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16
The Death of Mao
LIU XING’S VISIT WAS not an isolated incident. He was followed by a series of visitors all claiming to be my daughter’s friends. A few I knew by name, but I had met none of them in our home before the Cultural Revolution. They did not come together but one at a time. And they sometimes came at night. After talking about Meiping’s death for an hour, I was sure to have a sleepless night.
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“A-yi, do you mind not opening our door to so many visitors who claim to be my daughter’s friends? All they want to talk about is what she must have gone through at the hands of her murderers and how I must try to avenge her death. I’m tired of hearing the same thing day after day.”
“I have to open the door as long as I’m here. I know you are being harassed by these visitors. After you have talked to them, you always look quite ill. But what can I do? Perhaps you had better discharge me. You can easily manage on your own,” she said, looking distressed.
“Can you find another job?” I asked her.
“Frankly I like being here with you. I’m not likely to get another job with the same pay and working conditions,” she said.
I did not want to discharge her. But she had obviously been told to admit visitors who called on me. As long as she was here, she could not refuse to open the door. I would have to think of some way out.
“If I paid the rent, could you find some other place to live?” I asked her. The housing shortage was an extremely serious problem in Shanghai.
“I have a recently widowed cousin. She might take me in and let me share the rent. Do you want me to sleep out?”
“Good! We’ll arrange it this way. You go to live with your cousin and come in the mornings only. I’ll pay you the same wage and the rent. How about that?”
“That’s a good arrangement. You can have quiet afternoons and evenings. If you don’t open the door, no one can blame me for it,” she said happily.
That weekend A-yi made the arrangement with her cousin and moved out. I got a piece of cardboard, wrapped it in a sheet of red paper, and secured it with tape. Then I pasted a piece of white paper in the center, leaving a red border. On the white paper I wrote the following message: “Because of advanced age and indifferent health, I need rest. Visitors without previous appointments will not be admitted. Representatives of the government on official business are welcome anytime.” I signed my name, hung the cardboard notice outside my front door at the foot of the stairs with a red ribbon, and locked the door.
Next morning when I opened the door to go into the garden, I saw that my carefully made cardboard notice had been torn up and was lying on the ground. Mrs. Zhu was on the terrace. I picked up the pieces and confronted her with them.
“Did somebody in your family tear up my notice?” I asked her.
“Oh, no! Of course not! We never go near that door. As you know, when I come up to see you, I always come up the back stairs.”
Her unemployed son came out to lend his support to his mother and said, “Somebody must have climbed over the wall again last night. We lost two shirts that were hanging on the clothesline on the terrace.”
“You know there have been several cases of theft in this neighborhood. Don’t you remember the Party secretary warning us to be extra careful at our last study group meeting?” Mrs. Zhu joined in.
I did not believe a thief had climbed over the wall at all, so I asked them, “Have you reported your loss to the police?”
“No.” Mrs. Zhu’s son threw a glance at his mother and said quickly, “But we will certainly do so.”
“I’ll go to the police now and report it,” I said, glancing at my watch to see that it was after eight o’clock.
“Please don’t bother. I’ll go later,” Mrs. Zhu’s son said.
“I’ll go now,” I said.
With the pieces of cardboard in my hand, I walked to the local station at the end of our street. I thought it would be interesting to find out if the police were behind my harassment. If so, my local policeman, Lao Li, should know about it. I might discern something by watching his reaction during the interview.
The police station of our district was formerly the private residence of a wealthy Shanghai merchant who had fled to Hong Kong just before the Communist takeover. It was one of the largest houses in the area, with an attractive garden. I walked up the steps and entered the house. The large living room had been partitioned. In the front section, a man and a woman in uniform sat behind a counter. There were a few tables and benches scattered about the room. An elderly man with his resident’s book in hand was registering the arrival of his son on home leave from another province.
I stood by the counter and waited until the policewoman asked me, “What’s your business?”
“I’m a resident of Number One Taiyuan Road. I’ve come to see Comrade Lao Li, who is in charge of our street,” I answered.
“Did he tell you to come see him?”
“No. Something happened last night. I’ve come to report to him.”
“Everybody is at a study group meeting this morning. Come another time,” she said.
“I’ll wait for him.”
“They may be a long time. Sometimes the study group meetings last the whole morning.”
Determined not to be put off, I said, “I don’t mind waiting, if it’s all right.”
She didn’t say anything, so I sat down on one of the benches. Several people came to register births, deaths, arrivals, and departures. I watched the routine work of the police department and from time to time looked up at the clock on the wall. The hands seemed to move very slowly that morning, but I was determined to see Lao Li. Soon after eleven o’clock, the door leading to the inner section opened, and a man in uniform came out.
“Tell Lao Li there is someone from Taiyuan Road to see him,” the policewoman said to the man.
He went inside. After a while Lao Li came out. He was a burly man with a relaxed manner. Unlike most other policemen, he did not wear a habitual scowl on his face, nor did he let me know by his attitude that he thought me an undesirable character. I rather liked Lao Li and respected him as someone down-to-earth and fair. Behind his mild appearance, he was shrewd and alert. On his few visits to my apartment, he was always polite. But I knew he took in the situation at once just by a casual glance at the room. Certainly he was very different from the young policeman who had spat on my carpet as he strode into my living room in the early days of the People’s Republic.
When Lao Li entered the room, I stood up to show him respect. He told me to sit down and took a seat opposite me across the table.
“I’m from Number One Taiyuan Road,” I introduced myself.
“I know who you are,” Lao Li said impatiently with a glance at the clock. “What is it you want to see me about?”
“I’ve come to report that a thief climbed over the wall at our place last night.”
“Is anything missing?”
“The Zhus downstairs said they lost two shirts. I only had this torn up.” I placed the pieces of my cardboard notice on the table. Lao Li put them together and read it. The frown on his brows deepened.
“What’s this all about? Why did you write this?” He looked genuinely puzzled, so I knew that he did not know anything about my stream of visitors. The police department as a department was not involved in harassing me, but I could not rule out the possibility that some individual officials, most likely Maoist Revolutionaries promoted to official positions during the Cultural Revolution, were behind it all. During the entire 1970s, Maoist Revolutionaries and the rehabilitated old officials coexisted side by side in every government department in China. In the atmosphere of hostility and noncooperation, very little got done. The already clumsy bureaucracy became truly unwieldy. If a project had been formulated by the Revolutionaries, the rehabilitated old officials would most likely not know anything about it. At the same time, the Revolutionaries would make sure the rehabilitated officials did not recover all the power they had lost when they lost their jobs during the Cultural Revolution. In most cases, the rehabilitated officials found that though they had been given their old titles back, they had become simply figureheads. The Revolutionaries just carried on as if they were not there.
“So many people who claim to be my daughter’s friends call on me at all hours to talk about her death. I am tired of seeing them. I’m an old lady. I’ve had a serious operation. I need to rest,” I told him. He nodded and looked thoughtful.
“Why should a thief want to tear that up?” Lao Li asked me, pointing to the pieces of cardboard on the table. “It doesn’t look like something a thief would do.”
“The Zhus told me the thief did it.”
“All right. I’ll go over there to have a word with the Zhus this afternoon.”
I thanked him and went home.
It seemed Lao Li did not know anything about my string of visitors. While I was no wiser as to who was behind the scheme to harass me, I derived some encouragement from the fact that Lao Li did not tell me to stop putting up cardboard notices. I decided to make another one and hang it up again.
When I got back, A-yi was already there. I told her where I had been and showed her the pieces of my cardboard notice. She said, “It must have been torn up by the Zhus. No thief came over the wall at all. It’s just a pack of lies.”
“Why should the Zhus want to do that?”
“Someone must have told them to do it,” she replied in a low whisper, as if frightened, although no one could possibly overhear us.
“Who could have told them to do it?” I asked her.
