Despite the passage of time for more than 50 years, the scene of that night in October of that year is still imprinted in my mind like a knife, and I have never forgotten it.
First, the storm of the Cultural Revolution hit me when I was studying in Hefei No. 4 Middle School, and the usually quiet Peace Hall was filled with big-character posters overnight. The words “denounce”, “bombard”, “smash”, and so on, were all over the place. Two years before that, when we first joined the school, the severe situation of fighting Soviet and class enemies externally and internally had made us middle school students feel the extreme “prominence” of politics more or less: two afternoons a week, we sat around under the big acacia tree in front of the school building, studying in groups, reading editorials and articles, and for a while, reading one chapter a day from the newly published In some cases, they even read a chapter of the recently published novel “Song of Ouyanghai” every day. During the summer and autumn harvests, the school organized trips to the suburbs to cut wheat and harvest rice, and we lived and ate in farm houses. There was also militia training and target shooting, which made us high school students feel both nervous and mysterious.
I remember one day in October 1964, my classmates and I were helping with the autumn harvest in the suburban countryside when the news of Khrushchev’s downfall came over the radio, causing a cheer. The excitement of hitting 10 rings with live ammunition and the chagrin of missing the target were also endless topics of conversation at the time.
Nevertheless, the political movement seemed to be limited to the study of newspaper editorials and documents, and for us naive high school students, the pain of the “movement” was not yet felt at all. Classes were still held as usual, and exams and tests were not missing. The Cultural Revolution came out of nowhere and not only disrupted all this, but also threw the whole society, including us high school students, into the waves of the Movement.
In May 1966, the prologue of the Cultural Revolution was unveiled with the “Notice of May 16”; in June, the postponement of the college entrance examination was announced; in August, the “16 Articles” of the Cultural Revolution were broadcast. On August 27, the “8-27” rebellion broke out in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, and the Anhui “8-27” rebellion corps was formed. Soon after, a rival rebel group was formed, the former called the G faction and the latter the P faction. This was the first round of rebellion in Anhui during the Cultural Revolution.
At that time, those who were qualified to be the first group of rebels were all the “second generation of red” and “second generation of poor” students, wearing old military uniforms, wide belts and “red guard” sleeve bands. “cuffs”, walking around the streets and alleys to rebel. That thrilling history, I had the word “Royal Street Walk – Fifty Sacrifices” to record it in 2016, the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, in which I wrote: “The drums were frequently heard in the ancient town, August 27, Jinggang Mountain. Liu Deng was criticized in front of the Hall of Peace, and Zhang and Li were revolted.”
When the Cultural Revolution started, the school was immediately closed and the revolution started, and the students who were living in the school moved back home. I also moved my luggage and books back home, so naturally I didn’t have to read, and when I was bored, I occasionally went to the school and the streets to look at the big-character posters and watch the two factions debate and fight. As the saying goes, things gather in groups, and people are divided by groups. At that time, I and my classmate Lu Zhifan, who lived in Beimen Shuanggang, often came and went together to read the big-character posters, or swim together and tinker with the radio. I was a “loose cannon”.
In early September, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a notice to organize representatives of revolutionary students and revolutionary staff from abroad to visit Beijing to see the Cultural Revolution, and the nationwide cascade suddenly began to climax. I soon heard that some students from other high schools in Hefei and our school had already left, and those who had already returned from the Beijing caucus were talking about their experiences in detail, so Lu Zhifan and I were moved.
We said we would go. At that time, there was no direct train from Hefei to Beijing, and we had to transfer from Bengbu to Beijing. The two of us, carrying our satchels on our backs, got on the Bengbu-bound train at the Hefei train station without much trouble.
This is my first time away from home, both excited and apprehensive. It was late at night in Bengbu, where the northbound train must pass. We stumbled on the platform of Bengbu station, with a group of students coming from all directions, waiting for the northbound train. Once the train arrived, the upper and lower doors and windows became a channel for students to scramble to climb aboard, depending on how good you are. After a few tosses and turns, we both managed to climb on a green train from Hangzhou to Beijing.
It was after midnight, and the hard-seat compartment was full of sleeping male and female students. We both carefully moved from the pile of people into the carriage, near a place where we could barely get down, leaning against the back of the seat to stand, with inexplicable excitement, embarked on the journey to Beijing tandem.
The train drove very slowly and stopped from time to time, waiting for the train to leave the station ahead before moving on. At that time, students from all over the world flocked to the stations like a tide, causing each station to be overflowing with people. Almost every time I arrived at a station, I had to wait for a long time before I could move.
At about 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., when the earlier drowsiness had passed, the students lying under the seats got up from time to time and stretched themselves, and various unheard accents echoed, making the carriage suddenly active and noisy. A few female high school students leaning on the seat, chirping and giggling, can not understand what they say. A few college-like male students in the next seat stood and struck up a conversation with them, and from time to time a giggle drifted in. After a while, we asked them where they came from. The female students laughed and babbled a string of Wu Nong Shuo.
One of the girls, seeing that we did not understand, said with a smile in Jiangnan Mandarin that we were from Grandpa Lu Xun’s side of the family, and took out their school badges. It turns out that they are students of a middle school in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, and look like they are 14 or 15 years old. So talking and laughing, the train walked and stopped, bumpy for more than 20 hours, and in the evening of the 13th, the green train dragged the exhausted tandem army, and finally pulled into Beijing station with a long breath.
