At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the nationwide confiscation of the “Four Olds” originated from the infamous editorial “Sweeping Away All Oxen, Ghosts, Snakes and Gods” written by Chen Boda of the People’s Daily on June 1, 1966.
Many articles describe in detail how the Red Guards and revolutionary rebels went on a rampage to confiscate the family home. During the Cultural Revolution, my family suffered a house raid during the “One Strike, Three Revolts” campaign, which involved not the Red Guards, but brigade cadres and young militiamen. I was in the sixth grade in my village, the first year of junior high school in a seven-system school, and I still remember the scene vividly.
The so-called “One Dozen and Three Againsts” was a political movement started in 1970 across the country, a small movement attached to the larger movement of the Cultural Revolution, which was mainly against counter-revolutionary sabotage, corruption and theft, speculation and waste. It was called the “One Strike, Three Rebels” campaign. The campaign involved an immeasurable number of families and people, and the social terror and influence it caused was unprecedented.
It was an autumn day, and the night before, my mother and I were grinding noodles at the main team’s flour mill. In the past, the village used an ancient stone mill, pulled by oxen or donkeys, to grind the flour. Two years ago, the brigade just installed several steel mills, which have greatly accelerated the speed of grinding. However, due to frequent power outages, machine breakdowns and overhauls, the members had to queue up for ten days and a half months to get their turn to deliver the grain to the processing plant. That night, my father was summoned to a meeting with the main security unit, and my mother and I went to grind noodles. My mother and I went to grind noodles. Originally, it should have been my family’s turn in the queue, but suddenly a relative of a brigade cadre stepped in front of us again. When we got home, we packed up our things and the three of us quickly fell asleep.
At about 6:00 am, we were awakened by the sound of banging on the door. We heard someone outside the front door shouting, “Open up! Open the door!” My parents thought they had a patient who called my father to see a doctor. In the past, there had been too many such calls at the door in the middle of the night or at dawn, so I didn’t think about anything else. Unexpectedly, the door opened and there was a group of people standing in front of it. The head of the group was a demobilized soldier and brigade cadre who was usually quite familiar with my father. Today, he said to my father with a straight face and a very serious face: “Feng so-and-so, by order of the Wanrong County Revolutionary Committee, we are now conducting a thorough search of the home of you, a ‘historical counter-revolutionary’. You tell your family to get up and get dressed immediately, don’t talk nonsense, and actively cooperate with us in the search.”
“Since the Cultural Revolution, my father had been through a number of high-hatted criticism meetings and parades, but this was the first time he had searched the house. But this was the first time he had ever searched the house. He nodded his head, returned to the house, and hurriedly called out to my mother and me to get up. At that moment, the militia had already hailed us and stood all over the yard.
I had never seen such a scene before and was immediately confused. My mother whispered to the brigade cadre in charge, and he gave me special permission to go to school. The first thing I noticed was that I was a little upset, but I didn’t know what to say. I was so upset that I put on my backpack and went out the door, but there was a militiaman standing outside the door with a rifle in his hand, standing dignifiedly at the door.
The whole morning, I had a hard time in the classroom. As soon as school ended at noon, I rushed home. In the alleyway near my house, there were men and women standing in the neighborhood, pointing and whispering. I ran into the courtyard and saw my parents crouched dejectedly under the eaves of the house, looking melancholy, sad and angry. In the courtyard of our house, there were all kinds of furniture, cabinets, and cardboard boxes stacked haphazardly, and books, magazines, and papers were thrown all over the ground, just like the scenes in movies where bandits and robbers had looted the house.
Seeing this, I cried out, “Dad! Mom!” My eyes were already filled with tears. My parents looked at me with infinite sorrow, but did not respond. The north room was occupied by the production team as a warehouse for grain, and there were three big locks on the door. When I walked into the east and west rooms, they were in the same state of disarray as the two rooms.
“Mother, are they gone? What was found?” I asked.
My mother wiped her tears, sighed and said, “Alas, what can our family have? Who knows what people are searching for? After tossing and turning, even the cellar where the sweet potatoes were kept went down and searched the whole place, but nothing was found. Before they left, they took away your father’s syringes, stethoscope, and bottles and jars of medicine that he used to see a doctor. It’s not a good day to be alive!”
As I was saying that, my sister, who is a private teacher in the village school, rushed back. She told her parents: “I heard at the school that our house was raided, and I was very anxious, but today our village was raided by more than ten families. They didn’t do anything to you, did they?”
“That’s not true …… just wants your dad to be honest and ask if there are any concealed weapons or ammunition? Do you have a stash of reactionary items? Where would we get these things at home? By the way, they also took the five silver coins your in-laws gave you.” My mother said weeping.
