"Their mother's body was laid out on the bed at home, [but] they didn't even look at her."

Interviewer: Hello! Thank you for accepting my interview.

Thank you.

Interviewer: First, could you tell me if you were born in the 1980s, or the 1990s?

I was born in 1980, so traditionally, people would classify [me as being born in the decade] after 1980.

Interviewer: 1980s, OK.

Interviewer: But actually, some [people born in] '81, '82, and '83 believe we ought to be counted as the "post-1970" [generation].

Interviewer: Oh, OK. How do you identify/classify yourself?

I identify more with being classified as "post-1980."

Interviewer: OK. Where were you born, and where did you grow up in China?

I grew up in a city in northern China, Tianjin.

Interviewer: Could you please tell me, in your impression, approximately when was the first time you heard about the historical incident, the Cultural Revolution?

For me, this memory is pretty clear. It must've been when I was nine years old.

Interviewer: [When you] were nine.

When [I] was nine years old.

At that time, it just so happened...what was the greater background?

At that time, my parents were university professors.

At that time, they transferred from a university in Tianjin to a university in Guangzhou.

I was born in 1980; when I was nine years old, it was 1989.

At that time, of course my father said many, many things—I don't remember [most] of them—but I remember one statement.

That time, he was eating and chatting with my mother, and he said one sentence.

I'm not censoring it at all; this statement's original wording was, "The Cultural Revolution was just Old Mao wanting to be emperor."

This was my earliest impression of the Cultural Revolution, one I still remember.

Interviewer: That was when [you] were nine years old.

[Right].

Interviewer: Then, later on? Were there other channels through which you heard about the Cultural [Revolution]?

When I was 11 years old, in 1991, my [parents] were transferred from that university in Guangzhou back to that university in Tianjin.

Then, there was no other change; we kept living in Tianjin.

In my childhood, I liked reading; as long as a book had words, I'd pick it up and flip through it.

Once, I went to a classmate's home and saw his dad's bookcase. At the time [houses] were all small, just one room.

On the bookcase was a really thick book with a simple, shabby jacket. I remember [the text] was deep blue on a red background.

On the spine was written "Ten-year History of the Cultural Revolution." I've already forgotten who the author was.

I felt that book was really intriguing, so I picked it up and flipped through it.

I've already forgotten what content I flipped to intrigued me.

Anyway, after I'd picked it up, I said to [my classmate's] father, "Uncle, could you loan me this book?"

At the time, our two families lived up- and downstairs from one another; [we] were very familiar.

I remember my classmate's father looked at me and with a serious expression said, "I can loan it to you, but after you've read it, you definitely must return it."

So, I took it back to read. I remember lying on my little bed reading it; I must've read it for a week.

Interviewer: You were 11 years old.

11 years old, at that time. I was somewhat confused reading that book, since the author used a lot of obfuscations, I realize now.

[Also], that kind of chronological history book is pretty dry; it was like a day-to-day account.

When I was young, I most loved reading novels, foreign and Chinese novels, since [they] had a plot.

But this kind of [history book] was pretty dull. However, I still read through it.

Interviewer: [The process of reading] was simple.

Right. Actually, [as a] child, [I] had a basic idea.

Then, this idea was actually the feeling that these 10 years were very chaotic; everything was chaotic--

--

this was chaotic; that was chaotic; just this and nothing else. At the time, I was 11 years old.

Later...Should I go on speaking?

Interviewer: Yes. Go on talking--very good.

Later on, since from childhood I'd been pretty interested in history, so I unconsciously looked for relevant things to read.

Interviewer: May I ask, were your parents in social sciences, humanities, or natural sciences?

They were both very typical, very genuine natural sciences [scholars]; they both [specialized in] chemistry.

My paternal grandfather did, too. Later, [I'll] probably talk about my paternal grandfather's story.

In 1946, or sometime in the '40s, [my paternal grandfather] passed an entrance exam to study in the United States at public expense.

He got his Ph.D. at an American university, then went on to do a post-doc. In 1953—

Interviewer: [He] returned to China.

Right. Also, he took a circuitous route coming back.

So, he was [among] the first group of [Chinese] scientists to come back to China from studying in the U.S.

