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WHILE I ATTENDED TO my numerous physical problems and waited for the next move by the Maoists in 1971, spring and summer came and went. The golden autumn days were upon us. The most important event of the year, the National Day of the People’s Republic of China, was celebrated in the autumn on October First. It was a national holiday. The celebration of the National Day had been observed by the People’s Government ever since its inception. Everyone received extra food rations, was given the opportunity to enjoy free shows in public parks, and was allowed to purchase scarce consumer goods in the state-owned shops.
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The major event, organized by the authorities, was a parade held in each city. Colorful floats displayed diagrams, figures, and pictures of economic and cultural achievements of the previous year. Tens of thousands of workers, peasants, students, and even housewives marched in procession to pledge their loyal support for the People’s Government by shouting slogans specially composed by the Communist Party Propaganda Department for the occasion. The parades were carefully planned and reviewed by prominent Party and municipal officials in each locality.
In Beijing the parade was held at Tiananmen Square in front of the old Forbidden City and reviewed by Mao Zedong and other Politburo members and leading government officials from the balcony above the Tiananmen. Special stands on either side of the balcony were filled with foreign dignitaries and diplomats. At night there was an elaborate fireworks display.
The spectacle of hundreds of colorful floats with impressive displays and tens of thousands of men and women marching past the review stand waving red flags, shouting slogans, and holding aloft reproductions of Mao’s official portrait was an affirmation of Mao’s power and triumph. It must have been an intoxicating moment for the old man to see the adoring faces turn to gaze at him as the marchers passed and to hear their thundering voices wishing him a long life of ten thousand years (in the same words historically used for Chinese emperors). The smiling photograph of Mao splashed on the front pages of China’s newspapers all over the country on October 2 attested to his genuine happiness on this important occasion.
Everybody in China knew that for Mao Zedong, the peasant from Shaoshan, the National Day of the People’s Republic of China was a great day of personal satisfaction. Therefore it was most astonishing to find that on October First, 1971, there were no celebrations at all. When the morning broadcast did not mention anything, I was surprised. In the afternoon, I waited eagerly for the newspaper. When it came, I saw only Mao’s official portrait on its front page. The date, October First, and “Nation Day” were printed in red, but there was no mention of any activities by leading officials or any special events. While I was still puzzling over this extraordinary omission, a guard suddenly pushed open the shutter on the small window.
“Hand over your book of quotations!” she demanded.
It seemed such a strange order that for a moment I thought I had inadvertently done something to damage the book and she was going to use it as an excuse to punish me. Hastily I picked up the book and, with a brief glance to make sure it looked all right, handed it to her. After she had closed the shutter, I heard her going upstairs to demand the book from other cells. Then I knew that she had been instructed to collect the book of quotations from all prisoners.
She did not give the book back to me until she called me to go to bed. I examined it to try to find out why she had demanded it in the first place and was greatly astonished to discover that she had torn out the preface. This book of Mao’s quotations was first compiled and published by the People’s Liberation Army for its semiliterate soldiers to use in studying Mao Zedong Thought, on the orders of Lin Biao after he became defense minister.
The preface had been written by Lin Biao himself. In it he praised Mao as “the greatest living Marxist of our time, who developed the doctrine of Marxist-Leninism and successfully applied it to the specific conditions of China.” He exhorted the Liberation Army soldiers to study the quotations of Mao contained in the book and apply them to their daily tasks so that they could “blend Mao Zedong Thought into their bloodstream” and become soldiers who “study Chairman Mao’s books, obey Chairman Mao’s orders, and become Chairman Mao’s good fighters.”
There was nothing in the wording of the preface that could be considered objectionable by Mao. In fact it was such blatant flattery that many people found it embarrassing to have to memorize and recite it, a practice made obligatory during the Cultural Revolution. I felt the only possible explanation for the removal of the preface was that its author was in disgrace, as it was the practice of the Communist Party to obliterate from all its records the name and writings of a disgraced official as if he had never existed. Obviously the guard was under orders to collect the books from the prisoners and to deal with them. My realization that Lin Biao might be in disgrace was so stupendous that I stood there with the Little Red Book in my hand, lost in thought.
“Why are you not in bed?” the voice of the guard said outside the door.
Not wishing to give her the impression that I was interested in what had happened, I quickly arranged my bedding and lay down. But I did not get much sleep that night.
