Chapter 9

In late 1965, with the suppression of the drama, Hairui Dismissed from Office, we saw the birth of the Cultural Revolution. This was a play written by Wu Han, the vice-mayor of Beijing, who was a distinguished historian. His drama dealt with an administrative officer during the Ming dynasty who fought to rid the people of a tyrant and return farmland to the peasants. Hairui became a god in the people’s hearts, especially when he dared to criticize the emperor. For this major crime, he was dismissed from office. Wu Han’s drama was accused of using the past to criticize the present. Some party officials interpreted it as referring to the Lushan Meeting of 1959, where Marshall Peng Dehuai had been dismissed from office for criticizing Mao’s Three Red Banners policy. Eventually, Mao himself criticized the play by pointing out that its focus was on Hairui’s dismissal from office after championing the people. Therefore, Mao used this distorted logic to charge that Wu Han was anti-Party and anti-Socialist.

Shortly after the charges against Wu Han became public, a new element in Chinese politics, the four top ranking Party cadres now known as the Gang of Four began their own evil drama to seize supreme power. Making use of their various posts, these four wrote articles one after another viciously attacking Wu Han and declared him guilty of treason. However, some, such as Deng Xiaoping and Beijing’s mayor, Peng Zhen, saw the matter differently. They held the play to be a matter of academic discussion without any relation to Marshall Peng. They pointed to the historical lessons of the Stalin Era, and held that in academic matters we should seek truth through facts and everyone should be considered equal and without bias before the truth. They stated that in socialism, we should not make arbitrary decisions and force people to submit, but convince people by reason.

Mayor Peng Zhen tried to check the play’s criticism by
drawing it into a public academic discussion. After that effort,
one explosion followed another in the news. Mao charged that
authority in academic circles and education was still in the
hands of bourgeois intellectuals. The more the socialist
revolution advanced, the more the intellectuals would resist,
and the more their true anti-Communist and anti-Socialist faces
would be exposed. This simple idea became his bugle call
announcing the coming of the Cultural Revolution. He went so
far as to charge that many, like Vice-mayor Wu, although
members of the Communist Party, were in fact anti-Communist
Nationalists and sympathizers of the KMT. Mao also pointed to
the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party,
portraying them as “a sheaf of bad elements, where even a
needle or a drop of water could not get through.” Throughout all
of this ideological chaos, the original five person committee
which had recently been appointed to lead the Cultural
Revolution was suddenly dismissed with the announcement that
a new committee was to be established.

At this time in the evolution of the Chinese Communist
Party the four leading Party cadres who saw this period of
internal ideological strife and chaos as the perfect opportunity
to seize the leadership of the Cultural Revolution, began to do
so for themselves. It was under the great influence and behind
the scenes power of a mysterious third rate actress, Jiang Qing,
that the Gang of Four was able to solidify its control over the
Cultural Revolution Committee. This power hungry actress had
become the wife of none other than Mao himself. She was
joined in her quest for national prominence by Chen Boda, and
their two advisors, Kang Sheng and Wang Hong Wen. At that
time no one imagined the amount of power that Mao would
eventually permit this new Cultural Revolution Committee to
wield within Chinese politics, government, and society, to say
nothing of their permanent effect upon our culture. We would
all soon watch in horror as these four become the root of
China’s unprecedented suffering.

The first political battle of the Cultural Revolution
culminated in the fall of Beijing’s Mayor, Peng Zhen.
Newspapers throughout the country ferociously attacked the
Beijing evening newspaper serial Three Family Village. They
accused this serial of being part of an elaborately organized
attack on socialism, and they went on to speculate on its
motives. They insisted on digging up the root that grew deep
underneath it. This attack clearly focused on Beijing Mayor
Peng and the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist
Party. Everyone understood that the newspapers were the voice
of the Party, so they were shocked to read this attack on a part
of the Party. Once again, there was no way for the Chinese
people to know what was going on behind the scenes.
The newspapers told us what the Party liked or disliked,
but it was never their intent to tell us the truth or the facts. That
was never seen as their purpose We were perplexed and
shocked to see Marshall Peng (who was China’s Supreme
Commander in the Korean War), the Mayor of Beijing,
Vice-Mayor Wu, and a number of other senior government
officials, suddenly turned into anti-Communists and counterrevolutionaries
in rapid succession by the Party newspapers.

The melodies of the Cultural Revolution seemed strangely
discordant to most of our ears. What we had worked for nearly
two decades to build in China, now seemed suddenly poised
against itself and us. What was even more incredible, was that
impulsive, inexperienced teenagers would be the ones
encouraged to lead the charge of this new senseless revolution
against local officials and intellectuals. Such a devastating
political explosion in a great nation with more than 5000 years
of civilization shocked people all over the world as it’s bizarre
direction became clearer day by day.

A few months later, the May 16th Notification, a notice
of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and
formulated by Mao himself, was published by the Central
Political Bureau on that day in 1966. This notice gave us a
glimpse of the mysterious motives behind the growing confusion
of the new Cultural Revolution. “The representatives of the
bourgeoisie who have sneaked into our Party, government,
armies, and cultural circles, are a group of counter-revolutionaries
and revisionists. Once the conditions are ripe they intend
to seize political power and change the proletarian dictatorship
into a bourgeoisie dictatorship. Some of them have been seen
through and some of them have not. Some of them have been
trusted and fostered as our successors, for instance, the
characters of the type such as Kruschev. They are sleeping at
our side. Party Committees at all levels must pay full attention
to this.”

