Chapter 4

By the end of 1948, it was clear that the Kuomintang Government was going to lose the civil war to the ever growing numbers joining the Communist Party. The Kuomintang Governmental organizations and schools were already beginning their move to Taiwan. It was then that I met my eldest brother, Wu Feng, at the Shanghai Movie Studio. He was on his way to Taiwan with the Jian Qiao Air Force Academy from Hangzhou. He was an air cadet in the Academy’s 27th Class and had been a bomber pilot. That was the last time I saw him. Since 1949 we have lost contact, although I have continued to try to find him in vain. I often wonder if he is still alive. This is the natural and painful result of civil war.

Families everywhere throughout China were divided and scattered never to be reunited again. By April, 1949, we saw many government troops with tanks and guns retreating from the front. Refugees began pouring into Shanghai from the North. In the air the smell of gunpowder was strong and pervasive. The sound of gunfire rumbled nearby day and night. After sunset we sometimes climbed up onto the roof to watch the tracers flash through the night skies. We would tune our radios to the Communist broadcast, and the announcer’s speech and voice would seem both majestic and honorable, particularly when compared to the announcer on our local station.

At daybreak on May 24th, I was awakened by someone
shouting, “The People’s Liberation Army is infiltrating
Shanghai!” I was full of curiosity and ran immediately into the
street. I wanted to have a look at these Communists as they
marched into the city. What I saw was just ordinary men, like
me, only in uniform and carrying weapons, not the Red Bandit
Devils I had heard so much about. Most of them were just like
the men we would see everywhere in the rural areas with
tanned, weather-beaten faces. They didn’t look like the Evil
Communists described in the newspaper or in other media. They
didn’t look like men who advocated, “sharing property and
wives together,” or who, “disown their close relations,” and
who even, “killed others without batting an eyelid.” These were
the simple men, grassroots, the heart and soul of whatever party
they wanted to protect. They wore yellow-green cotton
uniforms, cloth shoes, and hanging from their shoulders were
rifles, machine-guns or “Tommy Guns,” taken from the
Kuomintang troops. Their ration was a long narrow sack filled
with parched rice. The only sign indicating which of those were
officers was a pistol with a red strip of cloth fastened at the end
of the pistol’s grip, which was holstered at their shoulder or
waist.

Their faces were expressionless as they marched by the
movie studio. Their eyes sunken. They had traveled a great
journey by foot, often walking both day and night to reach
Shanghai. Still we could feel their suppressed excitement. With
a warm smile they would refuse the tea, hot towels, and food
the people offered them all along the street. The PLA’s “three
disciplines and eight cares” did not allow them “to take even
one needle or thread from the people.” Their appearance so
impressed me that I followed their march into the city center.
When I came to Dongping Road, near the center of the city, I
noticed that some soldiers already there were holding their
rifles while others dozed, stretched out on the ground just in
front of one of President Chiang Kai-shek’s homes. They would
rather sleep on that cold ground than in any way infringe upon
the people’s rights. They paid for anything they broke and when
they accepted anything to eat from the people they left a
special paper note that was redeemable for money from certain
Communist organizations. Soon they marched on to the south,
looking like an army I had never seen or heard of before. How
wonderful it would be if they would keep this heroic spirit to the
end.

A few days later, one of their cultural troupes performed
in our film studio. The Yaogu, waist drum dance, was
particularly splendid. I had never seen such a vigorous
performance before. The drums were tied onto the waists of the
dancers, who beat them with two sticks and established a
surging, powerful dancing rhythm. It was an inspiring
representation of the new will and fighting spirit of the Chinese
people, which I greatly enjoyed and wanted to be a part of.
Shortly after the performance, an enormous parade which
included most all of the population of the metropolitan area was
mobilized by the new Communist officials. I joined the crushing
waves of this parade and felt as never before, that I was really a
part of our country’s future. I breathed strongly and freely in
overwhelmed excitement. These events gave me a sense of
profound change ahead for China.

One month later, I saw announcements in the newspaper
for enrollment in institutions of higher education. They revived
my hopes for more education, which was really what I always
wanted to do. I was able to sign up to take the entrance exam
for the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, which was my first
choice. I felt very nervous, because I had no formal training in
music. I just loved singing, that’s all. The scene at the
examination hall was what I had feared. Most of the teenage
candidates carried with them various instruments, with which
they had trained for many years.

I felt inferior and I soon completely lost my confidence. I
left the hall just before the examiner, Miss Zhou, called my
name for the singing audition. I was then faced with my second
choice—fine arts. I didn’t have any training in the fine arts
either. I had won first prize for a bamboo carving when I was a
middle school student and scribbled a little horse, house, ship,
and airplane for my mother when I was a child. Finally, there
were only a few days left before the entrance exam. I didn’t
know what to do with the charcoal that Mr. Xu, the artist at the
movie studio, gave to me so I could begin to practice drawing. I
did learn something about how to make an accurate contour. It
was a case of “dig a well only when one is thirsty.” Meaning
doing something only at the last minute.

Zhejiang Institute of Fine Arts, formerly the National Art
College, was located in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang
province. On the day of the examination, I was again faced with
my own lack of experience. As time was running out for the
drawing test in the examination hall, an examiner found me
still making the outline of the plaster head. He urged me, “Hey,
time will be over soon. You should hurry with the shading.” I
said nothing and kept on with my task. I didn’t know how to
shade. I had no choice but to concentrate completely on making
the contour of the head as finely accurate as possible. On my
way back to the movie studio, I thought I was done for again. I
was beginning to wonder what I could try as a third choice
when the news came that I was admitted to the Institute of Fine
Arts. I was very surprised. Later, I was told that my outline of
the head was exceptionally accurate!

Several days later, at the end of the oral part of the
exam, I was asked if I had any questions. I reluctantly told the
examiner that I had none of the financial resources necessary to
enable me to attend his school. With a kind smile, he assured
me I would receive a grant. My tuition, board and lodging were
to be free. I was ecstatic! He told me, “It’s a new China. Now
everything will change for the better!”

