Chapter 6

Walking out of that dreadfully dirty room, I met the cold-blooded triumphant eyes of those fellow students and faculty members who had worked so hard to convict me. In time it became known that they often sought personal gain by walking in other peoples’ tears and blood. They sat there gloating like conquering heroes.

But, I also saw other eyes deeply frightened by this storm around me. Their owners too had spoken out during the Party’s Rectification. Yet, they too had done their best to play the role of real revolutionaries by fiercely accusing me. Still, it was easy to see they were uneasy in their hearts. They could not be certain that they too might not be accused now that my verdict meeting was over. Through all of this, a wryly bitter Chinese proverb occurred to me, “Those who bow before me will survive and those who resist will perish.”

On my way home, at school, or on the street, my friends all seemed strangers from another world. I wondered who was the ghost, they or I? We were all walking down the same street, yet there seemed no relationship in space or time between us.
At home my life had become a nightmare. I felt like a child
forsaken by his mother, but even such a child would have some
possibilities for hope. He might find a shelter, a neighbor, a
relative, some way to live. Many had done so throughout
history. But, at this moment I felt that for me there was
absolutely no way. No future. No hope. I had no right to seek
opportunities on my own. Where was the law? The Party and
Mao were the supreme law, and they had turned their backs on
me.

A few days later the director of our studio, Ying Tai,
called me to his office and wanted to know what was in my
mind concerning the future, since I had been sentenced to
prison. I answered, “I wished I would be deported. I don’t care
where. My country has declared me a counter-revolutionary and
doesn’t need me anymore. I do not know if this is a possibility,
but this is what I really have been thinking.”

I knew it was an impossibly crazy thought. I am often a
fool, yet that was my true feeling. And, besides, at this point
what did I have to lose? How I wished for a pair of wings to fly
to a place where I could finally be myself. Mr. Ying stared at
me without words and dismissed me. To my surprise my answer
did not bring more trouble. I realized later that those careless
words could have created for me the title of traitor to my
country. To this day I have no idea why this new charge wasn’t
heaped upon me. Maybe I owe this bit of good fortune to the
understanding of Director Ying.

My pregnant wife returned from the Central Academy of
Drama on the Saturday evening following my conviction. I tried
my best to look undisturbed and put on a wry smile for her. I
could not let her share my suffering; however, I still had to tell
her what had happened. I tried to speak casually, “Dear, they
are sending me to reform through labor. It’s nothing. I promise
I’ll make friends and strive to come back to you as soon as
possible. No more than a year. Just think of it as if I’m going out
of town on business. Please don’t take it too seriously to heart.
Be strong. Know that I didn’t do anything unfair or improper to
our country or to you. Time will prove this.” My many efforts at
reassurance failed. Tears rolled down her face. My heart was
broken. It had only been four months since we were married,
and she was now pregnant. Soon she would be alone.
Completely alone to fend for herself in this cruel world.

From then on my foremost thought was how to raise
money to take care of my wife during the time I would be
imprisoned. My salary had been stopped already. I had been
receiving only 18 RMB (about $4) per month for living
expenses! But how could I find the money she needed? In
China we had no right to find a job on our own without the
authority’s permission. I couldn’t even become a peddler. It was
impossible. So, I was forced to save as much as possible from
my last 18 RMB.

Our studio had recently moved about three miles east of
the school. To save money I walked back and forth twice a day.
I accepted this as a form of punishment called, Laboring Under
Control. I prepared and ate gruel made from coarse maize for
lunch and supper every day my wife was not at home. I
permitted myself no other dishes but salt and two pieces of
onion. When I would try to eat more to keep from starving, I
often felt like vomiting. I was exhausted when I went to bed.
Day after day I worried about my wife and my unborn child. The
spiritual and physical suffering were nearly too great to bear. I
grew weaker and weaker, both physically and emotionally.
I sent letters to all of my close friends telling them about
my situation and that I had to break our contact to keep them
from future trouble. Having a friend labeled as an Ultra-Rightist
could only mean trouble. Nevertheless, one friend, Mr. Hu, a
classmate from the Zhejiang Art Institute, and now a
commander-pilot in the PLA Air Force, made many inquiries
and finally found my house and my wife while I was still in jail.
He kept in touch with me throughout the troubled times ahead.

