Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  Old Tui-chin was able to see what others missed because he looked at the world with relative objectivity. Not consumed by self-interest, he was apparently content to go on living just as he had, with a simple clay roof over his head and an acre of land under his feet. He had no personal ambitions, burdens, or problems that he could not solve. He was, therefore, calm, seasoned, and reflective, a person of great equanimity to whom others quite naturally brought their quarrels and difficulties.

  Circumstances no doubt helped Tui-chin maintain this objectivity. He had no wife and no children of his own. Although he was responsible for the upbringing of his nephew’s daughter, the little six-year-old was not a serious drain on his resources. Her company enlivened his life. Already past 50, a venerable age in rural China, he was not torn by passion for some woman not his wife and hence was free of the scandal and gossip that dogged the steps of many a younger man.

  Old Tui-chin’s admirable objectivity had survived some rather severe tests in the past. The Liberation had not been an unmixed blessing to him, and if he had wished to make an issue out of personal injury as so many other villagers had done, he had the grounds to do so. In the days when the Eighth Route Army and the Lucheng County Militia overwhelmed the Japanese and puppet garrisons of the Fifth District, Old Tui-chin was living several miles from Long Bow in a village called Changkechuang. Here he shared a house with his nephew, the puppet village leader. When the militia entered the village, they arrested the puppet leader and confiscated all his personal property. Included in the confiscated property were Tui-chin’s entire possessions. When the nephew was later released, he ran away, leaving his three-year-old daughter and Old Tui-chin behind. He never came back. He never even sent word as to his whereabouts.

  Old Tui-chin returned to Long Bow with absolutely nothing he could call his own except the clothes on his back. In Long Bow he still owned an acre of land, the remainder of his father’s holdings after the Japanese built their blockhouse on the property. In the distribution he received three sections of a tumbledown house, a few clothes, and a bag or two of grain. This accounted for the fact that he was the only delegate to the Congress still classed as a poor peasant. Yet he nursed no rancor toward anyone. When asked about his attitude he told Ch’i Yun: “As for me, I received housing, clothes, and grain. No one dares to treat me ill or oppress me as the puppet troops did. My life is much better than before. As for the rest of the peasants, they are all better off. If they lacked land, they got it. If they lacked housing, they got it, and the same went for animals, carts, and tools. But still some cranks are dissatisfied with their condition. What they want is just to sit home and eat. But how can the food go trotting into one’s mouth? Everyone must labor. That is our duty.”

  Perhaps the fact that Old Tui-chin had been a wage laborer most of his life had something to do with his advanced outlook. When he was 16 he began a nine-year job as a year-round hired man for a landlord. Then, after three years selling wine on the road as a peddler, he went to work in the local distillery owned by Fan Pu-tzu. For 23 years he labored as a distillery hand, rising before dawn to stoke the fires and quitting only after dark when the plant shut down for the night. This was a kind of life and a kind of discipline that few peasants knew. Perhaps it had instilled in Old Tui-chin some of the steadfastness, some of the toughness, and some of the selfless objectivity of the true proletarian.

  61

  A Final Determination

  The land problem should be considered solved and the question of land reform should not be raised again in areas where the feudal system has been fundamentally abolished, where the poor peasants and farm laborers have all acquired roughly the average amount of land, and where there is still a difference (which is permissible) between their holdings and those of the middle peasants, but where the difference is not great.

  Mao Tse-tung, 1948

  ON JULY 23, 1948, the newly elected People’s Congress met to make a final determination of the class status of every family in the community. The new appraisal of the fanshen situation which the work team brought back from the second County Conference had a very definite influence on the proceedings. The Congress delegates accepted the view that feudal property had, in the main, been expropriated, and that the poor peasants had, in the main, fanshened. They were therefore very strict in once again judging every family previously classed as poor. This trend, which first developed during the second classification in June, became the dominant feature of the final classification in July. Any family that possessed an average amount of land to till and a roof over its head was considered to have fanshened and was accordingly classed as a family that had achieved new-middle-peasant status.

  A summary of the three bangs, or stages of classification, clearly showed the trend (see opposite page).

  The table shows little if any change in the classification of families in the higher brackets but a marked change in the classification of families in the lower brackets. Whereas 95 families were still considered poor in May, only 28 were so regarded in July. Whereas only 68 poor peasants were thought to have fanshened in May, 136, or exactly twice the number, were considered to have done so in July.

  When the list was posted, a number of poor peasants who had been upgraded to the status of new-middle-peasants protested, but on the whole the people were well satisfied. The final classification reflected reality. It provided a basis for settling, once and for all, the land question. It enabled everyone to get on with production.

  With the final classification the Long Bow Congress not only solved this major fanshen problem, but it also solved many minor problems concerning the class status of households with mixed incomes. The most difficult case left over from the past was that of Wang Ch’ang-yi, the professional castrator. Although he had already been dead six months, it was still necessary to classify his household on the basis of its economic status during the base period years 1942-1945. While he lived, Wang Ch’ang-yi went out every day with his veterinary kit and earned money cutting pigs. At the same time, his family at home hired labor to till land holdings that were twice as large as the average in Long Bow.