I was almost penniless by that time, and there were
things I needed before I could begin school. I went to see one of
my old bosses at the movie studio. By this time, my cousin had
moved to Hong Kong, so I was without influence there. I asked
for one month’s salary in advance, which was only two silver
dollars. Even though I was familiar with the behavior of the
rich, I was surprised when this boss, Mr. Ren, dug some small
change from his pocket and handed it to me with the words,
“Well it’s all I’ve got. It’s all for you.” It wasn’t even enough to
buy a few bottles of Coke! I felt totally humiliated. It was as
though I were no more than a beggar to him. I threw his money
to the floor and left. Fortunately, my fellow assistants in the
movie studio came to my support with five RMB
(approximately $0.25). I was touched by their gesture of
generosity and sacrifice, for they had only a little more salary
than me. I will never forget those friends, Guo Yi-yao and Wu
Hua.

Once again, I had seen ugly features of the rich. Those
who had so much but shared so little. By this time I had grown
to detest the crowded and old city of Shanghai. Greed for
material pleasures had bent people out of the shape of
humanity. They would cringe before anybody who fed them, but
also put on airs and insult those below them with two-faced
hypocracy. I once went into a shop to buy a shirt that I had seen
in the window display. When I asked the salesman to show it to
me, he smugly looked up and down at the cheap t-shirt and
plain cloth pants I was wearing because it was summertime,
and said scornfully, “Didn’t you see how much it cost?” For an
angry moment I would have paid ten times the price to make
him jump to obey me. Everyone seemed to think they were
better than anyone else. I was happy to be moving on.

On the train ride to the art institute in Hangzhou, one of
the most scenic cities in all China, I made many new friends
from different parts of China. Most of them were younger than I,
for I was already twenty-two, but at last I was on my way to
being a college student.

Zhejiang Institute of Fine Arts sat on the shore of the
world renowned West Lake, just to the west and at the foot of
Gu (Lonely) Hill. Two embankments divided the lake into Inner
and Outer West Lake. These two embankments were named
after two great ancient poets, Bai Juyi and Su Dongpo. The
scenic views had all been given poetic names such as, Autumn
Moon Over the Calm Lake, The Moon Reflecting in Three
Ponds, Orioles Singing from the Waves of Willows, and so on.
Of the many pagodas and temples located around the lake, one,
the Yue Temple, commemorated the Sung Dynasty hero, Yue
Fei. In front of the temple an image of the treacherous Prime
Minister, Qin Gui, who fatally injured Yue Fei, kneels in stone.
I saw how alive history is to the Chinese when I saw men stop
to urine on his statue whenever they passed by.

The excitement of the moment was nearly more than I
could contain. We were the first college students of the New
China! Since I had left school eight years before, I was so
happy that such a long dream was finally becoming a reality.
Everything in my world seemed to glow with a new freshness
and sense of hope. I studied with great eagerness, including the
history of social development and political economy. These
subjects brought home to me how relations between various
types of peoples developed into a complex society, both on a
macro and micro level. I learned quickly, earned high marks,
and was soon selected in my political class to be a bridge
between the teacher and students by serving as a tutor. In art
classes, I began to study drawing from plaster models, and led
by our instructor, we often went to places in and around the city
to sketch from nature.

