The Red Mirror

Children Of China's Cultural Revolution

Chihua Wen, Bruce Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429972362
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

These evocative stories bring to life the tragic personal impact of the Cultural Revolution on the families of China's intellectuals. Now adults, survivors recall their childhood during the tumultuous years between 1965 and 1976, when Mao's death finally drew a curtain on a bitterly failed social and political experiment.A series of first-person narratives eloquently describes the life-long influence of this seminal period on China's children. Those who were teenagers in the late 1960s joined the Red Guards and the revolutionary rebel groups, following Mao's directives to make revolution, often to their own undoing. Those who were too young to participate directly were even more vulnerable. Although they had little understanding of the political firestorm that engulfed their parents, they were old enough to understand and feel the terror it brought. Vividly capturing the emotional intensity of the time, these stories explore what it was like to be caught up in revolutionary fervor, to be sent to the countryside, to be separated,either ideologically or physically,from one's parents, often forever.By undermining families and family structure, the Cultural Revolution created a generation of Chinese who view politics, the Communist Party, and life itself with deep cynicism. Presenting a spectrum of individual stories of people who saw the Cultural Revolution through the eyes of a child,  The Red Mirror  offers rare insights for understanding the crippling legacy of the Cultural Revolution.

The Stories

Prisoners and Wardens

On the June day I went to interview Xiaoyu, the dust in the hot Beijing air clouded the blue in the sky. The iveather reminded me of a southern California Santa Ana Indian summer, when the hot, dry winds blow off the desert. Riding on my bicycle against the wind, I spent more than an hour getting to her house.

Xiaoyu is a technician at a hospital, and she lives with her husband, a writer, in an apartment provided by her husband's work unit, the Ministry of Culture. When I knocked at the door, it was opened by a tiny, pale woman dressed in a too-large blue dress that seemed to intensify her diminutive frame.

During the interview, she sewed, making a shirt for her nephew from a piece of red-print cloth. She told me that she ivent to work every day, riding her bicycle for an hour and a half, not because there were experiments at the hospital that she had to perform and not because she felt a sense of social responsibility, but simply "because it's my job."

When she talked, she frowned slightly, scrunching her eyebrows together when she got to the diffcult-to-tell parts of her story, her gold, wire-framed glasses slipping down her nose. She appeared tense and mildly depressed even though her tone was clear and calm. Her voice, like her body, had a girlish charm.

I was the baby of our family. I had four older brothers named Xiaogang, Xiaojiang, Xiaobin, and Xiaonan. My oldest brother, Xiaogang, was a freshman at the Number Two University of Foreign Languages in Beijing. Xiaojiang lived near Xiaogang, in a Beijing boarding school. My two youngest brothers lived at home.

Prior to the Cultural Revolution, my father was a highly placed official in the Ministry of Public Security. We lived in a remote suburb some one hundred li [approximately thirty miles] from Beijing, close to the H jail for important political criminals. I frequently watched the prisoners fetching water from the boiler room or laboring in the courtyard.

We were reasonably well-off in those days, with a maid in the family to cook and clean the house for us. A chauffeur drove me to school every day. I was constantly spoiled by everyone in my family. I lived in a child's paradise. I never knew how different my family was until the day my oldest brother was arrested one winter Saturday in 1966.

On the day we learned of his arrest, my mother had come home earlier than usual to help the maid prepare a special dinner for Xiaogang's birthday. Once the dinner was ready and the square table set, we sat down to wait for him to arrive. We waited and waited. The dinner got cold. The maid warmed it up. We began to get worried. Dinner got cold again. It was warmed up again. By now my mother could not cover her anxiety. She kept walking out of the house, expecting to see my brother coming down the road. When the clock standing by the front door struck nine, my father said, "Maybe he isn't coming home. Perhaps we should start eating.

Just as we were about to begin, the front door opened and my second brother rushed inside, slamming the door. My mother ran to his side and asked him where Xiaogang was. Very much out of breath, he told us that Xiaogang had been arrested. Keeping his voice level, my father handed Xiaojiang a glass of water and asked him what had happened.

Xiaojiang answered, "I went to my brother's dormitory late yesterday afternoon to ask him to come home today That's what mother asked me to do. When I got there, his room was a disaster. It looked like someone had turned it inside out. He was not in the room; neither was his roommate. I had no idea what had happened, but my intuition told me that it was trouble. On my way to the dormitory phone to call home, Li Geng, Xiaogang's roommate, stopped me and told me what happened. He told me that some counterrevolutionary graffiti had appeared on the campus and that Xiaogang had been arrested for the crime."