Then, the June 1st edition of the People’s Daily
contained a big character poster written by seven people
headed by Nie Yuanzi, the secretary of the Party Committee in
the Philosophy Department of Beijing University. The poster
strongly criticized the leading member of the Party in Beijing
University. It charged that he had “sabotaged the Cultural
Revolution.”

An editorial in the People’s Daily that same day, pointed
out, “A violent storm of Cultural Revolution has already surged
into being within our country!” And it added that it would soon
“sweep away everything” before it. On that same day Mao
ordered Nie’s poster publicly broadcast. It lit a blazing fire in
Beijing University that soon spread throughout the entire
country. On June 2nd, the People’s Daily published Nie’s poster
on the front page with the caption, “A big character poster by
seven comrades from Beijing University shows us a great
conspiracy.” The Commentator, in his article, then accused the
Party Committee at Beijing University of being an anti-Party
clique. He then called on revolutionaries to place themselves
under the leadership of the Party’s Central Committee, headed
by Chairman Mao himself, to “fight resolutely against those
black gangs going against the Party leadership.” No matter
what banners they held or what their status or seniority, they
were to be smashed completely.

Mao’s words, for he was the Commentator, backed by his
extraordinary prestige and influence, plus the inciting
admonitions of the People’s Daily, sent people all over the
country into sudden action. The results of these words were
sensational and exciting. Nie became a heroine in one day. All
universities and colleges followed the example of Beijing
University. Like an immitating wave, they drug out the first and
second rank leadership of the Party committees within their
schools too. Big character posters sprang up everywhere and the
nation’s educational order was totally disrupted.

Our school, in the heart of Beijing, was once again full of
big character posters, and there was no doubt that the first rank
level of the Party’s committee in the school was the designated
target. How could ordinary people tell the truth from falsehood
in these posters or newspapers? Since we had no legal system
to check the power of the Party or to proclaim truth, those in
power could make somebody guilty of whatever they wished,
whenever they wished. It was exactly as in the old Chinese
saying, “Give a dog a bad name and then hang him.” As I
looked at these incredible charges, I took all of these posters as
fictitious stories and curiosities. Yet, given the increasing
tensions growing all around me, I also tried to learn something
from them.

Later it became obvious, that even the Chairman of
China, Liu Shao-qi, was unaware of Mao’s true intentions when
he launched his Cultural Revolution. As a responsible
government official, he sent working groups to the schools to
control the revolution by establishing and maintaining order.
Mao himself originally agreed to these steps. As a result, these
working groups took the place of the local Party committees. It
was their function to lead the cultural revolution according to
the Eight Articles set down by the Central Committee of the
Party. Among other things, these Articles directed: “No big
character posters on the streets,” “Handle problems differently
at home than abroad, inside and outside a unity,” “Hold a
meeting inside the campus, but not outside,” “Don’t have
denouncing meetings on a large scale,” and so on.

However, the students, with Mao’s support, took these
official restrictions as efforts to suppress their revolution.
Therefore, once again with Mao’s support, they began to drive
the new working groups out of the schools shortly after they
were established. Quite a number of people, including many in
the working groups themselves, originally thought that those
who were against the Party working groups must, therefore, be
anti-Party. As the days passed the swarm of contradictions and
paradoxes increased and intensified, until eventually hostility
toward the working groups broke out with the ferocity of an
erupting volcano. The students at Beijing Post and
Telecommunications College were the first to drive their
working group from their school. Then, one by one, without
exception, the students at other schools did the same.
Up until this time, I had formed a good impression of the
head of our college’s working group, Mr. Chao. He appeared to
be a pleasant and reasonable army man. I sympathized with
him, for as an army man he was duty bound to carry out all
orders given to him by a higher authority. But he too, was soon
driven from his post in confusion and disgrace.

As the days passed, more and more of the population
tried hard to figure out Mao’s real intentions, for everyone
wanted to follow them correctly. Yet there were others, like the
Gang of Four, who tried hard to figure out Mao’s intentions, just
to take advantage of the situation and to fish in the troubled
waters. Of course there have always been people of that type,
and there always will be too!

We even had a couple in our school who proved to be a
prime example of this opportunistic side of human nature. I refer
to them as a couple, not because they were lovers, but because
they often echoed one another’s opinions. From the beginning
they played their roles as if they were in an elaborately staged
drama. A drama which required some very mean and ugly roles.
They understood their leader’s taste quite well, and tried to
impress him accordingly with how deeply their proletarian
convictions ran, and how very faithful they were to the Party.
To all who would listen, they loudly proclaimed their
convictions as revolutionaries and leftists. Therefore, on many
occasions they worked hard to participate in the center of the
action, on the Cultural Revolution side, of course.

Not long into the Cultural Revolution, the whole school
was about to go to Beijing University to view the big character
posters displayed there. Before we ever left our campus, these
two stepped out of ranks, struck a pose, and with forced anger
shouted in chorus: “Wu Jieqin, get out of the rank! Zhang Di,
get out! Guan Tian, get out!” We were told that we were not fit
and therefore not allowed, to see the revolutionary big character
posters. Then, a few days later, at a movie party on campus,
celebrating August 1st Day, the day the Chinese Red Army was
founded, these same two got up and told us that we had no right
to sit with the revolutionary masses. At meetings organized to
criticize and struggle against “the enemy” they would almost
always be the first to open fire, sometimes dominating the
entire meeting.