What a special friend, especially considering that he was in the
PLA Air Force. A PLA pilot was never to have among his
social relations someone with my type of problems, nor even
with the wife of such a person. He was really a true friend in
deed. He gave me great spiritual support to continue.
May 6, 1958, is a day I will never forget. It was the day I
was forced to leave my wife and my home as a result of being
wrongly labeled an Ultra-Rightist, and an Anti-Communist. It
was the day that I became a specific target of the Proletarian
Dictatorship, that lasted until December, 1979. It was also the
day I left my studio art life behind, not to return again until
1983, 25 years later. It was the day I was forced to take the road
that ruined my youth and almost my entire life.

On the day before, I had met Ms. Zhao, the Party
secretary. She wanted to know if I had anything to say. “I don’t
see any point in saying anything since everything is settled,” I
replied. “But there is one thing I would like to say to you. I
know you are in a position to understand very well the charges
made against me, particularly the charge of my trying to usurp
the Party’s leadership.” Saying that, I turned and walked away.
At 9 a.m., May 6th, Shen Xin Zhong, the security cadre
of our school, led me to the car parked outside our home. As I
looked into my wife’s face, there were no tears. She just stood
in front of our door, stunned, looking again like the orphan she
always was, watching her only piece of family disappear. I
struggled to maintain my composure in front of her, eventually
getting into the car. I thought of nothing, but simply waited like
a sheep at slaughter, for whatever was to befall me. To allow
myself to be ordered about was all that I could do.
We drove to the police substation near our school to go
through some necessary formalities. The substation was already
crowded with criminals. I wondered how many were real
criminals, or how many were like me, trapped in a system they
could never understand. Men and women, young and old, I tried
to guess who they were and what crimes they must have
committed. Most of them did look like criminal offenders. It
was then that it hit me. I felt hurt and then angered that I was
seen as one of them, a comrade-in-jail, a criminal. Like the
others, I was ordered to be finger printed. Yes, I was now
identified as a true prisoner. When could I ever make the right
and wrong of these ten black fingerprints clear? Looking at
them through the shadows of time, how could future historians
and archaeologists distinguish the truth from them? Was I
doomed by history to be seen as a criminal?

After an eternity of these formalities, I was sent to a
place for temporary detention in the northern quarter of Beijing.
It was an old temple, originally a part of the Yonghe Palace. As
the car turned right off An Ding Men Avenue into a narrow
lane, our route zig-zagged and turned once more before we
reached the old palace, my place of imprisonment. It was
encircled by a brick wall, which was topped by a wire netting.
The heavy gate was closed. A small side door with armed
guards standing by it was opened for us. My life seemed to end
as I stepped through it.

As the door slammed shut behind me, every corner of my
mind screamed out that I had lost everything. The empty feeling
of loss crashed over me. The loss of my freedom overwhelmed
my whole body and soul. I had never felt such loss before. I was
sent first to a small office. The man in charge was about thirty
and, rather than the ever present uniform, was in plain clothes
and wearing glasses. His expressions appeared kind as he
questioned me. He asked, “Well, what’s your crime?” In reply,
my answer was simple and direct. “I spoke out during the
Party’s Rectification stating that we were short of democracy
and freedom; that the newspapers were not allowed to tell
people the whole truth; that Party members got undeserved
privileges; that conclusions on one’s personnel record should
be known to the person of record; that the Party’s Rectification
lacked good faith...” I was sure, that while I was saying all of
this, he was already aware of my crime, as it was known to all.
In reply he said only, “All right then, behave well in your
reforming labor.”

