WEBVTT
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Interviewer: Thank you very
much for your recollections, that is, for participating in the CR/10 oral
history project organized by the University of Pittsburgh.
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Interviewer: [Before recording] we informed you
that the project is a public database primarily used for history education
in American universities, and to offer a primary resource for professors
and students researching China’s Cultural Revolution.
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Interviewer: Could you please confirm that you
already understand this situation and have signed the video consent
form?
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[Yes.]
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Interviewer: Thank you very much. Then, could
you tell us what decade you were born in? You don’t need to say the exact
date; just “’50s” or “’60s” will do.
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I was born in 1956.
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Interviewer: That is, in the ’50s.
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The '50s.
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Interviewer: OK, thanks. Could you tell me your
highest level of education?
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I [went to] junior college.
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Interviewer: Previously you
and I talked about the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution.
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Interviewer: You were born in the ’50s, so
when the Cultural Revolution happened, you were already in elementary
school.
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Interviewer: Could you
briefly tell us, when the Cultural Revolution was happening, where did you
and your family live in China?
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We were in Zhangjiakou
City, Hebei [Province].
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Interviewer: OK. What were
your parents’ occupations during the Cultural Revolution?
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During the Cultural Revolution, my father was
both an economist and an accountant. His administrative position was called
section chief.
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For example, credit and
stocks—in a bank, there’s credit and stocks [sections], withdrawals and
deposits, etc.
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My father dealt with finance; these days, we
call it loans.
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During the Cultural
Revolution, my mother was in Zhangjiakou City’s Ministry of Science and
Technology. She was a professional typist.
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All along, up until after Liberation, [my father] was
engaged in banking. His job title [职称] was both economist and
accountant.
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Before Liberation, my mother had been in the Nationalist
party, I forget which number army division, as a typist in a department in
the Northeast.
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After Liberation, [she] tested into Zhangjiakou from
Beijing, also to where a bank was being set up. Later, [she] was a typist
in the Ministry of Science and Technology.
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Then, [she] did accounting, up until the Cultural
Revolution.
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Interviewer: OK. Thank you. We were just saying that when
the Cultural Revolution broke out, you were already in elementary
school.
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Interviewer: You must have quite a few [clear] memories of
that time. If I only give you about 10 minutes, could you share with us
some of the most important memories you have from that time?
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OK. When the Cultural Revolution started, I was in the
fourth grade.
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My memories of the time aren’t that distinct. That is,
why was the Cultural Revolution instigated?
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It was just following the mainstream; if everyone said you
should do something, you did it.
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For example, searching people’s houses to confiscate
their possessions, or going out in the street to parade around and hand out
flyers, and so on.
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My clearest memory is that when I was in the fifth grade,
our family lived in a "siheyuan" [courtyard house].
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From far away, I saw my mother with three people following
behind her.
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My mother’s hands were crossed over her chest, as if she
were blocking something. [I] saw this from far off.
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When I walked closer, I saw that my mother—
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--we knew there was a custom, if [people] were designated
one of the “five black categories,” they’d either wear a dunce cap or
have a black signboard hung around their neck.
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I subconsciously realized my mother’s right hand was
covering the left side of her chest; there was a black signboard hung in
front.
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On it was written “cow-demon and snake spirit [and my
mother's name]."
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At the time, it didn’t affect me all that much because
so many other people were being attacked.
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In our courtyard, seven or eight out of ten [residents]
had been affected, had been attacked.
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[People] had become used to it, and it had become
unremarkable.
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My mother brought people from their work unit to our home
to search it and confiscate possessions.
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At the time, I didn’t think it was that strange; rather,
I thought everyone had to take a turn in this at some point, since our
family’s social status was not good.
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While the house was being searched, I was still in the
yard, climbing up with other kids to look in the windows and see these
people search our house, turn everything upside down, then leave.
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I remember this like it was yesterday. Another [memory] is
of violent struggle from 1966 to 1967.
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My father had joined an organization in his work unit.
Within this organization, there were the Royalists and the Rebels.
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One day, my father didn’t come home. Everyone in the
family was really nervous.
