Perhaps the most notorious practitioner of this type of abuse was Wang Man-hsi, the rank-and-file militiaman and Communist Party member who was known as “The King of the Devils” for his readiness to beat up the people’s enemies. He had played a very important part in the Anti-Traitor Movement and the campaign against the gentry. Now, like the cop in the city market place who helps himself to the fruit in the stalls, Man-hsi took it for granted that the people owed him a few extras. The nighttime check-ups of the campaign against counter-revolution gave him ample opportunity to tip the scales in his own favor. Since the homes which he entered were almost all homes of “struggle objects,” he had no qualms about carrying off whatever suited him. He took two catties of hemp seed from Li Pao-chin’s house. From a widow’s garden he helped himself to garlic and chives. He liked the fruit on Yu-hsien’s trees so well that he came back several times for more. In Shao Lap-chang’s yard he not only picked ripe plums, but broke off a whole branch and carried it with him on his rounds. From Kuo Fu-kuei, ex-puppet police chief, he took a beautiful dry gourd because “it was so pretty.” From another ex-puppet he took a ripe watermelon. When the man protested, he shut him overnight in the village lockup.
When Man-hsi found a woman of gentry origin alone he took full advantage of his good fortune. Saying, “Bastard landlords, they took our women, why shouldn’t we take theirs?” he raped one landlord’s daughter, a visitor from another village, in the back court of his newly acquired home. Later he and another militiaman ordered the daughter-in-law of a local “money-bags” out of her neighbor’s house on the grounds that no one was allowed to sleep away from home. Then they took her to an empty yard and forced themselves upon her. Man-hsi, on his own, approached the wife of the fugitive Chin-ming several times, threw stones over her wall, questioned her about her husband, and ordered her out to village meetings. He only failed in his plan to possess her because her neighbors lived so close to her back wall that they could hear every noise in her house.
From being the scourge of the gentry it was an easy transition for Man-hsi to become the scourge of the average man. By rapid stages he developed many of the habits of the traditional village bully. When Li P’an-ming, the peasant in charge of public affairs, asked him to do rear service, Man-hsi swore at him, claimed that his ox was sick and sent him to see the poor peasant Lao-ts’un instead. When Lao-ts’un, for his part, also refused to transport grain, Man-hsi beat him up as a shirker. Another time, when asked to transport grain, Man-hsi went grudgingly, took the straw and beans another man had set aside for the trip and, by depriving the other man’s animal of feed, caused it to founder on the road. On that same trip he beat an honest poor peasant and threw his quilt on the floor because the fellow had the nerve to take for himself the only empty spot on an otherwise crowded k’ang in the only inn in the village.
Man-hsi refused to do his own share of work for soldiers’ families, but became very angry when others were slack in this respect. He beat them and brought them to the village office for questioning. When it was his turn to stand guard over the “fruits,” Man-hsi also took a few items from the public warehouse. He stole a small mirror, a sickle, an umbrella and a pack basket suitable for hauling grain on the back of a donkey. Later, when others wanted to borrow this basket from him, he refused to lend it, saying to himself, “Easy come, easy go.”
A militiaman who rivalled Man-hsi for stubborn misbehavior was Shen Yu-hsing. He was a tall, raw-boned man with a dour disposition and a sad face already deeply lined before the age of 30. Although his father was a life-long hired laborer, Yu-hsing had somehow managed to study six years in the village school, had learned to read and write, and had then peddled sugar for a living through several mountain counties. During the famine year, without any money with which to buy sugar, he worked in an industrial plant in Taiyuan. When Long Bow was liberated he was far from home. He returned empty-handed with nothing but rags on his back and not even a single quilt for a cover. Everything that he later acquired he owed to the Revolution. From the Peasants’ Association he first borrowed a pair of pants and a jacket. In the redistribution of collaborators’ property he was given a quilt. When he went to the front as a stretcher bearer, a women’s sewing group made him the first pair of shoes he had worn in over a year. As the Settling Accounts Movement gathered momentum he did well. He added an acre and a half to the original half acre inherited from his father and received four sections of housing. He very early joined the militia. In the spring of 1946 he also joined the Communist Party. He did this because some of his closest friends were already members.
Sudden prosperity, membership in a powerful party, and a rifle in his hand went to Yu-hsing’s head. Like Man-hsi, he craved women. A prostitute who had slept with him for money in the old days refused him when he came to her empty-handed. He twisted her arm and took her anyway. When a landlord’s daughter rejected him, he arrested her and took her to the village office on charges of spreading false rumors. One night he broke into a poor peasant’s home by prying open the lock with his knife and seduced the mistress of the house, who was sleeping there alone.
The object of his attentions was Chin-chu’s wife, an earthy woman of loose morals who had had many lovers over the years. Her husband was strong but cowardly, very slow-witted, dirty, and quarrelsome. It became almost a game in Long Bow Village to cuckold the heavy-browed, unhappy laborer and then taunt him about it afterward. In his rage all he dared do was beat his wife, a routine duty which he performed with gusto. For this harsh treatment she repaid him with never-ending nagging, quarrels over trifles, and continued unfaithfulness.
