"These friends of mine had sacrificed themselves for me."

Interviewer: Hello! Thank you for accepting my interview.

Hello.

Interviewer: Could you please tell me the decade in which you were born? You don't need to say the exact year.

In the last century, in the early 1950s.

Interviewer: Thank you. Where did you primarily live in China from 1966 to 1976?

At the beginning of 1966, I was in the second year of middle school in Beijing.

In 1968 I went "up to the mountains and down to the countryside," to join a production team in Shanxi [Province].

Interviewer: You probably have a lot of memories, and could talk about that period for days and nights.

Interviewer: However, if I give you about 10 minutes to talk about any of your memories of those 10 years, what would you most want to share with us?

I think I'd like to talk about joining a production team, and how I left that rural village.

One reason is that these things left the most lasting impression on me, and another reason is that they had a huge influence on my life.

Interviewer: OK, then please continue.

OK. When the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, I was in the second year of middle school.

So I counted among the "old three classes," graduating middle school in 1967.

We followed along with the wave of people going "up to the mountains and down to the countryside."

At the end of 1968, a group of classmates and I went a county in Yanbei [Prefecture], Shanxi, to join a production team.

At the time, joining a production team was the trend. To be truthful, I wasn't completely willing to go, but I didn't have any other option.

It seemed like everyone else was going "up to the mountains and down to the countryside," so I went along with them. I followed along with my school.

Over 200 of my classmates and I went to that same county.

We were a boys' school. There was also a girls' school that sent over 200 students to that county.

I stayed in that rural village for about five years altogether, from the end of 1968 up until August 1973.

I experienced a lot of things. Altogether, life there was definitely bitterer than it had been in Beijing, and the food was not nearly as good as in Beijing.

Every day we worked on the land, using very primitive methods. The intensity of the labor was quite high.

But as far as I was concerned, none of this was especially difficult or unbearable.

I was certainly unhappy and under pressure, but what was unbearable was being without hope.

At the time, when you went to a rural village, you were never told definitively how many years it would be before you'd be allowed to leave or be assigned to a job.

You couldn't see any glimmer of hope. This gave your spirit the most stress.

[After] I'd been in the production team for two or three years, my classmates started leaving one after another.

They used all kinds of methods to get away from the rural village. Some of them had their parents find jobs for them in other places.

There were all different kinds of situations, but none of these arrangements for leaving were done with the nation's consent.

Right. It was like, "Eight immortals cross the sea, each using his own power."

It must have been 1972 when the first group of Worker-Peasant-Soldier students came to enroll new students.

At the time, this was a totally new thing. To be honest, who didn't want to go to school?

[Those of us who'd gone to the rural village] all wanted to go to school.

Generally speaking, the placement office and the enrollment [officers] would discuss it, and then take those with the very best qualifications.

The quota was not large at all. This was in 1972.

Things changed in 1973. In the spring of that year, I heard the quota had been increased.

Furthermore, students were being recruited in music, physical education, and fine arts.

Students in these specializations first had to take a test in their field. Why do I mention this?

Simply put, I'd loved music since I was a kid, and since elementary school I had studied instruments at the Beijing Children's Palace.

I'd taken part in some amateur musical activities, and had studied the zhongruan [Chinese alto lute] and other musical instruments.

When students in specialty subjects started being recruited in [1973], I was actually still in the countryside.

But back in 1970 or 1971, the idea had started rattling around in my brain, and I had begun practicing music on my own.

Later, with the help of my friends, I bought a pipa [Chinese lute]. Why a pipa?

It was because at that time, the pipa was still relatively important among musical instruments.

When I returned to Beijing in the winter, I used the time to find a professional pipa player, and studied with [him] for two winters.

I studied basic pipa techniques, and learned two pieces.

One was a classical piece，"The Warlord Casts Off His Armor," and one was a modern piece, "Liuyang River."

On the basis of this skill, and with my friends' encouragement, I signed up to take the music test for Worker-Peasant-Soldier students.

At the time, it was the arts department of Shanxi University that came [to the village] to recruit music majors.

There were two of my classmates among the Educated Youth in that county who took the test with me.

One played dulcimer, while the other played accordion. They were both quite good in their fields.

The one who played the dulcimer had studied with a professional performer since he was small, so he was at a high level.

The one who played accordion was also very skilled.

Interviewer: Did you have time to practice when you were in the rural village?

We used the evenings; in the daytime we were busy farming. After dinner was our own time.

Those who loved to read would use the time after dinner for reading; those of us who played instruments used the time to practice.

My classmate who played dulcimer and I were in the same village. We had been friends at the Children's Palace when we were small.

After dinner, each of us would practice his own instrument.

Interviewer: Did the local peasants think this was something quite new and fresh?

Oh yes. The peasants would come to listen sometimes -- the Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants, especially the younger people.

They might not be familiar with what I was playing on the pipa, so they'd say, "Could you play 'The East is Red' for us?"

When I played "Liuyang River," some of the villagers would say "Hey, I know this..." because at the time, the pipa version of "Liuyang River" was being played on the radio.

Interviewer: You guys enriched the local cultural life.

