01
Cao Binhai, my high school classmate, tall, with the handsome northern men, love to play basketball, love to think, usually smiling, calm, before the Cultural Revolution I did not know that his parents are senior cadres, classmates can not distinguish between the high and low, do not deliberately inquire about each other’s families.
The Cultural Revolution began, the lineage theory couplet (old son hero child good man, old son reactionary child bastard, absolutely so) appeared to make the classmate relationship completely broken. In our Second Affiliated School of Teachers’ University, the children of revolutionary cadres and military officers set up the Red Guards, who were in an absolute dominant position, and some others, in order to show their loyalty to the revolution and Chairman Mao, joined a peripheral organization called “Red Comrades” in humiliation and reluctance, following the Red Guards around. At this point, the different classes of high school students were clearly delineated.
Cao Binhai, who was not only a descendant of the revolution but also the son of a high cadre, refused to join the Red Guards, but instead posted a large-print poster, “Absolutely so, absolutely reactionary”, openly declaring war on the lineage theory couplet! On August 18, 1966, the Red Guards, who had just been received by the great commander in chief, were at their most frenzied. According to the recollection of a teacher, a group of Red Guards debated the couplet with Cao Binhai that day: “It was not a debate, it was noisy and shouting slogans, and setting off firecrackers!”
How to further subdue Cao Binhai? Secretly, there is an unknown operation. There was a Red Guard leader in the senior class, Li Mou, who often went to the nearby Railway Ministry Party School in the red August of 1966, and Cao Binhai’s mother, Fan Ximan, was the head of the Railway Ministry Party School, deputy secretary of the Party Committee.
Li Mou found Fan Ximan’s opposing faction, the party school’s vice president He, in the name of protecting the persecuted workers and peasants cadres, even the couple received He secretly live down in the second annex of the teacher’s university, it can be seen how much energy the Red Guards had at the time, and there is not much restraint between the Red Guards, other Red Guard heads do not stop, at least one of He’s daughter is a Red Guard in our school junior high school, running every day, perhaps to give a favor It.
The “gangster black line” material to track down Cao Binhai’s mother Fan Xieman, which is the Red Guard to extinguish Cao Binhai’s temper winning weapon. The head of the school’s Red Guard, Li Mou, had our class of Red Guards hooked up with the vice president of the Party School of the Ministry of Railways, He.
On August 23, the head of the class Red Guard (male) came to the classroom, saw Cao Binhai and a few students talking, went up and questioned Cao Binhai opposed to the lineage theory couplet of large-character posters, debate back and forth after a few rounds, the male Red Guard came up with a killer, saying “your mother is a capitalist”.
Cao Binhai: “You can say I can, not to say my mother.”
Red Guard: “What’s wrong with saying your mother? Your mother is a capitalist, but also to raid your home.”
Cao Binhai: “Do you dare to go?”
Red Guard: “Why don’t you dare?
Cao Binhai: “Good! I’ll wait for you at home.”
……
The above is the recollection of Yu Fangmin, who was present at the time.
The next day, August 24, the male Red Guard with a few people went to Cao Binhai’s house, Cao Binhai is not at home, his mother Fan Ximan happens to be at home, the male Red Guard struggled her a few sentences, let her bow her head, confess, take the newspaper to write a banner “confession from leniency, resistance from severity”, posted on the wall of her house.
When Cao Binhai came home and found out that the male Red Guards had fought against her mother, he was furious and said in class, “Come at me if you have the guts!” In particular, the male Red Guard was named and told to go.
On August 25, the Red Guards continued to break into private homes to inflict harm on Cao Binhai. After noon, a female Red Guard in the class took a few “red comrades” from the same class to Cao Binhai’s house first, under the pretext of “rebellion” and “breaking the Four Olds”, or go to a high cadre’s house without permission! It is not appropriate to raid the home, when the leaders of various units are posted large print, as long as not yet qualified, Fan Xieman is still a senior party cadres.
This time it is Cao Binhai alone at home, it seems to have the determination of the fish dead. To a few unimportant students, he only pushed a few times, not seriously let them into the home.
