Interviewer: Hello, and thank you for accepting my interview. Could you first tell me approximately when you were born, such as “1940s,” “1950s,” “1960s”?
I was born in 1962.
Interviewer: OK, 1962. During the Cultural Revolution, the decade from 1966 to 1976, where were you living in China?
I lived in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
Interviewer: You must have many memories of that period, which you could probably speak about for several days.
Interviewer: However, if I only give you ten minutes – or, in other words, during the first ten minutes of the interview, what memories do you most want to share with us?
I was only four years old when the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, so I have few clear memories of [the early stage of the Cultural Revolution].
But I have distinct memories of the middle period of it, especially what happened in 1969. The Cultural Revolution had quite a large impact in Suzhou.
Every few days search teams would come through our neighborhood to search people’s houses and confiscate their possessions.
I remember the winter of 1969 very well; it was a very cold winter. From the time I was a small child, I didn’t live with my parents.
I lived with my paternal grandparents, because after graduating from university in the 1950s, my parents went to support the “border region.”
In 1953, after my father graduated from Saint John’s University, Shanghai and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics,
he was sent to work at the second department of the Beijing Ministry of Commerce; it was the department in charge of foreign trade.
At that time, in order to support the Great Northwestern region—which was called “supporting the border” back then—he signed up to go to Xining in Qinghai Province,
without obtaining permission from his family. This was in 1956. At that time, my grandfather was living in Suzhou, after retiring from XX Bank.
In 1956, to his surprise, he received a telegram from Qinghai. “We don’t have relatives in Qinghai,” [he said,] “Why am I getting a telegram from there?”
The telegram said that my grandfather’s oldest son [my father] had already arrived in Xining, Qinghai Province. The Qinghai of that time was totally different from today.
After I was born in Qinghai in 1962, my parents thought over the problems of the plateau climate, and when I was only eight months old, they sent me back to Suzhou to live with my grandparents.
So I spent my childhood “under my grandparents’ knees.” Let’s go back to something I just mentioned. What happened in 1969?
On a very cold winter night, someone knocked on the door, and then a team of Red Guards rushed into my home. They didn’t do anything to our home, but they took away my grandfather.
My grandpa did not return that night, and my grandma was very worried. My grandfather was not released until noon the next day.
He was asked to confess his “problematic history,” because someone else had revealed [his history] along with that person’s own confession.
He had a colleague, who was also our neighbor; that colleague’s home was searched [by the Red Guards] and he was asked to inform on his friends.
As a result, the neighbor said my grandpa was his best friend, since at the time, they were both senior executives at Shanghai XX Bank.
People like them were called “foreign slaves” at that time. Though my grandfather looked calm after he came back, I could tell [he was not].
After he got back, he made some decisions. Until then, we had been renting a courtyard home that had about ten rooms. He said, “There are only three of us. This house is much too big.”
He said we would voluntarily give it up, and only rent two of its rooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. In addition, we gave away all the furniture to the housing authority for our street.
As for all the calligraphy, paintings, and china, we smashed or burned them in our courtyard. I remember this so clearly. There was nothing left of them.
I remember asking the Red Guards if we could donate the artwork and china to our nation, but the Red Guards said that they did not want them.
They said those were all “capitalist things,” which were not appropriate to have in our home, and it was best to smash them or burn them to ashes.
At that time, our landlord was from a well-known family in Suzhou, a descendant of the master of Suzhou Liu [Lingering] Garden.
Because our families had been relatives as well as friends for several generations, they had rented one big courtyard of their larger complex to us.
Their family was truly impacted. A few trucks came—I don’t even know from where--and took away everything in their home. In their family there was an old grandma and a little grandson.
It was truly tragic. These are my memories of the Cultural Revolution. My grandma was someone who had received a bit of education.
She was already quite old in 1969, and after the fright [of these events,] she got sick and stayed in bed.
Less than one month later, she passed away, around the winter solstice in December 1969.
I can’t say it was directly caused by the Cultural Revolution, but at the very least, she was terribly frightened on the night my grandfather was taken away.
After all, she was quite old. And so in this way, she passed. Afterward, the one thing that my grandfather told me most often was,
“You must be careful. Never talk nonsense, and don't talk too much.”
After he retired, he returned to Suzhou; his friends there were the same type of people—the intellectuals and literati—and all of them were affected [by the Cultural Revolution].
