The winter in Yanbei is very cold, and the weather became colder and colder after we entered the village. The chimney of the coal-burning stove leads into the hole in the bed. It is a technical work to seal the stove before going to bed, because sealing the stove can ensure that the bed is warm and the temperature is just right.
One day the kang collapsed, and the folks there told us that the material used to support the underfloor slab wasn’t real and couldn’t be burned. We went to the brigade, and the brigade cadres told us that the general members were not willing to do the work because it was almost New Year’s Eve, and that they had found several Category 4 members to help us re-do the underfloor work.
When we first arrived, we couldn’t tell which were the landlords and which were the rich farmers, but this time there were five or six of them. We watched them work with curiosity. These people looked no different from ordinary folks, dressed in rags and shabby clothes. The difference was that they worked quietly, rarely spoke to each other, finished their work in one morning, packed up their things and left quietly, and of course none of us said a word of thanks.
The four types of elements were landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries and bad elements, which were later expanded to include right-wing elements and became the five types of elements, known as the “Five Categories of Black Elements” during the Cultural Revolution. With the progress of the Revolution, new contents were added, such as traitors, spies, and capitalists. They were all the enemies of the people and the targets of the dictatorship. The “black five” category was no longer enough, so that the terms “black seven” and “black eight” were used. The poor countryside is already the lowest stratum of society, but here they are even the bottom of the bottom stratum, only economically exploited, politically discriminated against, and trampled on.
After staying for a long time, some people pointed out to us that this one was a landlord and that one was a counter-revolutionary. We intellectuals instinctively kept our distance from them, and usually would not take the initiative to talk to them. But every day we worked together, and the townspeople quacked together, and we could hear everything about these people.
“Counterrevolutionary” Zhang Deyi
In our production team, there was a man named Deyi Zhang, who was a historical counterrevolutionary, specifically a point master of Consistent Tao. When I was young, I saw the movie “Consistently Harmful Taoism”, and I knew that Consistently Harmful Taoism was an outlawed reactionary sect.
In the early 1950s, when the government was arresting key members of the Consistent Way, he heard the rumor and ran away. Those who were caught were all shot, but after a few years of hiding, he thought he was safe and was caught when he returned to his village. Fortunately, the worst of the crackdown was over, and he was sentenced to only seven years in prison, after which he returned to his village and became a controlled historical counterrevolutionary.
I looked at this skinny old man in front of me, leaning back against the wall (squatting) and talking slowly, completely devoid of the tumultuous emotions of climbing over the blade of life and death, as if he were telling someone else’s story, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad, “Yes, saving one’s life comes first, and everything else can be taken lightly. I really wanted to ask him about his time as a consistent Taoist preacher, but I still didn’t open my mouth.
“Jing Ri Yue, the “rightist
Jing Riyue was originally a public school teacher, but in 1957 he was beaten up as a rightist and repatriated to his hometown, and his family’s composition was that of a rich peasant. After we entered the village, we caught up with the movement to purge the class ranks, and every movement will rectify people, like Jing Riyue such double material goods of course became the object of rectification.
Commune cadre Deng Li came to our production team to preside over the meeting, and I was designated to take notes. I was assigned to take notes. Jing Riyue stood in the middle, and Deng Li asked everyone to expose and criticize Jing’s crimes, sometimes with a lull in the proceedings, and sometimes with activists speaking up. I was in a difficult position, because all of them were talking about the bad things that happened in the village and among the clans, and some of them could not even understand the basic logic, so I really did not know how to record them.
Deng Li kept correcting the direction of the meeting, asking Jing Riyue to explain the political and historical issues. The first time I saw him, I was in the middle of a conversation with him. I was stunned. Is there anything more nasty than this in the Chinese language? The state cadre, in the presence of many girls and young daughters-in-law in public, is so nasty, how can one behave!
Later on, Jing Riyue had another run-in with bad luck. On that day, the vice captain led a group of us to hoe corn in a field east of the highway, and a quarrel broke out between Jing Riyue’s three boys (nicknamed San Bai Pi) and the two tigers of Jing XX’s family. The two fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds got into a fight, wielding a hoe as their ready-made weapon. Erhu’s older brother and younger brother also came over to fight, and Jing Riyue also came over wielding a hoe.
Five men and five hoes were fighting in the field, but the father and son were unable to beat the three brothers, and San Bai Pi was knocked to the ground. People were stunned, and Erhu was also terrified, shivering and shaking, and said something to the vice captain. We quickly stopped a carriage on the road and took the three white skins to the commune health center not far away, where they received a few stitches, but fortunately no bones were broken.
