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11
A Kind of Torture
AFTER THE EPISODE INVOLVING my brother, the interrogator continued with his inquiry about all my relatives and friends. This series of interrogations lasted nearly seven months, until the end of 1969. Then I was no longer called to the interrogation room. I waited and waited. A month passed, and then another. When there was still no sign of the interrogation being resumed, I spoke to the guard and requested to see the interrogator.
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“What do you want to say to the interrogator?”
“I want to ask him when he is going to clarify my case.”
“He can’t clarify your case for you. He just asks the questions and assembles the material. The government will make the decision about your case.”
“When is the government going to do that? I’ve been here such a long time already. I’m not well, I need medical attention,” I said.
“You are all right. We give you medicine and special food.”
“I’m not all right. My condition gets worse every day. I have had several more hemorrhages recently, and my gums are very painful. The sulfa drug I am obliged to take is bad for my kidney. I have only one kidney, you know. When I had my operation, the doctor warned me not to take too much sulfa.”
The guard did not speak for a moment. Then she said, “The difficulty about your case is really your own doing. You have to stay here because you won’t confess.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong. What am I supposed to confess? The interrogator has examined my whole life and my contacts with all my relatives and friends. By now the government should know all about me. How can anyone still think I am guilty of anything?” Frustration and disappointment made me raise my voice. But the guard merely closed the window and walked away.
During the past few months and the many sessions of interrogation, I had formed a distinct impression that when my life and activities had been examined, I would be released. Now I could not understand what was holding things up. The guard had said that it was up to the government to make the decision. This made sense to me because it was the usual working method of the Communist Party. What I did not know was on which level of authority my case was to be decided, and why it was taking so long. If my hopes had not been raised, perhaps my disappointment would not have been so great. As it was, I was plunged into renewed despair.
The misery of my life in the winter of 1969-70 was beyond imagination. Looking back on those months of heavy snowstorms, intense cold, and constant physical pain, I marvel that I could have lived through it all.
One day when I asked the guard to buy soap, I was given something that did not lather. The guard told me that soap was rationed and each person was allowed only one cake per month. When I requested permission to buy a little more because I had to wash my underclothes more frequently, the guard became annoyed and shouted, “When are you going to get rid of your capitalistic way of wanting more than other people? You are lucky to be allowed one cake per month. In many places the people are only allowed one cake per family.”
The toilet paper made of processed rice straw was replaced by something even coarser, made with old newspaper, string, and old cloth; bits of these were clearly visible on the rough gray sheets, stiff as a board. This substitute for toilet paper was rationed also. The cod-liver oil and vitamin pills I was allowed to purchase were often not available. A small lump of fat rather than meat often appeared with my rice. The severe shortages seemed to affect the guards as well. Several of them lost a good deal of weight, and even the militant guards who used to stride in and out energetically now looked rather subdued and peaked. It was all too apparent that the country was going through another period of economic crisis that invariably followed each political upheaval.
The newspaper printed reports of peasants “voluntarily” reducing their already meager rations and rural Party secretaries offering to increase the quota of grain the communes sent to government purchasing agencies. This was a repetition of the hunger and shortages of the early sixties, immediately after the failure of the Great Leap Forward Campaign. In such times of hardship, there were daily stories in the newspaper about heroes who increased production output and decreased their consumption of food and other commodities. However, half a sheet of the Shanghai Liberation Daily was still given over to criticism of the “capitalist-roaders,” who were also called “revisionists.” The subject of contention now was Mao Zedong’s military theory of the People’s War versus the capitalistic concept of the importance of military skill and modern weapons. Two ousted and disgraced military leaders, former defense minister Peng Dehuai and former chief of staff Luo Ruiqing, were the main culprits. Daily newspaper articles read to us over the broadcasting system accused these two of believing that advanced weapons rather than men armed with Mao Zedong Thought were the most important factor in deciding the outcome of war. Since both men had been removed from office several years earlier and handed over to the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries for persecution, the continued campaign of criticism could only mean that their viewpoint was shared by others in the Party and military leadership.
Prolonged hardship and privation were eroding my mental powers in a frightening way. The stalling of my investigation produced in me a deep feeling of despondency. Not being able to keep clean because of insufficient soap and toilet paper was demoralizing. Even the evidence in the newspaper of differences of opinion, or perhaps fierce debate, in the Party and military leadership failed to rouse me from lethargy. Every day I sat on the wooden bed, leaning against my rolled-up bedding, too tired and too ill to move.
In early spring, I again became ill with pneumonia and was taken to the prison hospital. There I made a slow recovery. When I returned to the No. 1 Detention House, just before May First, the weather had become warmer. Even though conditions continued to be extremely hard, the milder weather made life easier to endure. I felt I had somehow survived another crisis and been mysteriously brought back to life from the brink of death. When I was allowed outdoor exercise on a warm and sunny day and saw the young leaves unfolding on the plane tree over the wall, I thanked God for the miracle of life and the timely renewal of my own.
Since the conclusion of the Ninth Party Congress and the formation of Party Secretariats in each province and municipality, the Party’s tight control of every aspect of life had been reestablished. It became much harder than before to find out what was going on outside the prison walls through reading the newspaper. In the turbulent years of the height of the Cultural Revolution, vehement denunciations of the “capitalist-roaders” often revealed internal struggles in the Party leadership. In explaining Mao’s “correct” policy, the revolutionary writers, often non-Party men, would sometimes inadvertently state facts kept from the Chinese people. Now articles like that had disappeared altogether from the Shanghai Liberation Daily. Denunciations continued to appear, but I could tell that they were now written by professional Party propagandists. They were using the same stale language and timeworn quotations that were the stock-in-trade of Party men anxious to say the right thing but even more anxious not to say it in any way that might bring criticism on themselves.
I had my first inkling of another round of power struggles at the top when I saw in the newspaper a list of members of the standing committee of the Politburo. Missing was the name of Chen Boda, one of the radical leaders who had charted the course of the Cultural Revolution from its very beginning. Soon articles of criticism, without mentioning his name, were denouncing a “fake Marxist” who had declared himself a “humble commoner.” The sudden omission of a prominent man’s name without explanation almost always meant he was in disgrace. The criticism of a “fake Marxist” seemed to me to point to someone renowned as a theorist of Marxism. Chen Boda was just such a man.
I was greatly puzzled by this unexpected development because Chen Boda was known to the Chinese people as a faithful follower of Mao and his longtime confidential secretary. In fact, it was often whispered in China that many essays purportedly written by Mao Zedong were actually from the pen of Chen Boda. Though he did not seek the limelight like other radical leaders such as Jiang Qing or Lin Biao, the Chinese people knew him to have been one of the small elite group of Marxist theorists Mao relied upon.
After my release from the No. 1 Detention House a good deal later, I questioned several friends and acquaintances about the downfall of Chen Boda. It seemed that at the second plenary session of the Ninth Central Committee held at Lushan at the end of August 1970, the new Constitution of the Chinese People’s Republic was discussed. An important issue was whether to abolish the post of chairman of the Chinese People’s Republic, left vacant by the downfall of Liu Shaoqi. Chen Boda proposed that the post be maintained and nominated Lin Biao as the new chairman. Already alarmed by the rapid expansion of Lin Biao’s power since the Ninth Party Congress only a year and four months earlier, Mao was not keen to give Lin Biao added power and position. He declared that he favored the abolition of the post of chairman of the People’s Republic and suggested giving the ceremonial function of the head of state to the chairman of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress. In a heated debate, Mao denounced Chen Boda’s proposal as a counterrevolutionary move designed to reestablish pre-Cultural Revolution conditions.