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After two days, [he] came back. [I] saw him from afar. I
was really young then and didn’t understand things.
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When I didn’t have anything to do, I’d go to the outer
gates and look out, to see if my father had appeared on the horizon or
not.
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So, finally, on the afternoon of the second day at around
six or seven p.m., I saw my father walking home from far off.
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He was hobbling along. I was so happy to see him that I
ran home to tell my mother that my father had returned.
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After my mother went out to welcome him, a woman from our
courtyard who knew my father had been missing for two days also went out to
welcome him back.
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As soon as he went into the house, my father hugged my
mother.
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From the time I was old enough to remember things, up
until fourth or fifth grade, this was the first time I had seen my mother
and father communicate in this way.
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At the time, neither of them said anything. I think their
eyes held tears, but they didn’t say anything.
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But later in the evening, I saw my father show my mother
the back side of his body, which was covered in bruises from the top of his
thigh down.
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Then I understood he had been beaten. Later, my father
said he had been blindfolded and beaten by them because his family
background was bad.
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[His attackers said,] “Before Liberation, [your family]
worked for the Japanese and the Nationalists; why do you now stand with
either the Royalists or the Rebels?”
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What exactly my father said, I don’t know, since I was
young at the time. I just felt my father was really treated unfairly.
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Even in the later stages of the Cultural Revolution, no
matter what happened in the courtyard, my father didn’t dare go out.
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He’d just climb up and look out the window at [who] was
coming in and going out.
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Personally, I felt [he] was overcautious, very careful in
his speech.
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All along from the Three Anti- and Five Anti- campaigns,
to the Anti-Rightist campaign, to the Cultural Revolution, up until he
retired [he was attacked].
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Although they weren’t Rightists, my parents were sent
down in 1958.
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Up until the May 7 cadre school of the Cultural
Revolution, every time there was a movement, they both were affected.
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So, my mother had been a typist in the sixty- or
fifty-something Nationalist army division in the Northeast.
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Of course, she was an educated person. My father was born
after his father had already died. His family was a literary family.
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He had graduated from a normal school in the
Northeast.
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He’d gone north for work after 9/18 [1931, the
Manchurian Incident]—he’d found work in a bank, and did that from the
time he was young until retirement, so he had a lot of professional
ability.
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That is, in the bank, he was the best. At the time, in
basic skills competitions, he was first place.
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My mother was doing accounting and typing in the Ministry
of Science and Technology up until ’66 or ’67, then later she was sent
down to May 7 cadre school.
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I remember my father taking my older brother and me
[there].
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We must’ve ridden a train 60 or 70 kilometers to a May 7
cadre school in the suburbs, to see my mother.
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At the time, my mother had gotten so tan, her face was
really dark, like a farmer’s.
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The clothes she was wearing were covered all over in
patches. She was there winnowing grain.
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I remember, from the time I was very young, my mother
being a woman who loved putting on makeup.
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I remember high heels lying all over the house. Later,
after the Cultural Revolution [began], women only wore monochromatic
clothing, without giving it much thought.
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My mother had been a person with very good taste. The
first time I saw my mother dressed so poorly like this, I felt very
uncomfortable.
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Yet at the time I also felt this is how it should be. Sent
down for re-education, to re-educate [your] thinking, how could you still
hold on to petit bourgeois thinking?
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My father was also sent down. The two of them weren’t
sent to the same place. So, one day when my father came back, I was in the
courtyard grinding coal.
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It was like the charcoal briquettes we have in Beijing
today. There was a lump of coal.
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First you'd stick it together with sandy soil and dry it.
Then, you’d break it into small bricks and burn it for heating and
cooking.
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I was working on this myself in the courtyard when my
father suddenly appeared in front of me.
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I looked at my father and said, “Dad, you’ve come
back!” I subconsciously wondered, “When are you leaving again?”
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At the time, we felt, after our parents came back—we
were little and played a lot—and when our parents came back we were more
restricted; they were always pushing us to study.
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Later, my father told me that the thing that most greatly
touched and upset him in his whole life was coming into the courtyard and
seeing [me], such a small child, [working].