A few days after the guard had torn the preface out of my copy of the book of quotations, the newspaper came out with denunciations of someone “sleeping by our bedside.” No name was mentioned. To a Westerner, “sleeping by our bedside” would mean a spouse. To the Chinese, the expression meant someone very close. The same expression had been used for Liu Shaoqi when he was denounced. It implied that Mao did not know that very near him was an enemy who wished him ill. Other articles talked about the duplicity of a man Mao had trusted, who had voiced support for Mao while plotting Mao’s death. There were also frequent mentions of Party history and military engagements during the War of Resistance against Japan and the War of Liberation against the Kuomintang. The Chinese people, including myself, were familiar with Lin Biao’s personal history because it had been so frequently glorified when he was being built up as a suitable successor to Mao Zedong, just before the Ninth Party Congress. I now had no doubt that he had been ousted, though at the time I didn’t know any details of the struggle between him and Mao Zedong. Watching events closely and reading every word in the newspaper with meticulous attention, I noticed with relief that the name of Lin Biao’s man in charge of Military Control of the Public Security Bureau in Shanghai had disappeared. Since the No. 1 Detention House was a part of the network of prisons under the jurisdiction of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, this man was also the highest officer of the detention house. If my assumption was correct that the motivating force behind my own persecution was the military representative of Lin Biao in Shanghai, then I had good reason to hope that the downfall of Lin Biao would benefit me. On the other hand, I warned myself to continue watching developments. I thought it was premature to rejoice, for I had no idea whether the power vacuum created by Lin Biao’s downfall would be filled by the radicals headed by Jiang Qing or by the old guard headed by Zhou Enlai.
One night late in October, the guards once again called the prisoners to sit quietly to listen to a special broadcast. The loudspeaker was switched on, and a man’s voice lectured the prisoners on “the excellent situation created by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” The central theme of his speech was the announcement that President Nixon was to visit China in February of the following year. He told us that the Proletarian Cultural Revolution had so raised China’s importance in the world that the United States of America, which had hitherto adopted a policy of hostility towards the People’s Republic, was now on the point of realizing the futility of that policy.
“What is the significance of the forthcoming visit of Nixon, the head of the strongest capitalist country in the world? Would he have decided to come if China were weak and impotent? Of course not! Nixon has decided to come to China to pay his respects to our Great Leader because he has to face the fact that China, under the wise leadership of our Great Leader Chairman Mao, after being purified and strengthened by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, is invincible. Don’t forget that the United States is the most reactionary capitalist country in the world and our foremost enemy. The forthcoming visit of the president of the United States is a great victory for the Chinese proletarian class. It’s a reflection of the great achievement made by the Cultural Revolution. It bears out the fact that the decadent capitalist system is on the decline while our own socialist system is increasing in vigor and influence in the world.
“At first, when he offered to come, many of our comrades thought we shouldn’t welcome a man who represents imperialism against Vietnam, exploitation of the workers in the United States, and long-standing hostility against the People’s Republic of China. But our Great Leader is magnanimous. He said, ‘Let him come. Let’s receive him with courtesy and hear what he has to say. If he admits past mistakes and sincerely wants to change, we’ll welcome it. We are Marxists. We give a man a chance if he is honestly repentant.’ Our Great Leader is so wise! He is right! We’ll receive Nixon. And for the next few months we will educate all our comrades about the new situation and help them to see that by accepting Nixon’s visit, we are not surrendering our principles but accepting the surrender of the wrong policy of the United States government. Nixon’s visit is a great victory for us!
“In this connection, I want to give a word of warning to many of the prisoners confined in the Number One Detention House. Many of you are here precisely because you worshiped the capitalist world of the imperialists and belittled socialist China. You placed your hope in the capitalist world and believed that one day capitalism would again prevail in China. Let the forthcoming visit of the American president be a lesson to you all. Think carefully. If the reactionary Kuomintang had not been thrown out of China, if the United States troops had not been defeated by the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army in Korea, if the United States army were not bogged down in Vietnam, and if we had not become stronger as a result of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, would Nixon have wanted to travel across the world to Beijing to pay homage to our Great Leader?”
The speech was long-drawn-out, gloating repeatedly over the proposed visit by the president of the United States. I have given the gist of it. After my release from the detention house, I learned that the same interpretation was given to the visit when it was announced to the general public. Discussions were held in every factory, commune, and Residents’ Committee meeting to “prepare” the people for the forthcoming visit and to use the occasion to create the impression that Mao Zedong was now the most important leader in the world.
