"Who can understand why Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution? I think very few people can understand."

Interviewer: Hello! Thank you for accepting my interview.

Hello.

Interviewer: Could you please tell me what decade you were born in?

Interviewer: You don’t need to say the exact year; just the decade will do, such as “’30s,” “’40s,” “’50s,” "'60s," etc

.

The decade? I was born in the 1950s.

Interviewer: Could you please tell me where you lived during the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution?

Sure. I was born in Beijing and grew up in Beijing. I still remember the Cultural Revolution quite well.

Why? It’s because when the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, summer vacation still hadn’t started.

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.

In the early stage of the Cultural Revolution, there were these “work groups”; I think it was May or June when they arrived.

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.

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.”

This was interesting. Thinking back on the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, from the perspective of [someone] my age,

these were the 10 years when one’s worldview and perspective on life took shape, an important time.

In those 10 years, I finished elementary school, junior high, and high school, and “caught the last train” to join a production team.

So in every aspect, my memories of the Cultural Revolution are really strong.

If we talk about the Cultural Revolution’s influence on the country or on the individual, different people have different perspectives.

My opinion is that the Cultural Revolution had a different influence based on people’s age, where they lived, and their family background.

Interviewer: Could you tell me your own family’s background, if you don’t mind?

My parents were cadres within a central government institution; they weren’t really high-level administrative personnel.

My father was technical staff; my mother was administrative staff, so they didn’t feel a great impact [from the Cultural Revolution].

But I heard about the Cultural Revolution’s effect on the everyday lives of regular people.

As far as I remember, in the first year of the Cultural Revolution, “networking” started.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Beijing was still considered stable.

I have relatives in Guangxi; my paternal uncle’s wife brought my paternal grandmother to take refuge in our home in Beijing.

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.

Slowly things returned to normal, from the perspective of elementary school students. In early 1968, “resuming classes to make revolution” began.

We returned to school, and the Three Supports and Two Militaries units, the People’s Liberation Army, and the workers’ propaganda team all arrived.

At this time, I hadn’t completed the fourth year [of elementary school]. I started from the fifth year.

During the fifth year, my deepest impression is of the convening of the Ninth National Congress of the CCP on April 1, 1969.

With this as a turning point, the chaos of the first stage of the Cultural Revolution began to come under control,

began to proceed in an orderly direction that seemed like it could be controlled.

Since the Three Supports and Two Militaries units, the People’s Liberation Army,

entered schools, factories and mining companies, [the situation] was really different.

Elementary school students also started going to school again.

From what I recall, the internal and external aspects of the country's situation had a relationship to the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution.

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.

All of a sudden, [people] were relocated. My parents’ institution faced this problem. It relocated to the outer provinces as a preparation for war.

Interviewer: Did your parents go along, too?

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.

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.

As far as my family goes, the four of us—my parents, my younger brother, and I—were separated into four different places.

When I joined a production team, my brother was left alone in Beijing to go to school.

My mother was in Bengbu, while my father was sent far away on business to Sichuan, Shanghai [and elsewhere].

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.

During the Cultural Revolution, our life experiences were far more plentiful than those of today’s young people.

For example, every summer from 1970 through 1974, we went to rural villages to help harvest wheat.

There were also the military-style exercise drills in winter and summer—everyone in my generation experienced those.

In my impression, the most intense moments of the Cultural Revolution happened in the early stage.

I witnessed how our relatives were affected by both the Destroy the Four Olds campaign and [the campaign against] the “five black categories.”

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;

after his business became a joint public-private operation, he became dissatisfied with socialist [reforms].

When the Cultural Revolution started, his home was searched so his possessions could be confiscated, and then he was sent back to his hometown.

I remember it so well: one day in November or December of 1969, Granduncle and Grandaunt cautiously came over to our house, frightened.

My mom called her brother and sister over and said, “[Granduncle] is being sent back to our ancestral home.”

I remember Granduncle saying his home had been searched, and the Red Guards had also beaten them up.

Since my mom’s family had a workers' family background, her brother and sister were Red Guards.

Granduncle said, “Now when I see Red Guards, I feel scared.” This happened within one family.

For them, it was just that their house was searched, and they were sent back to their hometown,

but they returned [to Beijing] a few years later.

I myself never saw someone beaten to death during the Cultural Revolution, not once.

Our upstairs neighbors had their home searched and their possessions confiscated by the Red Guards. I was really young at the time.

The husband of that family had been locked up in 1958, leaving behind his wife and children.

