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17
Rehabilitation
FOR SO MANY YEARS I had waited for Mao to die. When I was in prison, I was desperate enough to pray for it to happen. Now that he had really died, I did not know how to proceed. The prospect of having the men responsible for my daughter’s death brought to justice was just as remote as ever.
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While I watched the political scene closely, I resumed regular English lessons for my disabled girl student, who came every other day in the mornings. Crippled from childhood by poliomyelitis, she had been barred from regular schools but had learned to read and write from her mother, who was a nurse in a large hospital. After our lessons, she would thank me politely, pick up her crutches, and slowly make her way down the stairs and out into the street to return home on foot.
As I watched her struggling with her disability, I could not help thinking of the irony of life in China. The misfortune of her illness had insulated her from the mainstream of Chinese life and protected her from the political experiments of Mao Zedong. But healthy and normal young people, including my daughter, were led by the Great Helmsman on a twisted road of frustration and anguish as they struggled to become a part of Mao’s socialist new society. Scores of them like my daughter had died, while others, including ex-Red Guards like Da De, had been victimized. Being disabled, my student did not go to school and was bypassed in the agonizing search for China’s destiny. Consequently she was mercifully spared.
My student hoped to become an English teacher at a secondary school, as Da De had done, to earn a living for herself.
“I can’t depend on my mother all my life. She’ll retire soon. My teacher’s salary would be a great help to supplement her pension,” she said to me when she asked me to help her prepare for the teacher’s examination.
Teaching her became my main occupation. But I was watching and waiting for an opportunity to petition the People’s Government to investigate the death of my daughter. I had long ago made a draft of the petition I wanted to send and had written it in the language of socialist China. Since then I had looked at it many times, changing a word here and adding a sentence there. The question was when and to which organization I should submit the petition.
On the morning of October 8, I awoke at my usual hour of six o’clock. I opened the door to the balcony and saw that it was a fine, crisp autumn morning with a few tufts of white cloud floating in the blue sky. Looking down, I saw my disabled student standing outside the front gate. When she saw me, she gestured for me to come down.
Quietly I went down the stairs, walked to the front gate, and opened it. My student’s visit to me at this early hour was most unusual. I thought it best not to disturb the Zhus. When I stepped outside, she came close to me and whispered, “I’ve been waiting for you. I don’t want the Zhus to know I’m here, so I didn’t knock on the door. My brother in the militia was called suddenly for emergency muster last night. There is going to be a war. I thought I should warn you to stay at home.”
I looked up and down the street and saw that it was deserted. I asked her, “War? War with whom?”
“I don’t know. Last night several men came and told my brother to go with them immediately. They told my mother that the militia had been put on alert. We are not supposed to tell this to anyone. But my mother and I thought I ought to come and warn you, as you are alone.”
I thanked her and watched her hobble away before returning to my apartment.
The news brought by my student was really extraordinary, I thought. I could not imagine any country attacking China or China initiating an armed conflict against any country at this time. Yet she had told me that the militia had been put on alert.
I had a Shanghai-made transistor radio. Sometimes at night when the weather was good, I could get international news bulletins from either the BBC or the Voice of America if I pressed my ear right against the set and listened carefully. I took the radio to the bathroom, closed the window and door, flushed the toilet to cover the initial noise of the shortwave, and switched on the set. Apart from static, I could not get anything at all. When A-yi came, I questioned her about conditions at the market. She made her usual complaint about shortages. I tuned the radio to the local station, hoping that if there was an announcement I would not miss it. Then I took out my notebook and spent the morning copying down and reciting Tang dynasty poems, a wonderful occupation, I had found, to take myself away from my immediate surroundings.
The day passed uneventfully. After supper, I heard Mrs. Zhu calling me in the garden. When I went to the balcony, she told me that the Residents’ Committee had called a meeting; we were to go over immediately. I hastily picked up my stool and joined her to walk across the street.
The room was packed, and the atmosphere was rather tense. It was so unusual for the Residents’ Committee to call a meeting at night that people sensed something extraordinary had happened. Everyone waited expectantly for enlightenment. There was none of the usual whispering and yawning; even the smokers were refraining from lighting their cigarettes.
After everybody had arrived, a middle-aged official of the District Party Committee got up and read a resolution passed by the Politburo. The gist of it was that “revolutionary action” had been taken on October 6 by the 8341 Regiment stationed at Zhongnanhai (the Central South Sea, former winter palace of the Manchu emperors, at present homes and offices of the Party Politburo members) to arrest Jiang Qing and her three close associates, known collectively as “the Gang of Four.” The document said the decision to take action had been made by the acting chairman of the Central Committee, Hua Guofeng, with the agreement of the defense minister and senior statesman of the Communist Party, Ye Jianying. The arrest followed a Polit buro meeting at which the decision had been approved unanimously, in order to preserve Party unity and prevent the disruption of the work of building socialism. The statement claimed that when Mao was alive he had already perceived the problem presented by the Gang of Four and had declared that it must be resolved. This part of the resolution seemed to me solely for the purpose of forestalling criticism that punitive action was taken against Mao’s widow only twenty-six days after his death by men who had cooperated with her while Mao was alive. The wording of the document stopped just short of claiming that Hua Guofeng was carrying out Mao’s orders when he arrested Mao’s widow.
