During the “Cultural Revolution”, the Red guards in Guangxi and the masses all over the country had disagreements over whether to “support Wei Guoqing” or “overthrow Wei Guoqing”, and they split into two factions that were at daggers’ crossed swords. One faction is called guangxi “Proletarian revolutionary joint command” (guangxi “joint finger” for short), the other faction is called “Guangxi revolutionary rebel April 22 command” (Guangxi “April 22” for short).
Wei Guoqing, the communist Party secretary of Guangxi, was criticized by Red guards and “rebels” at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
The masses, split into two factions, were at different ends of the spectrum, and the PLA engaged in “left-leaning” work did not agree. The field troops generally supported the “April 22” faction; The Guangxi Military Area Command, its military subdivisions and the armed forces departments of counties all support the “joint index”; The Cultural Revolution and Premier Zhou also tended to support the April 22 faction at the beginning. Thus, each faction has its strength. At the beginning, there were debates, posters and arguments on both sides. Later, the debate turned to name-calling, fists and scuffles. Later, they set up strongholds and attacked each other with machetes, spears, stones and bricks, leading to large-scale fighting and casualties. Premier Zhou Enlai and the head of the “Cultural Revolution of the CPC Central Committee” met representatives of the two parties in Beijing for many times, criticizing and mediating, and demanding the two parties to stop fighting. But it didn’t help. Then, at the instigation of Chiang Ch ‘ing’s “cultural attack on the martial guards”, each faction “seized” (some say secretly sent by the army) the arms of the people’s Liberation Army in support of its own faction, and a civil war began with live ammunition. With the support of the military sub-districts and armed forces departments of all regions, the “Joint finger” faction mobilized the militia forces in the countryside to encircle, suppress and attack the “April 22” faction in all regions and counties. Soon, the war between the two factions began in nanning, Liuzhou, Wuzhou and Guilin, and the railway and road traffic was interrupted. The civil war lasted from July 1967 to August 1968. Finally, with the support of the central government, Wei Guoqing was mobilized by the Guangxi Military Area Command to fight against the “April 22” movement. The isolated “April 22” faction was completely destroyed. Then guangxi began a mass killing campaign.
According to the chronicle of The Great Events of the Cultural Revolution in Guangxi published by Guangxi People’s Publishing House in July 1990, when guangxi “joint forces” and the PEOPLE’s Liberation Army shot dead more than 1,300 captives on April 22 along The Jiefang Road in Nanning, burning down 33 streets and causing property losses of tens of millions of yuan.
In fact, the “Cultural Revolution” killings in Guangxi began in July, August and September 1967, when “joint finger” armed forces all over Guangxi began to kill people in the process of besieging the “April 22” faction. Most of those killed were prisoners of war, as well as ordinary civilians. The killing spree began in March and April 1968. In March and April of that year, Wei Guoqing ordered all regions and counties to set up local “revolutionary committees” in which the “Joint finger” faction held power immediately after the elimination of the “April 22” faction. Then, under the guidance of the revolutionary Committee, a planned and organized 12-stage typhoon (known as the “killing movement”) began to blow all over the country to “launch a fierce attack against the class enemy”, with the slogan “Long live the Red Terror”. From then on, the “joint finger” faction of all units and departments began a large-scale campaign to catch people, catch people and swim against each other. During the fighting, some of the rioters were beaten to death with sticks, shoulder poles, stones and rifles at the venue and in the streets. For a while, the streets, highways, and the venue of the massacre were strewn with bodies and blood. According to the chronology of Events of the Cultural Revolution in Guangxi, 3,681 people were killed in Binyang county, Guangxi in 11 days. An average of more than 300 people a day were killed, including 176 families. There are written records in yishan county, where the author lives, more than 300 people were massacred in two or three days on July 14, 1968, according to incomplete statistics. In xiangbei, a small township in the county, as many as 35 people were killed in a single day, and the number of people being fought is even more difficult to count.
At that time, I taught in a senior high school in Yishan County, Guangxi (now Yizhou city). I joined the “April 22” school of this school. I am not in charge. I have only written articles critical of the “co-finger” faction and given one or two “situation reports”. But when the tide of mass arrests, grabbing, fighting and killing comes, I will not escape.
