"Turning every innocent person into a guilty one -- this is the very worst aspect of the Cultural Revolution, in my opinion."

Interviewer: Hi. Thank you for accepting our interview.

You’re welcome.

Interviewer: Could you please tell me when you were born?

Interviewer: You don’t need to say your exact age; just the decade of your birth is fine – such as “’40s,” “’50s,” “’60s.”

[I was born in the] ‘50s.

Interviewer: Could you tell me where you lived in China during the period of time from 1966 to 1976?

I was in Wuhan, and later in the countryside of Hubei Province for a while.

Interviewer: OK. I believe that if I were to ask you to share your memories of what you experienced during the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, it might take you 10 days or more.

Interviewer: But if I only give you 10 minutes, what would you most want to share?

Interviewer: Some experiences, a certain scene, a certain incident, or some of your ideas -- please say whatever you’d like.

Sure. May I start?

Interviewer: Go ahead.

When people talk about the Cultural Revolution, they say that it was miserable, or talk about being struggled against.

I feel that the greatest disaster of the Cultural Revolution, which of course I only figured out many years later,

was its unleashing of the dark side of human nature.

All religions try to suppress one’s dark side and praise one's virtues, but the Cultural Revolution was actually completely opposite.

At the time, when you saw your friends or loved ones being struggled against, you couldn't stay quiet.

You had to -- people would force you to -- get up [to join in the struggle].

The better your relationship [with the accused], the more others forced you [to participate in the struggle].

Interpersonal relationships were thoroughly destroyed.

That is why after the Cultural Revolution, though China has become rich and people's material lives have greatly improved,

interpersonal relationships are still a source of anxiety.

My personal impression is that during the first few years of the Cultural Revolution, we were not greatly impacted.

Although my parents were cadres, and were written about on "big-character posters," we were not affected too much.

But during the Rectify the Class Ranks campaign, my mother was ordered to the "cow shed."

It was because right before Liberation, she had gone to Kuomintang-occupied Nanjing [the Nationalists' headquarters].

The Kuomintang [KMT] government had lied to the students, saying poor students could go to college for free in Nanjing,

so my mother and her friends went there.

Then, seeing the KMT continuously defeated, [my mother and her friends] came back [to Communist-occupied areas].

[I later joked that] they were really opportunists. Later, she joined the Communist Party and became a firmly-committed Communist.

During the Rectify the Class Ranks campaign, one of her friends who had gone [to Nanjing] with her revealed this piece of history,

since everyone had to confess his or her past. Then my mother was treated as a spy and was arrested.

After the arrest, she was imprisoned in a cafeteria at her workplace, a university.

Such a place was [referred to as] a “cow shed" -- that kind of place.

At that time, the greatest impact on us was that the atmosphere around us became very tense.

For example, sometimes when I was walking down the street, if her old friends came to greet me, they'd ask,

“Xiao Lin, how are you and your sister?" Then I knew this was a very special, unusual thing.

You could feel that these people still had goodness, but they could not express it -- they did not have any other way to express it.

I still remember a little thing that illustrates this tense situation -- people lived in this kind of fear not only due to political pressure.

Instead, people around you reinforced the fear.

I was about 12 or 13 years old at that time and I kept hens for eggs.

Someone killed one of my chickens, and afterward, I sat at home crying.

Of course, I couldn’t go over and argue with the people who’d done it.

Because of my family’s situation at the time, we would never have won. I knew this.

My father came and said, “You’re crying over a dead chicken. Do you know what will happen if people find out about this?”

I immediately didn’t dare keep crying.

I remember that my father tried to make salted eggs. Because eggs were a bit cheaper in the spring, my father salted them, to keep them longer.

But he did not know how to do that, so the eggs got spoiled.

If this were to happen today, we would just throw the eggs away, laugh it off, and be done with it.

But my father went to the river, dug a deep hole, and buried the eggs in the night.

[Back then], your own business became everyone's business.

If, let’s say, you just threw the eggs away, someone would definitely say, how wasteful, how rich you are, how could you spoil such good food?, and so on.

These small things left really deep impressions in my heart.

Still, generally speaking, during the Cultural Revolution our family was pretty lucky.

Nobody was beaten or injured, and we all survived intact.

I feel that, relatively speaking, my personal experience was not particularly tragic.

However, from these experiences I've come to feel that this movement's greatest injury was not who was beaten.

But for the whole nation, the worst [injury] was that no person can really say he or she was not a persecutor during the Cultural Revolution.

Turning every innocent person into a guilty one -- this is the very worst aspect of the Cultural Revolution, in my opinion.