The resolution was not long. As soon as it was read, we were told that since it was late, discussions would take place next time. We could go home. There were no cheers, no boos. Nobody said a word. We trooped out of the room just as we had come in—with passive faces, heads slightly bowed to avoid unwittingly speaking with our eyes, moving slowly so as not to show excitement. We behaved as if we had no feelings one way or another because we were afraid. The news we had just heard was too startling, almost unbelievable. We were accustomed to sudden reverses of policy by the Party, but nothing like this had ever happened before. To play safe, it was best not to appear to react. Besides, Shanghai was in the hands of the radicals, as we all knew. Most of the local officials were their followers. Perhaps even the man who read the document to us was a Jiang Qing appointee. Shanghai people were wily; they did not wish to risk trouble by untimely laughter or cheers.
Mrs. Zhu and I walked home together in silence, each with her own thoughts. When we opened the front gate, we saw her militia son standing on the terrace.
“You are home already?” asked the mother.
“Yes, it’s all over,” answered the son.
I entered my part of the house and locked the door. As I walked up the stairs, I started to smile. By the time I entered my room, I was thanking God fervently. But I cautioned myself not to be overoptimistic. Obviously the arrest of the Gang of Four was the result of a power struggle within the Party leadership. It did not necessarily mean that Hua Guofeng was going to repudiate the policy of Mao. I very seriously doubted he knew any other way to govern China. Nevertheless I spent a restless night speculating on the future and composing petitions seeking my own rehabilitation and the investigation of my daughter’s death.
Next morning, Mrs. Zhu told me that Lu Ying had called. “There is going to be a city wide parade in support of the Politburo resolution to arrest the Gang of Four. We are to assemble this afternoon at two o’clock at the Residents’ Committee office to pick up flags and slogans,” Mrs. Zhu informed me.
I had never taken part in a parade before. The very idea of marching in formation carrying little flags and shouting slogans was abhorrent to me. I resented being herded and used in such a manner; I considered it an infringement on my privacy, if not an attempt to compromise my personal dignity. Of course, I had been able to maintain such a lofty stance all these years simply because no one had asked me to take part in a parade. Now that I was told to join one, I suddenly found it difficult to put my objections into language others could understand. While I hesitated, wondering how best to refuse, Mrs. Zhu added rather impatiently, “You will come, of course. Everybody is joining in. No one wants to be taken for a supporter of the Gang of Four, you know.”
“I don’t think I can walk nonstop for several hours,” I said rather lamely.
“We old ladies are required only to parade in our own district. It won’t be for more than an hour, Lu Ying told me.”
Wouldn’t it be a great joke if the radicals in Shanghai who, Da De told me, “hated my guts” were to turn against the Gang of Four and denounce me because I refused to join a parade to demonstrate the Shanghai people’s support for their arrest? The nimble-footed Party activists were very good at assuming new stances when the Party suddenly reversed its course. Many of them were known to hop right on the new bandwagon and become the guiding light for new directions, though of course there were some inevitable casualties. I realized I had no alternative. I had to take part in this parade, my very first and, I hoped, my last.
The Residents’ Committee ladies must have worked very hard overnight to get the flags and slogans prepared. When I got to the committee premises at two o’clock, they were piled high on the table, ready for paraders to pick up. Lu Ying told me to line up with the ladies who generally sat in our corner. It was the shortest line and the quietest. Nearly all of us and our families had been victims of the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps we had more reason to rejoice than the retired workers, the members of their families, and the young people waiting for employment. But none of us was even smiling. We had been knocked about, kicked around, and told so often that we did not belong but were merely tolerated in the shining new society of socialism that we no longer felt a part of what went on around us. We knew that in the eyes of good Communists we were an ill omen and harbingers of dangerous ideas, so that we had to be consigned to permanent isolation. Even in a parade, we had to be organized in a formation of our own. However, under our seemingly wooden exterior of unconcern, there was in fact a heightened sense of alertness born of the instinct for self-preservation.
The parade started. Our contingent brought up the rear. As we passed through the door to go into the street, each of us accepted a paper slogan attached to a bamboo stick. Mine was a simple message saying, “Down with Jiang Qing.” In the street, we halted for a moment to be addressed by a young activist. He told us that he would walk beside our group; whenever he shouted slogans from his sheet of paper, we were to repeat them after him. Then several young people with red banners, flags, drums, and gongs took up position at the head of the column. At a signal from the young activist, we started marching four abreast, shouting slogans after him. The contingent of workers and youths soon left us to join other paraders in the center of the city; we remained circling the area in which I lived.
We met a group similar to ours from a neighboring Residents’ Committee. Otherwise we just walked through the quiet, shabby streets without attracting attention or creating a stir. Perhaps we did not have revolutionary charisma; our demonstration was definitely not a success. The young activist gave up on us after a little over an hour, and we were allowed to return to the empty Residents’ Committee office. There we hastily laid down our slogans and fled home, not waiting for further orders.
“Did you know we were nearly in a civil war?” Mrs. Zhu asked me after we gained the seclusion of our garden and closed the front gate.
“Really? When?” I asked her.
“The militia was mobilized and issued weapons. They were to march to Beijing to rescue Jiang Qing. But news of a possible uprising leaked out. The regular army surrounded the city. They had to give up. My son told me it was touch and go.”
“It’s lucky he didn’t have to fight,” I said.
“Indeed. Wouldn’t it have been tragic if our son had died for Jiang Qing after what we went through during the Cultural Revolution?” she said.