I was elated by the new turn in China’s relations with the United States and believed that it could have a decisive effect on the power balance in the leadership of the Communist Party. At least, I thought, Zhou Enlai’s position would be strengthened for a considerable time to come. Perhaps the moderate forces in the Party leadership would gain the upper hand. If so, the end of my own ordeal might be approaching. However, I knew from experience that everything in China developed slowly. The effect of a major switch of policy in Beijing often took months, if not years, to be felt at the base level where I was. I also knew that the radical faction headed by Jiang Qing had a strong hold on Shanghai and that her longtime associate Zhang Chunqiao was the chief party secretary here.
After living for so many years without real hope, I became quietly excited by the new development. For weeks I watched the newspaper and waited. The guards appeared preoccupied, as they had been in the days after the Revolutionaries and the Red Guards took over the Shanghai municipal government in January 1967. I thought they were probably undergoing intensified political indoctrination about the downfall of Lin Biao.
Winter was again approaching. The holes at the elbows of my sweaters and at the knees of my knitted longjohns were beyond repair. The filling of my padded jacket and quilt had fallen to the bottom, leaving patches that were no more than two layers of cloth. The only shirt I had left was so patched that it was no longer possible to tell which piece of cloth was the original shirt. Obviously, if I was to survive another winter at the detention house, I desperately needed some additional clothing. Though my past requests for clothing had always fallen on deaf ears, I decided to try once more and see whether the changed circumstances might not bring forth a different response.
“Report!” I called at the door.
“What do you want?” A guard’s lethargic footsteps stopped outside my cell, and the shutter was pushed open.
I held my sweater out to show her the holes and said, “The weather is getting cold. My clothes and quilt are so worn that they are no longer warm. Please look at this. It’s full of holes. I also need a padded jacket and another shirt. Please look at my clothes. You will see I do need warm clothes for the winter.”
“How long have you been here already? How many years altogether?”
“This will be the sixth winter I am here. I came in September 1966. The clothes and bedding given me by the Red Guards were not new then. After so many years without the padding being renewed, they are no longer warm,” I said.
Now that I could see a glimmer of light at the end of the dark tunnel in which I had been confined for so long, I was determined to survive to the day when that glimmer might guide me out into daylight. Probably my voice showed my anxiety. This seemed to annoy her. She closed the shutter and walked away.
Undaunted by her cold indifference, I repeated my request for warm clothing and bedding to each guard who came on duty for several successive days. Finally one of them said impatiently, “All right! All right! You need warm clothing. We know about it already. Your request is being considered.”
A week passed, and then another. The weather got colder and colder. I decided to try once more.
“Report!” I called.
“What do you want?” a guard asked through the closed door.
“May I see the interrogator?”
“What for?”
“I want to make a request for warm clothes.”
“Haven’t you got warm clothes already?” The guard opened the shutter, and I saw through the opening that it was the older woman who had urged me to eat when I was manacled. I had not seen her since that night.
“My winter clothes are worn out. Please come into the cell and look at them. I’m so afraid I might get ill again this winter if I do not get some warm clothes,” I said.
She unlocked the cell door, came in, and examined my clothes and the quilt. Then she said, “I’ll report to the authorities. Would you like to borrow some prison clothes for now?”
The thought of wearing prison clothes filled me with horror, not only because I thought they might have bugs, but also because it seemed the final surrender of my dignity and independence.
“No, thank you. I do not want to borrow prison clothes. I want to get permission to buy new winter clothes with my own money that is now in the hands of the government.”
She appeared to be thinking over the problem, so I added, “My money was taken by the Red Guards when they looted my home. One of their teachers told me the government would keep the money for me if it had not come from exploitation. I have no shares in any factories or land in the countryside. When I explained this to the teacher, he told me that the money would not be confiscated.”
“I’ll report to the authorities,” she promised.
A few days later, I was called to the interrogation room. The older guard was nowhere to be seen. In the place of the interrogator sat the militant female guard who had always taken a lead in persecuting me. She was flanked by two other female guards, including one I considered mild. The sight of the militant female guard was both a surprise and a disappointment for me. Had the new situation in Beijing brought no change at all in the No. 1 Detention House? With this woman in charge, what hope had I that my request would fall on sympathetic ears?
After I had bowed to Mao’s portrait and read a passage from the mutilated book of quotations, I sat down on the prisoner’s chair and waited for her to ridicule my request. I was unprepared for her normal, almost kind tone of voice when she said, “What is this request of yours about winter clothes? Haven’t you got winter clothes already?”
“They are worn out,” I said. To prove my point, I pulled off my blue cotton jacket to reveal the padded jacket underneath, with its holes and tufts of cotton escaping through them. I raised my arms to show her the frayed cuffs.
