Throwing The Emperor From His Horse

Portrait Of A Village Leader In China, 1923-1995

Peter J Seybolt

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429975271
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Categoría: Asiatische Politik

This engaging book sketches an intimate portrait of the life of Wang Fucheng, an illiterate peasant who served for thirty years as Communist party secretary of an impoverished village on the north China plain. Based on conversations over a seven-year period (1987 - 1994) between Wang Fucheng and Peter Seybolt, the book unfolds as a continuous first

1

Poverty, Bandits, and Japanese Invaders: Early Life, 1923–1946

My discussions with Wang Fucheng began at the beginning, with his memories of the early years of his life. We discussed his family, their living conditions, the two villages in which he lived, customs, religious beliefs, and holidays. I asked him to recall the happiest and unhappiest times of his youth and to describe the effects of major events such as the famine of 1942, the Japanese invasion and occupation of northern Henan Province, and the rise of the Communist Party in the area. Information about these things had to be drawn from the recesses of Wang Fucheng’s memory little by little. Much of it he had not thought about in a long time. His wife, Wang Xianghua, listened with interest, occasionally putting in a word. She reminded him, for instance, that when he was young he was so obscure and insignificant that no one knew his name. Occasionally Wang Fucheng would call in others, like his friend Wang Changmin, to help refresh his memory. Other villagers would drop in too, partly out of curiosity about the foreigner in their midst, and would frequently offer their comments. Eventually, Wang Fucheng had to close his gate to control the crowd.

Wang Fucheng was animated during our early talks. He enjoyed recalling the past, even though much of it had been characterized by bitter poverty and deprivation. He often laughed and slapped his knee in mock disbelief as he recalled how poor he and his family had been. He became very grave, however, as did all of the people I interviewed in northern Henan villages, when discussing the famine of 1942-1943. His friend Wang Changmin broke down and cried and had to leave the room for several minutes when he recalled how his parents had starved to death during that catastrophe forty-five years earlier.

When I inquired about the war years, 1937–1945, the peasants in many villages where I conducted interviews referred to the Japanese reflexively as guizi (devils). That was not the case with Wang Fucheng. Rarely did he use deprecating terms when discussing others, a forbearance that characterized his personality. He was, however, utterly disdainful of the bandits, the leaders of secret religious sects, and various collaborators with the Japanese who preyed on the people under Japanese auspices during the war years. There were no Robin Hoods among them in Wang’s mind, and no redeeming character traits. Clearly the Communists were Wang Fucheng’s heroes, though he spoke of their activities unemotionally, taking for granted the rectitude of the role that they played in transforming his world. That attitude is easy to understand as he recalls the first twenty-three years of his life in this chapter.

Throughout this book, I have tried to maintain on the written page the cadence of Wang Fucheng’s speech as well as his vocabulary. His remarks were usually short and to the point. The transcribed sentences are, accordingly, succinct and terse. They reflect Wang Fucheng’s characteristic no-nonsense pragmatism, though they tend to mask the warmth and generosity of his personality.

Wang Fucheng:

I was born in this village sixty-seven years ago. My father was a farmer and salt maker. We were very poor. I was the youngest of four children, two boys and two girls. First sister was twelve or thirteen years older than I, second sister was seven or eight years older, and my brother was three years older.

When I was six years old, my father died. At that time, he smoked a white powder [opium or morphine] that had been brought to China by foreigners. Five or six people in this village smoked it. My father was very poor and had to steal to buy it. He stole from one of my uncles and was killed by him. I think he was buried without a coffin in the family grave plot. I don’t remember. He was only in his thirties.

Before my father started smoking opium, our family was fairly well-off compared to many others. My grandfather had divided his property among his four sons, and my father’s portion was eight to ten mu of land [6 mu = 1 acre] and a three-room house. The house was made of mud bricks, but it had a tile roof, which was fairly unusual here. Most houses had roofs made of sorghum stalks. Only a few comparatively rich families had houses made from kiln-fired bricks and with tile roofs. The farmland my father inherited was of poor quality, but it was enough to support us. Then, because of his drug addition, my father gradually sold all of the land except the two mu where the family grave plots were. He also sold the house with the tile roof and built a two-room mud house with stalks on the roof. Eventually he no longer worked, and my mother, sisters, and brother and I had to beg from our relatives to survive.