Another subject under discussion at the Central Committee meeting was China’s relations with the United States after President Nixon expressed, through third-country intermediaries, the desire for a rapprochement with Beijing. Premier Zhou Enlai had convinced Mao that if the United States could be induced to recognize the Chinese People’s Republic rather than the Kuomintang government in Taiwan, Communist China would receive recognition from most other countries in the United Nations. This would not only enable Communist China to take China’s seat at the United Nations, but it would make the eventual liberation of Taiwan much easier and less costly. Both Lin Biao and Chen Boda expressed opposition to any move for a rapprochement with the United States. They argued that as the leader of the capitalist world, the United States was inherently socialist China’s main enemy.
But all my informants agreed that the downfall of Chen Boda was really Mao’s warning to Lin Biao. It was not lost on the military man, who correctly concluded that the days of his own usefulness to Mao were numbered. This eventually led to Lin Biao’s unsuccessful attempt to wrest power from Mao. In any case, later developments proved that the second plenary session of the Ninth Central Committee was an important one. It ended the brief Lin Biao era and marked a drastic deterioration in Lin Biao’s power position relative to that of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai.
In 1970, when I was still in my cell in the detention house, I recognized the downfall of Chen Boda as something important, and I watched for events that might throw some light on the situation. In the autumn of that year, the newspaper published a photograph of the American writer Edgar Snow standing beside Mao on the balcony above the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Tiananmen, on China’s National Day. Though Mao had often stood there with other prominent visitors to China, this was the first time an American had been given such an honor. Snow was an old friend of the Communist Party and Mao Zedong. His book Red Star over China, published in the thirties, did much to legitimize the Chinese Communist Party in the eyes of the world. Since I had learned that everything Mao did or said had meaning, often a subtle one, I pondered the significance of his having an American with him on the balcony of the Gate of Heavenly Peace on China’s National Day while he reviewed tens of thousands of enthusiastic men and women carrying his portraits, shouting his slogans, and chanting his quotations.
Soon after National Day, the newspaper reported that Beijing had reached an agreement with Canada to establish full diplomatic relations based on the following five principles: mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, nonaggression, noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. Canada undertook to sever diplomatic relations with the Kuomintang government on Taiwan and to recognize Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China.
I thought Mao was using the case of Canada to say something to the United States. I believed his message was that he was ready to be friends if the United States would agree to abandon Taiwan. The establishment of diplomatic relations with Canada was the opportunity for him to declare his conditions for a similar arrangement with the United States. I became quietly excited and hopeful. That Communist China might move closer to the West seemed too good to be true.
The northwest wind started to blow again, but this time it did not dampen my spirits. For the first time since the Cultural Revolution began, something seemed to be happening in the right direction. When a gust of wind blew a withered leaf of the plane tree into my cell, I picked up the bright yellow leaf and looked at it for a long time, thinking it was a symbol of hope and a good omen.
A calmer mood took the place of anxiety while I waited in my cell for further developments. I thought I had reached the bottom line of suffering and things would get better when they started to move again. I was wrong.
One afternoon in January 1971, I was summoned to the interrogation room. The call was so unexpected that my heart was pounding with excitement as I followed the guard through the courtyard; I hardly noticed that a blizzard was beginning. At the door of the interrogation room, the guard suddenly gave me a hard shove, so that I staggered into the room rather unceremoniously. I found five guards in the room. As soon as I entered, they crowded around me, shouting abuse at me.
“You are the running dog of the imperialists,” said one. “You are a dirty exploiter of workers and peasants,” shouted another. “You are a counterrevolutionary,” yelled a third.
Their voices mingled, and their faces became masks of hatred as they joined in the litany of abuse with which I had become so familiar during the Cultural Revolution. While they were shouting, they pushed me to show their impatience. I was passed around from one guard to another like a ball in a game. Trying to maintain my balance, I became dizzy and breathless. Before I could gather my wits together, a young male guard suddenly grabbed the lapels of my padded jacket and pulled me towards him. His face was only inches from mine, and I could see his eyes glistening with sadistic pleasure. Then he bit his lower lip to show his determination and gave me a hard push. I staggered backwards and hit the wall. But before I collapsed onto the floor like a sack, he grabbed my lapels again and pulled me forward, and again he bounced me against the wall. He did this several times with lightning speed, in a very expert manner. All the time, the other guards continued to shout at me. I became completely disoriented. My ears were ringing, my head was splitting, and my body was trembling. Suddenly my stomach heaved, and I vomited. Water from my mouth got on the guard’s hands and cuffs. He became furious. Pushing me into the prisoner’s chair, the guard swore under his breath.
My heart pounded as if it were going to jump out of my throat. My breath came in gasps. I collapsed into the chair and, trying to recover my equilibrium, closed my eyes. Suddenly a stinging blow landed on my cheek. The voice of a female guard shouted, “Are you going to confess?”
Another sharp blow landed on my other cheek as several voices joined in to shout, “Are you going to confess?”
I remained in the chair with my eyes closed and ignored them. That was my only way to defend myself.
Someone grabbed my hair from behind and jerked my head up. I was forced to look up and found all five of them staring at me expectantly. It seemed that they really thought I would change my mind simply because they had beaten me up. But then, people who resort to brutality must believe in the power of brutality. It seemed to me that these guards at the detention house were rather stupid not to know me better after watching me day and night for so many years. I knew, however, that they were merely carrying out someone else’s orders.
One of the female guards was the militant young woman who had made trouble for me on many previous occasions. Now she said, “Are you going to confess, or do you want more punishment?”
When she saw that I remained silent, she gave my cheek another smart slap, took my arms, and draped them around the back of the chair on which I was seated. The young male guard who had pushed me against the wall grabbed my wrists and clamped a pair of handcuffs on them.
“These handcuffs are to punish you for your intransigence. You will wear them until you are ready to confess. Only then will we take them off. If you confess now, we will take them off now. If you confess tomorrow, we will take them off tomorrow. If you do not confess for a year, you will have to wear them for a year. If you never confess, you will have to wear them to your grave,” said the militant female guard.
“Think about it! Think about the situation you are in!” a male guard shouted.
“If you decide to confess now, we will take off the handcuffs right away and you can return to your cell,” another female guard said.
“What about it? Are you ready to confess? Just say yes, and we will take the handcuffs off,” another male guard said.
“Speak! Speak!” several of them shouted.
I looked at them all and said in a feeble voice, “I’ve done nothing wrong. I have nothing to confess.”
“Louder! Louder! Speak louder!” they yelled.
Though I spoke in a low voice, each one of them inside the room had heard what I said. Someone must be listening outside in the corridor. They wanted this person to hear my answer. From where I sat I could not see whether the small window behind the prisoner’s chair was open. But I did notice the guards glancing in that direction when they were pushing me around.