Xiaojiang learned that Xiaogang was being held in the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. My brother told Li Geng that Xiaogang would be fine as long as they took him to the Security Bureau, which was controlled by my fathers ministry. Li Geng suggested that my brother was a primary suspect because of my father's political problems and that it might not be wise to call home.

Xiaojiang continued, "Li Geng told me to go home and tell you what happened. I left the dormitory and hid in the city. If the situation was really as bad as it seemed, I didn't want to be followed. At three o'clock this morning I started walking home."

My father asked the maid to bring a basin of hot water so my brother could soak his feet. He had walked more than sixty kilometers that day. Despite his safe arrival, Xiaojiang was still wrought up. In his right hand he still grasped the brick that he had carried against potential attack while he walked through the dark.

What none of us had known before learning of my elder brother's arrest was that my father had been put under house arrest by revolutionary Rebels in his department. He had lost his right to speak in public and his influence on the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. Before my father could do anything to free Xiaogang, he was charged with crimes against the state and, without a court hearing or trial, was transferred to the H jail. This was just the first of a string of arrests on similar charges. Following the path walked by my eldest brother were my father's older brother, then my mother's brother, then my mother's sister in-law (who was Russian and a Revolutionary Party member), and finally my father.

Four or five days after Xiaogang's arrest, I heard a friend talking to my father. He said that the revolutionary Rebels would search our house the next day. They wanted to find some "written evidence" they could use against my father so he could be executed for counterrevolutionary activities. That night I could not fall asleep. I did not know if my father had anything that could be used as written evidence. I knew that I had a lot of children's books that had been bought for me by my father. He liked to give me books as a reward for good grades in school and as birthday and New Year presents. I imagined that the Rebels would find those books and use them as evidence against my father. I got up, gathered up the books, and stole into the courtyard, where I ran into Xiaojiang and Xiaonan.

"What are you doing here?" Xiaojiang asked.

"What are you doing here?" I asked back.

"You tell us first," Xiaonan said, adding, "or else I won't help you with your math anymore." I hated math and would never have had decent scores on my math exams without his help, so I surrendered.

"I want to bury my books. Will you help me dig a hole, please?

He agreed and told me they wanted to bury their hunting rifles and bullets. While they dug a hole under an apple tree, I helped them put wax on their bullets and remove parts from their rifles. We buried our treasures and our dreams there. Years later my brothers and I went back to where our house had been, thinking we might recover our treasures. Where our house and orchard had been a number of new buildings were under construction. There were a few trees still standing, but there was no way we could tell which might be the one we sought, and we returned to the city. Maybe it was better to not dig up the secrets of our childhood, better to let the nightmares of the past remain buried.

One afternoon shortly after my uncle's arrest, the Rebels came to throw us out of our house. With the exception of a few personal clothes and toilet articles, all of our belongings and household goods were sealed in the house. A short, bony man, who used to be one of my father's subordinates, was now the head of the Rebels. He shouted at my father, "You must plead guilty in front of the revolutionary masses. Otherwise you put yourself on the road to ruin I wondered how such a small man had this much power. Why was he allowed to shout at my father? I thought he must be some kind of dangerous demon.

Our whole family was driven to a military academy in Beijing. This made it more convenient for the Rebels to interrogate my parents. It also would allow them to turn my parents over to the revolutionary citizens' committees for public criticism and denunciation.

At the academy, our family was housed on the first floor of an H-shaped building. Where we had previously enjoyed an entire house, we now had to live in two rooms, one for my parents and one for my two younger brothers and myself. There was no lavatory or kitchen. We used the public facilities of the military. My mother had to go alone to the canteen to buy our food. The first time she sent me, the children of the military spit in my face and shouted abuse at me. She never even tried to send my brothers for fear that they would only get in trouble by fighting with the other children. But she didn't find it easy to go either. One morning after she came home with breakfast, I noticed that she was covered with mud and dirt thrown by the rebellious children. Every time the children saw us, they would bare their teeth at us and shout, "Da doo" [Down with] ..." If they got a response or thought we looked scared, they would continue to shout, "Da doo" and add my father's name. My brothers would have gladly sought revenge had my mother not restrained them. She didn't want to stir up any more trouble. She knew that our actions would only bring more misery down on my father's head.

Every morning after breakfast my mother sent us out of the apartment and away from the academy. She didn't care where we went. She just wanted us out of the sight of the Rebels. In those days counterrevolutionary slogans were often scrawled on the walls somewhere in the academy. My mother did not want any of her other children thrown into jail.

