After Dad was beaten as a rightist, he used part of his savings to buy a Soviet-made women’s bicycle, because he knew that it was impossible to have a car to pick him up from work, and the Academy of Fine Arts had just moved to Nanshan Road, and our home at the foot of the Lone Mountain, halfway across the West Lake.
Our family does not like to save money, Dad does not like to save money, Mom does not like to save money, and later I also do not like to save money, especially no sense of worry, belong to the “eat all, use all, health” family. At the beginning of the liberation, my mother was the deputy manager of the East China Petroleum Company, with a salary of about 120 yuan; my father was the director of the office of the president of the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Economics and the director of the personnel department, with a salary of about 140 yuan, and I was the only child, so I should be able to save money.
But my mom and dad were engaged in underground work, and they were almost “glorious” in the secret prison of the Kuomintang on the eve of the liberation, so they felt that the liberation of the new China had brought them back two lives, so they worked with forgetfulness and spent money on their comrades without distinguishing between you and me. Although they did not yet “regard money as dirt”, and knew that “a thousand pieces of gold scattered” would not “come back”, but they were known for their hospitality, and often had The “comrades” often came to greet our old nanny on Saturday: “Chen Ma, kill a chicken tomorrow, I have guests!” — they came to our house almost every Sunday to “eat”, and even made such unorthodox requests.
But in 1958, Mom and Dad began to panic about the lack of savings in their bankbook, because Dad was involved in the second batch of rightist hooding in 1958, and at this time, he heard and saw that many people who had been hooded as rightists were dismissed from their jobs, and some were even sent to the countryside for rehabilitation. To be honest, although Dad was from a large family, this life of forty years of experience is to study and teach and sit in the office, has never done the rough work, but he was not afraid of manual labor, but also not afraid to go to the countryside, but Mom had a stroke in 1957 hypertension, is already half paralyzed people, he really can not let go.
So they planned, as a last resort, to stay in Hangzhou, even to pedal tricycle to earn money (of course, although the mother fell ill, she still has a salary, but has been greatly reduced from the original 120 yuan down to 78 yuan). They never saved, but before Dad was officially notified of his “cap”, they managed to save enough money to buy a tricycle by picking up a couple of hundred yuan from their salaries every month.
Due to the “organizational care”, considering that mom was an old party member and bedridden, dad was not sent to the countryside and was only rehabilitated in his original unit; so dad used part of his savings that he intended to buy a tricycle to buy this Soviet-made bicycle for women.
This bike was bought at a really good time, because after Dad was formally hooded, he was criticized at conferences and meetings and could not leave work normally, and if he, a hot-tempered man, had to defend himself (that is, “plead not guilty”) when he heard the falsehoods planted on his head as a charge, the time of leaving work was delayed until after dark. At that time, the only bus number 7 from the “city” to the outer West Lake (the name of the road on the island in the West Lake where we lived) had already passed the last bus time.
After my mother’s death, my father told me, “Every time I rode my bike and slid off the Jintiao Bridge to the front of Zhongshan Park, I always braked and stopped in front of the big Hanbai jade stone lion and put my hand into the mouth of the stone lion to let the cold stone lion calm my anger: ‘Li Jiazhen, be calm, there is still a patient at home! ‘” Later, instead of venting his anger, he had to act as if nothing was wrong and withstand his wife’s scrutinizing gaze.
I still remember that at this time, the mother must be waiting at the window near the road, half-paralyzed she is touching the bed rail table step by step to get there. At this time, there must have been a small bottle of wine with two taels of soju on the table and a plate of food to drink – she asked old man Xu from the yard to buy them from the “Taiheyuan” restaurant next door. But after he became the secretary of the Party Committee of the Academy of Fine Arts and taught classes (teaching “History of the United Communist Party” and “Political Economy”), Mom forbade him to touch alcohol for fear of being “badly affected” by the smell of alcohol. She put the wine and food on the table after dinner and waited for her husband to return home.
