My father taught me...

Interviewer: Thank you for accepting my interview. Please don’t be nervous. First, could you tell me in which decade you were born?

I was born in the 1960s. During the time of the Cultural Revolution, I was born and completed elementary school.

Interviewer: Where were you living in China during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution? Which provinces or areas?

I lived in Xiushan County, which at that time was part of Sichuan Province, but is now a part of Chongqing.

I was born in Xiushan, and lived there until I graduated from high school.

Interviewer: If we only give you ten minutes and let you speak freely about your memories of the Cultural Revolution,

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

Originally, my parents lived in Hunan.

But during the 1950s, because they were makers of porcelain china, they were invited to Xiushan to help build up a china factory.

They had a relatively superior family background, neither landlords nor wealthy peasants.

They were respected by local people, because they belonged to the community of skilled workers.

Before Liberation, my father, as an able-bodied man, was summoned to work as a bodyguard for a distant uncle.

At that time, that uncle served as a senior official for the Kuomintang Party.

Even though he was always hardworking and conscientious, my father was never able to become the factory director, because of this issue.

He was always vice director. This situation is one I have deep impressions of during the Cultural Revolution.

Another issue concerns my neighbor’s daughter, who was my best friend from elementary school to middle school.

At the start of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, her father was identified as a Rightist and was continuously persecuted.

I didn’t quite understand it. My friend’s mom was also very kind to me.

My friend’s father was not very healthy because he was constantly repressed during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution.

The four kids in this family couldn’t find jobs, because work wasn’t arranged for them by the work unit.

Later on, one of the “aunties” from our neighborhood introduced a boyfriend to that family’s eldest daughter,

and they invited the local Party committee secretary to dinner.

I don’t know what happened next, but the eldest girl was then arranged to work in a collective enterprise’s store.

This left a deep impression on me.

Why would the same person receive different treatment in different times and under different circumstances?

So this is something that left a deep impression on me during the Cultural Revolution.

Interviewer: Now that the Cultural Revolution has already been over for many years, do you have interest in understanding it more?

Interviewer: Would you like to share it with the younger generation?

Of course. In retrospect, everyone had different experiences during the Cultural Revolution.

From my point of view, and from my family’s perspective, although my father went through such a hard time, he never had any complaints about the Party [CCP].

He said he believed the Party would set everything straight.

In accordance with my father’s own excellent work performance in the factory, he also cared about our education;

for example, [he taught us that] we had to study hard always.

He also said that no matter what things are like today, after all,

compared with what his life had been like growing up, things were still much better.

His family was very poor when he was young, and they often needed to beg for food.

[My father taught me that] now, China was a new society where people had enough nutritious food to eat, so we should be grateful to the Party.

Because of this traditional education, from the time I was small, I studied seriously;

my academic performance was always the best in my class and school.

In my political life I didn’t really experience much influence.

For example, I served in the Red Guards,

and since I had the best grades it was only natural that I was team leader [of the Young Pioneers], and class monitor.

By the time I got to university, although my father was still being influenced [by the Cultural Revolution] himself

– the situation still hadn’t changed – of course he still encouraged me to make progress.

So, I feel that I saw the different fates of people.

In retrospect, [I think we] should think more. [For example], we were such good friends;

how could it be that her fate was not as good as mine? Later on, I watched some films and read “scar novels,”

and got to know that there were more people who had even more miserable experiences [during the Cultural Revolution.]

Why? I think we should think more deeply about it, for example, about why such situations happened.

Did these things really have to happen? Could they have been avoided?

Interviewer: Very good. Thank you!