WEBVTT
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Interviewer: Hello! Thank you for accepting my
interview.
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Hello.
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Interviewer: Could you please tell me what decade you were
born in?
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Interviewer: You don’t need to say the exact year; just
the decade will do, such as “’30s,” “’40s,” “’50s,”
"'60s," etc.
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The decade? I was born in the 1950s.
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Interviewer: Could you please tell me where you lived
during the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution?
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Sure. I was born in Beijing and grew up in Beijing. I
still remember the Cultural Revolution quite well.
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Why? It’s because when the Cultural Revolution began in
1966, summer vacation still hadn’t started.
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Outside the classroom, some strangers who looked like
cadres appeared. The teacher said they were part of a “work group” that
had come to the school.
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In the early stage of the Cultural Revolution, there were
these “work groups”; I think it was May or June when they arrived.
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That year, we didn’t have [final] exams; we just went on
break. That’s when the chaos started, and when teachers started having
“big-character posters” written about them.
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At the time, I was a student cadre, so I always listened
to the teacher. If someone attacked the teacher, we sided with the teacher,
so we became the “Royalists.”
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This was interesting. Thinking back on the 10 years of the
Cultural Revolution, from the perspective of [someone] my age,
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these were the 10 years when one’s worldview and
perspective on life took shape, an important time.
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In those 10 years, I finished elementary school, junior
high, and high school, and “caught the last train” to join a production
team.
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So in every aspect, my memories of the Cultural Revolution
are really strong.
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If we talk about the Cultural Revolution’s influence on
the country or on the individual, different people have different
perspectives.
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My opinion is that the Cultural Revolution had a different
influence based on people’s age, where they lived, and their family
background.
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Interviewer: Could you tell me your own family’s
background, if you don’t mind?
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My parents were cadres within a central government
institution; they weren’t really high-level administrative personnel.
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My father was technical staff; my mother was
administrative staff, so they didn’t feel a great impact [from the
Cultural Revolution].
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But I heard about the Cultural Revolution’s effect on
the everyday lives of regular people.
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As far as I remember, in the first year of the Cultural
Revolution, “networking” started.
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We didn’t go to class, and just had fun for over a year,
up until 1967. In 1967 I began to realize that the country was in disarray;
in summer it was especially obvious.
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I was the older child in my family, so I’d be the one
going to buy vegetables, but [at that time] there were none to buy.
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Normally, I’d grab a basket at the market, and whatever
they had, I would buy. But [at that time], I’d run into a big line of
people waiting to buy vegetables.
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When the delivery truck finally came, no matter what kind
of vegetables were on it, we’d all rush over to buy them. This definitely
had an influence on everyday life.
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In the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Beijing was still
considered stable.
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I have relatives in Guangxi; my paternal uncle’s wife
brought my paternal grandmother to take refuge in our home in Beijing.
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Why did she need to flee? Because the violent struggle [in
Guangxi] was really intense; Beijing was calm in comparison. This type of
situation continued for about a year.
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Slowly things returned to normal, from the perspective of
elementary school students. In early 1968, “resuming classes to make
revolution” began.
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We returned to school, and the Three Supports and Two
Militaries units, the People’s Liberation Army, and the workers’
propaganda team all arrived.
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At this time, I hadn’t completed the fourth year [of
elementary school]. I started from the fifth year.
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During the fifth year, my deepest impression is of the
convening of the Ninth National Congress of the CCP on April 1, 1969.
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With this as a turning point, the chaos of the first stage
of the Cultural Revolution began to come under control,
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began to proceed in an orderly direction that seemed like
it could be controlled.
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Since the Three Supports and Two Militaries units, the
People’s Liberation Army, and the workers propaganda
teams
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entered schools, factories and mining companies, [the
situation] was really different.
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Elementary school students also started going to school
again.
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From what I recall, the internal and external aspects of
the country's situation had a relationship to the outbreak of the Cultural
Revolution.
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After the Ninth National Congress of the CCP, after the
March 2nd Zhenbao Island Incident [Sino-Soviet border conflict], things
were crazy for a while, as if we were going to war.
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All of a sudden, [people] were relocated. My parents’
institution faced this problem. It relocated to the outer provinces as a
preparation for war.
