预计阅读本页时间：-
9
Persecution Continued
THE ANTIQUATED AMBULANCE SPED through the streets of Shanghai, accompanied by the loud and continuous clang from the bell hanging on its side. I lay on a stretcher on the floor of the vehicle, with a female guard perched on the folding seat. The interior of the ambulance was by no means clean. I kept my eyes closed, partly to avoid looking at the guard, who hovered over me in the confined space, and partly to be alone with my thoughts.
广告：个人专属 VPN，独立 IP，无限流量，多机房切换，还可以屏蔽广告和恶意软件，每月最低仅 5 美元
I was deeply disappointed that I had had another hemorrhage just as the long-awaited interrogation seemed to have begun in earnest. I wondered whether I had a malignant growth. I thought of death. It did not seem frightening. After all, my death was the natural and unavoidable result of my having lived. In any case, being a Chinese, I believed that my own death would be only an interval in the continuity of life, for I would go on living in my child and her children, generation after generation, a flowing stream without end. But thinking of my daughter always caused my heart to contract with pain and worry. How was she living? What sort of future would she have after the Cultural Revolution?
The ambulance jerked to a sudden stop. I heard a loudspeaker in the distance broadcasting Mao’s directive, “Dig deep tunnels, store grain everywhere, and never seek hegemony.” When the stretcher was lifted out of the ambulance, I caught sight of a group of young male prisoners with shaven heads being led by a guard in front of the hospital. They all carried spades, shovels, and large baskets; their Little Red Books of Mao’s quotations were slung over their shoulders on a string. They seemed to be on their way to “dig deep tunnels” somewhere behind the prison hospital; Mao’s directives always had to be obeyed immediately. But they looked so emaciated that I did not know how they could perform heavy physical labor. Their pathetic appearance, dejected air, and bowed heads reminded me forcefully that I was just like them, a nonperson without any rights, quite unable to control my own fate. I turned my head to avoid looking at the sad spectacle of human ruin, and for the first time I was glad that being in a cell by myself without a mirror, I could continue to entertain an illusion of self-esteem.
I was put in a ward with surgical cases. In the small room, beds were placed next to each other with only a few inches of space between. My bed was by the door, through which a cold draft blew in a vain effort to dispel the odor of blood, urine, disinfectant, and unwashed humanity. On the other side of my bed was a woman groaning and muttering in a state of semiconsciousness, obviously just returned from the operating room. I wondered why I was put there among the surgical cases and whether it meant that the doctors at the prison hospital intended to operate. This prospect was extremely alarming, because in a rigidly stratified Communist society prisoners of the state certainly would get the worst medical care.
However, for several days, I was only given injections. The hemorrhage was brought under control, and I felt stronger because of bed rest and better food. One evening a small banana that had gone soft and brown appeared with my supper. I was surprised by my own positive reaction to that sad-looking banana and the pleasure I got from eating it.
A few days after my hemorrhage stopped, the same woman doctor I had seen when I had pneumonia in the winter of 1967 came to see me in the ward. She took me to a small office and told me that she had been trying to arrange for me to be examined by a gynecologist in a city hospital. But at that time the hospitals in Shanghai, controlled by the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries, were refusing to give medical treatment to “class enemies.”
“What do you think I am suffering from?” I asked her.
“It may be a growth, or it may be nothing more than the menopause.”
“Could it be a malignant growth?”
“It’s hard to say without a biopsy.”
“I’m not afraid to die,” I said. “But I mustn’t die before my case is cleared up. I can’t let a cloud of suspicion remain with my daughter for the rest of her life. It would ruin her happiness. Besides, I long to see her again. I’ve missed her so very much.” My voice quivered, and I couldn’t go on.
She laid a hand on my arm in a gesture of sympathy. “In my report to the Number One Detention House, I will stress the need for you to have better nourishment.”
“Please, Doctor, tell me what I can do myself to prolong my own life,” I asked her.
“Eat everything that’s given to you. Even the most unpalatable food has some nourishment. Try to be optimistic.”
Bitterness had so eaten my heart that I had lost the ability to cry. But the doctor had tears in her eyes when she murmured, “May God bless you!”
A week later, I was brought back to the No. 1 Detention House. I was then given rice twice a day, and a small piece of pork or fish appeared with the rice and cabbage for the mid-morning meal. Often the pork was mostly fat. Sometimes the skin was not altogether free of half-plucked hairs. And the fish was never really fresh. But remembering what the doctor said, I ate everything.
The young doctor at the detention house gave me written permission to purchase vitamin pills with the money I had deposited when I arrived. A male guard came with my banking record and bought me cod-liver oil capsules and vitamin B complex tablets. Vitamin C, so vital for my bleeding gums, was unobtainable in Shanghai.
The reaction of the guards to my improved treatment was by no means the same. The militant Maoists could not conceal their displeasure at the decision of the prison authorities to give me extra food and vitamins. They were always shouting at me or manhandling me whenever there was an opportunity. When I left the cell for exercise or interrogation, they would give me a hard shove that sent me stumbling, pinch my arms, or kick my legs. If I asked them for permission to replenish my supply of vitamin pills, they would refuse and shout, “Do you eat vitamin pills like rice?” or “Do you think this place is a health sanatorium?”
The mild guards obeyed the doctor’s orders without question. They bought me vitamin pills whenever I could show them that I had no more. But they bought one or two bottles at a time. The few guards I thought of as Liuists, however, would buy several bottles at a time when they were on duty. Once or twice, they even brought me bags of glucose powder as well as vitamin pills and pushed the lot quickly through the small window into my cell before another guard could see it.
The day after I returned from the prison hospital, the guard on duty handed me a pen and a bottle of ink. She said, “Get on with writing your confession! The interrogator is waiting for it.”
I picked up the roll of paper the interrogator had given me and saw that instead of the blank sheets I received in the winter of 1966 when I was told to write my autobiography, page 1 had a special quotation of Mao. It was enclosed in a red-lined square under the heading “Supreme Directive,” and it said, “They are allowed only to be docile and obedient; they are not allowed to speak or act out of turn.” At the bottom of the sheet, where the prisoner usually signed his name, was written, “Signature of Criminal.”
My immediate reaction was anger at the insulting word “criminal” and determination not to sign my name after it. However, after several minutes of consideration, I devised a scheme to exploit the situation and fight back at the Maoists.
Under the printed quotation of Mao, I drew another square, over which I also wrote “Supreme Directive.” Within the square, I wrote another of Mao’s quotations. It did not appear in the Little Red Book, but I remembered it from his essay “On the Internal Contradiction of the People.” The quotation said, “Where there is counterrevolution, we shall certainly suppress it; when we make a mistake, we shall certainly correct it.”
Then I wrote an account of the trip my late husband and I had made to Europe in 1956, with a list of the countries we visited, the activities I could recall, and the names of the people we saw. On the subject of conversations we had, I included general topics of no political significance. When I had nearly finished writing, I suddenly remembered two important events that had taken place in the world during the time we were in England: the Hungarian uprising and the Suez War of 1956. I couldn’t very well comment on the first, but I could with impunity include the second as a topic of conversation with friends, as it did not concern China or Communism. At the bottom of the page, following the printed words “Signature of Criminal,” I added, “who did not commit any crime,” and signed my name.
I handed the papers to the guard on duty. That very afternoon, I was called for interrogation.