Take myself as an example. I was only 11 years old when I joined in the Cultural Revolution.

But because I was good at writing, I was called upon to write all of the big critiques [denouncing people],

even up until the first few years after the Cultural Revolution.

I remember that after I completed my Worker-Peasant-Soldier student period [of college], I returned to my [original workplace], a research institute.

At that time, my workplace wanted to attack someone.

What's funny is, I can’t even remember who the victim was now.

But our vice director asked me to write a critique, although the Cultural Revolution was over already.

Anyway, since they asked me to write, I wrote.

During the Cultural Revolution, because I could write passably well, I criticized at least 10 people -- people who had nothing to do with me.

I didn't even know some of them. So it is very difficult to say who really did nothing bad.

Another thing left a huge impression on me. I had a good friend, who went to school in Jiangsu Province.

He had a physics teacher who particularly liked him.

When the Cultural Revolution started, this teacher was singled out. It must have been because he had had "improper male-female relations."

[The teacher] was given a hat to wear [with his crimes written on it],

and made to sweep the floors every day, or parade around in the streets.

The teacher and my friend were not only teacher and student, but also neighbors.

One day [the teacher] went out, carrying his hat. Seeing that no one was around, he didn't put it on.

My friend, who was just a junior high school-aged kid, saw his teacher acting so sneaky and thought it was really funny. So he laughed out loud a little.

That night, the teacher committed suicide.

For his whole life, my friend has felt guilty, thinking that because he was a student the teacher really liked, his laughter led to this tragedy.

In fact, there may have been no connection at all.

It could’ve just been that the teacher couldn’t stand the pressure from outside, or something like that.

More tragically, the teacher's wife saw that her husband had committed suicide in the kitchen, and so she tried to hang herself.

Fortunately, due to her weight or for some other reason, the rope broke, and she did not die.

The couple had three children, so if [she had died], I do not know how those children could have survived.

Although I have a lot of negative memories from the Cultural Revolution, in terms of my personal maturation – how can I put this?

It’s given me [the ability to] reflect on the Cultural Revolution now, and to ponder many things.

I don't dare say I'm a deep person, but after you sink to the bottom, you can think more deeply. It offers that opportunity.

For example, when I went “down to the countryside,” my biggest surprise was the poverty of the peasants,

and their human nature -- they were incredibly kindhearted.

When we were young, of course, we would say, “Oh, the workers and peasants are the main force of the revolution,” but the concept was abstract.

Maybe I felt abstractly that [peasants] were worthy of respect, but I had no real idea about them,

since we never had any contact with them, growing up on a university campus.

As a result, it was not until after going “down to the countryside” that I got to know the peasants as real people.

Being with them, especially playing with some of the children who were my age -- I was not yet 16 years old at the time -- I formed really, really good relationships.

Together we solved math problems and such, and I realized that there were many very talented people among these folks,

who were tied to the village [since they were not permitted to migrate at that time].

I think the most important thing I learned there was sympathy.

This experience greatly influenced my life and my worldview.

Now I firmly believe that all people who use their own hands and their own labor to earn a living,

no matter how simple they are, or how lacking in education, or how common – they are all extremely worthy of respect.

Because I saw those peasants -- their life was not easy, but they could live a happy life, and were ready to help others.

They gave a lot of help to us, the Educated Youth. They were so tolerant of us.

I remember the day we arrived there, we had no firewood.

We went to the path at the edge of the rice paddies, where some grass was growing, and cut a bunch of it down with a sickle.

We took a big pile of grass and used it to cook dinner.

It was only later that we knew the grass on the edges of the paddies was allotted to each family as cooking fuel, which was in short supply there.

We were really clueless, but they took great care of us.

To thresh rice after harvest, you’d tie the ox in the threshing court,

and lead it around and around in circles as it pulled a roller over the harvested rice plants.

It would be really hot, and so we’d rest, and the peasants would come to take turns with us – they’d continue leading the ox.

They took good care of us. After a shift, since we were still so young, we’d fall asleep in the shade.

Usually, the peasants wouldn’t wake us until mealtime. Therefore, threshing was easy work for us.

I usually tried to work the first shift and then take a nap, to make sure I did some work before going back to sleep.

Overall, the impression being in the countryside gave me was that peasants were particularly good people.

Sometimes we did not have vegetables to eat, so we’d go to the production team’s garden to steal some.

When we encountered the production team leader, we hid our hands behind our backs, though surely he knew what we were doing.

Interviewer: How long did you stay in the village?

Actually, I was very, very lucky. Hubei was one of the Third Front provinces. That is, many factories and research institutes moved to the mountains there.