Soon afterwards I heard that the radical leaders in the city had been removed from office. Some people said they were taken into custody pending investigation; others said they were merely confined in a special place to write confessions that would be used against the Gang of Four at a public trial. Not long after these rumors, new leaders were appointed to head the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee and Party Secretariat. These men’s fate during the Cultural Revolution had been very similar to that of Hua Guofeng. They had suffered denunciation by the Red Guards in the initial sweep but were soon reinstated and “came to the side of Chairman Mao’s correct policy line.” This phrase meant that they had confessed and denounced Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. After that, they were given positions as senior officials and collaborated with the radical faction headed by Jiang Qing. Their appointment was symbolic of Hua Guofeng’s brief four years in power, during which no real change of policy took place and radicals occupying official positions at the base level were not removed.
The Eleventh Party Congress was held in August 1977, while the entire country was engrossed in a campaign of denunciation against the Gang of Four. At this Party Congress, Hua Guofeng reached the zenith of his power. Not only was he elected chairman of the Party’s Central Committee but he also became the chairman of the Party’s Military Commission, the official commander in chief of China’s armed forces. His portrait now hung side by side with that of Mao Zedong in public places. In the newspaper reports, he was referred to as “Wise Leader Chairman Hua” to differentiate him from the late “Great Leader.” Clearly a new personality cult was in the making, carefully promoted by the remaining radicals in the Party and government, who saw in Hua Guofeng a possible protective shield for their survival.
The Party Congress reaffirmed that it would “hold high the great red flag of Mao Zedong Thought,” and Hua Guofeng pledged that he would carry out “all Chairman Mao’s policies” and obey “all Chairman Mao’s directives.”
At the same time, the Party Congress named the commander of the 8341 Regiment responsible for the arrest of the Gang of Four, Wang Dongxing, a vice-chairman of the Central Committee. It was a reward for his contribution to Jiang Qing’s downfall. It was said that the three men of the Gang were told to attend an urgent Politburo meeting and were arrested upon their arrival at the meeting hall. But Jiang Qing had refused to attend. Wang Dongxing had to go to her home and personally put the handcuffs on her.
Wang Dongxing was a longtime bodyguard of Mao. He was given command of the ten-thousand-man 8341 Regiment guarding Mao and other Politburo members living at Zhongnanhai because of his loyalty and devotion to Mao. It was said that his most outstanding service to Mao was bringing to his master’s attention an exceptionally beautiful woman, Zhang Yufeng (Jade Phoenix), whom he placed on Mao’s special train. She became Mao’s concubine and was given the official title “secretary in charge of daily life.”
Zhang Yufeng was the last of a succession of young females who had shared Mao’s bed. The Chinese people knew but never dared to talk about the fact that their “Great Leader” was a womanizer. In his dotage, the self-styled successor of Marx and Lenin, and the symbol of progress and enlightenment, believed, as some Chinese emperors had believed, that sexual liaisons with young virgins enhanced longevity in an old man.
Hua Guofeng was not a strong ruler. Relatively junior in the echelons of power, and until recently almost unknown to the public and the Party rank and file, he had neither grass-roots support nor a group of trusted administrative assistants to place in key positions. Without such a power base he could not rule effectively.
During 1977, China was in effect split into pockets of power controlled by local military commanders and Revolutionaries who interpreted Mao Zedong Thought in their own way and ignored directives from Beijing. At the same time the country was paralyzed by economic stagnation. The people had lost confidence in the Party as they watched ten years of infighting and listened to the official denunciations of one leader after another.
The arrest of the Gang of Four was like the lifting of the tight lid of a boiling cauldron. Very quickly it overflowed. People with grievances came out to demand redress. There were demonstrations and protests by both individuals and groups. Crowds gathered outside government offices, sometimes all night long, waiting to be received by reluctant officials. Buildings were besieged. Angry young people exiled to the rural areas demanded the right to return to the cities. The walls of public buildings were covered with Big Character Posters relating personal tragedies and demanding justice. These were eagerly read by the people, who added large posters with stories of their own grievances.
At the second plenum of the Central Committee, Hua Guofeng made two concessions. He agreed to the demand made by Ye Jianying and other members of the old guard to rehabilitate Deng Xiaoping and appoint him a vice-premier. And he promised that the Party and government would review all cases of victims of the Cultural Revolution.
I made many trips and wrote many petitions to the People’s Court, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Public Security Bureau. This activity lasted the whole of 1977. Though the junior officials appointed to receive the public and hear their petitions at the Prosecutor’s Office listened with patience to my story, all they said to me each time was that I must write everything down and send in my report. There was no response from either the People’s Court or the Public Security Bureau. In short, I was getting nowhere at all. The crowds I had met waiting outside those places fared no better than I did.
In March 1978, a man from the Public Security Bureau came to see me, accompanied by Lao Li from my local police station.
After they were seated, the middle-aged man in a faded blue Mao suit leaned forward, looked at me earnestly, and, with a frown on his brow, said, “I’m from the Public Security Bureau. You have sent many letters and petitions to both the Public Security Bureau and the Prosecutor’s Office, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I’ve sent a few petitions,” I said.
“Not a few”—he shook his head—“a great many!” The frown on his brow deepened as he added, “Why did you have to write so often? Don’t you trust the People’s Government? Have you no patience at all?”
The man spoke to me irritably. Lao Li fixed his gaze on the floor. Neither of them touched the tea A-yi had brought them.