“Who knows?” she said. But I thought she did know.
I had a peaceful afternoon. The second cardboard notice I made was not disturbed, and no one came to the locked door.
On the following day, after A-yi had left, my resolution was put to the test. Hean’s mother came to the door. I thought she would go away when she had read my notice. But she did not go away. Instead, she called me and knocked on the door. It was difficult to ignore my old friend. But I had to. She called me again. Then she left.
The day after that, my niece came with her baby. She was the daughter of my sister who had died. When the Cultural Revolution started she was only a teenager. Because of her family background, she was treated very harshly. The result was that she became nervous and timid, fearful of offending the Revolutionaries. Because I had been in the detention house, she had been reluctant to visit me. I had to send A-yi to urge her to come at Chinese New Year time. Therefore I was very surprised to hear her calling me outside my door. However, I ignored her. After a while she also went away.
I suspected that Hean’s mother and my niece were both sent to test my resolve. But I could not be sure. I decided to visit my old friend.
After I had explained to Hean’s mother why I could not open the door to her, I asked her, “Did you read my notice?”
“Yes, I did. But …” She hesitated, looking at me intently, unable to put into words what she wanted to tell me.
She could not bring herself to say that she had been told to come. Perhaps she felt ashamed, or perhaps she was afraid I might blurt it out to somebody. She bowed her head and seemed deeply embarrassed.
After a while, she said, “Wouldn’t it be better just to put up with the visitors? You can always take a sleeping pill. Why seek a confrontation? Are you not afraid of them?”
“No, strange to say, I’m not afraid. I have to fight back, otherwise I will die of anger and frustration.” Even as I was speaking, I felt anger welling up in my chest. Because of my daughter’s death, I hated the Maoists a million times more than I had when I was in the detention house. To fight back at them at least gave me some consolation.
Hean’s mother said to me, “We are such old friends that you should know I’m very fond of you. I hope you understand if I have said or done things I would not normally say or do. Living in the present circumstances, we can’t always be our true selves.”
“Oh, yes, don’t worry! I understand perfectly,” I told her and took my leave.
She accompanied me to the street. “Would you approve if I told everybody that I’m too ill to visit you? I do have rather serious heart trouble, as you know.”
“Certainly. I would miss seeing you, but it’s for the best. I don’t want you to be placed in an awkward situation.”
“I’m glad you understand. Let’s hope it won’t be for long. Take care of yourself.” She sounded relieved.
I continued to be firm and refused to open my door to people without appointments in the afternoons. Da De never talked to me about my cardboard notice, but he would carefully make appointments with me when he wanted to visit me in the afternoons. After a couple of weeks, the visitors ceased to come.
But the attempt to harass me did not stop. It only moved from my room to the street. One day when I came home from my walk, suddenly a small group of schoolchildren yelled at me, “Spy! Imperialist spy! Running dog of the imperialists!”
I walked on, ignoring them. But two bolder ones blocked my way and continued to yell at me. I could not push the children aside without creating a scene, so I stopped and said to them calmly, “Come with me. Let’s have a little chat.”
They fled. I went to the Residents’ Committee to complain. They told me that unless I could tell them the names of the children, they could do nothing.
This happened day after day, almost as if the children were waiting there to perform their act of insulting me. I varied the time of my walk. It made no difference. They were always there. And in the distance, there was always a man with a bicycle. As soon as the children started yelling, he would mount his bicycle and disappear.
Although the children were a nuisance and I was stared at by the few people who passed on our street, I did not give up my daily walk. I would just ignore the children and walk on as if I did not see or hear them.
A couple of weeks later, A-yi discovered that someone had written on our front gate with a piece of chalk, “An arrogant imperialist spy lives here.” She was furious and wanted to wipe it off with a wet cloth.
“Please just ignore it, A-yi,” I said to her.
“But it’s so insulting,” she said. “What will the people passing our front gate think?”
“Let them think whatever they wish to think. In any case, they must be used to such messages by now. Weren’t a lot of these messages written outside people’s homes during the early years of the Cultural Revolution?”
I went out at my usual hour of the afternoon and saw the same man with his bicycle across the street. He was close enough for me to see that he was about thirty, with a mop of thick black hair. Also I noticed that his bicycle had a rather bright yellow saddle cover. As soon as he saw me coming out, he mounted his bicycle and rode away. I closed the front gate without looking at the message and went on my walk.
A few days later, a heavy downpour obliterated the chalk writing on my front gate. Not long afterwards, the children also tired of their game. The most interesting thing was that although Da De could not have missed seeing what was written on my front gate, he made no reference to it at all when he came for his lessons.
I enjoyed a few peaceful days. The date March 27, 1975, was the second anniversary of my release from the No. 1 Detention House. I spent a quiet day sitting on the balcony in the pale spring sun knitting and reading Tang poetry. In the afternoon, I thought of the years I had spent in my cell, remembering the individual guards and the interrogations, and felt once again the cold, the hunger, and the torture I had endured. I looked at my wrists and saw the scars that would remain with me until I died. It seemed that although I was no longer confined in a prison cell, my struggle against persecution was by no means over. My enemy hovered on the periphery of my existence, and I must continue to be vigilant.
I was too depressed to go out, so I missed my afternoon walk. The next two days we had a steady drizzle. When the sun came out again, I was anxious for exercise.
“Are you going for your walk today? The weather is so nice,” A-yi said as she was leaving.
“Oh, yes, I certainly will go today,” I told her.
“Perhaps you can take the handle of the old wet mop to the co-op and get a new mop made.”
“Do I have to take the old handle?”
“Yes, they are short of handles. They won’t make one for you unless you bring the old handle.”
At the usual hour of three o’clock, I set out with the handle of our old mop to go to the little cooperative store where a few housewives in the neighborhood did odd jobs to make a few extra yuan. If I was being followed, I didn’t notice it. When I stepped off the sidewalk to cross the busy street in front of me, something suddenly hit me hard from behind. I shot out and landed flat on my back right in the path of an oncoming bus. Brakes squealed, and a man pulled me to the side. The bus slowly rolled over the handle of my old mop, breaking it. The conductor looked out of the window and shouted at me, “Why didn’t you look where you were going? Do you want to kill yourself?” Then the bus gathered speed and pulled away.
Everything had happened so quickly and so unexpectedly that I was dazed. My heart palpitated wildly, and my knees were wobbly.
“A bicycle hit you. The man didn’t stop,” my rescuer said.
“You saved my life. How am I to thank you?” My voice was shaky. It sounded to me like someone else speaking.
“No, no. The bus stopped in time. You had better go to a hospital to make sure no bones were broken,” the kind man said.
“I think I’m all right, just a little shaken. Please come with me. I would like to thank you in a concrete way with a present. Maybe you could accompany me to the police station to report the incident,” I said.
“You didn’t catch the man on the bicycle. The police won’t do a thing. Anyway, I have a meeting to attend.”
“Did you see the man who hit me?”
“Not really. But I noticed his bicycle had something bright on the saddle.”
“Was it a bright yellow saddle cover?”
“He was sitting on the saddle. But something bright caught my eye.”
“Was he a man with a mop of thick black hair?”
“Yes, do you know him?” the man asked me. “Is he a personal enemy?”
“No, I don’t know him. But I’ve seen him before.”
“Well, I have to go to my meeting. You had better be careful. He hit you deliberately. The street was empty. He didn’t have to hit you. And he rode away quickly.”
I thanked the man again, and he disappeared in the crowd.
When I managed to get home, I took two aspirin tablets and went to bed. It was only a little after four o’clock. I slept for about an hour. When I woke up, I found my whole body stiff as a board and aching so excruciatingly that I could hardly move. With difficulty I rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom. I thought a bath with a lot of hot water might help, but I couldn’t manage to get the water ready without A-yi.
