maxshanghai

En av mina lärare berättade att flera som undervisar vid Fudan är forna rödgardister. Han påpekade det ironiska i att samma människor som under kulturrevolutionen deltog i kampanjer för att krossa den traditionella kinesiska kulturen idag undervisar i kinesisk kultur vid universitetet. Man kan anta att de inte deltog i kulturrevolutionen friviligt dock. Jag intervjuade en man som genomlevde den här tiden. Det här är hans historia:

I was twelve years old in 1966 when the cultural revolution started. I remember they announced in school that there were no more classes and that we should all participate in this great revolution. We didn't know exactly what we were supposed to do, but we had all the freedom we wanted, and were urged to criticize the teachers, and even use violence against them. First it felt great, having this freedom, so we just attacked randomly. The teachers who weren't popular got the most criticism. Some of them suffered a great deal, I participated in some of it, I wasn't the most active, but I did my share. I regret it today. I guess it is human nature, everyone else was doing it, and it seemed justified at the time.

What would you accuse the teachers of?

Ridiculous things. Like, you are anti-revolution, anti.-Mao, "you are not loyal enough", most of it was fabricated. Mostly the attacks were verbal, but sometimes it got violent, when the victim refused to co-operate. All authority figures were attacked by default. The violence in my school wasn't very bad, it was an elementary school. But outside of school I saw people getting hurt very badly, with a lot of blood coming out. I did not see anybody die, but the victims I saw lying there might have died later.

The attacks were going on in the street, in the work units. We were spurred on by the propaganda, in the newspaper and on the radio all the time, and what was going on in the street. You see what is going on and you emulate it.

How did your parents react?

They were too busy with their own problems. They hardly ever talked to us. Whenever I said something about what happened in school my mother would just say "stay out of trouble". There was no real dialogue. So I gradually stopped talking about it with them. Now I understand, they were scared to death themselves. My father was attacked and persecuted at work. He worked in the ministry of foreign affairs. First I thought those that were attacked must be guilty, so when they attacked my father I could not believe it. If they made one mistake, they could have made many other mistakes. I thought maybe other victims were like my father. That's when it turned around for me, when my father got in trouble. I realized that this was not just one big party, this was for real, there were real consequences. So this was the beginning of my skepticism. I did not doubt the movement in its entirety, but I no longer felt that it was that noble. I lost my enthusiasm, but I still had to play along. I became an observer, played along when I had to, stayed away whenever I could.

During this time the city became chaotic, there was no more law, no more order. The children and the red guards did not just attack the authority leaders, they also preyed on each other. I was not very physically strong, so survival became a challenge. The older kids would beat you up for no reason. They would take your money. Going out in the streets became dangerous, it was mob rule. So you could not go out alone so we neighborhood kids went out in groups. We had no school and nothing to do, and we could not just stay at home all day, so we went out. Sometimes we preyed on others too. It was a very ugly thing. We would fight with others, sometimes just for fun. Those activities were not political at all, just...expressions of animal instincts, I guess. Sometimes we got hurt, sometimes we hurt others. The fights escalated, some kids got knives, all kinds of weapons, sometimes people got killed.

One neighboring kid I knew quite well, he was about 12-13, his father was a military officer, so he always wore his father's uniform. It was too big, but he was very proud to wear it. He was a very nice, likeable guy. His name was Chai Wei Wei. Another older kid somehow didn't like him, and every time he saw him he would beat him up, for no reason. One day after an especially hard beating my friend told his younger brother: "next time, go and get me the kitchen knife". So, the next time, his brother went and got the knife. It was a big knife, you know, Chinese style, like an axe, and he just went crazy with it, he ran after the older kid, screaming, like an animal. The other kid turned pale 'cause he really wanted to kill him. He went after him and he stabbed him, I don't know how many times, but everywhere, and eventually the other kid died. It happened on my street, I did not see it, but my friends told me about it.

So my friend got arrested and was sent away. We didn't hear from in a couple of months. Then one day we were called to a rally at the school, by the Red Guards. They were the ones who ran the school, Red Guards and a few of the teachers. It was a big rally with hundreds of people, the whole school was there. To our great surprise, Wei Wei was called to the stage, still wearing the uniform. It was a shock to see him there. We all knew what he had done so we felt very sorry for him. We knew that he was going to get a severe punishment, maybe even the death penalty. So it was hard watching him standing there, knowing he was maybe going to die for having killed someone. All of us who knew him knew that he was a very nice guy, that he had just killed the other kid in an act of rage. All the others at the rally were very angry, yelling out slogans. By this time I was almost in opposition to the campaign, I felt I wasn't one of them anymore. I felt we were just all victims, including Wei Wei, including the kid he killed. I wondered if I was unique, I dared not say a word about it, but deep down I knew: I couldn't be part of this. I was thinking "this is supposed to be a noble cause, why I am feeling this way?" I talked to my close friends later, and they were feeling the same way, because we knew Wei Wei, we thought "Wei Wei did not deserve this".

