"Each person carried a bit of dust when the Cultural Revolution ended."

[I] was born in 1953 in Harbin, Northeast China. From 1966 to 1976, I still lived in Northeast China.

[So I had] relatively more experiences in the Northeast.

I went "down to the countryside," worked in a factory, and started teaching in a middle school in 1976.

We had just gone through the elementary to middle school [entrance] exams [when the Cultural Revolution began].

Right as the exams finished, the Cultural Revolution started. We took the middle school entrance exam in June.

So, there was no time left to go to middle school; a great revolution just suddenly appeared.

At that time, apparently, a 13-year-old kid didn't understand anything. His/Her understanding was limited.

It wasn't like today; I think [today's] 13-year-old kids are really mature.

In that era, kids weren't that capable; they were really ill-informed and inexperienced.

Although we lived in a big city [that] wasn't considered too out-of-the-way, we...

From my first year of elementary school up until my sixth year, generally speaking, we were culturally illiterate.

It's just like today, I see [people in] China who are [have earned] a doctorate, but in general, they're culturally illiterate.

That is, their profession might be good; they might have earned Ph.D. degrees, but they lack culture.

I think after western culture streamed into our culture for over 100 years, our culture was, generally speaking, just about wiped out.

Later, after going through the Cultural Revolution, on our nation's land, culture was generally a blank space, a cultural desert.

Think about our childhood: the only culture that nourished up growing up were the eight model operas.

How could that count as culture?! So, it was pretty rotten.

When [I] was 13, seeing this big revolution, [I] had few other feelings besides being shaken to the core.

As for my family, of course my father would've experienced an impact, because of his family background.

When the Kuomintang [Nationalists] were in Northeast China during the War of Resistance Against Japan, he had served as a member [of the Kuomintang].

So, after Liberation, he was both united and under control.

Because he was considered to be a person of influence in education, he was united.

However, he was also put under control, since he was a Nationalist,...

...[that is], what [he'd] participated in was the Kuomintang [Nationalists'] War of Resistance.

So, he was this kind of self-contradictory figure.

So, in each successive [political] movement, there was no escape for him.

From the time I was small, I was in this kind of family, following along step by step.

As to how great an impact [my family felt], it could barely count as an impact, since my father's fate was the same as countless others'.

There was nothing unique about it. He was struggled against—this I feel was also the common fate of countless others.

I was [the same], I didn't experience any unique impact.

My path of growing up, my experience was also like this.

At age 16, I went "up to the mountains and down to the countryside" for a short while.

My father was rehabilitated, [so] I returned to the city. [Then, I] went to work in a factory.

After [I'd] worked in a factory for a few years, my father recovered his good name, and I went to work as a high school teacher.

After working as a high school teacher, I went directly to Nankai University to be a graduate student.

After completing graduate school, I went to teach at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China, and [have worked there] up until today.

That's how it is; [I] didn't have a unique experience.

It's not like other people, a few years older than I am, who during the Cultural Revolution might've had their fill of carnage and terror—some had personal experiences [like that].

Generally, because of [my] age, [I wasn't old enough] to be breaking through enemy lines, and couldn't have experienced much during this revolution.

13 years old is still too young, whether for rioting, or for having [clear] perceptions—none are too clear.

But from that year when [I was] 13 years old, I didn't understand the Cultural Revolution.

[I felt] really, really shaken to the core. So, from that year I started reading history.

From then until later, before [I was] 20, I'd carefully read almost all [books on] Chinese history, including The Twenty-Four Histories.

Among my generation, maybe in China, there are few people who can surpass my reading.

Whether it’s astronomy or geology, or the Three Religions and Nine Schools, or Confucianism and Buddhism, or Christianity, I've read nearly all the classics.

So, bearing confusion and a lack of understanding of why the Chinese nationality had become spiritually insane, mentally unstable, extremely

[疯狂], [I] developed a focus in many academic areas.

Although I am far from having done [deep] research or made contributions in every field, in terms of the quantity of my reading, really few people [could surpass me].

I think in the modern era, only Liang Qichao and a few other people could surpass me. I don’t take average people into account.

[As for] the Cultural Revolution, I could not use years’ worth of time, expend this much time on the whole history, and I don’t have this motivation.

I definitely bore a confusion and lack of understanding to go down this path, so in the end, [I] went to the [multifunctional] party, political, and academic Central Party School of the Communist Party of China,...

...wanting to gain a real understanding of China’s history, because that place was extremely convenient.

It was at once an academic division, a Party and government administration division, and also was closely connected with the Communist party.

The people you met were high officials of the Communist party.

If you wanted to see a provincial Party secretary [or] a division head, you could just knock on their door, since at intervals they’d rotate in their training, without exception.

Every provincial Party secretary, every division head, every government employee, all started from there as the first step.

[When I was] in my 20s, actually, in terms of my thinking, I was constantly changing.

From the beginning, with my lack of understanding of the Communist Party, up to later on, when [I] strongly opposed certain Communist Party policies—actually, it wasn’t just me.

Some people like Bo Xilai, like Wang Qishan, people I’d had contact with in the past, actually [they] were all like this.

This generation of people walked the same path.

[Of] the elite of every profession in China, there are many with whom I’m quite familiar, so [I know that] that everyone has read just about the same books.

At that time, there were some internal books, as well as some books that couldn’t be openly spread around, many, many that everyone read.

Just about [everyone] traveled the same path.

Each person carried a bit of dust when the Cultural Revolution ended.

In general, people walking into a new environment traveled the same path. Each person’s path was bumpy.

Or you could say, most people traveled like this: in their thinking, of course there were changes—

--from not understanding, or even from completely believing in and worshipping the Communist Party to not understanding [it], to criticizing it from many aspects.

Up until age 50, it changed into an understanding of many, many aspects. There were really many changes.

Each person carried a bellyful of perplexity. Some became laid-off workers.

Those who came out independently rushed into their own fields, each coming out step by step.

There was [nobody] who firmly carried out a certain profession at first, or was a firm believer; [everyone] felt perplexed and went along step by step.

The academic world was even more like this.

No matter which department a scholar was in—especially in the humanities—[as] represented [by] Xu Youyu—weren’t these people all like this?

Up until today it’s still contradictory.

After all, should China go toward the democratic path? Can [it] follow completely? Or, should it return to [the path of] traditional Chinese politics?

Two paths—we have no way to [unify our opinions]. Today, there’s no way to choose.

Up until today, people are getting more and more self-contradictory, since the path of democracy, since today in the United States—everyone sees this—democracy didn’t turn out so well.

[Toward] the prospects of China’s traditional path, people don’t maintain a really optimistic attitude.

Today’s path still must be chosen; it has not yet been settled.

So, this was the generation of the Cultural Revolution.

All along, I believed if this [my] generation would rise up, it would bring with it a powerful China.

This generation led to the only-child generation, [who] cannot bear heavy responsibility.

This generation, from age 10, began that kind of class struggle, mutual deception, two sides unable to co-exist, made their way through a bloody path of carnage.

If these people couldn’t accomplish something remarkable, neither could earlier or later generations.

Going back [to] my older siblings’ generation, they revered Marxism; their thinking was a rigid doctrine; they had no way of dealing with different situations.

But this generation, my generation, no matter if it’s Bo Xilai, or if it’s Xi Jinping, they all brought about a grand situation.