On July 5, 1968, I was seized by the “Red East regiment” of the school’s “Joint finger” faction. They beat me on the ground and forced me to confess. And there are some crimes that I don’t understand. My family had been destitute for generations, and they forced me to admit that I was a “destitute landlord”; Forced me to admit that I had incited the peasants to resist grain and taxes during my return (my family was in the countryside), and that I was Liu Shaoqi’s loyal lackey, preaching to the peasants “three packs of self”. Even more ridiculous is that I organized an assassination team in the countryside to assassinate Guangxi’s famous “activist Ran Sister-in-law, who actively studied and applied chairman MAO’s writings…” .
I deny it. Fight if you deny it. After a while of torture, yishan county armed forces came to two people’s Liberation Army, asked them to release people, so the same day I put back.
Before long, I was sent to this school privately set “labor reform team” (some places called “cowshed”) labor reform. He has since been deprived of all rights and personal freedom.
“Reform-through-labour teams” are hell. At any moment he may be criticized and beaten; He was even dragged to a street fight, beaten to death with wooden clubs, and dumped his body in the street. At that time of year, killings were rife all over Guangxi. I live in yishan county, almost every day killing people. At least a few a day to kill, more than a dozen, dozens. Bodies are often seen lying unattended along the road. As for rural areas, it is “no village does not wear filial piety, everywhere see blood spots”.
We worked under the scorching sun every day, and at night knelt in the “cowshed” to “plead guilty” to the great leader, and then received criticism from the Red Guards (the “Joint Finger” faction). Some were broken by the Red Guards during the night and could not work the next day.
One September morning, just after daybreak, there were loud knocks on the door. Alarmed, I got up and opened the door.
It is our yi Shan high school “reform-through-labour team” captain Old Kim.
“Lao Jin said mysteriously:” Lao Li, the Headquarters of the Red Army corps of the East informs me that there is no need to work today. At seven o ‘clock, get to the school square on the dot, everybody put up the sign, and whoever is late, smash the dog’s head!”
I was terrified out of my mind. Q: “Is it to swim fight?”
Old Kim said, “Who knows? !” Before he left, he whispered to me, “Lao Li, be careful!”
How to be careful? A persecuter, a persecuter. Cut him to pieces, let him!
I put up the sign and came to the square in time, determined to die. Several “ghosts and snakes” had already arrived. They were all on their knees, tied up in knots. A thug kicked me at the bend of my leg. “Kneel!”
I knelt down at once, and two thugs rushed up and quickly tied me up.
I thought of the possibility of death on the street today, I secretly began to cry……
Before long, all the ghosts and snakes had arrived. It was dark in a big row.
“Stand up! With a gulp. We all stood up.
We followed slowly, with two Red guards leading the way.
Not to go out on the street, not to go swimming, but to take us to the experimental building of the school.
When approaching the inspection building, I looked up and saw a huge banner hanging on the wall, reading: “Yishan High School Cultural Revolution Achievements Exhibition”, surrounded by large colorful slogans… The momentum is very warm.
We were taken into a wide laboratory. Posters were pasted all over the room. Eighteen of us knelt in our assigned positions on wooden racks made of planks.
Half an hour later, several red guards with red armbands also stepped onto the rack. Each of them stood behind us with a nanzhu plank one meter long, five centimeters wide and about one centimeter thick.
At this time, the school loudspeaker began to play “The East is Red” and other revolutionary songs, soon came the male broadcaster’s radio voice:
“Comrades in arms of the proletarian revolutionaries… Our most beloved great leader, Chairman MAO, taught us: ‘… The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution… It is very necessary and timely to… ‘, our most beloved Deputy General Lin also taught us: ‘This cultural Revolution, the harvest is very, very big… ‘, today, in order to show our Guangxi, our Yishan high school proletarian revolutionaries two years of bloody struggle to achieve the great results, specially held the cultural Revolution results exhibition, will be found out a number of class enemies to the general revolutionary teachers and students exhibition, the following…”
Then came the trumpets.
I immediately had a judgment: today is the “living exhibition”. We will exhibit to the masses as an exhibition of the achievements of the Cultural Revolution in Guangxi.