That wasn't [my intention]. Honestly, the most important thing was that I was depending on having this special skill to help me leave the village.

Before this, some of my classmates had used special skills to go work in factories, since some factories were recruiting those with specialized skills.

For example, one of our classmates was really good at ping pong, and he was recruited to go to Datong.

Once he got to the factory there, he was released from work half of the time to join in the factory's ping pong team.

In 1973 I formally applied and took the test for Worker-Peasant-Soldier students, for Shanxi Province Music Conservatory.

[I] went through an initial test, a re-test, and a recording. The re-test, and the recording were all done in Datong.

The recruiting teacher told us, "You all have to go back to take the entrance exam for the county."

He said this was a requirement of the higher central authorities. In addition, there was a Poor and Lower-Middle Peasant recommendation procedure.

That is, the production brigade had to write a recommendation letter and certify it, then send it to the "county resettlement office."

We went back to do as we'd been told. We took the entrance exam alongside those who were taking the general professional examinations, such as mathematics, physics, and chemistry.

The two subjects I had to test, language and math, were tested on two different mornings.

The recommendation was no big deal. I went back to the production brigade, and talked about it with the production brigade cadre.

He just said that everyone thought this was a good thing, and wrote a recommendation letter, saying nothing but nice things. I felt really grateful for this.

Then everything change quickly.

All of a sudden, the People's Daily printed the news of Zhang Tiesheng's blank exam booklet, and in a flash, it seemed like the direction of the wind changed.

It was like people were saying tests were not necessarily right. That year we had all participated in the entrance exam, but it wasn't necessarily right.

It was said that students ought to have been recruited from among those workers, peasants, and soldiers who had experience, and that exams were a resurgence of bourgeoisie, capitalist education.

Interviewer: Right, right.

It seems [exams] were given this label.

Never mind those of us who'd taken the tests for music, physical education, and art -- the ones who had tested in math, physics, and chemistry, as well as those in literature, history, and philosophy, also felt their hearts pounding.

After all, we had taken part in the entrance exam. If the entrance exam didn't count toward the score, what would we do?

This was a real cliffhanger.

After this moment passed, it turned out that my classmates who had high hopes of going to university didn't make it.

They never received acceptance letters. As for me, I was lucky; during this series of events, I received the selfless assistance of two of my friends.

When I was in Datong doing the re-test and the recording, I was outside tuning my instrument.

When I started practicing my pipa, my two friends, the one who played the accordion and the one who played the dulcimer, went to get the recruiting teacher from Shanxi University's arts department.

They said, "We know the quota is limited, and that in all of Yanbei there are only three places available for music students, and that Yanbei has 13 counties altogether...

"...If we only have one place in our county, we agree that you should let [him] be interviewed."

Interviewer: How wonderful!

That teacher gave the thumbs up and said, "In other counties, I've seen people try to undercut others, but this is the first time I've seen anyone willing to give up his own chance [to go to school] to let a friend have a chance."

At the time, I didn't know this had happened. It was only later that I found out [what they had done].

After I went to Shanxi University, that teacher told me about this.

That teacher helped me a lot. After the incident with Zhang Tiesheng, teachers were under great pressure.

Later on, I heard that although I was on the list of those who'd been accepted, my political qualifications were poor; I counted as someone with a bad family background.

Interviewer: In what way was your family background bad?

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, that's just how it was. My father was a rightist.

Interviewer: [One of the] "five black categories."

Yes, landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists were the "five black categories." [That was] my family background.

There was nothing to say, since [my father] was a rightist. In the early 1980s, my father was rehabilitated; that's another story.

The recruiting teacher accepted me, but after the Zhang Tiesheng incident, teachers' stress was huge.

Interviewer: I can understand that.

Later I heard that this teacher insisted on leaving me on the acceptance list, despite the pressure to avoid making mistakes.

Finally, I received the acceptance letter, but my two friends, the one who played accordion and the other who played dulcimer, didn't receive such a letter.

Interviewer: You've remembered them your whole life.

Right. Then, after I started [university], I felt conflicted.

On the one hand, I'd finally left the rural village; after five years there I had finally left. I was definitely happy.

But on the other hand, these friends of mine had sacrificed themselves for me. I didn't feel at peace.

After about a year -- that was when people started returning to the city from the countryside due to illness or family problems.

One [of these friends] returned to Beijing from the countryside because of family difficulties, while the other returned because of illness.

It was only then that I felt more peace of mind.

Later, we remained good friends, and we are still close today. Their life later on was good, very smooth.

Later, one of them ventured into business, and the other served in executive administration.

From my point of view, I feel a bit of regret that neither of them pursued a music career, since their [musical] skill level was very high.

At that critical moment, they weren't able to pursue the music profession.

From my point of view, it's a regret, but they never speak of it that way; they're always really at ease.

After leaving the rural village, I have always had a sense of gratitude toward my friends, the teacher who recruited me, the Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants who helped me, and the grassroots level cadre.

Interviewer: I can very much understand. At that time, leaving the rural villages was not easy to do.

Interviewer: Thank you so much for sharing your memories with us.

You're welcome.