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Interviewer: Hello! Thank you for accepting my interview.
First, could you tell me which decade you were born in?
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I was born in the '60s.
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Interviewer: Where did you live in China from 1966 to
1976?
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During this period, I was in Chengdu city, Sichuan
province.
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Interviewer: Since you were born in the 1960s, if I asked
you to talk about the decade from 1966 to 1976, you could probably speak
for a long time.
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Interviewer: But if I limit you to about 10 minutes, what
would you most want to share?
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Interviewer: Maybe the thing that left the deepest
impression on you, or just what you most want to express. What would you
like to say?
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Loneliness. My parents both left home to participate in
different social movements, especially to go to rural villages to receive
reeducation. I was lonely back at home.
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At the age of four, I started cooking and washing clothes,
and I had to receive those people who came to investigate us, or came to
search our house to confiscate our possessions.
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Although at that time I didn't really understand how
things worked, I have strong memories of loneliness and fear.
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Interviewer: You lived on your own at age four?
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Yes. I was by myself much of the time, though there were
some neighbors keeping an eye on me.
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There was a woman my mother knew well, who had more than
10 children, and sometimes I'd be invited to their house to eat.
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But most of the time, I was totally on my own, enduring
loneliness each night.
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The second thing was fear, since the children of
intellectuals were bullied by the children of the workers, peasants, and
soldiers.
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Usually when I went out, other kids would call me a "son
of a dog," or some other terrible names. So this gave me a feeling of fear.
[Loneliness and fear] were common feelings for me when I was young.
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Interviewer: What kind of influence do you think that
experience had on you later in life?
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It definitely had an influence. First of all, I learned
how to live independently.
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My family had deep-rooted traditions. My parents had both
been in the army and experienced war.
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They held firm convictions and maintained cultural
traditions, because for generations, members of our family had worked in
education.
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During difficult times they thought of a brighter future;
during dangerous times they thought of what to do to avoid such
problems.
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So, during my childhood I also learned how to respond to
society.
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Thereafter, I experienced a lot of different things all
over the world, but nothing fazed me; I was able to overcome anything.
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So, I myself am glad I had this kind of experience, even
if is not something I wanted to go through.
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Still, it was important to my personality, making me
stronger, giving me the spirit and ability to go all over the world without
fear,
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to be organized and be a good leader in my work, and to
make tough decisions during difficult times -- all of this is still really
important.
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Interviewer: You just mentioned that your parents were in
the military.
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Interviewer: During the 10 years of the Cultural
Revolution, was this still their social status? Or did they turn into
civilians, and become intellectuals?
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They were no longer military. My mom worked in
education.
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Among women at the time, she belonged to those who had
quite a bit of academic expertise, since she had been to secondary
school.
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My father had graduated from university; he was a
university student before Liberation.
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Interviewer: It's my understanding that during the
Cultural Revolution, not that many in the military were involved
[参与],...
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Interviewer: ...so perhaps [your parents] were persecuted
because they were already working in education at that time.
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Although the military didn't get directly involved, in
Sichuan, the rebel faction was quite active. The two factions called "The
Great Wall" and "8.26" often had battles in which blood was spilled.
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I saw them with my own eyes, though I was still small.
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I saw a lot of injured people on the street. We said they
had sacrificed their lives [died from their injuries].
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Since it was violent struggle, there were injuries on both
sides. Both sides wanted to prove they were loyal to this country and this
Party.
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Both insisted the other side was counter-revolutionary.
These childhood memories still seem so fresh.
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Often, clothes hung out to dry in the courtyard would
suddenly have bullet holes in them. These kinds of things happened a
lot.
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Bystanders were often hit by bullets. So, most of the
time, we stayed inside the house.
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Interviewer: Later on, did your family talk about the
Cultural Revolution?
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I'd say we didn't talk about it directly; we felt it was a
taboo, or a restricted topic. That's because my parents each had a
different point of view.
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My father was a conservative intellectual; that was his
family background. He was always fearful that his thinking was
bourgeois.
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Although he had bourgeois thinking, he was scared, so he
acted as if he was more to the left.
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For example, he'd often take a notebook and go copy down
"big-character posters," and then he'd study by reading them aloud.
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My mother had experienced war, and from the time she was
young, she had always looked at society critically.
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So, she always took what she thought was an upright
position, believing this or that was wrong, to the point that she even
protected some intellectuals by allowing them to hide in our home.
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I remember that sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and
wonder, why are there so many people in our house?
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My mom told me not to tell anyone about it, that these
were people who were being protected because they had run into some
difficulties.
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But in the morning, I saw they were all under the bed.
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At the time I remember thinking it was like a game, since
they usually came in the front door,
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hid under the bed all night, and in the morning left by
climbing the back courtyard wall.
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It was like a movie, like Mine Warfare or Tunnel Warfare.
