WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.500 --> 00:00:06.960 align:center line:-1Interviewer: Hello! Thank you for accepting my interview. Would you please tell me when you were born? 2 00:00:06.970 --> 00:00:11.720 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: You don’t need to say the exact date, just “1920’s,” “1930’s” is okay. 3 00:00:11.730 --> 00:00:16.120 align:center line:-1 1920's. 4 00:00:16.150 --> 00:00:21.820 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: During the decade of the Cultural Revolution, in what area of China did you stay? 5 00:00:21.830 --> 00:00:28.600 align:center line:-1 Beijing, Peking University 6 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:38.510 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: You must have lots of memories of that decade. 7 00:00:38.520 --> 00:00:43.800 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: You might be able to speak for days and nights without talking about them all. 8 00:00:43.810 --> 00:00:53.390 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: If we only give you ten minutes, namely, in the first ten minutes, what kind of memories do you most want to share with us? 9 00:00:59.400 --> 00:00:59.760 align:center line:-1 What? 10 00:01:00.020 --> 00:01:04.920 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: Just say whatever you want to say. Your memories of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976. 11 00:01:04.980 --> 00:01:07.800 align:center line:-1 You're saying the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution? 12 00:01:08.040 --> 00:01:09.840 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: Yes. 1966-1976. 13 00:01:09.850 --> 00:01:16.000 align:center line:-1 [My] deepest memory is “horrible.” 14 00:01:16.090 --> 00:01:18.410 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: What do you mean? 15 00:01:18.990 --> 00:01:27.880 align:center line:-1 Wherever you went there were people fighting, torturing people, beating people -- struggling against people. 16 00:01:27.890 --> 00:01:41.300 align:center line:-1 It was pitiful. Once I was on the bus, I saw a big truck on the roadside, 17 00:01:41.310 --> 00:01:49.030 align:center line:-1 with two people tied up, kneeling in the back of the truck. 18 00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:53.090 align:center line:-1 I remember when the first general assembly of the Cultural Revolution 19 00:01:53.100 --> 00:01:59.790 align:center line:-1 was held in the auditorium of Peking University Hospital, 20 00:01:59.800 --> 00:02:09.590 align:center line:-1 they made a few old professors who they they thought were landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists [the “five black categories”] 21 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:13.230 align:center line:-1 come up to the stage and kneel on the floor. 22 00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:19.900 align:center line:-1 Those professors were all in their 70s, and one of them was the director of ophthalmology of Peking University Hospital. 23 00:02:19.910 --> 00:02:33.020 align:center line:-1 There were also three companions, one was from the surgical department; I forget the other two. 24 00:02:33.030 --> 00:02:44.070 align:center line:-1 The Red Guards took the whips to flog them. I didn’t dare sit in the front; I sat in the back. 25 00:02:44.080 --> 00:02:52.030 align:center line:-1 Watching that, I wanted to cry, but I didn’t dare, didn’t dare cry. 26 00:02:52.050 --> 00:03:09.930 align:center line:-1 After that, it was just a series of injuries from beatings, deaths from beatings. Many things like this happened in our hospital. 27 00:03:09.940 --> 00:03:28.190 align:center line:-1 I had a classmate, a gynecologist. Her [brother], mother, and a nanny were tied up by the neighborhood Red Guards, 28 00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:38.640 align:center line:-1 and were made to kneel on the ground to be beaten by them. 29 00:03:38.650 --> 00:03:49.580 align:center line:-1 Her father was a senior engineer at Kailuan coal mine, but he had passed away. 30 00:03:49.590 --> 00:04:04.910 align:center line:-1 After that, her family moved to Beijing; her mother, being an intellectual, did some work with the neighborhood committee. 31 00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:08.950 align:center line:-1 For doing such works, there was a list of names. 32 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:11.850 align:center line:-1 All of the neighborhood Red Guards were middle school students. 33 00:04:11.860 --> 00:04:19.970 align:center line:-1 They found this list, and thought it was her list of people to torture. 34 00:04:19.980 --> 00:04:29.820 align:center line:-1 So they tied up her mother, brother, and nanny; [they were made to] kneel on the ground. 35 00:04:29.830 --> 00:04:33.220 align:center line:-1 After she heard about it, she went home. 36 00:04:33.230 --> 00:04:41.590 align:center line:-1 At first she didn’t understand anything, so she went to the Red Guards to reason with them. 37 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:54.260 align:center line:-1 But then she was pushed down and everyone, all four people, were beaten to death. 38 00:04:54.270 --> 00:05:00.850 align:center line:-1 This was one of the very first cases of someone being beaten to death during the Cultural Revolution. 39 00:05:00.860 --> 00:05:11.590 align:center line:-1 A friend of ours in Peking University was a returned student from the Soviet Union, exceptional in foreign languages. 40 00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:20.020 align:center line:-1 But because his family background was that of landlord, he was locked in the building, and hanged himself. 