The Soviet women’s car with friction lights was black, with a beautiful curve in the gear frame that curved downward after the leader, and a black wire net was carefully added to the rear wheel – a small addition to keep the women’s large skirts from rolling into the wheel, and to allow the skirt covering the rear wheel to float in the wind to increase the flowing beauty of the woman on the bike. The beauty of. However, when I bought the bike, my father was riding it, so the beautiful net cover was removed.
The bike was bought as a woman’s bicycle, 80% of the time my father wanted me to ride it later, but he didn’t teach me when my mother was alive because she was worried. However, in my father’s hands, the bike was, as he put it, “used up enough”.
In the years of being criticized, this car carried him in the daytime to face those hideous faces, and finally at night to return to the warm home; in the days and months of the great steelmaking, this car carried the exhausted him to and fro – this car’s credit is not small! But my father is most pleased is in the “three years of natural disasters” period, this woman car made a great deal of credit: Dad rode it all around Hangzhou, large and small free markets. Said “free market”, in fact, those who saw the police on the small black market, the dawn only existed, so Dad to an early morning will ride that car to those small market, late to go to the nothing.
The savings that he had intended to buy the tricycle, except for the bicycle and a 50 yuan thin pocket watch made in Suzhou, went up in smoke at the cost of three eggs for one dollar. Dad didn’t regret the high price of the eggs he bought at that time (you know, in the 1960s, you could often feed a family for thirty yuan! He said: “A sick person can’t live without this nutrition! Knowing that the yolk is high in cholesterol, it can’t be helped, even more expensive can’t afford to buy ……”
Mom is the wife of a rightist, even if she is an old party member, even if she is paralyzed in bed, at that time also can not get any care, I am afraid that dad is also with deep guilt. (Not that it was his fault.) That’s why he rode around desperately looking for eggs.
Mom finally died in 1962, of uremia. To this day, Dad still thinks that she got sick again because she ate a large rooster he bought on the black market. “Rooster is a hairy thing! But …… couldn’t buy any other nutrition at that time!” Whenever this matter is mentioned, Dad always regrets it.
After the death of my mother, my father began to teach me to learn to ride a bicycle, “practice car” is rented, the practice field is Suti, because afraid to break their own car. I lived in junior high school and couldn’t use the bicycle. In the fall of 1963, when I was admitted to Zhejiang University High School, which was two stops away from the West Lake where my family lived, my father officially gave me this bicycle for use.
The road in front of the ZJU Middle School was a long slope, about a mile long, and it was hard to ride up, but when I went down, it was as fast as flying, and the wind was blowing in my ears.
I will remember this slope for the rest of my life, because one day in the fall of 1966, my skillful “car” downhill made someone suffer a loss, so the next day I suffered a big loss.
As a matter of fact, in the autumn of 1966, we 66 high school graduates and the alma mater ZJU affiliated high school should have nothing to do with it, because according to the routine, at this time the graduates into the university after graduation into the university, did not enter the university is staying at home. But because this year is 1966, different from the norm.
In June, when the news came from Beijing that Chairman Mao supported the rebellion of Nie Yuanzi of Peking University and was going to start a campaign, our school, which had many children of provincial cadres, exploded, especially in our class. As I watched, the children of peasants and cadres, who had the best political prospects for further study but were overwhelmed by the pressure of further study and examinations, were particularly excited, as if they had finally found a straw to get rid of. So, they wrote big-character posters, criticized teachers, and set up Red Guard organizations, and were very busy.
I thought it was inappropriate for me to join the movement, firstly because of my status as the daughter of a rightist, and secondly because I was uncomfortable with their revenge – normally, teachers, whether they were from good or bad backgrounds, were treated with courtesy and affection, and even marks were not deducted for wrong questions in exams, but now they wanted to do such nonsense. Where is their conscience? Of course, it is still necessary to take a stand, and I also wrote several large-character posters, just to take a stand and show my support for the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”.
