It was early in 1967 when the military and labor propaganda teams, led by the People’s Liberation Army, moved into the elementary schools. My elementary school was a new school built a year before the Cultural Revolution, in the Haidian district near the city. A new red brick building with four floors. The courtyard walls were iron railings and a circle of poplar trees that I took the students to plant. There was a dirt road on one side, a dormitory for municipal workers on the other, a former Qing cemetery covered by a small pine forest in front, and crop fields behind. The school, which is only two years old, is staffed by high school graduates and junior college teacher-training students, with less than ten of the school’s forty-two employees over the age of thirty, including the principal, secretary, concierge and janitor. Basically, it’s a group of girls in their early twenties, and there are only seven men, including me.
There were three soldiers who came to our elementary school, of which the captain Liu was about the squad leader, a native of Leting County, Hebei Province, with a heavy accent, a look at the peasants who had just entered the city, quite tall, and most people in those days, thin, military style discipline button never tied. Worker propaganda team is transferred from the east of Beijing to the workers, there are eight people, the age of all in more than 30, to are honest. Workers actually have no power, everything must listen to the army. There was a company instructor or battalion political commissar to coordinate and manage about ten or so high schools and elementary schools. According to Mao Zedong’s instructions, classes were to be resumed, and the elementary schools started. The upper grades, which had been in full-day classes, had only half-day classes in the morning; the lower grades, which had been in half-day classes, had only two classes, either the first two or the last two, so that the school had no classes in the afternoon and the staff could concentrate on sports.
At that Time, the “resumption of classes and revolution” meant “cleaning up the class ranks”. At that time, ordinary Chinese people were divided into two categories, the people and the class enemy, similar to the commoners and slaves in ancient Rome. Each unit, under the leadership of the military propaganda team and the labor propaganda team, was looking for slaves to investigate class dissidents. According to Lao Liu, the military representative at the mobilization meeting, in our elementary school with only 42 employees, the class struggle was very fierce, and class dissidents were not only the rich, the poor, the bad and the right, but also class enemies of various names. He listed about a dozen of them in one breath. The most sensitive one for me was the so-called U.S.-Chiang secret agents. At that time, they were the agents commanded by Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, and it was said that they either lurked during the retreat of the Kuomintang or were developed by the lurking agents through various connections.
After the meeting, I was almost deflated and I knew it was inevitable. I understood that there was no one qualified enough to be a US-Chiang spy in this big bulletproof elementary school, except for my overseas connections. Although I could not speak at the time of the KMT retreat, my Parents were overseas and they had fled to Taiwan with the KMT and then to Africa. Every year or two my mother had a letter reporting her safety, forwarded to my aunt through a friend in Hong Kong. The letters from my mother made me want and fear to come. Every time I received one there was a hint of fantasy of longing to see my loved ones and a fear of great distress. I never dared to answer the letter, although I couldn’t let go, but always honestly reported to the organization and turned in the original letter from my mother. At that time, there was no such thing as a photocopy, and if you handed it in, it was gone. The letters that were copied were also burned at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
Even though I was so careful and honest, I still committed a crime. Overseas relations were the most terrible relations, because one could never tell, and even if one’s friends or relatives overseas visited Hong Kong, they might be considered to be in contact with KMT agents. At that time, Hong Kong was synonymous with the stronghold of the US-Chiang and Soviet secret services. Sure enough, one of my colleagues was soon approached by the military propaganda team to investigate whether I could speak English. It’s funny, I regret that I didn’t learn English in high school, but in those days I was truly glad that I learned useless Russian and not English. What was even more laughable was that after I left the country, I learned that my mother’s friend in Hong Kong was secretly helping the Communists. Their store was actually a stronghold of the Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong. This was, of course, an afterthought.
There is a whole procedure for cleaning up the class ranks. The first step was retreat, which was to study Mao’s quotations and articles on class struggle, speeches of the head of the Central Cultural Revolution and editorials of two newspapers and one journal (People’s Daily, PLA Daily and Red Flag Magazine). The second step is to learn with questions, that is, to study the relevant quotations and articles in a targeted manner. In fact, it is a side-step, back-to-back prosecution and denunciation. The third step is to enter the fight criticism, that is, to name and expose the class enemy.
The first step of the procedure is to make the staff realize the seriousness of the class struggle, to reach the mountain rain full of wind and killing atmosphere, causing everyone to be self-conscious, so that everyone in the meeting took the position to dig deeper into their past, take the initiative to explain; but also actively expose the class enemies around them, will not be tolerated.
