Chapter 7

I continued to work as the prison artist until one
November evening. Without any advance warning, a public
security officer came and told me to prepare to leave for
Beijing the following morning. I was overjoyed by this sudden
and unexpected good news. For some mysterious reason, I
seemed to be the only lucky one chosen. Friends and fellow
Rightists surrounded me with their envying eyes. I was forced to
keep my joy locked in my heart as I met their sadness the next
morning. As we shook hands to bid farewell, I had no idea why I
was returning to Beijing. It was only later that I learned that the
National Exhibition of Reformed Criminals, organized by the
Public Security Ministry, needed an artist to do some sculpture
work for them. Someone remembered that I was a sculptor and
recommended me.

I still don’t know who that angel was who was watching over me.

On the train to Beijing when a passenger came over to
take the vacant seat next to me, my two plain clothes
bodyguards stopped him. One of them said seriously, and in a
tone of mystery, “Do you know what sort of a person he is? No
one is allowed to take this seat.” People all around suddenly
flung puzzled looks in my direction. I was not dressed as a
criminal, and they could not read any marks of criminality on
my face. No handcuffs. No look of shame or defeat.
Nevertheless, no one dared approach me for the duration of our
journey. However, while waiting for the car to pick us up in
front of the Beijing Railway Station, I began to feel better when
no one paid any attention to me, as though I were just one more
face in the vast Beijing crowd.

I was returned to Yonghe Palace, where I had been sent
that first day of my imprisonment. When I arrived, I learned that
many prisoners from different places around the country were
already being organized and divided into different groups for
various types of work needed for the exhibition. Soon after my
arrival my wife was allowed to pay me a visit. I was
overwhelmed with surprise and emotion as I received the news
that she was waiting for me in the reception room. Led by a
security officer, I stepped into this small room furnished only
with a bench and a table. There to my heart’s uncontained joy,
sat my wife looking up at me with a broad smile. With the
security officer standing nearby, I was too embarrassed to
embrace her and say all those things I desperately wanted to
say. I gave her all the money I had saved from my work on the
prison farm, only 105 RMB (about $30). Then I just sat in
silence listening to her telling me the many details about our
son. Suddenly, in what seemed like just seconds, our time
together was up. Value the time you have with your loved ones.

To this day, I still remember that forced smile on her
face when we parted. On my way back to our workshop, the
officer said wonderingly, “The relationship between you two
seems very good. Why are you two trying to get a divorce?” I
could not answer him as I stood there in utter shock. How could
I tell him that I did not know we were getting divorced? I never
dreamed that she would do that. How could she? But as I
thought about it, the more I understood why she was considering
it.

Something must have happened to her while I was away. She
must have been subjected to heavier and heavier political
pressure, especially since she was a Communist Youth League
member. They must have forced her to draw a clear distinction
between us. To this day, I truly believe that this was the main
reason she considered a divorce. But why had she never
mentioned this to me? However, she apparently had changed
her mind after asking the jail authorities about it, and she never
spoke about it with me. Even so, I could never blame her for
considering it. My misfortune really had caused her a lot of
suffering. I know there were many, many other families ruined
by similar situations.

Within a few days of my arrival, I was assigned to the art
section. There were seven of us altogether. Including Gu from
Tianjin, a mold maker, and Xu, an oil painter from the PLA and
a former student in my school. There were also three other oil
painters, one from the People’s Art Publishing House, and the
other two from Northeast China. It was an art section composed
entirely of Rightists. The exhibition site was to be in Di Tan
Park (Temple of the Earth Park), and our workshop was in one
of the auxiliary temples there. While there we were continually
guarded by armed soldiers. At first we marched up through the
streets and the park early every morning and back to our place
of detention every evening. We endured the puzzled stares of
the people watching us every step of the way. Fortunately, for
the convenience of our work, we were eventually moved to a
public dormitory close to the exhibition site itself, saving us the
torture of that daily humiliation.