At the institute, our days were busy, but our nights were
usually free. In the evenings I watched young couples walking
among the waves of weeping willows that grew along the lakeside
embankments, sitting under a tree on Lonely Hill, loafing
with elegant leisure on the shore of West Lake, or even hugging
and kissing in the pavilion in the middle of the Lake. It was a
quiet and peaceful land of romance that seemed to be created
for lovers and art students. The pain of so many terrible recent
wars seemed a century away, as did my years of struggle to get
into school. My dream had finally come true, and it was
everything I thought it would be.

~~~

Within a few months a close friend of mine, then
studying in the National Art College in Beijing, asked me to
transfer and join him there. Beijing, once the ancient and now
the modern capital of China, had great appeal for me. So at the
end of 1949, when my first semester ended, I requested a
transfer and it was granted. When my train entered Hebei
Province on the way to Beijing, I saw many passengers wearing
gauze masks. I wondered if they could all be medical workers
until we pulled into the city, and I realized this was a common
means of protection against the cold. This was my first time in
Northern China.

I was so excited to be in Beijing, which still retained the
antique flavor of the old imperial capital. The old walls still
completely surrounded the city. The many gate towers were all
impressive architecturally. Jian Lou (Arrow Tower), with its
many apertures through which the home guards could shoot
arrows on an attacking enemy, stood imposingly due south of
Tian An Men Square. The names of these gates announced the
emperors’ desire for peace and stability. Tian An Men means
Gate of Heavenly Peace; Di An Men, Gate of Worldly Peace;
Zuo An Men, Gate of Peace on the Left; You An Men, Gate of
Peace on the Right; Guang An Men, Gate of Universal Peace;
Yong Din Men, Gate of Eternal Stability; De Sheng Men, Gate
of Triumph; and Zheng Yang Men, Gate Facing the Sun. In
1949, camel caravans carrying goods for trade still moved
leisurely into the city through these ancient gates.

In addition to these imposing towers, I was fascinated by
the many decorated archways at many crossroads within the
city itself. Two of these grand arches stood just west and east of
Tian An Men, right in the middle of Changan Road, restricting
the traffic with their regal size. It was the architecture and
beauty of The Forbidden City, the Palace Museum, and the
Temple of Heaven that I loved the most. Our school, the
Central Institute of Fine Arts (the Central was added to the
name after the Communist Party took power to show central
control), was located in the area of east Beijing, where the
supreme commander of the Qing Dynasty once had his
residence. Actually, our Institute was directly under the
leadership and control of the Central government.

Located just opposite our school was the Union Hospital
built by the Rockefeller Foundation in the early 20’s, which is
still one of the finest hospitals in China. In addition to these
exciting sites, I also soon discovered many scenic spots
outside, but nearby the city, especially the monumental and
overwhelming Great Wall. Beijing’s vastness and many
beautiful parks made me feel large-minded and peaceful,
compared to the claustrophobic feeling created by the crowded
intensity of commercial Shanghai.

My first meal in Beijing was wowotou, a northern dish of
steamed bread (or dumpling) made of coarse grained wheat,
instead of the familiar soft white rice of the south. Before
leaving Hangzhou some fellow students, trying to frighten me
with the harshness of northern life, described wowotou as coarse
and tasteless. From its name and their description, I anticipated
something small, hard, and wizened. I was surprised to discover
that I enjoyed my very first mouthful. Soon I also came to like a
variety called jinyinjuan, or gold and silver roll. It’s a steamed
bun made with three flours, wheat, yellow corn, and soybean.
It’s not only fragrant, sweet, and tasteful, but very nourishing.
What a pity it grew unpopular because it was thought to be a
food of the poor.

The Central Institute of Fine Arts was formally
established under the Central government only on April 1, 1950.
Xu Beihong was the first president, and he was the best known
artist and art educator in China. He and some other Institute
professors had been trained in Europe around the same time that
my uncle had been there. Our school was divided into
departments of oil, traditional Chinese painting, sculpture,
applied art, graphic art, and art history. The Department of Folk
Art and Mural Painting was just added in 1980. The school was
run according to traditional European models. One hour every
morning was devoted to foreign language study, and the next
three hours were devoted to professional courses such as
drawing as the basis for painting, sculpture, and print-making. In
the afternoon we had such courses as anatomy, coloring, art
history, literature, and politics.

Since the Chinese Communist Party was the power of the
state we were asked to follow the path of socialist realism. Art
must serve the people—the workers, peasants, and soldiers. It
was our task as young artist, to portray them in revolutionary
history, struggling to build a socialist country. Mao’s writings on
art were our guiding principles. No other portrayal of art was
allowed. All students were to experience the life of a worker,
peasant, and soldier for about two months every year. It was
called “learn through the life of the working people.” Then we
were expected to complete a work of art representing this life
experience upon our return to school. This narrow perception
naturally caused our art to become formally repetitive and
monotonous, and with little of the vital expression required to
create good if not great art.

When the new China was founded, Mao called on the
Chinese people to lean to one side, meaning the Soviet side.
Hence the Soviet’s influence was overwhelming in our art.
Soviet art books and magazines dominated our libraries.
Because of the Soviet teaching method, we changed to use
pencil rather than charcoal. Training courses in oil painting and
sculpture were set up only under Soviet experts. I highly valued
the valor of the Soviets in the war against Fascism and their
continued support to our country, yet I felt there was something
missing in their lopsided method of teaching. One day in a mass
rally welcoming Soviet experts, one Soviet artist, a leader of
the delegation, challenged us, “Let’s launch an art competition
between the Soviets and Chinese. But you’ll never surpass us...”
His smug words and manner stung my national pride so sharply
that I quit attending my Russian language class. This cultural
arrogance was to trouble me for many years to come.

During our 1950 summer vacation, the school called on
us to take part in the Land Reform Movement. Nearly the entire
student body responded to the call. However, two close friends
and I were attracted to a summer camp at the beach, which was
organized by the China Students’ Union and the Central
Committee of the Communist Youth League of China. My
friends and I had a wonderful time at the seaside in Qinhuang
Dao. We particularly enjoyed the Peoples Liberation Army’s
restaging of the Attack on the Plum Fortress that originally took
place in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province during the recent Civil War.
But when the three of us returned to school we noticed that
something was very strange. We were treated as politically
backward elements. I can tell you today, that the absolute
viewpoints of the philosophy of class struggle confused right
and wrong from its very inception.

Because I chose the Communist Youth League Camp at
the beach instead of a work camp in a peasant village, this
shadow enveloped my life like a dark and stormy cloud from
then on. People looked at us with cold eyes. We were even
criticized in some meetings, without directly mentioning our
names, for having not shown any concern for the land-reform
revolutionary movement. This reform was regarded as the single
epoch-making change for the Chinese peasant. In this regard, I
can understand why we were criticized, even though at the time
I was too young and ignorant about politics and the situation of
the Chinese peasants. However, from this very first national
political movement, the Communists showed their absolute
viewpoint toward the so-called Class Struggle. It often confused
and twisted right and wrong in their judgement of individual
people based upon their class status (which they were born into
without choice). Therefore, in this first land-reform movement,
they simply targeted the landlords and rich peasants as the
enemies of the people. The Communists became so
preoccupied with the class struggle concept that they were
willing to sacrifice at any cost, any productive members of the
country. The ultimate results of this movement were the
summary executions of many innocent people, primarily
because of the hard work they had accomplished throughout
their lives and the various material rewards that were gained as
a result of it!

If your family background was bourgeois, landlord, or
even a rich peasant, you were automatically seen as a second
rate citizen. If you had once served in the former government,
especially in the army, not to mention being trained in the
United States, you were considered worse, even though it was
to defend your motherland from the Japanese invaders. I and
many others, were seen as an alien-class element, a dissident
with counter-revolutionary antecedents. They didn’t care when
we joined the army or who we fought. People were suddenly
ranked as citizens by petty irrelevant distinctions. So began my
new understanding of the Communist Party.

I was soon surprised to learn that because I lost the
support of my parents when I was still a child and spent much
of my early life taking care of myself, I was not seen as nonbourgeois.
Instead I was criticized for my individualist-heroism.
Suddenly, Party organizations and its members were
everywhere. We could be reported to authorities at anytime by
the people around us. Whenever I did something on my own
initiative, I was charged with liberalism. I soon learned that
there was now an -ism label for anything that suited the Party.
My personal resentment of the arrogance I had seen in the
Soviet experts once caused me to ask pointedly about the
Soviet’s removal of heavy machinery from our factories in
Manchuria at the end of World War II. Therefore, I was then
criticized for being anti-Soviet. When I told my fellow students
about my experiences in the United States, it was taken that I
was advocating American imperialism, sham democracy and
material civilization. There was no longer any room in our
society for any individual expression or experience. This sudden
change in the Party’s attitude came so quickly following their
victory in the civil war that I was totally unprepared for it.
It’s reality soon struck home when my first work was
placed in a school exhibition. It was a watercolor. I tried to
make the patches of color show the fierce struggle of the scene
and left the people in the painting unfinished. Even that was
criticized as being bourgeois decadent expressionist art simply
because it was my work. I couldn’t understand the purpose of
such criticism, and the pride I had so strongly felt in the New
China just a year before began to crumble away piece by piece.
I had said what I felt and I was branded with bad -isms. I was
abruptly labeled as being, “Incompatible with the New China.”
No one was allowed to say no to what was seen, done, held or
dictated as correct by the Communist Party. This dictated
conformity was one of the main causes of my later great
tragedy. I have felt very constrained ever since this initial
realization of what was happening all around me. But even my
constraint became cause for criticism. “Now that China is
liberated all the people are happy but him. He feels constraint.
It must be class-feeling.” As the Revolution ceaselessly rolled
on, my life seemed doomed to be crushed under it’s dynamic
force.

In October, 1950, China sent her volunteers to the
battlefield of the Korean War. I went as well, “to Resist U.S.
Aggression, Aid Korea, Protect our Home, and Defend our
Motherland.” I once again voluntarily joined the Army Air
Force. At first I wasn’t accepted, but I applied again and again,
because I thought I should go. It was my duty as an army man. I
didn’t understand why they continually refused me. I was too
naive in matters of politics.

Eventually I was accepted and trained at an Air Force
Academy in Northeast China. The next spring a new political
movement, called Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries, was
launched on a nationwide scale. All the cadets were required to
make a clean breast of their past records. We were each
required to tell our life stories at meetings held daily. When my
turn came, all of my personal effects and experiences were
inspected. They took everything they wanted, including my
priceless photographs. I never saw any of them again. Among
the photo’s were several taken while I was in training in the
United States, including some street scenes and even some
with Millie. I told them, as they asked, everything about my
family, my social connections, and my life before the new
China ever came into existence. When I finished telling them
my story, I saw in their faces that something seemed very
wrong.

They spoke one after the other, criticizing me sharply,
and making detailed inquiries. I realized later that the Party
members and their activists had met earlier to determine my
case. They said, “Wu Jieqin is from a reactionary bureaucratic
family. He was a KMT airman trained by the United States
imperialists, and his social relations are very complicated. In a
word, he had a clear record of being anti-Communist and
against the people.” I was utterly confused. I wondered why my
family should be labeled as bureaucratic? Just because my
father and uncle both graduated from the political opposition's
military academy? Or because they had run a cinema? What in
my record was anti-Communist or against the Chinese people?
Is it because I joined the KMT Air Force to fight Japan? Or just
because I trained in the United States? Yes, I had friends in all
walks of life, all around the globe. So what?!? Even if some of
them got into trouble, was that my responsibility? Why should
these experiences bring me so much trouble and make me an
untrustworthy person? It was not fair. It was not right! What sort
of logic was this? As the sickened feeling in my stomach grew
deeper and deeper, I realized that there was no use trying to
defend myself, so I just kept silent.

The next day a mass meeting was held, but I was not
allowed to attend. I heard later from a fellow cadet that I was
cited as an example proving the need for a movement to
Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries. I was no threat to them nor
did I have any desire to control them, but I was officially
considered a Kuomintang airman—a counter-revolutionary
element—who had snuck into the People’s Army.

After a few more very difficult and confusing days I was
sent back to my school. The night of my departure, I couldn’t
sleep. I was so confused. I felt deeply wronged. Still I didn’t
realize the key point at issue here, so I just kept right on
walking blindfolded straight ahead, as though toward a dark
unseen abyss. There was little else I could do.

On the train returning to Beijing I saw about two hundred
fellow cadets suffering the same fate, washed out by the PLA,
almost all because of their family backgrounds. Most were
young men and women only eighteen or so. They seemed so
simple and so earnestly in love with their country, their
motherland. What could the Communists be thinking? This new
viewpoint of class struggle shredded everything everywhere into
utter chaos. You had to beware, it could crop up any time, any
place, with anyone—and it did!