In such an environment, few people dare to “cover up” for their colleagues and friends, because how do you know that you will not be included in such a large number of class dissidents? If your colleagues around you are named as class enemies, and you do not expose the material, lightly said that the lack of class struggle concept, heavy that you are a gang, it is easy to also be pulled out. The more close friends you are, the greater the threat to you, once the other side of the incident, you are not likely to say that the problem is not exposed. Of course, the other side of the fight must also focus on accounting and your dealings. So counter-revolutionary cliques are often formed in this way.
At that time, all of our colleagues broke off contact with each other, and if there were only two people in the teaching and research room, one of them would leave immediately. Often two people are all going to leave, the slower ones shake their heads and sit down again. The activists are not afraid to be careless, and there are many class enemies hiding deep within the revolutionary ranks. After they ate lunch, five or six of them gathered together to sing revolutionary songs. The one I remember most was a love song adaptation of “The Geese from the South Please Stay”, which was sung by Chairman Mao. I swallowed a sleeping pill before eating lunch, and then lay alone on the concrete floor of the sports room, listening to the song “The Geese from the South” sung by a group of female teachers in their early twenties at the other end of the hallway, feeling a bit bleak, perhaps because of my mood at the time.
I drifted off to sleep, not fearing that it would be too late for an afternoon meeting, because a male teacher would surely come and tap on the door to wake me up. He was the only active member of the seven male staff, and was specifically tasked with keeping an eye on me. The two-hour midday nap just made up for the lack of sleep I had in the dark. Without such a nap, I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to talk to, and even less to survive the daily afternoon finger-pointing.
Another way to preserve myself was to be critical of my own parents. The male teacher who was in charge of monitoring me called his rightist father out on more than one occasion at the retreat, using the most vicious words. This was another problem for me, without confessing that I couldn’t call him that hard, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to confess, it was just that I couldn’t expose it. I don’t remember anything at all when they left me, and after that there were only four or five letters checking in, I don’t remember anything about my parents, so what do I reveal? How could I analyze the “spiritual pollution” (then called bourgeois influence) they had on me? But I couldn’t write it, I couldn’t criticize it, and I couldn’t expose it, so what could I do? I really envied those who came from landlords and capitalists, they should have something to say.
For the military propaganda team, this was a time to observe the enemy, find activists and prepare materials.
For people with inherent deficiencies this is the most painful period. I knew that the finger was pointed at me, but I could not defend myself because no one accused me. If I asked the military representative to explain, I would be “here is no silver bullet”, and if I explained at the meeting, I would be “confronting the mass movement” according to the saying at that time, and I would be “jumping out of my own skin”. Besides, I had a lucky chance: “Maybe it wasn’t me? . Deep down, I really hoped that there was a Chiang Kai-shek agent in the school.
So I had to pretend to be innocent, to speak at the retreat together with everyone else about my experiences, to denounce the class enemies that might include myself. The more people suspect you of a crime, such as the “U.S.-Chiang agent”, the more you can’t avoid it, and you have to analyze the possible actions of the U.S.-Chiang agent in a righteous manner, and judge how to evade the investigation, in the name of analyzing the new trends of the class struggle. But after I finished my speech, I was worried that people would call me a “smoke screen”.
A month later, the campaign entered the second stage, the meeting is targeted, but not named. This is to give you the opportunity to confess. Besides, the military propaganda team first seized who, and then seized who is arranged, can not disrupt the “great strategic deployment of Chairman Mao”. This is like pointing at a monk and scolding a bald man, the monk can only silently recite Amitabha Buddha, never confess that “this bald is not his bald”.
After a few days, I suddenly had the urge to confess that I was an agent of the U.S. Chiang, but how did I answer the head? With whom did I contact? What information did I provide? What benefits did I receive? Where was the radio station? Did I have a gun? How do I know English? I didn’t know anything, so I played it cool and refused to explain. After a few more days, I suddenly began to regret that I was not an agent of the United States and Chiang. If I were really a Chiang Kai-shek agent, I would have been able to give an explanation. After two more days, I was glad that I was not a Chiang Kai-shek agent, because I saw a lot of “Chiang Kai-shek agents” and “Soviet agents” being uncovered, being beaten, having their homes raided, being transferred to the Public Security Bureau, being sentenced to imprisonment, and even death. They were so frightened that their legs were weak from walking. It was like the saying in the newspaper at that time: “I was in a state of fear”, and like ants on a hot pot. As the saying goes, “A thief’s heart is weak, but it turns out that not being a thief’s heart is even weaker.