I didn't have shrewd powers of discernment at the time, but this is the
impression it all gave me.
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Interviewer: What I really meant [to ask] was, after the
Cultural Revolution, did your family ever talk about things that had
happened?
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We must have talked a little, for example, discussing how
many portraits of Chairman Mao we'd painted every day.
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Because [at that time] we had a responsibility to make
[Chairman Mao] portraits every day.
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We'd use a kind of paper cutting that you'd shine a
flashlight through, to project his image onto the wall.
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On the wall was a big piece of paper, and we'd trace his
image on this. The more we painted--
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Interviewer: -- the more loyal you were to Chairman
Mao?
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Yeah, the more loyal. As a child, I'd hold the flashlight,
and help my mother paint.
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Later on, this helped my ability to do Chinese calligraphy
and paper cutting.
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I started studying calligraphy at age four, since I had to
write out "quotations."
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Interviewer: Quotations from Chairman Mao.
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Then, in elementary and middle school, I was one of the
masters of writing "big-character posters."
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At that time, though I didn't directly evaluate whether
the Cultural Revolution was good or bad, I would still take some of the
content of these activities and use them for experience, for practice.
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At that time, I didn't yet have the ability to judge right
and wrong; my feeling was just that this was just what society was
like.
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But more and more, we began to feel a kind of anxiety,
because our books, like Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber, had all
been taken away.
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My family's history books were also confiscated by the Red
Guards, and were even burned right before our eyes.
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So, sometimes what we talked about at home were the
difficulties these movements had caused our family, some disappointments
and even fear.
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Because the books you owned might turn out to be
counter-revolutionary. When we'd talk about these things, there was a kind
of pessimistic feeling.
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Most of the time, we didn't get formal education from
school, since when we got to elementary school, we were doing things like
going to rural villages to pull weeds.
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Also, at a very young age, we also started doing so-called
practical learning within society. So there were fewer and fewer chances to
study systematically at a school.
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However, there was another feeling, for us kids, a kind of
excitement. When the teacher announced we would no longer attend classes,
we were extremely happy.
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Sometimes we'd go to a rural village to help with weeding.
My knowledge of how to differentiate among medicinal plants came from the
drills I did in those villages.
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So children who grew up with parents who weren't deeply
impacted by the Cultural Revolution had different experiences from those
who parents were attacked.
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For example, there were three families in our neighborhood
[who were affected].
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One family had lived in the U.S. as commercial diplomats.
Later, they were greatly impacted [by the Cultural Revolution].
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The kids were always called “sons of rabbits” and
"sons of dogs"; they couldn't go to school. We all discriminated against
them.
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But my family was actually sort of humanitarian, so when
we cooked, we would make a little extra, and my mother would have me take
it over.
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At first, they wouldn't dare accept it, but later we took
it over quietly to give to them. This was our family's relationship with
them.
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Another family was that of a high-ranking engineer, who
lived next door. During the Cultural Revolution, when people's houses were
searched to confiscate their possessions, they pulled up the family's
carpet and found gold bars.
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Interviewer: Really?
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Yes. A capitalist! It was said he was an expert on steel.
Later he committed suicide.
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One time, I went over to their house, just to chat as
usual, and saw a person hanging from the top of the building.
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Interviewer: You saw it?
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I saw it. It was me who discovered it. I didn't quite
believe what I was seeing -- how could a person be there on the top of the
building?
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I went back and told my mother, and only then did I
realize it was suicide.
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Then there was a young man we knew who was in love.
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It seemed like at that time his status wouldn't allow such
a thing, and the other person broke it off, so he also hanged himself.
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I remember that guy was really good looking, really tall.
He often came to our house to look after me and play with me.
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Later on it was said he had done something terrible, and
died -- committed suicide.
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[At that time] people dying was not an exceptional thing;
it happened all the time.
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But a child at that time did not understand much about the
cultural background of that time, since they were protected by their
parents.
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[Our parents] tried to keep us from suffering too much.
That's what I believe.
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Interviewer: Today, do you have much interest in the topic
of the Cultural Revolution?
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I pay a lot of attention to it, because I think the
Cultural Revolution was a great upset for us.
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My feeling is that we lost a lot, [such as] the
intellectual possibilities of our childhood.
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Our parents were often not by our sides, having gone to
join "revolutionary activities" -- [I'm] putting that in quotation marks
--
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-- such as going to rural villages, being struggled
against, and even being insulted by others.
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From our point of view, the Cultural Revolution was really
negative. When I think of it now, it's a tragedy.
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In the development of China's culture, and especially its
history, this kind of experience brought to humankind, Chinese culture, the
Chinese ethnicity,
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Chinese people ourselves -- well, I think if it had not
happened, this society would be even more beautiful.
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Thank you for accepting my interview.
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