V o i F r o m t h e W H I R L W I N D F E N G J I C A I P A I M T H E O N B O O K S N E W Y O R K F O R E I G N L A N G U A G E S P R E S S B E I J I N G V O I C E S F r O M T H E W h R L W I N D An Oral History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution With a Foreword by Robert Coles Copyright © 1991 by Random House, Inc. Foreword Copyright © 1991 by Robert Coles Copyright © 1990 by Foreign Languages Press All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in different form as One Hundred People's Ten Years by Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, China in 1990. Published by arrangement with Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, China. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Feng, Chi-ts’ai. [I pai ko jen ti shih nien. English. Selections] Voices from the whirlwind: an oral history of the Chinese cultural revolution / by Feng Jicai; foreword by Robert Coles, p. cm. A collection of 14 first-person accounts selected and translated from: I pai ko jen ti shih nien. Includes index. ISBN 0-394-58645-X i. China—History—Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969—Personal narratives. I. Title. DS778.7.F462513 1991 951.05'6—dc20 90-52565 Book design by Chris Welch Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition C O N T E N T S FOREWORD VU by Robert Coles KEY FIGURES DURING THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION xi CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS xiii THEY WHO HAVE SUFFERED GREATLY 3 Translated by Cathy Silber AVENGER 28 Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco WAS I REALLY GUILTY? 38 Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco A TOUGH GUY 55 Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco A SENIOR RED GUARD’S APOLOGIA 63 Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco THE 3,650 DAYS OF A COUPLE /05 Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco THESE THIRTY YEARS OF MINE 128 Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco v C O N T E N T S COMMANDER NIU 146 Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco A MODERN ROUGE ET NOIR I$J Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco A YOUNG GIRL LOST 168 Translated by Deborah Cao and Lawrence Tedesco TWO WITNESSES TO AN EXECUTION 180 Translated by Denny Chiu THE PAPER COLLECTOR WANTS TO SAVE HER HUSBAND ig$ Translated by Denny Chiu THE MOST INTELLIGENT MAN 209 Translated by Denny Chiu THE SCIENTIST WHO PIONEERED THE ATOM BOMB 224 Translated by Denny Chiu INDEX H5 F O R E W O R D What follows are heart-breaking, yet ever so instructive decla­ rations, memories, avowals; narrative presentations of life as it was lived in a great nation going through a terrible moral and political crisis. What follows, too, is history as it can be evoked and portrayed from the bottom up, so to speak—not the history of big-shot politicians and generals, not the history of historians either, but rather the history of ordinary men and women who suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, did indeed feel the anxiety and pain, the continual terror that arrived in the name of a “Cultural Revolution;” a “whirlwind” for sure; so much swept away, so much shaken and buffeted, tossed about and torn apart. As one reads these remembrances, one yet again realizes that our lives are not given shape only by the early childhood we happen to live, or even the particular social and economic world we inherit from our parents and grandparents. A nation’s ups and downs, its political history, can become the ruling force upon the lives of thousands, millions of men, women, children —and, in some cases, can become instruments of terror and genocide. Because a “Cultural Revolution” took place, all sorts vu F O R E W O R D of human beings joined the ranks of the insulted and the in­ jured, the scorned and the rebuked, their lives significantly changed— in some cases irreparably changed, and alas, in some cases, ended. Those who speak in the pages that follow survived, though with minds that surely struggle hard, day and night, to put aside one central evil: what leaders who abuse power can do to their own people in the name of ideology. Here was a nightmare not unique to any country or continent; here was meanness and abusiveness become a national craziness: hysterical and cruel accusations and intimidations, lies and more lies, rumors turned into the clubs of vilification and even murder. Whole families, we get to know, were wrongfully arraigned or hunted down, and often enough, convicted of imaginary crimes, victims of a spell of out-and-out political madness that got turned into the everyday, wanton persecution of the innocent by the all too self- serving and self-aggrandizing— a nation’s scandal and its shame. Yet, amid such awful circumstances, amid so much wrong- doing and evil, amid a kind of panic and wickedness of vast proportions, and for a while, of seemingly endless duration, any number of vulnerable men and women and children managed to survive— not only survive in body, but in mind and soul. The “Cultural Revolution” was at heart a crazed, wanton as­ sault on one part of a country’s people by another part—an effort of some to frighten and intimidate others, to drive them into a land of fear and trembling, to use accusation in hopes that endless self-accusation would follow. The blind attempted to blind others (ideology run amok results in a loss of vision, a descent into the hell of slogans, clichés, rituals, rote exercises in surrender to anyone and everyone). Still, some kept their vision, saw clearly the lunatic excesses of their countrymen, whether in vin F O R E W O R D high or low places, and kept their eyes on what mattered, on a future they could only hope would come sooner rather than later. These “oral histories” are testimony to that kind of vision­ ary survival: a moral and psychological triumph of enormous significance. As I read these personal stories, each with its own losses and hurts to report, its own endurance and courage and resource­ fulness to chronicle, I realized what totalitarianism can come to mean in the life of a nation, a people: the loss of all respect for the personal dignity of the individual; the constant hectoring through state-owned radio and television; the use of rumor, innuendo, gossip, and lies of all sorts as a means of scaring people, destroying their sense of their worth, their rights as human beings; and finally, the hounding of those people, the arrests and arraignments, the threats and beatings and denun­ ciations and jailings. Here is the social and political reality that writers such as Kafka only imagined: stories of a world gone cruelly wild; but stories, too, of resiliency, of endurance, of extraordinary courage demonstrated against the worst odds imaginable. We are lucky to know the people who appear in this book; their stories have much to teach us, not only about them, but about us; their unlucky fate and our enormous good fortune to be spared, so far, such a fate. —Robert Coles Cambridge, Massachusetts 1990 ix