Yu-hsing, who was still a bachelor, took a liking to Chin-chu’s wife after that first night. He tried to persuade her to leave Chin-chu and marry him, a very serious crime in the eyes of the villagers who were willing to overlook much licentious behavior, but never the break-up of a marriage. In order to have time alone with Chin-chu’s wife, Yu-hsing ordered Chin-chu out to all public meetings and then slipped back to the house himself. When there were no meetings, he brazenly carried on his flirtation in Chin-chu’s presence. One winter night he broke the door open, complained that his hands were cold and put them under Chin-chu’s quilt to warm them. There he kept them for more time than it takes to eat a meal. When Yu-hsing left that night Chin-chu beat his wife so cruelly that she woke all the neighbors with her cries.
Although Shen Yu-hsing was himself head of the production committee of the Peasants’ Association, the more important he became, the lazier he got. He swore at others when they worked badly on co-operative projects, but did as little as possible himself. Once he was asked by Fu-yuan, the village head, to organize a group to work on the land of a soldier’s family. The soldier’s mother sent hot food to the field early in the morning so that the men would have something to eat when they arrived, but nobody came to eat all day. Yu-hsing had simply ignored the request. When the peasant Chao-ch’un refused to loan Yu-hsing his cart the latter attacked him and took it anyway. Whenever Yu-hsing saw Ch’un-ching, manager of the beancurd plant set up through mutual aid, peddling beancurd on the street, he popped a piece of the curd in his mouth to try out the flavor, but he never bought any and never paid for what he ate. When Ch’un-ching finally lost patience and refused to give him any more free samples, Yu-hsing felt insulted. He broke into Ch’un-ching’s home at night and stole several pounds of the newly-made curd. The other members of the mutual-aid group thought Ch’un-ching himself had stolen it and questioned him sharply. The quarrel that ensued almost broke up the group.
Both Yu-hsing and Man-hsi were rank-and-file militiamen. Though they were the worst behaved, they were not the only ones who did as they pleased. The question arises—why didn’t the corps keep its members in line? Why didn’t the militia captain call them on the carpet and discipline them? If Chang Chiang-tzu, the founder and first captain of the corps had remained in the village, he might well have done so, for he was a dedicated and conscientious man. But this very de
dication caused him to volunteer for the army in the very first recruiting drive. When he left for the front, Li Hung-er took his place as captain. Li Hung-er was young, active, and eager. He was a brave leader of men in action, but like many in his command felt entitled to special privileges after having faced danger. This weakness was aggravated by a liking for high living and beautiful women that was stronger even than that of his most susceptible subordinate. Since he himself spent his evenings courting other men’s wives, it was unrealistic to expect that he would hold his colleagues in check or maintain high personal standards before the corps in other respects.
Hung-er, with a German Luger on his hip, a white sash around his waist, and a sparkling white towel on his closely shaven head, cut a dashing figure. He knew well how to charm young women and also how to bully them when necessary. He courted five or six mistresses at a time and kept them in line by making them jealous of one another. One of his first affairs was with Chao Ch’uan-e, the young wife who feared that her family would be attacked as rich peasants. Since her husband was away most of the time working the family holdings on the Western Mountains, she had plenty of opportunity for casual flirtation. Later Hung-er took a liking to Ts’ui-ying, the very attractive bride of a recent recruit to the People’s Liberation Army. Since it was an arranged match between two young people who had never set eyes on each other, the bride had no particular attachment to her soldier husband and was much flattered by Hung-er’s attentions. Hung-er arranged for her to move out of her in-laws’ one-room house into the quarters of a second soldier’s bride who had a room of her own. There he visited her night after night. For variety he seduced the hostess too. The latter was afraid to protest because, as Ts’ui-ying said, “Hung-er is a king in this village. If you displease him he might mobilize the whole of Horse Square against your father’s family since they are so prosperous.”
Later, still another young woman caught Hung-er’s eye. Her name was Fu-e and her husband was a member of the militia under Hunger’s command. Hung-er arranged for him to depart on a long trip and then went to Fu-e with the announcement that “now everything is convenient for us.” When the girl’s aunt came to stay, Hung-er sent her home. When Fu-e remonstrated that this open flaunting of convention might arouse the village against her, Hung-er ordered her to be happy. When she wept instead, he beat her. When Fu-e’s husband returned, Hung-er arranged for her to join the weaving class sponsored by the Women’s Association. Since the students all lived and worked together in the “Foreign House” at the south end of the village, Hung-er was able to visit his mistress there every night. When the girl expressed fear that Hu Hsueh-chen, the head of the Women’s Association, might discover their liaison, the militia captain said, “She dare not oppose me. She’s in the palm of my hand.”
In order to cut a more dashing figure, Hung-er was not above taking a few items from the public warehouse. Chief among these was a pair of spectacles which he thought made him look cultured (an attribute he most certainly lacked at the time). He also took a fountain pen and a pair of brightly colored socks. Gifts for his favorites of the moment cost money, and since in the winter he had little produce that he could sell for cash, he took what he needed from the village stores. Once he took a large jar of salt. Salt, in that saltless region, was as good as silver dollars. The salt taken by Hung-er had been confiscated from Chief-of-Staff Chou Mei-sheng, who had himself grafted it from the public supplies when he was a puppet official. When the keeper of the warehouse found the salt missing and raised a hue and cry, Hung-er lined up the whole militia and demanded to know who had stolen the salt.