“It’s over eleven years since I was wrongfully arrested, and it is over ten years since my daughter was murdered. I think I have been very patient. I don’t mind telling you that while I trust the Communist Party and the People’s Government, my confidence in some individual officials who claim to represent the government has been severely shaken by my experience during the Cultural Revolution,” I said to him firmly.
“I have come here today to tell you to stop writing petitions. In due course your case will be reviewed, since it is the policy of the Party and government to review all cases of the Cultural Revolution.”
“How much longer will I have to wait?” I asked him.
“Do you know how many cases we have to deal with in Shanghai? Ten thousand people died unnaturally in this city. Their deaths were all related directly or indirectly to the Gang of Four and their followers. Many times that number were imprisoned. Many are still detained. Our first priority must be to examine these cases immediately and to release the innocent people. Then we will examine the cases of those who are out of prison and are still living, like yourself. After that we will come to the cases of those who are dead, like your daughter. There are many people working very hard to clarify all the cases. You must wait patiently. We’ll get to you and your daughter eventually.”
What he said seemed reasonable. I had not realized the magnitude of the problem facing the officials charged with reviewing the cases.
“It’s good of you to take time off to visit me today. I want to thank you and the government you represent. I must say your visit has somewhat restored my confidence. You are very different from the officials I have had to deal with during the past ten years.”
“Of course I’m different. I’ve only recently been rehabilitated myself,” the man said with a twist of his mouth that might have been a bitter smile.
“If you have experienced persecution yourself, you understand how I feel.”
“Of course I understand. But when you think of your own losses and suffering, try to think of the losses and suffering of others too. Think of the Party leaders who fought and sacrificed for the Revolution all their lives, such as Liu Shaoqi, Peng Dehuai, He Long, … and many others who died in tragic circumstances. And think of cadres like myself who joined the Party during the War of Resistance against Japan and worked hard for the Party without any consideration of personal gain. Because I did not fall in with the wishes of the Gang of Four, I was accused of having an anti-Party attitude and put in jail. Do you know that Mrs. Liu Shaoqi has only recently been released from prison? You must try to see the whole situation and put your own problems in perspective,” he told me.
I looked at this man seated in front of me and wondered what his true feeling for the Party was now. The cuffs of his faded blue cotton jacket were frayed, and his black cloth shoes were worn. His face was pale and thin. He had had a hard life; his appearance showed it. Dedicated lower-middle-ranking officials like this man were the foundation of the power of the Communist Party. When their faith in the Party was shaken, the Party could not govern effectively. No matter how correct or timely the policy decided upon by the Politburo in Beijing, its success or failure depended on officials like this man who implemented the policy.
“I’m grateful to you for coming. I shall not write any more petitions but will wait patiently for you to get in touch with me again,” I told him.
The man seemed pleased that he had accomplished his mission. When the two took their leave, I followed them to the front gate and saw the man from the Public Security Bureau get on his old rusty bicycle and ride away.
I was reassured by the official’s visit. It seemed my petitions had reached their destination and in due course I would be rehabilitated. At the same time, I also realized that I would be granted rehabilitation simply because the policy of the Party had changed. It had nothing to do with redressing injustice. In fact, in newspaper reports and in the documents concerning the review of cases, the word “justice” was never mentioned. When the Gang of Four was accused of committing crimes against the Party, the government, and the people, “crimes” referred not to their breaking the law but to their perverting the Party’s policy to further their own ambition. In Communist China, there was no law independent of Party policy.
A few months later, in the summer of 1978, eleven years after my daughter had been killed by the Revolutionaries, three members of the Shanghai Film Studio called on me.
“We have come on behalf of the newly reestablished Party Secretariat of the film studio to offer you our condolences for the death of your daughter and our fellow worker Cheng Meiping,” said the middle-aged man who introduced himself as the head of the personnel department.
The retired actress who had been Meiping’s teacher at the film school took my hands in hers and with tears in her eyes said, “All of us were terribly sad. We want you to know that we feel deeply for you.” The once famous actress, a graduate of Yanan’s Lu Xun Art Institute, looked at me as if a camera were on hand to record the scene. Although I had not met her until that moment, I knew that she was the wife of the assistant director of the Shanghai Film Studio.
The third person, a young man, introduced himself and said, “I was Meiping’s classmate at the film school. I have come on behalf of her former schoolfriends at the studio to express our sympathy.”
I invited them to be seated, and A-yi brought them tea. The director of personnel said to me, “Wang Kun here is on the committee to review all the cases of the film studio. We have had twenty-nine cases of death. Many others, including some of our foremost artists, were denounced as counterrevolutionaries and imprisoned. There is a lot of work to be done to review all these cases.”
“How did my daughter die? Who was responsible for her death? Do you know?” I asked all of them.
The young man named Wang Kun said, “We hope to get the cooperation of the Public Security Bureau to work on her case, because it involved people outside the film studio.”
“How long do you think the investigation will take?” I asked him.
“We are working very hard. Government policy is very clear. We must clarify every case, and where a mistake was made we must correct it,” Wang Kun said.
“Today we have come to convey to you the condolences of the film studio and to tell you that we are concerned for you,” the wife of the assistant director said to me. “If you have financial difficulty, you are entitled to assistance by the film studio.”