The night was terribly long, and I was most uncomfortable. Finally A-yi came and served me breakfast in bed. She was very distressed to hear of my accident. Perhaps she guessed that I was hit deliberately and felt partly responsible, for she had reported where I was going. The whole morning, she was on the verge of tears.
While she prepared a hot bath for me, I read Tang dynasty poems in bed. Suddenly I remembered that Mr. Hu had said he was going to call on me that very afternoon. Although I would have preferred to remain in bed, I got up and tidied up my room. I had no way of telling Mr. Hu not to come. After the revolutionary action of the Red Guards, no one in China was allowed a private telephone. To make a call, one had to go to a public telephone. The attendant took down the number one wanted to call and listened in to every conversation. Often she was not there at all, and the phone was locked up.
When Mr. Hu came at four o’clock, I served him tea and biscuits that A-yi had ready in the kitchen. Then I told him I had been knocked down by a man on a bicycle and had nearly been run over by a bus. I expected him to sympathize with me, show alarm, or maybe just say he was sorry. But he stared at me with great seriousness and said, “Please let me take care of you! If you would allow me to look after you, I would be so happy.” He seemed to be under emotional strain, as his voice was not altogether steady.
Was this meant to be a marriage proposal? I wasn’t sure. And because I had been preoccupied with what had been happening around me, he caught me by surprise. He seemed embarrassed by my silence. Hastily he added, “Do you think marriage is for young people only? Perhaps I shocked you with my blunt proposal?”
“Oh, no, not at all. I think it perfectly all right for older people to marry. And I’m sure many women would be proud and happy to be your wife. As for myself, though I am grateful to you and flattered by your proposal, I am bound by a vow I made to my late husband that I would remain Mrs. Cheng to the end of my life.”
His kind face softened into a wistful smile. He took my hand in his and said reluctantly, “I don’t know about other women. I have waited … But never mind! I must respect your resolution to remain faithful to your husband. I have always had the greatest respect and affection for him. He was a very fine person.” He let go of my hand after giving it a gentle squeeze.
The awkward moment passed. I had not caused Mr. Hu to lose face by a flat refusal. That was not the Chinese way.
After his proposal, Mr. Hu continued to visit me from time to time. He was always pleasant and attentive. But the interval between his visits lengthened until he resumed his old practice of calling on me on Chinese New Year’s Day only. In 1978, he came specially to tell me that he had been rehabilitated and restored to his former position as assistant manager and chief engineer at his factory. He was busily coping with post-Cultural Revolution problems and trying to resume full production.
“I’m working sixteen hours a day. I wish I were younger and could do more. There is so much to do and so much to learn. I have become rusty,” he said, looking so happy that he seemed suddenly to have shed ten years of his age.
In 1980, when I was given a passport to leave China, I wrote to him to say goodbye. He came to see me at once and told me he had thought all along that I wished to leave China. But I do not think Mr. Hu ever understood why I had chosen the uncertain prospect of starting a new life in my old age in some foreign land rather than settling down quietly with a ready-made family in my native country.
To have received a marriage proposal from a worthy man at the age of sixty was pleasant, if not exhilarating. I was in a good mood in spite of my aching limbs when Da De came for his lesson next morning.
I had unlocked the front door and was just finishing breakfast when I heard him bounding up the stairs. I looked at the clock. Da De was twenty minutes early.
“You are early today,” I said to him when he appeared at my door.
“I have something exciting to tell you.” He came into the room with a big smile. “I may be going to Beijing in the not too distant future.”
“Indeed. Have you been offered a job?” I asked him.
“Not yet. But I may have a wonderful opportunity.” He sat down across the table from me.
“Would you like a cup of tea and a piece of toast?” I asked, as I knew Da De was always hungry.
“Some toast would be nice.” He went into the kitchen and came back with four whole slices of toast, which he ate in no time at all. I wondered whether he had eaten breakfast, but I did not ask.
Taking a book from his bag, Da De asked me, “Do you think we could study this today?”
The book was Emily Post’s Etiquette. “Why do you want to study that? The contents of this book are of no use to a Chinese.”
“Not unless the Chinese is to become a diplomat stationed abroad,” he said.
“I see. Is that your exciting news? Is that why you are going to Beijing? Are you going to the Foreign Affairs Institute to train as a diplomat? If that’s the case, congratulations!”
A-yi arrived and came to my room right away. “Are you better today?” she asked anxiously. “Are you still sore all over?”
“Thank you, A-yi! I’m a lot better.”
She cleared the table and left the room. Da De asked me, “Have you been ill?”
“I was knocked down by a man on a bicycle and nearly run over by a bus. I thought you knew already,” I said.
Da De went red in the face and said indignantly, “How could I know? Do you think I’m behind every unpleasant thing that happens to you?”
“No, I don’t think you are behind them. That would be giving you too much credit,” I told him. Da De winced and looked ashamed for the first time since I had known him. “But I do think you are in the know; you are usually told. I think that whoever is behind all the unpleasant things happening to me trusts you.”
“You don’t understand. You think people are free agents. They are not. And the world isn’t divided into good men and bad men. In any case, good people are often compelled to do bad things, and bad people can also do good things. You will never know the things I have done for you. It doesn’t matter. I’ll only say that I’m not a piece of stone. You have been decent to me. Often I think you are kinder to me than anybody I have known except my own mother. Do you think I would allow someone to knock you down with a bicycle and have you run over by a bus?” Da De said this in a wounded tone of voice.
“My goodness! You have gone soft! If you weren’t told, that’s bad. It wouldn’t do, would it, if you were no longer trusted,” I said sarcastically.
Da De asked, “Are you sure it wasn’t just an accident?”
“The street was empty. He didn’t have to hit me. However, the bus passing at that precise moment might have been coincidental.”
“The whole thing could have been an accident,” Da De argued.
“No, I have seen the same man before. The man who helped me up told me the man had a mop of black hair and a bright-colored bicycle saddle.”
From Da De’s expression, I thought he knew who the man was. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Would you be angry if I give you a little advice?”
“Fire away!” I said, leaning back in my chair ready to listen to him.
“Do you realize there are people in positions of power who hate your guts? You make them think you despise them. They want to be looked up to, feared, and respected. But they think you laugh at them. Why don’t you hide your contempt for them and just take it easy sometimes?”
“How do I ‘take it easy’?” I asked Da De.
“Don’t react when something happens. Don’t get angry. Look at that notice you put down there outside your door. Nobody in China does a thing like that. A man’s home may be his castle in England, but it isn’t the case in China. When you don’t allow people to come see you freely and you send A-yi away in the afternoons, naturally people wonder what you are up to. Do you realize the Housing Bureau could have put another family in your other room when A-yi moved out?”
“There is no bathroom. Another family cannot come through my bedroom to go to the bathroom, can they?” I asked Da De.
“You simply have no idea how people live in Shanghai,” Da De said. “There are many families in this city living in rooms without bathrooms. The Housing Bureau didn’t send another family here. It’s a special consideration. You should realize it.”
“You puzzle me. Why should I be harassed and persecuted on the one hand and be given consideration on the other?”
“I can’t tell you more than to advise you not to look upon the situation in a simplistic way. In every government department, there are many people with power to do things. They don’t always agree, especially nowadays. The situation is extremely complicated. Just remember, there are people who feel sorry for you. They know you have been victimized. They very much regret the death of your daughter. Please try to be meek and resigned. The political struggle has reached a crucial stage. Why suffer more than you have to?”
“All right! Wise Da De! I’ll try to be meek and resigned, as you say. But life will be very dull, won’t it?”
“No, life won’t be dull. Many things are going to happen,” Da De said.
“Such as Da De going to the Foreign Affairs Institute to train as a diplomat,” I said, changing the subject.