Their usual procedure was for one of them to stand up
and shout, “Wu!”, or some other victim’s name. Then, as if his
indignation was not expressed strongly enough, he would then
follow by banging his fist on the desk, often causing the glasses
or cups to shake frightfully. Then he might take out a notebook,
actually a diary, turn to the required page, and read aloud the
poison he had written there. Often he read that his victim on a
particular day and at a particular place had said something
counter revolutionary to someone. For instance, he might read
that his victim had once talked with someone saying that
“people are equal in front of the truth.” Then he might shout
even louder, “People like you will never be allowed to be equal
according to the truth! What did you mean? What did you want
to do? Confess! You must be well-behaved!”

Neither one of them ever seemed to realize that this
show perfectly revealed their true colors. This was exactly the
behavior expected of a spy who was attempting to record what
he thought might be useful later against his colleagues. They
went so far, and were so emotional, that their evil quality even
knotted the muscles and blood vessels in their faces. Their five
sense organs could hardly play a healthy positive role in their
lives any longer. They had become victims of their own deceit.
They thought nothing of making others suffer, or even die, if
only it served their personal needs to be successful in their
game of power.

On August 5th, Mao’s big character poster, “Bombard the
Headquarters—One of My Big Character Posters,” appeared in
the government Center of the Chinese Communist Party, the
Zhongnanhai. It was later published in newspapers across the
country. One article in the People’s Daily read, “How splendid
is this first big character poster of Marxism-Leninism in our
country!”

The newspaper commentary went on to stress, “In the
past two months, some leading comrades from the Center, as
well as from local groups, acted in contradiction by practicing a
bourgeois dictatorship based upon bourgeois principles. They
knocked down the Cultural Revolution on a grand and
spectacular scale. They confounded black and white, and
confused right and wrong. They surrounded and annihilated
revolutionary factors, and suppressed all challenging voices.
They carried out white terror. With stars in their eyes, they
boosted the arrogance of the bourgeois and deflated the morale
of the proletariat. How cruel this had been.”

From that moment on it became obvious that the
situation was becoming very serious, and there was no doubt
that this revolution would be long term and nation wide. What
puzzled many of us, and what we asked was, “Where was the
bourgeois headquarters and who was at its head?” We could not
imagine that Liu, our nation’s number two man, was the target
of this insanity. Then, several days later we saw our national
leaders listed in a new and mysterious order: Mao, Lin Biao,
Zhou Enlai, Tao Zhu, Chen Boda, Deng Xiaoping, Kang Sheng,
and then Liu. Liu moved from the second in command, to the
eighth! This was the first we learned that something sinister
had happened amongst our national leaders.

Five days after Mao’s poster was published, I talked with
a school friend who had just returned from a reception given by
the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party,
celebrating the 16 Decisions of the Revolution. He told me that
Mao, completely unexpectedly, appeared suddenly like a
phantom before those present. Since Mao had assumed the
status of a god in the hearts of the Chinese people, their blood
surged when they heard Mao speak to them. He would say,
“You should pay attention to the affairs of our nation and carry
out the Cultural Revolution to the end.” Tears rolled down their
faces. They stretched out their hands to touch Mao’s holy body.
Words were inadequate for my friend to describe the scene he
saw and the effect it had on the peoples’ spirits. It demonstrated
how Mao’s status had soared in the hearts of the Chinese
people. Mao’s thoughts, and his person, had actually become
deified, like some ancient emperor god from our past. The
people’s worship of him seemed unshakable. It was this blind
veneration that become one of the major causes of the most
horrible tragedy of our five thousand year history, the Cultural
Revolution.

As all logic and reason seemed to evaporate into a frenzy
of Mao worship, we suddenly found ourselves living in the hour
of the Red Guards. These young fighters of the Cultural
Revolution were first formed in the middle school attached to
Qing Hua University and were directly supported by Mao
himself. Like a prairie fire, such groups soon spread throughout
China. I encountered them first on our own campus. It was the
end of July and we were having a quiet supper in our canteen.
Suddenly, a stirring ear-piercing voice that we had never heard
before came over the loudspeaker. It was an unknown boy’s
voice full of belligerence. It made its point with an antithetical
couplet: “If the father is a hero, the son must be a brave man. If
the father is a reactionary, the son must be born a son of a bitch!”

We soon learned they had given their new campaign the
title, The Devil Will Be Depressed When He Sees It. Suddenly,
out of nowhere, groups of young Red Guards, from various
middle schools, assumed an aggressive air on our campus
advocating and arguing strongly here and there with those who
disagreed with their couplets. I wondered how this could have
all come about, for it was all so clearly preposterous. It had
become a study in living surrealism. A truly upside down world
ruled by adolescents. As I looked around me, most of these Red
Guards were disturbingly young, naive, and as impressionable
as western adolescents at a rock concert. They all wore
yellow-green second hand army uniforms and caps still blazed
with Mao’s famous red star on the front. Their main insignia
was a big red arm band printed with the three Chinese
characters meaning Red Guard.