He studied chemistry, and remained in the university [to teach].

Later on, my father mentioned to me that during the Cultural Revolution, almost all people like my paternal grandfather counted as people who carried original sin,

...

so at the time there were all kinds of attacks. When my father talked about this with me, I was already 16 or 17 years old.

[My father] spoke quite concretely with me, but it was all his personal feelings,

...

since he was in the second year of senior high school when the Cultural Revolution occurred and experienced going “down to the countryside.”

I have a deep impression of the things he told me about at the time.

He said that one evening, he was sitting outside their family's house, watching all evening as group after group of Red Guards searched houses to confiscate possessions.

He said [he] could see a window of the house; after a while there was a big commotion, and a light came on in the window.

Then, people's shadows moved back and forth. After a while it was quiet, and the light went out.

After a while, again [came] another group [of Red Guards].

The same process went on three or four times in one evening. This was one [incident].

The second [incident] is, he told me my paternal grandmother was a homemaker.

Although she always respected my paternal grandfather, at that time, she was a bit...

Because people more or less followed the crowd, my father said during that period of time, she and my grandfather often had serious arguments.

What's more, the words [she] used were mostly those normally used when struggling against or persecuting intellectuals.

So, my father said at the time, my paternal grandfather endured a lot of emotional and psychological stress, was subjected to great injury.

This was their family's situation.

The middle school my father went to was the affiliated middle school of the university [where my paternal grandfather taught].

Actually, what my father talked about with me was quite scattered and disconnected; [when he] thought of it, he just rambled.

He once said that [when] he was in the sophomore year of high school, their school's Red Guards...

First he said to me, these so-called activist elements, Cultural Revolution activist elements, had some shared characteristics.

One was that they didn't do well in school; another was that they seemed to have good family backgrounds.

He talked about two incidents with me [that demonstrated] how warped human nature was at the time.

A group of third-year junior high school students struggled against a teacher.

Usually, it was organized so a group of teachers were taken to a place.

The so-called "struggle" was actually beating, [my father] said.

He noticed that at the time, among the group of teachers who'd been dragged out was a teacher who was pregnant.

Just as [she] was about to be taken out, a high school sophomore with a good family background,

...

who hadn't been classified in the "five black categories" or "seven black categories" really couldn't stand to see that,

...and in the name of revolution, pulled this teacher out of the ranks.

If [he] hadn't taken that teacher out, it's hard to imagine what the consequences might have been.

Another thing is that in their class, there were two sisters who were not far apart in age, so they were both in the same class.

These two sisters studied extremely well.

In [my father's] impression, these two girls were also quite pretty, that kind of perfect beauty.

However, when the movement came along, these two girls were the earliest in the class to "make a clean break" with their family.

I forget what my father said their mom did, but it seems like she danced ballet.

Moreover, she was also someone who'd studied abroad and returned home, a dancer.

What made people really sad is that after these two girls "made a clean break" with their mother,

...other than to ask for money and rummage through things, they never went back home.

What most angered people was that finally, [their] mother died of persecution, and when her body was lying on the bed at home,

...

they went home and didn't even look at her, just rummaged through the stuff in the house.

Finally, some other girls in their class really couldn't bear this. Usually, they all got along quite well.

They were all [living] in the university residence compound.

They really couldn't stand seeing [how the sisters acted towards their mother], so they organized and carried [her body] away.

But the two sisters didn't show their faces during this entire course of events.

Later, they were [among] the first group to go "down to the countryside."

I believe my father has many examples of feelings like this, since he was a professor's child.

In that university, we had a large group of this kind of person; they were all the children of [intellectuals] who'd studied abroad and returned home, so-called "birds of a feather flocking together."

[These kids] played together, and the bitter experiences they met with were all about the same.

I believe [my father] had many examples of [experiences] like this, but he never talked about them, and was unwilling to recall them.

He would just bring them up once in a while, for example [when he and] some classmates would share a meal, or [at] a classmates' reunion after X number of years.

[When] he mentioned the story of those two sisters to me, it was at [his] high school classmates' 50-year reunion.

They realized that those two sisters' situation was the worst among [their classmates].