At first, they only had a few words of discussion with each other, and someone said, “So-and-so (the male Red Guard who came to the house to fight Cao’s mother last time) will come again!”
Cao Binhai said, “If he comes, I dare to cut him!” He took out a kitchen knife from the kitchen and put it on the table. A “Red Guard” saw this and hurriedly put the knife into a pile of books.
The “so-and-so” male Red Guard really led several junior high school Red Guards into Cao’s house. The two confronted each other for a few moments, and someone said: “Just now Cao Binhai also said to cut you!” The male Red Guard said, “Give him the knife, let him try to cut one!”
At this point, the female Red Guards standing aside pulled out the kitchen knife “Red Comrades” secretly inserted in the book and handed it to Cao Binhai, saying “You cut!”
The surrounding crowd shouted “You cut!” “Do you dare to cut?” All thought that he did not dare to really cut. Cao Binhai swung the kitchen knife, a knife cut in the forehead of the male Red Guard, the male Red Guard fell forward, the back of the head exposed, Cao Binhai and a knife, everyone was confused.
Afterwards, the male red guard had a few stitches and no major injuries, in recent years he attended a symposium of his classmates to tell the truth, restore history, and express deep introspection and remorse for his childish fervor back then.
Cao Binhai incident continues to ferment, a child who lived in the same hospital back then recalled this.
Cao Binhai cut the Red Guards with a knife because the Red Guards of their class repeatedly went to his house to raid the house, he was angry, and said to the Red Guards raiding the house “you come again I will cut you! At that time, a Red Guard brought a knife to him and said. Go ahead and chop! Enraged, Cao Binhai raised his knife and slashed a Red Guard in the head, causing a big disaster. He was immediately beaten by the Red Guards with an iron-tipped belt, and the children in the compound were gathered under their house, hearing the sound of the belt beating but not seeing Cao himself, nor hearing his cries. When the Red Guards beat him to exhaustion and escorted him away, I will never forget that moment! Cao Binhai, wearing a white shirt stained with blood, appeared in front of us with one eye swollen into a fist-sized bag, smiling broadly and shouting “I am not guilty! ……
At night the Red Guards threw everything in their house from the second floor window downstairs, piled it into two big piles and set it on fire all night, and they lined up next to the two piles of fire and sang “Pick up the pen, make a sword and a gun ……..” Singing all night long! I was there for that scene, I was ten years old, but I totally remember the cruelty of that day and night. (Also: Cao Binhai’s little sister, who was only 12 years old at the time, was also present.
On August 25, the day, the second secondary school campus of the teacher’s university led to a more tragic tragedy. Cao Binhai thought that one person is one person, he certainly did not think he would bring his mother to death!
Some people recall that the head of the school’s Red Guards, Li Mou, showed great fervor throughout the incident, and it was he who sent Cao Binhai’s mother, Fan Ximan, to be killed on the day she was arrested from the Party School of the Ministry of Railways to the Second Annex. The second secondary school secretary Jiang Peiliang, Jin Zhengyu teacher was also killed on that day. How many teachers were beaten and raided that day, and how many students were beaten, scolded, punished and blown out of their dormitories, has never been found out.
The torture of Cao Binhai’s mother, Fan Xieman, was carried out on an outdoor concrete ping-pong table, and many students and staff teachers from “bad” backgrounds were forced to watch.
According to the recollections of some of the students present.
Fan Xieman was already on her knees on the concrete ping-pong table when the Red Guards pushed and shoved her, then punched her, pulled her hair, and hit her face. A female Red Guard, Wang Mou, a sophomore, could not hold back her high revolutionary passion and kicked Fan Xieman off the table tennis table, drowning her in the crowd. I could no longer see Fan Xieman’s figure, I could only see someone swinging a water-soaked belt to keep hitting hard, and then someone wielding a one-person high wooden stick, arm-like thickness, like pounding rice vertical ramming down.
One by one, a person tired, someone immediately scrambled to take over the shift. Each ramming, the students onlookers shouted in unison: “Yes!” It was like shouting a labor call. But from the beginning to the end I did not hear Fan Xieman say a word or moan. I didn’t see her resist in the slightest, like a piece of clay, like a piece of cloth, at the mercy of others.