If we felt compelled to argue with them about a couplet
we were first expected to tell them our family background to
prove we were qualified to enter into such a debate. This came
to mean that people of Black Five Classification would not even
be allowed to speak with them about the purpose of their
mission. The Black Five referred to landlord, rich peasant,
counter revolutionary, evil element, and Rightist. Upon first
seeing those almost baby-like Red Guards, I went up to them,
without any thought of personal fear, in the attempt to persuade
them that they were wrong. I answered their questions about my
background by saying that I only knew my father was out of
work since I had left home. It was just then that one of my
fellow workers in the library saw what was happening and
caught hold of me and dragged me hastily back to our office.
With concern and urgency in her voice, she said to me, “My
goodness! We worry about you. What would happen if they
were to ever learn of your background? Don’t do that again,
please!” Indeed what she said was true. They might have beat
me to death if they knew that I had dared to debate with them,
having the background that I had. I suddenly felt completely
helpless in any efforts I might have had to aid others in
understanding that the Red Guards were wrong. Completely
wrong!

This Couplet Debate, spread everywhere. First to other
schools in Beijing, then to the far corners of China. As I closely
watched the Red Guards, I saw children who had been well
trained to fiercely argue with people. They were so impulsive
and adamant that it sometimes seemed they would wipe out
anyone who dared to refute the viewpoint of one of their
couplets. It soon became obvious that the Red Guard movement
had become bigger than any of us had dared to imagine. So
fearsome had they become, that few of the population tried to
debate with these young scorpions set loose among us. Any of
those who did dare to raise a question had to be from the Red
Five Classification—worker, peasant, soldier, revolutionary
cadre, or family of martyrs. Even so, they still risked being
charged as traitors, as they often were. I remember one young
student from Beijing Middle School No. 2, who was eventually
tortured to death because he refused to yield to the insanity of
the Red Guards.

As I look back on those frightening days, I remember
with respect Deng Ling, the daughter of Deng Xiaoping, the
man who eventually became our nation’s leader. Most children
of senior cadres were spoiled by the many privileges they
enjoyed. No matter whether they were qualified or not, they
could get everything and anything because of their parents’
power. Many citizens were becoming very resentful of this
abuse of privilege. One morning among these Red Guards, by
our school gate, I was surprised to see Deng Ling arguing with
her sister about the absurdity of a couplet. She had criticized
the couplet strongly and was hurt to tears when, in retaliation,
someone consequently cursed her as a Rightist. During those
years that she was a student in our school, she always dressed
simply and lived a very plain life no different from any other
student. She always maintained this manner of life, even though
her father was on his way to becoming the leader of all China.
From the Red Guards’ first appearance, it was clear they
were destined to be the fighters starring in this revolution that
had no precedent in all of human history. Their oath was, “We
are the guards for our red regime. The Party Central Committee
and Chairman Mao are our patrons. To liberate the whole of
humanity is our duty-bound responsibility. Mao Zedong’s
Thought is the supreme directive of all our actions. We swear,
‘We shall resolutely shed our last drop of blood defending the
Party and our great leader, Chairman Mao!’” They held that,
“A rebel is a revolution,” and “The soul of Mao Zedong’s
Thought is to rebel.” They quoted Mao’s saying, “The myriad of
intricacies of Marxist principles boiled down to one phrase, ‘It
is right to rebel.’” Through this twisted concept of truth, they
had already assumed they were the dominating force of China.

~~~

On August 1st, 1966, Mao wrote in a letter to the Red
Guards at the middle school attached to Qing Hua University,
“Your actions show your just anger and rightful denunciation of
the landlords, revisionists and their lackeys who exploit and
oppress workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, and
revolutionary factions. It is right to rebel against reactionaries. I
express here my warm support...” With this overt support from
Chairman Mao, organizations of Red Guards suddenly sprang
up all over the country like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.
In Tien An Men Square, on August 18th, Mao received
Red Guards from all parts of China. I was not allowed to attend,
even though Tien An Men was very near to the Academy, but
the many TV cameras, newspapers, and friends who did attend
told me what happened. Millions of Red Guards gathered in the
square at five in the morning. Mao, in army uniform, reviewed
the Red Guard troops passing through the square. Then he
walked down from Tien An Men Gate Tower shaking hands
with the Red Guards. Tien An Men, highlighted by thousands of
waving red banners, became a sea of people hailing, “Long live
Chairman Mao!” A Red Guard girl from the middle school
attached to Beijing Teachers University came up to Mao and
gave him her Red Guard arm band, and Mao, on the spot,
tacitly approved her as the Commander-in-Chief of all Red
Guards. Her name was Binbin, which means, “urbane” or “not
forceful.” Mao said to her, “We should resort to force, but not
to urbanity.” So she changed her first name to Yaowu, which
means “resort to force.” As the months and years passed, this
petite teenage girl eventually did live up to her new name,
sometimes by even personally torturing her adversaries to death.

In the opening speech of this great rally, the head of the
Central Office for the Cultural Revolution, and member of the
Gang of Four, Chen Boda, called Mao a “great leader, great
teacher, and great helmsman.” Following Chen, Lin Biao said
in his speech that, “In this proletarian Cultural Revolution,
Chairman Mao is our great Commander-in-Chief.” From then on
we had to put up with the endless shouting of the title of these
Four Great’s whenever Mao’s name was subsequently
mentioned. Lin Biao took advantage of this occasion and the
simple-minded, curious, and impulsive young Red Guards. He
called on them to “Go all out to destroy all the old thought, old
culture, old customs, and all old habits of the exploiting
wealthy classes.” These then became the Four Old’s. He also
called on people all over the country to support the proletarian
revolutionary spirit of “dare to break through, dare to act, and
dare to rebel.” Thus was launched the Destroy the Four Old’s
movement on a national scale. It spread all over China with
amazing speed, and it wreaked incredible havoc on 5000 years
of rich and magnificent Chinese civilization.

There were big character posters on the streets the next
day urging everyone to “Declare war on the old world!” They
somehow rationalized as being part of the Old Fours any
modern western and Hong Kong styles of dress, including
high-heeled shoes, jeans, rouge, lipstick, permanent waves and
even long plaits of hair. They cut off high heels and long hair
and cut jeans to pieces wherever they happened to see them.
One day I went to the railway station to meet my sister
as she arrived from Sichuan. As I approached the main gate of
the station, I saw the Red Guards standing by the gate with
scissors in hand. I wondered what those scissors were for until I
saw two young women approaching the gate with their beautiful
long hair cascading down their backs. Immediately, the
revolutionary scissors answered my question. I heard the sound
of the scissors, “Katsa!” and the Four Old's were wiped out
before our eyes. The girls left wordlessly, with their beautiful
hair cut to their ears. However, they were luckier than the next
to approach the gate, a woman with a perm. In only a few
seconds she was left nearly as bald headed as a nun. She too
left wordless, but her tears spoke volumes.

At the end of August, we went to see the big character
posters placed around the sports circle in Xianlongtan Stadium.
When our school bus passed through Qian Men Street, which is
the main street running south of Tian An Men Square, a vast
sheet of red color blinded my eyes. All the shops along the
street were painted red to show they were not old, but brand
new Revolutionary Red! It was absurd how red everything was,
yet no one dared leave his shop in any color other than red,
because red was the color of the revolution. In a few days red
paint was out of stock throughout the city. So illogical had this
charade become, that there was even an attempt to revise our
traffic light signals. Red meant go and green meant stop!
Obviously the results of the short lived expression of Maoist
patriotism were numerous traffic accidents and massive disorder
throughout the land.

All the names of shops, institutes, organizations, schools,
and factories also seemed to be changing to take on new
revolutionary names such as East-is-Red Snack Bar,
Defend-the-East Hospital, Towards-the-Sun Art Association,
Workers-Peasants-Soldiers Restaurant, Ever-Red Middle
School, Four-News Barbershop, and so on. We could hardly tell
one from the other. They all sounded alike. Beijing’s best
known hospital, Union Hospital, opposite our school, was built
in the 1920’s with money from the Rockefeller Foundation. At
its main gate Red Guards had posted, “Long live the
revolutionary rebel spirit!” In front of hundreds of totally
confused onlookers, the Red Guards then took down the “Union
Hospital” sign and put up its new name, “Anti-Imperialism
Hospital.”

