“During the Cultural Revolution, it was an honor for young people to join the army, and an enviable way out. Fortunately, my younger brother joined the army one winter day from Hefei, on Chongming Island, far away from Shanghai.
Three months later, my brother wrote to say that he had passed the rigorous training of the recruiting company and had officially become a glorious soldier of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The younger brother also sent a standard military photo with a collar and cap badge, which made the whole family happy. My father even opened a bottle of good wine that he had kept for many years and celebrated happily.
On the night when he received the good news from his brother, a friend of my father’s came to the house in a hurry. He said that he had just accidentally seen his younger brother eating with two PLA officers in a small restaurant in the city center. The younger brother looked dejected and listless. Although he was wearing a new uniform, he did not have a collar or cap badge. He also noticed that the two officers were always around his younger brother during the meal. When his brother went to the bathroom, one of the officers followed him. This uncle, a university professor, came to our house often and knew about my brother’s military service, so he felt something was wrong and rushed to tell us.
Our family was still in a state of joy, but we were all shocked by the sudden news. What had happened to my brother? Or did you make a mistake? The whole family was restless and could not sleep at night.
The next morning, I rushed with my father to the Hefei People’s Armed Forces Department. After inquiring, I learned that my brother’s unit had received a letter from the public reporting that our family had relatives in Taiwan who did not conform to the policy of joining the army, so my brother had to be discharged from the army.
At a time when family origin and composition were highly valued, my siblings and I grew up filling out various political evaluation forms with pride and pride. My grandfather, a well-known anti-Japanese patriotic democrat in Anhui Province, died of illness and was buried in the Anhui Provincial Martyrs’ Cemetery. My father and mother were both volunteers in the army that fought against the United States and helped the North. Coming from such a “revolutionary family,” aren’t I qualified to be a soldier?
It turned out that all of my mother’s brothers had left for Taiwan on the eve of the liberation. For some unknown reason, my mother stayed on the mainland and joined the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), against the wishes of my two uncles. As a result, my mother never had any contact with my two uncles, and to this day, even their fate is unknown.
In those days of class struggle, my father and mother kept this “overseas relationship” a secret from us and our siblings, so that our children would not be affected, and we grew up thinking that my mother was an only child.
A person in charge of the Hefei People’s Armed Forces said to my father that they were fighting for us precisely because they were a “revolutionary family” like ours. Therefore, they didn’t ask the officer from Shanghai for my brother’s discharge.
My father and I stayed there, not knowing what to do for a while.
Suddenly, this kind-hearted person in charge of the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces gave my father an idea: before the local authorities had to go through with my brother’s discharge, I told my brother to run back to the army as soon as possible. He said that by doing so, he might be able to bring his brother back to life. When my father heard this, he hesitated at first, but after thinking about it for a while, he realized that there was no other way, and since I also thought it was feasible, he agreed to give it a try.
Time was running out, and there was no time to lose. My father and I rushed home, got some money and food stamps, and that morning we went with the city’s People’s Armed Forces officer to the hotel where the officer and his brother were staying. After the city’s People’s Armed Forces officer distracted the two officers, my father gave my brother some money and food stamps and told him to run back to the army. He told him not to leave from Hefei Railway Station, but to get on the train from a small railway station in the suburbs, go to Wuhu first, and then change trains to Shanghai to avoid being discovered.
When the two officers realized that my brother was missing, they panicked. My father and I also looked very anxious, saying that my brother was in a bad mood when we talked to him and that he was ashamed to be sent back like this. Later, my brother took the excuse to go to the bathroom and disappeared.
When the two officers heard this, they became even more anxious and hurriedly went to the train station, bus station and ship dock to look for him. They asked the Hefei People’s Armed Forces Department and our families for assistance in the search. At the same time, the two officers made a long-distance phone call to the chief of the army to report the incident and were criticized. The chief of the army instructed them to stay in Hefei and continue to look for their brother, and when they found him, to immediately discharged from the army with the local authorities.
In the process of looking for his brother, my father and the two officers became acquainted. They also told the truth, saying that during his three months in the recruiting company, his performance was excellent in all aspects, and the army was reluctant to return him. But as a soldier, we could only obey orders, and hoped that our families would understand.
On the third day, the two officers came to the house and told my father that they had received a call from the army saying that my brother had run back to the army. Before leaving, both officers said that they would speak for us when we returned to the army and try to keep our brother.
Several days later, we finally received a letter from my brother. The letter said that several chiefs of the army sympathized with him and arranged for him to stay in the army guest house while they wrote a report to their superiors and interceded.
The whole family was relieved, but they were still worried. My father asked a friend in Shanghai to go to Chongming Island often to visit my brother and find out more about him. Later, my father felt embarrassed to bother my friend like this, so he decided to ask me to go to Shanghai to help my brother. After all, it was my brother’s first time to travel far, and it must have been worrying for him to encounter such a thing. At that time, I was in Anhui province, a rural village, as a youth interloper, so I took a leave of absence and went to Shanghai.