Our public security officer, Lu, was from Shanghai. He
was an amateur boxer and painter, and was amazingly tall and
strong. He also seemed quite happy to have Rightists to guard.
Since we all lived, ate, and worked together, he eventually
came to know each one of us personally. He was openly
puzzled as to why we were labelled Rightist. One day after
work, on our way to the dormitory, he asked me, “How did you
become a Rightist? What were your offenses? I just can’t
understand why you have such a heavy punishment for being a
Rightist.” The more we were together, the more he understood
us. Often he led us to a bath house and even to the cinema after
work. I was very fortunate in that he seemed to like me
particularly. He often called to me in front of all the other
prisoners and would say, “Go buy some cigarettes and wine for
me,” or “Go make a sketch of a cloud pattern from the relief of
the Monument to People’s Heroes for your work,” and so on.
One day he even whispered a most welcome promise, “I’m
going to give you two hours to go home to see your wife and
baby.”

Home leave was perhaps the greatest difference between
criminal and political prisoners. Generally we could enjoy one
day’s home leave every two or three months, although during
1959-61, in what we called the years of disasters, we were
allowed only one. Finally, ten months after I had been
transferred from Xingkai Lake back to Beijing, I was given my
first one-day home leave. Fortunately, I was able to take a
shower and get my hair cut before going home. Even though I
was out of the jail, I still had the same persistently bad feeling I
had in the horrid railroad car when I was first sent off to prison. I
envied everyone I met on the street, for they were “free,” and I
knew all too well that I was not. I was a stranger amongst my
fellow countrymen.

My wife was still enrolled in the Central Drama Institute
and was without any real income. As I entered the gate that first
time, I was ashamed to find our new home to be a small room
of only twelve square meters, tucked away, not far from the
main gate of an old one story house. The room was in a mess
with housewares everywhere because of the lack of space and
the addition of a nursing baby. The sweet smell of the baby
lingered throughout the room. My wife was astonished when I
appeared suddenly in front of her. She hugged me and sobbed
bitterly in my arms. All I could do was stand there, heartbroken.
Holding her in my arms, a terrible guilt overpowered me. A
guilt for what I had put her through. Only four months after we
were married she was wronged by the Rightist label they placed
upon me. Her parents passed away when she was still a child,
and we had no relatives in Beijing, so she had to struggle daily
with her hard life, totally alone. She was alone in school with a
newborn baby. She was unable to earn more money, and there
were no sources of help available to her. But the severe
pressure on her mind and spirit was probably even worse than
her lack of money.

Once again I buried my personal sadness in my heart,
trying in every possible way to console and encourage her. My
four month old son was lying there calmly. Because of being
alone and her inexperience, our first baby caused her to be in a
continual rush and muddle. Since it was also my first
experience as a father, I soon made a fool of myself later that
night. When we went to bed I stopped my wife from nursing him
as she was accustomed to doing each night. I believed that it
would harm him to have something in his stomach before going
to sleep. I seriously thought it would be bad for his digestion.
Obviously, I knew absolutely nothing about caring for a baby.
But how could I admit that to my wife? And after my long
absence, my wife was evidently trying to give me the feeling of
being the head of our little family. Again and again throughout
the night we were awakened by his crying. I began to worry that
he might be ill, for he cried desperately. He just kept on crying
until the early morning when his mother finally relented and
gave him her breast. He calmed down immediately and I felt so
foolish and terrible as I realized that I had made my poor baby
suffer from hunger the whole night through. What a lesson for
me to learn. Seeing his thin weak body, I felt with conviction in
my heart that his weakness was because of me. Not just
because I was kept from being the father I should have been,
but because truth and justice were not respected in my life.

At eight that morning I was required to report back to my
prisoner’s world and leave my newly discovered son fatherless
once again. The pain in my heart became more than I could
hide as I walked slowly back to the imprisonment which had
become my life.

Back at the prison, the first task they gave me for the
exhibition was to depict in sculpture, the true story of the
political and social reform of a savage and cruel bandit named
Zhou. He had recently been released from prison and had
become a great example for the Party. Of course, he had
followed the Party’s wishes exactly.