~~~

The Red Guards from the Art Middle School, which was
part of our university, rebelled first against the art culture itself!
They went first to the well known art gallery in Liulichang
Street that was famous for its display and sale of traditional
Chinese paintings, calligraphy and antiques. Its name, Yong
Bao Zai, over its main gate was quickly covered up. A new big
character poster was hung over the shop window. It read, “Yong
Bao Zai has been a black store for several decades. It exploited
working people’s sweat and blood, serving the bourgeoisie...
feudalist landlords. It never served socialism or workers,
peasants, and soldiers. It is an exchange for the black gang of
artists. We are now going to strike it to total ruin.”
Not long afterward, we were horrified to learn that Red
Guards from several other schools, stirred up by someone in our
own school, were coming to destroy all of our plaster cast
sculpture models which had been created from the originals of
classical Greece through the Renaissance on to the 19th
century. These very valuable models were stored in our
warehouse and brought out for teaching purposes only. They saw
these sculptures as the dross scum of western civilization,
especially Venus, because she was nude.

Fortunately, all of the Red Guards were not of one mind.
Many did not agree that these models were truly western dross.
However, they understood very clearly how difficult it would be
to stop their fellow teenaged Red Guards, once they were
committed to what they believed and that these beliefs created
pure-crazed action. Even though the inevitable seemed upon us,
we had to try something to avoid the destruction of our valuable
collection. At least we had to attempt to reduce the damage to
a minimum. Finally, as the purge became eminent, we decided
to take the initiative. We decided to receive the outside Red
Guards warmly and show them our enthusiastic support for their
revolutionary deeds. But, before they arrived, we would move
as many as possible of our most valuable models down into the
cellar to be hidden. When the Red Guards arrived, we
explained to the young zealots our need for teaching anatomy
and figure structure to our students, and asked their permission
to keep some of our models for those purposes. We went even
further by suggesting that to properly educate our students in the
values of the Cultural Revolution, we had to retain some
Western models enabling us to properly criticize this form of art
ourselves. Then together with the Red Guards, we carried out
our preselected victims, which were duplicate copies. These we
were ready to sacrifice to the Cultural Revolution in the middle
of our athletic field, the chosen execution ground.

In a line beside these mute victims, stood our older
professors. All were leading artists in Chinese culture, but were
now caricatured as masters of intimidation. They were labelled
as reactionary authoritative persons of learning. Their heads
were drooped in disbelief as young Red Guards hung label
boards around their necks. The boards read, Black Gang or
Reactionary Authority and so on. The full-sized Venus and
Michelangelo’s Dying Slave seemed to sob in sad sympathy. I
am sure they never expected to be executed so cruelly in this
culture rich in 5,000 years of art. And what did it mean for a
slave to be executed by a party of workers and peasants? With
people crowded around this spectacle, Li, the one who led the
Red Guards from outside our school, screamed himself hoarse,
accusing those mute enemies, Venus, Moses, the Slave... and
those poor old master professors. To everyone who had the
ability to listen, he shouted his story of how he was a victim of
these statues.