I pulled myself together with an effort and stated in a clear and loud voice, “I’m innocent. You have made a mistake. I have nothing to confess.”
I heard the small window behind the prisoner’s chair close with a loud bang. My tormentors waited a little while before opening the door to usher me out, perhaps to make sure the person outside had time to get out of sight. When I stood up, the militant female guard came behind me and put her hands around the handcuffs to tighten them a few notches so that they fitted snugly around my wrists.
The blizzard was now in full force. Whirling snowflakes were falling from the darkened sky, and the strong wind nearly knocked me over when I stepped out of the interrogation building. The guard said, “Follow me!”
He did not return me to the women’s prison but led me in another direction into a small building in a corner of the prison compound. When he opened the door and flipped the switch to put on the dim light, I saw that the place was in an even worse state of neglect than the rest of the prison compound. A thick layer of dust covered the floor and the walls. When we moved down the corridor, cobwebs floated down from the ceiling. The guard unlocked a small door and said, “Get in!”
The room was very dark. I waited for him to switch on the light, but he just closed the door after me. Standing outside, he asked, “Are you going to confess?” When I did not reply, he snapped the lock and went away.
I stood just inside the door in total darkness, trying to make out where I was. An unpleasant odor of staleness and decay assailed my nostrils. Gradually I realized that the tiny room in which I was locked had no windows. However, the door fitted badly; a thin thread of light seeped through the gap. When my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I saw vaguely that there was a wooden board on the dusty floor and a cement toilet in the corner. Actually I was standing in the only space left, for the room was no more than about five feet square. Something soft dropped on my forehead. I was so startled that I experienced a moment of panic. With my hands tied at my back, I could do nothing to brush it away. I shook my head hard, and it slid down my face to my jacket. Perhaps not many insects could live in this dark room, I thought. It must have been a cobweb from the ceiling.
My heart was still beating very fast. In spite of the unpleasant smell in the room, I breathed in and out deeply and slowly to try to calm down and slow my heartbeat. When I felt better I sat down on the wooden board and tried to look around in the dark. I was relieved not to see anything that suggested blood, excrement, or vomited food left by previous prisoners. I was so tired that I put my head on my drawn-up knees and closed my eyes to rest. The only compensation for being locked in a cement box, I thought, was that without the window to admit the cold air and wind, the place was decidedly warmer than my cell.
The handcuffs felt different from the others I had worn before. I examined them with my fingers. Indeed, they were different, much heavier and thicker, with a square edge, not rounded like the others. My hands felt hot, and my fingers were stiff. I tried to exercise my hands by moving them as much as the handcuffs allowed.
“Are you going to confess?”
The sudden sound of a voice startled me. Had the guard been outside all the while, or had he just come into the building? How was it that I had not heard him?
There was really no point in exhausting what little strength I had, so I did not answer him but remained where I was with my head resting on my knees. I tried to take my mind off the present by recalling beautiful scenes and pleasant experiences of the past. But it was very difficult. The ugly reality was all too real and overpowering.
Other guards came at intervals to ask me the same question. I listened for their footsteps. Some came quite stealthily, others did not bother to soften their tread. When they opened the door of the building to come inside, I could hear the howling wind and the sound of the guards stamping their feet to get rid of the snow. I supposed they were told to come and see if I had succumbed to their new form of pressure. Some of them lingered for a moment after asking their question; others did not wait for my answer but left almost immediately.
Apart from the guards, there was no sound whatsoever. I must have been the sole occupant of that building on that day. If there were other prisoners, surely I would have heard a sigh or a moan long ago.
I did not know how long I sat there. In a dark room, in complete isolation, time assumed a different meaning or had no meaning at all. I only knew that my legs felt stiff and my head ached. But I refrained from moving as long as the guards continued to come. When a guard switched off the light in the corridor on his departure, I thought they might have decided to retire for the night. But I still waited for a while before standing up. It was not possible to walk because there was simply no space and I was afraid to bump into the dirty wall in the dark. So I shuffled my feet to try to restore circulation to my legs. My arms ached from being held at my back in the same position for so long, and my hands felt very hot. I tried to get some relief by moving my shoulders up and down.
After standing for a while, I sat down again. With my head on my knees, I rested. Perhaps I had snatches of real sleep, or perhaps I just dozed while murmuring prayers. Then I would stand up again to repeat my newly devised exercise. I felt very weak. My natural inclination was to move as little as possible, but I compelled myself to do the simple exercise, for I knew that was the best way to keep going. In the past I had not suffered from claustrophobia, but there were moments during the night when I felt myself getting tense. My breathing became difficult, and I had the sensation that the walls were falling on me. To prevent myself from getting into a panic, I would stand up quickly and move my body as much as possible in that confined space. And I would breathe very slowly and deeply until I felt calm again.
The best way for me to snap out of fear was always to take the initiative in doing something positive. Even the simple act of moving my body around made me feel better immediately. If I had just sat there feeling dejected and let my imagination run wild, I could easily have become terribly confused and unable to cope with the guards. Of course I was hungry and my throat was parched. But when I thought of the cement toilet coated with dust and grime, I was reconciled to not having any food or water that might force me to use it.
The night dragged on very slowly. More and more I felt that I was buried in a cement box deep underground. My hands became very hot and uncomfortable. When I found it difficult to curl my fingers into a fist, I knew they were swollen. My hands became my sole preoccupation. I feared that the brutal and ignorant guards, intent on getting what they wanted from me, might inadvertently cripple me. I knew that when a Communist Party official tried to achieve an objective during a political campaign, he went to excess to carry out his orders and ignored all possible complications. Trained to obey promptly by such slogans as “Wherever Chairman Mao points, there I will run,” and fearful of the consequences of appearing hesitant or reluctant, he exaggerated everything he had to do. If the victim suffered more than was intended or was left a cripple, that was just too bad. I had seen this happen again and again. Hands are so important. If my hands were crippled, how would I be able to carry on with my daily life when the Cultural Revolution was over?
I pressed my fingers in turn. At least they were not numb. But I could tell they were badly swollen. I wondered how long I would remain manacled like this and how long I could live without food or water. Vaguely I remembered reading in an article that a human being could live for seven days without sustenance. In my present weakened state, perhaps five days, I thought. In any case, hardly twenty-four hours had passed. At that moment I did not need to think of the threat to my life, only the threat to my hands. What could I do to lessen possible damage to them? It seemed to me the swelling was caused by the tight handcuffs fitted firmly around my wrists, preventing proper circulation. When the militant female guard put her hands around the cuffs to tighten them, she knew exactly what she was doing. If she had not tightened them but had left them as they were, perhaps the state of my hands would not have been so bad now. The guard who first put the handcuffs on had not tightened them, so they had probably not been instructed to do so. In that case, a mild guard might be persuaded to loosen them a little. I decided to show my hands to the guard who came in the morning and request that the handcuffs be loosened.
When finally I heard the sound of a guard coming through the outside door and saw the thin line of light appear again around the cell door, I stood up.
“Are you going to confess? Have you thought over the matter?” It was the voice of a male guard.
“I would like to speak to you for a moment,” I said.
“Good! So, you have decided to confess at last.”
“No, no, it’s not about confession. It’s about my hands.”
“What about your hands?”