Later, I don’t know who said, “She’s playing dead! The counter-revolution is still resisting!” Someone else said, “Throw water and salt on her!” Then the crowd gave way to the canteen, and I saw Fan Xieman, perhaps already a corpse. She was lying flat on her back, the dark blue blouse already torn, revealing white, swollen skin and streaks of bright red blood on it. Her legs were so swollen they looked like they were going to burst through her pants.
Someone brought a basin of cold water from the cafeteria and poured it over her body, muddy water, and she didn’t move; someone else then sprinkled salt on the wound, and she still didn’t move. Under the summer sun, in full view of all eyes! This scene was carved on my heart like a knife.
The Red Guards took turns to come forward and beat them. The Red Guards ordered Fan Xieman to kneel down. Fan was determined not to kneel. So the beating got worse, and the ping-pong table to the east of the beating was the canteen. The Red Guards brought a pot of salt from the cafeteria and applied salt to the wounds as they beat them. The company has been using wooden sticks, softball bats, and rosewood sticks copied from the family, beating for more than an hour, nearly two hours, without stopping. Not a single cry for mercy was shouted by Fan Xieman. Until finally by two strong red guards with wooden sticks. Been a non-stop ……
The beating that the students recall are all famous and class Red Guards, the Second Affiliated School of Normal University so far no one beater has come forward to admit to apologize, and no one has corrected or opposed.
That day I went to the Northern Normal University to see the big words back, in the school gate, saw a flatbed truck pulled out, Fan Xieman has died, lying on the car, white shirt are shattered. Cao Binhai left a life, because he cut people were twisted to the Public Security Bureau.
Zhong Mou, the leader of the Red Guards at the school, announced over the loud speaker, “We’re going to hold a meeting of 100,000 people to invite Chairman Mao to come and beat Cao Binhai to death at the meeting!” That night, the Red Guards of many schools in Beijing rushed to the Second Affiliated High School to march in solidarity, and the playground was “crowded with people” to denounce the class enemy’s “counter-revolutionary class revenge” against the Red Guards. There were also Red Guards in many places on the street, proclaiming: “The son of a bitch has turned the sky! Kill people! Blood will be spilled!
The tickets for the 100,000-strong congress were blue and gray, and most of them had been issued. On the reverse side of the tickets were printed these demands: 1. We strongly demand that Chairman Mao, the Great Leader, attend the congress; 2. Only children of the Red Five are allowed to attend the congress; 3. …….
On August 25, an incident occurred in the city of Lanchang, Chongwen District, Beijing, in which Li Wenbo, a citizen dissatisfied with being beaten and imprisoned for raiding his home, slashed the Red Guards with a kitchen knife and attempted suicide by jumping off a building, and was beaten to death by the Red Guards. These two incidents of resistance against the Red Guards were made to look like a bloody counterattack by the class enemy and set off an even more serious killing spree in Beijing. (Wang Youqin: “The Dead of the Cultural Revolution” – Li Wenbo)
Zhou Enlai stopped this meeting of 10,000 people, and I think it would have been embarrassing if Chairman Mao and other central leaders had been there to watch Cao Binhai being killed. Late on August 26, Zhou Enlai’s speech at a meeting with representatives of the Red Guards in the capital said, “……… The Party Central Committee is very concerned about You, Comrade Lin Biao care about you, Chairman Mao care about you, you to meet together is not easy, we are very upset. Yesterday, some of our Red Guards were stabbed by bad guys, we are very sad in our hearts and want how to help you, so we want to establish a liaison station at the Labor People’s Cultural Palace ……” Of course he said he also remembered Cao Binhai’s mother, Fan Xieman, the only female deputy director of the Ministry of Railways appointed after 1949.
02
At the end of 1966, the Red Guards who beat and killed people in Red August were criticized, and Comrade Wang of the Public Security Bureau task force went to our school to investigate Cao’s case. By his arrangement, several of us students went to the First Detention Center in Half-Buqiao near Taoranting, which used to be called the First Prison.