The requirements for the exhibition soon became very
complex. It became evident that it would require much more
time and effort than expected. It was to be centered around an
electric revolving stage divided into fifteen smaller stages
arranged in series. All together there were to be more than two
hundred human figures. Each one had to be created in color,
complete with scenic backgrounds. In a word, they wanted to
make it as lifelike as possible, and I was required to complete
the entire exhibit within one month!

I found myself hard pressed to discover various new and
untried methods and techniques, or I would never be able to
meet these unreasonable demands. Initially I decided to make a
clay head from bandit Zhou’s photo. As quickly as possible I
made a mold from which I had fifteen copies made, one for
each scene. On these fifteen copies I was able to create
different expressions appropriate to each stage of the story’s
plot. Using this assembly line method, I was able to save a
great deal of time. Upon their completion, I painted them in
natural realistic colors. Now faced with the problem of fifteen
different bodies, I decided to experiment with wire frames
wrapped with hemp, rags, and cotton to create the illusion of a
clothed figure. This was the only way I could put clothes on
them, and still prevent any damage when the stage would move
suddenly. When the heads were joined to the flexible wire
bodies, I could then adjust them into any position required.
Though they were only 30 centimeters high, they still needed to
have everything from hair to shoes.

The first of the scenes I had to create was of a prisoners’
mass rally. Hundreds of sitting figures were required. To
complete this and the other fourteen scenes on schedule, I
positioned all the figures within the viewers perspective,
leaving out of sight all other parts in untouched clay, somewhat
like a two dimensional painting. Using such techniques I was
able to finish the work on time. Thankfully it was very well
received and the senior officer in the Public Security Ministry,
who was the Director of the Bureau of Reform Through Labor,
came especially to see my work. He was the person in charge
of the reform of criminals throughout China. Through talking
with him, I soon learned he had studied sculpture in Japan
before the war and had been in the same class with the Vice
Secretary of the Party Committee at the Central Institute of
Fine Arts.

It was later in 1958, while reading a newspaper, that I
first saw the slogans indicating the Party’s basic policies for
building the New China. They were called the Three Red
Banners. These banners were the General Party Line, the Great
Leap Forward, and the People’s Commune. Under these
guidelines the Chinese people were called upon to outstrip
Britain and catch up with the United States economy in just
twenty years. This great effort began with a nationwide program
of steel-production, an industrial-age foundation. In the
countryside every bit of iron, from the people’s cooking pans to
door knobs were collected to make steel implements in small
homemade furnaces.

The Party used many propaganda methods to keep the
people excited about the country’s future prospects. In
agriculture, extraordinary figures of grain output per mu
(mu=0.0027 acre) were reported every day. As I remember, it
was up to 130,000 jin (6500 kg.) per 1 mu. Once I even saw a
promotional picture of a boy lying on the top of rice stalks in a
paddy field. They were supposedly so lush and thick they could
hold his body up out of the water. According to the new rage of
the day, these great achievements were referred to as launching
satellites. The Soviets and Americans could launch their
satellites, but China was doing even greater things by launching
prosperity for her people. I wondered how we could truly raise
steel output by this simple method of recycling scrap and
personal articles. I couldn’t believe the astonishing reports of
grain output either. But people dared not show any sign of
disbelief or question. We learned that Marshall Peng De-huai,
the Secretary Minister of National Defense, did object and was
tortured to death. No one would dare say no to anything Mao
said or did. It soon became evident that this was the root of our
country’s tragedy. No one could ever be himself or herself
again. All lies must be accepted as truth.

At the end of August, just as I was finishing the urgent
work for the exhibition, I was called to Beiyuan Prison Farm in
north Beijing to do a huge statue of a brick layer. It was to be
about four meters tall. This would make it as tall as the flags
carried by the honor guards who were to lead the parade
celebrating the 10th anniversary of the New China. In addition
to the statue, they also needed a huge wooden banner about 12
meters long and 3.5 meters high with sculptured relief heads of
a worker, a woman peasant, and a soldier mounted on one
corner. The whole thing had to be light enough to be carried by
the honor guards. So, in frustration I was forced to quit my work
for the exhibition, which I was told was a much more important
task.

