“Did you hear everything from the conference just now?” The conference presenter asked me.
I nodded my head.
“What do you think of the conference? I think it’s your first time to attend this kind of meeting.” Although I couldn’t tell them the truth, I didn’t want to say anything that flattered them against my will. So I asked, “Can I ask you for some advice on some of the issues I’ve been thinking about all day today?”
It looked like he got a little upset, but his mouth said, “Go ahead!”
“Which organization do you represent? Who authorized you to hold such a meeting? Who else is in attendance besides past company employees?”
He was obviously upset by my question about “rights” but tried to restrain himself. He replied, “We represent the proletariat. This meeting was called with the authorization of the Leading Committee of the Proletarian Cultural Revolution in Shanghai.”
I asked him to explain the purpose of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He said it was a great revolution to remove all resistance to the advance of socialism in Chinese society. He repeated the oft-applied Mao quotation and told me that every Chinese must participate in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, without exception.
“You must be honest, like Tao Fang, and reform yourself properly.” He said.
“I did not feel that I had done anything wrong.” I said, expressing in my tone of voice my surprise at such words from him.
“Maybe you’ll change your attitude after you reconsider.” The other said, “Suppose you were to harbor the imperialists, it would not end well.”
“What’s there to harbor? Every activity of the imperialists is recorded in our history books.” I replied.
The man raised his voice and said, “What are you talking about? We don’t care about the past, we only talk about the present. Regarding the company you work for, Tao Fang has admitted all crimes. We know that Asean’s Shanghai office is a sheep’s head selling dog meat; we also know the role you played in this dirty deal. Don’t treat us like fools.”
“I really don’t understand what you are saying.” I said, “As far as I know, this company I work for has never done anything illegal or unethical. China has a public security department, so of course if there were any mistakes, they would have been discovered long ago.”
They both looked at me with wide eyes and almost simultaneously called out, “You want to harbor imperialists!”
I said angrily, “You misunderstand, I am just telling the truth, I know them. Why should I harbor them? The Shanghai office of Asia has been closed and the British general manager has left, so no one needs my protection.”
“Yes, the British General Manager is gone, but you are still there. You know everything as well as he does. Your husband was the general manager for many years; after his death, you succeeded him in the company, so you must know everything.”
“It is because I know everything about the company’s Shanghai office that I say they have never done anything wrong.” I said.
Another person interrupted me. He said, “I suggest you go home now and think about it, and we’ll let you know when we need you again. Give me your phone number.”
I gave him my phone number and left.
Outside, it was already twilight in the evening, and a breeze was blowing in my face, which was very pleasant. I decided to walk home so I could get some exercise and think about things.
As I walked past the first medical school, I saw my friend Vinnie, squeezing out of the half-closed doors, followed by a large group of her colleagues. We greeted each other and she paired up with me to go home, as she lives near my house.
“Why are you out so late?” Vinnie asked.
“I just went to a criticism meeting. I’ve been ordered to join the Cultural Revolution.”
“Is it because the Shanghai office of Asia Inc. has been closed? Tell me quickly.” “It’s a long story. Why don’t you come up to my house and have dinner with me?” I asked. I was eager to hear Vinnie’s opinion. She had been through many political campaigns and was very experienced in how to deal with these situations.
“Okay. I’ll make a phone call home from your house later. Henry has been coming home late these days. Every time there’s a political movement, he’s a professor and always has to pay the price. The professor will always be the object of the movement.” Vinnie said. Henry was her husband, a professor in the architecture department at Tongji University.
“Is Henry in any kind of trouble?” I asked eagerly.
“No! Thank God, not yet.” Vinnie replied, fetching a comb from her purse and combing her hair. “Your maids will faint when they see me coming to dinner with my hair like this.” She was over forty years old and had three sons, but still retained a slim figure. Although she was dressed in a people’s dress that did not match her very well, she nevertheless looked very pretty. She had to dress herself like a medical school teacher of English and Latin. Since receiving her B.A. in English Literature from the New England Women’s College of Arts, she and her husband, a graduate of Cambridge University in England, returned to China at the end of the war against Japan. Henry was hired as a professor in the Department of Architecture at Tongji University and was later promoted to head of the department. But with the high rate of inflation at the time, the professor’s salary could not keep up with the rising prices, and to supplement the family expenses, Vinnie often taught Chinese to the European expatriates in Shanghai. They knew firsthand the inability of the Kuomintang government to manage the post-war economic problems and the reform of the college. They therefore supported the liberation of China by the Communists in 1949 in order to achieve peace and stability.
At that time, few Shanghainese knew much about Marxism, the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong because the Kuomintang blocked the real situation in the Communist-liberated areas. Before 1949, the only source of news about the liberated areas was the glorious reports of the liberated areas by Western journalists and writers who visited Yan’an from time to time. Most of them were democrats. They were impressed by the sincerity and discipline of the Communist leaders. Before liberation, in the KMT-ruled areas, the Communist underground had vigorously propagated the promise of peace-building, a national united front and a democratic government after liberation. All this was in stark contrast to the corrupt rule of the Kuomintang. Chinese intellectuals enthusiastically embraced the propaganda of the Communist Party.
After the liberation of Shanghai, the government encouraged women to work, and in 1950 Winnie became a teacher at the medical school. The following year, an ideological reformation campaign was launched to unify the administration of the university. Vini and Henry suddenly came to their senses. Although they were both not implicated in this campaign, they had to reflect patiently on their family origins, the imperialist education they had received, and Henry had to self-criticize the world view and educational ideas expressed in the architectural design, and they repeatedly wrote critical autobiographies. After this phase of punitive and humiliating examination, Henry was deemed unfit to continue as head of the architecture department. Because of the comprehensive use of Soviet teaching materials for lectures at that time, some traditional Chinese working methods and Western architectural design were defiantly called feudal and corrupt.
Although the ideological reform movement ended in 1951, branch secretaries were assigned to all levels of the university organization. They managed the work and life of the faculty, most of whom had little education and had never been teachers. Henry and Winnie lived in the house assigned to them, accepted the salary they were paid, and worked according to the instructions of the Party leadership. These two highly educated, active and imaginative young people, confident in the Communist Party leadership, were turned into a pair of educational machines by the ultra-leftist line of suspicious persecution of intellectuals. But they were the lucky ones; there were many university teachers throughout the country whose situation was even worse than theirs, some of whom were sent to labor and reform, and some of whom were actually purged from their schools.
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