  Was Wang Ch’ang-yi an exploiter, a craftsman, or a free professional? Was he a landlord, a rich peasant, or a middle peasant? What proportion of his income did he earn? How much of it came from exploitation?

  The Congress finally solved this problem by dividing the Wang family income into two parts—on one side they placed Wang Ch’ang-yi, the veterinarian, and his personal earnings; on the other side they placed Wang Ch’ang-yi’s family, the landowners, and their earnings from exploitation. Wang was given a personal class as a craftsman, and everything relating to his craft, from the instruments to the income, was considered to be legitimate property not subject to confiscation. The family as a whole, however, was classed with the rich peasants. Its surplus land, tools, housing, etc., were made subject to confiscation. Thus a fine line was drawn between the gentry as exploiters and the gentry as professionals. The same line was applicable to all rich peasants or landlords who taught school, practiced medicine, or performed any other kind of service for pay.

  This concept of personal classification being distinct from that of the family as a whole helped to solve other vexing problems. Huan-ch’ao, the blacksmith, for instance, was called a handicraft laborer, but his family was put in the new-middle-peasant category on the strength of its landholdings, housing, and implements. The same occurred in the case of the carpenter Li Ho-jen, the weaver Wang Kuei-pao, and several others.

  ***********

  Once the class status of every family in the village had been determined, it was possible to look back on the whole process of land reform since 1945, and on its various stages. The table on page 592 may serve as a summary of this process. What was finally revealed with striking clarity by these figures was the extent of the damage done to middle peasants by the leftism of the first post-war years. In the winter of 1946, middle peasants as a class lost 66 acres of land, 12 draft anima
ls, and considerable quantities of grain. By the time the May 4th Directive had been fully implemented they had lost another ten acres of land and several head of livestock. Actual losses were more serious than these figures revealed because in these over-all totals the land and livestock gained by certain middle peasant families cancelled out the losses sustained by other less fortunate families. A breakdown showed that 21 out of 64 middle peasant families lost almost 100 acres of land, even though 16 others gained 23 acres. It was the losses of the 21 that explained the prevalence of “chive cutting thought” in 1946-1947 and the reluctance of so many middle peasants to meet or to become active.

  All these difficulties arose because the expropriation movement had gone too far, broadened its target too much, called middle peasants rich peasants and rich peasants landlords, and had stripped them all of their property.

  Once this situation was revealed by the final classification, the next step was to correct the errors. Those who had been stripped had to be resettled, those who should never have been attacked had to be repaid. But first, all the property available for resettlement and repayment had to be assembled and put at the disposal of the Congress.

  62

  The Midnight Raid

  The main factor in eliminating the landlord class and in wiping out the feudal system is the confiscation for distribution to the peasantry of the lands, grains, plow animals, agricultural implements, and such properties owned by the landlord class, together with the rich peasants’ surplus possessions. The most basic of all is land distribution. We should not consume much time seeking out hidden wealth and should not keep the movable possessions that have been confiscated for long without distributing them.

  Jen Pi-shih, 1948

  IN RURAL CHINA, night possesses an absolute quality long absent in the industrialized West. This, as least, was the case before the transformation of the Chinese countryside by co-operatives and communes. At night everyone went early indoors. If they lit any lamp at all, it was but a twist of cotton in a cup of vegetable oil. The wavering flame thus created pushed back the darkness only a few feet. The glow could hardly be detected beyond the paper windows; and since all windows opened on courtyards that were in turn surrounded by walls, no light at all was visible from the far side of these walls. This meant that as night fell, complete and utter darkness descended upon the land. All human activity out of doors ceased. To wander in the countryside after dark was to wander in the atmosphere of an enormous universal graveyard in which there was no light at all except that which came from the sky. When clouds covered the sky, the darkness could be overwhelming, frightening, primitive in its totality, like a return to the primeval fen before men discovered fire. Little wonder that people feared the dark, believed in ghosts and conjured up all manner of awesome spirits to rule the earth and air. The ever recurring contrast between darkness and light, light and darkness as the world revolved made real and palpable the ancient, cosmic struggle between the yin and the yang, the black and the white, the female and the male, the evil and the good.

  At the nadir of one of the blackest of all nights, I found myself groping my way through the soft mud that the June flood had deposited in the courtyard of Widow Yu Pu-ho’s house. All around me other figures advanced toward the widow’s door. Scarcely visible though they were in the gloom, they nevertheless made their presence known by muttered curses. Each time a cloth shoe sank in the ooze or a shin knocked against one of the scattered obstacles on the ground its owner involuntarily swore under his breath.

  A long shed that had once flanked the west side of the yard had collapsed during the flood. Timbers and piles of straw-matted adobe lay in scattered heaps on the ground. The whole area smelled of dampness and mold, a background odor that seemed to sharpen rather than deaden the occasional whiff of truly rotten matter from an overflown cistern that assailed the nostrils of our nocturnal raiding party.

  The group around me was made up of members of the standing committee of the Long Bow People’s Congress, several newly appointed village officials, the cadres of the work team, and several armed militiamen. They were advancing across that courtyard in the middle of the night in order to take Yu Pu-ho by surprise.