“They are badly swollen. The handcuffs are very tight. Could you loosen them a bit?” I asked.
“You are feeling uncomfortable now, are you? That’s good! Why don’t you confess? If you confess, the handcuffs will be taken off.”
“Can’t you loosen them a bit now?”
“Why don’t you just confess like the other prisoners? You have brought this on yourself. It’s not the fault of the handcuffs.”
“Please look at my hands. They are badly swollen.”
“I can’t do anything about that. If you decide to confess, I will unlock this door and take you out. That’s all I can do,” the guard said.
“Could you not report to your superior that my hands are very badly swollen?”
“No. If you decide to confess, I will take you out.”
It seemed useless to go on. I sat down on the wooden board again.
“Are you going to confess?” he asked me once again. I did not answer. He remained there for a moment longer before going away.
The fact that my hands were badly swollen was no surprise to the guard. Of course he knew the effect of the handcuffs. I could not have been the first person they had done this to. He was probably telling his superior at that moment that I was getting worried and agitated about my hands. From that his superior would think I was nearer to doing what he wanted. They would never loosen the handcuffs to prolong what they regarded as the period of waiting for me to confess. I decided it was useless to ask the guards to loosen the handcuffs. I must just trust God to preserve my hands.
“Come here!” the voice of a female guard said.
I stood up. I was already right by the door. She had turned up rather quickly, I thought.
“I’ve come to give you some advice,” she said in a normal voice, as if she were talking to another guard, not in the harsh tone the guards habitually used to address the prisoners. “You are not a stupid woman. Why don’t you do the intelligent thing and confess? Why punish yourself by being stubborn?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You are worried about your hands. That’s quite right. Hands are very important to everybody, but especially to an intellectual who must write. You should try to protect your hands and not let them be hurt. You can do that easily by just agreeing to confess.”
I still did not say anything.
“You know, when they said they would never take the handcuffs off until you agreed to confess, they really meant it. They will do it too. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is not something to be trifled with, you know.”
I continued to remain silent.
She waited for quite a long time. Then she said, “Well, you think carefully about what I have just said. It’s good advice I have given you. I’m sorry for you. Think about what I said.”
When I heard her footsteps going away from the door, I sat down again.
I was angry with myself for being so stupid. How could I have thought for one moment that they would loosen the handcuffs? Now that I had shown them my weakness, they would be glad and think I might indeed succumb to their pressure out of concern for my hands. I said to myself, “I’ll forget about my hands. If I have to be crippled, then I’ll accept being crippled. In this world there are many worthy people with crippled hands or no hands at all.” I remembered that when my late husband and I were in Holland in 1957, we had bought a painting by a veteran of the Second World War who had lost both his hands. He used his toes to hold the paintbrush, I was told. I used to treasure this painting as a symbol of human courage and resourcefulness. It was slashed by the Red Guards when they looted my home. But the thought of this artist whom I had never met inspired me with courage and helped me to become reconciled to the possibility of losing the use of my hands after this ordeal.
The female guard was followed by others. All of them lectured me on the advantage of obeying the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and confessing. Now that they knew I was suffering discomfort and worrying about my hands, they did not dash away but lingered hopefully outside the door waiting for my answer. After being so long without food and water and not having had much sleep at all, I felt very weak and faint. My intestines were grinding in protest, and I had spasms of pain in the abdomen. But I just continued sitting on the board with my head on my knees waiting for the guards to go away.
The day seemed interminable. Patiently I waited for their next move. At last the door was unlocked. A female voice called, “Come out!”
The icy-cold fresh air in the courtyard miraculously cleared my head, and I felt a surge of life to support my wobbly legs. The guard led me back to the same interrogation room in which they had beaten me up the day before.
The militant female guard and the young male guard who had put the handcuffs on me sat in the place of the interrogator behind the counter. After I had entered the room and bowed to the portrait of Mao, the female guard told me to recite a quotation from memory.
“’First, do not fear hardship. Second, do not fear death,’ ” I said. It was the first quotation of Mao that came into my head and, under the circumstances, certainly appropriate.
“That quotation is not for the likes of you! Chairman Mao said that to the revolutionary soldiers,” the female guard said indignantly.
But they let it pass. They did not ask me to recite another quotation, although I had one about overcoming ten thousand difficulties to strive for final victory ready to recite if they gave me the opportunity to do so.
“What are you thinking about now?” asked the male guard.
“Nothing very much,” I answered.
“Don’t pretend to be nonchalant. You are worried about your hands. You would like the handcuffs to be loosened,” he said.
I did not say anything.
“What you should think about is why you have to wear them in the first place. It is entirely your own fault. Do we put handcuffs on all the prisoners kept here? Of course not. If you find the handcuffs uncomfortable, you should think why you have to wear them. They can be taken off if you decide to confess. It’s up to you entirely,” he said.
“Are you going to confess?” asked the female guard.
When she saw that I said nothing, she got angry and shouted, “You deserve all you are getting. You are tired of living, I am sure. I have never seen a prisoner as stubborn and stupid as you!”
“Have you lost all reason? Have you lost the wish to protect yourself? You are being extremely stupid. You are like an egg hitting a rock. You will get smashed,” declared the male guard.
A year or two ago, I would have shouted back at them and taken pleasure from it. Now I was too ill and too tired. I no longer cared.
They looked at each other, and they looked past my shoulder at the small window behind the prisoner’s chair. Then they stood up.
“Take her out! Take her out! Let her go to see God with her granite head!” the male guard shouted.
It might seem surprising that a guard in a Communist prison should have spoken of God, but what he said was in fact a quotation from Mao Zedong. Referring to political indoctrination and hard labor as a means to change the thinking of intellectuals allegedly opposed to the Communist Party, Mao had declared that the Party’s purpose was reform of the enemy rather than annihilation. Then he added, “If some still want to go to see God with their granite heads, it will make no difference.” Since the publication of his remark, “to go to see God with his granite head” was generally used to denote a man refusing to change his mind or accept the point of view of the Party.
A guard flung the door open. Although I felt dizzy, I made an effort to walk steadily and followed him out of the room. The icy air outside was like a knife cutting through my clothes. I shivered violently. The guard led me back to the women’s prison and my cell. When I passed the small room used by the female guards, I saw from their clock that I had been locked in the cement box in the other building for almost twenty-four hours.
The guard unlocked the door of my cell and said to me, “Now you will continue your punishment in here.”
When I was called to the interrogation room the day before, drinking water had just been issued to the prisoners. The water was still in the green enameled mug on the edge of the table where I had hastily placed it. Now I bent over the mug, removed the lid by gripping the knob on top of it with my teeth, and placed it on the table. Then I caught the edge of the mug with my teeth, gradually lowered my body to a squatting position, and tipped the water into my mouth. By this method, I succeeded in drinking quite a bit of water. After that, I moved over to the cement toilet, stood with my back to it, lowered my body, and removed the lid with my imprisoned hands. I strained my hands to unzip my slacks. I was able to sit on the seat I had made with two towels joined together and to relieve myself. But to strain my hands to one side to unfasten the zipper made the handcuffs cut severely into my flesh. It was very painful.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. The cell was very cold and seemed to get progressively colder. But the familiar cell was not as dirty and stuffy as the cement box where I had spent the previous twenty-four hours. When the second meal of the day was delivered to the prisoners, the woman from the kitchen pushed the aluminum container through the small window in the usual manner. Even though I was famished, I had to refuse it, for I simply did not know how I could eat with my hands tightly tied behind my back.