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Of course, I wasn’t that small, a fourth grader, but
maybe as we see it now, I was indeed a small child.
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In my father’s eyes, it was seeing me, so small, doing
this heavy physical labor, and what’s more it was like chopping wood for
cooking.
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In China we have a saying, “The children of the poor
head the household early on.”
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[My father] saw me like this, and felt incredibly
downhearted, but also, there was no other way.
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That is, [our] parents were both away, so they depended on
us brothers to hold down the fort, since I also had our paternal
grandmother. That’s one [memory].
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In 1970, I went to junior high. Right after I’d started,
the school began to “do field study on farms and in factories,” that
is, to go to rural villages to receive re-education from the poor and
lower-middle peasants, but this lasted a month.
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At the time, the village we went to was in Zhuolu County,
the Wubu commune’s second southern division’s production brigade.
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The head of this production brigade was also the Party
committee secretary.
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At the time, in order to accommodate us junior high
students, [the Party committee secretary] took the “siheyuan”
[courtyard house] of a local landlord,
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made the landlord’s whole family move out, cleared out
the house, and gave the whole thing, the north, south, east, and west
sides, to us students [to stay in].
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One class of students had about 50 to 60 people, about 30
boys and 30 girls. The girls stayed in the east wing; the boys were in the
north.
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On the doorway of the wing, there was a couplet—I’m
not sure who discovered it—an old couplet.
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I guess it had been put up for good luck during Chinese
New Year or some other festival, and it was already extremely
weathered.
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Still, we could make out the characters. Some of my
classmates said that the first line read, “For a long and prosperous
life, have a virtuous mind,"
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while the last line was “To have good descendants, study
hard,” but the line [across the top of the door] couldn’t be read.
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At that time, we just felt, isn’t this reactionary?
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At the time, book learning was worthless, and what’s
more, these words were saying to separate yourself from the working class,
get away from the peasants,
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from the extensive toil of the masses, as if studying was
a career, and well-educated people were superior to others.
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At the time the greater social environment [criticized
ideas like this]. So we couldn’t let this go.
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All of us students, along with the teacher, went looking
for the head of the production brigade, and had the head bring this
landlord to the courtyard—back to his former home.
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[There,] the entire class of students struggled against
him. “Why do you want to fight for prosperity and longevity? Why do you
want to have a virtuous mind? Why must you study hard to have good
descendants?”
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So, we made this landlord give an explanation. He
explained by saying, “At the time, we thought the way to have good
descendants was to study hard.”
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We just couldn’t wrap our heads around this. At the
time, we were as far left as could be.
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However, after I had actually started my own family and
got out into society, and up until today, I’ve educated my children and
thought back over this question.
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If I say, “For a long and prosperous life, have a
virtuous mind” and “To have good descendants, study hard,” what is
wrong with that?
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To this day, I feel these lines are completely correct. If
from the time they are small, our children don’t study, how can our
nation be powerful and prosperous?
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Right? How can [our nation] ascend in the world?
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So, knowledge can change people’s fate, change
people’s lives.
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So, up until today, I’ve always believed that in China,
in the United States, anywhere in the whole world, if any person lacks
education, that person lacks hope, and this country will not progress.
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This is the conclusion I’ve come to.
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So, after I came to the U.S., although I didn’t have
another chance to study, because of my age and other factors, I’ve always
instilled this idea in my younger generation, my son.
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I’ve always urged him to study hard, built this
foundation from the time he was small.
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So, later, he went to a private high school, and then got
into Harvard.
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After he graduated, he continued with his studies. He
graduated from Harvard Business School, and became a pillar of the national
community.
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I personally feel, it’s fine whether he’s in the U.S.
or China; science has no national boundaries, and neither does
knowledge.
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No matter who he works for, it’s all a contribution to
humanity and society. So, looking back, I still feel this saying “To have
good descendants, study hard” isn’t just for me, but for all
people.
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Interviewer: OK. Thank you for participating in
our CR/10 video project. Thank you so much.
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You're welcome.
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