~~~

Because I had missed the previous year due to my cadet
training, when I returned to the school in June of 1951, I was
asked to do a figure drawing to see if I could keep up with the
progress made by the rest of my class. I chose to do a drawing
of the school’s plaster model of Michelangelo’s Dying Slave. I
was happy to see that my former classmates were also
interested in my success. They also hoped that we could
continue to study together. Our Dean of Studies, Professor Wu
Zuoren, now the Chairman of the China Artists’ Association and
the Honorary President of the Central Institute of Fine Arts,
came to judge my completed drawing. After studying the
drawing, he finally looked up and said, “Fine, go back to the
same class.” Upon hearing this, my classmates hugged me with
joy. This was what I wanted to do, study art and sculpture.
That summer the school also received a government
commission to complete a special project. To our excitement,
we were to design the Exhibition of Interchanging Commodities
from Towns and Counties in North China. This exhibition was to
take place in Tianjin, not far east of Beijing, where they
provided us with free board, lodging, and recreation. The whole
faculty and student body became involved in this exciting
project. We traveled to Tianjin by train and settled into the
former British Club where the old race track was designated to
be our work site.

One morning, shortly after our arrival, I witnessed a
unique ceremony. The project organizers lowered the British
flag and then raised the Chinese in its place. It was powerful
being there to witness the symbolic ceremony representing the
fact that we Chinese, had taken this club over from the British.
Since our country had been humiliated by so many foreign
powers for such a long time, we all completely felt happy and
proud of being Chinese as our flag was raised and confidently
flew at the top of the flag pole.