As the sea of people squeezed out of the station, they were struck by a scene of red flags and drums: at the exit of Beijing Station, a group of students wearing “Red Guards” sleeve bands waved drumsticks and pounded hard, while chanting slogans. On the big red banners were huge slogans: Warmly welcome the revolutionary students and teachers from abroad to visit the Cultural Revolution in Beijing! Resolve to carry out the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the end! The revolution is not a crime, the rebellion is justified and so on. The two of us drifted with the flow of people leaving the station and were rushed to the “Liaison Station for Foreign Revolutionary Teachers and Students in Beijing” not far away. After waiting for an hour or two, we finally got our turn and took out our student ID cards to register and were told that we were assigned to stay at Yong’anli Elementary School, and each of us received a red paper “temporary bus pass for foreign revolutionary teachers and students”.
It was late at night, how to get to Yong’anli Primary School? They said it was not far from Beijing Station, so we asked and walked, and soon walked up Chang’an Street (which had just been renamed Dongfang Hong Road in the Four Old Days). The street was brightly lit, and the road was much wider than I had imagined. From time to time, there were trams with two “long braids” that I had never seen before, which looked like a pair of wings, making people feel new.
When we were looking around, at a loss, we saw a beautiful, handsome schoolgirl walking towards us, a standard Red Guard outfit, wearing a faded military uniform, a wide belt around her slender waist, two short braids on the back edge of her military cap, wearing a red background yellow “Red Guard” sleeve band on her arm, with a bright red Chairman Mao badge on her chest, looking But 16 or 17 years old.
When we got close, she greeted us generously with a mouthful of pure Beijing dialect and asked us where we were going. After learning that we were going to Yong’anli Elementary School, she said with a little joy that my house was also in that direction, and we were going the same way. I stared at her and asked, “Where can I get a ride? This childish girl waved at me and said with a calm face, “Follow me.
We both followed her with suspicion, and actually walked to the middle of Chang’an Street, and when she saw the cars coming from the west to the east, she ran up and stopped them. Seeing a car speeding by, the girl has no fear, not long, an empty bus was actually stopped by her on the street. At this moment, we have been the girl’s actions stunned, only to see her command-like waved at us both, repeatedly shouted quickly into the car.
Chatting with her in the car, I learned that she is a Red Guard in a Beijing high school, more than a month ago to go to the South caucus, just returned to Beijing tonight. What a small person with great insight. Ten minutes later, the car arrived at Yong’anli, the female student shouted at the driver to stop, and then instructed us both to get off and walk straight to the head, turn a corner is Yong’anli elementary school. In hindsight, if we hadn’t met her, we wouldn’t have known how to find Yong’anli Primary School that night. But it happened suddenly, and perhaps there are teenage boys and girls to avoid suspicion, we did not even ask each other’s names.
At that time, there were hundreds of foreign students living in Yong’anli Elementary School, eating and living in the school, and during the day, they could take the bus to the universities and colleges to read the big-character posters, and they could also compete in the streets for all kinds of leaflets that people spilled from cars or buildings. On October 18, we were given a box of cookies (coincidentally, the cookies were made in Hefei) without breakfast.
We were taken in line to sit in rows on the sidewalk side of Chang’an Street, the first few rows were full of soldiers. Just after noon, the music of “Dongfang Hong” came out from the tannoy, and Mao Zedong came slowly from west to east in an open-top car. This was the fourth time that Chairman Mao met with the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.
In October, it was nearly late autumn in Beijing, and the chill was full. A few days later, I took my mother’s letter to the Beijing Knitting Factory outside Chaoyang Gate and found my fourth aunt, whom I had never seen before. Seeing that I was thinly dressed, she took me to a nearby store to buy a fleece jacket and took me back to her home in Zhugan Hutong, Chaoyang Gate. The next day, I went to pick up Lu Zhifan from Yong’anli Elementary School, and then we both stayed at Aunt Si’s house. It was much more convenient to live in Aunt Si’s house, which was across the street from the Ministry of Culture and not far from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so I could walk there in the morning and evening to read the big-character posters and get back many flowery leaflets.
This was my first experience in Beijing and my first crosstown. I stayed for about a month and went to famous schools such as Peking University and Tsinghua University, as well as to the Forbidden City and Beihai and Wangfujing Xidan. Later, Lu Zhifan went back to Hefei first, and I stayed at my fourth aunt’s house for some more days.
One night, Mr. Yu Pingbo, who lived in another quadrangle across the wall from my aunt’s house, had a broken light and called my cousin to help him. At that time, although I was young, I knew that Mr. Yu Pingbo was a famous red scientist who had published “A Study of Dream of the Red Chamber” and other red science monographs. At that time, the fourth aunt and Mr. Yu were both raided by the Red Guards, so it is considered “the same disease”. I have the impression that Mr. Yu was quiet, courteous, and in a bad way, he was a famous scholar.
That night in October, especially the encounter with the female Red Guards in Beijing on Chang’an Street, was my first impression of the Cultural Revolution, which was accompanied by bewilderment and confusion.
At this point in the article, I suddenly had a strange thought: I wonder where is the girl who reigned over Chang’an Street and stopped cars in the street? In a sea of people, there is no way to find her. Perhaps every morning she is dancing and singing with her elderly companions in a square in Beijing, to the music of a light-hearted song. I wonder if she still remembers this strange encounter, and I wish her well and happiness.
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