Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

  I had a favorite corner in these "wing seats" (fei-lai-yi) where I used to sit for hours reading, occasionally stretching my arm out to touch the fan-shaped leaves of a rare ginkgo tree. There was a pair of them outside the front gate of the library, towering and elegant. They were the only sight that could distract me from my books.

  My clearest memory is of my teachers. They were the best in their field; many were grade one, or special grade.

  Their classes were sheer joy, and I could never have enough of them.

  But more and more political indoctrination was creeping into school life. Gradually, morning assembly became devoted to Mao's teachings, and special sessions were instituted in which we read Party documents. Our Chineselanguage textbook now contained more propaganda and less classical literature, and politics, which mainly consisted of works by Mao, became part of' the curriculum.

  Almost every activity became politicized. One day at morning assembly the headmaster told us we were going to do eye exercises. He said Chairman Mao had observed that there were too many schoolchildren wearing spectacles, a sign that they had hurt their eyes by working too hard. He had ordered something to be done about it. We were all terribly moved by his concern. Some of us wept with gratitude. We started doing eye exercises for fifteen minutes every morning. A set of movements had been devised by doctors and set to music. After rubbing various points around our eyes, we all stared intently at the rows of poplars and willows outside the window. Green was supposed to be a restful color. As I enjoyed the comfort the exercises and the leaves brought me, I thought of Mao and repledged my loyalty to him.

  A repeated theme was that we must not allow China to 'change color," which meant going from Communist to capitalist. The split between China and the Soviet Union, which had been kept secret at first, had burst into the open in early 1963. We were told that since Khrushchev had come to power after the death of Stalin in 1953 the Soviet Union had surrendered to international capitalism, and that Russian children had been reduced to suffering and misery again, just like Chinese children under the Kuomintang. One day, after warning us for the umpteenth time against the road taken by Russia, our politics teacher said: "If you aren't careful, our country will change color gradually, first from bright red to faded red, then to gray, then to black." It so happened that the Sichuan expression 'faded red' had exactly the same pronunciation (er-hong) as my name.

  My classmates giggled, and I could see them stealing glances at me. I felt I must get rid of my name immediately. That evening I begged my father to give me another name. He suggested Zhang, meaning both 'prose' and 'coming into one's own early," which expressed his desire for me to become a good writer at a young age.

  But I did not want the name. I told my father that I wanted 'something with a military ring to it." Many of my friends had changed their names to incorporate the characters meaning 'army' or 'soldier." My father's choice reflected his classical learning. My new name, Jung (pronounced "Yung'), was a very old and recondite word for 'martial affairs' which appeared only in classical poetry and a few antiquated phrases. It evoked an image of bygone battles between knights in shining armor, with tasseled spears and neighing steeds. When I turned up at school with my new name even some teachers could not recognize the character $1.

  At this time Mao had called on the country to go from learning from Lei Feng to learning from the army. Under the defense minister, Lin Biao, who had succeeded Marshal Peng Dehuai in 1959, the army had become the trailblazer for the cult of Mao. Mao also wanted to regimentalize the nation even more. He had just written a well-publicized poem exhorting women to 'doff femininity and don military attire." We were told that the Americans were waiting for a chance to invade and reinstate the Kuomintang, and that in order to defeat an invasion by them Lei Feng had trained day and night to overcome his weak physique and become a champion hand-grenade thrower.

  Physical training suddenly assumed vital importance.

  There was compulsory running, swimming, high jumping, working out on parallel bars, shot-punning, and throwing wooden hand grenades. In addition to the two hours of sports per week, forty-five minutes of after-school sports now became obligatory.

  I had always been hopeless at sports, and hated them, except tennis. Previously this had not mannered, but now it took on a political connotation, with slogans like: "Build up a strong physique to defend our motherland." Unfortunately, my aversion to sports was increased by this pressure. When I tried to swim, I always had a mental picture of being pursued by invading Americans to the bank of a surging river. As I could not swim, my only choice was between being drowned or being captured and tortured by the Americans. Fear gave me frequent cramps in the water, and once I thought I was drowning in the swimming pool.