Our new project required that we create huge sculptures,
posters, billboard illustrations, and art lettering, all being part of
a single integrated design. Each artistic discipline had to work
very closely with all the others. Our minds were stimulated, and
our thoughts shared. Regulations and restrictions seemed much
less important here than when we were at school. Everyone
brought their individual abilities and wisdom into play for the
good of the group effort. It seemed as though we were realizing
a method of teaching art which was finally worth exploring.
Those two months of open creativity not only produced a
harvest of good art, but also a sound and definitive education in
the collective spirit. We worked not only for our own personal
fame and gain, but also with pride in serving the people of
China.

Then, in the winter of 1951, Mao launched a national
campaign against what he called the three evils—corruption,
waste, and bureaucracy. Taking advantage of the winter
holidays, students were sent to various places as members of so
called Tiger Hunting Teams. With six other students I was sent
to the Art Supply Service then attached to our school. It was
housed two miles from the campus. I worked there under the
office of the Campaign Against the Three Evils. The entire staff
and all the workers were organized to study Party policies
attached to this campaign. The staff was then called upon to
make a clean breast of their crimes and accuse others they
knew to be criminals as well. These crimes included
embezzling, forgery, theft, bribery and other white collar
crimes. Some suspects were already being locked up in isolated
rooms within the offices. Most of those locked up were directors
on various levels. Some were even old Party members from the
early Yanan days. We had no mercy on those we saw to be
“criminals.”

I learned from the newspaper that corruption and waste
had become very serious problems indeed. It also revealed how
Party cadres had degenerated from revolutionary heroes into
grafters. The best example we were told of was two senior
cadres, the secretaries of the Tianjin Prefectural Party
Committee, Liu Qing-san and Zhang Zi-shan, who were even
sentenced to death for their crimes. The Party wanted to show
that its own members were not exempt from justice. In showing
this, they concurred with the old Chinese belief that it was best
to execute one as a warning to a hundred. What a crime.
In February 1952, most of my fellow students were finally
called back to school to begin the spring semester. For some
reason, I was kept working on the campaign until May. I found
no more tigers, but I did find a little rat who embezzled a
camera and slightly more than a hundred renminbi yuan (about
$100 USD). I supposed that was considered worth three months
of my time.

At the end of each academic year the topics for our
Experiences of Life projects would often be assigned by the
department directors. However, this year in 1952 we were free
to choose our own topics, as long as we used plaster paris and
they were realistic in form. Because I love children and feel
familiar and comfortable with their ways and character, I
decided to reflect the great changes that had taken place in the
New China through the depiction of a child born after the
founding of the People’s Republic. First I carefully observed
several children at the kindergarten near our school. Then I
focused on the most distinguishing characteristic of
children—their ability to imitate. I decided to show how our
world had changed by depicting what children were imitating.
They were no longer imitating smoking, stealing, or killing as
they had when I was young. So I decided to portray a little boy
of three or four wearing baby overalls and trying hard to put on
the steelmaker’s gloves of his father. This very healthy boy was
meant to make a strong contrast to those pale thin children who
suffered from hunger and cold that I had seen everywhere before
the New China was created. My efforts were a great success
and this work won prizes and warm popular acclaim. Accounts
of it were published in Hong Kong and the Soviet Union. But I
knew clearly that my basic modeling skill had a long way to go
and was not yet mature. The time I spent in the army had cut
into my study time and this left me feeling far behind where I
wanted to be in my artistic development.