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Interviewer: Did your parents go along, too?
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Our family moved to Bengbu in Anhui Province. My parents
were there for about 10 years; they didn’t return [to Beijing] until
after the Cultural Revolution.
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I myself stayed in Beijing to go to school, separate from
my family. The actual influence of the Cultural Revolution on families
varied from one to the other.
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As far as my family goes, the four of us—my parents, my
younger brother, and I—were separated into four different places.
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When I joined a production team, my brother was left alone
in Beijing to go to school.
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My mother was in Bengbu, while my father was sent far away
on business to Sichuan, Shanghai [and elsewhere].
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That’s how it was for this family of four, but we got
through it. Later I felt it had been like a test of mettle.
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During the Cultural Revolution, our life experiences were
far more plentiful than those of today’s young people.
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For example, every summer from 1970 through 1974, we went
to rural villages to help harvest wheat.
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There were also the military-style exercise drills in
winter and summer—everyone in my generation experienced those.
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In my impression, the most intense moments of the Cultural
Revolution happened in the early stage.
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I witnessed how our relatives were affected by both the
Destroy the Four Olds campaign and [the campaign against] the “five black
categories.”
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One of my mother’s young uncles—I called him
Granduncle—lived in Beijing. In the initial stage of Liberation, he was a
small business owner;
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after his business became a joint public-private
operation, he became dissatisfied with socialist [reforms].
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When the Cultural Revolution started, his home was
searched so his possessions could be confiscated, and then he was sent back
to his hometown.
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I remember it so well: one day in November or December of
1969, Granduncle and Grandaunt cautiously came over to our house,
frightened.
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My mom called her brother and sister over and said,
“[Granduncle] is being sent back to our ancestral home.”
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I remember Granduncle saying his home had been searched,
and the Red Guards had also beaten them up.
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Since my mom’s family had a workers' family background,
her brother and sister were Red Guards.
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Granduncle said, “Now when I see Red Guards, I feel
scared.” This happened within one family.
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For them, it was just that their house was searched, and
they were sent back to their hometown,
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but they returned [to Beijing] a few years later.
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I myself never saw someone beaten to death during the
Cultural Revolution, not once.
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Our upstairs neighbors had their home searched and their
possessions confiscated by the Red Guards. I was really young at the
time.
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The husband of that family had been locked up in 1958,
leaving behind his wife and children.
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It was said that [he] was taken into custody because he
was a historical counterrevolutionary.
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During the Cultural Revolution, families from the “five
black categories” were attacked.
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Interviewer: Did you ever participate in students
rebelling against teachers?
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The Cultural Revolution was a chance to personally
experience human nature; that was my experience.
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Some things I saw and personally experienced during the
Cultural Revolution made me feel that people’s human nature was expressed
naturally.
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The first thing is that after the Cultural Revolution
started, everyone was putting up “big-character posters.”
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One day, my father came home and said our neighbor had
written about him on a poster.
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Interviewer: Your neighbor posted it?
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Why would our neighbor put up a “big-character poster”
about our family? Well, that couple had only one child.
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On their poster, they wrote that during the “three years
of natural disasters” our family had money to buy a lot of meat and
fish,
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and we had eaten to our heart's content.
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This “big-character poster” didn’t make waves, and
didn’t have any effect on our family.
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My father was low-level technical staff, so as far as he
was concerned, he wasn’t a primary target of the Cultural Revolution.
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As for me, during the Cultural Revolution I was one of the
students the teacher liked.
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I listened to the teacher, and the teacher was willing to
let me act as the class cadre.
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After the Cultural Revolution started, I followed the
crowd, and later joined the Little Red Guards organization.
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The Little Red Guards’ duty was to control the bad folks
in the school. Our school's Young Pioneers counselor was an older teacher
whose last name was Li.
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Teacher Li was attacked. As I recall, there were two
reasons. First, his family background was landlord.
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Second, his offense was drawing a picture of Mao.
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So, he was criticized, and criticism meetings were often
held for him.
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The Little Red Guards took turns supervising Teacher Li,
checking to see what he was doing.
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I was also assigned to check in on him; two people worked
in shifts.
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During this supervision, a lot of people kicked, hit, and
cursed at the teachers.