The same men except for the soldier were in the room. A dark scowl was on each face, a reaction I had anticipated when I decided to contest their assumption that I was a criminal when I was not. I did not wait for a signal from the interrogator but bowed to Mao’s portrait immediately. The quotation the interrogator chose for me to read was “Against the running dogs of the imperialists and those who represent the interests of the landlords and the Kuomintang reactionary clique, we must exercise the power of dictatorship to suppress them. They are allowed only to be docile and obedient. They are not allowed to speak or act out of turn.”
In front of the interrogator were the pages I had written. After I had sat down, he banged the table while glaring at me. Then he banged the table again and shouted, “What have you done here?” He pointed at the papers. “Do you think we are playing a game with you?”
I remained silent.
“Your attitude is not serious,” the old worker said.
“If you do not change your attitude, you will never get out of this place,” said the young worker.
Before I could say anything, the interrogator threw my account on the floor, scattering the pages, and stood up. He said, “Go back to your cell and write it again!”
A guard appeared at the doorway and shouted, “Come out!”
I followed him back to the cell. The roll of paper I was given was the same as before. It had the same first sheet with the printed quotation enclosed in a red square at the top and “Signature of Criminal” at the bottom. Since I had embarked on this course of action, I decided I had to carry the fight to the finish. I did not hesitate but wrote the same quotation and again added the words “who did not commit any crime” before my signature. The account I wrote could not be exactly the same as the first one, but I have an excellent memory, and it was more or less the same. The next day, I handed the paper to the guard. Again I was called almost immediately. Again the interrogator threw my account on the floor, scattering all the pages, and told me to write another.
This was repeated once more. Then the interrogator said to me, “Are you mad? Perhaps we should send you to the mental hospital and have you locked up with the crazy people.”
“I’m not mad. If you are not satisfied with what I have written, you can point out my mistakes. I would be glad to correct them.”
“Why did you add a quotation under the printed one? Why did you write a qualifying phrase before your signature?” the interrogator demanded.
“I was only trying to make my account reflect the true facts more accurately,” I said. “I wanted to remind you that our Great Leader Chairman Mao said that we should correct our mistakes. I hope you will carry out Chairman Mao’s directive and correct your mistake in my case. As for the added phrase before my signature, it’s appropriate. I did not commit any crime. If you must call me a criminal, then I am the criminal who did not commit any crime.”
“Instead of confessing your crime, you spend your time arguing,” answered the interrogator, no longer shouting.
“I’ve never committed any crime. If you insist I have, you will have to prove it.”
“We’ll certainly prove it. But we want to give you a chance to confess so that you can earn lenient treatment.”
“Have I not told you over and over again I’ve never committed any crime? Have I not signed a pledge that you can shoot me if you can prove I’ve committed a crime?”
“You are bluffing! Don’t you worry. We’ll shoot you when the time comes,” the young worker said heatedly.
“Go back to your cell and write the account again,” said the interrogator.
The secretary handed me another roll of paper, and I followed the guard back to my cell.
When I looked at the paper, I found that this time the first page with the printed quotation and the “Signature of Criminal” at the bottom was not included. All the sheets were blank. Again I wrote down my account. Two days later I gave it to the guard on duty.
To people who have not dealt with such men as the Maoists, my persistent effort to fight back against my persecutors may seem futile and pointless. But the Maoists were essentially bullies. If I had allowed them to insult me at will, they would have been encouraged to go further. My life at the detention house would have become even more intolerable than it was already. Besides, every word I uttered in that interrogation room was recorded. Being an eternal optimist, I hoped that one day a just man would be appointed to investigate my case and that what I had said would help him to arrive at the right conclusion.
Several days passed. Daily I waited for the interrogator to call me and go on with his questioning. But I was never called. Finally, one morning, a militant male guard and the militant female guard who had kicked me came to the door of my cell. “Come out!” they threw open the door and shouted.
When I bent to pick up the Little Red Book of Mao’s quotations, the female guard stepped into the cell and pushed me roughly. This was so unexpected that I nearly fell down.
“You won’t need this where you are going!” She snatched the book out of my hand and tossed it onto the bed. Then she twisted my arms behind my back. The male guard came in and clamped a pair of handcuffs on my wrists. The female guard again gave me a shove. I stumbled. When I regained my balance, she gave me another push.
“Hurry! Hurry!” she shouted.
I followed the guards out of the women’s prison and through the main courtyard to the front entrance. The interrogator, the young worker, and another man were waiting at the second iron gate. Parked in the drive was a white sedan with the engine running.
“Get in! Sit in the middle,” the interrogator said.
I climbed into the back of the car and sat in the middle of the seat. With my hands pinned at my back, I had to sit upright. My first impression was surprise at how soft the seat of the car was. It was a long time since I had sat on a soft seat with springs.
The interrogator and the young worker sat on either side of me. The other man sat with the driver. The car moved slowly along the drive and, gathering speed, drove out of the prison gate.
Where were they taking me? Were they going to carry out their threat and have me confined to a mental hospital? I did not think they were taking me for execution, because surely such extreme measures were carried out on the prison premises under cover of darkness. Besides, once they had killed me, they would have no hope of extracting a confession from me. To keep me alive but make my life difficult was their probable aim. I thought a mental hospital was the more likely destination. It would be difficult to continue my fight from a mental hospital. The shrieks and cries of the mentally ill would be depressing. However, I soon discovered that the car was not going towards the road that led out of town to the mental hospital.
Through the fluttering silk curtains that covered the windows of all official cars, I could see that we were passing through Shanghai’s downtown business section and were speeding towards the western suburbs. There were few pedestrians and little traffic. The familiar streets evoked a flood of memories. We crossed an intersection only a block from my house. And there was the No. 1 Medical College. It seemed a lifetime ago that I had met Winnie coming out of its gates in the evening twilight when I first got involved with the Cultural Revolution in the summer of 1966. I wondered how she was faring and whether she had had to go to one of those Cadre Schools I had read about in the newspaper.
The car slowed down and entered the drive of the technical school where I had attended the first struggle meeting against our former chief accountant, Tao, and from where I was taken to the No. 1 Detention House on the night of September 27, 1966. It was now already early March 1969, and the unwarranted accusation that I had betrayed my country still hung over my head.
Several men were standing in the pale spring sunshine. One of them opened the door of the car and led me into a small room. Another man behind me was pushing my head down, so that all I could see were the legs of the man walking in front of me. I heard the turning of the lock on the door as soon as I entered. I was left there alone.
There was only one solitary wooden bench in the dusty place. Paper pasted on the window prevented me from looking out. The walls were covered with Big Character Posters from ceiling to floor. There were more piled up in one corner of the room. The ones on the walls did not look freshly written. Some were torn; all were stuck on the walls in a haphazard manner, overlapping one another. When the door was opened to admit me, a gust of air blew several onto the floor.
I sat on the bench and let my eyes wander over the posters. Gradually I realized that they had been hastily pasted on the walls entirely for my benefit. They were old Big Character Posters used during the past two and a half years. Now they were on display again to undermine my fighting spirit. The signatures on them were those of Shell’s ex-staff members. Some were written by one man, while others were signed by several names. The messages on them denounced Shell, my late husband, and myself. The “crimes” listed were numerous. Some were distortions of facts or misinterpretations of events. Others were pure imagination. Names of our friends and the three British managers who succeeded my husband were all listed as “foreign intelligence officers” with whom I was supposed to have worked in close cooperation. The names of Scott and Austin appeared on several posters. The White Russian woman employed as secretary at our office was denounced as a double agent for Britain and the Soviet Union.
I closed my eyes to shut out the obnoxious lies. After waiting for a long time, I thought I should try to find out what was going on outside. I listened. When I heard footsteps, I knocked on the door.