After my father was killed, my mother took me to live with my grandfather and grandmother in Jiang Village, six li [3 li = 1 mile] from here. I lived there until 1946, when I was twenty-three. When I returned to Houhua, I knew no one.

The family broke up after my father died. My brother went to Shanxi Province as a long-term laborer and later was conscripted as a soldier by the Warlord Yen Xishan.¹ He was killed by the Japanese during the War of Resistance [1937–1945]. My two sisters were married and went to other villages. They were introduced to their husband’s families by relatives. There was no special marriage ceremony. We were too poor. They just went to live with a man’s family and were considered married. Actually, my older sister had three husbands at different times. She had a very hot temper and left when her husbands beat her. She had nothing to eat, so she had to go to another man.

Both of my sisters had bound feet, as did most of the women around here, some until the late 1940s. There was an old saying: “big feet, loss of face.” I remember the ribbons binding my sisters’ feet. My sisters mostly stayed at home. If they went out on the street, the village people would laugh at them and look down on them for being out. Because women with bound feet could do no farm work, those in the poorest families didn’t bind their daughters’ feet. The first concern was survival. But, I would say that about 80 percent of the women here had bound feet even though Houhua was a very poor village. It was difficult for my sisters to walk. It took my older sister over an hour to walk three li to Taiping Village, where her second husband’s family lived. It is a twenty minute walk for me. My older sister died of a large tumor when she was forty-six or forty-seven years old.

After my mother took me to live in Jiang Village with her parents, our life was very difficult. My grandfather had lost his sight because he was old and had overworked. He had the white eye disease [cataracts]. My mother was deaf. She had been ill when she was young and couldn’t hear after that. We had about six mu of poor land, enough to feed us for only about half a year. We had no meat and rarely ate vegetables. Every year we ate sorghum porridge twice a day until it ran out, then we ate tree leaves, grasses, roots, and wild vegetables. I did not eat a mantou (steamed wheat bun) until I was seventeen or eighteen years old. I was always hungry. I never went to school. Having nothing to eat, how could I study? To this day I cannot read or write. Later, when I was Communist Party secretary of Houhua Village for thirty years, I did everything by memory. I kept everything in my head.

In Jiang Village my mother helped support us by weaving cotton cloth. Someone would take it to market and buy more raw cotton for her to weave. Our clothes were made from the cloth she wove, as were our cotton shoes, which were dyed with red soil. We never had much to wear. We couldn’t even afford a long overcoat for winter, so I wore a short cotton-filled jacket with a belt around the waist. Even when I was twenty years old my mother and I had to share a single quilt when we slept.

I collected firewood to sell. I remember being beaten when collecting wood near the property of a rich family. They thought I was stealing. Sometimes I did steal. Once I stole about 100 jin [1 jin =1.1 lbs.] of leaves from pear trees. We boiled them and ate them for quite a long time. When I was sixteen or seventeen I collected manure for fertilizer. One day when two of us were collecting manure, we were accused of stealing and told to eat it. The other person did, but I didn’t because my grandfather came in time.

I sometimes worked as a short-term laborer for the more prosperous households in the village. I was used only for a few days at harvest time to cut corn and sorghum. I received no pay but was given my food for the day. I remember well that when I was about eighteen I was working for a rich peasant and was given five steamed wheat buns at noon and four more in the evening. They were the best thing I had ever eaten, and that was the first time I had ever had enough to eat. The next day there was no work, and I was hungry again.

There were only about four or five rich peasants in Jiang Village, and no landlords. Almost everyone there was poor. We were no poorer than many others.