I was then placed in a room in one of the side chambers
of the old temple. It had been recently divided into two
compartments for prisoners. I shared a space roughly two meters
wide and six meters long (6’x19’) with fourteen other prisoners.
We slept on the ground, permitting each of us only about forty
centimeters space. We could only sleep on our side and turning
was almost impossible. We were packed like sardines in a can,
smelling at least as bad. I could not sleep at all the first night.
With my body stuck between men who were possibly
murderers or rapists, I reflected on the many surprising twists
and turns my life had taken. Suffering Japanese air raids, cold,
hunger, and my mother’s death when I was only thirteen. Then,
out of hatred for the Japanese invaders, I voluntarily joined the
Air Force to protect my homeland before I was seventeen. Then
I firmly left the KMT Air Force when the civil war broke out,
knowing that I could never kill my own people. I just couldn’t
do it. Then when the Communist Party took power, my heart
began to stir, yearning for a new China. I laid all my hopes on
the earthshaking changes the Communists were supposed to
bring to China. My heart brimmed with respect for each new
gloriously emerging thing they brought to our shattered land.
When I believed that foreign troops would invade our country
across the Yalu River during the Korean War, I again joined the
army. I would rather die than see China invaded again. Now in
1958, being investigated and then put, innocent, into jail, I
tried in vain to imagine a future where my people only had the
right to say yes but never no. The more I thought of this twist of
history, the more confused and depressed I became.

The next morning we were awakened from our restless
sleep at 5:30. For breakfast we were given a cup of maize gruel
and a small piece of pickle. Shortly after finishing our meal it
was time for us to stand and listen to the reading of the Party’s
policy toward criminals. Each of us were then required to recite
what we understood of these policies. This was called “To
integrate the Party’s policy with one’s own thought.” With each
word I spoke, I wondered how could one be assumed to be
saying what he really thinks when he had no right to say “No”?
So, in fact, there were no exceptions to our morning recitations.
We just said what the authorities needed to hear from us. I soon
learned that among the fifteen prisoners in my group, there were
petty thieves, gangsters, murderers, rapists, people with
counterrevolutionary antecedents... and Me! Most acknowledged
their guilt, yet would seldom relate any specific details.
There was one exception. A man in his fifties. A coal miner
from Mentougou, near Beijing. He enjoyed telling us how he
committed his crime. In graphic detail and still expressing
considerable excitement, he told us how he had sex with a
widow and her daughter at the same time in the same bed.
Shamelessly he confessed, “My legs feel like jelly whenever I
happen to meet a pretty woman. Then I can’t walk anymore. I
just can’t help myself.” So, he had been accused and convicted
as a bad element within society.