I have to closely observe the movements of the activists who are favored by the military representatives. They usually came ten minutes late to the meeting, that is, they went to the military propaganda team and labor propaganda team office for a pre-meeting first. When we didn’t have activists to lead us, we studied Mao’s Selected Works in silence. My eyes were on Mao and the quotations, my heart was muttering, there was a feeling of great distress, perhaps similar to the mood of death row inmates awaiting execution. Later, whenever I saw the red quotations, I experienced this fear again, about the conditioned reflex of Pavlov. By the way, Pavlov was a Soviet.
There were eight of us in the third-year faculty. At the head of the group was Zhang Pingzhen, the secretary of the league branch appointed during the Four Clean-ups, who usually did not talk much but spoke fiercely; her father was a member of the PLA and was an active member of course. The most active activist was called LXX, a female teacher from the poor peasants. According to today’s aesthetic point of view, she did not have much femininity, short hair, walking heel first, a little wobbly. Her skin is very dark, her lips are thick, her voice is hoarse, but her voice is very loud.
Back then it was not easy for female teachers to get approval to get married, because the secretary was afraid of getting married and having children and taking maternity leave, and it was troublesome to find someone to cover the classes. But LXX was one of the few young people who got married before the Cultural Revolution. Her husband, also a teacher, was in another school and was very quiet and not very talkative. She joined the league during the Four Clean-ups and now aims to “join the Party on the fire line” in the campaign to clean up the class enemies, so she is the most prominent. She had the closest relationship with the military propaganda team, and we all had to guess her words to judge the “new trend of class struggle”.
The oldest teacher among us was Cheng Jun, who was 35 or 36 years old at the time (about 17 in 1949), but looked like he was in his 50s. The LXX did not treat Cheng Jun as a person at all, let alone as an elder. Not a day goes by that the daily reading does not take Cheng Jun to the knife, always glaring at him with both eyes, first to two paragraphs of the red book to criticize the landlord class of Chairman Mao’s quotes, and then vowed to declare: “Our elementary school is a leaky landlord, people are still alive, the heart does not die, we must not let them overturn the sky, so that we eat two times suffering, suffer two crops.” I stole a glance at old Chengjun, he actually nodded and smiled.
To be honest I hate these activists, they use the whole thing as a way to get ahead. If they are originally from the opposing faction, naturally there is still factionalism, more think they are revenge. If the original is a faction, they think they are speculating to protect themselves. Of course, I dare not say anything, but to follow their tune to carry out another day of great criticism. The days were like years!
Under the meeting is the military representatives and activists frequently talk to people to mobilize to expose. That day, I looked for my desk across the Music teacher Wang, she came back with a sense of honor and relief on her face. She knew to find her to expose others, indicating that the military propaganda team still trust her, indicating that at least for the time being she is not the object of purging. So we all looked forward to being approached by military representatives and activists every day, and the sooner people were approached, the less problems they had. I waited in agony, seeing that almost all of the faculty had been approached, but no one was always looking for me, and there was a sense of desperation in addition to anxiety.
The colleagues who used to be closest to me not only don’t talk to me in public and don’t greet me anymore, but also in private with a flicker of the eyebrows at most. They knew something was going to happen to me, so they had to pull away to avoid being accused of “tipping me off”.
But the activists were different, they took the initiative to greet me: “Teacher Pan is here?” I quickly said, “Hello!” I said, “How are you? The military representatives and members of the revolutionary committee even took the initiative to call me “comrade. I knew that the activists, the military representatives and the members of the Revolutionary Committee greeted me in order to stabilize me. In fact, there may be another psychological factor: those who dare to call me comrade are people who know the inside story, people who are trusted, and they are not afraid to “put the gourd under the plum tree”. This is a symbol of privilege, you can not compete for the whole honor.
My situation is even more difficult, not only do I have to continue to pretend to be safe, but also to write back to back with the revolutionary masses to report the material. But who do I report? I didn’t know the strategic deployment of the military propaganda team, and if I got the order of the criticism wrong, I would be interfering with the general direction of the class struggle, which was an additional crime. Besides, I still had illusions, expecting that it would not go to my head, and I wanted to make amends. I was under a lot of pressure, but there was no one else to consult.
The opportunity finally came.
That day, after two classes in the morning, we returned to the teaching room to study Mao Xuan. According to the instructions of the military propaganda team, we had to destroy the classroom’s broken quotations and Mao’s photos by burning them. Of course this was something that only activists were qualified to do.
LXX was the backbone of my opposing faction, and for two months I was being side-tracked by her almost every day, which I hated with a passion but could do nothing about. When she burned the quotations, she suddenly talked about how her parents were in tears of grief when Stalin died. Several other activists answered, recalling vague memories of Stalin’s death from their childhood. I knew the time had come for revenge, and the prosecution material was available. Talking about the death of another proletarian leader while destroying Chairman Mao’s quotations and pictures of him was tantamount to saying that Chairman Mao was dying, which could also be elevated to cursing Chairman Mao to die (this is called going to the top), which was a treacherous statement and a violation of heaven’s law. I knew that if I chatted like this, once it was revealed, I would be an active counter-revolutionary. If LXX was branded as a counterrevolutionary, the percentage of counterrevolutionaries among the 42 employees would be enough, and I would not necessarily be indiscriminately counted as a US-Chiang agent.