“All right! All right! Put on your jacket,” she said.
“The government is holding my assets. I want to ask permission to use some of my own money to buy some much-needed clothes,” I said, laying emphasis on the words “my own money.”
“Which government department is holding your money?” she asked. “Have you a receipt?”
“The Red Guards took the money when they looted my house. They didn’t give me a receipt.”
“You mustn’t use the word ‘loot’ when you refer to the revolutionary action taken by the Red Guards. They were acting on our Great Leader’s instruction to rid socialist China of the Four Olds and to deal with the exploiting class,” she said.
“I’m not a member of the exploiting class. According to Marxism, only those who live on the interest from their stocks and shares in factories or on rent collected from the peasants are ‘members of the exploiting class.’ My money was mostly my salary, which I earned legally, and my family inheritance, which was guaranteed by the Constitution,” I said heatedly. If I had spoken like this a year ago, she would have exploded. Now she just ignored me.
“Did the teachers of the Red Guards who came to your house to take revolutionary action against you tell you which government department would be holding your money?”
“No, they merely said the money would be held pending a decision by Chairman Mao.”
“Exactly. All personal assets taken by the Red Guards are frozen and cannot be touched before the Chairman makes a decision,” she said.
“I also have a foreign exchange account with the Bank of China,” I said.
“Foreign exchange accounts are frozen too.”
“All right, then. Let me borrow an English typewriter. I will write a letter to my bank in Hong Kong and get them to send me some money.”
“That won’t be allowed. You are not allowed to communicate with anybody outside China,” she said. “How do we know what you might write?”
“Before posting the letter, you will naturally read what I have written.”
“You might send a coded message out of the country. That wouldn’t do at all. What we’ll do is to report your request to the senior authorities and see to it that you get some warm clothes when it gets really cold. Now you must go back to your cell and study our Great Leader Chairman Mao’s books really diligently.”
I was dismissed and led back to the cell. Throughout the interview, the militant female guard had spoken in a normal voice, almost sympathetically. The change was startling. I supposed she was a typical example of those Party members who “follow the Party line closely.” The Chinese people called them “chameleons,” as they changed attitude and behavior according to circumstances just as rapidly as the chameleon changes color. Such Party members were the survivors and achievers. They never questioned the policy of the Party but followed it promptly and carried it out. They were mindless robots, unburdened by the capacity for independent thinking or a human conscience. They made the best cadres for any Party secretary in any organization, as they were always willing and ready to serve him without question as long as he represented the power of the Party and could give them promotions. But should he fall into disgrace, they were always the first to denounce him. They were the new type of successful people produced by the Communist Revolution in China. Because they seemed to maintain their positions through every twist and turn of the Party’s policy, they became the example for the young generation of Chinese to emulate. The result was a fundamental change in the basic values of Chinese society.
A week later, a large bundle was deposited on the floor of my cell by a male guard. After I had signed the receipt, he locked the door and departed. I took the bundle to my bed and untied it. To my great astonishment, I found in the bundle the padded jacket, the fleece-lined winter coat, the two sweaters, and the pair of woolen underpants the Red Guards had allowed my daughter to keep for her own use after they looted our home in 1966. Also included was the winter quilt for her bed. Wrapped among the clothes were several towels and a mug she used for tea. One of the towels was a rose-colored Cannon face towel I had brought back from Hong Kong, which she was using when I was taken to the No. 1 Detention House. It looked exactly the same as it had in 1966. I examined the padded jacket of navy blue woolen material lined with maroon silk. It was new in 1966, and it looked new now. I picked up the white porcelain mug with trembling hands and found it was stained faintly brown inside. It had not been washed, and the tea had dried.
My heart thumped faster and faster as I examined each article and realized its appearance was an ominous message of disaster. Hateful though the idea was, I could not help thinking that something terrible had happened to my daughter not long after I was arrested. She had probably died. That was why the clothes had hardly been worn and the face towel remained unused and new-looking. Perhaps her death had happened rather suddenly and unexpectedly, so that she did not have time to wash the mug she had used for tea. My legs were shaking so violently that I had to sit down quickly.
The No. 1 Detention House allowed families of inmates to send them articles of clothing and daily necessities such as soap and towels on the fifth day of each month. It was always the loneliest day of my imprisonment as I listened to the guards carrying parcels to other prisoners but never to me. At first I wondered why my daughter never sent me anything. Later I believed that because she was a member of the Communist Youth League, she had been compelled to renounce me. While I missed not having this tenuous link to my child through monthly parcels, I was glad she was spared the unpleasant task of coming to the prison gate and lining up for hours to hand over a parcel. Now, deep in my heart, I knew the reason I had never received any parcels was that she had died.