However, as the Great Leader said, “The tree wants to move but the wind does not stop”, and the “lineage theory” was a raging trend in the campus, and we, the children of the rich, the poor, the anti, the bad and the right, could not avoid it. That day, I heard that the next day at the entrance to the school on both sides to hang a pair of written “old son hero child good man, old son reactionary child bastard”, each student passing through this door in addition to “to declare their family” to explain their composition (family origin), the composition of bad Students with bad composition had to make fools of themselves by chanting: “I’m a son of a bitch, I deserve to die! I deserve to die!”
I decided not to go to school the next day, so I asked a neighbor girl who went to junior high school in Zhejiang University to ask the Red Guards in our class for leave, saying that she was “sick and resting at home”.
During those two or three months when Chairman Mao was in Beijing to meet with the Red Guards again and again, the Red Guards and the children of the Red Five in our class were busy going north and had no time for me, so this summer, except for occasionally going to the Chinese hospital to get two pairs of Chinese herbs to regulate dampness and heat and come back to decoct and eat and eat, I just “cat” at home on weekdays, not going out of the door, not entering. Dad was “ordered” to enter the “cowshed” of the Academy when the campaign started, so I had a very lonely summer.
However, as the old saying goes, “luck comes but can’t be stopped, bad luck comes but can’t be avoided”, once the summer vacation was over, the Red Guards and Red Five who had been received by the Great Leader came back in high spirits and immediately organized the whole class to raid my house.
My house was turned upside down, so the “dark side” of my house finally “saw the light of day” – not only copied two large bags of books, but also copied many paintings and calligraphy, including the late Qing Dynasty The “dark side” of my house finally “saw the light of day” – not only two sacks of books, but also many paintings and calligraphies, including more than a hundred pages of the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republican period, some of which came from the famous Fei Xiaolou. Their war results are not to say that it is not fruitful.
I was also “ordered” to return to school to “carry out the revolution”, and the next day I had to go to school obediently. That day was October 7.
When they saw that I had obeyed and returned to school, they didn’t make things difficult for me, but at the end of the school day, one of the female Red Guards greeted me: “We’re going to burn the ‘feudal capitalism’ things we copied from your house, and you have to watch the burning!”
They felt that burning the paintings and calligraphy copied from my house in front of me was very impressive and would give me a feeling of “accompanying the beheading.
When I saw them pile up the hundred or so pages by the playground and set them on fire, the anger in my chest finally got the better of me: “These ancient paintings, you can surrender them to the museum, why burn them?
Then, without looking back, I quickly left these ignorant and uneducated “revolutionary generals”, went to the carport, rolled out the bicycle, and rode out of the school.
As I left them, I could faintly hear their indignant shouts behind my head, probably accusing me, probably ordering me to come back, but I didn’t listen to them, because my heart was also full of anger and contempt! So they got even angrier, so they told the little junior high school Red Guards who did whatever they told them to get on their bikes and chase me back immediately to be criticized.
Just as I rode out of the school gate, I heard someone behind me shouting my name and telling me to stop.
I didn’t stop, knowing that they were the ones who were chasing me away. I pedaled harder and gripped the handlebars more tightly with both hands. I felt the bike racing down the long slope like an arrow off a string.
Suddenly, the bag rack on the back wheel of my bike was hit hard by something, and the whole bike shook a little. Fortunately, I had a good grip on my bike and my bike didn’t get knocked over and I was still speeding.
I thought they didn’t seem to be catching up, so I looked back. I saw something – far away, the junior high school kid who hit me was sitting in the middle of the road, cursing and swearing at me, next to his bike that had been broken because he hit me.
Of course they didn’t stop there, and the next day after school, the two junior high school kids were waiting for me by the playground.
One of them, the first thing he said to me was, “You fucking son of a bitch!”
I replied, “I’m not a son of a bitch, I’m a human being! –My mom and dad didn’t crawl out of the dog hole, they didn’t defect, they walked out of a KMT prison with a straight face!”
The other party cursed, “Your father is a son of a bitch!”
I said back, “Your father is a son of a bitch!”
The other party scolded: “Your father is an old rightist!”
I said back, “Your father is a capitalist!”
