"Many of my viewpoints and the basic ways I see the world were shaped during that period."

Interviewer: Thank you for accepting our interview.

Interviewer: Could you first tell us where you lived in mainland China during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution?

I am from Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution, I was in Beijing.

Interviewer: Could you tell us whether you were born in the 1950s or 1960s?

I was born in the 1950s.

During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, I went through elementary school, middle school, and high school.

The start of my working life was also during the Cultural Revolution period.

Interviewer: If we give you ten minutes to talk about your most unforgettable memories or the scenes your remember most clearly,

Interviewer: ...or to speak about your own thoughts or feelings regarding the Cultural Revolution, what do you most want to share with us?

From the point of view of almost all Chinese people, the Cultural Revolution was a major event.

I mean during that era. During the 1960s, we had just started elementary school.

It was a few years after the “difficult period” ["three years of natural disaster"], and society felt stable and harmonious.

Students would just study or play, and everything was pretty good.

But all of a sudden, the Cultural Revolution came, and it seemed like everything changed overnight.

The biggest change at school was that kids didn't need to go to school anymore!

We got a vacation, because the teachers had to engage in the Cultural Revolution.

Another change happened among our neighbors.

I have deep impressions of this.

There were big changes at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

One was the struggles -- struggling against people.

We had neighbors who were denounced.

Red Guards from other places came to struggle against them, searching their houses to confiscate their possessions and beating them.

I had never encountered such things, and I never imagined that such things would happen.

My family lived in Peking University, which was one of the areas hardest hit by the Cultural Revolution.

Some things happened there during the earliest phase of the Cultural Revolution.

One was the struggles and the struggle meetings.

For example, the Red Guards came to our neighbor’s home, claiming my neighbor’s grandmother was a landlady.

They put a chair out in the street in front of our home, dragged her out, and made her stand on the chair to be struggled against.

Then, they shaved her head.

Another issue was searching people’s houses to confiscate their possessions.

Quite a few homes in our neighborhood were searched.

Our home was almost searched as well, but because my father was about to leave Peking University at that time, [it didn’t happen.]

It was said that some people suggested searching our home,

but others said that [my father] was no longer under the control of Peking University, so they didn't do it.

It seemed that we escaped a disaster.

Another unforgettable event was the Destroy the Four Olds campaign.

Our neighbors' kids were older; [they were] middle and high school students.

They were burning books and we little kids just stood there watching them.

They asked us, “Do you have any Four Olds books at home?”

I didn’t know, but it seemed that we had some old books.

They told me to bring those old books and burn them.

So, I ran back home and took a series of my father’s books from the shelf.

I took them out because I saw old pictures -- classical Chinese paintings, to be more accurate -- on their covers,

but I actually didn't know what books they were.

And then, I went back to those people and burned the books with them.

Even after I burned the books, my family didn’t dare to criticize me.

They just asked me, “What were you doing?”

I said, “People were burning books outside, so I had to follow.”

No one yelled at me about it, even though my parents were usually pretty strict with me.

Only later did I find out that I had burned a set of the superior edition of

that my father had borrowed from someone else.

I burned it, just like that.

But that was the reality of that time.

So, my deepest impressions of that time were comprised of things such as kids not going to school, people searching homes, and people struggling against other people.

It was totally different from the orderly life I had before.

It felt like there was no order anymore.

Of course, I have different impressions from different phases of the Cultural Revolution.

When we got a little older, the violent struggle started.

It happened at Peking University and Tsinghua University, and children all went to see what the violent struggles were like.

Even today, I still have strong impressions of watching college students fight each other.

I saw them use water pipes to make spears and stab each other.

Then, what followed were things like frequent political education and criticism meetings.

Later, students went "down to the countryside."

This was a very important event that’s perhaps beyond the realm of imagination for today's students.

At that time, [students] had to spend at least one month in the countryside every semester.

The longest time I spent in the countryside was a whole year during high school.

During the busy season, we went to the field to work; during the slack season, we spent half the day studying and the other half working [on the farm].

This became our daily routine and was no longer something fresh and new.

Anyway, political studies, criticism [struggle] meetings, and going down to the countryside to work framed my impressions of the Cultural Revolution.

During the later phase of the Cultural Revolution, after people my age had graduated from high school,

a lot of people in China were already starting to feel disgusted with the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps because of my family's influence, I started to care about the fate of the nation,

so on these points I had some [opinions], perhaps more than most young people today.

Interviewer: Do you think what you experienced during the Cultural Revolution had an impact on you,

Interviewer: ...for example, on your maturity, your understanding of society, your knowledge of Chinese history, etc.?

Definitely, because that period of time happened to correspond with the age at which a person's worldview is shaped.

Although society was in chaos, I think our family's education was still quite strict.

One thing was that my paternal grandparents still abided by ideas from traditional culture, so I was affected by those things.

Although not promoted openly, [traditional culture] still exerted an imperceptible influence on me,

for example, understanding manners and etiquette.

Even in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, it was still necessary to know customs and manners and to acquire basic moral values.

In addition, [my thinking was] also influenced by my family, especially by my father, who was a rather rational person.

During the later phase of the Cultural Revolution -- actually, it started during the middle of the Cultural Revolution --

[my father] taught me many subtle lessons.

For example, how to analyze issues, how to view society, and that we need to see things from a historical perspective --

for example, what was the economic base, what was the superstructure, and so on.

Also, how to pursue the truth.

During the Cultural Revolution, it was very popular to study Marxism-Leninism and to recite from the selected works of Chairman Mao.

However, because my father was quite familiar with this field,

he often reminded me to pay attention to the previous sentence and the following sentence when analyzing Chairman Mao’s words,

and to understand Mao’s statements within specific contexts, instead of reading them in an isolated manner.

Also, for example, [he taught me about] what Marx identified as socialism.

At that time, my father couldn’t directly critique society in front a child as young as I was,

for fear of me going outside and telling others, but he guided my thinking.

For instance, he told me what Marx said in a specific book and what he meant by it.

[My father] meant to suggest to me that some things being said [about Marx and socialism] were not right.

Starting from that point, my worldview was subtly influenced by those ideas, despite lacking formal education about them.

It was because we were involved in too many such things, and such involvement was not just verbal, but rather, very deep.

I think many of my viewpoints and the basic ways I see the world were shaped during that period of time.

Interviewer: The Cultural Revolution ended many years ago. But you are still interested in, and paying attention to, the research on the Cultural Revolution, right?

Yes. I always pay attention to -- and read -- any available articles about the Cultural Revolution.

Also, I often think about things that happened during the Cultural Revolution, not the details of course,

Interviewer: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us.

Thank you.