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One time, I couldn't help myself--
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I felt that if I didn't raise my fists, too, it would be
obvious I was not that revolutionary, did not live up to the label
“Little Red Guard.”
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I picked up a small stick and hit Teacher Li. He might
have been able to tell I was doing this for the benefit of others.
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He lifted up his head and said to me, “Chairman Mao’s
Little Red Guard, to be endlessly loyal to Chairman Mao, you need civil
struggle, not violent struggle."
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After hearing what he said, I didn't dare look directly
into the teacher's eyes. I didn’t dare hit him again.
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Actually, the Cultural Revolution was also [a chance to]
embody humanity.
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During the Cultural Revolution, I matured from a young
teen to a twenty-something.
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The influence the Cultural Revolution had on the course of
my life is completely different from what today’s teens or
twenty-somethings would experience.
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It made me more independent and helped me face the course
of my life independently.
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I think if the Cultural Revolution had not happened, I
might still have gone to college; I definitely would have been able to.
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Furthermore, I might have done the work I preferred to do.
But the Cultural Revolution delayed my time of going to college by three or
four years.
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The Cultural Revolution made me go to a rural village for
more than two years, and then work in a factory for over a year.
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It made my early life experiences more complicated, and
richer.
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Interviewer: Do you feel this was good for your life
personally, this challenge?
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Personally, I have no regrets.
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Even during what was the most difficult time, when each of
the four people in my family was in a different place, we did not have too
many complaints.
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After I grew up, I actually did not reflect on the
Cultural Revolution much.
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When people bring up this topic, I think of
something Chairman Mao said in the latter part of the Cultural
Revolution.
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He said, "I have done two great things in my life.
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The first is tangling with Chiang Kai-shek for over 20
years, and driving him off to an island [Taiwan].
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The second is that I launched the Cultural Revolution.
This was praised by few, and criticized by many.”
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Who can understand why Chairman Mao launched the Cultural
Revolution? I think very few people can understand.
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Interviewer: Today, do you continue to pay attention to
this topic?
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I don’t actively pay attention to much about it.
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I feel that in the history of humanity, in modern Chinese
history, 10 years can be seen as either long or short.
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The greatest influence and meaning of this incident is
that it makes us think, why did it happen?
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It is intimately linked to the major leaders of the
country at that time.
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It has already happened; when researching it, objectively
evaluate its influence on the country, as well as its after-effects.
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I think this is even more important.
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Someone said something I pretty much agree with.
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[S/he] said Chairman Mao was a really idealistic person;
in advancing a social revolution, he wanted to transform people's soul.
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When I heard this, I couldn’t make my own judgment, but
it caused me to think deeply.
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What it made me think about was that during the Cultural
Revolution, I matured into a young adult.
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In most aspects of life I didn’t have any fearful or
unhappy experiences.
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At that time, the Cultural Revolution influenced many
experiences as well as everyday life in [China].
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People were deprived of their dignity and of the rights
bestowed by law.
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But on the other hand, there were many proud
accomplishments during the Cultural Revolution.
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In the summer of 1967, I went to buy vegetables at
Zhangjiakou shopping center, but came home empty-handed.
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I remember so clearly, on the south side of the street, on
the geology building’s wall, hung a big red banner.
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It said our country had successfully detonated its first
hydrogen bomb. This left me a lasting impression on me:
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at the time China was facing internal disorder, yet it
could still achieve this great goal.
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On the evening of April 24, 1970, some classmates suddenly
turned up at my house, telling me to spread the word to other classmates,
to tell them there'd be a parade that night.
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The launch of [China’s] first space satellite had
succeeded! These things all happened in the midst of the Cultural
Revolution.
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Compared to today’s society, during the Cultural
Revolution people weren’t wining, dining, whoring, and gambling.
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During the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, there was
no inflation. This is why, when thinking back on the Cultural Revolution
today,
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certain things will cause people from all levels of
society to [nostalgically] say, “Here’s how the Cultural Revolution
was…”
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Interviewer: Thank you for sharing your memories.
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These are just a regular
teenager's [青少年]
memories of the Cultural Revolution up to age 20.
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Interviewer: Right. What we are collecting are just
regular people’s true feelings and memories.
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Interviewer: Thank you for your time, and for accepting
our invitation.
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Thank you.
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