Now, against the scales of the dragon, they became furious, dragged me away, and beat me up. Afterwards I knew that the one who scolded me was the son of the provincial party secretary Chen Weida, the provincial party secretary is “standing aside” these days, the son of the secretary is not feeling well at the moment, my scolding back is poking him in the heart.
These junior high school kids and other cadre children of ZJU are all Red Guards.
At this time, as it is known that the earliest Red Guards in Beijing were composed of the highest-ranking cadres’ children, they called themselves “high cadres’ children”, so the local cadres’ children have followed this name, also called themselves “high cadres’ children”, and in the late Cultural Revolution, even county cadres, commune cadres’ children also called themselves “high cadres’ children” it!
It is said that at the height of the frenzied activities of the Beijing Linkage, several sons of provincial cadres from our Zhejiang University High School went to Beijing and asked to join its organization. The children of these activists did not even give them a glance and refused with these words: “Your father is a bad cadre, we don’t want him!” –Turned out, the linkage is composed of top cadres’ children, their fathers’ level is either one or two, so they do not want the provincial third or fourth cadres’ children to participate. Hey, pedigree theory to this place is also true, so that those in the local bravado of the cadres of the children lost the prestige, had to wilt head and return. I don’t know if this rumor is true, but if it is made up, the person who made it up is also quite humorous.
They pushed me into the reading room of about ten square meters, the long reading table in the middle of the room where all kinds of newspapers were placed had been removed, but the wooden benches on the four sides, not removed, were placed against the wall.
They pushed and shoved to get me to the center of the hut, these 13 or 14 year olds half of the youth then jumped on the bench one by one, have untied the brass headband around the waist, waving to me to hit the head ……
The whole process of beating me is not detailed here, I will write another article later, because the focus of this article is the bike.
The state of being beaten can be briefly described: the next day my face was all swollen up, my nose almost flush with my face, only the tip of my nose raised a little. A week later, my father saw me, showed me the bruises on my back, burst into tears, and told me that it was not a strip of bruises, but the whole back was a purple bruise ……
The Red Guards were held at school for a week, and the Red Guards “visited” my house repeatedly. At this time my house was empty, so the Red Guards came to my house as if no one was there, at will, without any hindrance. Not only did they “take” the flashlights they needed, the paper they needed to write large-character posters (specifically, the old Xuan paper that my mother cherished and was going to keep for painting), but they also destroyed all of my household utensils and appliances that could be smashed, torn, or broken, such as all of the porcelain (including several antique porcelain bottles), hot water bottles, books and paintings (not part of the Books and paintings (which did not belong to the scope of feudal capital repair). Later I learned that such a form of copying, called “destructive copying”, was also taken from Beijing “to learn from the experience”.
I returned to the home has been trampled on the home, see the torn books on the ground half a foot high, see the house outside the smashed pieces of utensils scattered everywhere, want to cry, and even do not care to clean, every day to step on the room spread three, four square meters of broken books and porcelain tiles, through the outer room to the inner room to sleep, and in the morning from the inner room to step on the broken books and porcelain tiles through the outer room. During this time, my father was allowed to come back to visit the Red Guards of the Academy of Fine Arts once, but he was too lazy to clean, only half a foot high in the house of the remnants of the porcelain tiles to pick out a walkable path, to facilitate my passage. I remember when I left, my father left a sentence: “The Kuomintang agents raided the house, not like this!” –At the end of 1948, my mother and father, who were working underground, were arrested late at night, and the Kuomintang agents also raided our house, looking in the toilet, panning the milk powder cans, and going through the whole house. “The Kuomintang agents raided our house, but not like this!”
By the end of 1966, these early Red Guards themselves were in a situation of “mud bodhisattva crossing the river – it is difficult to protect themselves”, their fathers who were all big officials were being criticized as “capitalists” by the newly risen rebel faction, so their most important class enemy was now the rebel faction, and they had no time to care about those old “fallen dogs”, old class enemies.
These old class enemies were “the rich, the poor, the anti, the bad, the right” and later added “capital”. At the end of 1966, they and their families, the home raids have been raided, not killed have been “no nonsense, no movement” and obediently stay aside. I also stayed at home, only occasionally riding my bicycle to the hospital or to visit my father in the “cowshed” at the Academy of Fine Arts, and reading the big-character posters, living a life of purity and inactivity.
