"Fight to get mother back, and help father run away."

Interviewer: Thank you for accepting my interview.

Interviewer: Could you tell us in which decade you were born, such as 1930s, 1940s, etc.?

I was born in the 1940s.

Interviewer: Could you tell me where in China you were living between 1966 and 1976?

I lived in Guiyang.

Interviewer: Based on your age, I believe you must have many memories of the Cultural Revolution.

Interviewer: If we only give you about ten minutes to speak freely, without organizing your speech too much,

Interviewer: ...what memories would you most want to share with us?

Interviewer: Please just speak freely.

Let me tell you a story.

In 1970, my mother worked at Guiyang Xinguan Elementary School, teaching second grade students.

One afternoon, two teachers from the school came to my home and said my mom had written a reactionary slogan,

and as a result, she was being held at Xinguan Elementary School.

People from the school asked us to send some bedding and clothes to her.

I said OK. When the two people left, I told my younger brother:

the Six Regulations of Public Security indicated that anyone who attacked Chairman Mao and Vice Chairman Lin was a counter-revolutionary.

My mom taught second-year Chinese. She intended to write “Down with Liu Shaoqi,”

but she mistakenly wrote it as “Down with Chairman Mao.”

But she erased it right away.

Interviewer: It was just an accident, right?

Yeah – so she just erased it.

The result was, an eight-year-old child told this to his older brother.

His brother and I were both apprentices at the same tractor factory, and we knew each other quite well.

It was him [the older brother] who reported my mother’s reactionary slogan to the principal.

So the principal called the District Education Bureau and locked my mom up.

I said to my younger brother that this was not a small thing.

It was a counter-revolutionary crime, which would lead to an arrest.

[I told him] we should fight to release mom today.

After all, she did not write any confession.

Let us take her back and definitely not admit [the crime].

When we arrived at the school, it was already dark.

The principal saw us and asked, “Why didn’t you bring anything [for your mother]?”

My brother said, “We are here to take our mom back. Do you hear us? We will fight you to the death if you dare to say another word.”

We escorted our mom out while cursing [the school leaders].

Even the principal did not dare to stop us.

The two teachers standing beside [the principal] knew us well,

and did not try to stop us, so we just took our mom back home.

I told my mother, “Since [the slogan] was erased anyway, there was no longer any evidence. You could just say you never wrote [those words].”

And later, this incident suddenly –

Interviewer: -- just faded away?

-- just faded away, right.

Although it happened 46 years ago, I still remember it very clearly.

In an uncivilized society, barbarous ways sometimes work effectively.

If I had not fought to make them release my mother, the next day when she signed the confession,

at the very least it would have said [she] had committed a counter-revolutionary crime.

Interviewer: Is your mother still alive?

She is dead. If she were still alive, she would be 100 years old.

Interviewer: So when the Cultural Revolution decade is mentioned, this is the first thing you think of – saving your mother.

Yes. I want to tell you another story.

In 1966, I worked as an apprentice at XX, my younger brother was training in a chemical factory at XX.

My brother is now in the United States and is already 60 years old.

I also have a younger sister.

At that time, my brother was 14. In March of 1966, my father retired.

But in May, his former work unit asked him to come to participate in the Cultural Revolution.

Later, though, they decided he was one of the “cow-demons and snake-spirits.”

One day in September, people were to struggle against him;

the “big-character poster” [against him] was finished one day before.

My father was already in his 60s.

The struggle meeting would have destroyed both his body and mind.

So my younger brother helped our father run away in the middle of the night.

He took our father to the Forest Park and then went back home himself.

My father ran into the countryside alone and hid in the home of a former student of my mother.

My brother said that our father was so scared of the struggle meeting that he ran away, and he [my brother] could not find him.

“Perhaps father ran off somewhere to commit suicide,” my brother said.

As a result, the meeting that was supposed to have thousands of participants lost its object and couldn’t be held after all.

We brothers were fearless.

At that time, I’m afraid it would’ve been hard to find another person in China who dared to do this: fight to get his mother back, and help his father run away.

Interviewer: When the Cultural Revolution is mentioned, the first thing you think of is how you and your brothers saved your mother and father.

We were just fearless. In 1960, when my brother and I were starving, we even stole from the government warehouse.

We really were fearless.

Interviewer: Thank you for accepting the interview.