He had a relative who was labeled a capitalist at that time—[he] was the boss of a textile factory.
[He and his wife] hanged themselves together. After the suicide, none of their children were there, and the neighbors were the ones who helped take care of the bodies and cremate them.
I remember that my grandpa also went to help. From about ’69 to ’70, the Cultural Revolution was quite serious in Suzhou. At the time, within the city center, things were relatively okay.
My grandfather did not belong to any work unit in Suzhou, since he had already retired from the bank in Shanghai. The people who came to him were all Red Guards from our neighborhood.
We lived in the city; on summer nights, when we sat outside to keep cool, we often heard that something [bad] had happened outside of the city.
Some said there were gunshots, or that there were people slashing others with machetes and fishing out their victims’ intestines with harpoons.
As these rumors spread throughout the city, everyone was shocked and anxious. Later, after our house had been surrendered and all of our furniture and collections destroyed,
I lived in a little room of about ten square meters with my grandfather. As a small child, I felt life was completely different from how it had been.
Before [the house was surrendered], I could run around a big house, playing hide-and-seek with the neighbor kids, feeling that I had very large space.
But after 1969, everything was different. That’s how things were for my grandpa and me in Suzhou.
But my parents were in Qinghai during the Cultural Revolution, and they never told me about [their living situation].
It was only later on, when my father grew old, that they started to talk a little about [what they experienced]. They were sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution.
My mom was a doctor. She graduated from Shanghai Second Medical College. As a doctor, she had the professional habit of frequently washing her hands.
The Red Guards in Qinghai Medical College said, “If you like washing your hands and keeping tidy so much, how about you go feed the pigs?”
They made her do the dirtiest work, but somehow she got through it. Xining is the capital of Qinghai Province. In the border areas around Qinghai, there are many Tibetan districts.
At that time, my mom was sent to these Tibetan areas; she was a gynecologist, and traveled around helping Tibetan people with childbirth.
She was really good at riding horses, and she would camp and cook outdoors. At that time, even for emergency calls, there was no ambulance, and every doctor had to go on horseback,
with assistance and protection from two Tibetan locals. People were often surrounded by wolves, or fell into ice holes.
My parents lived in these “border areas,” and they only had one vacation every four years to return and visit their parents.
As a result, I could only see my parents once every four years, for one month each time. My father came to Suzhou to visit his father, while my mom went to Shanghai to see her parents.
So, my impressions of the Cultural Revolution were mainly about [things that happened] in Suzhou. Now, my mother often tells me about how difficult the environment of the pastureland was.
These days, she speaks casually about it all, but back then—since she was Shanghainese, and went to university around Liberation, around the end of the ’40s and the beginning of the ’50s,
these kinds of experiences were a cultural shock to her, and left a lifelong impression on [both of my parents].
Because I was living in Suzhou [at that time], I didn’t know much about their circumstances, and only learned more later on. Our school in Suzhou also did "open-door schooling."
[At school], kids like me found it hard to hold our heads up,
because when we had to fill in our family background [on a form, I wrote] that both my parents were college graduates and my father worked at a bank—
oh sorry, I mean my grandfather—we were labeled “foreign slaves.” Although [my grandfather] was not severely impacted, he became a target of street supervision.
Some of his colleagues and friends who did not have good interpersonal relations were put in jail—in the south, we cared a lot about interpersonal relations.
Some couldn’t bear the misery caused by all of this, so they committed suicide, some by jumping into the river—there were all kinds of situations.
In the south, these people all were those with so-called bad family backgrounds.
Interviewer: As a little kid, you only met your parents once every four years—how do you feel about this? Do you think it had any influence on your life later on?
I think the most direct [influence] might be that I am not as attached to my parents as to my grandparents. But this is not uncommon among the people around me.
Children of people like my grandfather were [mostly] college students. At that time, if college students had what was called “revolutionary awareness,”
this meant they were aware of the problems of their family background and were thus willing to respond to the calls of the nation.
Once they were summoned, many were sent to Tibet, Qinghai, Ningxia, and other “border areas.” So, they all sent their children to live with grandparents.
I have many [friends] my age who lived with their grandparents. I lived with my grandparents and didn’t have a deep impression of my parents, since I only saw them once every four years;
of course our emotional connection was not that deep. But my grandparents had a great influence on my education. For example, I learned English from my grandpa.