“What do you want?” the voice of a man asked.
“May I go to the bathroom?”
The door was unlocked by a woman, who led me to a courtyard at the back. We passed through an area used as a dormitory, with rows of bunk beds jammed into the rooms. Later I learned that the ex-staff of Shell had been confined there since 1966, undergoing endless indoctrination and writing confessions while doing physical labor. Now there was no one about. In the distance I could hear the voice of a man addressing a meeting. I thought that whoever lived in the dormitory must be at the meeting.
When I came out of the bathroom, I was not taken back to the small room with posters, but to the hall where the struggle meetings against Shell’s former chief accountant and myself had been held in 1966. Again a man came behind me and placed his hand on my head to bend it low. Two women held my arms, straining them forward to hurry me on, so that the handcuffs cut into my wrists painfully. They were behaving in an exaggeratedly militant manner, as women trying to appear revolutionary often did in China.
I was taken to the front of the room and half thrown, half dropped onto the floor as if I were a sack. The man kept his hand on my head so that I could not look around. When I sat down on the floor, he sat down right behind me, with his hand firmly exerting pressure.
Just before I sat down, out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the room was filled with people sitting on the floor. This arrangement implied insult, as according to Chinese tradition only slaves, condemned criminals, or enemies captured in wars sat on the floor. The people in the room were shouting slogans long familiar to my ears. For a full minute, it seemed, they shouted demands for my downfall and destruction. I heard footsteps coming to the front of the room. When the noise of slogan shouting died down, a young man’s voice addressed the meeting.
“Here she is!” he shouted in a loud scream. I imagined him pointing a finger at my bowed head. “We have brought her here so that she will be exposed for what she is. We’ll let her see that we know all her secrets. All of you were involved in the scheme of the imperialists to destroy socialism in China too. To a certain extent, you are also guilty, because you also worked for the firm that exploited the Chinese people from the beginning of this century. It was also a spy organization that gathered information to be used for the imperialists. The more senior you were, the more guilty you are. The more management valued your work, the more guilty you are. We, the Revolutionaries, are very fair-minded. If you are thirty percent guilty, we do not punish you for fifty percent. But of course we have our own standard of evaluation. It’s the standard set up in accordance with our Great Leader Chairman Mao’s teaching.
“During the past two and a half years we have given all of you an intensive course of reeducation combined with physical labor. Many of you have made good progress in improving your socialist awareness. You shed your inhibitions and came forth with your exposure of the enemy. That’s to be commended. Others of you are still hesitant. You are like a tube of toothpaste. When we squeeze, something comes out. When we squeeze hard, more comes out. When we do not squeeze, nothing comes. Well, if you continue to maintain a negative attitude, naturally we’ll squeeze very hard until you are dry.
“Very soon we are going to let some of you return home. This is good news for you. But remember, only those we consider ready will be allowed to go. The others will have to continue with reeducation. When or whether you will be allowed to go home and how long you must continue with reeducation and physical labor depends entirely on yourselves.”
The speaker was just a voice to me. But it was the voice of an uneducated young man, perhaps a worker who had become a Revolutionary of some standing because of his close adherence to the Maoist doctrine. These Revolutionaries were the most ardent supporters of the Cultural Revolution because it gave them undreamt-of opportunity for personal advancement. They looked upon Maoist leaders like Jiang Qing as redeemers who had elevated them from the mundane existence to which their mediocre intellect and lack of ability had condemned them.
From what the speaker had said, I knew that the people sitting on the floor in the room were mostly ex-staff members of my former office. Now he called on them to “expose” and “condemn” me as a means to redeem themselves. They readily complied. But I knew it was all arranged beforehand and that the speakers had been selected and told what to say. And the drafts of their statements had been approved by the Revolutionaries. Even before the Cultural Revolution no one in China could make a public statement without first having it approved by his or her Party secretary. During the Hundred Flowers Bloom and Hundred Thoughts Contend Campaign of 1956, and later during the period of the Democracy Wall of 1978-79, the Party ordered the people to speak and write Big Character Posters. In both instances, because the Party did not or could not censor each and every statement and poster and the people exceeded what the Party wanted them to say, the situation quickly got out of hand and the Party had to clamp down again.
The men I used to see daily and worked with for over eight years stood up one after another to repeat what was written on the posters I had seen in the small room. Their hesitant and frightened voices were telling lies so outrageous, using words so alien to them, that I knew they were suffering shame and anguish. My own emotion was one of deep sorrow that the highhanded Maoist Revolutionaries had degraded all of us to such an extent. But I listened carefully, trying to fathom the intention of the Maoists from the words they had put into these men’s mouths.
The floor was hard, and my neck was aching from having my head pushed down by the heavy hand of the man behind me. I shifted my position and drew up one leg. Then I rested my head on my knee. In this posture, I could see a corner of the blue jacket of the man seated on my left and nothing more. Since I made no attempt to look up but appeared content to bend my head down, the man behind me gradually relaxed his grip.
The statements made by Shell’s ex-staff became more fantastic by the hour. What they were saying was absurd and unbelievable to anybody who had some knowledge of the world outside China. The sum total of the accusations was an amateurish attempt at a spy drama without a convincing central theme, beginning, or end.
I heard the voice of the young man calling on our former chief accountant, Tao.
The corner of the blue jacket disappeared from view as the man next to me stood up. I wondered why the Maoists had placed Tao next to me on the floor.
Tao was saying in a faltering voice, “As everybody knows, I was arrested at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and taken to the Number Two Detention House. While I was there, the interrogator and the guards most kindly gave me reeducation to help me raise my socialist awareness. Gradually I realized the seriousness of my crime against socialism and the Party. A desire to earn lenient treatment was born in my heart. At that juncture, the kind and understanding Revolutionaries brought me back here and allowed my family to visit me …” He was evidently overcome with emotion and unable to go on.
“My eldest son is a Party member, and so is my daughter-in-law. My son received his higher education entirely due to the opportunity given him by the Party and the People’s Government. My whole family is eternally grateful to our Great Leader Chairman Mao. I cannot describe the remorse I experienced when I saw my wife, my son, my daughter-in-law, and my baby grandson …”
He drew a long breath, broke down, and sobbed.
There was dead silence in the room. The pale spring sun cast a shifting shadow of the window on the floor in front of me. I had been watching it move across the floor. Now I wondered how much longer the meeting was going to last. I was getting tired and hungry. But I warned myself not to relax vigilance. Somehow I did not think Tao was called upon merely to set an example for me to follow. After all, I did not have a child specially educated by the Party.
When Tao resumed, he seemed to be making an effort to speak, like a man utterly exhausted. His voice was unsteady as he declared, “My wife, my son, and my daughter-in-law talked to me. The Revolutionaries talked to me. The cadres representing the Party and our Great Leader Chairman Mao talked to me. They showed that I must obey the teachings of Chairman Mao. There is no other way for me to turn. I can’t let them down. I’m going to confess and make a clean break with the past. I want to go home and be with my family. To confess fully is the only way.” He again paused for a moment, almost as if he were reluctant to go on. Then he plunged in and said in a loud and firm voice, “I was a spy for the British imperialists. I joined the British spy organization through the introduction of this woman’s husband, the late general manager Cheng. After he died, this woman became my boss. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, she warned me not to confess and promised me a large sum of money if I would hold out.”
A denial or an argument with Tao would serve no useful purpose. But I must put a stop to this farce. I jerked my head up and laughed uproariously.