No one came to ask me if I was going to confess. But I knew I was under observation, for I could hear the guards come to the peephole to look into the cell. At bedtime, the guard called at each cell for prisoners to go to bed. She came to my cell as if nothing unusual had happened and said, “Go to sleep!”
With my back to the wooden bed, I unrolled my quilt and blanket and spread them over it. It was slow work and strenuous for one who had not eaten any food for so long. But I managed it. Then I lay down on the bed. First, I lay on one side with my body weight pressing down on one shoulder and arm. It was extremely uncomfortable; my arm ached. Then I tried to lie on my stomach with my face turned to one side. I found this position impossible on the hard wooden bed because my body weight was on my breasts. After lying like this for a little while I had to give up. In any case, I could not cover myself with the blanket. While I was performing these acrobatics with my hands in handcuffs behind my back, I never stopped shivering. The room was bitterly cold. Finally I decided lying down to sleep was out of the question. I should try to get some sleep sitting up. I sat across the bed with my legs up and my back leaning on the toilet-paper-covered wall. Then I closed my eyes, hoping to doze off.
It was such a cold night that there was ice on the window-panes, and the snow piled against the window did not melt. Inside the cell, the feeble light shone through a haze of cold air. Every breath I took was a puff of white vapor. My body shook with spasms of shivering. My legs and feet were frozen numb. I simply had to get up from time to time and walk around the cell to restore circulation to my limbs. The weight of the handcuffs dragged my hands down, and I tried to hold the cuffs up with my fingers while walking slowly in the cell. They seemed to get tighter and tighter, and my hands seemed to be on fire. I tired so easily that after walking around for only a little while I had to sit down again. Then I got so cold that I had to walk some more. Perhaps I managed a little sleep from time to time when I sat against the wall with my feet up, but the long night was a night of misery and suffering.
However, it came to an end, as everything in life must do, no matter how wonderful or unpleasant. I saw the light of dawn creeping into the room and heard the guard calling outside each cell, “Get up! Get up!”
Soon afterwards the Labor Reform girl pushed the spout of the watering can through the small window to offer me cold water for washing. When she did not see my washbasin, she peered into the cell and looked at me inquiringly. I turned my body a little so that she could see my handcuffs. Quickly she closed the small window and went away.
Under the circumstances, being unwashed was the least of my worries. I could receive water in the empty mug with my back to the window and drink by gradually squatting with the mug in my teeth, but my empty stomach protested with spasms of gripping pain that refused to be assuaged by water. My hands were so hot that I was in a constant state of restless agitation.
On the third day, the pain in my abdomen miraculously stopped. But I felt very weak. My eyes could no longer focus, and the usual sound of prison activities seemed to grow fainter and fainter.
That night, I again sat on the bed, leaning against the wall with my hands crossed to hold the handcuffs with my fingers in an effort to reduce their weight. Though I shivered with cold, I no longer had the strength to get up and walk around the room.
After the prisoners had settled down to sleep, the small window was pushed open gently. I did not hear any sound until a voice that was almost a whisper said through the opening, “Come over!”
I wondered whether it was just another guard urging me to confess. But she had spoken softly, almost stealthily, as if she did not want others in the building to hear her.
With an effort I moved to the small window and saw the face of one of the older guards there. She was bending down to watch my faltering steps through the opening.
From the beginning of my imprisonment I had found this guard the most humane. At first she attracted my attention because she walked in that peculiar way of women whose feet had been crippled with foot-binding, an old custom that lingered into the 1930s in some remote rural areas of China. When the feet of these women were unbound, they were already permanently damaged. This guard was not a native of Shanghai, because she spoke with the accent of North China peasants. I thought she must be one of those country women who had been liberated by the Communist troops as they swept down the plains of North China and had joined their ranks and become a Party member. I observed that she carried out her duty in a matter-of-fact manner and did not seem to enjoy shouting at the prisoners as the other guards did. When the weather got cold, if she was on night duty, I often heard her offering to lend bedding from the prison stock to prisoners who did not have sufficient covering. The last time I fainted because of lack of food, it was this guard who took me to the hospital and got the doctor to sign a paper ordering more rice to be given to me. Since it was the Maoists who had reduced my ration to pressure me on that occasion, I thought she couldn’t be one of them.
“Why aren’t you eating your meals?” she asked me.
I thought, “What a silly question! Doesn’t she know I have got the handcuffs on?”
“They will not remove the handcuffs simply because you won’t eat, you know. And if you should starve to death, you will be declared a counterrevolutionary. That’s the customary procedure for prisoners who die before their cases are clarified,” she added.
“I don’t know how to eat without using my hands,” I said.
“It’s not impossible. Think hard. There is a way. You have a spoon.”
She sounded sympathetic and concerned. I decided to ask her to loosen the handcuffs a little, as my tightly imprisoned hands were tormenting me. I was in a constant state of tension because of them. They occupied my mind to the exclusion of all else.
“My hands are swollen and very hot. My whole body feels tormented because of them. Could you please loosen the handcuffs a little bit?” I asked her.
“I haven’t got the key to unlock the handcuffs. It is being kept by someone higher up. Just try to eat something tomorrow. You will feel better when you have some food inside you,” she said.
A gust of cold wind from the other end of the corridor indicated that the door of the building was being opened and another guard had just entered. She slid the shutter quietly into place and went away.
I returned to the bed and sat there thinking. The guard was right. I should try to eat. To die was nothing to be frightened of. What really frightened me was the possibility that my mind might get so confused that I might sign something without realizing its significance. But how could I handle the food without my hands? The guard said there was a way and told me to think hard. She also mentioned that I had a spoon. My eyes strayed towards the table. First I saw the plastic spoon, and then I saw my clean towels neatly folded in a pile. A plan formulated in my mind, and I decided to try it when food was offered to me again.
The guard had said that the key to unlock the handcuffs was not kept by the guards but by “someone higher up.” There was no hope the handcuffs could be loosened. I must think of some way to reduce the heavy weight of the handcuffs, which were not only dragging my hands down but also pulling my shoulders out of their sockets. With difficulty and very slowly, with my back to the bed, I managed to roll up the quilt. Then I pushed the rolled quilt to the wall. When I sat down against the wall, I placed my hands on the soft quilt. The weight was lifted, and I felt a surge of relief.
To have made plans and thought of some way to overcome difficulty gave me a new lease on life. Although I continued to be cold, hungry, and miserable, the long night seemed to pass more quickly.
At daybreak, when the guard called the prisoners to get up, I stood up to stretch my legs. I tried to hold the handcuffs with my fingers and, to my horror, felt something sticky and wet. Turning to the quilt on which I had rested my hands throughout the night, I saw stains of blood mixed with pus. It seemed the handcuffs had already broken my skin and were cutting into my flesh. I shuddered with a real fear of losing the use of my hands, for I realized I was powerless to prevent disaster.