Since he worked at a foreign bank, he read English newspapers and spoke English well. My choice to major in English primarily due to my grandfather’s influence.
In addition, my grandpa was firmly grounded in the Chinese classics. He had me practicing calligraphy when I was only three years old, and also taught me about the classic texts.
At that time, all the schools were shut down and our house had been given up. My grandpa just stayed at home and told me fables and stories from all the books he had read.
So, most of my knowledge of traditional Chinese culture came from my grandpa. As a result, I majored in English at college and studied history in graduate school.
After I came to the United States, I have been able to research modern Chinese history, and have enjoyed it a lot. That’s because the perspectives are different.
Due to the absence of political influence [in the United States], I’ve been able to have a relatively objective view of the history of that time.
So, my views on life, the world, [and values]—the so-called three views—were influenced by my grandfather the most.
The climax of Cultural Revolution’s influence on Suzhou happened between 1969 and 1971, before the Lin Biao Incident.
In the two years from October 1969 to September 1971, Suzhou was horribly impacted by the Cultural Revolution. My grandfather was quite brave.
Although he was “wearing a hat” [given a negative label] himself, he was very generous to his friends and relatives. Some of his friends and relatives were living extremely hard lives.
He often went to visit them, sometimes sneaking a few little things to them. He always took me with him, so I knew what was going on.
There was one old lady, who was already over 80 at the time, who was locked up in a kitchen. There was no one to even give her a sip of hot water, since she had no children.
But [she came from] a prominent family in Suzhou, and her family’s house in the Dongshan area has become a museum now. This woman passed away a few days after my grandpa visited her.
My grandpa often took me to visit and console others. He’d sometimes take them a few items or give them a little money—one or two RMB.
Considering his position at the foreign bank and his family background, my grandpa should have—
Interviewer: —been more miserable.
Yes, he should’ve been more greatly affected. But because he had quite good interpersonal relationships in our neighborhood, [he wasn’t impacted as much].
He was not only supportive of his relatives and friends, but also of neighbors whose living conditions were not so good, because he had some savings.
For example, some of my elementary classmates still [say,] “Your grandpa helped me pay the elementary school tuition.”
Back then, tuition per semester was only about one or two RMB, but some people couldn't afford it.
[In that situation,] my grandpa just paid for them. Also, every time the courtyard collected electricity fees, it was really like “hounding a hero to death just for a bit of money.”
Some people couldn't afford to pay, so my grandpa paid the fees for them. He passed away at age 87.
There was no one in our neighborhood who didn’t know Old Mister Ye living at #14 Miaotang Alley.
His good personal relationships saved him from many of the impacts his colleagues felt during the Cultural Revolution.
[Even though] his colleagues hadn’t attained positions like his in the foreign bank, their experiences during the Cultural Revolution were miserable, and their homes were all ransacked.
Our home was not searched; what my grandfather did was to give one of our old houses in Dongshan, a suburban area of Suzhou, to the nation.
He wrote the letter himself, saying that he was willing to give the house away. Later on, this house became a private museum.
Interviewer: It’s still there?
Yes, it is. Originally he donated it to a production team, and the team used it as a threshing ground that contained more than one hundred rooms, pavilions, and kiosks.
After “reform and opening-up,” since the house was built in the Ming Dynasty, the team divided it into four sections and sold them to four private collectors.
It’s open to the public now, and has become a famous tourist attraction in the Lu Alley of Dongting, Dongshan.
Why did this leave such a deep impression on me? It was because when he was writing the letter with a brush—
Interviewer: Oh, you saw him writing the letter?
Yes, I did. He said he was willing to donate [the house] to the nation, that we no longer wanted it.
He did many things of this kind, and as a result, the nation kept this in mind and did not physically attack him during the Cultural Revolution.
But all of his friends were all among what were known as the “four categories”—landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, and bad elements.
Interviewer: Add the rightists, and it became the “five [black] categories.”
Right, adding the ones who worked for foreign [organizations,] these people were the major targets of strict street supervision.
Later on, my grandpa also served the residential district by copying and writing things, since he had good writing skills.
So, in a word, our family was scared by [my grandfather being taken away] in 1969; afterwards, we basically felt little impact of the Cultural Revolution.
The only thing that changed dramatically were our living conditions at home.
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