Mysteriously, the day I left the exhibition site I noticed
that our guard, security officer Lu, was conspicuously missing. I
remained puzzled by my friend’s mysterious absence until, a
year later I was told by another security officer that Lu had
been reduced to tears by the official criticism of his relationship
with me, and was ordered back to Shanghai. He had been
condemned for “serious Rightist deviation” and for his failure
“to draw a clear line between himself and the enemy,”
therefore “losing his class standing.” Their system divided the
people. My heart was crushed again. He had once said to me, “I
am very happy to have a friend like you. I’ll visit you as soon as
you are released.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but he had
risked all to reach out in friendship to me. To recognize his
cherished friendship I made a statuette for him. I called it “The
Boxer.” I also sent him an anatomy book. I knew that because
of his avid interest in painting, he could use the book as a
teaching tool to further his skills. Because I was a prisoner,
those who criticized him for his friendship to me could not be
blamed for their opinions. During those years in China, who
could know the real truth about anything, especially of my
innocence.

The Beiyuan Farm for prisoners was about two miles
beyond Beijing’s Gate of Triumph. During this period, it was
also used as a chemical factory. However, the concertina wire
on top of the walls and watchtowers at each corner clearly
marked it as a prison. I was put into the art section with about
ten other prisoners. The sculpture I had been ordered to create
was really beginning to worry me. To begin with, I didn’t know
where I could get the hard material stand and the support
frames for such a large and heavy clay statue. Then they told
me that the statue was to be carried in a parade and had to be
light! I was now forced to consider making a mold and then
casting the sculpture out of a very light material such as paper
mache, but I had no experience with paper mache. Once again,
the most difficult problem was the time allotted to complete the
project. It had to be completed within four weeks, ten days
before National Day, October 1, 1959.

It would be dreadful to fail in this very public assignment.
Since I was labelled a Rightist, there would be suspicion that I
failed on purpose. I tried very hard to complete this work as
assigned, one way or another, no matter what, but my anxiety
over my success took a terrible toll. I eventually became too
nervous to sleep or eat as I should. Because of the pressure, I
worked from early morning until late at night, sometimes into
early the next morning. Because of the pressure created by this
schedule, I was allowed to sleep at the workshop, even though
it proved not to be the best accommodations. The studio
workshop had originally been some sort of greenhouse, its floor
sunken below the ground and its windows placed just above the
ground. Its sole piece of furniture was two wooden benches and
a board consisted of my bed.

Getting immediately to work, I first made the frame and
armature for the 4 meter tall brick layer with the only material I
could get—wood. Of course, by itself, it couldn’t stand such a
heavy load of clay needed to make the mold for the paper
mache sculpture. So, instead I made use of the strong
supportive quality of wire. Even though all that I could obtain
was rather thin, it worked fine. Then I made a little experiment
in paper mache. First, I worked out a clay face in relief and
then layered it in a very absorbent rice paper. I cut the paper
into various sized triangular shapes and stuck six layers of them
to the clay relief to make a copy. It separated from the clay
mold underneath naturally when it dried, and the copy kept the
original form pretty well. In this manner, I found the solution to
creating a light-weight, four-meter tall figure.

It had taken tons of clay to model the entire giant figure,
and it was taking far to long to dry. In desperation I cut out a
small hole at the back and dug out as much of the clay from
inside of the statue as I could. Lessening the mass would
naturally help it to dry quicker. When it still dried too slow, I
cut off the upper part of the figure at the waist and dug more
clay out of the lower half. Finally, when they were completely
dry I rejoined the two parts and added the finishing touches. But
just as I completed the basic sculpture, I collapsed from
exhaustion and became very ill.

My temperature shot up to 41 degrees centigrade (105
degrees fahrenheit). I was too weak to stand up and almost lost
consciousness, so they carried me immediately to the clinic.
While being given a glucose transfusion, I heard the voice of
the public security officer, old Mr. Zhang, speaking to the
doctor, “You must bring him back to life at any cost!” Then he
ordered more and better food, including fruit, prepared for me.
With their kind help, my strength gradually returned.