Since Man-hsi had stood guard that day, the weight of suspicion fell most heavily on him and no denial on his part did much good because of his already established reputation for carrying away property.
Thus did Hung-er, to cover up his own misdeeds, reward Man-hsi, his most active corpsman, faithful follower, and partner in many an amorous escapade. Hung-er and Man-hsi were so close, in fact, that they had swapped sisters in marriage. With such close personal and family ties one could hardly expect that Hung-er would supervise or correct Man-hsi’s behavior or vice-versa.
Hung-er, Man-hsi; and Yu-hsing were not only militiamen; they were also Communists. Why didn’t the Party branch criticize them, make them correct their behavior, or expel them? As a matter of fact, Fu-yuan and T’ien-ming did make efforts to reform all the the wayward and especially to reform Hung-er, who was setting a bad example for the whole militia. Several times he was brought before the branch executive committee and criticized for his “rascal affairs.” When confronted with his transgressions in open meeting Hung-er was very contrite, apologized for bringing disgrace to the Party, swore that he would correct his behavior and promised to hold the militia in check in the future. But within a few days he seemed to forget his promises and returned to his old ways. When T’ien-ming criticized him privately, Hung-er became angry and swore at him for a meddler. Both T’ien-ming and Fu-yuan found it hard to make a big issue of loose morals because they themseleves were also involved in illicit affairs. Until they found the strength to give up their own liaisons and learned to lead by example, they could not hope to have too much influence along such lines.
Yu-lai, the deputy leader of the Peasants’ Association, made this point clear. This very selfish and quarrelsome man took over a privy that had already been allocated to another peasant, An-feng. When Fu-yuan criticized Yu-lai for occupying An-Feng’s privy, Yu-lai retaliated with direct action. He came to Shih Hsiu-mei’s home at night with several of the militia and arrested Fu-yuan as he slept with her on the k’ang. Thus was Fu-yuan ridiculed before the whole village. He found it difficult to criticize others after that.
24
The Blackmail of Wang Yu-lai
Certain persons, when solving all kinds of concrete problems, place their personal interests above the Party’s interests; or they are always worrying about their personal gains and losses, weighing their personal interests; or they engage in jobbery, taking advantage of Party work to achieve certain personal aims; or they attempt to pay off their personal grudges against other comrades on the pretext of a question of principle, or of Party interests.
Liu Shao-ch’i, 1942
IRONICALLY, it was Wang Yu-lai, vice-chairman of the Peasants’ Association, who was responsible for the worst abuses of power—abuses which were of a very different order from the petty transgressions and excesses of a Man-hsi or a Yu-hsing, however crude these might be. The ex-bandit, ex-Catholic Yu-lai developed a system all his own for gradually extending his power and influence until he became the most hated man in liberated Long Bow. His method was as old as politics—the witch hunt. Even though T’ien-ming, chairman of the Party branch and director of public security, was responsible for all anti-agent work and asked no help from Yu-lai, the latter, who was neither a Communist nor a policeman, set himself up as a one-man investigation committee, security guard, and arbiter of political loyalty. He prowled around alone at night checking on the state of law and order and accused all those with whom he quarrelled of having secret liaison with the Kuomintang. It was he, more than any other cadre, who put the “agents’ caps” on Catholics’ heads and then used these “caps” and the threat of punishment that went with them to buttress his own position.
By such activity Yu-lai impressed the district leader, a worried man who was glad to see such zeal, especially from an ex-Catholic. At the district leader’s suggestion, Yu-lai’s son, Wen-te, was transferred from the militia to public security work. In the fall of 1946, Wen-te became T’ien-ming’s assistant. Thus, through the back door, Yu-lai gained a foothold that he had been unable to establish through the front door—an official connection with police work. Since his son, Wen-te, was very much under his influence it was as if Yu-lai himself had been appointed to assist T’ien-ming.
Like most self-appointed guardians of political purity, Yu-lai apparently believed that he was really saving the community from counter-re
volution. When he went to the county seat on an animal-buying expedition, he boasted that he had single-handedly turned Long Bow upside down. “I can discover enemy agents without even putting on my spectacles,” he declaimed, before a skeptical audience at a street-corner mutton-soup stand. “My beard is a high official’s beard and whoever is ordered by me to die must die.” So saying he scowled the fierce, eyebrow-clashing scowl for which he was famous and looked intently at the faces in the crowd in front of him as if about to pick out an enemy agent right then and there.
During those fateful months of late 1946, when Nationalist troops were driving on Changchih and many persons truly expected a “change of sky,” there was some truth to Yu-lai’s boast that he had turned the village upside down. More than 20 peasants came under suspicion through his efforts alone and though none of them was officially investigated, charged with any crime, or sentenced to punishment, they were subject to constant harassment, detentions, questioning, and discrimination in day-to-day affairs.
Fanshen Page 31