A Centenarian's Memories

Interviewer: Hello, Auntie. Thank you for participating in our CR/10 interview project today.

Thank you for coming to interview me.

Interviewer: Auntie, first, could you please tell me what year you were born in?

I [was born in] 1918.

Interviewer: Thank you. During the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, where were you?

I was in Tianjin.

Interviewer: Then, could you use a few minutes to share your Cultural Revolution experiences, impressions, feelings, etc.?

During the Cultural Revolution -- 16 Middle [School] -- on the street next to us was a middle school, No. 16 Middle School.

Interviewee's daughter, off camera: 61 Middle School...

No. 16 Middle School students came to search my house and confiscate possessions.

They took my things away. There were some things that they burned out in the courtyard.

It was such a shame.

Among [those who participated] was a really good student, who saw my father's writings [among the things being burned].

He kept them and secretly gave them back to me.

Interviewer: That's wonderful. There were still good people.

Right. Anyway, [after] everything was taken away, I was made to go to the basement.

I lived there continuously for 10 years.

Interviewer: In your own basement?

Right -- our own house's basement.

My previous house had been quite large, but later on we moved to smaller house.

However, this smaller house still had two floors, a basement, etc.

Interviewer: Do you have a deep impression of any incident during the Cultural Revolution that you could talk about with us?

My house was searched to confiscate possessions during the Cultural Revolution.

All of my books were burned, all of my foreign language books were burned.

I feel it's hard to talk about.

Interviewee's daughter, off camera: What had you been using those foreign language books for?

Like Tolstoy's [books] and others...so many...

Interviewee's daughter: And a lot were reference books, right?

Huh? What?

Interviewee's daughter, off camera: You did translation; you had a lot of reference books, right?

They weren't all reference books; there were foreign language novels and others.

I studied foreign language literature, so all of my books were in English. They saw these English books.

The Red Guards were upstairs, since my books were all upstairs, [on] the second floor.

[They] threw the books down, one by one, and burned them in my courtyard for a whole day.

They burned all of those books of mine. My home didn't have anything worth money.

I feel that books were more precious. So, they burned them all.

In the end, a student from No. 16 Middle School gave two of my father's books back to me, [since] he thought they were [important to me]. So great.

Interviewer: Thank you. You're up there in age, a century old, but you still participated in our project.

Interviewer: We are really very lucky. Thank you for accepting our interview.