When he finished, the young crowd went into action.
Within minutes they had broken the statues from far off France
into hundreds of pieces and harnessed the remnants around the
necks of all those old professors, and threw the wooden bases
into a blazing fire. It created an erie scene, a type of sacrificial
rite. When the fire slowly died down, the old professors were
escorted back to their special dwelling labeled Niupeng,
meaning cowshed, as if they were some ominous monsters or
demons.

Finally, the Red Guards left shouting triumphantly,
“We’ll burn your library the next time we come!” Those of us
who worked in the library became anxious for the safety of all
the knowledge placed in our keeping. In desperation, we soon
built a brick wall around the windows to prevent anything
inflammatory from being thrown in from outside. We put up
slogans such as, “We should take care of our State’s property!”
and “Protecting our cultural heritage is our duty!” Then we
picked out all the duplicate copies of the libraries cherished
titles, together with any damaged books, and piled them up as a
potential sacrifice to await the Red Guards’ threat of eminent
return. We continued to wait through the coming months, but
fortunately this Red Guard faction never did return. No one
knew why. Their hands must have been too busy purifying the
rest of Beijing.

It was during this period of chaos that Lin Biao said in an
enlarged session of the Central Political Bureau that, “the basic
problem of revolution is the problem of political power. Once
the proletariat, the working people, have the power, they will
have everything. If they do not, they will lose everything... when
the proletariat seizes political power, the millionaires and
billionaires can be smashed at once and the proletariat will
have everything.” Then, the Minister of Public Security said in
an expanded session of the Beijing Public Security Bureau,
“Whatever rules we have provided, even from the public
security organizations or the state, don’t be bound by them... If
people beat someone to death, I don’t agree, but people should
hate with all their soul the bad ones among us. So use force if
you can’t dissuade.” One can see from these statements that the
beating, the killing, the searching of people’s homes, and the
confiscation of their property, all of it, all across the country,
came from above. People suffered everywhere and our local
leaders were paralyzed to do anything about it.

One afternoon, as I was walking in the Dongdan district, I
heard a group of Red Guards shouting as they sped past me on
their bikes. On every bike there was a red flag. Each of these
young teenagers looked as if they had all donned their parents’
old army uniforms. In their baggy official attire they had
become China’s new army. In this bellicose atmosphere, I saw
an almost nude, fat, yet muscular man of about forty on the
back of a pedicab under escort by members of this teenage
army. The man’s eyes were closed and he looked exhausted.
The rope binding him was so tight that it bit into his flesh and
bruised it here and there. Sitting by his feet was a boy about
eight, huddled tightly against his father. Where were they
taking them? Who was this man? Was he one of the Black
Five, a dissident, or a war prisoner? The poor child was so
frightened that the sight of him made my heart ache.
Standing there in a daze, I just couldn’t understand what
this hysteria was all about. Was this the revolution referred to
by Mao as, “A great revolution that touched people to their
innermost being?” People were beaten bloody while their
attackers shouted a quotation from Mao supporting their cruel
righteousness, “Revolution is not a matter of entertaining
guests, not a matter of doing embroidery, not a matter of writing
an article. Revolution is rebellion, a violent action.”
A terrible example of this teen violence let loose upon us
by our leader was an incident in which more than three
hundred, so-called black elements were killed at Daxin in
Beijing. The oldest among these elements, was eighty years,
while the age of the youngest traitor was only thirty-eight days.
What was that inhuman world that had become China! Of the
twenty-two families these young guards decided to punish, there
was not a single soul left alive after the bloody slaughter.
These were special Public events organized for
punishment. Some of these horribly bloody scenes were even
held in public theaters. From outside, we couldn’t bear to hear
the screams of those who were chosen for punishment within.

Not all were fortunate enough to get out of these places of
punishment alive. To show that the revolution was indeed a
violent action and meant to suppress any resistance that might
appear, they went on to established armed pickets. “Kill
without appeal” was their circular order. Taking these orders
literally, they set themselves up as reforming through labor
criminal courts, torturing and killing the innocent. The picket
members were from the families of cadres and army men, many
of them children of senior cadres. They had long accepted that
they themselves were zilaihong, innately revolutionary. This
naturally made them feel far superior to everyone else.

One morning, in the later days of the revolution, I visited
a middle school in Beijing that had set up such a criminal
court. Whoever had been brought there as a member of the
newly expanded Black Nine, or who even just had a different
point of view from their accusers, would be dragged into this
court and made to suffer all kinds of tortures, with such
picturesque names as kneeling on hot cinders, paint face with
paints, hanging test , sonorous kowtow, imitating an airplane,
burning hair, target practice, piercing through, and so on. The
pickets often carried banners with a theme slogan, “Long live
the Red Horror!” I also saw these same characters written on
the wall in their court room that day. But here these characters
were written in the blood of their victims. As I looked at these
ghastly traces of human blood dripping from the characters on
the wall, I felt the terror that was sweeping through our great
land. As I stood there in a sickened terror, it was as if my hair
was standing up in horror, knowing that my life was deemed
just as expendable by those young teenagers.

