"At the time, it seemed like [no one] dared imagine Chairman Mao would die."

Interviewer: Thank you for accepting my interview.

Interviewer: First, could you please tell me approximately when you were born?

Interviewer: You don’t need to say the exact year; for example, was it the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s?

I was born in the ’60s.

Interviewer: Then, could you please tell me, from 1966 to 1976, where did you live in China?

I’m from Beijing. I was in Beijing.

Interviewer: OK. Since you were born in the 1960s, your impressions of the Cultural Revolution might not be very deep, but you’d still have had some experience [of it], right?

Interviewer: I know that if I gave you some time to talk about your memories, you could probably say a lot.

Interviewer: If I only give you about 10 minutes, that is to say, in the first 10 minutes [of this interview]...

Interviewer: ...what memories of history, or understanding [of the Cultural Revolution]—what

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I have no memories of the early stage [of the Cultural Revolution], since I was born in the same year the Cultural Revolution [started].

So, for the first few years, I generally have no really deep memories.

Also, my family’s situation was somewhat unique, so...my family experienced some impacts, but none were that serious.

So I don’t have that many deep memories [or] memories of what was going on in society.

After I got older, I remember air raid shelters being dug, dancing the loyalty dance—I still remember, and maybe [I] also danced it.

An air raid shelter was dug in front of our house.

Other memories...hmm...I also heard about violent struggle, but I didn’t actually see it myself.

Elementary school was relatively relaxed. We were quite close with our neighbors, and there were a lot of kids.

After school, [we] just played, and there wasn’t much pressure about homework.

In the place where I [lived], politicization was pretty strong.

For example, in our elementary school, [we] heard Jiang Qing had come to Peking University to speak, and some classmates saw [her].

Then, when we were in class, the lesson stopped, and we started listening to the radio,

and listening to kids telling stories about seeing “Auntie Jiang Qing.”

One deep impression is that there were some invisible controls.

One funny thing is that a classmate told me, “If you want to swear an oath with someone, don’t say ‘in the name of Chairman Mao’--

"--say ‘in the name of Chairman Mule’—say it quickly, and later you won’t have to own up to [your oath].”

Later, I actually said this once, I [forget] where, and our school’s director called me out of class to chat with me, asking me what I had done, what problems I was having.

[He] didn’t tell me what I’d done [wrong], just made me say myself what bad thing I’d done.

I thought and thought, and finally spoke about this. In the end, it was settled by not being settled; finally, there was no serious [repercussion].

Another thing is, something unusual about me is that from the time I was small, I’ve been pretty sensitive to politics.

Interviewer: You’re interested [in it] personally, right?

It’s that I know quite a bit, and have some reactions. For example, the day Chairman Mao died, we were not allowed to go home until the afternoon.

Later, I saw the teacher run out crying from the office.

Actually, that day when we weren’t allowed to go home, I’d guessed [what had happened]. At that time, I was only about 9 or 10.

Interviewer: What had you guessed?

I'd guessed that Chairman Mao had died.

Interviewer: How did you guess?

Before, when the head of state, Zhu De, had died, the procedures and the quality [of the atmosphere] were different.

[Based on] the feeling of that day, I guessed that things would only be so serious if Chairman Mao had died.

At the time, it seemed like [no one] dared imagine Chairman Mao would die.

That’s how it was—[I] was 10 years old at the time.

Later, after the news spread throughout the school, classmates were crying [with their heads on] the desks. But one classmate went outside.

[He] didn’t cry, just caught some crickets. Then, the crickets were killed by [his] classmates. Then he cried.

Our teacher criticized [him], saying, “Chairman Mao dies and [you] don’t cry; instead [you] cry when crickets die.”

That kid was pretty naughty.

As for me, [I] couldn’t cry; [I was] pretty indifferent. At the time, I was pretty big; I sat in the back [of the classroom].

Probably only 10 percent of our class, only five or six people, weren’t crying. Everyone else was wailing; some were lying across the desks wailing.

I couldn’t stand it, and laid [my head] on the desk, laughing.