41 00:05:20.030 --> 00:05:23.160 align:center line:-1 There were numerous similar cases. 42 00:05:23.180 --> 00:05:28.420 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: Peking University was a serious disaster area. 43 00:05:28.430 --> 00:05:49.840 align:center line:-1 Yes. The day Nie Yuanzi posted the first "big-character poster," I had a baby. 44 00:05:49.850 --> 00:05:55.090 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: You had a baby. So, you remember it clearly, right? 45 00:05:55.100 --> 00:06:00.810 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: This is something you can’t forget because on the same day that Nie Yuanzi posted the first "big-character poster," you had a baby. 46 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:09.740 align:center line:-1 Yes, my husband had no time to come to the hospital to see me. 47 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:19.860 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: So from your point of view, that decade was really frightening. 48 00:06:19.870 --> 00:06:25.300 align:center line:-1 Very frightening. 49 00:06:26.200 --> 00:06:31.260 align:center line:-1 My husband's older sister taught junior high school. 50 00:06:31.270 --> 00:06:35.950 align:center line:-1 In the blink of an eye she was pulled aside, shaved bald, 51 00:06:35.960 --> 00:06:42.410 align:center line:-1 punished by being made to kneel in the yard, and was not allowed to go home. 52 00:06:43.680 --> 00:06:51.040 align:center line:-1 Her house was searched and possessions were confiscated. 53 00:06:51.050 --> 00:07:09.590 align:center line:-1 Her roommate wore [the Chinese-style dress] “qipao." All of her “qipao” were cut to pieces, shredded; 54 00:07:09.600 --> 00:07:19.830 align:center line:-1 furniture was thrown everywhere, scattered on the floor. 55 00:07:19.840 --> 00:07:24.200 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: You were in Beijing throughout the decade? 56 00:07:24.210 --> 00:07:36.180 align:center line:-1 Yes. Later, my husband was imprisoned for eight months. 57 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:40.580 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: No visits were allowed, right? 58 00:07:41.620 --> 00:07:49.550 align:center line:-1 I could visit, but he was not allowed to come home. 59 00:07:49.560 --> 00:08:05.800 align:center line:-1 We just met in a reception room when I visited him. I took my sons to see him. 60 00:08:05.830 --> 00:08:20.310 align:center line:-1 In the beginning, he was accused of being a "bourgeois reactionary academic authority." 61 00:08:25.400 --> 00:08:35.500 align:center line:-1 The men who took his baggage from home were his colleagues. 62 00:08:35.510 --> 00:08:46.690 align:center line:-1 Since their relationship was very good, the two of them secretly told me, your husband is fine. 63 00:08:46.700 --> 00:08:51.200 align:center line:-1 Why was he arrested? 64 00:08:51.300 --> 00:09:04.560 align:center line:-1 There was a spy from the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics who had been lying low since Liberation. 65 00:09:04.570 --> 00:09:10.890 align:center line:-1 He was a colonel, then a physician at Peking Union Medical College Hospital. 66 00:09:10.900 --> 00:09:19.000 align:center line:-1 He knew my husband’s older sister. 67 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:27.010 align:center line:-1 That spy was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment [after Liberation]. 68 00:09:27.020 --> 00:09:32.410 align:center line:-1 After the start of the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards made him write down the names of spies he knew. 69 00:09:33.030 --> 00:09:39.290 align:center line:-1 He wrote the names of 10 people; my husband was one of them, 70 00:09:39.300 --> 00:09:54.380 align:center line:-1 so they put my husband in prison as a lurking military intelligence spy for eight months. 71 00:09:54.390 --> 00:10:12.630 align:center line:-1 After a long investigation, they found no evidence, so they went to the jail to re-interrogate that spy. 72 00:10:12.640 --> 00:10:27.170 align:center line:-1 They showed him my husband’s picture, and asked, “Is that him?” 73 00:10:27.180 --> 00:10:44.000 align:center line:-1 The spy said no, it doesn't look like him. He said he had misremembered. He must've gotten it wrong. 74 00:10:44.010 --> 00:10:55.750 align:center line:-1 He said the agent he had been speaking of had been in hiding since before Liberation, since around 1948, 75 00:10:55.760 --> 00:11:09.700 align:center line:-1 but my husband had joined the Communist Party in 1947. So, that spy was totally wrong. 76 00:11:10.020 --> 00:11:24.510 align:center line:-1 They made him look at pictures of several people with the same last name as my husband, and in the end, he pointed out the actual spy, which wasn't my husband at all. 77 00:11:24.520 --> 00:11:27.490 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: So, your husband wasted eight months in prison. 78 00:11:27.500 --> 00:11:40.410 align:center line:-1 So, my husband has come to the conclusion that the special agents of the Kuomintang [Nationalists] 79 00:11:40.420 --> 00:11:48.370 align:center line:-1 used the Cultural Revolution to torment the Communists. 80 00:11:48.380 --> 00:11:55.710 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: They used this chance to mess with the Communists. [Laughs.] 81 00:11:55.720 --> 24:00:00.000 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: Thank you. Your memory is quite clear; the interview lasted 12 minutes. Thank you.
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