My reaction was not what anyone had expected. There was a moment of stunned silence. Then several men rushed to my side. The man behind me pushed my head down again. Another man shouted, “What are you laughing at?” Someone else said, “How dare you laugh!”
The sound of people moving about came from the back of the room. There was even a noise that was like suppressed giggles. The tense atmosphere of a moment ago had collapsed like a burst balloon.
The voice of the young man in charge of the meeting was shouting at me amidst the noise, “Why did you laugh? Answer me!”
“If you put on a comic play, you must expect the audience to laugh. It’s the natural response,” I answered. With my head pressed down, I had to talk to the floor. But I raised my voice and spoke clearly so that every person in the room could hear me. I wanted to show our ex-staff that there was no need to be frightened of the Maoists.
“Take her out! Take her out!” the young man yelled. Then he led the others in the room to shout slogans against me.
I was forcibly dragged out of the room, pulled through the courtyard like a sack, and pushed into the waiting car. A woman Revolutionary kept her hand over my mouth to prevent me from speaking, while the man did not relax his pressure on my head. I was pinned on the back seat of the car in an awkward position, with the woman perching on the edge of the seat and the man squatting in the narrow space between the front and back seats. But I was lighthearted. I thoroughly enjoyed breaking up their carefully planned meeting. I wondered what would have happened if I had sat there quietly. I did not rule out the possibility that Tao had been instructed to talk to me and incriminate me in some way to validate his lies. There must have been a reason, I thought, for the Maoists to have placed me next to him.
It was my bad luck to find the militant female guard on duty when I returned to the cell. Needless to say, she had not kept rice for me. She did not take the handcuffs off my wrists. As soon as she unlocked the door, she gave me a hard shove that sent me lurching into the room, where I collapsed on the bed. Almost immediately, running footsteps could be heard in the corridor. The same male guard who had escorted me from the car came back to call me for interrogation.
The guard was in a great hurry; it was difficult to keep up with him. When I reached the interrogation room, I was out of breath and my heart was beating wildly.
There were no fewer than eight men in the small room, four seated on chairs placed along the wall opposite Mao’s portrait, the others crowded around the interrogator.
The interrogator waved his arm towards the portrait. I bowed and nearly lost my balance. The floor heaved, and I closed my eyes.
“Remain standing!” someone said, but his voice seemed to come from very far away.
“Explain yourself! Why did you laugh?” another voice said in the distance.
I tried to say something, but no word came. I must have fainted from hunger. When I opened my eyes, I found myself sitting on the floor supported by a female guard. My arms were freed from the handcuffs. The sleeve of my left arm was pulled up. The young doctor was standing over me, unscrewing the needle from a large syringe. He nodded to the interrogator and left the room. The female guard pulled me up and pushed me into the prisoner’s chair. She also left the room.
My heart was still palpitating, and my lips were parched. But I felt better.
“Now answer my question. Did you not see for yourself that the others are more enlightened than you are? They are coming over to the side of the Proletarian Revolutionaries. They have confessed everything. What are you going to do? Are you going to do the same and admit your guilt?” the interrogator asked.
I was feeling stronger by the minute. What did the doctor give me? Was it just an intravenous injection of glucose, or was there something else in the syringe? Perhaps there was a stimulant. I was now wide awake, ready to fight.
Before I could answer the interrogator’s question, someone interrupted. ‘What were you laughing at? Why did you laugh? It’s no laughing matter. To be accused of being a spy for the imperialists is a very serious matter.” It was the voice of the young man who had led the meeting at the technical school. I looked at him with curiosity.
To my surprise, he did not look like the young industrial worker I had assumed him to be from his voice and vocabulary. He wore a jacket like that of an army officer, but without the red patches on the collar that denoted a member of the Liberation Army. His trousers were dark gray, made of good-quality worsted that would cost at least 30 yuan a yard, twenty days’ pay for an industrial worker. His hair was plastered down with grease, and his black leather shoes were carefully polished. On the wrist of his left hand a gold watch peeped from under the cuff of his shirt sleeve. He was a young man of about twenty-five with an air of self-importance. I was puzzled who he was and how he dared to appear so well dressed during the Cultural Revolution; the clothes he was wearing were denounced as the habitual attire of the capitalist class. Was he not afraid to be mistaken for a class enemy?
Years later, I was to learn that his appearance was typical of the sons of senior army commanders. The khaki jacket was a hint that the wearer was connected with the armed forces and therefore above the law. The status of their fathers gave these young men the privilege of looking different from the other Revolutionaries they attempted to lead. Direct access to the seat of power through their family connections set them apart. In time they became the Mafia of Communist China as they plundered wealth, raped women, and organized black market and gambling activities.
Those whose fathers were very senior in the military hierarchy became China’s biggest “back-door men” and “fixers.” They could arrange anything, from housing and jobs to import and export trade, because they could get things done through their own network of cronies without going through the established bureaucracy. Even merchants from Hong Kong anxious to get a good contract in China had to bribe these swaggering young men, often by giving them “jobs” enabling them to travel to and from the British colony and smuggle gold, silver, and antiques out of China, and TV sets, recorders, and watches into the country.
“Answer! Answer!” the well-dressed young man shouted. I looked at him, and then I looked at the interrogator. But the latter was staring at the paper in front of him, seemingly annoyed that the young man had taken over the job of questioning me.
“I laughed because it was funny,” I told him.
“What was funny?”
“The whole thing you arranged was funny.”
“Explain yourself.”
“Well, don’t you see? Tao was lying, and lying very badly. But you believed him, and you were going to let him go home to his family. Isn’t that funny?”
“Tao wasn’t lying.”
“Wasn’t he? Then you mean he was a real spy? In that case, you were going to let a real spy go home instead of punishing him with the death penalty or a stiff sentence? That’s even funnier.”
“Never mind what’s going to happen to Tao. What about yourself? Don’t you want to go home?”
“Of course I want to go home. I want full rehabilitation. I want an apology from the People’s Government to be published in the Liberation Daily in Shanghai and in the People’s Daily in Beijing. But I won’t lie. I’ll achieve all that by adhering only to the truth,” I said.
I was looking at this well-dressed but rather stupid young man intently, wondering how he could have failed to realize that I laughed merely to break up his carefully arranged meeting. Suddenly he stood up and shouted in an excited voice, “Bow your head! Bow your head! I won’t let a class enemy stare at me with eyes like a pair of searchlights!”
The man seated next to him, obviously a lackey, quickly stood up, walked over to me, and stretched out his hand to push my head down.
“It’s my habit to look at the person I speak to. If I made you nervous, I apologize. Would you like me to sit with my back to you?” I turned my body to face Mao’s portrait on the wall, as the prisoner’s chair was nailed to the ground and could not be moved. From the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the interrogator. He was biting his lip to stifle a smile.
“Now answer my question. Were you or were you not a spy for the British? Are you or are you not going to confess?” asked the young man.
“I’m not a spy for anybody. I have nothing to confess,” I said firmly to the wall from which Mao’s portrait looked down on me. As I gazed at Mao’s face wearing what was intended as a benign expression but was in fact a smirk of self-satisfaction, I wondered how one single person could have caused the extent of misery that was prevailing in China. There must be something lacking in our own character, I thought, that had made it possible for his evil genius to dominate.
“You are a spy!” the young man shouted angrily.
“I’m not.” I shook my head.
“We have evidence you are.”
“Produce it, then.” I turned to face him once more.
“Didn’t you hear your ex-staff members this morning?”
“That was no evidence. Just empty words of accusation made under duress.”
“Don’t you worry. We’ll show you concrete evidence. One, two, three, four … a very long list of things you said and did. But by then it will be too late for you to win lenient treatment.”