A graduate of this same middle school, Wu, had been
beaten to death because he had objected to that notorious
notion of blood lineage, which stated that if you were
descended from a landlord, you were as villainous as the worst
landlord in history. A retired worker over eighty, who had
worked in this school his whole life, was falsely charged as a
remnant of counter-revolution and then severely beaten. Then to
complete their task, they doused him with boiling water and
then whipped him with belts until he finally died. In our school
the Red Guards also beat some teachers, especially the older
ones, using leather belts with brass heads and with metal rods
to break their ribs. Those professors labelled Black Elements
were forced to do manual labor every day, regardless of their
physical condition. They were subjected to the cruelest public
criticism at any time and at any place the Red Guards chose.

One day, one of the best known artists in China, Ye, was
stopped by a young Red Guard as he labored on campus. Ye
was then denounced fiercely, then his head was lashed with a
belt until bloody. When the Red Guard finally left, Ye went to
the clinic for treatment, and then, in fear, quickly returned to
continue his assigned labor.

Many homes of the Black Nine were searched and their
private property confiscated for unknown reasons, to be given to
unknown people, to be used for unknown purposes. They took
all that they considered proof of one’s guilt or associated with
bourgeois decadence. Under the pretence of revolutionary
righteousness some also took valuables. A photo with a foreign
friend might lead to a charge of having illegal relations with a
foreign country or being a spy. Professor Chang’s diary kept
from the time he lived on his farm, caused him to be accused of
keeping a biantianzhang. This was considered to be a record of
loans, former land holdings, and confiscated property which
were secretly kept by a member of the overthrown classes who
were still dreaming of a return to power. He tried to defend
himself, but as in all defenses, it was in vain. The stronger your
efforts to defend yourself, the stronger their efforts to make you
suffer. They eventually forced him to confess, but in so doing he
suffered to the limits of his physical endurance.

I was much luckier. In 1951, 1955, and again in 1957,
most of my personal effects which would be likely to arouse
suspicion, particularly my photos taken in the United States,
were confiscated from me. I had sold my Smith&Wesson
revolver when I needed money in Shanghai early in 1949.
Otherwise I definitely would have still had it with me, since
shooting was one of my hobbies and I had never anticipated
what would happen if I were caught with a gun under the
Communist regime. I later learned that the most common
punishment for such a crime was to be beaten to death on the
spot by these young Guards. So, knowing the consequences, I
checked everything I had at home and threw some souvenir
American coins—pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters—plus
my air force dog-tags into a nearby pond. I wonder what
archaeologists will think a thousand years from now when they
find these coins and dog-tags. “How did all these come to this
part of the Chinese countryside so far from their home? Why
were they all on the bottom of this little pond? There was no
war between these two countries here.”

As I expected, they finally searched my home while I
was detained by one of the Red Guard organizations in our
school. The only thing they took was a photo of my eldest
brother in Taiwan, Wu Feng. This they thought proved that my
family’s background was reactionary. Anyone who was
determined to be from the families of former landlords were
sent by train back to their own countryside immediately after
their houses were searched and the incriminating evidence was
confiscated. At the train station, when they went through the
underground passage to the railway platform, those who were to
be shipped out were fiercely beaten by Red Guards who lined
both sides of the passage. Some fell to the cold concrete floor,
unconscious from the severe beating. The world famous writer,
Lao She, author of the great play Tea House, then an old man
of 70, could not stand the thought of continuing under such
tortures and drowned himself in the lake where I once worked
breaking ice, before they could take him away. Many famous
masters of literature and the arts, like Lao She, ended their
lives rather than endure such cruel persecution.

