Chapter 7: The January Revolution and the PLA’s Support for the Left
I waited for the interrogator to come back for another arraignment. A few days passed, however, but nothing happened. I saw the guards running back and forth in the corridor in a restless manner, and the air seemed a bit tense, so I guessed that something new must have happened outside. I often intentionally stood against the cell door, hoping to hear the sound of the guards in the small room at the top of the tunnel. But I could only hear their tense voice, but not the specific content of the speech. Sometimes they seemed to be arguing about something, but most of the time, they just lowered their voices and whispered. Although the prison is a dead silence, but how can not hear what they are actually talking about. I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous because I couldn’t hear a single drop of information.
At the beginning of December, shortly after my first trial, the guards stopped delivering newspapers to us. This was very unusual. Because newspapers were always considered an important tool for educating prisoners, the guards kept ordering us to read them carefully. After a few days, I began to ask them for newspapers to read. At first the guard refused my request, and after my repeated requests, she said impatiently, “You don’t know that there is a revolution going on outside.”
Until about the middle of December, it was the season of cold winter and ice lock, the northwest wind that pierced the marrow of the bones swept through Shanghai. The temperature dropped day by day, straight down to about zero degrees and then lingered. The unrestrained cold wind, the windows of my cell scraped the rattling, covering the handkerchief on the window seams, often by the cold wind scraped to pieces. I have put on two sweaters and a cotton jacket, but still freezing shivering, teeth chattering straight. The cold, bone-chilling cell, the breath coming out of the mouth like a white cloud. I could only keep stamping my feet and rubbing my hands against each other to make my fingers and toes feel a little warm. When the guards yelled at the prisoners to do outdoor exercises, I think they themselves must have been very reluctant to leave the fireplace in their cells when it was freezing cold.
The wind is strong outside, but it’s still warmer than a humid cell. And moving around will also accelerate blood circulation. But the uncontrollable cold wind can’t stop blowing dust, making everywhere a gray cloud, you can’t open your eyes.
Suddenly I saw all the guards, all swarmed out of the tightly closed booths on the watchtower, rushing down the escalator along the way and disappearing in an instant. At the same time, the noise on the road grew louder and louder, like at least a few thousand people, with the momentum of a mountain, into the guardhouse. The PLA soldiers on the post, still firmly clutching their rifles, stood firm at their posts, but could not help but stretch their heads and necks and look out towards the entrance of the prison. At that moment, I could hear a female prisoner in the next playground, nervously pressing her voice, but clearly saying, “It’s about the Red Guards coming to rescue the comrades thrown into prison by the city government.”
Immediately afterwards, from another playground came the cry of a young woman: “Let me out! Let me out! I am a Red Guardl Long live the Great Leader Chairman Mao!” That cry for freedom mingled with the sound of fists beating against the gate.
The riot at the entrance of the guardhouse continued until the noise came to an abrupt end after a burst of gunfire, which was fired by the PLA guards. After a while, the guards came back one by one and escorted the prisoners out of the playground. The Red Guards’ attempt to storm the guardhouse gave the guards such a shock that when they opened the gates of the playground, they seemed much more moderate, not yelling as loudly as usual, “Come out!” They just waited by the gate and let us go out on our own.
In the following days, there was a clear difference in the attitude of the guards. They began to be less responsible, often absent on duty, for hours at a time, they did not see them, not even the sound. Fortunately, the women in the kitchen continued to bring food and boiling water to the prisoners. The young woman who was serving her sentence here also brought us water for washing and brushing as usual. The guards, even when they came on duty, just gathered in that small room, talking nervously about something. From the occasional words I caught, I had a feeling that they were also involved in the revolution, and that they were preparing to establish their own revolutionary organization so that they could also join the ranks of the revolutionary army as a high-flying rebellion. For the prisoners, the guards’ self-care also relieved the heavy pressure on everyone. At times, some prisoners could be heard, no longer lowering their voices to speak. Some could even be heard snickering.
Since December 2, when I stopped sending out newspapers, I began to lightly mark the wall to count the dates. By the time I reached the twenty-third bar, it was Christmas night, by my reckoning. Although it was past the time to go to bed, the guards had not yet informed me to go to bed. I could only sit there in the long, cold night. Suddenly, a soprano sang the hymn “Christmas Eve” upstairs, at first in a timid and tentative manner, but then the song gradually rose to a higher and stronger pitch, and it rose like a dervish in the prison cell, which was confined by four walls, and stirred in the eerie and dark corridor, clear and loud, making me glad and moved. Her singing voice made me conclude that it was the voice of a professional singer, and that she might have angered the extreme leftists and been arrested and imprisoned. For me, listening to an unseen prisoner refugee sing “Christmas Eve” in this icy cell was one of the most timeless and endlessly meaningful Christmas concerts I have ever attended in my life. Finding no one to stop her, she sang even more indulgently, without any sense of timidity or hesitation. The whole cell was silent, and everyone was holding their breath to enjoy the beautiful song.
When the last note was still floating in the air, the guards stomped up the concrete escalator. As they scurried from cell to cell, they asked, “Who’s singing? Who?” and “Who’s breaking discipline?” But none of the prisoners answered them.
After New Year’s Day, a loudspeaker was set up in the corridor and all the prisoners were ordered to sit down and listen to an important report.
A man read out a proclamation from the Shanghai Workers’ Rebellion Command. It announced that the Shanghai Red Guards and rebel faction, with the approval of the Central Cultural Revolution in Beijing, had taken power over the Shanghai Municipal Government on January 4, thus bringing down the “reactionary” municipal committee and the municipal government. For a long time, the old Shanghai Municipal Committee had been opposing the correct line of the great leader Chairman Mao, following the revisionist line and trying to carry out a capitalist restoration in China.
Later, the newspapers published an editorial on this issue, saying that the “hero” of this revolutionary action was Wang Hongwen, who used to be the head of the security section in a yarn factory. He united the rebellious mass organizations that had sprung up in the city and set up the Shanghai Workers’ Rebellion General Headquarters, with himself as its leader. His behind-the-scenes supporter was Zhang Chunqiao, an old acquaintance of Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, and the Shanghai representative of the Central Cultural Revolution Leadership Group in Beijing. Eventually Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen and a well-known ultra-leftist writer Yao Wenyuan formed a tight-knit political clique, the infamous “Gang of Four””.
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