One morning around seven o'clock, before my mother sent us from the apartment, I went to a public lavatory. On the wall in the lavatory were the characters for the words Chairman Mao written upside down, with an Xdrawn through them.¹ When I saw this, I ran home immediately and told my mother. While she was frightened, she also knew that if she reported the incident to the Rebels, they might be a bit easier on my father. However, I was frightened that the Rebels might think I had written the characters on the wall. I wrapped my arms around my mother's legs and begged her not to report the writing. She then asked me if anyone had seen me in the lavatory or along the path. When I assured her that no one had been around, she relented. Worried that we might get blamed anyway, she rushed us out of the apartment, saying, "Hurry and get out before those rats smell something and try to start more trouble."

The slogan went undiscovered until noon. Once they found the writing, the Rebels gathered up everyone they could find who had been near the lavatories that morning. When they came to our house, my mother told them that we could not be responsible. She had sent us to the city early that morning before the "reactionary event" had taken place.

For all the necessity of the visit, the lavatories were scary places to go. You never knew when you would be set upon and cursed by the Rebels or their children. Since the most dangerous times were at night, my mother had a house rule forbidding us to go to the lavatory unless we absolutely had to. Every night after dinner she would place a bucket in our room so we could urinate, and then she would lock us in where we would be safe. This arrangement didn't bother my brothers; they were teenagers and not modest at all. I was much too shy to use the bucket, however. My solution to the problem was not to drink any liquids or eat any soup at dinner. In this manner I was usually able to wait until morning to use the toilet.

One midnight I was awakened by a noisy, upset stomach. I tried to ignore it. I lay on my back, then on my left side, then on my right side, and then on my stomach. Soon my stomach hurt so much that I was wet with sweat. I woke up my brothers, and they suggested that I climb out the window. We didn't want to tell my mother because she would be worried.

Although it was midwinter, I climbed out of the window in my nightgown, it was no protection from the cold. I ran as fast as I could toward the lavatory, about four hundred meters from the apartment. I was almost there when I saw another person headed in the same direction. I quickly lay down behind a small pile of bricks. I didn't want to be seen by the wrong people. They would report me, and I might be accused of writing the counterrevolutionary slogans. I peeked over the top of the bricks, trying to see who was there. It was the daughter of one of the Rebels.

Once a little bad luck finds you, more soon follows. I stayed on the cold ground behind the bricks, hoping she would not be long. My hands and feet were numb with the cold, and I was frightened that she would hear my teeth chattering. She was not in a hurry to finish her business. I began to imagine that she had seen me and was waiting in the lavatory to catch me and report me to the authorities. I tried to hang on, but my body wouldn't wait. I lost control of my bowels. Now I was in real trouble. I couldn't go into the lavatory for fear of being discovered, and I couldn't return home because I was too embarrassed. Fortunately for me, Xiaobin was worried about me and had come to look for me. He picked me up and carried me home. We did not tell my mother about what happened.

My father was labeled the biggest zouzipai in the public security and court bureaucracy. ² Every time he was denounced at a public meeting, my mother was sent to accompany him to the denunciation.

My mother was a reticent person. She had to be because of her position as a director of the General Office of the Ministry of Public Security. She was in charge of the top-secret documents section. The Rebels tried to get her to testify against my father. She just kept her mouth shut firmly. When this failed, they tried to force her to divorce my father. She steadfastly refused this as well. One morning she failed to return from her meeting with the Rebels. No one, not even my father, was able to find out where she was taken.

When the Rebels were unable to find sufficient evidence of my father's counterrevolutionary activities to have him executed, they exiled him to a camp in northeast China. My brothers and I were not told of his transfer. For many weeks we lived in those two rooms, wondering if either of our parents was still alive. One day my brother told me he had overheard two Rebels talking about our mother. He learned that she was to be denounced the next day at a meeting called the Hundred Thousand People's Meeting. My brothers and I went to the meeting, which was held in the Workers' Sports Arena in Beijing. On the platform I saw my mother standing along with other thought criminals. Hung around her neck on a piece of thin wire was a large iron sign that read, "I am the cursed wife of XX." Her neck was bowed by the heavy sign, and the wire was visibly cutting into her neck. Her head was splotched with bald spots.

The Rebels forced her to a microphone at the center of the stage. They commanded her to publicly state her guilt. She refused. One of the Rebels kicked her in the knee. She lost her balance and fell down on the platform. The leader of the Rebels stepped on her back and shouted, "You are dead! You are dead!!" My brother and I could not bear to watch, and we ran from the meeting.

We didn't heat anything from my mother and father for about a year after the meeting. People told us that they were forbidden to write to anyone. One spring day a little boy told me that my mother had returned to the city but that she was still forbidden to go home. He was the son of one of the Rebels, and he had overheard his father talking at ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Author's Introduction
• THE STORIES
• About the Book and Author