These places had to recruit workers, so hiring in Hubei moved quickly. I stayed in the countryside less than a year.

Within 11 months, I was recruited back to my hometown, to a computer research institute, where I worked in a lab. One could hardly be luckier than this.

Moreover, my parents did not have to “go through the back door” [use connections to arrange this position].

In fact, they really wanted to use their social capital to help, but before they got the chance, I had already come back.

I knew only one other person who was as lucky. We came back on the same truck together, and later became good friends.

Even though it was just a year [in the countryside], to me, in terms of my maturation, it was—

Interviewer: --very important.

Yes, very important. In fact, if I had stayed longer, this experience might have turned into a negative one, right?

Interviewer: There is a saying similar to this: if it’s a short stay, the fresh enthusiasm won’t wear off.

Yes -- because you stayed there for a short time, went through enough hardship and got enough education,

but you weren't there long enough to develop a disgust for the world and become extremely pessimistic.

Then, you came back to the city after learning a lot of positive lessons.

It's often said the lessons of being in the countryside were about withstanding hardship, working hard, etc.

The best thing, to me, was learning who the peasants were, understanding how to have empathy with them and think about things from their point of view.

Interviewer: It’s very important.

Another [benefit] was lifelong friendship. If you weren't eating meals from the same pot, then you wouldn’t form that kind of relationship.

Our landlord was the son of a rich peasant. His parents had died long before, and he was all alone.

He was a strong worker for the production team, so the production team never treated him as the son of a rich peasant [a class enemy].

Still, no matter what, he had that shadow over him, you know?

We [were assigned to live] in his house, and everyone treated him so rudely.

For example, a girl in my group was washing clothes at the river bank, and he went to wash there, too.

He used her soap, just a little bit, and so the girl pushed him and he fell into the water.

He climbed up as if nothing had happened. He wasn't even angry.

One time, we were using the waste from the girls’ outhouse to fertilize the [Educated Youth allotment] garden, but there wasn't enough.

The boys were lazy, so they had been using the landlord’s toilet to save a few steps.

The landlord was named Shagu, a real country name meaning "ox in the sand."

I said [to one of the boys], “Go to Shagu's outhouse and get some waste for the garden.”

My teammates said, “Is it really okay?” They were concerned, since manure was like gold in the village.

I said, “Why not? You guys used his toilet, so why can’t we get half the waste back?”

Then they went and got half of the waste to fertilize our garden.

When it got dark, we finished up to go home.

Just then, a good friend of mine, a country boy, ran over [and said,] “You'd better not go back! Shagu is standing at the entrance to the village, ready to fight you!”

Clearly Shagu knew I was the one who’d instigated it.

I said, “What do I have to fear? Two of our boys used his toilet, but we only took half of the waste. He got off easy!”

Then I just swaggered back.

When I got to the village entrance, Shagu was indeed standing there with a darkened face, the kind of expression that made you feel a real storm was coming.

Then I saw our production brigade secretary, whose home was the first house as you came into the village.

He was standing there, watching from a distance -- he knew something big was going to happen.

He was afraid of something bad happening to the Educated Youth sent by Chairman Mao.

I figured, Shagu is a rich peasant, and the secretary is watching, so Shagu won't dare do anything to me.

So I passed him as if nothing had happened. The case was closed that day, but later on, it became apparent that Shagu was really, really angry.

According to the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism, the economic base determines the superstructure [of society], right?

Through this incident, I realized that although I had studied Marxist-Leninist theory more than the villagers and my fellow Educated Youth, in practice, they obviously knew it better than I did.

Those folks knew that to take Shagu’s waste was to take your life into your own hands!

I was the only one who didn’t know. I thought, we only took half! We didn’t even take two-thirds, which we deserved—but no, that just wasn’t done.

Shagu wouldn't stand for it. After that, he totally hated me.

Even before that, he had never liked me much, because I treated him with total disregard.

Actually, I think that hurt him much more than being pushed into the river. Because I didn't treat him like a person.

One day later on, we were eating breakfast, and he was there.

He had never bothered me before, but that day he said something sarcastic, and so I put my empty rice bowl on his head.

He pushed me down, knocking my head against a heavy piece of furniture. I almost passed out.

Then I stood up ready to fight him tooth and nail! I was only 16 years old. Eventually the others pulled me away.

Many years later, I gradually understood that I was very unfair to him.

One time when I went back to China, seven or eight years ago, I took my family back to the countryside.

Interviewer: Did you see him?

I didn’t see him, but I met with our production brigade secretary’s wife. She was also a very important person to us.

Because she was wife of the production brigade secretary, he assigned her an easy job—to be our instructor on [country] life.