“I’m not going to the Foreign Affairs Institute for training. Comrade Jiang Qing has said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must be reorganized. Young men and women faithful to our beloved Chairman Mao’s teaching are going to be sent there. She said, ‘Mix some sand in the sticky clay to loosen it up.’ The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been under Chen Yi and Premier Zhou for so long that it has become an independent kingdom full of capitalist ideas. The proletariat must now march in.”
“Will you be going abroad right after getting to Beijing?” I asked him. From Da De’s remark, I thought Jiang Qing wanted to take over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“That I don’t know. Comrade Jiang Qing wants some Revolutionaries in every embassy abroad. There will be resistance. It’ll be a struggle. But backed by Chairman Mao, she will get her way. My name has been included in the list from Shanghai. I hope I’ll be chosen. My English is a lot better than that of others on the list.”
“I hope you will be chosen, Da De. It will be a break for you. Better than to stick around with the Revolutionaries you are mixed up with now. They seem to me to be a bunch of rascals.”
Da De went red in the face again. But he did not argue with me and defend his comrades.
We spent the morning studying the elementary principles of etiquette. When Da De left, he was happy in anticipation of a brighter future. Having served the radicals for so many years, he believed he would be rewarded.
During 1975, the campaigns of denunciation in the press were like the tidal waves of the sea. When one subject was exhausted, another subject was introduced with a deafening roar. When the people’s indignation against the ancient sage Confucius was deemed to have waned, other topics of denunciation were presented to stimulate their interest. In this way, the Maoists built up what they called “revolutionary momentum” and kept the pot boiling.
One day, the Shanghai Liberation Daily came out with a long article that occupied a full page of the newspaper, which had only four pages, denouncing a film about life in China made by a famous Italian filmmaker, Antonioni. At our study group meeting, the article was read to us, and Antonioni was condemned in no uncertain terms. None of us had ever heard of Antonioni, and we did not know that he had come to China and made a film. Furthermore, the film was never shown in any Chinese cinema, so that no Chinese had actually seen it. I carefully studied the long article, reprinted from the People’s Daily, the official Party organ, as well as other articles published subsequently to echo its views. Gradually I realized that the denunciation of Antonioni was aimed at whoever had given him permission to come to China to make the film. The article alleged that every shot taken by Antonioni to show poverty, backwardness, and ugliness in China was a reflection of the reactionary thoughts of those who had made it possible for him to do so. What’s more, it seemed the film had been used by several Chinese embassies abroad to entertain guests. Chinese politics operated by gossip and whispering campaigns. It was not long before I learned that the real targets of this attack on Antonioni were Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and First Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping. It seemed they had given Antonioni permission to make the film, and they were of course responsible for the embassies abroad.
There were many other instances like the campaign against Antonioni, too numerous to record here. All of the denunciations were in fact veiled attacks directed against either the prime minister or the vice-premier, who was working hard to restore production both in the factories and in the rural communes.
One day, I was told by my one remaining student besides Da De that Zhang Chunqiao, the Party boss of Shanghai, a Politburo member and a longtime associate of Jiang Qing, had said, “We would rather have socialism’s lower production figures than capitalism’s higher production figures.” The radicals in the rural areas took up his statement and proclaimed, “We would rather have socialism’s poor harvest than capitalism’s abundance.” Not to be left behind, other radicals declared, “We would rather have socialism’s trains that are behind schedule than capitalism’s trains that are on time.” In such an atmosphere, the workers became fearful of doing too much, the peasants became reluctant to go into the field, and drivers of trains, buses, and even mules deliberately slowed down so that they could arrive behind schedule. The already strained economy took another tumble. With their controlled propaganda machinery and widespread network of radical organizations, which had been developed during the Cultural Revolution, the Maoist leaders succeeded in sabotaging Deng Xiaoping’s effort to put China’s economy back on its feet.
The newspaper headlines and the voices from loudspeakers screamed daily, “Hit back at the rightist wind of reversing the verdict of the Cultural Revolution!” What did the radicals mean by “the verdict of the Cultural Revolution”? They meant that Deng Xiaoping had been denounced as a “capitalist-roader” during the Cultural Revolution. This “verdict of the Cultural Revolution” should not have been reversed by Deng’s rehabilitation in 1973. The atmosphere became increasingly tense. Anything that incurred the displeasure of the radicals was interpreted as “attempting to reverse the verdict of the Cultural Revolution.” And they used this slogan to block any further attempt to rehabilitate old officials. Once again, the Chinese bowed their heads and walked on tiptoe, fearful of treading on dangerous ground or appearing less than totally submissive.
The program to modernize industry, agriculture, science and technology, and the armed forces, popularly known as the Four Modernizations Program, first proposed by Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, had been adopted by the People’s Congress. Oblivious of the radicals’ propaganda war, Deng Xiaoping went on with his efforts to normalize life in China and implement the Four Modernizations Program. Entrance examinations for universities and colleges were reinstituted. But as a concession to Mao’s ideology, the candidates for the examinations first had to complete a period of manual labor in a factory or rural commune. The radicals’ answer to Deng’s decision to restore entrance examinations was to announce the discovery of a young hero by the name of Zhang Tiesheng in Liaoning province. Zhang Tiesheng, according to press reports, did not answer any of the questions on the examination paper but wrote an essay on the back denouncing the effort by the “former capitalist-roaders” to take China backwards to pre-Cultural Revolution conditions. He declared in conclusion, “We must hit back at the rightist wind of reversing the verdict of the Cultural Revolution!”
Zhang Tiesheng became a hero the radical leaders urged the Chinese young people to emulate. He was sent on tours of the country to “warn” the people of the importance of “hitting back at the rightist wind.” Since the Party secretary of Liaoning province, Mao Yuanxin, was Mao’s nephew and a close associate of Jiang Qing, the Chinese people realized at once that the whole business of Zhang Tiesheng was manufactured by the radical leaders and that the young man simply acted according to their instructions.
Once again, to read a book or to study any subject at all became taboo, just as in the early days of the Cultural Revolution. My only other student besides Da De, a disabled girl, became very frightened. I told her to study at home but to come to visit me as a guest from time to time so that I could correct her essays. I also told Da De to stop coming regularly for his lessons.
One evening, I was in the garden cutting the last of the roses before the frost. I saw Mrs. Zhu’s working son seeing a man off at the front gate. When he came back he asked me whether he could speak to me. I invited him upstairs.
“Did you notice the man I was seeing off? He is a great friend of Vice-Chairman Wang Hongwen. When Wang Hongwen organized the Shanghai Workers Revolutionary Headquarters to overthrow the municipal government and the Party Secretariat in January 1967, he was Wang’s trusted lieutenant. They have remained close friends ever since. Whenever Wang Hongwen comes to Shanghai, he is always invited to wine and dine with him.” He carefully watched my reaction as he told me this.
Obviously he was leading up to something, so I listened but made no comment.
“Well, he is going to Beijing in a few days’ time at the invitation of Vice-Chairman Wang. He is in a position to help you. A word in the ear of the vice-chairman and all your troubles are over,” he said.
“What trouble do you think I’m in?” I asked him.
“For one thing, you haven’t been properly rehabilitated. And your daughter died in mysterious circumstances. I suppose you would like to see her death avenged. All of that can be done by a word from Vice-Chairman Wang.”
“Do you mean to say that your friend can enlist the help of Vice-Chairman Wang Hongwen to ‘reverse the verdict of the Cultural Revolution’ for me?”
“To reverse the verdict of the Cultural Revolution is not allowed. It needn’t be called that if Vice-Chairman Wang takes a personal interest in the matter. It would be called ‘clarifying the case’ or something like that. Of course, you’ll have to pay for it, but not more than you can afford. Your money is in the People’s Bank; they will know how much to charge you. And you can even get an exit visa to go to Hong Kong for as little as ten thousand yuan,” the young man said.