“Report!” I rushed to the door, hoping to find out the truth from the guard.
“What do you want?” The guard opened the shutter and looked at me through the opening.
“These things you have just given to me—they are my daughter’s clothes and quilt,” I said.
“Yes,” answered the guard.
“What’s happened to my daughter?”
“Nothing has happened to her,” she replied.
I bent down to look at her face through the small window. She appeared quite normal and calm.
“The clothes look as new as they did in 1966. Has she not used them during the past few years?”
“How do I know? She probably bought new clothes. She works, doesn’t she? She has her own salary. She can buy new clothes, can’t she?”
“Do you mean to tell me that you know for a fact my daughter is alive and well at this moment?” I hoped so much for reassurance.
“I haven’t seen her, if that’s what you mean.”
“But you do know, don’t you?”
“Why should she be otherwise?” The guard closed the shutter and walked away.
Was I being hysterical? Had prison life made me oversuspicious and sensitive? I examined everything again carefully. As I touched each item of her clothing, I became more and more convinced that she had indeed died. The message came to me clear and strong that she was no longer in this world. Yet I needed concrete proof because I was accustomed to dealing with facts and was suspicious of feelings I could not understand or explain. There was also a block in my mind that prevented me from accepting such a terrible possibility as her death, which would have rendered my years of struggling to keep alive meaningless. Death came to old people, not to someone as young and healthy as she was. I kept on trying to convince myself she was all right in spite of what I saw.
But I could not explain the unusual look of her things spread out in front of my eyes. They seemed to say time had suddenly stood still not long after my imprisonment. The navy blue jacket looked new. But when I examined the silk lining I saw that it had creases at the armpits and that there was a handkerchief in one of the pockets. It seemed to me she had worn that jacket, but certainly not for more than one winter at the most. My mind was racing with speculations as I tried to imagine what could possibly have happened. What the guard said seemed to indicate she was alive and well. Yet she did not specifically say so. An idea came into my head. I went to the window again.
“Report!” I called.
No one came. I called again and again. Still no one came. Yet I heard the guards talking in their room at the other end of the corridor. When the guard on night duty came to tell me to go to bed, I tried to talk to her. But she did not come near my cell, only called out from a distance her order to go to bed.
I was not able to sleep. I became more and more anxious. The first thing next morning, I called the guard again.
“Report!”
No answer. I decided to wait for the daytime guard to come on duty. When she came, I called again, “Report!”
She came quite promptly. “What do you want?”
“These things of my daughter’s the guard brought me yesterday make me very uneasy. I can’t understand why my daughter doesn’t seem to have used them. The Red Guards left each of us only one padded jacket. Why hasn’t she worn hers during the past few winters? To prove my daughter is alive and well, I request you to ask her to write me a few words in her own handwriting.”
“Prisoners in a detention house are not allowed to communicate with their families,” she said.
“Perhaps she could just write ‘Long Live Chairman Mao’ or one of Chairman Mao’s quotations or even just her name,” I pleaded.
“No, that’s not allowed. I have told you already, prisoners in a detention house are not allowed to communicate with their families,” she said firmly.
“But I have been here such a long time already,” I said.
“That makes no difference.”
I repeated my request to every guard who came on duty during the next few days. I was more and more convinced that my daughter was really dead, because they were either evasive or simply kept silent. One or two of them looked definitely embarrassed when they refused my request to see my daughter’s handwriting. They did not look at me but averted their eyes or simply looked at the floor.
My mind was in turmoil and my heart in anguish. I longed to know the truth while I was afraid of it. One moment I was convinced that she had died. The next moment I believed I had become oversensitive and too pessimistic because of prolonged imprisonment.
After a few weeks of anxiety, with little food and hardly any sleep, I became sick once more, with a high fever and delirium. I was again taken to the prison hospital. My body was so resilient that in spite of the fact that I no longer had the will to live, I survived. I was brought back to the No. 1 Detention House just before Christmas.
Throughout the years of my imprisonment, I had turned to God often and felt His presence. In the drab surroundings of the gray cell, I had known magic moments of transcendence that I had not experienced in the ease and comfort of my normal life. My belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and goodness had been restored, and I had renewed courage to fight on. My faith had sustained me in these the darkest hours of my life and brought me safely through privation, sickness, and torture. At the same time, my suffering had strengthened my faith and made me realize that God was always there. It was up to me to come to Him.