No sooner was I on my feet than I ran back to work and
completed the finishing touches on the sculptures five days
ahead of the Tenth Anniversary National Day. For this I was
praised and rewarded in a mass meeting. I was given a towel, a
notebook, a pen, and 14 RMB ($8) as a reward. I had been
judged as a self-reforming activist by authorities. However, I did
not appreciate being praised as “well behaved in reforming.” I
was still a victim! I didn’t need anybody’s favor. I only wanted
to do whatever I had to do and do it well, especially since I had
to do it anyway. This had nothing to do with who I was and
what I thought politically. It all seemed so foolish!

After the sculpture for the National Day parade and the
works for the exhibition were completed, I was sent to work in a
chemical plant established for prisoners in north Beijing. It was
not a regular plant, but more like a primitive chemical
workshop with only the simplest facilities—some very basic
vats, beakers, flasks , and three different acids. Oh, yes, they
also were without all but the very poorest safety precautions.
Factories and farms had been set up throughout China, for both
prisoners and those who had been released after serving their
sentences. This captive work force was utilized to fulfill the
policy of reforming through labor, as well as providing
employment for those released from jail. Without such a
program, released prisoners found it almost impossible to find
jobs. But more importantly, their labor produced social wealth
while they were still kept easily under firm control. Some of
these prison factories, surprisingly, even won a certain positive
reputation for their products. The brand names of these goods
typically were something like Zixin, “turn over a new leaf,” Xin
Sheng, “new life,” or Zixin Lu, “the road leading to a new life.”
If you saw this sort of brand while shopping, you knew the
product was made by prisoners.

When I first arrived at the chemical plant, I was made a
warehouseman. The warehouse was only a small room packed
with chemicals which filled all available shelves and floor
space. This dismal hole was to be my introduction to poisonous
potassium hydroxide and combustible sodium. The former
looked like sweet dumplings, but I soon learned that one lick
would instantly send me to meet God. Outside the warehouse,
in a small temporary shed, there were about ten chemical flasks
sitting side by side on a small stand. The worker there was a
postgraduate student from Beijing Industrial College. One night
he lost his patience while transferring the sulfuric acid drop by
drop into a container, and rapidly poured in the last few ounces.
An earsplitting explosion shook the warehouse, setting it on fire.
There was very little time before the remaining chemicals
would explode, so I rushed into the warehouse and carried the
large pot of sodium out to a place upwind where I thought it
would be safe. Then I turned back to retrieve the remaining
dangerous chemicals one by one. I was close to exhaustion
when I finally heard the fire engine siren in the distance. Once
the firemen arrived, the fire was put out very quickly, but the
graduate-prisoner had been badly burned. Fortunately, he had
the good sense to roll on the ground to put out the fire on his
body, but the burns on his face were severe. When he got out of
the hospital I couldn’t recognize the handsome young man I had
once known.

While at the chemical plant, an abandoned brick kiln
become my new home, and criminals once again became my
roommates. As I looked at them each day, I could not suppress
a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. When I read about
criminals in the newspaper, and particularly when there were
photos, the criminals had always appeared to be fierce looking
devils. However, now that we were working together, eating
together, and sharing the same quarters, they no longer looked
quite so fierce. In fact, they were often very polite. Like
everyone else, they had parents, wives, and children. They must
have had their own loves and hates, their own expectations of
life. In our kiln there were thieves, hired murderers, and rapists.
Day in and day out, as I would look into the common, restless
and cold expressions of their eyes, I couldn’t help but imagine
the corruption which had filtered into their thinking. One of the
first things I noticed was how difficult it was for them to look
people straight in the eyes, like someone caught red-handed
stealing a bag of money. I even tried to imagine them in the act
of a crime, who their victims were, and especially some of their
own cruelties. When I thought that their victim might even have
been one of their own family members, my loathing and hatred
for them would overcome me as my blood would boil and I
wanted to dash at them and tear them to pieces.