A few meters down the dark corridor from our quarters
there was a single cell with iron bars. Inside was a fat monk in
handcuffs and fetters. I heard that he refused to confess his
crimes, continually professing his innocence and shouting at the
guards. As punishment he was treated in this primitive manner.
The handcuffs got tighter and tighter and as the days passed,
eventually cut into his skin as he struggled hopelessly against
his bonds. I wondered if a real criminal would behave in such a
manner.

~~~

One day my wife came to be with me after she finished
school. She was only allowed to walk around outside the high
walls, repeatedly calling my name. She tried in vain to tell me
that our new baby was moving inside of her and that she missed
me terribly. I never heard a word she cried to me. Life was so
cruel to her. There was no one she could talk to about how
much she was suffering from her desperate life of loneliness.
She had become an orphan at age twelve. She was born in
Shanghai where her father had worked in a bank. He then
became a drug addict and finally ruined himself and his family.
In desperation, her mother committed suicide and her father
died not long after. Then she and her brothers and a sister were
taken to their eldest sister, Huihua Cheng, to live. After two
years of junior high education, she was accepted by the
Children’s Drama Troupe, which was attached to the China
Welfare Association founded by Madam Song, the widow of Dr.
Sun Yat-sen, Father of the Republic of China.

All members of the Children’s Drama Troupe were
teenagers. She was well trained by them and worked there as a
stage-artist when she was only 15 years old. They loved Madam
Song so much that they always called her “Mama Song!” I
believe those were her happiest days as she felt she had finally
escaped her bitter childhood. How could she know there would
be such disaster ahead of her because of me. I still regret that I
ever married and brought her into my suffering life. If I hadn’t,
things might have ended up differently for her. I still feel guilty.
I owe her so much. Now, many years later, I can never repay
her the love she deserves. Even writing this is too painful and I
am limited in the memories that the pain will permit me to
recall.

Finally, after two weeks in that foul 15 man cell, we
were transferred to the No. 1 Beijing jail in the southern quarter
of the city. That night we were put into four coaches following a
police car with a harsh and unpleasant siren and flashing red
lights. It was almost midnight, yet some people were on the
streets because of the warm summer weather. Looking out at
the many pedestrians as they walked the streets around us, I
again felt the deep pain of my lost freedom. The people outside
seemed so lucky and happy, no matter whether they were poor
or rich, or even handicapped. They seemed to eye us with such
a curious expression, as if to say, “Look at those evildoers!” As
we drove by, I wanted to cry out to them that there was
someone in this coach who was terribly wronged. That all of us
were not evil. But how could they know? Even though our
coaches passed them so closely, they might as well be on
another planet. None of the people on the street and in the
houses, buildings, and cars even cared about me and the deep
wrong I was forced to endure. I was completely alone.
Just before we reached the jail we passed a street and a
bridge. The street was named “Zixin Road,” meaning “Start a
New Life.” The bridge was named “Banbu Bridge,” meaning
“Half a Step.” It was as if the whole area had something to do
with reforming criminals.

We were then delivered to a real jail, the principal jail in
Beijing. There was razor wire netting on the walls, with
watchtowers on every corner, and of course those famous
iron-barred windows that the movies had made me so familiar
with. Now those terrible bars were to become a real part of my
life. It was not long before I learned that large numbers of
prisoners did not remain here, but were gathered here before
being sent onto the northeastern China frontier bordering the
Soviet Union. There, on the frozen tundra of the Siberian
frontier, was China’s coldest and most desolate place, Xingkai
Lake. This, I learned, was to be my final destination.

The day before we were sent up to the northeast, our
family members were allowed a brief visit with us in the jail
yard. We were asked to shave, be clean, and dress as well as
possible. One thing I was thankful for was that political
prisoners punished by reform labor, were not issued prison
uniforms, as were the true criminals. The criminals wore black
uniforms, black cloth shoes, and were shaved bald. They were
readily distinguishable from the political prisoners, who were
allowed to wear their own cloths and keep their hair. Before we
met our families, the public security cadres exhorted us not to
ask for too many things from home. We should do our best not
to put more burdens materially and spiritually upon our loved
ones than we already had. Rather we should give them hope for
a brighter future. A future where we would be able to start a
new life as soon as possible. Their language and concern
seemed genuine and touched me. I didn’t expect them to talk to
us like that. It was totally different from what I had seen in the
movies and read in books.

As soon as we stepped out of the jail building and into
the large courtyard, I saw my wife with her swollen belly
standing off at a distance, among the vast crowd of anxious
family members. As they saw us enter the courtyard, they
pushed toward us like a rushing tidewater as soon as the guard
gave them the signal. Each one finding their kinsman from
among our desperate ranks.

~~~

My wife was accompanied by one of her classmates,
Ding Mi Xiang. With something in her hand she came up to me
with a smile that tried to conceal the sadness in her heart. My
mind was very confused and angry, yet I tried so hard to make
her feel that this trouble would soon be over and that everything
would then be okay again. She said very few words. Her face
revealed only a little reluctant smiling expression once in a
while. Then she left without saying goodby, only a turning of
her head back to me once every few steps. I did not know until
a few years later that she had burst into tears of grief as soon as
she left that dreadful place.

A few days later we were herded aboard a heavily
guarded prison train and began the hard trip of three days and
two nights to the Siberian frontier. The old box cars were far too
crowded for anything but sitting. We even had to sleep sitting
up, pinned against one another like bricks. There were no
sanitation facilities and the smell was awful, worse than the
foulest sewer. I felt suffocated. The air was dead toxic. It made
no difference if the train was moving very fast, the air around us
had a stench beyond words. Through a small crack in the train’s
wall, as I gasped for fresh air, I gazed longfully at every mile
that drug me further and further from my wife and the world I
knew. I looked out at the clouds wishing that they hid a God
who was coming to save me, and carry me away from this
nightmare. I felt miserable leaving my newly married wife
carrying my child, yet to be born in an unknown time and
place, and me buried in oblivion for a crime I didn’t understand.