I thought her offer of assistance so many years after my release from prison rather hypocritical, but I realized she had been instructed by the Party secretary to make it. I said politely, “Thank you very much. I have no difficulties at all.” Then I addressed all three of them. “I hope it will not be too long before you will be able to bring the killer of my daughter to justice.”
“The real culprit is the Gang of Four. We must direct our anger against them,” said the personnel director in the tone of voice all Chinese bureaucrats used when they were embarrassed.
“That’s true, of course. But the man who actually committed the murder must be brought to justice,” I said.
“According to our records, your daughter committed suicide. Until we find evidence to the contrary, we must not assume her death was due to any other cause.” The personnel director obviously did not want to hear me say my daughter was “murdered.”
Perhaps Wang Kun saw that I was getting angry, for he said quickly, “I would like to come and talk to you again very soon. When would it be convenient?”
“Any afternoon would be all right,” I told him.
They got up to leave. The wife of the assistant director again expressed her sadness at my daughter’s death. Either her emotion was genuine, or she was an extremely good actress; she made me cry with her.
Wang Kun came to see me several times. Gradually I came to realize he was trying to prepare me to accept the rehabilitation document the film studio had already drafted. From my point of view, this document was not satisfactory because it failed to state clearly how my daughter had died. While it no longer insisted on the verdict of suicide, it merely said that she “died as a result of persecution.” I was sure someone somewhere was trying to protect my daughter’s murderer. I fought for the clarification of this point with the film studio to no avail. Wang Kun merely told me that politics was a complicated matter and the time was not yet ripe to get to the bottom of many things.
While I was still arguing with the Shanghai Film Studio, representatives of the Public Security Bureau called on me again in October 1978. There were three of them, including the man who had come with Lao Li to tell me to stop writing petitions.
Pointing to his associates a short man of about fifty and a young woman, he said to me, “This is Director Han, and this is Xiao Li.”
“We have come on behalf of the People’s Government to apologize to you for the wrongful arrest and imprisonment you suffered during the Cultural Revolution. We also wish to extend you our condolences for the death of your daughter as a result of persecution,” said Director Han in an official manner.
I invited them to be seated. Xiao Li took out her notebook to transcribe our conversation, as all official visits had to be put on record.
“I appreciate your coming today. There is no need to apologize. I feel no resentment against the People’s Government. It was obvious to me that followers of the Gang of Four usurped the power of the government and put many innocent people, including myself, in prison. What I’m really concerned with is the fact that those responsible for my daughter’s death have not been brought to justice,” I said.
“You must trust the People’s Government and the Security Bureau,” the first man said.
“We have come today mainly to discuss your own rehabilitation,” Director Han said. “We have read the record of your interrogations at the Number One Detention House. You were very brave when you defended the late chairman of the People’s Republic, Liu Shaoqi. You spoke up for him when even veteran Party officials were too timid and afraid to speak up. You will be pleased to know that very soon Chairman Liu Shaoqi’s name will be completely cleared by a Politburo resolution.”
“I’m very glad the power to control the affairs of our country has once again returned to leaders who will pursue the correct line of Mao Zedong Thought,” I said diplomatically.
The first man took a sheet of paper from his bag and laid it on the table. “This is the draft of your rehabilitation document. We would like to hear your opinion and suggestions before making it official.”
The document gave my name, age, and other particulars before stating that my arrest on September 27, 1966, and subsequent detention was a mistake. Investigation by the committee charged with reviewing all cases of the Cultural Revolution had found me not guilty of any crime. Therefore, I must be rehabilitated according to the policy of the People’s Government. I told them that I found the wording satisfactory.
“This document will be made official and given to the Residents’ Committee. It will be read at one of their general meetings,” Director Han said.
“Soon you will hear from the committee in charge of frozen bank accounts. Your deposits will be returned to you with interest,” said the first man.
“I’ll just accept the original sum. Since the country is having economic difficulties, I would rather not accept the additional interest,” I told them.
“You will have to accept. It’s government policy,” Director Han said. Then he smiled and changed the subject. “Do you know I was rehabilitated and reinstated to my old job only a few months ago? I was imprisoned for three years. I didn’t get the special food you were given in the Number One Detention House, you know.”
“As I told you before, I feel no resentment about what happened to me. During the six and a half years I was at the Number One Detention House I had much time to study and to think. I have learned a great deal. But I do feel deeply disappointed that greater efforts have not been made by the Public Security Bureau to resolve the crime committed against my daughter and to bring the murderer to justice.”
I addressed the above remarks directly to Director Han. But he refused to be drawn into a discussion of my daughter’s case. He went on, “You were given very special consideration at the detention house, you know. The special food, the medical treatment, etc. If you had remained outside, perhaps you wouldn’t have survived the Cultural Revolution.”
It was really incredible, I thought, that this man could be trying to make me say I was grateful to the Party and the People’s Government for putting me in prison. All the bureaucrats of the Party seemed to have an insatiable appetite for hearing words of gratitude from the people, even when they knew those words could not have been sincere. It was as if they needed reassurance that even when things went very wrong there was something good about the system after all. Perhaps it would have been diplomatic if I had spoken as he hoped and agreed with him. But I had been too wounded by my suffering and by the death of my daughter to go that far. I remained silent.
For an awkward moment, he waited for me to speak. Finally they took their leave.
I accompanied them to the front gate. As I opened it, I said to them all, “I would like to thank you again for coming today. I will wait for you to notify me when my rehabilitation document is finalized. And I would like to repeat my request that those responsible for my daughter’s death be brought to justice.”