“A real spy shouldn’t be given lenient treatment. A real spy should be shot, whether he confesses or not,” I declared.
The interrogator stood up and took over. “Go back to your cell now and think over everything you heard at the meeting this morning. They were not all lies. Some are serious matters. The situation you are in is no laughing matter.” He got up and walked out of the room. A guard came to lead me back to the cell.
As I approached the women’s prison, I saw the woman from the kitchen in her white apron pushing the huge cart with layers and layers of containers of sweet potatoes for the prisoners. She was being helped by two Labor Reform Girls. Apparently another inmate was also being given rice; the two containers of rice and cabbage stood out amid the golden brown color of the potatoes. As soon as I was back in my cell, my portion of rice was pushed through the small window.
My gums were now bleeding almost continuously. I had to rinse my mouth before taking food, or the food tasted of blood. Chewing had become more and more difficult. The cabbage was usually very tough. It took me a very long time to finish a meal. Because I had to return the chopsticks with the container before I could finish eating, I had been allowed to purchase a plastic spoon from the prison shop. Now I sat on the edge of the bed, scooped the rice and cabbage into one of the mugs, washed the aluminum container and chopsticks to give back to the woman from the kitchen, and started to eat my only meal of the day with the plastic spoon. While I ate, I reviewed what had happened during the day.
In spite of being knocked about and handcuffed, I thought that on the whole the day had not been wasted. I had learned what had happened to the former members of the company’s staff and could see my own predicament in better perspective. I regretted that so many of them had succumbed to pressure, which must have been great, but I worried about others whose names I did not see on the Big Character Posters and who were not among the speakers denouncing me. I wondered whether they were still in this world.
As for our chief accountant, Tao, I considered his behavior dastardly. But I had to forgive him, I believed. The sound of his sobbing was still in my ears. It was the cry of a tortured soul who had reached the end of his tether.
The weather was decidedly warmer, and I had stopped shivering several days earlier. I wondered whether I should wash the warm woolen sweater I was wearing and put it away. I felt I must take great care of all my winter clothing, as goods like that were not available in the prison shop. God knew how long I would have to remain in the detention house. The struggle between the Maoists and myself was in fact a war of endurance. I simply must not die.
Soon after I had got into bed, the guard on duty came to the small window. She pushed open the shutter gently and said in a whisper, “Would you like to take a hot shower?”
What an unexpected and welcome offer! Prisoners were allowed one hot shower a month. In the winter months, when it was too cold to wash in the cell with cold water, I counted the days from one hot shower to the next. That afternoon, when I came back from interrogation, I had noticed that the female guards were going to the shower room one after another. This continued throughout the whole evening. Now, it seemed, they had all finished, so the guard was offering me the chance to use up the hot water that was left in the pipes.
I jumped out of bed, grabbed my soapbox and towels, and followed her to the shower room. While I stood under the spray of warm water, washing my hair and my body, I marveled at the changed attitude of some of the guards since the day I had been bold enough to defend their former leader, Liu Shaoqi. When I emerged from the shower room, I slipped into the cell quietly. Soon afterwards, the guard came and snapped the lock.
It rained the next day, not the chilly drops of winter that crystallized into ice on the ground, nor the angry torrent of summer thunderstorms. It was the gentle drizzle that softly soaked the earth to awaken the trees and flowers, warning them of the approach of spring. I had always loved that wet smell of the earth after a day of spring rain. It seemed so full of hope and the promise of beautiful scented flowers and green shady leaves. The departure of winter, the relatively better food and vitamin pills, and the relaxed attitude of some of the guards combined to make me feel less on edge. I found myself more optimistic about my chances of surviving the ordeal and less worried about the future.
My feeling of euphoria continued the next day. When I was called again for interrogation, I walked with almost sprightly steps. This time only the well-dressed young man and the young worker were seated behind the counter.
After I had entered the room and the guard had closed the door, the young man raised his arm in the direction of Mao’s portrait. I bowed. He told me to read the following quotation: “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting pictures, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely, and so gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an act of violence with which one class overthrows another.”
“Do you love England better than you love China?” he asked.
“I’m a Chinese citizen. Of course I love China better,” I answered.
“If we leave out the matter of citizenship, would you still love China more?”
“Chinese blood flows in my veins. Of course I love China more. I have always been a patriotic Chinese.”
“Were you in the United States in 1940?”
“Yes, I was there for a few months.”
“Did you make speeches when you were there?”
“Yes, I made some speeches about the Japanese invasion of China.”
“We have information that you also made speeches in praise of the British war effort. You spoke on a radio program in New York. You were heard by some of your former Yanjing University friends who have now confessed and provided us with this information. Probably you also spoke at other places. In any case, when you returned to Chongqing, you made a propaganda broadcast from the Kuomintang radio station. You said the British imperialists were heroic people with great courage who would never give up until they won the final victory. Did the British government ask you to make propaganda for them? Were you already recruited by the British in 1940? Answer me!”
“I went to New York from England on a British passenger steamer. A number of the passengers were interviewed on a radio program. The interviewer asked me questions about Britain. Naturally I answered truthfully,” I said.
“You made propaganda for Britain.”
“During the war, Britain and China were on the same side.”
“Not in 1940. The British were helping the Japanese then. What you did proves beyond doubt that you were a British spy as long ago as 1940.”
“Nonsense. I was just a Chinese visitor in Britain who was moved by the courage and resolution of the British people in the face of overwhelming odds when Britain stood alone to resist Hitler’s plan to conquer all of Europe.”
“Listen to you! You are at this moment echoing the propaganda line of the British imperialists. We think you love Britain better than China.”
“You can think whatever you want to, but you will have to prove your accusation against me.”
“We will prove it. We will prove that your claim of patriotism is false. It’s for the purpose of covering up your evil deeds.”
He took a small brown folder from under the counter and held it up to look at. All I could see was the back of the folder; I wondered what it was that he was looking at with so much assumed concentration. Suddenly he turned the folder around. I saw that it enclosed a black-and-white photograph of myself dancing with a Swiss friend in the early fifties, when the French Club was still in existence in Shanghai. An unemployed photographer snapped pictures of the guests of the club and offered them copies for a yuan each. To help this man, we all bought the pictures. When the Red Guards came to my house, the photographs were in the storeroom. They must have taken them all. My Swiss friend was an excellent dancer who knew many fancy steps. In the picture, he was teaching me something new and we were both laughing.
“Do you call that patriotic?” the young man said severely, as if I had been caught doing something terrible.
“What has dancing got to do with patriotism?” I was genuinely puzzled.
“You were dancing with a foreigner. And you looked quite happy dancing with a foreigner. That’s decidedly unpatriotic.”
“Is dancing with a foreigner unpatriotic?” I was rather taken aback by his line of attack. But I recovered in a moment and saw how I could turn the argument in my own favor. I went on, “I didn’t know dancing with a foreigner was not patriotic. But I must accept your superior judgment, as you are an enlightened Marxist and a Revolutionary. However, if I was not patriotic, at least I was useful. That’s to my credit, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean, you were useful?”
“Well, as you have just said, dancing with a foreigner was not patriotic. By dancing with my Swiss friend, I was making him unpatriotic, because to him surely I was the foreigner. If by the simple act of dancing I can make others unpatriotic, isn’t that being useful? Think of the possibilities from that point on. You can simply send me to dance with all China’s enemies all over the world and let me make them unpatriotic. Then, without firing a single shot, all of them are done for. How could anybody be more useful than that?” I was so overcome with mirth that I had some difficulty speaking the last few words clearly.