This was also the first time I had ever been paid for my
art. I was surprised to receive money from various sources
because of this work. With this new wealth, I became the first
student in our school to buy a radio. Some of my fellow students
even teased, “It seems you can live on this work your whole
life!” Finally I realized that I could say things through my art
which could touch the lives of others and be appreciated by
them. This was an awesome discovery for a young student.

~~~

When I graduated at the end of the 1953 spring semester,
we were again sent to factories and rural areas to learn from the
lives of workers and peasants. Students of the Sculpture
Department were divided into two groups, one of which was
sent to a small country village called Hegezhuang about 60
kilometers to the west of Beijing. The other group was sent to
the Shijingshan Iron and Steel Works Factory. Any student
whose family background was not considered good or who had a
record of social or political problems was sent to the
countryside. Naturally, I was in this group.
In the impoverished mountain area of Hegezhuang, we
lodged separately in the houses of poor and lower-middle
income peasants. Our lodging was termed the three
togethers—eat together, live together, and work together. I was
assigned to live with the Deputy Party Secretary of
Hegezhuang. There were four people living in his home; Deputy
Secretary Pang Xianyi, his mother, wife, and a sister of
eighteen. They lived in a very poor and shabby one-story house
built of sun-dried mud bricks, with an irregular dirt floor and a
thatched roof. With only two rooms and a small kitchen of
about two square meters, it was a dark and dreary house with
very little furniture. The two kangs, built-in heatable brick beds
connected to the cooking range, served as a place to eat meals,
to read, and to do various household chores. The only other
significant furniture were two simple benches. Meat, rice, or
even wheat were a rare treat anytime during the year. Their
standard diet was a steamed bread of very coarse corn mixed
with a flour made from various types of beans. Life for Pang
Xianyi and his family was very hard, even before I moved in.
As soon as we arrived in Hegezhuang, we began working
in the fields every day from early morning until sunset.
Whenever our work permitted, we also made many sketches of
the peasants at their tasks. Sometimes to liven the drudgery and
monotony, we sang and played our musical instruments in mass
rallies. The peasants thoroughly enjoyed our life among them,
for they evidently had no recreational life at all before we came
to Hegezhuang.

Almost every evening Deputy Secretary Pang Xianyi, sat
on his kang—brick platform—in his room after the day’s heavy
labor in the fields, and sang A Child Cowherd. This is a song
about a boy who once lived in the village named Wang Xiaoer.
One day in 1942, he was watching the grazing cattle in the Tai
Hang mountains, when a band of Japanese invaders came upon
him and ordered him to lead them to where the local guerrillas
were hiding. Little Wang deliberately led them wrong, into a
dead end. The angry and brutal enemy killed and mutilated him
with their bayonets, then threw his body down into the valley
below. The people of his village created this song to pay tribute
to his memory and loyalty. He had such a great spirit at so
young an age! The story of his fate saddened me, but his
courage made me proud. Proud to be Chinese! Each time I
heard Pang sing this song it became harder to cool my hatred
for the Japanese. That hatred grew even stronger when, each
day, I would see scattered throughout Hegezhuang, several
houses which were still burned and left in ruin by those cruel
invaders.

I soon discovered these peasants to be a sincere and
down to earth people. My host family treated me as one of their
own, especially the kind old mother. For more than sixty years
she had lived such a hard life and saw my time with them as a
bright spot amongst all the drudgery. When mealtime came she
would say to me, “Lao Wu, go get your sister to have a meal.
She is watching the cattle somewhere around back.” She made
me feel like I was part of her family. The day finally arrived,
however, when we were scheduled to leave and return to
school. It was an unforgettable day. Mother Pang pulled me
aside and untied a cloth-wrapped little treasure bundle, one
cloth layer after another. When she untied the fourth layer,
there appeared a small handkerchief, and inside it were a few
coins. She took my callused hand and squeezed her money into
it. How could I accept such a gift knowing it was her only
savings? This was enough money to buy a kilogram of meat.
After struggling for the proper response, I said, “Mother Pang, I
don’t need any money at present. Please keep it for yourself,
but thank you very much.” I immediately saw from her eyes
that my words hurt her. She needed to show her affection for me
and I soon realized that I had no choice but to accept her
generous gift. Then, she also gave me some eggs which she
would never permit herself to eat. I was so moved by her
expression of affection that I couldn’t find the appropriate words
to tell her of my gratitude. So, in silence with my heart swelling
up inside of me, I accepted her gifts. Whenever possible, over
the following years, I would take that 30 mile bus trip back to
visit her and to present her with gifts from Beijing. Knowing of
her life of hardships, sacrifice, and generosity affects me to this
day.

The purpose for sending students to live in the
countryside was to create an understanding of the peasants, to
learn from them, to reflect on the excellent qualities of their
lives and natural way of living with little, and to interpret those
things into art for the world to see. I remember one day, when
we were in a field seeding beans, the way that Pang’s wife
planted beans caught my eye. Each step forward was graceful
and productive as she sowed the seeds before her. Her
movement reminded me of the Chinese proverb, “Every man is
the child of his labor.” Staring at her in the field that day, I
made up my mind to make her the subject of my graduation
project. When the sculpture was finished I was pleased with
both its content and form. However, my professor seemed to
feel differently. Fortunately he still graded it with an A, even
though his comments were all negative.

Through this criticism, I began to understand how
difficult it is to be an artist. What on earth is the criterion for
measuring the value of any work of art? The fate of any work of
art seems always controlled by those authorities within the
field, or sometimes by critics completely beyond the world of
art. I thought such control was abnormal and could only be an
obstacle to the development of any art form. These
contradictions began to torment me as they would for the rest of
my life. Like so many artists before me, I eventually learned
that there was nothing I could do but create my art and hope
that it would touch people’s hearts and minds and that they
would understand and appreciate it.

~~~

Upon returning to school from the countryside, I was
surprised to discover that a troupe of young actors and actresses
from the Shanghai Children’s Art Theater was rehearsing day
and night in our auditorium. This troupe was a subdivision of the
China Welfare Association, which was founded by China’s
vice-chairman, Madam Song Qingling, the widow of Dr. Sun
Yat-sen, the father of modern China. All the performers wore
uniforms, with the boys in blue pants and white shirts, and the
girls wearing blue skirts and white blouses. Most of the girls
wore their hair in pigtails. Among them, I was immediately
caught by the beauty of one young actress. She had a lovely
and touching face that I could not get out of my mind. Her
name was Minghua, and she was an eighteen year old whose
main job was stage art designer. We had many opportunities to
get together as we showed each other our departments and
talked about drawing. Because she was the most beautiful girl
in the theater, many of the other boys in our school aggressively
pursued her and asked her to walk with them in the park, go
boating, or to see a movie. I didn’t worry, for I believed love to
be a natural happening, and if she was really interested in
someone she would show him in one way or another. If it was
meant to be me, we would both know.

About two weeks after our return, the theater group was
to leave for Korea to entertain our troops. The night before,
Minghua and I happened to run into each other while she was
preparing to go up to her room. Suddenly I blurted out, “Could
we meet again?” “Well, we can at least write,” she answered,
while looking back at me as she went up the stairs. Not long
after that, her first letter came to me from the Korean battle
front. I was so happy! Of course I replied to her without delay. It
was autumn at the time, and in the letter I enclosed a beautiful
colored maple leaf to show my budding affection. Then, for
several years to come, after the troupe returned to its home in
Shanghai, love letters shuttled back and forth between us.
During this period of love and courtship, I accepted a position
as an associate professor and began to feel confident about my
future. I was doing everything I could to make it better.
In the summer of 1956, Minghua was sent to study at the
Shanghai Institute of Theater. It was a great chance for us to
come together, as it was possible to obtain student transfers
between our two sister schools. So, I went to the Central
Institute of Theater and applied for her transfer to Beijing. She
was finally able to move to Beijing at the end of 1956, and we
married in January 1957. Since the loneliness of my mother’s
death, this was now my life’s happiest period.