In November 1978, twelve years and two months after my arrest, I was officially rehabilitated and declared a victim of wrongful arrest and persecution. The rehabilitation document was read at a meeting of the Residents’ Committee. Then I was given back my bank deposits. Soon after that, the Shanghai Film Studio held a series of memorial meetings for the twenty-nine members of their staff who had died from persecution. Except for my daughter, the others were nearly all old artists who had known Jiang Qing during the thirties when she was a struggling actress in Shanghai. Among them were film directors who had refused to cast Jiang Qing in parts she coveted, actresses more talented and successful than she, and men with whom she had had love affairs.
The memorial meeting for Meiping, held at Longhua Crematorium, was attended by over two hundred of her friends and fellow artists, as well as representatives from the Shanghai Cultural Affairs Department and the Bureau of Motion Pictures. These two organizations and the film studio also sent wreaths in the name of the directors and the organizations. Kong and other schoolfriends of Meiping’s decorated the hall. Although the growing of fresh flowers had only recently been revived in the rural areas around Shanghai, they managed to get enough to fill the front part of the hall, where an enlarged photograph of Meiping in a heavy black frame was placed. The rest of the hall was filled with evergreens and wreaths made of paper flowers.
The ceremony was simple and dignified. Meiping’s teacher, the wife of the assistant director of the film studio, made the memorial speech, in which she recounted the story of Meiping’s short life of twenty-four years, emphasizing the fact that Meiping had received many citations for outstanding achievement and service to other people. The veteran actress delivered the speech with feeling and sincerity, and she moved the audience to tears. The sound of sobbing could be heard throughout the proceedings, and at times it drowned the mourning music played on a tape in the background. At the end of her speech, led by the officials, everybody came up to bow to Meiping’s photograph and to shake hands with me to express personal regret at Meiping’s death.
Soon it was all over. Kong accompanied me home in the same car the film studio had sent to pick me up. Even as we were leaving, the organization that was to use the hall after us was already there unloading wreaths from a truck. Kong told me that all the auditoriums at the crematorium had been booked well into 1980. To accommodate as many memorial meetings as possible in the course of one day, two hours were allowed for each organization using the hall. In the following year, with more and more cases being clarified and more and more deceased being rehabilitated, it became necessary to combine memorial meetings for several members of the same organization.
Kong carried Meiping’s photograph upstairs into my room and took his leave. A-yi brought me a cup of tea. I told her to go home, as I wanted to be alone.
That night, I could not sleep. Lying in the darkened room, I remembered the years that had gone by, and I saw my daughter in various stages of her growth from a chubby-cheeked baby in Canberra, Australia, to a beautiful young woman in Shanghai. I felt defeated because I could do nothing to overcome the obstacles that prevented the complete clarification of her case. I blamed myself for her death because I had brought her back to Shanghai from Hong Kong in 1949. How could I have failed to see the true nature of the Communist regime when I had read so many books on the Soviet Union under Stalin? I asked myself.
Next morning, the newspaper printed a report of the memorial meetings of the film studio. Meiping was listed among the dead artists. The news of my own rehabilitation also spread as a result. During the following month of December and over the New Year holiday period, I had many visitors. Relatives who had kept their distance and avoided my daughter and me when our lives were under a cloud now claimed me as their dearest and nearest. They told me that they had worried about me and cried for Meiping. Some of them offered to live with me and take care of me, while others nominated their children for me to adopt so that I would not be childless. None of them attempted to explain why they had not shown us sympathy or given us help when we needed it. They felt no remorse for neglecting us, partly because some of them had had difficulties of their own and partly because they had behaved in exactly the same manner as millions of other Chinese living under the shadow of Mao Zedong. They thought I would understand.
Even minus a large sum that had somehow got lost after the Red Guards took my money away, the money returned to me from bank deposits was more than I could possibly use. Through the Party secretary of the Residents’ Committee I learned that the Federation of Women had started a program to rebuild nursery schools and day-care centers that had been destroyed by the Red Guards. To help young working couples with small children seemed a worthy cause. I gave the Party secretary a donation of 60,000 yuan (about $40,000 at the exchange rate of 1978). And I distributed cash gifts to my husband’s and my own relatives, the young people who had helped me after my release from prison, my old servants, and widows of former Shell staff members who had died since the Cultural Revolution. To absorb the large amount of cash that had been returned to the people, the government released on the market such household appliances as refrigerators and television sets imported from Japan, and organized a travel agency to offer sightseeing trips to scenic spots. The prices charged were very high. For instance, a twenty-inch Hitachi television set was priced at over 2,000 yuan. But the Shanghai people, starved for consumer goods, eagerly bought them. As for those who had large sums returned, they went on a spending spree.
On New Year’s Day, 1979, China and the United States established diplomatic relations. This development triggered a terrific vogue for studying English. When I went to the public park to join a class for taijiquan exercise in the mornings, I saw young people on the benches, on the lawn, and in the pavilions reading English textbooks or spelling English words aloud. The daily English lessons broadcast by the Voice of America became very popular. The young people boldly purchased powerful radio sets and tuned in. The fact that they also listened to the News Bulletin in Special English following the lessons was incidental. As the government took no action to stop this trend, even people not learning English began to listen openly to the Voice of America broadcasts. To listen to foreign broadcasts had always been taboo in Communist China. Those of us who listened surreptitiously never dared to talk about what we heard, even before the Cultural Revolution. Now people not only listened to the Voice of America but discussed what they heard openly. In the schools, English became the first foreign language taught to the students. Even eight-year-olds were given English lessons. Now when I met the schoolchildren who used to yell, “Spy, imperialist spy!” at me, I was greeted with “good morning” or “good afternoon.”
