WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.720 --> 00:00:04.560 align:center line:-1Interviewer: Hello. Thank you for accepting my interview. 2 00:00:04.570 --> 00:00:12.410 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: First, could you please tell me the decade you were born in, such as "1940s," "1950s," etc.? 3 00:00:12.420 --> 00:00:14.360 align:center line:-1 I was born in the 1940s. 4 00:00:14.370 --> 00:00:20.100 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: Where did you live in China during the 10 years from 1966 to 1976? 5 00:00:20.110 --> 00:00:21.400 align:center line:-1 In Guizhou Province. 6 00:00:21.410 --> 00:00:29.210 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: Guizhou. Since you were born in the '40s, you certainly must have some memories of those 10 years [1966-76]. 7 00:00:29.220 --> 00:00:31.370 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: You probably couldn't talk about it all, even if you had several days. 8 00:00:31.380 --> 00:00:45.280 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: If I limit you to about 10 minutes, or in other words, in the first 10 minutes of the interview, what memories would you most like to share with us? 9 00:00:45.290 --> 00:00:58.360 align:center line:-1 OK, sure. When the Cultural Revolution started, I had just graduated from high school. I wasn't yet 21 years old. 10 00:00:58.370 --> 00:01:13.880 align:center line:-1 When the Cultural Revolution started, it was carried out according to the Communist Party's traditional methods. 11 00:01:13.890 --> 00:01:21.340 align:center line:-1 Generally speaking, this meant to search out those with undesirable social status, and struggle against them. 12 00:01:21.350 --> 00:01:27.620 align:center line:-1 Since I still wasn't that old when [the Cultural Revolution] started, it didn't hurt me much. 13 00:01:27.630 --> 00:01:34.480 align:center line:-1 Until one day, the southward networking team arrived [in our area] where at the time elementary school teachers were doing training. 14 00:01:34.490 --> 00:01:38.850 align:center line:-1 I had also joined in the training, although I was not an elementary school teacher. 15 00:01:38.860 --> 00:01:44.610 align:center line:-1 I went to listen to the southward networking team's propaganda. 16 00:01:44.620 --> 00:01:50.130 align:center line:-1 That [meeting] was when everything went wrong, with people exposing other people's backgrounds. 17 00:01:50.140 --> 00:02:00.280 align:center line:-1 Some people said, “Those people are activist elements. That person is such-and-such, his father did this or that in the United States." 18 00:02:00.290 --> 00:02:06.660 align:center line:-1 They'd say things like this, and the people would all shout, "Down with [him]!" 19 00:02:06.670 --> 00:02:10.860 align:center line:-1 At that time, I just happened to run in from outside, thinking to listen to what they were talking about inside. 20 00:02:10.870 --> 00:02:13.990 align:center line:-1 [That's] because there were two groups, [people from] outside listening to the southward networking team’s [propaganda], 21 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:19.330 align:center line:-1 others inside exposing the backgrounds of those who were listening to the southward networking team’s [propaganda]. 22 00:02:19.340 --> 00:02:25.620 align:center line:-1 As I was listening, I was pushed into the middle, as [they] were about to struggle against [me]. 23 00:02:25.630 --> 00:02:30.740 align:center line:-1 After the struggle...I was only 20 years old, and I was really scared. 24 00:02:30.750 --> 00:02:39.250 align:center line:-1 After I went home and lay down on the bed, I thought, it's all over; I only have this little bit of peace under my mosquito net. 25 00:02:39.260 --> 00:02:43.540 align:center line:-1 [I would be] totally screwed the moment [I] went out. 26 00:02:43.550 --> 00:02:53.950 align:center line:-1 At the time, I worked at the education office to educate farmers. A few days later, I lost my job. 27 00:02:53.960 --> 00:02:57.010 align:center line:-1 After being struggled against for a period of time, I was fired. 