It wasn’t [because of] something else...I just saw my classmates crying, and thought it was so funny. I couldn’t help it.

Interviewer: It wasn’t that you felt Chairman Mao dying was funny, but that your classmates were laughable.

Right. I just thought it was laughable when I saw my classmates crying.

I’m kind of an idiot, or it could be said that I don’t care much about stuff [like this].

[I] also heard a bit about the April 5 [1976] Tiananmen Incident and things like that, but the adults didn’t talk about it with us.

I remember, after the Gang of Four was crushed, my paternal grandfather said, “Ah, they got what they deserved.”

When it wasn’t yet public, after I heard about it, I still didn’t know who they were, but anyway, I knew they’d met with trouble.

From my point of view, the Cultural Revolution, that era, was rather

[愉快], a rather happy time.

[Children] had no responsibilities; kids played freely, not like kids today, whose education is so arduous.

Interviewer: Exam-oriented education.

Right—it’s tough. I could say that, about my family environment at the time, all in all, my family was a benefactor of the Communist Party’s rule.

My parents were intellectuals as well as Party members; so, the Communist Party treated them pretty well.

[As for] our neighbors...[The people who lived] in our area were all schoolteachers.

After the Cultural Revolution [began], a lot of teachers were driven away [from the neighborhood].

But at the time our family already didn’t teach at that school, so we still lived there, and weren’t greatly impacted.

But the neighbors who’d [moved there] more recently had pretty tough lives. [They] were all university staff.

Interviewer: You had a chance to see the lives of people who were not [in the] high-level intellectual class like your parents, and realized their lifestyle was different from yours.

Right. At that time, we had a neighbor, who was the dining hall cook [and had] four children.

His wife was a temporary worker; I don’t know what [she did]; I don’t have much impression [about her].

[She] was a temporary worker in the school.

At the time [people] used grain ration tickets. [The cook and his wife] wanted to use their ticket to trade “fine grain” for “coarse grain.”

That is, they wanted to trade tickets with our family.

They couldn’t afford to eat “fine grain,” that is, rice and flour; they’d only eat corn and things, so they wanted to trade grain ration tickets with us.

As for our family, we ate “fine grain.” But personally, I really liked sweet potatoes, corn, and such things.

However, my [parents] were unwilling, since [they] had experienced the era of the Great Famine; they had had enough of that stuff.

So, because of this, we were at odds. When it came time to buy sweet potatoes, I wanted to buy a lot, to bring back to eat.

When some of the neighbors came back from rural villages, they could bring back dried sweet potatoes and things, and I thought this was great food.

So, people’s lives were quite different. At the time, I could perceive this difference.

Also, people’s positions in society were different.

Interviewer: So speaking from a certain perspective, the Cultural Revolution caused you to have some benefit, right?

Interviewer: In terms of understanding society, understanding different social classes of the people around you.

Right, I think so, because I had the perspective of an observer, on the outside, since [my family] didn’t feel much impact.

Our family was somewhat affected, but not too much. In addition, I was young, and my family protected me.

So, I didn’t know much about these situations. A lot of things I didn’t even know until recently.

For example, my paternal uncle wasn’t married; before, I thought he was a model worker, really revolutionary.

Actually, it seems like he didn’t get married because he experienced some impacts.

During the Cultural Revolution, he was about 20 years old.

He didn’t marry until the very end of the Cultural Revolution; in actuality, [it was because] he’d been impacted, so there was no way [he could marry].

He’d come to our house and play with me, and I didn’t know about these things at all.

I thought he was a really happy person, a really revolutionary person, but really, that’s not how it was.

Interviewer: Later, did you become interested in the Cultural Revolution?

Interviewer: Although you didn’t experience much at all yourself, later did you personally feel interested in better understanding the Cultural Revolution?

I’m very interested, since I’m interested in people.

Now I’m a

[社会科学家]; I’m interested in these things, situations [involving] people, especially situations close to me.

Actually, I also pay a lot of attention to reading memoirs related to history. I’m really interested in that.

Interviewer: Thank you for accepting my interview. Thanks.

OK.