When the woman from the kitchen offered me the aluminum container of rice through the small window, I went to accept it. I turned my back to the opening, and she placed the container in my hands. I took it to the table. With my back to it, I picked up a clean face towel from the pile and spread it on the table. Then I picked up the plastic spoon and tried to loosen the rice with it. Shanghai rice was glutinous. When it was cooked in the container, it stuck to it. I had to dig hard with the plastic spoon to push the rice and cabbage onto the face towel on the table. With each movement of my hands, the handcuffs dug deeper into my flesh. My whole body was racked with pain, and tears came into my eyes. I had to rest and take a deep breath. Nevertheless, I persisted in my effort to get the rice out of the container. When I succeeded in getting quite a bit out, I turned around, bent over the towel, and ate the rice like an animal.
I repeated this several times. When the woman came to collect the container, she did not immediately open the small window to demand it back but stood outside watching me struggling to get the rice out. Because of the pain and my fear of infection, I stopped after each scoop to take a deep breath. I was very slow. Still the woman said nothing, though normally she was always in a great hurry. As I blinked back tears of pain, I wondered if eating was really worth the effort. But I continued to try, simply because I had decided to stay alive. When I could not carry on any longer and had got nearly half of the rice onto the towel, I carried the container behind me and pushed it through to her with my wounded hands.
In the afternoon, when rice was given to me again, I found that the woman from the kitchen had already loosened it for me. I had only to tip the container and most of the rice fell out onto the towel and bare table.
My being able to consume food seemed to have infuriated the Maoists, for the guards came to the small window again to threaten me. They never mentioned the word “handcuffs,” probably because they did not want the other prisoners within hearing to know what they were doing to me. But they continued to urge me to confess. Although the rice I managed to eat each day did in fact make me feel stronger, I was having difficulty walking. For some reason I could not explain, the handcuffs were affecting my feet. Like my hands, they felt hot and painful. My shoes became so tight and unbearable that I had to kick them off. Fortunately they were soft cloth shoes, so that I was able to press down the backs and wear them as slippers. Now I just staggered about, for my feet could not bear even the reduced weight of my emaciated body. The stains of blood and pus on the quilt became larger and more numerous as the handcuffs cut through more skin on my wrists and bit more deeply into the wounds. Either the weather suddenly got a lot warmer, or I was feverish; I no longer felt the cold but shivered from pain whenever I had to move my hands or stagger across the room.
One day when I was at the small window getting drinking water, my imprisoned hands holding the mug trembled so much that half of the water spilled down the back of my padded jacket and slacks.
“Your hands are very bad. The higher-ups don’t know it. Why don’t you wail? As long as you don’t cry out, they will not know how bad your hands are,” the woman from the kitchen whispered through the opening before hastily closing the shutter.
Though the Chinese people were normally restrained about showing emotion, they did wail to show deep grief at funerals or as a protest against injustice that involved death. The sight of someone wailing had always embarrassed me. It was like seeing someone strip himself naked. From childhood I had been disciplined never to show emotion. The memory of trying for many years to fight back tears lingered; gradually I came to regard crying as a sign of weakness. Should I wail now just to call attention to the fact that my hands were being crippled? I decided against it. For one thing, I did not think I knew how to emit that prolonged, inarticulate cry that was so primitive and animallike. For another, I did not want to do anything that might be interpreted as asking for mercy. “The man higher up” had ordered the handcuffs put on my wrists so that I would be tormented by them. He believed my suffering would eventually lead me to give a false confession to save myself. The best way to counterattack was certainly not to show that I could no longer endure suffering. So I ignored the kind advice of the woman from the kitchen.
Several more days passed. The handcuffs were now beginning to affect my mind, probably through their effect on my nervous system. I got muddled periodically and forgot where I was. I no longer remembered how many days ago I was first manacled. Life was just an unending road of acute pain and suffering on which I must trudge along as best I could.
During moments of lucidity, I tried to discipline my mind by doing simple arithmetic. I would repeat to myself, “Two and two makes four, four and four equals eight, eight and eight equals sixteen, sixteen and sixteen equals thirty-two …” But after only a little while my ability to concentrate would evaporate, and I would get confused again. The guards still came to the locked door. But what they said was just a jumble of words that made no sense to me.
After several more days, I became so weak that I no longer had the strength to stagger to the small window for rice or water. I tried to refuse when they were offered to me, but whether words came out of my mouth or not I did not know. Perhaps the woman from the kitchen was urging me to take the rice or the drinking water; I did not hear her voice, only sensed that she stood there waiting for something. Most of the time I was so far away that I did not know what was happening around me. After drifting in and out of consciousness like that for some time, I passed out altogether.
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself lying on the dusty floor.
“Get up! Get up!” a man’s voice was shouting very near me. “You are feigning death! You won’t be allowed to get away with it.”
My arms were still bent to my back, but they were no longer held together by the handcuffs.
“Get up! Get up!” a female voice joined in.
I pulled myself together and looked up to find the militant female guard and the young man who had put the handcuffs on me standing over me. The cell door was wide open. Dangling in the hands of the female guard was the pair of heavy brass handcuffs they had removed from my wrists. The handcuffs were covered with congealed blood and pus. Probably the guard considered them repulsive, as she was holding them gingerly by the chain with just two fingers.
“Don’t think we are finished with you! There are other ways to bring you to your senses. Those who dare to oppose the Dictatorship of the Proletariat will not be allowed to get away with it,” said the man.
The female guard gave my prostrate form a hard kick as they left the cell and locked the door behind them.
I remained on the floor, too exhausted to move. Although the handcuffs were gone, my whole body was aching and hot. Slowly I brought my left arm forward and looked at my hand. Quickly I closed my eyes again. My hand was too horrible to contemplate. After a moment, I sat up and looked at both hands. They were swollen to enormous size. The swelling extended to my elbows. Around my wrists where the handcuffs had cut into my flesh, blood and pus continued to ooze out of the wounds. My nails were purple in color and felt as if they were going to fall off. I touched the back of each hand, only to find the skin and flesh numb. I tried to curl up my fingers but could not because they were the size of carrots. I prayed to God to help me recover the use of my hands.
After a while, I tried to get up. But I had to stifle a cry of pain, for my feet could not support my body. As I was very near the bed, I managed to haul myself up to it. The woolen socks were stuck to my feet with dried pus. When I succeeded in peeling the socks off with my numb and swollen fingers, I saw that my feet were also swollen to enormous size. Under each toe was a large blister. I could not take the socks completely off because some of the blisters had broken and the pus had dried, gluing the socks to my feet. What was making it impossible for me to walk was the fact that some of the blisters had not broken. Obviously I needed a sterile sharp instrument such as a needle to break the blisters and let the fluid out. Also, to prevent infection, I needed bandages and some antiseptic medicine for the wounds on my wrists. I stood up. I almost sat down again immediately because the burning pain in my feet was unbearable. However, I resisted the impulse to sit down and, shuddering, remained standing. I thought that since I had to move about in the cell, the sooner I practiced walking on my swollen feet, the better. I moved one foot forward a couple of inches, shifted my weight onto that foot, and moved the other foot a couple of inches. Eventually I arrived at the door. Leaning against it for support, I called the guard on duty.