28 00:02:57.020 --> 00:03:07.010 align:center line:-1 After the Cultural Revolution had been going on for a while, a classmate and I felt that we had both been wrongly dismissed. 29 00:03:07.020 --> 00:03:13.400 align:center line:-1 We went back to protest, and they reinstated our jobs. This was one of my own personal experiences. 30 00:03:13.410 --> 00:03:19.570 align:center line:-1 There are also others' experiences. I felt that interpersonal relationships were really strained. 31 00:03:19.580 --> 00:03:25.590 align:center line:-1 At the time, my father's sister was part of a combat team in Guizhou College of Agriculture. 32 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:31.920 align:center line:-1 A teammate in her combat team [went to her home to chat]--only people who held the same views would go to [someone’s] home and chat. 33 00:03:31.930 --> 00:03:39.710 align:center line:-1 [During the chat], the nanny came out and said, "This is all because of that old spook [Mao Zedong]! If he came out and made a statement, people wouldn't be fighting so much." 34 00:03:39.720 --> 00:03:49.880 align:center line:-1 This statement made everyone present extremely nervous, since no one ever dared speak this way about Chairman Mao. 35 00:03:49.890 --> 00:03:55.100 align:center line:-1 From today's point of view, what she said was not wrong. 36 00:03:55.110 --> 00:04:04.990 align:center line:-1 [However, at that time], my aunt's coworker was really nervous. She was at a loss what to do, so she just left. 37 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:10.080 align:center line:-1 We felt this was no good, that this was a problem. 38 00:04:10.090 --> 00:04:18.010 align:center line:-1 As expected, the next day, [the coworker] exposed what the nanny had said at my aunt's house. 39 00:04:18.020 --> 00:04:24.290 align:center line:-1 [The nanny] was about to be taken in and struggled against. 40 00:04:24.300 --> 00:04:33.450 align:center line:-1 Later, they searched [my aunt's] house to confiscate possessions, then took my uncle into custody, and locked him up in a classroom. 41 00:04:33.460 --> 00:04:41.520 align:center line:-1 At that time, people's relationships were filled with anxiety. 42 00:04:41.530 --> 00:04:48.990 align:center line:-1 These coworkers were comrades in arms at first, then suddenly, because of one sentence, one rushed to expose the other. 43 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:51.840 align:center line:-1 That's how strained relationships were between people. 44 00:04:51.850 --> 00:04:55.470 align:center line:-1 Then, I rode my bike to Guiyang. 45 00:04:55.480 --> 00:05:01.680 align:center line:-1 At that time, [we] knew the nanny couldn't stay [at my aunt's home], so she was sent to help [or take care of] my paternal grandmother in Guiyang. 46 00:05:01.690 --> 00:05:10.540 align:center line:-1 I rode my bike to my grandmother's house, and said, "Something's happened; you can't stay here either." So, [the nanny] went away. 47 00:05:10.550 --> 00:05:16.830 align:center line:-1 My uncle had once tried to commit suicide, after he was taken into custody and locked up. 48 00:05:16.840 --> 00:05:23.140 align:center line:-1 [And at that time] a lot of things that were like "underground activities" happened at home. 49 00:05:23.150 --> 00:05:31.960 align:center line:-1 For example, [they] put a note inside a matchbox, and asked my younger male cousin, who was three or four years old, to deliver it to his father [my uncle]. 50 00:05:31.970 --> 00:05:40.990 align:center line:-1 The classroom [where my uncle was kept] didn't have a bathroom; the bathroom was out on the mountain in back. 51 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.140 align:center line:-1 The note said, "When you go to the bathroom this evening, wait for [the interviewee]." 52 00:05:44.150 --> 00:05:48.240 align:center line:-1 That evening, I went there, thinking I was doing something very important to help my family. 53 00:05:48.250 --> 00:05:55.860 align:center line:-1 I'd never done something that important at home. That day, I went up to the bathroom to wait for my uncle. 