But the young man was not amused. His face flushed in anger. Pointing to the door of the interrogation room, he shouted, “Get out! Get out! I’ll have you shot!”
He looked so threatening as he advanced towards me that I fled the room in haste. But in the corridor there was no guard to lead me back to my cell. I waited, trying to stifle my giggles. I did not think it seemly or prudent to break out in laughter in that grim place. They might really think I was mad and consider themselves justified in sending me to the mental hospital.
However, it did not pay to laugh at the expense of someone in authority. This was made amply clear to me the very next day.
I was called to the interrogation room just before the prisoners’ midmorning meal. After the preliminaries, the same young man handed me the fourth volume of The Collected Works of Mao Zedong, opened to a page reprinting a letter broadcast from the headquarters of the Communist army to a group of Kuomintang generals. The letter was drafted by Mao Zedong in December 1948, when Kuomintang troops were encircled by the Communist army on the north bank of the Yangzi River near Nanjing, the Kuomintang capital. It pointed out the hopelessness of the Kuomintang position and urged the generals to surrender.
“Remain standing and read the letter aloud,” the young man ordered.
I read the text aloud. When I had finished and was about to hand him back the book, he said, “Read it again! Let the words sink into your stupid mind.”
I read it again. When I had finished it for the second time, he said, “Did the words sink in? Do you understand the hopelessness of your position? You are surrounded just like those Kuomintang generals. No help is coming! The only way out is to surrender.”
I said nothing. He glared at me for a moment and then yelled, “Read it again!”
When I had finished reading, we stared at each other. Then he shouted impatiently, “Read it again! Let the words sink into your granite head!”
There I stood in the interrogation room for hours that day, reading the letter over and over again until I was dizzy, my voice hoarse and my legs badly swollen. By late afternoon, I was so weary that my voice was barely audible and I read the words haltingly. Since by this time I knew the text by heart, I no longer had to look at the book but spoke the words slowly with my eyes closed. Gradually my arm holding the book dropped to my side. Whenever I stopped or hesitated, the young man yelled, “Are you going to surrender?” He would wait for me to answer. When I did not answer, he would yell, “Read it again!”
At first the young worker stared at me while I read. Now I saw that he had lost interest. With his head on his folded arms, he seemed to be dozing. The two of them took turns to go out to eat. I had to go without food. Hungry and exhausted, I was in a daze. My mouth was so dry that my voice became a low murmur. Still, each time I finished reciting the text, the young man yelled, “Repeat!”
I was allowed to go back to my cell only when it was getting dark. Though I couldn’t be sure how long I had stood in the interrogation room reading that letter drafted by Mao, it must have been more than seven hours. No food was kept for me. Throughout the whole day I had only water to drink in the morning before I went to the interrogation room and in the evening after I came back to the cell. To give myself some nourishment, I swallowed a handful of cod-liver oil capsules and B complex tablets.
This routine went on for three days, except that on the second and third day I was allowed to return to the cell in time for the afternoon meal. The guard on duty at the women’s prison cooperated with the young man. She prolonged the evening exercise period, during which she took up position outside my cell and saw to it that I walked around and around for an hour. After I went to bed, the night duty guard came repeatedly to my cell to open and shut the small window with a loud bang or kick the door with her heavy boot to disturb my sleep. In spite of being awakened by her several times during the night, on the whole I slept soundly.
At the end of the third day, I was again on the verge of collapse. I thought this might be apparent to the two young men. At the end of the afternoon, they both asked me, “Are you going to surrender?”
I tried to speak. But I was very weak, and my throat was so dry that only a hoarse whisper came.
“Speak clearly! Are you going to surrender?” the well-dressed young man asked.
I made a great effort. With all my strength I managed to say, “Not guilty!”
“You will surely be shot!”
He left the room in a fit of temper and banged the door. I sat down in the prisoner’s chair to rest and to wait for the guard.
The young worker stared at me with a puzzled frown on his brow. After a while, he said, “What can you be thinking about? What is it you pin your hope on?”
I said nothing. A guard came to lead me out of the room.
Days passed. But I was not called again. Many times a day I thought of the exchanges I had had with all the interrogators, including the well-dressed young man. Over and over again I went through the questions they had asked me and the answers I had given. Could I have done better? Could I have done otherwise? I came to the conclusion that although they sometimes appeared to be trying to find out the actual facts of what had happened, all the interrogations were in fact simply part of the attempt to find me guilty. The questions were asked to elicit answers in which they could find something to use against me. At the same time, they used the sessions of interrogation to show their power over me so that I would eventually be frightened into submission. Interrogations were not going to help resolve my case. They were used solely to add to my hardship. In fact, there was no point in my hoping for more interrogations.
With the coming of warmer weather my general health seemed to have improved somewhat. One piece at a time, I washed my winter sweaters and socks and laid them out to dry. I cleaned the collar and cuffs of my padded jacket and put it away. Be prepared for a long stay in the detention house, I told myself. As long as I could keep alive, I still had hope. The philosopher Laozi once said that when events developed to the extreme, the trend would be reversed. I must wait. I did my daily exercise and spent many hours reciting poetry to myself. Often I would sit there with Mao’s book on my lap as if I were absorbed in reading his essays, but actually my mind was filled with the stanzas of Li Bo or Du Fu.
On April 1, 1969, two and a half years after my arrest, the long-awaited Ninth Party Congress opened in Beijing. The newspaper reported that Lin Biao delivered the important political report, praising the Cultural Revolution and promising unrelenting efforts at class struggle. Among the fifteen hundred delegates were a large number of his supporters from the army, navy, and air force. In the new Party constitution, Lin Biao was officially named Mao’s successor. Both Lin Biao and Jiang Qing succeeded in placing their associates in the new Central Committee of 279 members. Many old, well-known Party officials were dropped. Some few, like Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and Foreign Minister Chen Yi, maintained their positions. But as a group the influence of the old guard was greatly diminished. In the final photograph published in the newspaper, Mao stood in the middle. On his left were all the Maoist leaders, such as Lin Biao and Jiang Qing. On his right were the few members of the old guard headed by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai.
While the Ninth Party Congress was in session, the newspaper reported daily displays of enthusiasm and support by the populace. In the detention house, prisoners were obliged to listen from morning till night to broadcasts of speeches and news bulletins, including long lists of names of delegates. Familiar names disappeared. New names appeared, reflecting the power realignment that was going on in the Party leadership. On the day Lin Biao gave his political report, all prisoners were roused from sleep and told to get dressed and listen to a tape of it.
One day, just as I had settled down to eat my rice in the morning, the cell door was unlocked. A male guard yelled, “Come out!”
I ignored him while I quickly swallowed mouthful after mouthful of rice without chewing.
“Come out!” he yelled again. But he did not come into the cell.
My chopsticks were flying as I swept the rice into my mouth. I was determined to face whatever was in store for me with some food in my stomach. I suspected they always timed the interrogations to make me miss my meals.
“Come out!” he yelled for the third time and came into the cell. Calmly he took the mug of food from my hand and placed it on the table. “You can eat it when you come back,” he said.
Quickly I dipped the other mug into the washbasin full of cold water and drank several mouthfuls to wash down the hard rice lingering in my esophagus.
“Hurry up! You are so slow,” he said.
“Please go outside. I have to use the toilet.”
He had to leave the cell. The female guard on duty came in to watch me. I washed my hands and wiped my mouth. As I was picking up the Little Red Book of Mao’s quotations, the mild female guard shook her head and murmured, “No need to take it.” I put the book back on the bed and followed her out of the cell.