Under the watchful eyes of the guards, I could not pray openly in the daytime. The only way I could be certain of being left alone with my prayers was to bend my head over a volume of Mao Zedong’s books while I prayed to God from my tormented heart. As I spoke of my daughter, I relived the precious years from the time of her birth in Canberra, Australia, in 1942 until our forcible separation on the night of September 27, 1966, when I was taken to the struggle meeting and arrested. I felt again and again the joy she had given me at each stage of her growth and knew I was fortunate to have received from God this very special blessing of a daughter. Day after day I prayed. More and more I remembered the days of her living, and less and less I dwelled on the tragedy of her dying. Gradually peace came to me, and with it a measure of acceptance. But there was something more. While I could no longer cling tenaciously to the hope that I would see her alive and well on the day I walked out of the No. 1 Detention House, I knew there was much I still had to do both before and after my release. My battle was by no means over. It was up to me to find out what had happened to my daughter and, if I could, to right the wrong that had been done to her. My life would be bleak without Meiping. But I had to fight on.
In February 1972 President Nixon came to Beijing. The newspaper devoted whole pages to reports of the visit and published large photographs of his arrival, the banquet of welcome, and his visit to Mao Zedong at the latter’s home. As I looked at the smiling face of Mao while he was shaking the hand of the American president, I thought the moment was indeed Mao Zedong’s finest hour. In that moment his years of humiliation, of being denied recognition, were wiped away. And I was certain that he relished the meeting with the American president not only for its significance to himself and the Chinese Communist Party but also for what it meant to his lifelong foe, the Kuomintang in Taiwan.
In all the photographs and reports, Zhou Enlai figured prominently. The newspaper reported that Prime Minister Zhou Enlai accompanied President Nixon to Shanghai, whence the American president was to return to the United States. It said the departure of the president was slightly delayed, hinting that there was some last-minute difficulty about drafting the text of the final communiqué. However, eventually it was signed. The published version included an acknowledgment by the United States that Taiwan was an integral part of China. This commitment would render it impossible for the United States to recognize an independent Taiwan state, the event the Chinese Communist government feared most. Furthermore, in the communiqué the People’s Government did not renounce the use of force for future reunification of the two Chinas. This was decidedly a victory for Communist China. It seemed Communist China had gained a great deal from the president’s visit, while the price she paid was no more than a display of elaborate hospitality. The policy of rapprochement with the United States seemed more than justified. I felt that the personal position of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai had been greatly enhanced by his successful and skillful diplomacy.
Now there was a respite from class struggle; a more peaceful atmosphere prevailed. The tone of the newspaper was no longer belligerent. Even the guards seemed to behave more like normal human beings. In March I was called for interrogation. The interrogator I had when I first came to the detention house was back at his job. He started from the beginning, as if the intervening years had not existed, and asked me to write another autobiography. Then he questioned me about my family, my relatives, and my friends, as well as my personal life and activities, going once more through everything I had already covered with the interrogator from the Workers’ Propaganda Team in 1969. When I became impatient and pointed out to him that I had already answered all these questions, he merely said, “You have to answer them again.” I did not think he was trying to trap me into saying something different so that he could charge me with lying. It was more likely that the official interrogator of the No. 1 Detention House and the interrogator of the Workers’ Propaganda Team served different masters.
This series of interrogations lasted several months. I did not remember how many times I was called to the interrogation room or how many quotations I read from Mao’s book. There was no more shouting or argument. But I was sick and tired and found the sessions extremely tedious.
One day in the autumn of 1972, the interrogator produced a letter, obviously taken from our office file, and asked me whether I had written it. I saw it bore my name, so I said yes.
“This is proof of your illegal activity. But at the same time, it may only be a political mistake,” he said.
I was astonished. “May I see the letter again?” I asked him.
He handed the letter to me. I saw that it had been written soon after my husband died in October 1957. I had gone to the Shell office to take charge because the Bank of China had refused to cash the company’s checks unless someone was made responsible for the office and had his or her personal seal registered with the bank. I remembered the circumstances very well. That morning I had received a telephone call from the general manager of Shell’s Hong Kong office. He told me that a general manager had been appointed to succeed my late husband but he could not get to Shanghai until March of the following year. He said, “London wants to know if it is all right with you.” I told him it was all right and I would inform the Industry and Commerce Department of the Shanghai municipal government. Then he asked me to draw up a list of things the new general manager and his wife should bring with them. In particular they wanted to know whether they should bring a supply of wheat flour, as they knew the Chinese people ate rice.
