The origin of the term “account of the changes” is unknown, but I first heard of it in a movie called “Sophora Village”. Released in 1964, the film reflects the dramatic changes that took place in rural North China during the important historical periods from land reform in the 1940s to the co-op system in the 1950s. Cui Laokun, the landlord of Sophora Village, had his land and property divided equally among the poor, and the old landlord kept an account of who took which piece of land from his family, who took the livestock, and who took the carts. The book was not discovered until after the commune and after Cui Laokun’s death.
The film was so influential that it was a must-watch for almost everyone, and became an excellent teaching material for class struggle education. From then on, the “Book of Changes” became the evidence and symbol of the fact that “the class enemy will not die if he destroys our hearts.
Wang Xiangsheng was the director of the Erlong Road School, but he was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and accused of being a class dissident. His father’s class was composed of rich peasants and capitalists, and his father added the title of capitalist because he owned an oil mill.
In the early days of the Cultural Revolution, it was normal to criticize the ruling faction, and it was learned that Wang Xiansheng’s parents happened to come from their hometown to live with Wang Xiansheng’s family. Wang Xiansheng was the main target of the criticism, and Wang’s wife and parents became his companions. Wang’s wife, Sun Zhiguan, a general cadre of the Xicheng District Committee, was allowed to stand, as her family was from a lower middle-class farming background.
The main content of the criticism centered around Wang Xiansheng’s revisionist education line and some of the events in the “Four Clean-ups,” and the activists spoke one by one, chanting slogans in an impassioned manner, no different from an ordinary criticism.
After the meeting, I went to the storage shed to get my bicycle, which was located in a small walkway behind the logistics building. I saw a terrifying scene. A group of students were surrounding Wang Xiangsheng’s father and mother, beating them with chair legs, belts, and long wooden sticks. The old woman’s head was shaved, and her head was covered with paste, ink, and a red liquid that at first glance looked like blood, but on closer inspection was red ink.
The old woman was crying, the old man was stripped naked, and both old men were kneeling. The students pressed the old man to ask where the change account was, and the old man looked bewildered, saying where was the change account. Two large male students, Zhang Xiaoqun and Bai Jie, with long wooden sticks thick enough to hold in their hands, asked if there were any accounts of the change of heaven, and when they answered no, they swung their sticks to beat them.
The old woman was thin and withered, and when Bai Jie hit her with a stick, she lay down on the ground and could not get up, and the old man and woman cried and wailed under the stick, begging for “forgive me, forgive me. In the end, I was told that I would kill you if you didn’t hand over the account. The old woman later cried, saying that there was a bankbook under my desk clock, and that the students couldn’t understand it at the time and said it several times with a thick Jiaodong accent.
The students, who spoke with a strong Jiao Tong accent, were unable to understand what was being said and said it several times. Most of the other students were from junior high schools, and I can’t name them, but there may have been Xiao Ying and a few junior high school girls with ink bottles in their hands.
The next day I heard the news, the old couple hung themselves that night.
Half a century later, things have changed dramatically, and it is now forbidden to torture or kill a cat. What was it that made these middle school students so cruel? On what basis do they press the fictional “accounts of change”? This cannot be attributed to the general environment of society. “Class struggle, once grasped, will work,” “the class enemy is still alive,” and “class struggle must be talked about every day, every month, every year,” are the words that fill the entire society. In addition, literary works such as the movie “Sophora Village” played an even more important role in fueling the struggle. Perhaps this is what the students thought.
Zhang Xiaoqun’s father was a famous film director, Shui Hua, who directed such class struggle-themed films as “White Hair Girl,” “Revolutionary Family,” and “Eternal Life in Flames,” among others.
In those years, what we received was an education full of bloody class struggle, and what we lacked most was education of humanity. Didn’t Lei Feng say, “Be as cruel to the enemy as the harsh winter”? Xie Fuzhi, the then Minister of Public Security, also said, “The good guys killed the bad guys, and they deserved it. The dominant public opinion was extremely bad for the whole society, not to mention the youth.
Later, I went to Shanxi to join the army with the tide of people going to the countryside, and there was no way to know what happened at school. It is not known how the beating of Wang Xiangsheng’s parents was handled, or whether the student who beat him had any remorse or repentance. Xiangsheng Wang and his wife are deceased, and it is said that Xiangsheng Wang has a younger brother in Beijing.
Er Long Lu School, my alma mater, has produced many famous people, two of whom I respect the most. The first one is Li Xue Li, a third grade junior high school girl who dared to lend a helping hand to the desperate teacher Zhang Fang. She was the pride of Erlong Road School. Unfortunately, Li Xue Li died in her 50s. The second one is the famous writer Wang Xiaobo, who, in the face of darkness, laughs and curses, but in his seemingly vulgar and obscene language, gets to the heart of the matter. Sadly, Wang Xiaobo also died at a young age.
People often don’t sleep well as they get older. Occasionally, I would think of what happened in the bicycle shed, the old woman’s head was covered with paste and red ink, just like brains and blood; the sharp, miserable screams, the pleading, and especially the desperate, helpless look in ……’s eyes. Since I couldn’t sleep, I simply got up and picked up a pen.
It is for this note.
2018-02-28
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