Li Xiangfu, the resident village cadre of the commune, dealt with the matter and severely criticized Erhu’s family, who compensated some of the medical expenses. At that time, if the ingredients were not good enough for a lawsuit, even if the lawsuit was justified, the family would lose half of the money first. Li Xiangfu’s treatment won the hearts of the people, and some people said that Li Xiangfu and Jing Riyue used to be classmates. Later on, we learned that Li Xiangfu’s reputation was always the best among those cadres in the commune, and he was not like some cadres who used class struggle at every turn.
At the end of August 2018, our group of interns returned to the place where we had interrupted the team to look for our old friends. Jiu Shuo, a descendant of the village during our internment, was a good friend of our Zhiqing. I met Jing Riyue on the street. He was already 92 years old at this time, and I never thought he would still be able to call out my name upon meeting me. Now he has been “corrected” of the “rightist” problem, and he can get more than 3,000 yuan pension every month. 50 years ago, he actually remembered everything clearly, and when it comes to Deng Li, he was furious, he said that not long ago he met in the county town. Deng Li, Deng Li also greeted him. He said of course he couldn’t forget what happened at the meeting, and scolded the old man, who was also nearly 90 years old, in the street, so he could take revenge.
Yu Mei, the “traitor”, and Jiao Yong, the “rich farmer”.
There were two proud villagers in Guqianbao Village, one named Jing Cang and the other named Yu Mei, who both joined the revolution in the 1940s and are now in the army. The villagers said they both became big officials, but later they learned that Jing Cang was a regiment-level cadre and Yu Mei was only a battalion-level cadre, not really a big official.
Yu Mei was stationed in Qingdao, and during the movement to purge the ranks of the class, someone from the Qingdao army came to investigate Yu Mei’s history, saying that he had a history of mutiny.
Soon Yu Mei returned to the village, taking his family with him, and wearing a “traitor” hat. It is said that the army was lenient with him, expelling him from the Party and the army, while the others were treated as demobilized.
The dual identity of traitor and demobilized soldier made Yu Mei’s position in the village a bit awkward, and the village treated him quite well, only arranging some light work. In the autumn, he and Xu Quanying, an intellectual, were arranged to watch the fields together, and at that time, most of the male intellectuals were arranged to watch the fields.
When he was young, he used to sell twists. He said that he first boiled sugar into thin sugar, and then fried the twists with thin sugar and flour to make them crispy. He also said that the time bombs dropped by the U.S. in Vietnam automatically drilled down 3 meters when they hit the ground, and then drilled one meter horizontally. I was very impressed with all of this, and felt that he was really a very knowledgeable person, and that Quan-Ying and him were companions in watching the fields.
One afternoon at the end of the day, Yu Mei led Quan Ying to inspect the west end of the village and found two stalks of deflated corn in an old man’s basket covered with grass. The old man’s name was Jiao Yong, a rich farmer, and the commune cadres in the village, Song Moumou, immediately tensed the strings of class struggle and held a struggle meeting at the main team headquarters that night, hanging two sticks of corn around the old man’s neck and standing on a stool. When the old man was young, he froze his ten toes off outside the exit, and usually walked a little bit, very poorly.
He was not allowed to go home at night after the struggle, and two militiamen watched him. In the middle of the night, he said he needed to go to the toilet, and jumped into a well not far from the main office, only to be discovered the next day. It was a big deal to get killed, and later the county public security bureau said that the public security bureau did not have a record of Jiao Yong being a rich peasant. In fact, there is a difference between rich peasant elements and rich peasant members, and most people are not aware of it. The worst thing is that those who have the power do whatever they want and do not care about people’s lives.
I don’t know what Yu Mei thought of Jiao Yong’s death, but such a trivial matter could have been let go of a bit, as Yu Mei’s status was actually on the edge of “untouchability”, or perhaps she was anxious to show merit. I think Tian also caught a child herding sheep to cook and eat corn, and after catching him, the child was slapped twice by the village cadres, which I especially regret.
Later on, there was an incident that made Yu Mei a bit of a mess. A Zhiqing stole a military coat in Beijing and sold it to Yu Mei in the village. The Beijing police chased Yu Mei to Guqianbao village, found him, confiscated the coat, and reprimanded him.
At that time, military uniforms were a hot commodity, and society was full of “knock-off” uniforms, and people, especially young people, coveted an authentic military uniform. I wondered if Yu Mei, a demobilized soldier, had to buy uniforms from outsiders. Perhaps Yu Mei had his own problems and needed to strengthen his demobilized soldier status.
Fifty years later I returned to Fort Valley Front and learned that Yu Mei’s traitor problem had long since been rehabilitated, restored to Party membership, and paid back wages, but it was impossible for him to return to the army. He bought a house in the county town and lived there for the rest of his life.
No one has rehabilitated old man Jiao Yong, and I feel that his ghost is still floating over Fort Guqian.
Written in Beijing, October 2018
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