54 00:05:55.870 --> 00:06:01.460 align:center line:-1 When he came to the bathroom, he asked how things were at home. 55 00:06:01.470 --> 00:06:04.580 align:center line:-1 Keeping up with the situation at home was just like engaging in a clandestine operation. 56 00:06:04.590 --> 00:06:09.300 align:center line:-1 Later, my uncle still couldn't deal with [the situation], and tried to commit suicide. 57 00:06:09.310 --> 00:06:19.760 align:center line:-1 However, because he didn't know much about electricity, he didn't succeed. 58 00:06:19.770 --> 00:06:22.860 align:center line:-1 These were some things that happened during the Cultural Revolution. 59 00:06:22.870 --> 00:06:33.990 align:center line:-1 Anyway, interpersonal relationships were strained. One day people were combat team comrades; the next they were exposing you, [just because you said] one sentence wrong. 60 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:41.350 align:center line:-1 You'd immediately become the opposition. [People] would expose someone, thinking that afterwards [they themselves] were protected, were safe. 61 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:48.290 align:center line:-1 But you had to be ready--to be locked up, be struggled against. 62 00:06:48.300 --> 00:06:53.430 align:center line:-1 When [Red Guards] came to search our house, [they saw] a high school diploma with Sun Yat-sen's image on it. 63 00:06:53.440 --> 00:07:00.720 align:center line:-1 The Red Guards said, "You people dare hold on to an image of Chiang Kai-shek!" 64 00:07:00.730 --> 00:07:08.010 align:center line:-1 They took it away, but of course later on it wasn't a problem. After all, it was Sun Yat-sen's image, not Chiang Kai-shek's. 65 00:07:08.020 --> 00:07:12.420 align:center line:-1 These [incidents] are the ones I remember well. 66 00:07:12.430 --> 00:07:25.770 align:center line:-1 Another thing I remember well is that, when the two factions were fighting one another, each would find a person from the other faction who had an undesirable class status, and take that person into custody, and you couldn't go wrong. 67 00:07:25.780 --> 00:07:29.910 align:center line:-1 Even if there was a problem in the future, this wasn't wrong. 68 00:07:29.920 --> 00:07:37.540 align:center line:-1 Anyway, this was the Communist Party's traditional way of attacking people: find someone with an undesirable class status, and that would do. 69 00:07:37.550 --> 00:07:43.530 align:center line:-1 That's how it was in Guizhou at the time. 70 00:07:43.540 --> 00:07:49.770 align:center line:-1 Then how did peasants see this kind of large-scale cultural revolution? 71 00:07:49.780 --> 00:07:57.390 align:center line:-1 When we went "down to the countryside,” didn’t we shout, "Wu Han, Deng Tuo, Liao Mosha" [the names of the Three-Family Village Anti-Party Clique]? 72 00:07:57.400 --> 00:08:05.570 align:center line:-1 In those peasants’ mind, what was [this slogan]? Those old lady peasants [misheard and] thought this slogan was, “The weights in Wuhan cost 23 cents each.” 73 00:08:05.580 --> 00:08:10.610 align:center line:-1 Those peasants fundamentally didn't understand what [we] were doing. 74 00:08:10.620 --> 00:08:16.990 align:center line:-1 To other people, it was mutual attacks; just find a person with a bad social status and attack him/her as hard as you could. 75 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:26.630 align:center line:-1 That [way, you] couldn’t go wrong. If you struggled against someone with a desirable social status, it's possible you'd run into some bad luck someday. I guess it was like this. 76 00:08:26.640 --> 00:08:32.860 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: So you're saying, during the Cultural Revolution, social status was extremely important, and decided a person's fate. 77 00:08:32.870 --> 00:08:44.230 align:center line:-1 Right. When taking in someone from the opposing side, you definitely had to choose the person with the bad social status; [you] wouldn’t choose someone with a desirable social status to struggle against... 78 00:08:44.240 --> 00:08:48.235 align:center line:-1 Interviewer: Thank you! Thank you for accepting my interview.
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