While I was astonished to learn that the famous hero of the January Revolution that toppled the Shanghai municipal government and Party Secretariat, Vice-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Wang Hongwen, was indulging in large-scale corruption, I also realized the danger I was in if I should fall into this trap. So I smiled at him and said in as friendly a voice as I could muster, “You are really very kind to offer to help me through your friend. I’m most grateful. But at the moment I have no plans to go to Hong Kong. As for my rehabilitation and the death of my daughter, I expect the People’s Government will do whatever needs to be done when the time comes. It would be presumptuous of me to trouble such an important person as Vice-Chairman Wang Hongwen with such a trivial matter.”
“Don’t you realize conditions in China have changed?” He was getting impatient and excited. He raised his voice to a high pitch when he said, “The government won’t do a thing if you don’t make arrangements privately with an official.”
I looked at the open door and gestured to him to lower his voice. Then I said, “I have confidence in the People’s Government. That can’t be wrong, can it?”
“If you are sincere, you are a fool!”
He stormed out of my room, walking quickly down the stairs and banging my front door as he went out. He was plainly disappointed and annoyed that my refusal prevented him from getting his cut of the deal. I thought his offer was a straightforward case of corruption, but I could not rule out entirely that it was a trap to get me to take part in “attempting to reverse the verdict of the Cultural Revolution” so I could be found guilty of counterrevolution.
When Da De came a few days later, I said to him, “It’s ages since I took you to a restaurant.”
“We mustn’t go to a restaurant now. In any case, all the good dishes have been taken off the menu. They are to be served only to visitors from abroad,” he told me.
“It’s too bad we only have cabbage and noodles today. Otherwise I would ask you to stay for lunch.” I knew Da De’s aversion to cabbage and noodles, which he had daily when he lived in poverty as a child.
“Would you like me to cook you a dinner?” he asked.
“There is hardly anything at the market,” I said.
“I’ll get the food through my friends. What would you like to eat?”
“Just get what you like,” I told him and handed him three 10-yuan notes, more than two weeks’ wages for a worker.
At five o’clock the following evening, Da De came with fish, shrimp, and a chicken, as well as a bottle of Shaoxing wine and two bottles of beer. I had asked A-yi to stay and help him. Between them they produced a really good dinner of several delicious dishes. Da De drank the Shaoxing wine with his meal and started on the beer while relaxing in my only easy chair.
Lazily he said, “Don’t you think I’m a pretty good cook?”
“You are an excellent cook. I congratulate you! Now that you have been fed, may I ask you a few questions?” I said.
“Ah, I must pay for my dinner! Glad to tell you anything, as you know,” Da De drawled.
“I need to be educated about the present situation. You needn’t tell me anything you shouldn’t. But I’d like to hear your analysis of the situation.”
“I’ve told you already the struggle has reached a crucial stage. It concerns the future course of the Communist Party and the government. Are we going to preserve the fruit of the Cultural Revolution and proceed from there, or are we to go back to Liu Shaoqi’s policies without Liu Shaoqi?”
“What are Liu Shaoqi’s policies without Liu Shaoqi?”
“What Deng Xiaoping is doing.”
“I thought the propaganda attack was aimed at Premier Zhou.”
“Deng Xiaoping is acting on behalf of Premier Zhou, who is ill, as you know. The point of contention is who is to succeed Premier Zhou. Is it going to be Deng Xiaoping, or is it going to be Zhang Chunqiao? The premier himself and the old leaders like Chen Yun and Ye Jianying want Deng Xiaoping to succeed Premier Zhou. The present campaign is to impress upon the nation that if Deng Xiaoping becomes premier, he will reverse the verdict of the Cultural Revolution,” Da De told me.
“What about Vice-Chairman Wang Hongwen? Is he going to succeed Chairman Mao?”
“Oh, no! He is just keeping the seat warm for Comrade Jiang Qing. She can’t very well be appointed vice-chairman while Chairman Mao is still living. But she will become his successor when he dies. What Comrade Jiang Qing wants is to be the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and Zhang Chunqiao to be the prime minister.”
I thought, Good God, don’t let that happen! But to Da De I could not express such an opinion. Instead I told him about the offer made to me by Mrs. Zhu’s son.
“Have you agreed to it?” Da De asked me, sitting up.
“No. It’s illegal to bribe officials,” I told him.
“If you have agreed to it, you won’t see your money again and you won’t get an exit visa for Hong Kong either. A lot of people have fallen into their trap already,” Da De said and took another sip of his beer.
“What about the victims? Don’t they complain?”
“It’s a case of ‘a mute swallowing bitter herbs.’ He can’t speak out. They are already guilty of bribery.” Da De laughed heartily and drained his glass. He took the second bottle and opened it.
“It’s a shame such things are going on,” I said.
“Don’t be a puritan! As long as money can buy the things people need, they will always want to get money. Of course, leaders in high positions are exempt from punishment. Xin bu shang da fu—punishment does not reach senior officials. That’s China’s tradition. You know that!”
“Shouldn’t a socialist government have changed that?”
“Who would do the changing? The senior officials themselves? What a hope!”
Silently Da De drank the second bottle of beer. When he had finished it, he stood up to bid me good night and lumbered to the door.
However, he stopped suddenly and said casually, “I suppose you know Premier Zhou is dying of cancer in the Beijing Hospital?”
“Is it really true?”
“Yes, it’s true. Since he will be removed from the struggle by dying, a lot of cases … such as the one about a conspiracy of foreign firms and government departments in Shanghai, you know what I mean? Somebody mentioned it to you, perhaps? And others, of course, there are others … In any case”—he waved his arm in the air—“all will be shelved!”
“Why only shelved and not clarified?” I asked him anxiously.
Da De seemed to sober up and pull himself together when he said, quite clearly, “Once an accusation is made by a senior source, it can never be clarified, only shelved. You don’t expect the senior source to admit he made a false accusation or a mistake, do you?” He did not wait for my answer but sauntered out the door and down the stairs.
I stood there staring at his retreating figure, momentarily stunned by his message. Perhaps I should have felt relief that the so-called conspiracy of foreign firms and government departments in Shanghai in which I had become so unjustly involved was to be shelved. It could mean the end of my harassment and the beginning of normal existence. But all I was conscious of was a feeling of emptiness. I thought of the wasted years of my life and the senseless murder of my daughter. At the same time, my determination to leave China for good one day was strengthened by what Da De had said. I knew that when a case was “shelved” and not clarified, it could always be revived again when the political climate demanded it. Just because a senior Maoist Party official had made a false accusation and refused to admit he was mistaken, an innocent person like myself would have to live the rest of her life under a shadow.
The year 1975 drew to a close amidst rumors impossible to verify. I heard from one person that Mao Zedong had visited Zhou Enlai in the hospital. My informant said that when Zhou suggested that Deng Xiaoping be appointed prime minister to succeed him, Mao pretended not to hear Zhou’s weakened voice. Another person told me that both Mao and Zhou were dying. Jiang Qing and her associates hoped Zhou would die first, so they withheld medical treatment to hasten his death. Yet another person said that Jiang Qing and Mao’s nephew Mao Yuanxin had completely isolated the dying Mao Zedong from all Politburo members wishing to see him. All messages were transmitted through them, the story went, including directives to the Politburo that might or might not have originated from Mao.
In January 1976, Zhou Enlai died after serving as prime minister of the People’s Republic of China since its inception in 1949. An enigmatic man, Zhou was a Communist leader with a difference. To the Chinese people, he resembled those few traditional prime ministers immortalized in history and legend because of their high moral caliber. Even Zhou’s consistent efforts to mitigate the ill effects of, rather than to oppose openly, Mao’s disastrous political campaigns, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, were considered “wise” by the long-suffering Chinese people. They were only too glad that Zhou Enlai was there to pick up the pieces afterwards. Because Zhou appeared reasonable rather than intransigent, subtle rather than bombastic, many people who had met him thought him less than a firm believer in Marxism. In actual fact, a close examination of his life and views, as reflected in the decisions he made and in his published speeches and writings, reveals that Zhou Enlai never wavered from the commitment he made to realize Communism in China when he joined the Party as a young man. He differed from the radicals only in his belief that foreign capital and intellectuals trained abroad could be utilized to achieve his ultimate aim.