I suggested that Cao Binhai’s criminal case should fall under self-defense and should not be kept in custody. The prison authorities said, “If we don’t lock him up, will he survive? He would have been killed!”
The prison also said that “Kang Sheng was the head of this task force”; “Cao Binhai sometimes showed mental abnormalities inside and grabbed other people’s steamed buns, but not often”; “We didn’t tell him that his mother had died “.
See Cao Binhai than the original fat, very short flat head, hair color is a little gray. The prison party in advance to our visit and be visited both sides have taken care of, so no one said anything, just a simple greeting, he smiled cautiously, can not see his nerves have any abnormalities. But I was sad: his mother died because of him, he really did not feel anything in his heart?
My impression is that the prison authorities did not treat him as a “bad guy”, and he was later acquitted, no verdict. My classmate Zhang Zhejiang and I wrote a defense for Cao Binhai. Leng Yunfa was once a Red Guard opponent of Cao Binhai, and after criticizing the Red Guard’s Red Terror, she reflected sincerely and actively participated in this defense.
In September 1968, several of our classmates went to Inner Mongolia to join the brigade, and Cao Binhai’s eldest sister came to Beijing station to see us off and take a group photo. Later, we lost touch with each other.
When did Cao Binhai come out? The people in the Second Affiliated High School don’t know, but I heard that his father picked him up. His father was a major general when he was transferred from the military to the local level, and was persecuted and tortured during the Cultural Revolution. Cao Binhai parents divorced at an early age, he and his sisters have been living with his mother.
I heard that after his release from prison, Cao Binhai was assigned to work at the Qingdao Rolling Stock Factory, far from Beijing. It was also his father’s request that he be transferred back to Beijing from Qingdao. Later, I heard that Cao Binhai had an accident and was hit by a locomotive and died.
But which year did Cao Binhai die? Why did he die? What was his life and mental state after his release from prison? We don’t know anything about it. Decades have passed, and we are still alive as the same classmate. I would like to send a bouquet of flowers to Cao Binhai’s grave to tell him that we have not forgotten!
Many students in the class worked hard to help find clues to contact Cao Binhai’s sister. I specifically went to the Nankou Rolling Stock Factory to find out the status of Cao Binhai’s return to Beijing and the process of the accident, but the factory found no such person or accident. Cao Binhai should have no love or marriage experience before he was born, perhaps he is a collective account? I also went to the police station in the South Exit to check the register of deceased people in the district, but there is no record of Cao Binhai.
Ji Ye of the Liberal Arts class did a lot of investigative work on the 8.25 incident, and heard from her sources that Cao Binhai’s little sister was suffering from depression and that Cao Binhai’s family did not want to have any connection with the Second Affiliated School of Teachers’ University and was too deeply hurt.
The success was not lost, a friend of the Ministry of Railways provided the phone number of Cao Binhai’s big sister. Instead of dialing her directly, I sent a text message: “I really don’t want to bother you, I don’t want to bring up the cruelty of that era, but I wish I knew about your brother’s grave and went to send a bouquet of flowers, I was in his class”. She didn’t reply.
After thinking about it, I passed the phone number to Ms. Wang Youqin: “You should take the blame for my ‘disturbance’ for the sake of social justice, after all, you have made countless phone calls and asked countless people you don’t know in your quest for historical truth – whether they are willing or not. -Whether they are willing or unwilling.”
Fortunately, Wang Youqin got through and relayed the details to me: Cao Binhai died in August 1985 at the age of 38. He was transferred from Qingdao Rolling Stock Plant to Beijing Changping Rolling Stock Plant, and in August 1985, a few days before the anniversary of his mother’s death, he went into a trance and was hit by the head of a locomotive while crossing a railway track. Cao Binhai has no cemetery, and his ashes are with his mother at Babaoshan.
In May 2016 I went to the Babaoshan Cemetery and found the ashes of Fan Ximan and Cao Binhai, who had long since changed his name to Fan Dong. I brought a bouquet of flowers and bowed silently in front of the urn of Fan Ximan and Fan Dong, in my heart on behalf of many students of the Second Affiliated School.
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