  In spite of compulsory swimming every week during the summer, I never managed to learn to swim all the time I lived in China.

  Hand-grenade throwing was also regarded as very important, for obvious reasons. I was always at the bottom of the class. I could only throw the wooden hand grenades we practised with a couple of yards. I felt that my classmates were questioning my resolve to fight the US imperialists. Once at our weekly political meeting somebody commented on my persistent failure at hand-grenade throwing. I could feel the eyes of the class boring into me like needles, as if to say: "You are a lackey of the Americans!" The next morning I went and stood in a corner of the sports field, with my arms held out in front of me and a couple of bricks in each hand. In Lei Feng's diary, which I had learned by heart, I had read that this was how he had toughened up his muscles to throw hand grenades.

  After a few days, by which time my upper arms were red and swollen, I gave up, and whenever I was handed the wooden chunk, I became so nervous that my hands shook uncontrollably.

  One day in 1965, we were suddenly told to go out and start removing all the grass from the lawns. Mao had instructed that grass, flowers, and pets were bourgeois habits and were to be eliminated. The grass in the lawns at our school was of a type I have not seen anywhere outside China. Its name in Chinese means 'bound to the ground." It crawls all over the hard surface of the earth and spreads thousands of roots which drill down into the soil like claws of steel. Underground they open up and produce further roots which shoot out in every direction.

  In no time there are two networks, one above ground and one below ground which intertwine and cling to the earth, like knotted metal wires that have been nailed into the ground. Often the only casualties were my fingers, which always ended up with deep, long cuts. It was only when they were attacked with hoes and spades that some of the root systems went, reluctantly. But any fragment left behind would make a triumphant comeback after even a slight rise in temperature or a gentle drizzle, and we would have to go into battle all over again.

  Flowers were much easier to deal with, but they went with even more difficulty, because no one wanted to remove them. Mao had attacked flowers and grass several times before, saying that they should be replaced by cabbages and cotton. But only now was he able to generate enough pressure to get his order implemented but only up to a point. People loved their plants, and some flowerbeds survived Mao's campaign.

  I was extremely sad to see the lovely plants go. But I did not resent Mao. On the contrary, I hated myself for feeling miserable. By then I had grown into the habit of self criticism and automatically blamed myself for any instincts that went against Mao's instructions. In fact, such feelings frightened me. It was out of the question to discuss them with anyone. Instead, I tried to suppress them and acquire the correct way of thinking. I lived in a state of constant self-accusation.

  Such self-examination and self-criticism were a feature of Mao's China. You would become a new and better person, we were told. But all this introspection was really designed to serve no other purpose than to create a people who had no thoughts of their own.

  The religious aspect of the Mao cult would not have been possible in a traditionally secular society like China had there not been
impressive economic achievements.

  The country had made a stunning recovery from the famine, and the standard of living was improving dramatically. In Chengdu, although rice was still rationed, there was plenty of meat, poultry, and vegetables. Winter melons, turnips, and eggplants were piled up on the pavements outside the shops because there was not enough space to store them. They were left outside overnight, and almost nobody took them; the shops were giving them away for a pittance. Eggs, once so precious, sat rotting in large baskets there were too many of them. Only a few years before it had been hard to find a single peach now peach eating was being promoted as 'patriotic," and officials went around to people's homes and tried to persuade them to take peaches for next to nothing.

  There were a number of success stories which boosted the nation's pride. In October 1964 China exploded its first atomic bomb. This was given huge publicity and touted as a demonstration of the country's scientific and industrial achievement, particularly in relation to 'standing up to imperialist bullies." The explosion of the atomic bomb coincided with the ousting of Khrushchev, which was presented as proof that Mao was right again. In 1964 France recognized China at full ambassadorial level, the first leading Western nation to do so. This was received with rapture inside China as a major victory over the United States, which was refusing to acknowledge China 's rightful place in the world.