When we finally reached our destination in Mishan
county, which had jurisdiction over Xingkai Lake, soldiers from
the prison farm armed with machine guns welcomed us at the
railroad station. When I finally stepped down from that dreadful
train rejoicing in the thought of breathable air, I looked straight
into a machine gun barrel. I understood that in those soldiers’
eyes we were all criminals. How could they know that they
were nervously aiming their loaded guns at an innocent artist?
We were immediately transferred into trucks for the
difficult ride out to Xingkai Lake, which served as part of the
natural walls of this outdoor prison. Driven down a rough and
rugged road into a land that seemed totally neglected by the
civilizing touch of man, we felt even more alone than ever.
There were no signs of cultivation, as there is nearly
everywhere else in China. Stranger still, there were no people.
So, along a road with water on both sides, sometimes
marshlands, sometimes a lake, we finally arrived at our new
home at the open prison planted in the middle of nowhere.

Xingkai Lake is located at the far edge of northeast
China. The north part of the lake was snatched by the Soviets
decades before and was now a part of the Soviet Far East, or
Siberia. It is a huge lake, more like a small sea and frozen so
hard in the winter, that any vehicle could drive across without
the slightest fear of the ice cracking. In 1969, there was a
military conflict in this area between the Soviet’s and the
Chinese, at which time the frozen lake held the weight of many
tanks without signs of the slightest crack. There, in that frozen
wasteland, we lived in row after row of inverted V-shaped straw
roof sheds, surrounded on three sides by the vast lake, making it
impossible to escape. The cold barren ground was our floor. We
covered it with straw to avoid sleeping on the frozen ground.
There is where we slept, with our heads to the middle of the
shed, our feet out to the edge where the straw roof reached the
ground. The smaller of us, like me, could stand in the middle,
the others were cursed with the need to continually crouch. Not
even the relative warmth of summer could bring relief. During
June, in the northern wastelands, daybreak occurred at three
o’clock. We had to be working from daybreak to dusk, so our
summer nights and our rest was very short.

Upon our arrival, our first task of manual labor was to
build a dike. From the first moment, everything was done by
hand, with only a few primitive tools to assist. Those who had
never before done such heavy labor, or who by nature were not
strong were crushed in both body and spirit by this reforming
through labor. We who were designated Rightist received a
small payment for our labor, unlike the criminal
offenders—even though we lived, ate, and worked with them. I
learned quickly to be skeptical of labor as a means of reforming
criminals. It was all too common for criminal prisoners, as soon
as they were released, to resume their crimes and be returned to
prison. But we Rightists, how was labor to reform us?
I put all my strength into the labor before me. This I did
to gain better pay to send on to my wife and unborn baby. I
earned the highest payment possible, 25 RMB, roughly $5
USD, a month. But my legs quivered and it was nearly
impossible to straighten my back because of the countless loads
of black clay I carried on my back day after day. I was
completely exhausted every time we returned to our hut from
the labor site. Fortunately, because of my physical training
while in school, I was able to stand the test of the many forms
of heavy manual labor inflicted upon my body as a prisoner at
Xingkai Lake. However, my back was badly damaged there and
I have since never fully recovered.

Fortunately, we found a plentiful stock of fish in Xingkai
Lake, so we often had fish included in our otherwise tasteless
meals. This heavy labor created big eaters out of all of us. I was
the smallest, still eating 400 grams (nearly one pound) of
steamed bread or noodles in a single meal!

One day I was called from my work to the general
headquarters of the prison. It seemed that artists were needed
for the nationwide exhibition celebrating the 10th anniversary of
the New China. I was sent to an isolated wooden house near the
headquarters building. There I was surprised to encounter among
the prisoners from another prison farm not too far away, some of
my former schoolmates and friends. In 1958, we were ordered to
help prepare the exhibition for this camp. Such exhibitions were
being prepared all over China to celebrate the achievements of
the New China. In our group there were designers, painters,
writers, a dramatist, a journalist, a photographer, a movie
director, and me. Almost all of us were labeled as Bourgeois
Rightist.

Compared to criminal offenders, in time we enjoyed a
relative degree of freedom and trust from the guards. We could
take a walk around our small hut and even obtain leave to shop
in a little drug store located on the prison farm. After working
all day, I often searched around our little hut picking up the
most beautiful pebbles I could find. Some were probably fossils
since I sometimes found what looked like fish eyes looking
back at me. This land had been part of a great inland sea many
centuries earlier. I gathered these unique and colorful pebbles
as presents for my wife. I even kept them safely hidden until I
could finally return home. By now it was summertime and the
mosquitos were terrible. It seemed they had never met we
humans before, but they sure enjoyed the taste. They would bite
and suck our blood even when we were running. The only way
we found to stop them was to slap them dead. We had swolled
welts all over our bodies, especially on our legs. But worse than
all the mosquitoes and poor physical conditions, was the
loneliness crushing down upon my heart.

