Soon, Man Ping found out that I often appeared in the garden in the early morning. So if she came home at night, she would write a note and roll it into a small ball and drop it in the garden, so that I could see it the next morning when I came downstairs for a walk. It rained a lot in September, and every other day it rained, and the paper ball was soaked to the point that it was impossible to open. What could she write on a small note? It could only be a greeting to me. For example, “I love you, Mom!” “Take care of yourself”, “Let’s be brave and weather the storm together, dear mom ……” and so on. These are certainly a great comfort to me and make me feel less lonely.
Whenever I went to the kitchen to eat, if Lao Zhao was also inside, then the Red Guards had to watch from the side and forbid us to talk. But between Zhao and the Red Guards, it is possible to talk casually. Later I found out that although Lao Zhao was talking to the Red Guards, there were many things he said that were specifically for my ears. For example, one day, Lao Zhao asked the Red Guards, “Do you often beat up teachers?”
I found Lao Zhao’s question very surprising. Because when the Red Guards came to raid the house on August 30, they were still very friendly to their teachers. I waited impatiently to hear the Red Guard’s answer.
The Red Guard said unconcernedly, “If they have bourgeois ideas or force us to study and prevent us from joining the revolutionary movement, then we will beat them up. There are many teachers who just don’t understand the importance of an in-depth cultural revolution. They still believe in the stuff written in books. The great leader Chairman Mao taught us that ‘we learn to swim in swimming’ and that we must learn in the practice of the revolutionary movement and in hard labor. The school routine is outdated. Those teachers who still cling rigidly to book knowledge are surely against our great leader, and we must then treat them as enemies.”
On another occasion, Lao Zhao asked the Red Guards, “Did you go to the storming of the city hall?”
“Of course! This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time. The entire Shanghai city government has been corrupted by revisionism into heart-piercing rot.”
From Lao Zhao’s conversations with the Red Guards and from the Red Guards’ leaflets and mimeographs, I learned that now, every day, thousands of Red Guards were springing up to join forces with workers’ organizations and form new rebel groups. I don’t know if they are doing this to achieve some kind of personal benefit, or if they are simply afraid of being seen as backward elements. This situation prompted the masses to be forced into this Revolution.
The raids on capitalists and the strikes on intellectuals led to the growing selfishness of the Red Guards and the rebels. The methods of persecution also became increasingly virulent and cruel. They were eager to push the movement deeper and deeper. It seems that the leaders of the ultra-leftists wanted to take advantage of the situation and the psychological state of the rebels to focus on the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and the municipal government and put pressure on them, condemning them for harboring the bourgeoisie in order to oppose Mao’s line. They asserted that the municipal party committee and the municipal government had deliberately refused to carry out Mao’s instructions for several years. Of course, the leaders of the Shanghai Municipal Committee and the municipal government were not novices in politics. They had experienced the stirrings of many political storms. They understood that Mao’s set of tactics was to mobilize the masses. So they themselves took the approach of mobilizing the masses. Soon they also organized their own Red Guards and rebel factions to intervene in the cultural revolution. They started a big debate with the ultra-leftists and fought for the leadership of the Cultural Revolution. In their slogans and actions, each faction tried to make itself appear more red, more brutal, and more leftist. So unless the two organizations engaged in armed combat and fought to the death, you could not figure out which faction each organization belonged to. At the same time, the so-called bourgeoisie and intellectuals were caught in the middle of the struggle between the two factions and suffered a lot of pain. For both factions wanted to show their cynicism toward their class enemies. Whoever fights the hardest will appear to have the real power.
As the situation of violent persecution escalated, the cultural revolution became deeper and deeper. The crackdown on class enemies became more and more widespread and involved more and more people. A new slogan was introduced, emphasizing the need to degrade and combat the sons and daughters of bourgeois families. The slogan was: “Dragons give birth to dragons, winds give birth to winds, and rats give birth to sons who dig holes in the wall.” Meaning that the children of class enemies must also be class enemies. I really couldn’t figure out how such a slogan emphasizing genetics could appear in a country that believes in Marxist materialism. I don’t have the time or energy to ponder this question. But after this slogan was raised, Man Ping was removed from the ranks of the masses and put into the “cowshed” together with some other class enemies of the studio. The victims in the “cattle shed” spent all their time writing confessions and trying to purge their minds of individualism that did not conform to Mao Zedong’s thought. I learned all this from a conversation between Lao Zhao and another Red Guard. Once I heard Lao Zhao yelling outside my room that he was going to send a bedding and replacement clothes to Man Ping because she had been put in the “cow shed” and was not allowed to go home. At dinner, I couldn’t swallow a single bite. But in order to learn about Man Ping’s recent situation, I had to pretend to sit in the kitchen to eat. The old Zhao did not disappoint me, I just sat down, he talked to the Red Guard about Man Ping.
“I saw her. I gave her all my stuff. She looks good and is in a good mood. She told me that she was writing a critical examination to recognize her origins. She also said that everyone in the cowshed was taking good care of her. It seems that she is quite cheerful. But what kind of criticism did she need to write? She was a member of the Communist Youth League and had received many commendations and several awards. She was very friendly to the proletariat. Once in the countryside, a peasant woman suddenly fell ill, and Man Ping immediately took her to the commune hospital in a boat by herself, saving the peasant woman’s life.”
“She was born in a foreign country and came from such a family, so of course she had to be self-critical.” The Red Guard said to Lao Zhao, “She may be a red carrot, red on the outside and white on the inside. In any case, the Communist Youth League has now been disbanded at all. Hu Yaobang, the General Secretary of the Communist Youth League, is also a revisionist.”
Not long after, the rebels from the film factory came. They raided Man Ping’s room and swept away everything she had left in the room. This sudden turn of events caused me a great deal of pain. I didn’t care about any blow to myself, but now that Manning was involved, I was devastated.
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