Soon after moving into the kiln, I was transferred to work
in the drying house, where all the chemical products from the
workshop were dried. In the drying house there were rows and
rows of wooden shelves on which products were placed to dry
by central heating. It was smelly, and my throat felt continually
dry and uncomfortable, even though I always wore a mask over
my mouth. Because of the long hours it was particularly hard for
me to work the night shift. I often couldn’t keep from falling
asleep, and was often rudely awakened by the guard’s
threatening shouts.

It was while working in the drying house that I got myself
into some very serious trouble. Our drying house was too small
to dry all the products given to us, so, because I was in charge
of this building, I sent a prison worker to dry some of the
products out in the natural air on big bamboo trays. That night I
was awakened from a deep sleep by rapid shouting, “Wake up,
Lao Wu. Something serious has happened. Team leader, old
Zhang, wants to see you immediately!” I hurried to the drying
house and saw the team leader standing there in a rage. Zhang
was an old man of kind heart, a guerilla fighter during the war
with Japan. He was also the one who shouted at the doctor to
save my life at any cost when I was critically ill. He led me to
the place where the products were drying outside on the
bamboo trays, and then I saw for the first time that all the
products had turned yellow. They should have been white!
Clearly the containers had not been cleaned thoroughly. I knew
that this chemical product cost more than a hundred thousand
yuan per kilogram. What a huge loss! Kind old Zhang looked at
me, trembling with rage, but it seemed there was no way to
repair the damage.

I was devastated! By then it was already daybreak and I
was standing motionless, with tearing eyes. Seeing my personal
devastation, he waved me to go back to bed without another
word. Two days later I was sent to work in one of the dangerous
chemical workshops, apparently as a sort of punishment for my
carelessness. Although I was not the immediate cause, I was
the one in charge. But the lightness of my punishment caused
many of the other prisoners to say behind my back, that I got
special treatment from the public security officers, especially
old Zhang. What made their complaints even worse was that
while at the chemical workshop, I was appointed boss of a work
group, even though I didn’t know anything about chemistry.
The workshop was a large room furnished with three big
reacting pots, some enamel buckets, and a thermometer. We
put raw materials into the pots, then heated and stirred them.
We then took them outside to let them cool down and turn to
ice in the naturally cold weather. By the next morning all the
contents would have turned to crystal, which we then dried to
become the final product. We also worked with hydrochloric,
sulfuric, and nitric acids and we would find many burn spots on
our bodies and clothes from the splattering of these acids.
Whenever any of the acids splashed on us we had to rush to the
faucet and wash it away with water as quickly as possible.
Often it left a scar on our skin. One time, while prisoners were
busy mixing nitric acid with other chemicals in rows and rows
of large jars in an open outdoor courtyard, the danger became
very clear to me. No sooner had I walked through the thick
yellow smoke billowing up from the mixture, than my pants
legs had disintegrated into no more than a few strips of cloth.
We often looked like beggars with our clothes corroded
into tatters. We also produced a tart smell from our bodies,
even though we couldn’t smell it ourselves. Making all of this
worse, we were forced to work three full shifts a day.
Then, in those brief times when we weren’t working, rain
often disturbed our short and troubled sleep. Our kiln was not
only damp, but water leaked in everywhere through the many
open vents. So when it poured outside, it drizzled inside.
Sometimes the water would flood the lowered floor up to a foot
deep, and our shoes would be like little boats floating back and
forth across the room. We would all have to get up to drain the
water out, and then go to work the next morning with cold, sore
and fatigued bodies.

The work was also grueling and seemed endless. Often,
on my way back to our kiln, tired, in beggar-like rags, and
carrying my towel made bag holding my chopsticks and rice
bowl, I would hum my favorite songs I had learned in the
States. This recalling of warm memories seemed to fill my
lonely heart with comfort and summon the courage needed to
go on living in this world of stench and smoke.