In China, news traveled faster by word of mouth than through the newspapers, where the simplest fact could not be published without the approval of several bureaucrats. It was the sudden return of a heart specialist urgently called to the bedside of the prime minister, the gathering of local officials at an unusual hour, the cancellation of a major event, and a telephone conversation overheard by a subordinate that told the Chinese people that Zhou Enlai had died. When the Shanghai Liberation Daily finally came out with the news, in the afternoon, the people read it to learn not what had happened but how the newspaper presented the news, which they knew reflected Beijing’s attitude toward the event.
A-yi came breathlessly up the stairs and into my room with a basket of vegetables still in her hand. “Prime Minister Zhou has died!” she exclaimed.
She handed me a piece of black cotton cloth and continued, “I got this for our armbands of mourning. It’s already nearly sold out at the cloth shop at the marketplace. There is a rumor that the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee will not supply extra black cloth for armbands because they do not want the people to wear mourning for Premier Zhou. As soon as the people heard this, they abandoned shopping and mobbed the cloth shops.”
At the demand of Party members living in our district, our Residents’ Committee organized a memorial meeting for Prime Minister Zhou. The room was decorated with wreaths made by the residents. The flowers on the wreaths were made of colored handkerchiefs because crepe paper had been sold out in the shops and the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee refused to sanction additional supplies. Lu Ying’s son made a frame of dried rice straw for the wreath presented by our small unit, and Mrs. Zhu and I provided the green leaves from the evergreen ilex hedge in our garden.
The memorial meeting was well attended. A bedridden woman was carried in on a chair, and several old men were assisted by their grandchildren. The people came spontaneously, and I thought their emotion was genuine. Many were weeping openly, and the words of tribute spoken with trembling voices were sincere. It was a simple but moving ceremony. For the first time, I had attended a meeting where everybody was himself and not acting the part that was expected of him.
Meiping’s friend Kong called on me in the evening to tell me how the news of Premier Zhou’s death had been received at the film studio. He said that someone close to the radicals had just returned from Beijing in the morning. This man said that upon being informed of Zhou Enlai’s death, Jiang Qing had exclaimed, “Hitherto I was locked in a cage. Now I can come out to speak!”
“I thought she had been speaking all the time ever since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. What do you make of such a remark by Jiang Qing?” I asked him.
“God knows what more she wants to say, unless it’s to declare her ambition to become the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party,” Kong said. “The country is seething with rumors already, ranging from a plot to assassinate Deng Xiaoping to civil war.”
“I suppose a successor to Prime Minister Zhou will be announced soon?” I asked him.
“The delay in making an announcement can only mean the struggle is still going on. There is a move in Shanghai to send a delegation to the Politburo to demand the appointment of Zhang Chunqiao. I heard that those close to Zhang Chunqiao are already preparing slogans and banners to be brought out the moment his appointment is announced. They seem to expect to win.”
“What about Deng Xiaoping? At the moment he is the first vice-premier,” I said.
“The old leaders are all for him, of course,” Kong said.
“Isn’t the army an important factor in the struggle?”
“Yes. Ye Jianying is the head of the Military Commission. But I hear a few of the area commanders are leaning towards Jiang Qing and her group.”
On subsequent days, apart from reporting the Central Committee’s memorial meeting for Zhou Enlai, the Shanghai Liberation Daily, controlled by the radicals, cut to the minimum the space devoted to his death. It wasn’t until a documentary film of his funeral reached the city’s cinemas that the Shanghai people saw the long lines in the capital waiting to pay their last respects outside the Beijing hospital where Zhou’s body lay in state. And one million people braved the bitter January wind of North China to stand for hours along the route on which his body was taken to be cremated. Close-up shots showed men and women of all ages, some with toddlers in arms, weeping, watching intently, and murmuring words the camera did not record.
The people of Beijing defied more than the weather when they stood in the cold waiting for Zhou Enlai’s cortege to pass; they were sending a message of defiance to the radicals, who, they thought, had treated Zhou shabbily. The film ended with a shot of a plane flying over the country. From that the people of Shanghai learned that Zhou Enlai had willed that his ashes be scattered over China’s rivers and mountains. Zhou’s wish not to be buried in an elaborate tomb at the Eight Precious Hill Cemetery reserved for top Party leaders gave rise to a host of rumors about a radical plot to desecrate his grave, Zhou’s aversion to sharing the same ground with Kang Sheng and Xie Fuzhi, both collaborators of Jiang Qing, etc.
After Zhou Enlai’s death, Jiang Qing became even more active and was constantly in the public eye. While denunciations of the attempt by the “capitalist-roaders” to “reverse the verdict of the Cultural Revolution” continued, more and more articles appeared in the radical-controlled press praising China’s few female rulers in history. Attention was concentrated on Empress Lu (241–180 B.C.) of the Han dynasty and Empress Wu (A.D. 624–705) of the Tang dynasty, both of whom succeeded their husbands upon the men’s death. The reigns of these women were described as prosperous and propitious to prove the virtue of female rulers. The Chinese people watched with dismay Jiang Qing’s maneuvers to prepare public opinion for her acceptance as Mao’s successor. They showed their contempt by circulating stories about her promiscuity and self-indulgence that defied the most fertile imagination. Once at our Residents’ Committee meeting, a police official addressed us and told us that we must not pass on rumors about our leaders and must report to the police if we heard any. Although the man did not mention any leader’s name, everybody knew that some of the rumors had gotten back to Jiang Qing and that she was trying to stop their circulation.
The festival of Qing Ming (“Bright and Clear”) in March of the lunar calendar generally took place in early April. The Chinese people traditionally visited the graves of their ancestors to pay their respects. After the Communist Party took over the country in 1949, Qing Ming was designated as Martyrs’ Day, when schoolchildren were organized to present wreaths at the tombs of the revolutionary martyrs. A couple of days before Qing Ming in 1976, people came to the Monument of Revolutionary Heroes in the center of Tiananmen Square in Beijing to place wreaths and floral tributes to Zhou Enlai. Children tied single white paper flowers on the branches of the evergreen hedge around the monument, with endearing messages addressed to “Grandpa Zhou.”
Zhou Enlai was childless, in China considered the greatest misfortune. It was said and generally believed by the Chinese people that when advised to take a younger wife so that he could have an heir, Zhou had refused and said, “All Chinese children are my children.” For this the Chinese people admired him as a man of impeccable moral principle, the more outstanding because many other Communist Party leaders were discarding their older wives in favor of young women in the cities they had conquered.
The wreaths accumulated. They came by the thousands from factories and people’s communes in and around Beijing, carried by workers and peasants in mourning in a solemn procession and laid down in a ceremony, with the men and women taking an oath of loyalty to the deceased premier. Soon the steps and the area surrounding the monument were covered. Those who brought the wreaths lingered, and others made special trips to watch the scene. The men and women read, sometimes with homemade loudspeakers, the poems and pledges they had written for Zhou Enlai while others listened and copied down the poems and messages attached to the wreaths and flowers. So many children had tied single white flowers on the hedge that it was entirely covered. It was estimated that by the day of Qing Ming several hundred thousand people had visited the monument and taken part in one form of ceremony or another, swearing allegiance to Zhou Enlai and what he stood for. The young people pledged emotionally to accomplish Zhou Enlai’s unfinished task of rebuilding China through his Four Modernizations Program. By now, the wreaths had overflowed to cover the stands around the square. Increasingly, the poems for Zhou went beyond simple epitaphs of praise. Many of them compared the radical leaders unfavorably with the deceased prime minister and expressed concern about China’s destiny falling into their hands.