Early in the New Year, the Party secretary of the English Department of the Foreign Language Institute called on me to offer me a job as a teacher of English.
“I’ve come to invite you to join our department. There is now a great need to teach our young people foreign languages, especially English. We are expanding the department and hiring new teachers,” he declared with a big smile, happy in the knowledge that he and his department had suddenly acquired prominence.
I had already heard that the former Shell doctor had been invited to teach English at the Foreign Language Institute. But I had no intention of getting myself involved and prejudicing my plan of eventual departure from Shanghai. Unemployed, I had a much better chance of getting a passport, for no one would be able to say I was needed for some kind of work and use it as an excuse to deny my application to go abroad. Since I was going to refuse his offer, I thought I should be extra polite to put him in a good mood. “I’m honored by your visit,” I said. “You are the Party secretary of the department, with a lot of responsibility, yet you have taken the time to come to see me yourself rather than sending a deputy. I’m indeed most honored. But I’m afraid I am not well enough to take on a full-time job. I have had rather an unusual experience and a serious operation.”
“I know all about that,” he said. “I have already checked with the Public Security Bureau.”
“Since you have been in touch with the Public Security Bureau, you know I have only recently been rehabilitated. I need time to get my personal affairs in order,” I told him.
“Don’t you want to serve the people?” he asked.
“To serve the people” was perhaps the most publicized slogan of the Chinese Communist Party. It was a phrase taken from an essay Mao Zedong wrote in 1944 to commemorate the death of a Party member, Zhang Side. Whenever the Party wanted a man to do something he did not want to do, the official would ask, “Don’t you want to serve the people?”
It was impossible for me to say that I didn’t want to serve the people. I thought a compromise was in order. “Would you agree to my teaching a few students here at my home?”
“You mean teaching them individually?”
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid we’ve never had that kind of arrangement before. How are we to calculate your pay if you do not come to teach at the institute?”
“I would be quite happy to do it without pay. To serve the people, as you have said.”
After thinking over my proposal for a few moments, he said, “I’ll have to discuss your suggestion with my colleagues. I will let you know what we have decided.”
He took his leave.
I never heard from him again. By offering an alternative he could not accept, I put the ball in his court and saved his face. Instead of my refusing him, he was refusing me. This was the only way to deal with people who hated to be refused.
The newly opened United States consulate general was located on Huaihai Road, a few blocks from the small park where I did my daily taijiquan exercise. On my way to and from the park in the early hours of the morning, I would see people in long lines outside the gate waiting patiently to apply for visas. And my students would bring me news of relatives and friends being given passports to leave the country. The major subject of discussion among young people was no longer how many lovers Jiang Qing had or how many innocent people had been killed during the Cultural Revolution but which Politburo or Central Committee member was sending his sons and daughters to America on the student exchange program. Now that China was welcoming visitors from abroad, overseas Chinese flocked into China to visit their relatives. They brought consumer goods with them as presents and offered to help with the education of family members who had missed going to college because of the Cultural Revolution. To go abroad, especially to go to the United States, became the most prestigious thing to do for young and old alike.
The political situation in China in 1979 was also good. Although Hua Guofeng continued to be the head of both the Party and the government, Deng Xiaoping was expanding his power and more collaborators of the Gang of Four were being ousted from Party leadership. There was an atmosphere of relaxation and hope in the country, reminiscent of the middle fifties, before Mao Zedong clamped down on the intellectuals with the Anti-Rightist Campaign.
I thought I must somehow get a passport before the Party tightened up again. The question was what reason I should give the authorities for my proposed journey abroad. It had to be good enough to ensure approval, because a refusal recorded in my dossier would prejudice future applications.
One night when I tuned in to the Voice of America’s program of international news, I learned that China was applying to the United States for most-favored-nation status. Tucked away somewhere in a corner of my mind was a news item I once saw to the effect that the United States Congress would deny most-favored-nation status to countries that hindered family reunion. This was aimed at the Soviet Union, where a large number of Russian Jews were waiting to go to Israel. But I knew the Chinese Communist Party would take note of this condition. After I had switched off the radio, I thanked God that on this night the voice of the announcer had come through the atmosphere strong and clear so that I did not miss hearing the news. It was something unlikely to be reported in the Chinese press.
I had two sisters in the United States of America. When the Communist army took over China, they were students in American universities. Subsequently they married and settled in the United States. The younger of the two sisters was only a small child when I left home in 1935 to go to England. We had not seen each other for over forty years. My other sister, Helen, had accompanied her husband to Shanghai for a short visit a couple of years ago. Since then, I had maintained a sporadic correspon dence with her. Now I sat down immediately and wrote her a letter requesting her to send me an invitation to visit both my sisters in California for “family reunion.” Helen seemed to understand the situation perfectly. She quickly sent me a suitably worded letter signed by both sisters.
Early in March, when the warm current from the South Pacific began to reach Shanghai and the moisture in the wind reawakened the frozen sycamore trees lining the streets, I walked hopefully to the Xujiahui District Public Security Bureau, where the special office for passport and travel applications was situated. When I reached my destination, I realized that I should have come an hour earlier.