And gradually I became a dissident. I moved away from the mainstream, got sick and tired of the propaganda. I wasn't very political, but I felt a disgust toward the whole thing. I was said Chai Wei Wei got a sentence of 15 years. I never saw him again after that day of the rally.

Another tragic case, I had a friend who lived above us. His mother jumped out the window. I looked out the window and I saw this lady lying there in a pool of blood. I didn't realize it was my friend's mother. There were people standing around. While watching I saw my friend's father, I remember his face, so pale, not even human, twisted. He carried a blanket to put on her dead body, and I thought, I couldn't believe it, it was my friend's mother. I didn't know why she jumped, to this day I don't know. A few days later the father disappeared. He was arrested for, whatever reason. So the three kids had to live there alone. Fortunately they had a relative who lived not too far away who came and gave them money and cleaned them up a bit. A lot of these stories happened around you. You heard horrible stories, almost on a daily basis. The father was in jail until the mid-seventies, so almost ten years. When he came back he looked so old, so sick. Before, he was a very handsome man, a very able man. When he came back, it was almost like he had lost his soul. He would look at you with no expression. He would hardly talk to anybody. He didn't recognize us; before we had been neighbors. Then he died of cancer, and we thought, anyone who had been through what he had been through would develop cancer.

The Cultural Revolution was a big trauma for our family. We eventually lost our home in Beijing and were sent out to central China. My father was arrested two times, first for a couple of months, the second time for almost a year. He never talked about it, it was too painful I guess. He talked to my mother about, I think. He didn't talk to us children much anyway.

When he came back from jail, did you notice anything different about him?

O yeah. He became much more...first of all, physically he looked much older, you could see he had a lot of pain, I could sense it. A lot of friends had turned on him, that was difficult for him. There was a power struggle within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For various reasons he had become alienated from the power holders in the Ministry and the Cutlural Revolution was the perfect opportunity to take him on. His friends turned on him for different reasons, some were too scared not to, in the campaign atmosphere. Others did it to advance their own careers.

How did it happen, when he got arrested?

The Red Guards came to our home. My father had his belongings ready. My parents knew that they were coming, but they hadn't told us. My mother talked to the Red Guards in the living room, she closed the door, she didn't want us to hear. Then she came out and the Red Guards were gone, my father was gone. She said "there is an investigation, your father is away to answer some questions, it is going to be a while". My sister began to cry, and my mother said "don't cry, nothing is going to happen to him, he will come back". I just stood there, completely blank, thinking "why is this happening?".

A few months later he did come back, and we were notified that we had to go to the countryside. We were moved to Jiangxi province, a mountain area, to work in the fields. We all lived in one small room, there was no kitchen, no toilet, no electricity for the first six months, then only a few hours per night. We lived in a camp with other intellectuals; ambassadors and, for example, the vice president of the Institute of Diplomacy in Beijing doing agricultural work. And they weren't very good at that. They just screwed up all the time, it was a waste of time. The farmers in the village had given us half their land, they were ordered to give it. We had the farmers to help us, but they spoke in this local dialect, and they did not really know how to explain things. When the harvest came, the other half had a huge harvest. The village had around 20 households so the farmers were less than 100 people, and that included old people. But we could not manage that piece of land, we worked almost day and night, and we were maybe 400-500 people.

After two years I could move back to Beijing, but my family stayed for four more years. When I moved back to Beijing I started working in a factory. And by this time I was completely fed up with the campaigns. And you could see that other people were too.

The Cultural Revolution finally came to an end in 1976 with the death of Chairman Mao and the subsequent arrest of the Gang of Four. Z remembers drinking with his friends the day Mao died:

I said "This is good, this is good news, we finally got rid of this guy, he was a disaster". My friends were all shocked. Then I regretted it, I thought "maybe I went too far?". But I said: "it means we have something to hope for, something new. I don't know what it will be, but it will be something better, because it can't be any worse than the way things are now".