Many years later, after the Gang of Four was smashed,
and the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were over, a former
schoolmate came from Shanghai and happened to meet me at
our school gate. He rushed over to me and hugged me tight,
crying, “My dear old Lao Wu, you are still alive. We thought
you were no doubt killed during those years.” Yes, as I thought
back on all that happened, I would have been dead if I were not
in Beijing. Especially if I had not been able to make my way
back to my own school, I would have never been able to escape
by sheer luck alone. But here in our school, my case had
cleared just in time. I had already paid for my sins through
years of imprisonment, and I was now in a position of little
importance. I was as controlled as a bird in a cage. Being caged
after those previously long years of imprisonment made me
suffer deeply, that is true, but at least I survived. The new
revolutionary forces were not very interested in me as a result.
It seemed their hands were too full persecuting others more
important than I who had not yet paid for their sins. Thus I
survived.

~~~

Many party leaders in other parts of China tried to stop
this uncontrolled violence in their areas, thinking that this was
not the right way to carry out a cultural revolution. The Red
Guards then met this official resistance by lodging formal
complaints against the regional leadership. Supported by Mao,
the Office of the Cultural Revolution, and the majority of their
fellow students, the Red Guards in Beijing began to establish
ties with students in other cities nationwide. They called it the
Great Contact. They would then travel around the country with
free transportation, board and lodging.

Soon our school auditorium, dining room, and classrooms
were full of Red Guards from all parts of China, most of them
looking very young and innocent, like baby students. Red
Guards from Beijing who went to other cities were considered
special just because they were from the capital, the place
where Mao lived. They were now suddenly free to carry their
revolutionary experiences, technics, and excesses to other
cities. The results were that the Red Guards from other cities
followed blindly whatever atrocities the Red Guards of Beijing
committed.

One day a big character poster appeared on the streets
that attempted to convince the public that the heads of the
reactionary bourgeoisie and the commanders of the bourgeoisie
headquarters who were attempting to overthrow the party of the
people were none other than the Chairman of China, Liu
Shaogi, along with Deng Xiaoping. I, like everyone else, was
totally shocked by such a notion. I slowly begin to realize that
this was a totally different kind of revolution from any that
China had experienced in the past. It was special because no
one, not even our leaders inside the red walls of Beijing’s
Zhongnanhai, the heart of China, knew what was really going
on, what would happen next, and where it would end. If these
leaders knew so little, how could the common people of China
be able to tell truth from falsehood in the affairs of our nation?
There was no way to know the inside stories, the true stories.
The newspapers, our only media, could only say what the
people in control wanted said at that time.

The organizations of public security, the procurate and
the courts were totally paralyzed. The Central Committee of the
Cultural Revolution had long since fallen into the hands of the
Gang of Four, and their personal directives were now, in fact,
our laws. The Red Guards were the executors. These rulers
alone were to decide everything, but that was logistically
impossible. Inevitably there would be conspiracies and tricks. It
was the same old story, thousands of years old. Treacherous
court officials would eventually seize power, then those loyal to
the sovereign would be murdered. The Gang of Four knew
history’s script very well. They used it to realize their own wild
ambitions, by taking full advantage of this chaotic revolution.
Step by step they had been favored and trusted by Mao, the
Supreme God of China. Of primary importance, they needed to
sweep aside all barriers against the realization of their personal
motives and ambitions. They made use of the naive innocence
of the young Red Guards’ blind faith in the Party and in the
person of Mao, their god. One after another of the senior cadres,
old marshals, and even founders of the People’s Republic itself
were persecuted to death. Their operating policy was the same
as I had experienced in 1957, “Give a dog a bad name and then
hang him!”

Having grown up in a movie family, I had watched Jiang
Qing, who was a movie actress before she went to Yanan to
join with the PLA. Now, she was dreaming of becoming the
Queen of the Red Capital, Beijing. I knew that she had run from
Shanghai to the Northwest and had become Mao’s wife, and
that seemed to indicate that she must have something very
special. However, she was still relatively unknown to the
people. But her words and deeds as the revolution wore on, put
more and more worry into their hearts. I was surprised when
years later, as the tempest of the Cultural Revolution
developed, she suddenly began to appear on more and more
important occasions. I never could understand why or how all of
our country’s senior leaders, with their long and rich
experiences of revolution, having met and survived so many
severe tests, suddenly found themselves under her control. How
did she come to such power? Why had no one sensed the
danger and stopped her? My final thought was always, if Mao
said “No!” she would be nothing. So why did he never say,
“Enough!”?

She persecuted to the death all who knew her dirty and
sordid past. After the Gang of Four had been smashed, I
happened to meet a well known movie director’s wife, Mrs.
Zheng, in a friend’s home. She was sobbing bitterly while
telling me the story of her husband’s death at the hands of Jiang
Qing. It was late one night in Shanghai. Suddenly, some
mysterious people forced their way into their home. The
intruders did not identify themselves, but they rummaged
through chests and cupboards. Every inch of space was
searched, and they took away all that they wanted. Her husband
was also taken away, never to come back again until after his
death. All of this it seemed, because he had been a close friend
of Jiang Qing while they were at a movie studio during the
1930’s. Mrs. Zheng said there was private and very personal
information in at least one letter Jiang Qing had sent her
husband. Years later she killed him to keep her dirty record a
secret.

Since everyone saw the purpose of the Cultural
Revolution from a different perspective, each person naturally
had a different point of view as to what it really was and what it
was meant to accomplish. Therefore, the many young
participants found themselves divided into numerous
confronting factions, each an independent Combat Team within
the Red Guards and with a different perspective. As the Cultural
Revolution developed in Beijing, the central conflict there
developed between two large groups, or Combat Teams, calling
themselves the Loyalists and the Proletarian Rebels. This type
of internal struggle, running throughout the entire Cultural
Revolution and across all of China, added even greater chaos.
In January, 1967, Mao made a command, “We’ll seize
back the power from those who take the Capitalist road.” The
Red Guards in Shanghai took the first action in response to
Mao’s words. They seized power from the Shanghai Committee
of the Chinese Communist Party. Almost immediately this
storm of power seizing swept all across the entire country,
regardless of whether the individual leadership was right or
wrong. If a Red Guard didn’t join the most radical movement he
was labelled as part of a Loyalist faction, and not part of the
Patriotic Rebel faction. Hostilities between the two factions
ultimately broke out into armed conflict. Each faction tried to
seize from the other the nation’s seal of power by force of arms,
thinking this would give them a substantial lasting power. Even
families were divided, putting father against son and mother
against daughter. Relations throughout the country were as
tense as if between enemies on a battlefield. It was almost as
though we were on the brink of another civil war.

School was suspended everywhere. Every empty space on
the walls of this many-walled city, and on every other open
place in our schools and streets, were filled with big character
posters. The city itself had become a wide open propaganda
battlefield for this bizarre revolution. Everywhere it had become
a youthful civil war filled with ignorance. Each side asserted
that they were the real rebels under the leadership of Mao. But
God only knew which side was telling the truth. I wondered to
myself as I read the posters, how could all those marshals, and
senior revolutionaries, who for decades had been held in such
high esteem by the Chinese people, suddenly turn into hidden
traitors, renegades, warlords, and even bandits? How on earth
had all of these things happened? How did they get away with
it?