Our marriage, born in an era of idealism and turmoil,
unfortunately had too many obstacles ahead to succeed. The
beauty and passion of our early relationship eventually turned to
a bitter fruit, which spoiled in the withering political climate in
the years to come. But to a young couple in love, our school
life together that year was the best of times. We had dancing
parties on weekends. I sang in the Beijing Teachers Chorus and
sometimes even conducted our own school chorus. I introduced
classical music to our cultural activities and taught some songs
to our students. Besides all this extra curricular activity, I still
kept up my physical training, including swimming and body
building. Also that year, to give our students some general
military knowledge, a class of military physical training or
Sports for National Defense, as it was called, was added to our
curriculum. I was sent to the Navy Club to learn how to coach
our students in the use of life boats, or Sampans, which hang
from the side of ships. In this course I also learned the
government policy for building our naval force, elementary
knowledge of the navy and its ships, and the identifying
characteristics of all kinds of warships. But my main course was
how to operate a Sampan.

Once I became the coach I picked sixteen of our
strongest students, eight men and eight women, to begin
competitive training. Twice a week we would train on the lake
in Beihai, or the North Sea Park. Empress Dowager Cixi, the
last true ruler of the Qing Dynasty, wanted to be near the sea,
so the lake was called the North Sea. During these training
exercises I acted as both coach and helmsman. Upon
completion of our course, the government organized a sampan
race between all of the universities and colleges of Beijing.
Finishing second, less than one second behind the Sports
Department of Beijing Teachers University, we were extremely
proud of our accomplishment. In my excitement, I wrote a song
to tell the story of our memorable training experiences. Several
of the students added poems, and we called it “a chorus with
poems.” For our gala celebration I conducted our school chorus,
who were all dressed in borrowed navy uniforms. As they sang
and recited what we had written, they were very well received
by the entire faculty and student body. When the Beijing
Teachers University heard of our performance, we were invited
to perform there as well. We all felt honored by our success and
the praise we received. I was once again accepted by all, in
spite of my past, or so I was beginning to think.

When our class discussed what we should present for the
school’s New Year’s Party, I suggested a circus. But since none
of the others had ever seen a real circus, and I had seen only
one, a German circus in Shanghai, I was chosen to be the
director. According to the abilities of my fellow students, I
organized a variety of acts such as rope dancing, flying knives,
plate spinning, jar balancing, jumping through rings of fire,
figure-shaping in the air, weight-lifting, conjuring the bear, and
of course clowns. Naturally, in most of our acts, the show would
have to depend on illusion. We would have to “pass fish eyes
off as pearls,” even though there would be many in our
audience who knew better.

On the day before our performance we created a splendid
playbill, with portraits of all the actors and actresses crowned
as prize winners in the XXth World Youth Festival. We asked
our dean to be our Honorary Chairman. When the New Year’s
Eve celebration arrived, our circus had suddenly become the
main event of all the festivities. After all of the other activities
were completed, the announcer solemnly proclaimed, “And the
last event of the evening is a great and glorious circus!” The
audience hushed, eyes glued to the front, waiting for the curtain
to rise. Unexpectedly, the sounds of a march came from the
entrance behind the audience. No sooner had all the lights
come back on and the audience turned to look for the source of
the music, than all of the circus performers and their band came
marching from the rear, through the audience and onto the stage
led by Professor Ai, our Dean.

Just after the flying knife act, someone from the audience
sent a note forward saying, “We think the flying knives should
be canceled from future performances. It is really splendid, but
far too dangerous.” This gave us an indication of how successful
we were in creating an illusion for our audience, and that’s all
it was. Just an illusion! I had chosen a young student, Miss
Zhang, whom for this show we named Lindaiyu after the slim
and beautiful central character in the famous poem, Dream of
the Red Chamber. Standing with her back against a large board
she stretched her arms out to the side. We had textured the
board to hide the slots we made for the daggers to pass through
on both sides of her neck, the outside of her ankles, and
underneath her armpits. We then mounted the daggers to the
back of the board below the slots so that when they popped
through the board, they appeared as if they had been thrown by
the actor. We used large rubber bands to pull and fix the
daggers to the back of the board where we had someone hidden.
The actor throwing the dagger also had a rubber band inside his
sleeve. When the drumbeat and accompanying music hit a
crescendo, the dagger flashed downward as the actor appeared
to throw it. The eyes of the audience rapidly followed the
assumed trajectory of the knife to its beautiful target. At the
same instant the person behind the board released the
appropriate dagger fixed behind the board so that it assumed its
prearranged position in the front of the board. This was done six
times. Six times they fit precisely, and six times the audience
went wild with disbelief and satisfaction with the trick.
Since weight lifting had given me the strongest muscles
in our group, I held the ladder in the act, Beauty Shaping the Air.
When the curtain rose I appeared from backstage holding Miss
Yang high over my head. She was the lightest member of our
sculpture department, and was from Taiwan. As I put Miss Yang
down, two people brought me a large ladder about five meters
high. I balanced the ladder upright and walked around the stage.
We had fixed a thin iron bar over the top of our stage curtain.
As I sensed I was under the bar I imperceptibly hooked the
ladder to the bar while pretending to continue balancing it.
Then, in pace with the music, Miss Yang stepped from my
thigh up to the ladder, shaping the air with graceful gestures as
she climbed higher and higher. My extraordinary strength and
superb balancing skill was all an act. An illusion which went
undetected. The audience went wild again!

Unexpectedly, our performance that evening was a huge
success. The audience was so excited and pleased that we were
asked to do another performance before representatives from all
the universities and colleges in Beijing, the Central Committee
of the Communist Youth League, and even the China Acrobatic
Troupe. If the applause of this audience was an appropriate
measure of our skill, we were just as successful the second time
as we were the first.