When I arrived in Shanghai, I stayed with one of my father’s comrades and took a boat to Chongming Island the next day.
The next day, I took a boat to Chongming Island. When I found the army, to my surprise, my brother’s mental condition was quite good. My brother said that everyone in the camp was very sympathetic to him, and they were all working hard for him to stay. Even the son of the commander, political commissar, and chief of staff of their unit has become good friends with his younger brother, and said that he wants to help him in his activities. Now the army is in charge of food and housing, and only lets him do occasional chores and wait for news.
During that time, I was on the Shanghai beach and my heart was set on Chongming Island. Every few days, I would take a boat to Chongming Island to visit my brother and get news. For several days, there was no new development at all.
Some days later, when I went to the island to visit my brother again, I noticed that he looked much more downcast.
It turned out that the son of the army chief had whispered bad news to my younger brother: the army had sent people to my mother’s unit and other relevant departments for an outward transfer. Not only did he find out that both uncles were still alive, but that they were also serving in important political and military positions in Taiwan. To make matters worse, the transfer accidentally revealed that Mother also had a cousin and a younger cousin in Taiwan: ……
Many years later, I learned that my younger brother’s unit had originally wanted to find out, out of good intentions, if the two uncles in Taiwan had passed away or were insignificant figures, so that they could give their superiors a step down to withdraw the order. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, but instead it led to even harsher instructions from my superiors, who were more and more determined to discharge my brother from the army.
I was surprised to hear this, but I didn’t take it personally. On the contrary, I thought naively that my two uncles had no connection with our family, let alone my two cousins. The “political trial” should not be so implicated, right? I told my brother to put in a good word for the head of the army and to keep on keeping on. I always felt that if I kept on, there would be hope.
I didn’t dare to tell my parents this unknown news, but I told my father’s comrade in Shanghai, who, after hearing the news, thought there would be no hope. After hearing the news, my uncle thought there was no hope for me, and advised me to give up as soon as possible. But I was still unmoved.
Why was I so stubborn? It is because if my brother was sent back from the army, he would have no other choice but to go to the countryside like me, and become a civic-minded youth. Having one Zhiqing in my family is already enough to worry my parents. If there was another Zhiqing, my parents would have to worry a lot. To comfort my younger brother, I took him to Shanghai for two days. In the evening of that day, when I saw my younger brother off to the ship, I felt uneasy and uncomfortable as I watched my brother’s lonely figure drifting away on the pier.
A few days later, I suddenly received a call from my brother, saying that the tone of the army chief’s conversation with him had changed.
In the past, the chief had always tried to persuade and guide him, but now he had changed his tone. He said that his stay here had already created a bad influence in the barracks, and that if he didn’t leave, the army would stop feeding and sheltering him. The chief’s sons and comrades who often visit his brother have also disappeared these days. And the army didn’t give him anything to do.
I hurried to Chongming Island again, gave my brother some money and food stamps, and continued to cheer him up: if the army doesn’t care about his life, he should find a hotel nearby and stay there. Still, I told him to be sure to persevere without wavering.
After that, I didn’t receive any more messages from my brother for several days.
I was about to go to Chongming Island again when I received a phone call from my father, who told me that the army had sent another unit to Chongming Island. He told me that the army had sent another officer and two tough soldiers to escort my brother home, and that they had completed the discharge procedures for me at the same place, so that I could evacuate Shanghai.
At this point, I had been in Shanghai for nearly two months.
When I returned home, I was as depressed as my brother, for I could no longer enjoy the glory of being born into a so-called “revolutionary family. I knew very well that the appearance of these “Taiwanese compatriots” in that lifelong file would make our brothers’ future extremely uncertain, and my heart was filled with a deep sense of sadness about the fickleness of fate. My mother, on the other hand, felt even more torn and complicated. She was both sad and guilty, often saddened by her own sadness and tears, until she fell seriously ill.
I don’t know whether it was the unpredictable world or the inevitability of history. After only two years, the farce of the Cultural Revolution, which had been going on for ten years, finally came to a heavy end. The country became more enlightened, and seemed to be more tolerant and gentle to families with various “overseas ties”.
After resuming the “college entrance exam” that had been interrupted for 11 years, I prepared to go to college. My whole family wanted my brother to go to college, too, but he took it personally and enrolled in the army in the village where he was a soldier, which he finally did.
His younger brother joined the army again and went to Shanxi. During those first days, no one, except for my mother, was worried that my brother would be discharged from the army again.
After all, that absurd farce was finally negated, and the dawn of reform and opening up was finally beginning to appear in the troubled motherland.
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