The five pieces of silver bracelets were a bride price given by her in-laws before my sister’s wedding, and according to the custom in my hometown, they were used to make a silver bracelet for my sister to wear at the wedding. My mother showed me the shiny ones, some with the portrait of Yuan Shikai and others with the portrait of Sun Yat-sen engraved on them. My mother originally had a pair of silver bracelets saved up, but when my sister got married, she had the good sense to give her own pair of silver bracelets to her sister and “embezzled” the five silver pieces. My mother once told me, “Nowadays, silver is a very rare thing, and it’s hard to find in the world, so keep it so that you can use it to marry in the future. Who knew that my mother would be so distressed by the loss of the five silver coins from ……?
My sister consoled me and said, “Mother, as long as you are well, you will be fine, but if you don’t have anything, you can think of a way to get rid of it later. You and my father must not show any resentment in front of everyone, and my brother must not say anything to his classmates. Well, I still have to rush back to school to save myself the criticism from the leaders.”
My parents’ heavy heart relaxed a little, and their sadness eased a little, perhaps because they had heard that more than ten families in the village had their homes confiscated that day, and I don’t know how many families in the county had their homes confiscated. Then, they and I tidied up a little bit of our things that had been turned upside down.
About ten days later, the school organized a trip to Xuedian Village, seven or eight miles away, to visit an exhibition on the class struggle, the theme of which was to publicize the victory of the “One Strike, Three Revolts” movement. I went there on foot with my classmates, and the streets and lanes of the village were bustling with members and students from all over the world. When it was our turn to visit, we straightened up and crowded forward. The exhibition hall was set up in several classrooms of Xuedian Village School. In addition to Chairman Mao’s portrait, quotations, and colorful slogans, the exhibit was a collection of objects from the last county-wide raid, including a leather jacket, brick tea, a satin quilt, a wooden bucket that used to hold grain, and a large scale that weighed things ……. Although these items were relatively new to our students, they were not new to us. It is rare, but not too unusual.
Further down, there is a yellowing ledger with a brush to keep accounts, which the narrator says is the landlord’s family’s private stash of changeable accounts. There are exquisite water pipe bags and fine tableware and tea sets, which the narrator says is a testament to the pre-Liberation life of rich landlords and peasants. There are pictures of Chiang Kai-shek and Yan Xishan in military attire, which the narrator says is the hope of the class enemy that the Chiang bandits in Taiwan would attack the mainland. There is also a Japanese saber, which the narrator says is a weapon of the class enemy’s attempt to restore capitalism. ……
The more I read, the more surprised and angry I became. I never thought that, in the midst of the National Cultural Revolution, these “land, rich, anti, bad, right” elements, just like the newspaper propaganda, are like the onion in winter – the yellow leaves are rotten and the heart does not die. They never forget the restoration of the lost paradise life, the restoration of the evil capitalism, and the suffering of the poor and middle peasants. The great leader Chairman Mao said, “Never forget the class struggle. The class struggle will work when it is grasped. It seems that Chairman Mao was really far-sighted and insightful.
I crowded in the crowd of visitors, listening to the commentator’s righteous explanation and the people around me.
Some of them said, “Look at these five types of black people, one in front of the other, with so much good stuff hidden in their homes!”
“Yes, these guys should be criticized and rehabilitated through labor, and the dictatorship of the proletariat should be implemented, and there should be no mercy!”
Suddenly, a display case caught my eye, and I could hardly believe my eyes, but it was the truth. The exhibits in the window included a stethoscope, syringes for injections, silver needle packs for needles, a medicine cabinet, and many bottles and jars of medicine. On the top of the display case was written a line in big black letters: “Historical counterrevolutionary Feng Mou Mou set up a private underground hospital”. Ah! Aren’t these the items that were confiscated from our home the day it was raided? When my house was confiscated, I felt ashamed in front of my teachers and classmates; the confiscated items were put on display, which was obviously a shame; and I was on the spot again, which was even more embarrassing. The big black letters pierced my eyes like sharp silver needles; the medical equipment pierced my eyes like sharp silver needles; the stares of my classmates around me pierced my eyes like sharp silver needles.
At this moment, my face was red, my face was feverish, my heart was beating fast, my breathing was fast, I was excited, ashamed, ashamed, helpless, and my heart was like a broken bottle of five flavors, sweet, sour, bitter, hot, and salty. I really wished there was a crack in the ground and a rat hole in the corner, so that I could get into it and disappear without a trace. I don’t know how I managed to follow the flow of people step by step out of that exhibition room.
The last classroom was dedicated to “the new bourgeoisie member so-and-so,” who, the lecturer said, was the director of the supply and marketing agency of a certain commune, and had embezzled many valuable commodities over the years, including satin quilts, fashionable clothes, sewing machines, bicycles, and dozens of brand-new watches.