As each day was swallowed by the next, and each week
by its endless next, I realized that I was not alone in my pain.
This dreadful place was a great equalizer where we all equally
suffered the horrid agony of our confinement. It was as if I was
in exile without a face, just as I had seen in Soviet films. In
reality, even the location was the same. At one point our prison
farm in China, and one just like it in Russia, were separated
only by a small river. The inhabitants on the other side were
prisoners, with the same hopeless lives just like us, and both
countries shared Xingkai Lake. In fact, we could throw a
package of cigarettes across this river to each other. Both
countries had devised the use of this Siberian waste-land to
crush the wills of men.

However, the one thing that made my faceless
confinement especially hard to bear, was the creeping fear that
I would never see my wife again. They would not, and probably
could not, tell me how long my term in prison would be. This
endless exile was as difficult for me as it was for all of the
other prisoners. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I
received a letter from my wife. She told me that on July 25th I
had become the father of a baby boy. Me a father! I had a son!
But who was he? What did he look like? It didn’t matter! I was
a father! I finally felt happiness once again! The joy! The
excitement! The reason to keep on going! My fellow Rightist
showed their congratulations with bouquets of beautiful wild
flowers which they had picked somewhere in our vast
desolation. That evening, my fellow prisoners asked me to sing
a song to commemorate such a happy event. So, with as much
bravado as I could muster, I wrote a poem:

Framed-up on this bleak and desolate lake,
I heard the magpie tell me, I was a father!
Grow up slowly, so slowly, my dearest baby boy,
So that you are sure to live a life of freedom!

Then I sang George Gershwin’s lullaby, Summer Time.

My eyes grew moist as I sang. I could not tell whether I was
happy or sad. My life was now intertwined with this innocent
new life somewhere hundreds of miles away. He was a part of
me but when, if ever, would I know the joy of seeing him? At
night I would think about him over and over while lying in bed,
for I wanted to give my son the best name I could. I felt very
excited and good when it finally came to me. It is composed of
the first character of his parents’ first names. I simply added
another symbol to them, which means “bud.” Doing this, his
name ended up as, Jie Meng. This name was to show that he
was the most treasured fruit borne from my wife and me. I was
so satisfied with this name, because it revealed the love
between the three of us. He and his mother were the only dear
ones I had left in this world.

My memories of those happy days before my marriage to
his mother, with the love letters which flowed between us,
always filled my mind. Whenever she knew someone would be
visiting Beijing, she always asked them to bring me some of
my favorite food. When she visited me in Beijing, we would
sing together while strolling along the streets or rowing a boat
on Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace. Then, we would often
hug and kiss each other in Zhong Shan Park—without the
slightest worry about the world around us.

Excitedly, I wrote to my wife the next morning and
enclosed a watercolor portrait of our baby I had not yet seen. A
portrait as my heart had imagined him to be. I also enclosed a
gift to him, a baby bib, which I bought from the small drug store
on the prison farm. My wife, and now our newborn son, were my
primary comfort and spiritual supports. They pulled and pushed
at my heart daily, and I missed and worried about them more
and more as the days, weeks and months continued to drag on. I
dreamed about them night after night.

Criminal prisoners had a set amount of time to serve on
their sentences, but we political prisoners had no such time
frame on ours. There was no way to know how long it would be
before we would be allowed to return home to our families. Not
knowing our fate was the worst form of torture for us. In those
days, I didn’t worry about what my future would bring, for I
knew that we Chinese could no longer build our own futures
ourselves, because we now had to follow whatever the
Communist Party demanded of us. So, the only concern for my
future was to return home. That was my only light at the end of
a very dark tunnel. The reunion with my wife and new born son.
In despair I often prayed for a pair of wings that would take me
back home and on to a place where we could live happily
together in freedom and peace.