Before that, I had heard people say that the joint finger schools in Nanning, Liuzhou, Guilin and other places in Guangxi had all held large-scale “living exhibition”. The “joint finger” faction called it the “animal exhibition”. One by one, the leaders and activists of the failed “April 22” faction as well as the “capitalist ousting” (leading cadres) supporting the “April 22” faction were put into an iron cage and exhibited to the outside world for the broad revolutionary masses to visit. It is said that this kind of “living exhibition” can not only show the “great achievements” of the Cultural Revolution of the “joint finger” faction in Guangxi, but also boost the morale of their revolutionaries. Being exhibited as exhibits, it is said that there are also leading cadres at the provincial level. After Nanning and Liuzhou, some regions and counties have followed suit and launched the “Living Exhibition”. Today, the Red Guards at Yishan High School where I work also put us on display as “exhibits”.
The exhibition of the Living was called the public exhibition in ancient times. But only “individual” prisoners were targeted. Wasn’t an exhibition of the living on such a large scale as today an invention of the Cultural Revolution?
As the crowds began to arrive, the exhibition began.
There are 18 people on display. A “capitalist roader”, “the kuomintang remnants”, “reactionary academic authority”, “catch the right”, “4 · 22” faction member, there are four “on April 22” school students (but there was a man shut up in prison, a flight is not captured, the two people temporarily short of exhibition), then I just know, there are two serious illness teachers are also listed in the “display”, just short of exhibition because of illness. The exhibits are arranged according to the size of the crime and the previous position in the school. I was ranked the sixteenth. Behind me were two students who were called “counter-revolutionaries”.
After a blast of slogans, “commentator” began “commentary”. The procedure is: the commentator first uses the bamboo board toward “exhibits” the head force one board to hit down, sends out “beep” a crisp sound. The commentator roared: “×××, lift up your dog’s head!” Let the audience see “exhibits” “reactionary features”, is “ba” a crisp sound, “commentator” roared: “×××, lower your head!” The second procedure is for the narrator to read one or two quotations from Chairman MAO before explaining the “crimes” committed by the “exhibits”. The third procedure was that the narrator repeated the pattern at the beginning by beating down one board and asking the “exhibit” to raise the “head of the dog”, and then beating down another board and asking the “Exhibit” to lower the “head of the dog”. Some of the crowd took the lead in Shouting slogans. This exhibition of “exhibits” has come to an end.
My “narrator” is a “joint finger” Red guard. “The commentator” introduce way: “Guangxi ‘4·22 black gan Jiang’ Li Guo river, bourgeois thought is serious, take the opportunity of the cultural Revolution, jump up and down, maliciously attack my proletarian revolutionaries (point to ‘unite to point to’ a group)… Hui advocated Liu Shaoqi ‘three from a package’, incited farmers to resist grain and taxes, organized assassination teams, plotting to assassinate The active study of MAO’s writings activist Ran Sister-in-law… It’s a death sentence! …” .
Bang! “Li Guo River, lift up your dog’s head!”
I was forced to raise my head again. Then another bamboo plank came down… My “show” program is pretty much finished.
At that time, Aunt Ran was the most famous “active learner and active user of Chairman MAO’s writings” in Guangxi. Aunt Ran and I are from the same village. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the old man brought people to sign up for a local April 22 mass organization. After the People’s Armed Forces Department of Yishan County knew about this, it was said that she was put under house arrest in the armed Forces department to do her ideological work and asked her to withdraw from the “April 22” faction and join the “Joint finger” faction in Guangxi. Guangxi two factions after fighting she has not appeared, so a more than 80 years old granny, who wants to assassinate her? Then, in 1969, when I liberated the cadres, I was liberated, and all these “smears and false words” were demolished.
Yishan High school “living exhibition” a total of seven or eight days, many people outside the unit also came to visit. According to the original plan to always make bottom go to, later because the “MAO zedong thought propaganda teams working class” (hereinafter referred to as “workers propaganda team”) to the school, think about it too degrading, also give them a “revolutionary” smear on the face, then ordered to stop the practice, we can extricate from the humiliation of the plight of these talents.
Yan Huang Chun Qiu, 2012, no. 1
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