In those years, members went to the Supply and Marketing Cooperative to buy goods, many of which needed to be purchased with a ticket. The director embezzled so much valuable merchandise that visitors were outraged and acted even more resentful than they had been at the previous exhibit, cursing and saying that the director should be shot. In this exhibition room, I was also pushed out by the crowd mechanically, and my mind was still on the display case about my father.
The tour finally ended, and the students went home in twos and threes, some to go home, some to play. I quietly avoided everyone and went back to the village alone along the country lanes.
I couldn’t figure out what my father’s exhibit in the exhibition room had been thinking about.
My grandfather, uncle, father, aunt, and cousin were all doctors, especially famous for treating ophthalmology. Before the liberation, my grandfather took my uncle and father to Jishan, Xinjiang, and Wanrong to practice medicine, and finally settled in Ding Fan Village, Wanrong County. After the founding of New China, my father joined the Chinese Communist Party and responded to the call of the Party Central Committee by meeting with several other individual doctors to set up a joint clinic in the village, and donated his private clinic to the collective for free, which was well received by the people.
His father was favored by his superiors, who sent him to Yuncheng for medical training in Western medicine and transferred him to Gao Cun Township as the director of the township hospital. My father gradually became a doctor who combined western and eastern medicine, especially famous for treating eye diseases and children’s diseases, that is, surgery, which was also a good hand in Wanrong County at that time.
There were unpredictable weather conditions. In 1964, during the “Four Clean-ups” campaign, my father was cleared of all historical problems. It turned out that when he was practicing medicine in Dong Town, Xinjiang County, before the liberation, because he had cured the mother of the county’s Yan Xishan pseudo-governor of the county of his eye disease, the governor, as a gesture of gratitude, did him a favor by letting his father serve as the acting village commander of Dong Town’s pseudo-border village. He warned his father that, in the midst of a military chaos, no one would dare to bully him if he held a public position.
In response, my father did not agree to the offer, nor was he able to refuse it in person, and replied that he would consider it at home before deciding. Unexpectedly, the governor reported his list to the authorities. Three months later, Xinjiang County was liberated. At the end of the “Four Clean-ups” movement, the organization found out about the incident in the enemy’s files, and concluded that my father had concealed history and mixed with the CPC organization.
In the end, he was dismissed from the Party, demoted, and removed from his position as director of the rural hospital, and returned to Ding Fan Village as director and doctor. “At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he was branded as a “historical counterrevolutionary” by the rebel faction of the brigade, expelled from the health clinic, and returned to the production team for reform through labor.
His father, who became a member of the society, worked in the cold and heat, and learned a lot of farm work that he had never done before. The higher-ups sent a new doctor to the village health center, but the new doctor was not very skilled, and most of the members did not trust him, so they still came to my father’s house when he was sick. Since they were all from the same village, my father could not refuse them, so he did his best to treat them.
In fact, my father’s home medical treatment is nothing more than giving patients acupuncture, injections, massage, eye drops, diagnosing illnesses, reminding patients what medications to take, what injections to give, and what illnesses to examine at the commune or county hospital, which is completely fulfilling his obligations. The medical equipment originally belonged to our family’s private clinic, and there were many more medicine cabinets and instruments in the main health center that belonged to our family.
The charge against my father in this house raid was “setting up a private underground hospital,” which sounds so horrible. Wouldn’t it be normal for a medical family to store some medical equipment in their home? What law does a doctor, who has been deprived of his right to see a doctor, break by treating members of his community in his spare time at home for free? What a “trumped up” charge! But, at that time, to whom would this reasoning be addressed? And who will be the judge?
From the items confiscated from my family, from the charges brought against my father, I thought of the other items I saw at the exhibition, and of the narrator’s commentary. Were the yellowed ledgers at the exhibition really the “accounts of change” kept by rich landowners and farmers? Are those photos and sabers really of rich landowners and peasants preparing for Chiang Kai-shek’s invasion of the mainland and the restoration of capitalism? The doubt flashed through my mind, and I suddenly realized that it was extremely inappropriate, reactionary, and sinful to have this thought. I turned my head and looked around, but no one was around, so I was a little relieved.
It was already dark when I returned home sullenly, but after a few moments of patience, I described to my parents what I had seen and heard at the exhibition. When my father heard that, he sighed and smoked in silence with his dry pipe pot. He did farm work every day, picked up manure, couldn’t wash his hands clean, and had countless germs. He does farm work every day, picks up manure, and can’t clean his hands.
“Son, do you see where we put our five dollars of silver?” My mother suddenly asked me.
“No, I didn’t see it.” I tried my best to remember, but I didn’t remember a thing.
My mother said indignantly, “Well, did someone take it for themselves?”
“Alas! Don’t tell me you’re not afraid of getting into trouble?” Father boomed out a sentence.
The five dollars, and the medical equipment, were not returned until my father’s history was vindicated in 1979.
June 5, 2013 at Sky Books
Revised August 2017
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