  In addition, there was no general political persecution, and people were relatively content. All the credit was given to Mao. Although the very top leaders knew what Mao's real contribution was, the people were kept completely in the dark. Over the years I composed passionate eulogies thanking Mao for all his achievements and pledging my undying loyalty to him.

  I was thirteen in 1965. On the evening of I October that year, the sixteenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic, there was a big fireworks display on the square in the center of Chengdu. To the north of the square was the gate to an ancient imperial palace, which had recently been restored to its third-century grandeur, when Chengdu was the capital of a kingdom and a prosperous warlord city. The gate was very similar to the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Peking, now the entrance to the Forbidden City, except for its color: it had sweeping green tiled roofs and gray walls. Under the glazed roof of the pavilion stood enormous dark-red pillars. The balustrades were made of white marble. I was standing behind them with my family and the Sichuan dignitaries on a reviewing stand enjoying the festival atmosphere and waiting for the fireworks to begin. Below in the square 50,000 people were singing and dancing. Bang. t Bang.t The signals for the fireworks went off a few yards from where I stood. In an instant, the sky was a garden of spectacular shapes and colors, a sea of wave after wave of brilliance. The music and noise rose from below the imperial gate to join in the sumptuousness. After a while, the sky was clear for a few seconds. Then a sudden explosion brought out a gorgeous blossom, followed by the unfurling of a long, vast, silky hanging. It stretched itself in the middle of the sky, swaying gently in the autumn breeze. In the light over the square, the characters on the hanging were shining: "Long Live Our Great Leader Chairman Mao!" Tears sprang to my eyes.

  "How lucky, how incredibly lucky I am to be living in the great era of Mao Zedong!" I kept saying to myself.

  "How can children in the capitalist world go on living without being near Chairman Mao, and without the hope of ever seeing him in person?" I wanted to do something for them, to rescue them from their plight. I made a pledge to myself there and then to work hard to build a stronger China, in order to support a world revolution. I needed to work hard to be entitled to see Chairman Mao, too. That was the purpose of my life.

  15. "Destroy First, and Construction Will Look After Itself"

  The Cultural Revolution Begins (1965-1966)

  At the beginning of the 1960s, in spite of all the disasters Mao had caused, he was still China 's supreme leader, idololized by the population. But because the pragmatists were actually running the country, there was relative literary and artistic freedom. A host of plays, operas, films, and novels emerged after long hibernation. None attacked the Party openly, and contemporary themes were rare. At this time Mao was on the defensive, and he turned more and more to his wife, Jiang Qjng, who had been an actress in the 1930s. They decided that historical themes were being used to convey insinuations against the regime and against Mao himself.

  In China, there was a strong tradition of using historical allusion to voice opposition, and even apparently esoteric allusions were widely understood as coded references to the present day. In April 1963 Mao banned all "Ghost Dramas," a genre rich in ancient tales of revenge by dead victims' spirits on those who had persecuted them. To him, these ghost avengers were uncomfortably close to the class enemies who had perished under his rule.

  The Maos also turned their attention to another genre, the "Dramas of the Ming Mandarin," the protagonist of which was Hai Rui, a mandarin from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). A famous personification of justice and courage, the Ming Mandarin remonstrated with the emperor on behalf of the suffering ordinary people, at the risk of his own life. He was dismissed and exiled. The Maos suspected that the Ming Mandarin was being used to represent Marshal Peng Dehuai, the former defense minister who in 1959 had spoken out against Mao's disastrous policies which had caused the famine. Almost immediately after Peng's dismissal, there was a noticeable resurgence of the Ming Mandarin genre. Mme Mao tried to get the plays denounced, but when she approached the writers and ministers in charge of the arts they turned a deaf ear.