The militant female guard ran into the corridor and shouted breathlessly, “What are you doing? Why are you so slow?”
I followed her out of the women’s prison to the courtyard. Another male guard was waiting with a pair of handcuffs. The female guard twisted my arms back and put the handcuffs on my wrists. Then she gave a hard shove that sent me staggering. As soon as I recovered my balance and started to walk normally, she gave me another hard shove. Thus, by fits and starts, I reached the front entrance of the detention house. The same white sedan was parked there with the driver in his seat. He had his hand on the horn, emitting intermittent bursts of sound until he saw me coming. The well-dressed young man was pacing to and fro, and the old worker was standing nearby.
When they saw me, they both walked over. I knew from the expression on the young man’s face that what was going to happen to me this day was a punishment for my intransigence. He said through clenched teeth, “You are going to a meeting to celebrate the successful conclusion of the Ninth Party Congress and the election of the new Central Committee. Be sure to behave yourself. Abandon your arrogant manner! Otherwise the Revolutionaries will tear you apart.” He relaxed somewhat, almost as if the prospect of my being torn apart by the Revolutionaries was pleasing to him.
“Here in the Number One Detention House, we have rules and regulations about the treatment of prisoners. We have been extremely tolerant and restrained towards you. Outside this gate, the situation is different. The revolutionary masses can do whatever they want. You had better be careful. Don’t speak out of turn. In fact, you had better be docile and obedient, otherwise they will kill you. Many people have been killed already in that way,” the old worker said.
Were they really concerned about the preservation of my life? I thought not. They were simply anxious to avoid the criticism that they had failed to tame the prisoner under their control. Possibly senior officials were to be present at this meeting, on whom they would want to make a good impression.
“Do you understand the situation?” the young man asked me.
“I will not answer back if I am not provoked,” I told him.
“Perhaps we should really teach you a lesson before we go,” he said, curling his fingers into a fist and waving it in front of my eyes.
“You should know by now I am not to be silenced by physical violence. The more you provoke me, the more I’ll answer back.”
“All right, then. We shall let the masses teach you a lesson. You better look out. They will kill you if you answer back.”
“Do you mean to say I must remain silent even if someone asks me a question?” I wanted to get the situation clear.
“Yes, just bow your head and admit your crime.”
“I would rather die than admit something that is not true.”
“Keep silent, then. Whatever they say to you, just keep quiet,” said the old worker, who seemed decidedly the better person of the two.
“All right. I’ll keep silent, no matter what they say. But that doesn’t mean I admit I’m guilty.”
“It’s not for the masses to decide whether you are guilty or not,” the old worker assured me.
The young man told me to get into the car. I sat down on the back seat with the old worker and another man. The young man sat beside the driver. As the car emerged from the drive onto the streets, another sedan with all the others who had taken part in my last few interrogations followed.
April was a beautiful month in Shanghai. The polluted air of this industrial city was freshened by the young leaves of plane trees lining the streets. There was a sense of renewal after the rigors of winter. The windows of the car were open; the brown silk curtains fluttered in the breeze, so that I could see something of the streets. We were heading north right across town. At intersections we were frequently held up by parades organized to celebrate the conclusion of the Ninth Party Congress. The red banners, the slogans on colored paper, the drums and gongs, and the portraits of Mao were the same as had been used in other parades at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. But I noticed that the people taking part now looked very different from the excited crowds of three years ago. Instead of the animation I remembered, people looked bored. Their steps were slow and dragging; their voices shouting slogans were weak and flat. Some did not join in at all. They seemed to be suffering from revolutionary fatigue after nearly three years of unremitting enthusiasm for class struggle. Or, perhaps more likely, they were simply disillusioned by the developments of the Cultural Revolution. Many of them probably had children who had been Red Guards, to whom they now had to send food and clothing since nearly all former Red Guards had been dispersed to the rural areas. Others might have found the confusion and shortages created by the Cultural Revolution a heavy burden added to their already straitened living conditions.
Normally streets in Shanghai were filled with loitering people. But on this spring day, apart from the paraders, there were few idle onlookers. I was puzzled, because I had not fully realized to what extent the violence by the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries had driven the people off the streets. Stray bullets had claimed many victims during the factional civil wars, and the Red Guards and Revolutionaries had beaten people up at random just to keep themselves in a state of readiness for further action.
When the car reached the area of the universities and the military airport on the outskirts of the city, an air force parade came towards us. At the end of the line was a contingent of strikingly beautiful, slender young girls in uniform. They looked more like glamorous females in a film version of the air force than the real thing. Later, after my release, when the Lin Biao affair had officially been made the subject of public criticism, I learned something about these young women. The Chinese people were told that when Lin Biao made his son, Lin Liguo, second in command of the Chinese air force at the age of twenty-five, fresh out of some military college reserved for sons of senior officers, followers of Lin Biao sent Lin Liguo beautiful girls from all over China to form his “three thousand beauties in the inner palace,” in imitation of the selection of concubines for the emperor’s heir in the old days. The girls were offered jobs in the air force as an enticement. Because membership in the armed forces was a guarantee of higher prestige and better treatment, with special consideration for their families, the girls enrolled eagerly without realizing that they were chosen for Lin Liguo’s pleasure. Then they were brought to Shanghai, where Lin Liguo had an elaborate secret establishment. The girls were sorted out under the pretext of physical examination. Those who did not catch Lin Liguo’s fancy were assigned jobs in the air force. These were the girls I saw taking part in the parade.
The car turned into the gates of a large compound of redbrick buildings. There was no signboard to indicate the nature of the place, and no sentry to guard the entrance, only a solitary man to admit the cars and close the gate after us. He followed the cars inside. The atmosphere was rather mysterious, and I decided to observe everything closely. It almost seemed as if they did not want me to know where I was being taken.
After passing between trim lawns and budding willow trees, the car stopped in front of one of the buildings. Two husky-looking women in blue Mao uniforms with the red armband of the Revolutionaries were waiting. One of them opened the door of the car. The old worker jumped out. I was preparing to alight when the second woman stretched out her hand and pulled me out roughly. The two women put their hands under my arms and hoisted me up to take me into the building, almost as if they thought I might try to run away. We entered a small room, and they pushed me into a corner.
“Face the wall! Don’t move!” one of the women yelled.
I heard the women sit down heavily. No one uttered a word. After what seemed a long time, I heard the door being opened; a man’s voice mentioned food. After whispered consultation, one of the women left the room. When she came back, the other one went out. All the time I stood with my face to the wall.
More waiting in complete silence. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other for the hundredth time. Suddenly the door opened again. A man’s voice said with an air of awe and mystery, like a servant in the home of a Chinese high official speaking of his important master, “Lai-la!” This meant someone had arrived. From the messenger’s tone of voice, it was someone important.
The two women shot out of their chairs like lightning, grabbed my arms again, and half carried, half dragged me out of the building. We passed beside a deserted basketball court along a tree-lined path and entered another building. My feet hardly touched the ground; my armpits were bruised by the women’s iron fingers.
My curiosity increased by the minute. What could this place be? The layout was like that of a university compound. But the clean buildings and trim lawns seemed to indicate this was no ordinary institution of higher education. The men who came with me were walking a few steps ahead of me. They had an air of restraint and caution. I decided, in spite of the absence of armed sentries at the gate, that the place was either the site of a government department of some importance or a military installation. Chinese people usually tread gingerly in the vicinity of power and firearms.