Because our secretary at that time was a British woman, I thought she would know best what advice to give, so I asked her to draw up the list and write a covering letter, which I signed. In her zeal to help her compatriots, she gave rather a long list that included items from buttons to detergents. But from a political point of view, the letter seemed to me completely innocuous.
“I can’t see anything political in this letter,” I said.
“Nothing political? You divulged information about the grain supply situation in Shanghai,” he said.
“Really? Let me see the letter again.” By now I realized that he had been instructed to find some excuse for my imprisonment in order to avoid having to declare at the time of my release that I was innocent. I knew the Communist Party loathed admitting mistakes, since it had declared itself to be “the great, glorious, and correct Chinese Communist Party.”
He handed me the letter again and said, “Read the passage about grain rations.”
I read, “ ‘The Shanghai government allows everyone twenty catties of grain per month. One can buy either rice or flour. It is more than enough.’ ” I asked the interrogator, “What’s wrong with that?”
“That’s divulging information concerning the grain supply situation,” he said.
“The grain ration is given to everyone, including all the Europeans living in Shanghai. It’s not a secret. What’s there to divulge when it is a fact known to everyone?”
“Your letter was sent abroad,” he said.
“Do you mean to say the Europeans in Shanghai will not tell people abroad about it when they go back to their own countries? What about all the overseas Chinese who come back for short visits? Don’t they know what grain rations their family members get? Do they conveniently forget it when they leave China?”
“That’s their business. This letter is your business. Do you or do you not admit you wrote this letter?”
“The letter was not actually written by me. But I accept full responsibility for it, as I signed it and it was sent out of the office when I was the responsible person. The point with which I disagree is that stating the fact of a ration of twenty catties of rice or flour per person per month constitutes ‘divulging information.’ “
“It’s illegal to divulge information about the grain supply. But we can consider it only a political mistake since you were ignorant of the regulations,” he said.
“Nonsense! It’s not a mistake, political or otherwise. Show me the regulations, if you have any.” I was angry. But he just ignored me and adjourned the interrogation.
When winter came, the prisoners were again given three meals a day; I got fish or meat with my midday meal. But my health had deteriorated to such an extent that these measures made no difference. I had another bad hemorrhage. When the bleeding was brought under control, I was taken by the militant female guard, dressed in civilian clothes, to the Zhongshan Hospital of the No. 1 Medical College for an examination. An appointment was probably made beforehand, as we went straight to the gynecology department and were admitted into the doctor’s office ahead of all the other waiting patients.
I was surprised to find the “doctor” a young woman in her early twenties, with an armband of the Revolutionaries. She was clumsy during the brief examination, and afterwards she told the guard I had cancer of the uterus. I did not believe her because I was sure she was not a qualified doctor. I thought she was one of those who had learned to be a doctor by being one, just like the young medical orderly I had encountered before. But apparently the guards and others at the detention house believed her. My treatment improved. Some of the guards looked at me with pity in their eyes. After my release, I learned that the officials in charge of my case looked for housing for me in earnest after my visit to the hospital. Eventually it was decided to allow me an apartment with two rooms and a bathroom because it was assumed that since I did not have any children to look after me I would need a live-in nurse towards the end of my life.
On March 27, 1973, after the midday meal, while I was walking about in the cell, a guard opened the small window and said, “Pack up all your things.”
“All my things?” I asked her.
“Yes, all your things. Don’t leave anything behind.”
Soon afterwards the door opened and two Labor Reform girls came into the cell. They collected all my things and took them away. A guard in the corridor said, “Come out!”
I looked around the cell, my “home” for exactly six and a half years. Without my washbasin and towels, it already seemed different. I noticed the sheets of toilet paper I had pasted on the wall by the bed and wondered if I should tear them off so as not to leave any impression of myself behind. But I decided to leave them for the next unfortunate woman who was to occupy the cell. As I stood in the room looking at it for the last time, I felt again the cold metal of the handcuffs on my wrists and remembered the physical suffering and mental anguish I had endured while fighting with all the willpower and intellect God had given me for that rare and elusive thing in a Communist country called justice.
“Come along! What are you doing in there? Haven’t you stayed there long enough?” the guard called.
I followed her to the front courtyard and into the room where I was registered when I arrived at the detention house in 1966. There was no one inside. I sat down on the chair.
The young doctor followed me into the room. He stood by the counter, half leaning on it in a casual manner, and said, “I want to tell you the medication I have been giving you so that you can tell your own doctor when you leave here.” He named several medicines.