“Report!” My voice sounded feeble. But almost immediately the shutter on the small window slid open. The guard had been right outside the door, watching me through the peephole all the time without my knowledge.
“What do you want?”
“May I see the doctor, please.”
“What for?”
“My wrists and feet are wounded. I need some medicine and bandages,” I explained.
“The doctor does not give treatment when the prisoner has been punished,” declared the guard.
“In that case, perhaps you could just give me some disinfectant ointment or Mercurochrome for the wounds?” I knew the guards kept a supply of these in their little room.
“No, not allowed.”
“The wounds may become infected.”
“That’s your business.”
“May I just have a roll of bandages to tie the wounds up?”
I lifted my swollen hands to the window to show her the wounds on my wrists, but she turned her head the other way and refused to look at them.
“May I have some bandages?” I asked her again.
“No.”
I got angry. “So, you do not practice revolutionary humanitarianism in accordance with Chairman Mao’s teaching,” I said.
“Revolutionary humanitarianism is not for you,” she said.
“No, it’s not for me because I’m not a real enemy of the Communist Party. And I haven’t done anything against the People’s Government. Revolutionary humanitarianism was applied to the Japanese invaders. The Communist Party gave the wounded Japanese prisoners of war medicine and bandages, according to Chairman Mao’s books,” I said sarcastically.
“Look at you! As argumentative and unrepentant as you were before. You learned nothing from the handcuffs. Perhaps you did not have them on long enough. If you argue any more, I am going to put them on you again.” With that threat she retreated to the guards’ room and remained there. I knew she had no authority to put the handcuffs back on my wrists again. It was just bluff. She knew I knew it too.
It seemed there was no alternative to relying on myself to deal with the wounds on my wrists and feet. With the help of God, I thought, I would find some way to prevent infection. Very slowly I shuffled to the table and drank up the water in the mug. I heard the woman from the kitchen entering the building with her heavy trolley, on which were two huge buckets of boiled hot drinking water for the prisoners. I waited for her at the small window. When she came to me, she gave me a generous portion, filling the large mug almost three-quarters full. I poured this water into the washbasin and with a clean towel carefully washed the wounds on my wrists and wiped away the dried blood and pus. Then I washed my feet in the same bloodstained water. The feel of hot water on my skin was good. I longed to drink some, but I thought it more important to clean the wounds.
While I sat on the bed drying my feet, I wondered what I could tear up and use as bandages. After so many years, my meager stock of clothing had become even more depleted because I often had to tear up a worn garment to patch those that were just beginning to develop holes. As I was searching my mind for an idea, I saw the pillowcase hanging on the clothesline. I had washed it the morning I was called to the interrogation room. It looked dry. It was the only pillowcase I had left, but I thought I could dispense with it; I could put the pillow under the sheet at night. I raised my arm to take it off the clothesline. To my dismay, I found I could not reach the pillowcase because my arm refused to be raised higher than the level of my shoulders. I supposed that after such long restraint the tendons were paralyzed. I resolved to restore the function of my arms by exercise. But that would take some time. For the moment, at any rate, I would have to leave the wounds on my wrists uncovered.
The Labor Reform girl came with cold water. She poured the water slowly into the washbasin as I held it up to the small window. As soon as she saw my hands shaking because they could no longer bear the weight, she stopped. The washbasin was barely half full. I poured some of the water into one of the mugs for drinking. With the rest, I washed my face. Then I tried to comb my hair. Since my right arm holding the comb could not reach the top of my head, I used my left hand to hold up the elbow of my right arm. With my head bent forward, turning first this way and then that way, I managed to smooth out my hair. I wanted very much to give myself a sponge bath and change my underclothes. But I was afraid I would catch cold in the icy room. In any case, I was already exhausted, and there was no more clean water.
The woman from the kitchen was again at the small window. She handed me the afternoon meal through the opening. The aluminum container was filled to the brim with rice and boiled cabbage. When I pushed the food into my mug, I discovered two hard-boiled eggs buried at the bottom of the container.
To forestall, I am sure, any possibility of my thanking her for the eggs, the woman did not open the window to collect the container as was her habit but shouted through the door as if she were angry, “You are always so slow! Hand the container over to the guard on night duty when you have finished! I can’t stand here all night waiting for you!”
I sat down on the edge of the bed to eat. With each mouthful I swallowed, I felt a little strength flowing back to me. When I had finished, I washed the mug and stood up to exercise my arms. I was most anxious that I should be able to reach the pillowcase on the line as soon as possible so that I could make bandages to cover up the wounds on my wrists. I swung my arms up and down many times, each time raising them a little higher in the air to stretch the tendons. My feet were very painful, but I remained standing until I was exhausted. After a short rest, I resumed the exercise.
The guard on night duty came to the small window, handed me the day’s newspaper, and took away the aluminum container. I looked at the date on the newspaper and discovered that only eleven days had elapsed since I had been called to the interrogation room and manacled. It seemed much longer. The guard came to tell the prisoners to go to bed.
This was the first time in eleven days that I had the chance of a full night’s sleep. But it took me a long time to drop off. Somehow, the tight handcuffs had affected my nervous system. My whole body was aching and hot. No matter on which side I lay, it was painful and uncomfortable. The weight of the blanket and quilt seemed unbearable. Since I did not feel the cold, being feverish, I pulled the blanket off. I tried to arrange my feet and arms in such a way that the blood and pus would not stain the quilt. I soon found this impossible.
To put those special handcuffs tightly on the wrists of a prisoner was a form of torture widely used in Maoist China’s prison system. Sometimes additional chains were put around the prisoner’s ankles. At other times, a prisoner might be manacled and then have his handcuffs tied to a bar on the window so that he could not move away from the window to eat, drink, or go to the toilet. The purpose was to degrade a man in order to destroy his morale. Before my own imprisonment, victims and their families had simply not told me about such practices. But after my imprisonment, I became a member of that special group, so they did not hesitate to tell me of their experiences. However, since the People’s Government claimed to have abolished all forms of torture, the officials simply called such methods “punishment” or “persuasion.”
It took me many months of intense effort to be able to raise my arms above my head; it was a full year before I could stretch them straight above me. The minor wounds left no scar after healing, but the deeper wounds where the metal of the handcuffs cut through my flesh almost to the bone left ugly scars that remain with me to this day: a legacy of Mao Zedong and his Revolutionaries. The swelling of my hands and fingers subsided eventually, but the backs of both my hands had no sensation for more than two years. The nerves were so damaged that when I experimentally pricked the back of my hand with a needle to draw blood, I felt nothing whatever. Even now, after more than thirteen years, my hands ache on cold, wet days. In winter, even in a warm room, I have to wear gloves in bed. If I use my hands a little too much in cleaning, typing, or carrying heavy parcels, sometimes I find my right hand suddenly going limp and useless, unable to grip anything. My right hand sustained a greater degree of damage than my left hand, mainly because the zipper on my slacks was on the left side. Since I strained to the left of my body to unzip my slacks whenever I had to use the toilet, the handcuffs cut deeper into the flesh of my right wrist. The irony of the situation was that normally women’s slacks in the clothes stores in China had the zipper on the right side. Since my slacks had been specially tailored, I had the zipper on the left, because I had worn it that way long before the Communist regime came into being. I suppose the interrogator would have said that this was another instance of my stubborn reluctance to change my old way of life.