  In the final bang the lusty widow had been classed as a rich peasant. The list was to be posted the next morning. By that time it would certainly be too late to seize the wealth of the only gentry family in the village that had never been touched. Even a raid such as this, carried out the night before, might well prove useless, for neighbors had reported strange doings in the flood-damaged courtyard. Relatives of the widow and her daughter, Pu-ch’ao, had been coming and going at odd hours for weeks. Boxes had been carted away in the night. Perhaps the bulk of the family’s possessions had already been dispersed. To wait until the lists were posted would only insure that the dispersal was complete. The Congress, after making a final differentiation of the widow’s class, had voted to register everything she owned before she had a chance to learn her fate.

  No one doubted that Yu Pu-ho, despite her modest dwelling place, had wealth. The peasants recalled the elaborate wedding she had arranged for her daughter and the lavish funeral she had given her departed husband. On the latter occasion, the coffin had been transported inside a glass case that was supported by 16 people instead of the usual eight. All the members of the family had worn fine things, gowns of silk and coats of fur. Where were these costly garments now? And where was the gold that represented the savings of several generations of exploiters and the accumulated labor of several generations of the exploited? People asked each other such questions because they feared the worst. The old widow was cunning, no doubt about that, and the most cunning trick of all had been to marry off her daughter to a poor peasant, a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army. Since Pu-ch’ao had already been wed three years she was classed as poor and a soldier’s dependent to boot, even though she lived in her mother’s house and ate and dressed like one of the gentry. As a poor peasant she was entitled to attend all village meetings, study classification procedures, and carry back to her mother all the knowledge she picked up. Forewarned was forearmed. Only a fool would sit there month after month waiting for the axe to fall. But until the widow’s class was settled, the government and the Communist Party forbade any move against her. The frustrated cadres had no choice but to carry on the step-by-step program called for in the Border Region directives, even though they knew full well that Yu Pu-ho could easily outwit them before her fate was finally decided. No doubt her daughter had told her that beatings were no longer allowed, that force was taboo, and that no time would be wasted looking for buried treasure. Goods once hidden need never be revealed. All this explained why, once Yu Pu-ho was declared to be a rich peasant, the Congress decided on immediate action.

  The delegation that moved out in the middle of the night to register and seal the widow’s property was divided into three groups. One, made up entirely of women, was designated to find and interrogate Yu Pu-ho’s much abused daughter-in-law, the bride of her soldier son, Yu Jen-ho. The women thought that the girl, a poor peasant by origin, might well reveal the family secrets without any urging. A second group, led by Cheng-k’uan, the Congress chairman, was dispatched to the home of Yu Pu-ho’s poor peasant lover, Wanger. It was only logical to suppose that he had already hidden valuable things for his beloved mistress. A third group under the leadership of Hsin-fa, secretary of the village Party branch, undertook to handle the widow herself. Hsieh and I joined the latter.

  The tall Hsin-fa reached the widow’s door first. He pounded on it with his fist, raising enough thunder to awaken the dead.

  “Come in, please come in,” said Yu Pu-ho in a loud voice. As she spoke she pulled back the wooden bolt and flung the door wide open.

  Obviously the visit came as no surprise. Behind the widow a light was burning. It silhouetted a figure made comically bulky by layer after layer of padded clothing. This was topped off by a patched black smock. Strange outfit for so warm a night
! The widow’s round, usually smooth face was furrowed with anxiety, but she pretended a hearty welcome as she talked without pause in a tone sweet with assumed geniality.

  “Here, sit on the k’ang. It’s muddy out there, I know,” she volunteered as we filed silently past her into the cavernous dark dwelling. “A terrible thing the waters did. Knocked my shed down. I have nothing to rebuild with. That’s right. Make yourselves comfortable. Pu-ch’ao, go fetch some bricks so that they can all sit down. We don’t have much furniture. Our home has no luxuries—as you can see. No luxuries.”

  I found myself wishing that she would stop talking. What did she expect to gain by it, the crafty old schemer? She only revealed her nervousness. Pu-ch’ao, by contrast, was as calm and cool as a river reed growing by the banks of the Ssa Ho. She stood in the shadow by the door and did not say a word.

  The widow half leaned, half sat on the edge of the k’ang. Her hands, fumbling with the hem of her black smock, twitched. Suddenly she stood up, walked a few steps on her disfigured bound feet, and sat down again.

  The great size of the widow’s house only emphasized its drab emptiness. From its gloomy depths came the same moldy smell that rose from the courtyard outside. The single oil lamp, set on a wooden chest beside the north wall of the room, cast a flickering glow that showed up by turns the smoke-blackened ceiling overhead, the battered k’ang along the east wall, and the spacious chamber to the west. Only a thin reed mat and two faded cotton quilts covered the k’ang. In the whole west wing the alert and roving eyes of the widow’s many visitors could detect only a large wooden box, some rolls of reed matting, an earthen jar, a few bowls, a mirror, and a brush. In the middle of the floor, in forlorn isolation, stood an old wooden armchair. Its black stain had been polished until it glistened by generations of use.