“Thank you very much,” I said.
“Well, you are going to be released shortly. Are you glad?” the doctor asked me.
“It’s high time, isn’t it? Six and a half years is a long time to lock up an innocent person,” I said.
He winced but went on as if he had not heard me. “I want to give you some advice before you leave. It’s for your own good. During the time you have been here, you haven’t exactly behaved in an exemplary manner. In fact, in all the years of the detention house, we have never had a prisoner like you, so truculent and argumentative. When you leave this place, you must try to control yourself. Be careful not to irritate the masses. Shanghai is no longer the same city it was before the Cultural Revolution. You must show some respect for the proletariat. Otherwise you will suffer. You are a sick woman. You don’t want to be brought back here again, do you?”
I did not say anything. He stayed a few more minutes and then departed. Obviously he had been told to talk to me. But why, I could not tell. In fact, I wasn’t listening to him very carefully. What occupied my mind was simply whether I would find my daughter alive after all.
My bundle of clothing was thoroughly searched by two male guards. When they had finished, I was escorted to one of the interrogation rooms. There was no more bowing to Mao’s photograph or reading quotations. The interrogator merely pointed at the prisoner’s chair. I sat down.
Another man I had never seen before sat beside him. This man said, “You are going out today. We feel the time has come for you to go out. I will read to you the conclusion arrived at by the People’s Government on your case. However, after you have heard it, you are allowed to express an opinion, if you have any.”
He took a couple of sheets of paper out of a folder. Then he said to me, “Stand up to listen to the conclusion.”
I stood up.
He read out my name and other personal particulars such as age and place of birth. Then he went on, “ ‘The above-named person was brought to the Number One Detention House on September 27, 1966, for the following reasons. One, in October 1957, in a letter to England, she divulged the grain supply situation in Shanghai. Two, she defended the traitor Liu Shaoqi and opposed the Central Committee resolution passed on Liu Shaoqi. These are serious matters that deserved punishment. However, in view of the fact that she is politically backward and ignorant, we decided to give her a chance to realize her mistakes. After six and a half years of education in the Number One Detention House, we observed a certain degree of improvement in her way of thinking and an attitude of repentance. We have, therefore, decided to show her proletarian magnanimity by refraining from pressing charges against her and allowing her to leave the detention house as a free person.’” When he had finished reading, he lifted his head and looked at me.
I was livid. Anger and disgust choked me. While I despised their blatant hypocrisy and shamelessness, I knew deep in my heart that the real culprit was not this man but the evil system under which we all had to live. I would have to fight, whatever the price, I told myself. I stared back at him and sat down.
“Haven’t you something to say? Aren’t you grateful? Aren’t you pleased that you can now leave as a free person?” the man said.
I tried my best to control the rage that made me tremble and said, “I can’t accept your conclusion. I shall remain here in the Number One Detention House until a proper conclusion is reached about my case. A proper conclusion must include a declaration that I am innocent of any crime or political mistake, an apology for wrongful arrest, and full rehabilitation. Furthermore, the apology must be published in the newspapers in both Shanghai and Beijing, because I have friends and relatives in both cities. As for the conclusion you have just read, it’s a sham and a fraud. I was brought to the Number One Detention House long before Liu Shaoqi was denounced. How could you have anticipated that I would speak on his behalf? As for divulging information about the grain supply situation, it’s just your invention to save face. I never divulged anything, and you all know it.”
They looked at each other. Then the interrogator said, “The Number One Detention House isn’t an old people’s home. You can’t stay here all your life.”
“It doesn’t have to be all my life. I’ll stay here until you give a proper conclusion to my case. If you are ready to give one tomorrow, I can leave tomorrow.”
“We have already heard your opinion. As I have said, we allow you to express your opinion. It’s noted down. We’ll forward it to the senior authorities. You can leave now,” the other man said.
“No. The moment I leave, you will forget the whole thing. The wrong conclusion will go into my personal dossier. I’ll stay here,” I said.
The interrogator stood up. He said, “I have never seen a prisoner refusing to leave the detention house before. You must be out of your mind. In any case, when the government wants you to go, you have to go. Your family has been waiting for you since early this morning. How much longer do you want to delay your departure?”
Did he mean my daughter was out there waiting? Oh, how I longed to see her! Suddenly two female guards came into the room. One on each side, they dragged me out to the second gate.
In the distance, standing beside a blue taxi, was the figure of a young woman. She was shorter than Meiping, and I realized with a sinking heart that she was my goddaughter Hean.