  In 1964, Mao drew up a list of thirty-nine artists, writers, and scholars for denunciation. He branded them 'reactionary bourgeois authorities," a new category of class enemies.

  Prominent names on the list included the most famous playwright in the Ming Mandarin genre, Wu Han, and Professor Ma Yin-chu, who had been the first leading economist to advocate birth control. For this he had already been named a rightist in 1957. Mao had subsequently realized that birth control was necessary, but he resented Professor Ma for showing him up and making it clear that he was wrong.

  The list was not made public, and the thirty-nine people were not purged by their Party organizations. Mao had the list circulated to officials down to my mother's level with instructions to catch other 'reactionary bourgeois authorities." In the winter of 1964-65, my mother was sent as the head of a work team to a school named "Ox Market."

  She was told to look for suspects among prominent teachers and those who had written books or articles.

  My mother was appalled, particularly as the purge threatened the very people she most admired. Besides, she could plainly see that even if she were to look for 'enemies' she would not find any. Apart from anything else, with the memory of all the recent persecutions few had dared to open their mouths at all. She told her superior, Mr. Pao, who was in charge of the campaign in Chengdu, how she felt.

  Nineteen sixty-five passed, and my mother did nothing.

  Mr. Pao did not exert any pressure on her. Their inaction reflected the general mood among Party officials. Most of them were fed up with persecutions, and wanted to get on with improving living standards and building a normal life.

  But they did not openly oppose Mao, and indeed went on promoting his personality cult. The few who watched Mao's deification with apprehension knew there was nothing they could do to stop it: Mao had such power and prestige that his cult was irresistible. The most they could do was engage in some kind of passive resistance.

  Mao interpreted the reaction from the Party officials to his call for a witch-hunt as an indication that their loyalty to him was weakening and that their hearts were with the policies being pursued by President Liu and Deng. His suspicion was confirmed when the Party newspapers refused to publish an article he had authorized denouncing Wu Han and his play about the Ming Mandarin. Mao's purpose in getting the article published was to involve the population in the witch-hunt. Now he found he was cut off from his subjects by the Party system, which had
been the intermediary between himself and the people. He had, in effect, lost control. The Party Committee of Peking, where Wu Han was deputy mayor, and the Central Department of Public Affairs, which looked after the media and the arts, stood up to Mao, refusing either to denounce Wu Han or to dismiss him.

  Mao felt threatened. He saw himself as a Stalin figure, about to be denounced by a Khrushchev while he was still alive. He wanted to make a preemptive strike and destroy the man he regarded as " China 's Khrushchev," Liu Shaoqi, and his colleague Deng, as well as their followers in the Party. This he deceptively termed the "Cultural Revolution." He knew his would be a lone battle, but this gave him the majestic satisfaction of feeling that he was challenging nothing less than the whole world, and maneuvering on a grand scale. There was even a tinge of self-pity as he portrayed himself as the tragic hero taking on a mighty enemy the huge Party machine.

  On 10 November 1965, having repeatedly failed to have the article condemning Wu Han's play published in Peking, Mao was at last able to get it printed in Shanghai, where his followers were in charge. It was in this article that the term "Cultural Revolution' first appeared. The Party's own newspaper, the People's Daily, refused to reprint the article, as did the Peking Daily, the voice of the Party organization in the capital. In the provinces, some papers did carry the article. At the time, my father was overseeing the provincial Party newspaper, the Sichuan Daily, and was against reprinting the article, which he could sense was an attack on Marshal Peng and a call for a witch-hunt. He went to see the man in charge of cultural affairs for the province, who suggested they telephone Deng Xiaoping. Deng was not in his office, and the call was taken by Marshal Ho Lung, a close friend of Deng's, and a member of the Politburo. It was he whom my father had overheard saying in 1959: "It really should be him [Deng] on the throne." Ho said not to reprint the article.