As news of this astonishing activity spread to other cities, trains departing for the capital carried contributions of wreaths and poetry to Beijing. The more militant opponents of the radicals chalked slogans and put up posters against them outside the carriages. The train attendants did not wipe off the slogans but kept them fresh, so that each train that arrived at the Beijing railway station was a living protest against the radical leaders.
This mass display of sentiment for Zhou Enlai very quickly developed into a mass demonstration of resentment against the radicals, including Mao Zedong himself. No names were mentioned. But veiled comparisons were made to the first Qin emperor (259–210 B.C.), generally regarded by Chinese historians as a cruel ruler who persecuted scholars and destroyed books, setting back China’s cultural development. The wording of the poems became less ambiguous, and the sarcasm against Jiang Qing and her associates became bolder. To go to Tiananmen Square became a must for the young people of Beijing. They not only copied poems down and listened to the writers’ recitations but laughed heartily at the radicals and made speeches against them.
Such behavior was unheard of in Communist China, where every demonstration was organized by the government to express support for government policies. On the few occasions when Chinese people supposedly demonstrated outside foreign embassies, activists had always been there among them to direct everything. During the Cultural Revolution, except for the short time when things got out of hand, the Red Guards were controlled by Maoist Party activists. The radical leaders watched the scene at Tiananmen Square with increasing alarm and decided to take action. On the fatal night of April 5, the mayor of Beijing, a Jiang Qing collaborator, ordered the militia to surround the area. The police and the militia, both controlled by Jiang Qing and her associates, went in with clubs and pistols to drive the people away from the monument. As the people dispersed, the militia opened fire. Thousands of unarmed demonstrators were killed or wounded. Those found with poems were taken to the Security Bureau, condemned as counterrevolutionaries, and shot without trial. Tiananmen Square was cordoned off. It took the cleaners of Beijing two days to hose away the blood and remove everything including the corpses.
I was told long afterwards that Mao Zedong, terminally ill at home, heard only the version of the Tiananmen affair given him by Jiang Qing and Mao Yuanxin, who acted as his liaison with the Politburo. They alleged that Deng Xiaoping was behind the Tiananmen affair, designed to discredit Mao and to repudiate the Cultural Revolution. It was the “capitalist-roaders,” they claimed, hitting back at the Proletarian Revolutionaries. In a fit of temper, Mao dictated a directive to a hastily called Politburo meeting, asking its members to pass a resolution to remove Deng Xiaoping from the position of vice-premier and to appoint Hua Guofeng, a relatively junior member of the Politburo, as acting prime minister and first vice-chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In effect, Mao Zedong had designated Hua Guofeng as his successor. Though an aged and dying man, Mao was astute enough to know that if he had appointed Zhang Chunqiao as premier, there would have been civil war in the country and the Communist Party would have been irrevocably split.
Hua Guofeng had joined the Communist Party as a guerrilla fighter during the Sino-Japanese War in his native province, Shanxi. He was relatively unknown to the Chinese people, and his career was undistinguished. Just before the Cultural Revolution, he was appointed Party secretary of Mao’s native province, Hunan. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he was denounced as a “capitalist-roader” but was soon rehabilitated when it was found that he had perpetuated Mao’s personality cult and was in the process of building an irrigation system for the county where Mao’s relatives lived. Hua was not a controversial personality and seemed to be acceptable both to the radical leaders and to the old guard. He was a compromise choice. Evidently Mao believed that with Hua in charge, his own position in Chinese history would be secure.
The Politburo resolution was quickly broadcast by the Shanghai Broadcasting Station and appeared in the newspaper the next day. The people were also notified through their Residents’ Committee study group meetings. The Tiananmen affair was officially declared a counterrevolutionary attempt to create disturbance. After that no further mention of it was made in the official press. But horrifying details of the massacre spread fast by word of mouth all over the country. Those who had escaped from Tiananmen Square on the day of the massacre secretly wrote down the poems from memory. Soon handwritten copies were circulating surreptitiously among the people.
The appointment of Hua Guofeng to the supreme position of leadership both in the government and in the Party created a temporary lull in the published rhetoric, but the struggle for power and position went on nonetheless. Public interest in Deng Xiaoping was kept alive by rumors of plots to assassinate him. Though his whereabouts were unknown, several people told me that he had been seen in Guangzhou living under the protection of the army.
“It seems so strange that interest in the fate of Deng Xiaoping has not flagged since his removal from office,” I said to Da De one day when he was chatting to me about Hua Guofeng.
“People expect him to bounce back again, just as he did before,” my student told me.
“Is it likely?” I asked him.
“Who knows?” Da De said.
My student seemed much more subdued since the Tiananmen affair. Though usually forthcoming with comments and information, he never talked to me about what had happened on April 5 at Tiananmen. Also, the appointment of Hua Guofeng seemed to have disconcerted him. While he gave me the facts of Hua Guofeng’s personal background, he refused to be drawn into a discussion of the appointment itself. His half-smile and air of nonchalance disappeared. In its place was often a thoughtful, if not worried, expression.
We had long ago exhausted the book on etiquette and had gone back to a volume of short stories. As I opened the book, Da De suddenly brightened up and said to me, “Would you like to meet my girlfriend?”
“Have you got a girlfriend? Why haven’t you told me before?” I exclaimed in surprise.
“I thought I should wait until we were engaged.”
“Are you engaged now?”
“More or less. Her father still opposes our marriage. I suppose he thinks I’m too poor,” Da De said, looking dejected.
“Is he someone important? Is he a senior official?”
“No, he is an ex-capitalist,” Da De said, looking me straight in the eye as if he dared me to say something unpleasant. In fact, I was so surprised that I was quite speechless.
“Well, as you know, I didn’t go to Beijing after all. They selected two people from Shanghai; both had connections with someone senior in Beijing. These two don’t even know any foreign languages. I think the best course for me is to become an English teacher in a middle school, get married, and settle down in Shanghai. My mother thinks it’s best too.” Being bypassed seemed to have given him a jolt. I thought he was beginning to wonder whether he really had a future with the radicals.
“It would be nice to have you remain in Shanghai. You must love the girl very much to accept the handicap of being united with a capitalist family in marriage,” I said.
“It isn’t such a handicap. The Politburo has already passed a resolution to return with interest all private bank accounts frozen by the Red Guards ten years ago. Her father will recover quite a large sum of money. He has told the children that he will distribute his fortune to them as soon as he gets it back, and not wait until he dies. Of course, I’m not marrying her for her money, though her father seems to think so.”
A few days later Da De brought his girlfriend to visit me. She was twenty-eight, two years older than Da De, not very bright or very beautiful, but quiet and self-assured, obviously in love with Da De, whose sharp intellect and vibrant personality must have seemed exciting to her. I congratulated her and asked when she was going to invite me to her wedding feast. She blushed and said, “That’s rather uncertain. At the moment, my father refuses to give permission for me to marry Da De. It’s not because he doesn’t have money. It’s because he is a Revolutionary.”
Da De said quickly, “I’m going to become a teacher. The Foreign Language Institute is conducting a test to recruit English teachers for the middle schools. My mother has already put my name down for it.”
