broadcast by the Central Radio at 8:00 p.m., so the parade often took place at night as well. Amidst the cheers that rocked the night sky, the sound of gongs, drums and firecrackers, people carried the portrait of the Great Leader Mao and the quotation board of the latest instructions, waved the Red Book and held a powerful rally and march. In the sea of joy people shouted: “Great news from Beijing, the latest instructions shine in people’s hearts.”
The first few times, people were still full of enthusiasm, chanting slogans, singing songs of the Great Leader, and dancing the loyalty dance. The number of times more, we are a little “tired”, enthusiasm is also low. I remember a radio call to the streets to cheer the release of the “Supreme Directive”, few people responded. After repeated mobilization in the broadcast, there were still not many participants, so I had to show my cards in the broadcast: “Come and join the march, students! Newspaper reporters have been waiting outside the school for a long time, and the report of the march will be published in the newspaper tomorrow.” In order to take care of the school’s face, everyone finally came out of their dorm rooms for yet another cheering action.
IV. Feeling Love
At the end of 1968, Chairman Mao issued the latest instruction: “It is necessary for the intellectual youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor peasants. It is necessary to persuade city cadres and others to send their children who have graduated from junior high school, high school and college to the countryside for a mobilization.” Faced with the imminent graduation, our future assignment is to the countryside or to the border minority areas, the future is unpredictable. People began to think about their future work, their future, and where their other half was, and this time love came unexpectedly.
Girls have more boyfriends, a few are public, most are underground, only a few good friends know. There was also a fight between two boys for a girl in public due to the intervention of a third party. This incident became the talk of the town during the walk. One student commented: “love affair storm”, another student immediately picked up: “jealous sea wild waves”, actually became a wonderful pair, so we laughed more than.
I fell in love with Li Bingduo is a kind of fate. We are both from Chongqing and were admitted to the physics department of Sichuan University in the same class and in the same group, I was the math class representative and he was the physics class representative. “During the Cultural Revolution, we belonged to different mass organizations, so we seldom interacted and talked to each other.
In 1967, during the “5.19” Zhonghe field armed struggle, many students and I were taken prisoner by the opposing faction, and Bingduo participated in the rescue operation, but we were surrounded and almost died. After we got married, Bingduo told me that at that time he was so intent on saving me that he was always in the front. He also felt strange, why he only had my image in his mind, and did not think of other students. When I thought about it, I realized that I had quietly liked this girl, “existence determines consciousness” well. But there is a thief’s heart but not the courage, do not dare to openly show it, only the heart secret love.
The opportunity finally came, once I and Bing Duo, and a female classmate back to Chongqing together, on the train began to talk about the pendulum. The three of us went on a trip to the North Hot Springs together, and then went to stay overnight at Bingduo’s house in the Western Division, which was the first time I entered his home. A few days later, he actually used his rudimentary cycling skills, which he had only just learned, to ride his bicycle from Beibei and stumble more than 90 miles to Xuetianwan and find my house to visit me. We began to see each other.
We were both born in intellectual families, and my father had a good hand in calligraphy. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he went to help write a pair of words for the wedding of a retired soldier in his unit: “The military and the people are united as a family, and let’s see who can beat the world. He was said to have codified Chairman Mao’s quotation, “If the military and the people are united as one, see who can beat the world”. As a result, he was taken out and paraded through the streets and branded as a “bourgeois reactionary academic authority”, and has not been “liberated”. Bingduo’s father was also attacked during the “Cultural Revolution”. We could be said to have lived up to the old adage of “the right family”. At least we had a lot in common in terms of living habits, which saved us from the process of assimilation and transformation. Over the next few decades, I have come to realize the richness of this old adage.
To prevent detection, we always met at night, in the bushes by the school building, in the bamboo grove of Wangjiang Park, and in the classrooms of Wangjiang Elementary School. In short, where fewer people go, where the darkness to where to drill. As the poet Gu Cheng wrote: “The darkness gave me black eyes, but I used it to find the light.” On a date, he asked to shake my hand, and it was the first time we shook hands. I asked him what it felt like and he said, “It was a small, soft, warm hand.” I, on the other hand, felt that his hand was a wide, hard hand.
We talked about our families, our understanding of various phenomena during the Cultural Revolution, stories from the past and the present, poems and riddles. We searched for light in the “dark night” and the fun in life. In the negative and boring life, we looked for passion and motivation to continue our voyage.
When we were walking behind the science building at night, we were finally met by some boys in the same class and were exposed, and our “underground activities” became “public activities”. The two of us ended our “lurking period” and went out together in the middle of the day. For the first time, a boy invited me to dinner, and Byodo generously ordered several dishes, which we were unable to finish. But this time he was “taking advantage of a small loss,” and from then on I was “trapped” and cooked for him for decades.
In 1970, we went to work on a military farm, and soon afterwards, according to the principle of allocation of college students in Tsinghua University: “Far from the double, near the sick, not far from the bachelor”, we were assigned to work in Guizhou, ending our life of leisure. After leaving school, the first batch of workers, peasants and soldiers college students then stride into the university with their heads held high. An old era was over, and a new one began.
Interestingly enough: eight years later, Bingduo returned to Sichuan University for further study, when the college entrance examination admission system was restored, and he met the last class of peasant and worker college students on campus. It was the turn of the tide, and a new era began at the university.
December 2009 in Chongqing
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