It was during this period, after my son’s birth, that the
prison officials moved us into a tent close by the hall where the
exhibition was to be held. Our tent was also located by the road
not far from the headquarters. At that time, Xingkai Lake Farm
included eight branch prisons. Two of them were for women.
Every day on this road, all the prisoners passed by in rank going
back and forth to their manual labor. As the women passed by,
the men prisoners looked at them with hungry and lustful eyes.
As we looked closely, we saw the same hunger and lust in their
eyes staring back. Some of these women seemed to recognize
that our small group of Rightists were different from the
criminal offenders. This awareness seemed to intensify the
interest they showed in us with each passing day. Likewise, day
after day, the loneliness I felt for my wife and new family
continued to grow.

It wasn’t long before we learned first hand that Xingkai
Lake is one of the coldest places in China. It sometimes fell to
more than -45° centigrade (-49° fahrenheit). As the nights grew
colder, the criminal offenders were given fur hats,
cotton-padded coats, pants, gloves, along with a sort of
galoshes, and some sleeveless vests. They were also given a
special grass called Wula, one of the treasures of Northeast
China. This Wula grass was pounded into a pliable form, and
was then put into the cotton-padded galoshes as insulation,
making the shoes much warmer, almost like a down lining.
None of this, not even the simple treasure of Wula grass was
given to the political prisoners. We were left to survive the cold
through our own inventiveness.

Winter came early in the far north. By early October,
snow covered everything in sight. The world all around us was
white. The houses were soon nearly half buried. Often all we
could see was a little space hollowed out in the snow which
indicated the location of a door. The signboards, such as those
reading, “Administration Office” and “General Affairs
Section,” appeared like small hurdles in a field of snow. It was
then that I finally realized why all the doors opened inward, for
otherwise, we could never be able to get them open as the snow
piled up deeper and deeper in front of them. Night after night
the cold became unbearable, especially for those of us still
crouched in that flimsy hut. The arctic wind constantly blew
into our meager shelter, and the inadequate stove proved
hopeless in its efforts to warm us. I slept with my cloths on and
with the ear flaps to my fur hat down around my head. It was far
too cold to even go outside to relieve ourselves, so I was forced
to become inventive. I rigged up a rubber tube, one end by my
bed and the other extending outside through the bottom of the
tent. As the nights grew colder and colder, I grew even more
proud and thankful for the blessing of this bit of indoor
plumbing. Of course, everything that went outside at night soon
turned into ice and sat there all winter long!

On one very cold day, I was called, along with two other
artists, to the home of the prison warden. We called him the
supreme boss. He had a very large and comfortable home with a
very fine hunting gun hanging on his wall. In all of my misery,
until I stepped into his beautiful home, I had not stopped to
realize how good this desolate region of China was for hunting.
There were bear, marten, river deer, roe deer, hare, and many
other animals throughout this primitive land. Off in the most
remote forests, the great siberian tiger, the world’s largest cat,
still competed with man in hunting all of those fantastic
animals. And out below that massive sheet of ice, called
Xingkai Lake, plenty of fish could be caught wherever the
guards would bore a hole and drop a line. It took me awhile to
return to my senses and recover from the shock of such luxury
sitting in the middle of all our desolate misery. I then realized
that the supreme boss was “asking” us to paint a picture of the
beautiful future prospects of Xingkai Lake. Because of the
opportunity to act as free men, we were happy to accept the
assigned task, and we each knew that to paint it, we had to
look over the whole lake area on foot in the winter’s biting cold.
In just a few hours after leaving the warden’s home, we were
led by a former prison worker out to see the lake.
On our way to a primitive area of shoreline, we passed
through the Number 5 branch prison farm for women. The farm
was surrounded by an artificial brook, much like a moat,
designed to keep male and female prisoners apart. To my
observation, it didn’t seem to work very well. Despite the
danger, we all knew of a young woman who swam the brook
and made love under the stars to a male prisoner late one
summer night. Most of the women prisoners were petty thieves,
drug addicts, and prostitutes. However, I eventually met a girl
from Shanghai who claimed to have been sent there because
she wanted to choose her own job when she graduated from
college. She had the courage to refuse two jobs she was
assigned by the Party and, therefore, was forced to pay the
consequences for not obeying them.