In the early spring of 1960, I was finally given a one day
home leave. As luck would have it, my wife was touring South
China with her school troupe at the time. While she was gone
our poor son had to live in a nursery six days a week. Then, on
Sundays, he was looked after by a kind hearted nurse in her
home. So, when I stepped out of my prison’s heavily guarded
gate at eight o’clock that morning, I hurried to catch a bus
which would drop me near the nursery. Finally, near the Beijing
Hotel, I located my son’s nursery. It was a compound, with
houses built around a courtyard in traditional Chinese style.
As I reached the courtyard, I saw a little boy not more
than two standing by the door of the dining room across from
me, waiting expressionlessly for his turn to wash his face.
Although he was only a nursing baby when I last saw him, he
surprised me by rushing to my arms as soon as he caught sight
of me. He had just learned to walk, and as he ran, he seemed
likely to fall at any moment on the uneven pavement. He
appeared fearful, as if he wanted to throw himself into the
embrace of his parents and never let them get away again.
Everyone was amazed that he had recognized his father. One of
the nurses standing behind me said, “It can only be explained
by blood relationship.” How could he understand why he
couldn’t live nestled in his parents’ warm embrace in his own
home? He had suffered ever since he came into this world and
once again I felt that it was my fault. I held him so tight. Seeing
his body so frail, and his face pale, from malnutrition, I couldn’t
stop the tears from flowing down my cheeks.

After getting him cleaned up, we first went to a
children’s shop where I bought him a small toy. Then it was off
to a western restaurant in Dongfeng Market. He was too happy
to sit still, but skittered all around me. It was then I first
realized that a baby knows many things, even though he may
not yet know how to speak. My son amazed me after finishing
his first piece of bread and butter by suddenly bursting out,
haiyao!, meaning, “I want some more.” This was the very first
word I ever heard him speak. Not Daddy, but “more.” It didn’t
matter whether it was only a piece of bread or a tasteful piece
of fried chicken, he kept on saying “more.” Though I was happy
and excited to hear him talk, I was sad to discover that he had
learned to say nothing other than “more.”

After lunch we had our picture taken at Tien An Men
Square. Then, I happily strolled with him in my arms to a quiet
and secluded avenue in the former diplomatic district. There I
sat on a bench on the sidewalk, and he nestled in my arms and
fell fast asleep. The foreigners passing by looked at us with
smiles and curious expressions. They seemed to ask, “Look, is
that a man baby sitter just sitting there with a baby?” I felt
happy as never before, with my baby in my arms. The time
seemed to fly ever so fast, and before I knew it, it was time for
me to go back to that iron fence. He awoke abruptly and burst
out crying when I put him in the arms of his nurse. His cries tore
into me as if they were the concertina wire around my prison
walls. It was impossible to know when I would see him again. I
would gladly suffer more if only it would make it possible for
me to be with him.

One night, during our meal break, a political prisoner
friend of mine, Mr. Guan, was insulted by a notorious hoodlum
who had earned the nickname “Dragon” in the Chongwen
district of Beijing. Mr. Guan had been a lightweight boxing
champion, and could take no more abuse from the Dragon. No
sooner than the latter spat out, “You, damn Rightist!” than the
former’s fist was crashing into his accuser’s jaw. It was a
lightning fight that lasted only a few seconds. The Dragon, who
had never lost a fight in Chongwen, wanted to retaliate, but a
second punch quickly had him on the ground with a black eye.
He hadn’t touched the boxer and instantly lost any will to do so.
I thought, “Yes, among the strong there is always someone
stronger.” It also soothed my feelings, for I felt I was insulted as
well as my friend by the accusation, Rightist. All statements
from anyone about Rightists, I took personally.

After years of living among criminals, I eventually grew
skeptical of the possibility of them ever being reformed through
labor. They had their own satirical phrase, “erjingong,” a little
word play on Beijing opera that means, “entering the imperial
palace a second time.” So it is for all those put in jail for the
second time. It seems they could not help committing their
crimes again, especially the stealing and sexual criminals.
Those who were sexually promiscuous, particularly prostitutes,
did not change because of physical labor or because they were
condemned by traditional moral concepts. The doctors in the
prison clinics were themselves sexual criminals. One was from
the army and another from a very prestigious hospital in
Beijing. The latter was an x-ray physician. He took advantage
of patients x-rayed in a dark room, where he seduced and even
raped a number of women patients including several foreigners.
How would forced labor teach a person like him to resist sexual
temptation under those same conditions. It didn’t make any
sense in his case.