I had no knowledge of the world at that time. I never traveled far from the village, even to a nearby market town. The main market was Jingdian, eight li from here. I had no money and nothing to trade, so why should I go? I was too hungry. No money. I didn’t even have friends when I was a child. Everyone ignored me. People didn’t know my name. They just called me Er Wang Xiao (Little Second Wang).

Because of my poor diet I was always sick. That is why I am so short. I often had diarrhea, but I never saw a doctor. How could I? I had no money. There were no doctors in our village. When rich people got sick they called in a doctor from 10 to 20 li away. Doctors wouldn’t treat sick people until they had been given a banquet. They would first eat and drink and receive gifts. Ordinary people couldn’t afford that. We did have a spirit medium in the village who claimed to cure people with magic spells and by contacting the spirits of the dead, but that was just superstition.

In those days, of one hundred children who were born, eighty wouldn’t grow up. An uncle of mine had four sons, all of whom died. Only a daughter was left. She now works far from here. In those days few people lived to be sixty. Today many are in their seventies and eighties.

The best times were festival days, especially the New Year celebration, what we call Spring Festival today. We would mix sorghum flour with pieces of dried sweet potato to make a steamed bun. This was our main food for the holiday, but we also made a larger steamed bun, called huazi, of wheat flour and the pulp of sweet potato after the juice had been pressed out. We put Chinese dates on top of it. We offered it as a sacrifice to the gods, then we ate it.

Another special day was the Moon Festival in the middle of the eighth month of the old [lunar] calendar. People who could afford it bought moon cakes to eat. We just made a steamed bun with corn flour and put turnip in it.

In the spring at the Clear Bright Festival (Qing-Ming) people burned paper for their ancestors. We ate no special food at that festival. It was a time to sweep graves and repair tombs. The Wang family tombs of many generations are in Houhua Village, but I never went back there at that time.

There were seven or more temples in Jiang Village and over ten in Houhua Village. Some were longer than this house, and some were as small as a mat. I remember the names of only some of them. In Jiang there was the Goddess of Mercy Temple, the Bodhissatva Temple, the Old Mother Temple, and the Buddha Temple. In Houhua there was the Old Grandfather Temple, also called the Temple of the Jade Emperor Supreme God; the Fire Star Temple; the Bodhisattva Temple; the Old Grandmother Temple; and the God of War Temple.

The Grandfather Temple, in the west of Houhua Village, was the largest. It had a big Buddha statue in the middle, six big statues on either side, and dozens of other statues. I don’t know who built those temples or where the money came from. Some were hundreds of years old. I suppose that many families donated money, especially families of people who got sick.

When I was a child I did kowtow to gods in the temples, but I never believed in it. I just followed others. We had pictures of gods in our house, and we kowtowed and burned incense in a bowl when unusual things happened or when we ran short of something. We had pictures of the grandfather god, the god of wealth, and the stove god. I seldom bowed to them, but the old women of the house did. When I was older, after the war with Japan, I helped smash the temples and the statues. The temple bricks were then given to retired soldiers for building houses. There were three or four households of Christians in most of the villages around here. There are still two old women in this village who have those beliefs, and in Jingdian market town there is a Catholic priest. I don’t know much about that religion. None of the gods were useful for solving real problems.

The worst time I can remember was the great famine of 1942. It rained some in the spring of that year, but then it was completely dry for three planting seasons. The crops all died. During the summer of 1942, 80 percent of the people of Jiang Village and Houhua left home to beg. Most went to Shanxi Province; some went to Shandong Province and the northeast (Manchuria). Many never returned. One or two hundred people from Houhua either never returned or starved to death. More starved in Houhua than in Jiang Village. Many young children, especially girls, were sold at that time. A girl cousin of mine who was twelve years old was sold to a stranger for seven or eight dou [decaliters] of grain. Another uncle sold both his daughters. Some people gave away their children just to save them from starving. People tried to sell their property and their children to relatives. Those who bought them were not necessarily rich. The price was very low. It makes me very sad to discuss those times. It was a sorrowful period of our history. We had to sell my grandfather’s house, where we lived, to a family named Su from Jiang Village. It was a three-room brick house. We got only eight dou of grain for it. We then built a very simple mud house with sorghum stalks on the roof. When it rained, water poured through the roof, making mud of the floor. We also had to sell our six mu of land, all we had. From then on we had to rely on relatives. Some lived ten li from Jiang Village. I went there to ask for grain. I also collected manure and firewood and traded them for grain.