It was said that [he] was taken into custody because he was a historical counterrevolutionary.

During the Cultural Revolution, families from the “five black categories” were attacked.

Interviewer: Did you ever participate in students rebelling against teachers?

The Cultural Revolution was a chance to personally experience human nature; that was my experience.

Some things I saw and personally experienced during the Cultural Revolution made me feel that people’s human nature was expressed naturally.

The first thing is that after the Cultural Revolution started, everyone was putting up “big-character posters.”

One day, my father came home and said our neighbor had written about him on a poster.

Interviewer: Your neighbor posted it?

Why would our neighbor put up a “big-character poster” about our family? Well, that couple had only one child.

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,

and we had eaten to our heart's content.

This “big-character poster” didn’t make waves, and didn’t have any effect on our family.

My father was low-level technical staff, so as far as he was concerned, he wasn’t a primary target of the Cultural Revolution.

As for me, during the Cultural Revolution I was one of the students the teacher liked.

I listened to the teacher, and the teacher was willing to let me act as the class cadre.

After the Cultural Revolution started, I followed the crowd, and later joined the Little Red Guards organization.

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.

Teacher Li was attacked. As I recall, there were two reasons. First, his family background was landlord.

Second, his offense was drawing a picture of Mao.

So, he was criticized, and criticism meetings were often held for him.

I was also assigned to check in on him; two people worked in shifts.

During this supervision, a lot of people kicked, hit, and cursed at the teachers.

One time, I couldn't help myself--

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.”

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.

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."

After hearing what he said, I didn't dare look directly into the teacher's eyes. I didn’t dare hit him again.

Actually, the Cultural Revolution was also [a chance to] embody humanity.

During the Cultural Revolution, I matured from a young teen to a twenty-something.

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.

It made me more independent and helped me face the course of my life independently.

I think if the Cultural Revolution had not happened, I might still have gone to college; I definitely would have been able to.

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.

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.

It made my early life experiences more complicated, and richer.

Interviewer: Do you feel this was good for your life personally, this challenge?

Personally, I have no regrets.

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.

After I grew up, I actually did not reflect on the Cultural Revolution much.

I think of something Chairman Mao said in the latter part of the Cultural Revolution.

He said, "I have done two great things in my life.

The first is tangling with Chiang Kai-shek for over 20 years, and driving him off to an island [Taiwan].

The second is that I launched the Cultural Revolution. This was praised by few, and criticized by many.”

Who can understand why Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution? I think very few people can understand.

Interviewer: Today, do you continue to pay attention to this topic?

I don’t actively pay attention to much about it.

I feel that in the history of humanity, in modern Chinese history, 10 years can be seen as either long or short.

The greatest influence and meaning of this incident is that it makes us think, why did it happen?

It is intimately linked to the major leaders of the country at that time.

It has already happened; when researching it, objectively evaluate its influence on the country, as well as its after-effects.

I think this is even more important.

Someone said something I pretty much agree with.

[S/he] said Chairman Mao was a really idealistic person; in advancing a social revolution, he wanted to transform people's soul.

When I heard this, I couldn’t make my own judgment, but it caused me to think deeply.

What it made me think about was that during the Cultural Revolution, I matured into a young adult.

In most aspects of life I didn’t have any fearful or unhappy experiences.

At that time, the Cultural Revolution influenced many experiences as well as everyday life in [China].

People were deprived of their dignity and of the rights bestowed by law.

But on the other hand, there were many proud accomplishments during the Cultural Revolution.

In the summer of 1967, I went to buy vegetables at Zhangjiakou shopping center, but came home empty-handed.

I remember so clearly, on the south side of the street, on the geology building’s wall, hung a big red banner.

It said our country had successfully detonated its first hydrogen bomb. This left me a lasting impression on me:

at the time China was facing internal disorder, yet it could still achieve this great goal.

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.

The launch of [China’s] first space satellite had succeeded! These things all happened in the midst of the Cultural Revolution.

Compared to today’s society, during the Cultural Revolution people weren’t wining, dining, whoring, and gambling.

During the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, there was no inflation. This is why, when thinking back on the Cultural Revolution today,

certain things will cause people from all levels of society to [nostalgically] say, “Here’s how the Cultural Revolution was…”

Interviewer: Thank you for sharing your memories.

These are just a regular

[青少年] memories of the Cultural Revolution up to age 20.

Interviewer: Right. What we are collecting are just regular people’s true feelings and memories.

Interviewer: Thank you for your time, and for accepting our invitation.

Thank you.