In July, an earthquake registering 8 on the Richter scale hit Tangshan, an industrial and mining city in North China. There was no warning because the State Bureau of Seismology was embroiled in a new round of power struggles and its work was completely paralyzed. The city was 80 percent destroyed, and over a million inhabitants died or were severely wounded. The quake area included both Beijing and Tianjin, where, though casualties were not heavy, houses collapsed and thousands were rendered homeless. As the news of the earthquake spread all over the country, rumors of government ineptitude spread with it. At the same time, based upon intensive observation of animal and insect behavior, new and worse earthquakes in many parts of China were predicted. Frantically, the people in cities built temporary shelters, covering every inch of available space with makeshift huts of every shade and description. Everybody lived in a state of hysteria while waiting helplessly for disaster. In Shanghai, the Residents’ Committee organized earthquake drills, and everybody was told to sleep with their doors open. There were false alarms when I stood with the Zhus in the garden in my pajamas waiting for earthquakes that never came. It was while the nation was thus preoccupied that Mao Zedong died in September.
Da De had, in the meantime, passed the test for middle school English teachers and had been assigned to teach twelve-year-olds in a school not far from where I lived. After the excitement of being a Red Guard and a Revolutionary, Da De found his new life tedious and dull. Although our regular lessons had ceased, he continued to drop in for a chat. He found in me a willing listener, and he knew that since I knew no one of political consequence, his words would not get back to Party men who mattered to him politically. Soon after Mao died he came to see me.
That afternoon, a memorial meeting for Mao was held at Tiananmen Square, attended by half a million representatives of workers, peasants, and soldiers. From the platform Hua Guofeng, in his capacity as the first vice-chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, read the memorial speech. Beside him were Vice-Chairman Wang Hongwen in military uniform and Jiang Qing in dramatic black mourning clothes that covered her from head to toe. Our Residents’ Committee organized people to view the proceedings at the homes of those with television sets. I was told to join the Zhus downstairs.
After the TV program from Beijing, we watched the Shanghai memorial meeting for Mao conducted by Ma Tianshui, who was a deputy of Zhang Chunqiao, the official head of the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee. Before the Cultural Revolution, Ma was a junior vice-mayor of Shanghai. He joined the radicals after the so-called January Revolution when the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries toppled the old Shanghai municipal government and Party Secretariat. Over the years, Ma Tianshui became a trusted servant of the radical leaders, taking over the day-today administration of Shanghai while Zhang Chunqiao remained in Beijing. The Shanghai memorial meeting was held at the People’s Square and timed to follow the Beijing meeting.
Mrs. Zhu’s television set was tiny, but she turned up the sound so that everybody in the room could at least hear the speeches. Normally, according to Communist Party tradition, Ma Tianshui’s speech should have been similar to the speech given by Hua Guofeng, if not a complete repetition word by word. Therefore, I was surprised to notice that Ma Tianshui’s speech differed from the one made by Hua Guofeng in two important aspects. First, Ma said, “We must carry on with Chairman Mao’s already decided policy,” while Hua Guofeng made no mention of any “already decided policy.” Second, Hua Guofeng quoted a well-known statement Mao had made during the Cultural Revolution: “We want Marxism, not revisionism. We want unity, not dissension. We want to be open and aboveboard, not scheming and intriguing.” Ma Tianshui had not mentioned it.
When the program was over, I thanked Mrs. Zhu and went upstairs. Soon afterwards, Da De came. He had watched the TV program at his school.
“Why didn’t Ma Tianshui make a speech exactly the same as Chairman Hua’s?” I asked him. “What did Ma Tianshui mean by ‘already decided policy’?”
“The ‘already decided policy’ is for Comrade Jiang Qing to become Chairman Mao’s successor, of course,” Da De said.
“Do you mean to say that Chairman Mao decided that before he died?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“If Chairman Mao wanted his wife to succeed him, why did he give Hua Guofeng the note that said, ‘With you in charge, my mind is at ease’?” I asked him.
“Did any of us actually see the note?”
“It was reproduced in the newspaper,” I reminded him.
“Can you say for sure it was written by Chairman Mao? Can you say for sure there are no other notes?” Da De asked me.
“It can’t be a forgery, surely,” I said, remembering the hard-to-decipher script, obviously written by a shaky hand.
“Towards the end of his life Chairman Mao lost the power of speech. He scribbled many notes, you know,” Da De said.
“Goodness! So nothing is really settled,” I exclaimed.
“Thanks to my future father-in-law’s insistence that I cease to be a Revolutionary, I am out of all of it,” Da De said.
“I have been told you are a captain in the militia. Are you still with that organization?” I asked him.
Da De was surprised by my question. For a moment I thought he was going to deny it. But he quickly recovered and said with an embarrassed smirk, “I suppose the Zhus told you. As a teacher, I’m now an intellectual. I don’t qualify for the militia anymore.”
“How did you qualify when you were an unemployed youth?”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly an unemployed youth.”
“You told me you were.”
“It was a lie. I was told to lie to you.”
“Did you have a job with a government organization?”
“Sort of. I was only a messenger. Temporary messenger, you might call it. Didn’t you once tell me that unimportant people in unimportant jobs are often called small potatoes? Well, I was just a very small potato.”
“Were you a small potato with the group dealing with the case of the so-called conspiracy of foreign firms and government departments?”
He nodded.
“Did you really believe there was a conspiracy?”
“At first.” Da De looked at me beseechingly and said, “Don’t you understand? I was told so by people I trusted. They claimed they had evidence against you and the foreign companies. But as time went on and I got to know you, I realized the whole thing was really a plot. You became a victim of the power struggle within the Communist Party, like so many other people, including me. I missed going to college and wasted all these years of my life. I became a sort of tool of those who had power over me.”
“Now you are out of it all. The case is shelved and you have become a teacher.”
“Correct.”
“Did they let you go with good grace? Were they not annoyed that you wanted to marry a girl from a capitalist family?”
Da De laughed and said, “You haven’t a clue what those people are like. They are only too glad that they don’t have to find a job for me. My usefulness is over. They were pleased to get rid of me. And some of them actually envy me because I am marrying a girl with the prospect of getting a large sum of money. Why do you think people want to get involved in political struggles? To get better jobs, of course. And better jobs mean better living conditions and more pay. There is no way one can get ahead in China except through taking part in political struggles.”
“Please tell me how my daughter died and who killed her. Did they do it for money?” I tried to keep bitterness out of my voice.
He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Haven’t you been told that she committed suicide?”
“I don’t believe it. Do you think I should believe it?”
“Her death was not intended. They overdid it, I was told. It was really an accident,” Da De said. After a few minutes, he added, “I’m sorry. Please believe me, I’m terribly sorry it happened.”
“Do you mean to say the men who abducted her weren’t ordered to kill her but they did? Isn’t that what you are saying?”
Da De nodded.
“Why was she abducted?”
Da De was reluctant to tell me at first. But after a long hesitation, he said, “It’s the usual formula. Someone thought she should be made to denounce you since you were so stubborn at the detention house and refused to confess.”
“What has happened to her murderers?”
“They are around.”
“Are they in senior government positions?”
“I can’t tell you any more. I have already said too much.”
“I’m going to write a petition to the People’s Court to request an investigation of my daughter’s death. I want those men brought to justice.”
“It’s no use. They will be protected. You’ll be ignored. It’s really worse than useless. If you should write a petition now, they would know you do not believe the official version of suicide,” he told me.
“Would they suspect you of having told me things you shouldn’t?”
“They might.”
“I think you should stop coming to see me.”
“Yes, you are right. Perhaps I should not come anymore now that …” Da De did not finish his sentence, but I knew what he was thinking about. Hitherto he had come to see me as a part of his job. Once the case was shelved, he really should have stopped coming.
“I have several eggs. Will you stay for supper? I could make some scrambled eggs.”
“I would like to stay, thank you very much,” Da De said.
We had supper together. After helping me with the washing up, Da De said goodbye. I took 400 yuan from the drawer and said, “Da De, it has been a pleasure knowing you. You are a very intelligent young man. I hope you will have a happy life. This is my wedding present for you. Perhaps you can buy something useful with it.” I handed him the money.
He didn’t say a word, obviously overcome with emotion. After standing there for a moment, he accepted the money from me and left.