She taught us how to tend our allotted vegetable garden. Our vegetables grew well, all because of her teaching.

She showed us how to make soft tofu, pickled vegetables, etc. Therefore she was important to us, too. I saw her.

As for Shagu, he had taken his grandson to town to have fun, so I didn’t see him, but I saw his wife.

When we were in the countryside, Shagu wasn’t yet married.

But every time the production team had a day off, Shagu would carry a load of food and wool yarn to charm his prospective wife.

At that time, a pound of wool yarn, just about enough to knit a sweater, was a valuable thing.

When I saw his wife, I asked, “Has Shagu ever mentioned me?”

She said yes, he said that you were “too” capable, which is our way of saying "very hardworking."

I asked if he had ever mentioned fighting with me. She said he had never mentioned it. I just felt that—

Interviewer: All he remembered were the good things about you.

Right. They really always remembered the good things about you.

We brought some cigarettes and gave her a carton, and she was really appreciative. In fact, I always felt sorry toward him.

Interviewer: A little bit guilty toward him, right?

I really feel guilty towards him. At that time, actually, I was not stupid enough to think Shagu was a class enemy.

Although that’s how we had been educated, I was not stupid to such an extent.

However, you would still think he was different from others.

My relationship with others in the village was really good. Why did [I] specifically discriminate against him?

Obviously, his family background still made me consider him incompatible.

Another thing is that Shagu was an orphan with a bad family background. He had a lowly look to him.

Even though he was a strong worker in the production team, he seemed sneaky.

He couldn’t stand up straight, and he didn’t make people feel sympathetic or respectful toward him.

Therefore, the first impression he made on people was pretty bad. But it wasn’t his fault; it was the fault of the circumstances.

There is a writer from Hubei named Hu Fayun. I don’t know if you know of him.

Hu Fayun wrote a book titled

[Winter of Confusion]; his most famous book is

[Such is This World@sars.come].

Interviewer: Oh, right!

is a story about a group of children with bad family backgrounds who form a Mao Zedong Thought propaganda team during the Cultural Revolution.

In the beginning there is a section that implies that the protagonist, the propaganda team captain, may in fact be [the author] Hu Fayun himself.

[The protagonist] has a music teacher who is impacted by the Cultural Revolution; before, he had greatly respected this teacher.

When he sees the teacher being made to parade through the streets, cowering and pitiful, his respect disappears; he doesn’t even have any sympathy.

That is to say, sympathy for people who were suffering could easily fade away.

The sufferers had a kind of non-human appearance, without their own dignity, so it was difficult for them to gain others’ respect and sympathy.

After reading the book, I wrote a letter to Hu Fayun, whom I had met before.

I said the way I viewed Shagu, to whom I showed no pity, was similar to the music teacher he’d written about.

It is because the sufferers themselves gave an appearance of being victims, physically and mentally, so they could not evoke sympathy.

I'm not saying this to defend myself. I'm just saying that this was a kind of person shaped by that era.

[Hu Fayun] also said that the attitude toward the victims is an interesting psychological issue to research.

Interviewer: Right, right, right. In that historical environment, it was a kind of self-denial on their part.

Interviewer: The way you talk about this makes me think it is a unique point of view from which to ponder this issue.

Yes, that is why I respect my mother. Though she was put in the “cow shed,” she was a loyal Communist.

They pressured her [to confess]. During the Cultural Revolution, it was common for people to betray one another.

The most profound case I know was of a math professor at Wuhan University, called XXX.

He was a high-ranking professor and the honorary director of my research institute. He was that famous.

His son, being a young man full of passion, went to China’s border with Vietnam, wanting to cross over and join the war [against the United States].

He was caught and sent back, labeled a traitor [in light of his family background].

What resulted was guilt by association – all his relatives were subsequently condemned.

[The professor] was locked up and interrogated. They said, "Your son went to the border -- did it have anything to do with you?"

I heard that under this pressure, [the professor] eventually implicated about one hundred people.

It was quite a lot of people, many of them his former students and colleagues.

I know there was one person he betrayed, [a student] whose family’s social status was bad.

That student’s father had been a city garrison commander for the Kuomintang, so [the son] was imprisoned.

This young man tried to commit suicide many times without succeeding.

He was a very, very talented young man who had been a graduate student of [that professor].

You could say [that professor] was without moral integrity.

However, I cannot blame him, because this kind of extreme pressure could really break people down.

My mother was sent to the "cow shed" because someone pointed the finger at her under such pressure.

However, when she herself was pressured to disclose something about others,

she said, “I want to be loyal to the Party. One is one and two is two. Even if you kill me, I can't just say something out of thin air. Doing that would be deceiving the Party."