Because of so-called revolutionary feelings, those two sisters had enthusiastically taken the lead in going "down to the countryside" to join a production team.

Then, very early on, [they] got married to local peasants.

[When] joining in the classmates' reunion, the two sisters' regrets [were obvious].

There were a lot of things everyone was unwilling to mention.

[My father] said the reunion was a bit awkward, since everyone felt there were always some things they ought not to touch on, since they were not good for anyone.

Were those two female students bad? Actually, it's hard to say.

But that era created some historical facts; from the facts, [the two sisters] were bad.

There's no way of denying this.

It's hard to imagine [someone's] own daughters seeing their own mother dead on a bed and not paying any attention, just going to rummage through stuff.

So this was something really…

But personally, first of all, in high school, this [the Cultural Revolution] was never a "test point."

Interviewer: What is a "test point"?

A so-called "test point" is just, for example, a high school unified examination in history would test—

Interviewer: Oh, a test's main focus.

A test's main focus. So, [we] didn't need to memorize things [regarding the Cultural Revolution].

Then, in history books, these things [concerning the Cultural Revolution] were generally all in small print.

Generally, they'd appear in extracurricular reading; what's more, they were written about with very little elaboration.

Also, honestly speaking, now I think they didn't conform at all to historical fact.

Maybe this was also an opportunity for a change in my thinking later on.

Later, [after I] went to university, my father didn't [limit] me on money.

When I was in high school he hadn't really given me much money, so I was really poor.

After [I] went to university, he stopped being miserly, and I started buying all kinds of books.

I bought a serious history book, Wang Nianyi's

.

Elaborately packaged, it was also like a chronological history book.

Only when I became truly interested in this did I consciously go back and dig up my father's memories, and then recall things he’d mentioned before.

I really became interested because I unexpectedly came across a selection in

from a book called

written by Yu Luowen,

...the little brother of Yu Luoke [a student who was executed for his writings].

The book he wrote was really visceral, and also very real.

I went to look for that book, and actually found it. But it had already been censored beyond recognition.

At the time, our home already had the internet, so I just found the complete original edition online. I still have that book.

I remember very clearly it has an orange cover.

There are a lot of little notes stuffed inside, where I [wrote out] the things that had been censored out and stuck them in the book.

Later, from [reading] this book I went on to seek out traces of Yu Luoke's life, and then from Yu Luoke's persecution,

...

[I] looked for things about the background of that historical period, such as people like Zhang Zhixin's [and] Yu Luoke's individual cases.

Then, I gradually looked for some upper-level things.

So-called upper-levels things were things that at the time...

Actually, I don't know if

had [them] or not, but actually, I read this book.

Then, [I] felt that [The Lushan Conference Incident], perhaps in this time period—that is, before all of the historical incidents that arose from the Cultural Revolution—it amounted to—

To speak clearly, I really believe the change in Mao Zedong Thought started from the Yan'an Rectification [Movement].

The Yan'an Rectification, the Three-anti and Five-anti campaigns, then the Anti-Rightist Campaign, then it was the Great Leap Forward, then the Cultural Revolution.

Researchers of history might believe this was a period of logical change in a leader's thinking,

...which brought about the period in China's history from [19]49 to 1976 [the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution].

In the beginning, I looked for some domestic information; later I sought foreign information.

I read some really interesting...I’m not going to talk about that.

Interviewer: This shows you are still very interested.

I'm extremely interested in much of history, especially recent modern history, with some [historical incidents].

Interviewer: Do you feel that there are many young people born after 1980 [who are interested] like you?

Not many.

Interviewer: I also think there aren’t many.

Really not many. I feel that [people] of my age or a year or two younger lean toward modern cynicism.

So-called modern cynicism is that they only care about their personal lifestyle.

To be honest, for living, my minimum can fall quite low.

Interviewer: Is there no one of your own age with whom you can talk about this subject?

Yes.

Interviewer: There is still someone.

There's just one person.

Interviewer: Really very few! So hard to find.

Yes, it’s rare.

Actually, around us, there's one or two people who can discuss this with me, but what they pay attention to is not quite the same.

But, we can still talk about a few things regarding this subject.

Interviewer: Good. Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Interviewer: Thank you for accepting my interview.