In the summer of 1953, after my graduation, I enrolled in
a postgraduate course for two more years. Our course of study
was centered around a work study program which enabled us to
put our art into practice. During this period we were
commissioned to do architectural sculpture for the Soviet
Exhibition Hall, the Overseas Chinese Hotel, the Astronomy
Observatory, various gyms, and so on. We received some extra
income from these commissions, and so were enabled to
establish the Sculpture Research Studio, which we located on
the Central Art Institute campus.

~~~

For the summer of 1954, the China Students Union
organized a true vacation at the seaside resort of Beidaihe for
all college postgraduates, assistants, and instructors. Beidaihe
is located in Hebei province of Northeast China, and has a truly
picturesque beach. While there we were boarded in a primary
school about half a mile from the sea, and I was selected as
one of the lifeguards. Every morning the lifeguards would search
out the best place to swim and erect bamboo poles in the
seabed about a couple hundred meters from the shore, marking
the boundary of the area we thought safe to swim. Every pole
was topped with a red flag and swimmers were not allowed to
go beyond them.

One day after our noon nap, I returned routinely to the
beach with my friend, Gu. It was high tide and a crowd of
people had gathered just beyond some of the poles. A lifesaving
boat was just leaving the beach. As we ran up to the crowd we
were told that a young girl about seventeen had been swept
away by the tide while washing her feet on the shore. As we
watched, the lifesaving boat tried in vain to find her. While
people were talking excitedly, someone shouted, “Look! There
she is! Over there!” We all turned to follow where she was
pointing. About two hundred meters from shore we could see a
black splotch of hair floating up and down with the waves.
As a responsible lifeguard, I ran through the surf, jumped
into the sea, and swam with all of my strength and speed. I had
to do all I could to save her. Finally I reached the girl and
immediately froze. For the first time in all of the excitement I
was struck with fear! I had saved a number of people from
drowning in the past, but I had never brought a dead person out
of the water before. The body had already bloated and its color
had changed to blue and purple. What was I to do? I couldn’t
return without her. I tried to grab only the hair, reluctant to
touch the cold body. But as I grasped her hair, the waves tossed
her body into me with all its force. I twisted away as if I had
received an electric shock.

Suddenly I realized that everybody on shore was
watching me. I could only grab her hair and swim desperately
with my other arm. The next several minutes seemed like an
eternity. As I finally approached the shore I broke through the
waves, and her brother ran out to help me. He fought his way
out into the water, took her by the waist and walked ashore with
her clutched tightly to himself. Could I have held her so tightly?
I felt ashamed of myself as I watched him walk away with her.
What if she were my sister? Perhaps that is what blood
relationship meant. I didn’t know, and I couldn’t explain it to
myself. It was my job to rescue her, and I had failed. In many
fitful nights since, I have dreamed of that girl and touched her
lost soul. Her hair moving in slow languor up and down in the
waves. Her cold blue body rubbing up against my bare skin. It
was a nightmare.

While we were away on summer vacation, our school set
up two training courses under the leadership of Soviet experts.
One was in oil painting, the other in sculpture. Successively
throughout the year, students were sent to the Soviet Union for
advanced study. I soon discovered that the candidates were all
named by Party authorities, not by the faculty. We had to be a
Party member to apply. Ability was not the primary
requirement. Four students in our department were Party
members, and one of them was a rather poor student too! Even
worse, he was very mean and self seeking. We understood early
that many people applied for Party membership, not out of
devotion to the Communist cause, but for selfish purposes such
as these. It was a means of acquiring special rights and
privileges. Such people often spoke in a tone of extreme
zealotry to show themselves off as fervid revolutionaries. Yet
anyone who knew them well could see that this was not their
true pitch. They were two-faced and only concerned about
themselves. If we dared to speak against them, we would
suddenly find ourselves in deep trouble for giving Party
members an ugly image and, therefore, slandering the Party.
We could be publicly criticized and even punished. In short, I
learned we could never say “no” to the Communist Party. Its
authority was absolute, and its so-called brilliance,
righteousness, and superiority were to be obeyed by all.
Needless to say, I was never sent to study in the Soviet Union,
and neither were the most talented artist in our department.

Later that summer I was surprised to receive a letter post
marked Sichuan. It was from my younger sister May. The last
time I had seen her she was waving a tearful goodby to me from
my aunt’s house. That seemed like a lifetime away. Like so
many others in the chaos of war, we had lost contact in 1945.
Then, one day she saw my art work in the local newspaper. She
was so pleased with my success she decided to send her four
year old daughter to me in the escort of my aunt and cousin
who were to be soon moving to Beijing. She hoped I might
provide a better opportunity in life for her than she was able to.
I went immediately to the personnel office for the special
permission required to look after her and to keep her in my
dorm room. To this day I am deeply grateful to the kindhearted
Mrs. Wang who finally found a way to waive the prohibiting
rules. My young niece was called “Little Pearl.” She was a
very sweet and lovely girl who quickly became the pet of our
school.

As strange as it sounds, my niece ended up living with
me and three fellow students in a small dormitory room. Every
evening while I reviewed my lessons at the desk, she would
read a children’s book by my side. Then the two of us slept with
our heads at opposite ends of one small bottom bunk bed. Later
in the year I sent her to a kindergarten not far from our campus.
Every morning about seven I took her there and then I went to
pick her up at about five. Because of the love and devotion I
showed her, the attendants in the kindergarten thought I was her
father. I went to the tailor’s to have her dresses made and
shopped for nutrients and whatever else I felt she needed. Every
Sunday I took her to a song and dance performance created
especially for children. As the weeks turned to months I often
heard her sing a song from these performances as she climbed
the stairs to our room after playing with the students outside.
Sometimes she would imitate a dance she had seen somewhere
before. Her funny, lovely movements, that pair of big dark eyes,
her prominent forehead and chubby face with her lips pursed up,
all made me happy as I grew to love her more and more each
day.

As time went on, she suffered when I had to attend class
or some required meeting which forced me to leave her alone in
our room. If the people in the next room were free, I would ask
them to take care of her. At the meetings I would find myself
very absentminded and would dash back to our room as soon as
it was over to see if she was all right. It broke my heart when I
sometimes found her sobbing alone, immersed in her loneliness
and fear. Often I had to ask several girl students to take her for
a bath, for we only had a public bathhouse. She also proved to
be a well qualified model for a sculpture I created for an
exhibition at the Communist World Youth Festival in Budapest,
Hungary. So, I had to admit that in spite of the extra burden she
created on me, she definitely earned her keep!