The government didn’t help at all during the famine. It was a time of great confusion. Before the Japanese came [in 1938] the villages here were administered by a village head, also called a guarantor head, who was responsible for all village affairs, especially tax collection. He was assisted by several section heads in charge of about thirty households each. The village head reported to a big guarantor head who was responsible for taxes and keeping order in several villages. He reported to the county government. No one wanted to be the village head because he could get in trouble and even be beaten by higher authorities if he couldn’t collect enough tax money. Usually the landlords and rich peasants paid poor people to act as village head. They often chose unemployed loafers who were glad to be paid something to do the job. The village head changed often, every two years or so. I recall a man called Er Huai Ye (secondary evil lord) was village head at one time. That is what we called him because he was so cruel, but his real name was Wang Yintang.

Taxes were paid in silver and copper money based on the amount and value of your land. We got the money by selling our products at the market. If a family could not or would not pay, the family head might be taken to jail by the armed county police and beaten badly. I remember a family named Liu who couldn’t pay their tax even though they sold their land. Just before New Year’s Festival, when all debts are due, he was beaten severely with a stick. They beat him forty strokes, and he promised to pay, but later he just couldn’t and they left him alone. Actually, often there was no fixed tax standard and no fixed time for collection. They just called for taxes when they wanted them, usually after the harvest. Sometimes bandits also came and made us pay.

There were a number of bandits in this area at that time. Before the Japanese arrived, they usually came in small groups, though there were some large bandit gangs of several hundred people. I remember that there was one near the Yu River area, about seventy or eighty li north of here, led by He Jiuxiang. His gang was fighting another one in Houhua Village when the Japanese first came in 1938. In those days the Nationalist (Guomindang) government didn’t care if the bandits fought each other or not. When bandits came to plunder, resistance was organized by secret religious societies (huidaomen), not by the government.

Ding Shuben was the government magistrate in Puyang County when the Japanese arrived. Jiang Kaishek told his troops not to resist, so Ding and his men withdrew and there was no local government.² There was no formal Guomindang government in this area from 1938 to 1945. Many bandits came out then, and many more secret religious societies with superstitious beliefs were formed. They burned incense, kowtowed, and chanted, thinking that knives and bullets would not then hurt them. I don’t know all the details, but their purpose was to get power. They got recruits by giving food and clothing and protecting families. They were out to control several hundred villages; then they could be like kings and collect crops and money from the people. Many of them joined the Japanese when they came, and some joined the Central Government Army. They differed from ordinary bandits in that the latter had no superstitious beliefs. Ordinary bandits joined with others like themselves to control an area, acting like evil tyrants. Both types of bandits killed a lot of people and stole crops. They were very cruel.

A religious-society leader named Sun Buyue controlled most of the villages in Xun and Hua counties just south of here. I remember when someone from this area traveled to Xun County and was caught by Sun. He was put on a board and had nails driven through his hands and feet. Two other people I know of were captured there and starved to death.

Most of the area north of here was controlled during the war by the Imperial Assistance Army stationed in Anyang, Tangyin, and Wei counties. They were Chinese traitors who collaborated with the Japanese. We called them “Japanese running dogs.” Many were former Nationalist troops. Jiang Village and twenty or thirty others were controlled by Li Ying, a former Nationalist officer who went over to the Japanese. He had his own organization, which he called the “Cleanse the Countryside Bureau.” His purpose, too, was to seize power for himself. He had about a thousand soldiers under him—his own troops, loyal to him personally—but they were backed by Japanese soldiers in Dongzhuang, a market town about ten li from here. He established various branch bureaus that controlled ten to twen...