The next day, as usual, LXX went first to the preparatory meeting of activists. I waited for her return like a beast in ambush. She returned near the end of the day’s reading, and through her dark face, she could still see that her eyes were red and swollen, and she had obviously cried. Uncharacteristically, she did not say a word, frozen in front of the desk. Everyone froze, unable to imagine what had happened to her, an active member of the poor peasants. Only I understood that the pleasure of revenge had temporarily replaced the fear, but of course I remained silent.
The tone of the afternoon meeting changed, mainly to learn from Vice Chairman Lin Biao’s praise of Mao Zedong, and I was sure that my prosecution was in effect. Now it was time for LXX to experience the kind of insinuation that is more shocking than naming names. She was curled up in the corner of the conference room, her head hanging low, her face not only dark, but also completely lost its luster, and aged a dozen years. During the interval, LXX’s laughter could no longer be heard. The other activists were sad and depressed, and they lost their energy to make common cause. The teachers who had been kicked by them a few times did not dare to say much, but drew no flinch to exchange a look or slightly tug the corners of their mouths, making an effort to hide their inner pleasure. I really disrupted the strategic deployment of the military propaganda team, and my pressure seemed to be relieved. There was no aggressive offensive for a week. The military propaganda team was in a dilemma: they had no one to rely on if they pulled out the activists from the poor peasants in the elementary school, but it would be an organizational mistake for them to rely on such an “active counter-revolutionary”.
We didn’t finish our meetings until 9:00 or even 10:00 p.m. every day. The first time I went Home, I walked through the dark hallway, and I saw LXX xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx faintly in the darkness through the hidden classroom door. I then understood that my plot would not succeed.
As expected, after another week, the military propaganda team and the labor propaganda team held a meeting of the entire school staff, and the army’s political commissar Bai also came. The meeting was LXX review. The nature of the problem was no longer in doubt when the military representative Lao Liu led the entire staff to read the quotations. The quotations he chose from Chairman Mao were all about the internal contradictions of the people. But this play is not good. Lao Liu’s pitch was clearly at least an octave higher. He announced, “Comrade LXX will now fight against private criticism and revision.”
LXX, wearing the most fashionable clothes at that time: a military uniform without a collar and cap badge, hung her head low and walked up slowly with the check, first she bowed deeply three times to Mao’s photo on the meeting, turned her back to the staff, and then began to read the check softly. To be honest, this examination is not easy to write, because according to the rules at that time, all non-positive statements involving Mao must not be repeated, the reason is not to spread reactionary statements. So the censorship of speech crimes could not involve speech, but only empty slander of oneself. After reading a few sentences, as we expected, she began to weep bitterly, bowing repeatedly to the statue of Chairman Mao on the stage and apologizing to him. The censorship venue was uncharacteristically quiet, with no one leading the slogans.
We simply could not hear what she was saying, in fact, there is no need to know what she was checking, the play, everyone on stage and off stage have a set role, all have to tacitly cooperate, seriously act well, sing well. No matter who it is, the consequences of a bad performance are very serious. You know how many people are in a similar inspection after being declared as the current counter-revolutionary, by the revolutionary masses beaten up, criticism parade and then sent to the Public Security Bureau to prison. After the inspection, LXX bowed again and again to Mao’s photo and then bowed his head without saying anything. The LXX was not able to explain what the LXX had done wrong, he just deducted a bunch of empty hats, for example, “did not fight hard against the word private a flash”, “hit by Liu Shaoqi Black cultivation of the poison” and so on in today’s can be called nonsensical words. Old Liu spoke with a strong accent of Leting in Hebei, and after pulling up the tone, it seemed a little funny, so I remembered that every autumn when I was young, all the people who came to our house to shake briquettes were from Leting. Finally, Lao Liu pointed out that LXX came from the poor peasants, had deep class feelings for Chairman Mao, and had a profound review, so her mistake was still an internal conflict within the people. “Now we have to work deep into the contradictions between the enemy and us!” The atmosphere had changed again.
I was still in the robbery, but afterwards LXX was much more restrained and not considered an activist. Did she know I was the one who reported it? That year, I was 21 years old, and LXX was older than me, about 23 years old. According to my age today, looking back, we were still all children, but for the class struggle we all put each other to death.
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