We entered a meeting hall where about a hundred people were assembled, sitting in two sections facing each other. In the space between, against the wall, was a raised platform. A number of people in civilian clothes were seated there in a semicircle behind a table. The men from No. 1 Detention House joined them. On the walls were the usual Cultural Revolution slogans written in white paint on red cloth. They proclaimed the victory of the Maoists and the utter destruction of the “capitalist-roaders” in the Party. The “historical” meeting of the Ninth Party Congress was declared a great success for the promotion of Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought. I noticed that the portrait of Lin Biao, the official successor to Mao, appeared beside the official portrait of Mao.
Everything in the room was neat and clean, indicating that the building belonged to an organization with a generous budget and a high degree of discipline. That could only mean the military. I looked at the audience. The people seemed to me rather better dressed than the usual crowd on the streets. There were many jackets and trousers made of wool or Dacron, not the sea of faded blue cotton at an ordinary Shanghai meeting.
The women deposited me in front of a microphone opposite the platform. One of them pushed my head down so that I was forced to look at the floor. Within my view were some tangled wires leading from the microphone. One of the wires must lead to an electric outlet, I thought. Where did the others lead? Was it possible that men in another room were listening in on the struggle meeting? Who could they be? Why should they behave in such a mysterious manner? Perhaps they did not want me to see them? Apart from my local policeman and the young woman in charge of the section dealing with foreign firms at the Shanghai Industry and Commerce Department, I knew few government officials by sight. At diplomatic receptions of the few Western missions in Shanghai to which I had been invited, I had seen one of the vice-mayors and some officials of the Foreign Affairs Department. Surely they must have become victims of the Cultural Revolution when the Shanghai municipal government was overthrown. The only possible explanation was that Lin Biao’s men had taken over my investigation. The men listening to the struggle meeting were men in uniform. What they did not want me to see was not their faces but their military apparel.
The audience was shouting slogans and waving Little Red Books in the air. After the “Long live our Great Leader Chairman Mao” came “Good health to our Vice-Supreme Commander Lin, always good health!” This seemed to me not only a reflection of the elevated position of Lin Biao after the Ninth Party Congress but also testimony to the fact that those who had organized this meeting were his intimates, anxious to promote Lin Biao’s personality cult.
Two legs came into my limited field of vision. A man’s voice spoke in front of me. He introduced me to the audience by giving an account of my family background and personal life. I had noticed already that each time my life story was recounted by the Revolutionaries I became richer and my way of life became more decadent and luxurious. Now the farce reached fantastic proportions. Since I had promised not to answer back but to remain mute, I was much more relaxed and detached than at the previous struggle meeting in 1966. However, the audience jumped up from their seats when the speaker told them I was a spy for the imperialists. They expressed their anger and indignation by crowding around me to shout abuse.
To be so maligned was intolerable. Instinctively I raised my head to respond. The women suddenly jerked up my handcuffs. Such sharp pain tore at my shoulder joints that I had to bend forward with my head well down to ease the agony. They kept me in this position during the rest of the man’s denunciation of me. Only when the people were again shouting slogans did they allow my arms to drop back. I was to learn later that I had been subjected to the so-called jet position invented by the Revolutionaries to torment their more recalcitrant victims and to force them to bow their heads in servile submission.
Another man took over. He spoke about what he called my “disobedience” to the command of the Revolutionaries, who represented the Communist Party, to confess. I realized for the first time that my failure to provide a confession of guilt was interpreted as an act of defiance against the Party. The audience was now even more angry. Perhaps disobeying the Party was a more serious offense than being a spy? I did not have time to decide on an answer before I was pushed and fell to the floor. However, the female giants by my side pulled me up with their strong arms, and I was restored to my previous position behind the microphone.
A third man spoke. He denounced my defense of Liu Shaoqi. After the Central Committee resolution against him and the amount of propaganda that “proved beyond doubt” that Liu was everything the resolution named him to be, the subject of Liu Shaoqi became one that demanded a strong display of anger from anyone who did not want to get into political trouble. When one tries to show emotion one does not genuinely feel, one tends to exaggerate. This audience was no exception. The women were always prompt and ready to pull me up again. Once or twice they even raised an arm to ward off a blow aimed at me.
The people in the audience soon worked themselves into a state of hysteria. Their shouts drowned out the voice of the speaker. Someone pushed me hard from behind. I stumbled and knocked over the microphone. One of the women tried to pick it up, tripped over the wires, and fell, dragging me with her. Because my arms were pinned behind me by the handcuffs, I fell in an awkward position. My face was pressed on the floor; many others fell on top of us in the confusion. Everybody seemed to be yelling. There was pandemonium. Several minutes passed. Finally I was pulled up again.
Utterly exhausted, I longed for the meeting to end. But the speeches continued. It seemed everyone sitting around the table on the platform wanted to make a contribution. They had ceased to denounce me; instead they were competing with each other to sing the praises of Lin Biao in the most extravagant flattery the rich Chinese language could provide. Their efforts to register their devotion to Lin Biao could be explained, I thought, only by the probable presence of Lin Biao’s loyal lieutenants listening in an adjacent room.
Suddenly the door behind me opened. A man’s voice shouted, “Zuo-la!” This meant that somebody had departed. The two simple words produced an electric effect. The speaker stopped in mid-sentence. Since the important person or persons listening in another room had gone, there was no more need to go on with the performance. Some of the audience were already on their feet, while others were collecting their bags and jackets. Hastily the speaker led them to shout slogans. He was largely ignored. Only a few responded while walking out of the room. It seemed the people were no longer angry with me; though they did not smile, the glances directed at me were indifferent. I was just one of the many victims at whose struggle meetings they had been present. They had done what was required of them. Now it was over. Once when a man brushed against me, someone behind him even stretched out a hand to steady me.
The room cleared in a moment. I could hear members of the departing audience chatting as they left the building. “Getting rather chilly, isn’t it?” “Where are you going for supper?” “Not raining, is it?” etc., etc. They sounded no different from an audience departing after a show in a cinema or theater.
The tense atmosphere dissipated like the escaping air from a burst balloon. The two women led me to the waiting car. This time they allowed me to walk by myself. For them also the show was over.
The “celebration” of the Ninth Party Congress went on for several weeks. Every few days I was taken to a different struggle meeting, sometimes less well organized than the first one. When the audience was very violent, I suffered much. Afterwards, I would be called for an interview in the interrogation room and asked whether I was ready to confess. I would either say, “I have nothing to confess” or “I’m not guilty,” or simply remain silent. Then I would be taken to yet another struggle meeting. This exposure to one struggle meeting after another, called “rotating struggle,” was a mind-numbing experience. Day after day, my ears were filled with the sound of angry, accusing voices, my eyes were blurred by images of hostile faces, and my body ached from rough handling and physical abuse. I no longer felt like a human being, just an inanimate object. Sometimes my spirit seemed to leave my body to look on the scene with detachment. Though I stopped thinking or observing what went on and withdrew into myself after a time, I was never really confused or frightened.
My personal experience of “rotating struggle,” painful though it was at the time, was a comparatively mild one. After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, people became vocal about their experiences in the Cultural Revolution. I met one wizened old man who talked about his experience with a great sense of humor. He told me that he had been struggled against “more than a hundred times,” frequently with a heavy iron chain around his neck, used to punish victims who refused to bow their heads voluntarily. Only when he told me some of his friends and colleagues had died during the struggle meetings did he display emotion. I asked him about the “jet position,” which inflicted so much pain on the victims. He lightly brushed it aside, saying that it was used on everyone.