After passing the women’s farm, it seemed as if we
walked all day before climbing over a small mountain and
suddenly there the lake was, like a small sea below us. Humans
were scarce in this very desolate part of China, which left
nature untouched in all her glory. A vast uninhabited land on
the edge of such a tremendous mass of humanity. Anyone could
settle there as a farmer without the slightest need for permission
from your neighbors. When we finally reached the hill
overlooking the lake, I was surprised and overwhelmed by its
significant vastness. Still to this day, it is the largest lake that I
have ever seen. It reached out onto the horizon like an endless
frozen desert.

Every now and then, on our daily trips to the lake, we
would encounter patrols riding on what seemed to be the most
beautiful horses I had ever seen. They looked like Arabians with
traces of some other breed, so different from the stocky, shaggy
horses of north China. The more days I spent traversing this
countryside, the more I realized how impossible it was for
anyone to escape from such vast surroundings, even if these
mounted guards did not try to prevent it. Its complete isolation
were the bars on our jail. Just a few weeks after completing our
study, a prisoner from our camp tried to escape by running
across the frozen lake into the Soviet Union. It was a terrible
winter’s day, which he counted on to hide his escape. When the
armed guards found him on the lake ice several hours later, he
was lying, helpless and motionless, in the icy cold almost
frozen to death. He was a talented young science teacher from
Beijing University who had also been wronged as a Rightist.
During his confinement at Xingkai Lake he had become
obsessed with regaining his freedom, unfortunately there was
nothing anyone could do. The distant image of a Soviet Union
less dogmatic than his homeland, offered him a glimmer of
hope. Unfortunately, it was a false hope created by the hopeless
reality of our situation.

One day, several months later, while in line waiting for
my lunch ration, I felt a head, just up to my waist, bumping up
against me. I looked down and there stood a young man who
had lost both of his legs. With two short crutches under his
arms, he waited for his ration like the rest of us. I watched his
short thighs swaying rhythmically suspended below his
crutches, as he balanced his meager ration. Upon inquiry I
learned that he was the young science teacher. When the patrol
finally found him, he was frostbit with cold on the frozen lake.
He had sacrificed his legs in his quest for freedom. A feeling of
dread pierced my soul. Could this have been one of our great
future scientists destroyed by this unjust campaign? Who knows
how important he might have been to our country.

Just a few days later, as I was walking down the main
road, an open truck rumbled slowly by me. In the back I saw a
prisoner lying in a pool of blood. He had no lower jaw and was
bleeding everywhere. It looked as if his jaw had been shot off
by the guard beside him. In this dreadful place, the guards too
were prisoners. Prisoners of desolation, just as much as we
were. They were under orders to shoot whoever tried to escape,
and shoot they did. However, I can truthfully say I never saw
any torturing of prisoners during my stay in this god forsaken
prison. There seemed no need for it here. In fact, most of the
public security officers I met seemed to conscientiously carry
out the policy of Revolutionary Humanitarianism. Generally,
they didn’t even personally humiliate the prisoners. Whenever
possible they tried to reason things out and avoid the use of
force. These guards were definitely not like those I had seen in
films or read about in books. Here we technically were not in
jail, for there were no cells. But in this prison of isolation, we
were forced to work hard to set up factories and additional
farms in the wasteland of the north. We worked all the time and
learned many new skills. Our achievements in these areas were
recognized and encouraged with small rewards. Our families
were even informed of our progress. Routinely we were
summoned in ranks to listen to talks of admonition from the
officers, who spared no words in telling us the Party’s policies.
We were also allowed to read the official newspapers every
day.

One of the elements of beauty in all of this desolation
were those wonderful pebbles and fossils to be found on the
lake shore. I thought they were the most beautiful and
marvelous in the world. One day a worker showed me a prize, a
remarkable cherry colored fossil. It lay, crimson in color, in a
tray of water. When he took it out of the water the red spiral
gradually turned to white, wrapping around the stone, like the
peeling of an apple from top to bottom, ring after ring until it
was all white. When he put it back into the water, it reversed
the process until, once again, it had regained its original
beautiful red color. Everyday at the lake I tried so hard to find
another like it. Whenever I walked along the shore, I searched
and searched for this wonderful prize for my wife and baby boy.
But always I searched in vain. Even this simple token of beauty
eluded me.