- I was 20 years old when my house was raided and I was beaten up by my classmates.
The “little generals” burned many ancient paintings and calligraphies and broke many ancient porcelains, but none of them hid and took them home – maybe they were ignorant. (By no means they are “selfless”, because they took away bicycles, flashlights and other household items, and even “incidentally” took away my mother left behind to paint the old rice paper – they used to write big words. (They used it to write large-character posters.) The class of female Red Guards who copied and burned the ancient calligraphy and paintings was my class, and the destructive copycat was the junior high school Red Guards.
I was in my senior year of high school, and ZJU had a junior high school. It was the female students of our class who instigated them to fight. Because I did not want to see my family’s ancient paintings being burned. In fact, I was only 19 years old according to the real age. Because my father responded to Chairman Mao’s call to learn from the Soviet Union, seven full years old to go to school. So I went to school at the age of seven and a half after two years in the older class. (Small month, born in December)
However, these were the work of junior high school juniors. After my classmates of the Red Five raided my home, a certain Red Five quietly returned the gold necklace my mother had left behind, but the watch returned was a dropped and broken one. (I don’t know which of the Red Five did it, but of course, it was never this classmate.) I was beaten and locked up for a week, with a bruised nose and a swollen face, but I was not subjected to greater abuse – perhaps the “little generals” were still somewhat innocent then, (not benevolent by any means) There were “moral standards” then, but today I’m afraid even such “moral standards” are gone.
Although the word “simple” seems to glorify them and I am reluctant to use it, I can’t think of any other word, and the word “simple” is still inaccurate. So, until now, I resent them, but not hate them – at least, in the early years of the Cultural Revolution, there was still a little bit of simplicity in this group of “high cadres” and the Red Five. (Did they not put me to death yet? Or did I forget the pain of my sores? At that time, I heard a lot about people being killed, but I didn’t hear much about rape. The reason for this is that the students were innocent after all, but later on, there were more people in society who participated in the Cultural Revolution, and the composition became more complicated, so there were things like fishing for property and rape.
But then again, I would rather have “no moral standards” today than “moral standards” forty years ago. In today’s “no moral standards” and deteriorating world, I can at least be left alone and do what I can do. Forty years ago, I and my contemporaries were not able to do what we wanted to do, what we did not want to happen was always stuck to me, insecurities were always lurking in the shadows, and life would change for no reason. Unfortunately, there is no defense against it.
My father, Li Jiazhen, was an underground worker and worked as an assistant to Lu Xuzhang of the East China Trade Department of the Shanghai Military Control Council at the beginning of the liberation. Later he asked to be transferred back to the art world, and in 1954 he became the secretary of the Party Committee of the East China Branch of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, before being branded as a rightist in 1957. Both his father and mother, Zhang Youju, were students during the Jiangjin period of the Wuchang Art College, the predecessor of the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, one under Tang Yihe and the other under Zhang Zhaoming; they were one of the rare artistic couples in the history of Chinese art who joined the revolution together and worked for the underground party.
But there are still wonderful moments in 1966 that make me think about …… to this day
At that time, I had just applied for university. I was a bit “forced” to apply for a foreign language, because my foreign language teacher kept asking me to apply for it. I said, “No, I can’t be a translator because of my poor composition!” “Then you can be a writer!” He still encouraged me. In May 1966, I was still a “educable child”, but after two or three months, I became a “son of a bitch”.
I did not want to enroll in a foreign language, another reason is that I am afraid of memorizing words (I am afraid of recitation by nature, living to this day, I can remember the poems, chapters, are a small sentence, a small paragraph, a small paragraph fragmented), but in the face of the teacher’s expectations, I had to be determined to ruthlessly to memorize words ……
The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you want to do.
I was not “qualified” to do sports, and secondly I was not interested in them, so I took my Russian textbook, my word book and the book I had just borrowed, “How to memorize vocabulary”, got on my Soviet-made bicycle and rode in a flash to the bottom of the Suti “Cross Rainbow Bridge”, facing the West Lake, and sat down on a green wooden chair.
I followed the instructions in the book “How to Memorize Vocabulary” to memorize: “First, memorize the related words in groups of three, three groups, and after you remember more, memorize them in groups of three, three groups ……”.
I memorized and memorized, but the boring words could not be memorized, first I closed my eyes and meditated, and then closed my eyes for a longer and longer time.
…… When I woke up and opened my eyes, guess what I saw? Blue sky and white clouds!
It turns out I had a nice nap on a bench! I will never forget the blue sky and white clouds I saw instantly when I opened my eyes …… until today.
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