After all, bicycles were still a luxury in 1966, so Zhang Chao, a Red Guard at the Academy, took an interest in my bicycle. One day, he appeared in our courtyard, and once again my clean life was interrupted.
He came up with a very rude, “Hey, are you Li Jiazhen’s daughter?”
Although I didn’t recognize him, I could see that he was not a good person, so I had to answer, “Yes.”
“Where is that bike? We want to use it.”
“The bicycle is mine, you see, and it’s still a woman’s.”
I also knew that such a plea was feeble, so I tried to find another witness. I saw a certain teacher who was panning for rice by the communal tap water in the middle of the courtyard, and said to him, “Teacher x, tell him, is this bicycle mine to use?”
The teacher, who was usually a good friend of ours, lowered his head, and I thought he would nod a little and give me proof, but he just lowered his head, held the rice pot with a bitter smile of embarrassment on his face, and hurriedly left this place of right and wrong. I cast a look for help to several other teachers in the courtyard, and all I saw was a head turned away.
For a moment, a feeling of helplessness enveloped me, and I understood that no one would testify to me.
Next to me, Zhang Chao said coldly, “Whether you use it or not, it is always the bike of the rightist Li Jiazhen.”
I understood at once that this was not the age of reasoning, even if someone came out to testify for me. Besides, these teachers were all teachers of the Academy of Fine Arts, and they did not dare to offend the Red Guard of the Academy.
What do you mean by “protect yourself”, this day I have the most profound understanding.
Ten years had passed, and it was 1976.
Of course, “in the blink of an eye” is from my point of view now – a person who looked at that decade from the outside in 2006. At that time, I felt that the decade was very long, and the country also spent a lot of time in that decade, not to mention that the leadership of the country changed hands several times during that decade. Fortunately, the power finally returned to the hands of the leading class that was in power ten years ago, and the children of the leading class finally had a day to raise their eyebrows, especially for the Red Guards who were so powerful at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, but later wilted their heads.
One day in the late autumn of 1976, dozens of exalted Red Guards gathered at the entrance of the Academy of Fine Arts, some of whom had been afraid to show their faces at the Academy for seven or eight years, because the Academy had been led by the “rebel faction” for the first seven or eight years. Although the “rebels” also called themselves the Red Guards when they first started, but they were the “three divisions” (Third Command), the people’s impression is not deep, in the minds of the people, mention the “Red Guards In the minds of the people, mentioning the “Red Guards” always refers to the “First Division” (First Command) of the Red Guards who raided homes and gave the most vigorous “cow devils and snake gods” to wear high hats at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
Now, at the entrance of the Academy of Fine Arts are the former “First Division” Red Guards, and Zhang Chao, who had taken my bicycle from me, is among them.
Zhang Chao is very excited, he was suppressed for a few years, now finally can hold their heads high back, and can and “old comrades” reunion, to talk about the great years, how can he not cheer?
However, Zhang Chao’s laughter in front of the school alarmed one person, namely my father.
Although the rightists would not be rehabilitated until 1977, a year later, they were not in the situation of “being beaten by everyone” as they were ten years ago.
He came out of nowhere, came to the front of the school pile of people, and said loudly to the laughing Zhang Mou: “Zhang Chao, you can now return the bicycle snatched from my daughter to me, right?”
Zhang Chao was simply confused: of course he knew this old rightist, and of course at this time he remembered the Soviet-made women’s bicycle, but he did not know how to reply – it seemed that it was not good enough to simply scold, the situation was different in the end! He said, “I …… didn’t rob that bicycle, and I didn’t use that bicycle afterwards!”
“How is it that you didn’t rob it? Did you not take it from my daughter?” The father still aggressively questioned.
At some point, those people beside Zhang Chao, one by one, slipped away. The father saw that he had achieved his goal, so he also went away. Of course, the purpose was not to get back the Soviet-made women’s bicycle, which he knew would never come back.
Written in 2006
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