I remember very, very clearly, it was around the Spring Festival of 1969. Our family was taken to [the "cow shed"] to persuade my mother [to confess].

They said, “Look, your family is here; if you go ahead and confess, you can go home early and reunite with your relatives.”

It was all lies. When you were done, they would never actually let you go home.

At that time, I was 14 years old; my sister was 12. She was younger, and not particularly mature.

She leaned over the table, her head buried in her arms. She didn’t speak for hours.

Finally, when we were about to go, my sister raised her head and said, “Mom, just say it, as long as you say it, you can go home to celebrate Spring Festival.”

My mother said, “You know I cannot deceive the Party.”

Of course, my mother did not say, “They’re the ones lying to you; we can’t go home for the Spring Festival even if we confess something.” But my sister believed them.

My mother said she could not deceive the Party; if there was nothing to say, she couldn’t say anything.

During the Cultural Revolution, you could discern that some people were able to stick to the moral bottom line. My mother is one of them.

My parents were really worthy of respect. At that time, things were sometimes very strange.

My mother was detained in the “cow shed,” but my father was still trusted.

During the Rectify the Class Ranks campaign, he was sent to places to investigate the history of people [like my mother].

He had a partner, a Shanghainese I called Uncle Li, who was a staffer in my father’s office.

Uncle Li looked like Pu Zhigao in The Red Crag [红岩], [a novel about a Communist party member who betrays his comrades].

He was a Shanghainese, neat and tidy, fair-skinned, with glasses.

I always had a poor impression of him [due to his resemblance to Pu Zhigao].

However, after Uncle Li partnered with my father, I found that despite his soft bourgeoisie appearance, he was very kind-hearted, willing to help people out of difficulties.

Interviewer: He was not a traitor type [like Pu Zhigao in The Red Crag].

Yes, in that novel, everything was stereotyped.

So the two of them would go to obtain evidence.

For example, a person might say, “I am not traitor. During that period of time, I was with somebody who is our revolutionary comrade and can testify for me.”

My father and Uncle Li would immediately get on the train – you know what transportation conditions were like at that time.

They’d catch the last train and rush to find that person. With great difficulty, they would vindicate the suspect by gaining this testimony. So in this way you could—

Interviewer: —could exonerate someone.

—could exonerate someone. My father said that one time, rushing back and forth like this, he had a fever, and so he stayed in a small inn.

[Being that sick] was dangerous, but two people together could take care of each other.

From then on, my father's impression of Uncle Li was better than before. Maybe before he had felt the same way I had.

You know, it was very common to stereotype people. [You might say], “You look so neat! You don’t look like one of the proletariat."

I still remember another of my father’s subordinate cadres, who really knew how to flatter my father.

Before the Cultural Revolution, he used to go fishing with my father.

My father was fun-loving, with no other shortcomings.

Loving to have fun is not a shortcoming; of course. Now I believe it's a great merit.

[This subordinate] helped my father dig up worms for bait, so my father really liked having him as a cadre.

But my mom? She could see through people, and she did not like him at all.

In the early days of the Cultural Revolution, people struggled against one another.

But when my father was struggled against, it was actually very civilized; there was no violence. People just said a few words.

My father had never offended anyone.

There was just one person, this [subordinate cadre], who jumped up on the stage, shouted insults at my father for no good reason, and slapped him across the face.

Later, my father came back and said, “XXX is really no good. He treated me so nicely before, sucking up to me.”

My mom said, “Good thing he hit you.”

Interviewer: That slap was a wakeup call.

That slap made him understand clearly. He used to always say this guy was a good person. At that time, it was hard to see who was a good person.

The Cultural Revolution was like a litmus test, enabling me to see which of my mother's old friends would come over and say hello to me.

Those people were different.

Interviewer: You are really good at storytelling. You vividly describe the relationships between people during the Cultural Revolution.

Actually, I think that normally I don't pay much attention to relationships between people.

I’m really not very concerned about how others see me. But at that time, if they came over to say hello, it was—

Interviewer: —a warm greeting you’d remember for a lifetime, right?

Yes, right. So I still remember these people today. Normally when people said hello to me, I didn’t even pay attention.

Interviewer: Very very good.

At that time the situation was…

Interviewer: It’s wonderful, what you shared.

…very educational, for me.

Interviewer: These small stories can make big points.

Interviewer: You illustrated what happened among people at that time, including those with a bad social status, and your parents’ experiences. Very very good.

Thank you.

Interviewer: OK. Thank you, thank you for the interview.

You're welcome.