Some of my friends exclaimed, “Why did you bother to zip up your slacks at all when you had your handcuffs on!” I suppose I could have left my slacks unzipped, but I would have felt terribly demoralized. That wouldn’t have been good for my fighting spirit. Looking back on those years, I believe the main reason I was able to survive my ordeal was that the Maoist Revolutionaries failed to break my fighting spirit.
On the whole my feet fared better. Though they remained swollen and painful for many weeks after the handcuffs were taken off, there was no permanent damage. When Sunday came around again, I was able to borrow a needle to open the blisters and let the fluid out. After that, I was able to hobble along slowly without excruciating pain until the blisters gradually healed.
The morning after I was freed from the handcuffs, the guard called the prisoners for outdoor exercise. I went to the door to wait for her so that I could ask to be excused.
“May I be excused today? My feet are swollen. I can’t get them into my shoes,” I said when she opened the shutter.
She looked at my feet through the opening and saw that I was wearing cloth shoes with the backs pressed down.
“You can go out just as you are,” she answered.
“I’m afraid it will be difficult for me to walk the distance to the exercise yard. My feet are very painful. May I be excused this time?” I requested again.
“No, you will have to go. Today, everybody must go.”
She unlocked the door and stood there watching me. Each step I took was sheer agony. My body trembled, and I was very slow.
“Please, may I stay in today?” I asked again after going a yard or so.
“No, you have to go today,” she said.
What did she mean? Why must I go today? What was so special about today? I was thinking while making slow progress. She was patiently following me out of the building of the women’s prison. Since my cell was at the end of the corridor, I was always the last prisoner from downstairs to go out.
Suddenly, the militant female guard ran into the courtyard. “Why are you so slow? Walk faster! We can’t wait for you all day!” she shouted.
I continued to shuffle along, trying very hard to bear the pain and walk faster. She gave me a hard push impatiently. I collapsed onto the path. The other guard pulled me up.
“You are acting! Hurry up! Hurry up! Can’t you walk faster? Walk faster!” she yelled and then dashed off in the direction of the exercise yards.
“I can’t walk any faster. To fall down only delays me,” I said to the other guard.
“Never mind. Do the best you can.” She seemed much more reasonable.
Finally I reached the exercise yard. Instead of being locked into my usual place with the plane tree over the wall, I was put into an exercise yard directly below the pavilion on the raised platform from which the guards watched the prisoners walking about below. The pavilion seemed to be closed. All the guards were standing in the wind on the platform. As soon as the door of the exercise yard was locked, I leaned against it for support and to take the weight off my feet, which were burning with pain. I thought I would remain there until the exercise period was over.
“Start walking!” shouted the voice of the militant female guard on the platform above me.
I had reached the end of my tether, so I ignored her and remained beneath the platform, leaning against the heavy iron door.
“What are you doing there? Start walking!” she called again.
“I can’t walk. My feet are excruciatingly painful. Can’t you see my arms and hands? My feet are just the same. They are badly swollen and wounded. Blood and pus are coming out of the wounds.” I was so angry that I shouted back at her. I fully expected her to come down and hit me, as prisoners were not allowed to talk about what happened to them in the hearing of other prisoners. My voice was loud enough for everyone in the area of the exercise yards to hear clearly. But she did not rush down from the platform to punish me. It almost seemed that what I had just said was exactly what she wanted to hear, for she moderated her tone of voice when she said, “Just stand in the middle of the exercise yard.”
I hobbled to the middle of the yard and stood facing her.
“Turn around! Face the other way!”
Why did she want me to face the other way? It seemed she wanted me to be seen but not to see what went on on the platform where she stood. It suddenly dawned on me that someone, probably the so-called higher-up, was on the platform. But I saw only the guards who were familiar to me. The man could be inside the pavilion. It had glass windows. If he was inside, he could see my wounded arms and hands easily. I supposed he had come in person to verify the damage done me by the handcuffs. What I had said to the militant female guard was tantamount to a description of my condition. That, I decided, was why the militant female guard was pleased to hear it. She probably hoped to impress the “higher-up” with the good job she had done in inflicting damage on my wrists and feet. But why did the “higher-up” not stand with the guards on the platform? Why did he have to hide in the enclosed pavilion? I turned my body slightly so that I could see the entrance to the pavilion from the corner of my eye. After a little while, three men in khaki military topcoats came out of the pavilion and disappeared down the steps followed by the female guard. Although I had been outside hardly more than ten minutes, I was now told to go back to my cell. On my way back no one urged me to walk faster.
The same guard who had accompanied me out walked back with me. When she opened the door of the cell, I showed her the wounds on my wrists. They were once more covered with blood and pus.
“Please look at these wounds. I need to bandage them up to prevent infection. Could you please help me to take down that pillowcase on the clothesline so that I can tear it up to make bandages?” I asked her.
Without a word she stepped into the cell, pulled the pillowcase down, and handed it to me.
The pillowcase was not new in 1966 when I first came to the detention house. Now it was paper-thin and fragile. I had no difficulty tearing it into strips. It made two sets of bandages.
The prison was very quiet. I did not hear the guards calling the prisoners upstairs to go for outdoor exercise after I came in. It seemed they had stopped the outdoor exercise—something that had never happened before. I thought probably the whole so-called outdoor exercise in which I had participated was arranged solely for the three military men to see the state I was in. It had not been a routine outdoor exercise at all.
When drinking water was given to me again, I washed the wounds and bandaged them up. Very quickly the blood and pus seeped through the cloth. It was out of the question to change the bandages immediately. In the cold and damp cell, a wet bandage would take a long time to dry. I simply had to find a way to dry the bandages more quickly. Perhaps, I thought, I could dry the bandages by wrapping them around my mug whenever boiling water was given to me. That would enable me to change the bandages at least twice a day. And if I washed the bandages just before going to sleep and left them to dry after rolling them in a towel to take out the excess moisture, they would probably be dry by morning. In this manner, I might manage to change the bandages three times during each twenty-four hours.
When hot drinking water was next given to me, I wound a strip of wet bandage firmly on the outside of the mug. It pleased me to see steam coming from the damp cloth, which quickly turned lighter in color as it dried.
For the next few months I devoted my whole attention to caring for the wounds and gave the newspaper only a cursory glance. But I had the impression that there were fewer articles of denunciation of a military nature and many articles demanding that Communist China take her rightful place at the United Nations. It also seemed that Lin Biao’s name was mentioned less frequently, while Premier Zhou Enlai seemed to have become more prominent than he had been for years.
Because of my poor physical condition, the wounds were slow to heal. It was many weeks before even the most superficial wounds formed scabs. At the same time, my old trouble of inflamed gums and hemorrhages persisted. It amused me to see the young doctor giving me treatment for these while stringently ignoring the wounds on my wrists.
To add insult to injury, several of the guards came to examine my wounds when they were on duty at the women’s prison. Though most of them made no comment, a few militant Maoist guards told me I deserved the punishment.
I did not expect to be called for interrogation, as everything about my simple life seemed to have been scoured with a fine-tooth comb. I thought probably the Maoists would come up with some other way to torment me. But I did not try to anticipate what it might be.