Though it was only a quarter to seven and the office did not open until eight o’clock, there was already a large crowd waiting. By the time the iron gate was opened at half past seven, I found myself in the first third of a long line that wound its way around the block. Slowly the line moved forward as the people were let into the waiting room. I was squeezed behind a young woman just inside the door. The rest of the line waited outside in the courtyard. The large waiting room was packed with people sitting tightly against each other on the narrow benches and standing next to each other in the aisles. Everybody was good-natured. When the door to the office opened at eight, there was no jostling for position. People went in one by one. Some came out with a smile and a blank form in hand. Others came out empty-handed and did not look so happy. After some time, the young woman ahead of me got a seat. As she moved on, I sat down beside her.
“Are you hoping to go abroad?” she whispered to me.
I nodded.
“Which country?” she asked.
“The United States,” I said under my breath.
Her face lit up with a grin. “That’s where I’m going too. To join my father, whom I have never seen. He left in 1949, a month before I was born.”
“Has he sent for you?”
“Yes, he has a restaurant, and he said that he wanted to help me if I was willing to work for him.”
“Have you a job in Shanghai?” I asked her.
“No, I’m waiting for employment. During the Cultural Revolution we had a hard time because my mother had not divorced my father. The Red Guards said my mother was an American spy. She died at the Cadre School. But recently she was rehabilitated,” she said with tears in her eyes.
“I hope you’ll be happy in the United States,” I said.
“I’m rather scared because I’m not sure my stepmother will like me. Do you think the government will let me go?” she asked anxiously.
“Oh, yes. I think you’ll have no difficulty.”
“Have you been to the United States?”
“Yes, a long time ago.”
“What do you think I should do to prepare myself for living there?”
“Study English, if you can find a teacher.”
She nodded and said, “I’m working hard at it now.”
As we chatted, we were moving towards the benches nearer to the door of the inner room. After more waiting, the young woman ahead of me went in. She wasn’t there very long. When she came out, she was smiling. Bending down, she whispered, “I got it,” and showed me the application form in her hand.
“Next!” a voice called from the room. I went in.
A rather stout middle-aged woman was seated behind a desk. There was a chair facing her, and a blank pad and a pencil on the desk. Otherwise the room was bare. She looked to be in an ill temper. It must have been a tedious way to spend a fine morning, interviewing masses of people eager to leave the country under one pretext or another.
“What is it?” she barked at me.
I sat down on the chair facing her and said, “I would like to make an application for a trip to the United States of America to visit my sisters, one of whom I have not seen for forty-four years.”
“Why do you want to visit them?” she said.
“Family reunion. We are getting on in years. We would like to have a family reunion.”
“Can’t they come to Shanghai to see you? Many visitors are coming from the United States,” she said.
“One of my sisters did come with her husband. But the younger sister I haven’t seen for forty-four years is too busy. She can’t spare the time to come.”
“Which is your unit?” she asked.
“I have no unit,” I said. “I’m not working.”
“Which was your unit when you were working?”
“I used to work for a foreign firm before the Cultural Revolution.”
“What’s your name? What’s the name of the foreign firm?”
I told her, and she wrote them down on the pad.
“During the Cultural Revolution I suffered wrongful arrest, but I am now rehabilitated,” I told her.
She wrinkled her brow and stared at me, thinking. I knew she was in a quandary as to how best to deal with me; naturally she did not want to make a mistake. To prevent her from refusing, which would have been final and irrevocable, I said quickly, “I’m known to the senior authority at the Public Security Bureau. Director Han and other officials of the bureau have been to my home. Why don’t you just let me make the application and leave it to them to approve or reject according to the policy of the government?”
After a moment’s consideration, she said, “All right, I’ll give you the application form. When you hand it in, you must present the required documents.”
“I have a letter of invitation from my sisters,” I told her.
“Bring your rehabilitation paper too and your resident’s book,” she said, continuing to stare at me. Her tone of voice had softened considerably since I mentioned Director Han. She must have been wondering how I knew her superior and whether she had not treated me too harshly. With her eyes fixed on my face, she pulled open one of the drawers, took out a form, and handed it to me.
I thanked her and left the room. In the waiting room, everybody watched me eagerly to find out whether I had been given a form. Their concern was later explained to me by one of my students who had been through the same experience. It seemed only a limited number of forms were given out each day. The more people coming out of the interview with forms, the fewer forms left for those waiting.
When I got home, to my surprise, I found the woman had given me an application for a travel document to Hong Kong by mistake. I had to go back to change it for a passport application. I quickly walked back. The waiting crowd kindly allowed me to go to the head of the line after I explained my problem.
The woman was rather disconcerted when I told her that she had given me the wrong form. But she changed it for me without saying anything.
Next morning I carefully filled out the application and handed it in with the required documents. I did not expect to hear from the Public Security Bureau for at least a year, the usual length of time for processing a passport application during 1979. But I also knew cases of people who had to wait several years just for permission to go to Hong Kong, before the Cultural Revolution. In any case, I was fortunate; the woman official did not refuse to give me the application form. If she had refused, there was absolutely nothing I could have done except to give up the whole idea of applying. Although her position in the bureaucratic structure could not have been very senior, the power she was allowed to exercise seemed frighteningly enormous.
