Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

  They had been brought up in the fanatical personality cult of Mao and the militant doctrine of' class struggle." They were endowed with the qualities of youth- they were rebellious, fearless, eager to fight for a 'just cause," thirsty for adventure and action. They were also irresponsible, ignorant, and easy to manipulate and prone to violence. Only they could give Mao the immense force that he needed to terrorize the whole society, and to create a chaos that would shake, and then shatter, the foundation of the Party. One slogan summed up the Red Guards' mission: "We vow to launch a bloody war against anyone who dares to resist the Cultural Revolution, who dares to oppose Chairman Mao!"

  All policies and orders had hitherto been conveyed through a tightly controlled system which was entirely in the hands of the Party. Mao now discarded this channel and turned directly to the masses of the youth. He did this by combining two quite different methods: vague, high flown rhetoric carried openly in the press; and conspirao to rial manipulation and agitation conducted by the Cultural Revolution Authority, particularly his wife. It was they who filled out the real meaning of the rhetoric. Phrases like 'rebellion against authority," 'revolution in education," 'destroying an old world so a new one could be born," and 'creating new man' all of which attracted many in the West in the 1960s were interpreted as calls for violent action. Mao understood the latent violence of the young, and said that since they were well fed and had had their lessons stopped, they could easily be stirred up and use their boundless energy to go out and wreak havoc.

  To arouse the young to controlled mob violence, victims were necessary. The most conspicuous targets in any school were the teachers, some of whom had already been victimized by work teams and school authorities in the last few months. Now the rebellious children set upon them.

  Teachers were better targets than parents, who could only have been attacked in an atomized and isolated manner.

  They were also more important figures of authority than parents in Chinese culture. In practically every school in China, teachers were abused and beaten, sometimes fatally. Some schoolchildren set up prisons in which teachers were tortured.

  But this was not enough on its own to generate the kind of terror that Mao wanted. On 18 August, a mammoth rally was held in Tiananmen Square in the center of Peking, with over a million young participants. Lin Biao appeared in public as Mao's deputy and spokesman for the first time. He made a speech calling on the Red Guards to charge out of their schools and 'smash up the four olds' defined as 'old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits."

  Following this obscure call, Red Guards all over China took to the streets, giving full vent to their vandalism, ignorance, and fanaticism. They raided people's houses, smashed their antiques, tore up paintings and works of calligraphy. Bonfires were lit to consume books. Very soon nearly all treasures in private collections were destroyed.

  Many writers and artists committed suicide after being cruelly beaten and humiliated, and being forced to witness their work being burned to ashes. Museums were raided.

  Palaces, temples, ancient tombs, statues, pagodas, city walls anything 'old' was pillaged. The few things that survived, such as the Forbidden City, did so only because Premier Zhou Enlai sent the army to guard them, and issued specific orders that they should be protected. The Red Guards only pressed on when they were encouraged.

  Mao hailed the Red Guards' actions as "Very good indeed!" and ordered the nation to support them.

  He encouraged the Red Guards to pick on a wider range of victims in order to increase the terror. Prominent writers, artists, scholars, and most other top professionals, who had been privileged under the Communist regime, were now categorically condemned as 'reactionary bourgeois authorities." With the help of some of these people's colleagues who hated them for various reasons, ranging from fanaticism to envy, the Red Guards began to abuse them. Then there were the old 'class enemies': former landlords and capitalists, people with Kuomintang connections, those condemned in previous political campaigns like the 'rightists' and their children.

  Quite a number of' class enemies' had not been executed or sent to labor camps, but had been kept 'under surveillance." Before the Cultural Revolution, the police were allowed to release information about them only to authorized personnel. Now that policy changed. The police chief, one of Mao's own liege men Xie Fuzhi, ordered his men to offer the 'class enemies' to the Red Guards, and to tell the Red Guards about their crimes, such as their 'intention to overthrow the Communist government."

  Up till the beginning of the Cultural Revolution torture, as distinct from torment, had been forbidden. Now Xie ordered policemen 'not to be bound by the old rules, no matter if they had been set by the police authoriues or by the state." After saying "I'm not in favor of beating people to death," he continued: "But if some [Red Guards] hate the class enemies so much that they want to kill them, you don't have to force them to stop."

  A wave of beating and torture swept the country, mainly during house raids. Almost invariably, the families would be ordered to kneel on the floor and kowtow to the Red Guards; they were then beaten with the brass buckles of the Guards' leather belts. They were kicked around, and one side of their head was shaved, a humiliating style called the 'yin and yang head," because it resembled the classic Chinese symbol of a dark side (yin) and a light side (yang).

  Most of their possessions were either smashed or taken away.

  It was worst in Peking, where the Cultural Revolution Authority was on hand to incite the young people. In the city center some theaters and cinemas were turned into torture chambers. Victims were dragged in from all over Peking. Pedestrians avoided the spots because the streets around echoed with the screams of the victims.

  The earliest Red Guard groups were made up of high officials' children. Soon, when more people from other backgrounds joined, some of the high officials' children managed to keep their own special groups, like the "Pickets." Mao and his camarilla took a number of steps calculated to increase their sense of power. At the second mass Red Guards rally, Lin Biao wore their arm band to signify that he was one of them. Mme Mao made them the guards of honor in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square on National Day, 1 October. As a result, some of them developed an outrageous 'theory of the bloodline," summed up in the words of a song: "The son of a hero father is always a great man; a reactionary father produces nothing but a bastard!" Armed with this 'theory," some high officials' children tyrannized and even tortured children from 'undesirable' backgrounds.

  Mao let all this happen in order to generate the terror and chaos he wanted. He was not scrupulous about either who was hit or who were the agents of violence. These early victims were not his real targets, and Mao did not particularly like or trust his young Red Guards. He was simply using them. For their part, the vandals and torturers were not always devoted to Mao. They were just having a wild time, having been licensed to indulge their worst instincts.

  Only a small proportion of the Red Guards was actually involved in cruelty or violence. Many were able to avoid taking part because the Red Guard was a loose organization which, by and large, did not physically force its members to do evil. As a matter of fact, Mao himself never ordered the Red Guards to kill, and his instructions regarding violence were contradictory. One could feel devoted to Mao without perpetrating violence or evil.

  Those who chose to do so could not simply blame Mao.

  But Mao's insidious encouragement of atrocities was undeniable. On 18 August, at the first of the eight gigantic rallies which altogether were attended by thirteen million people, he asked a female Red Guard what her name was.

  When she answered "Bin-bin," which means 'gentle," he said disapprovingly, "Be violent' (yao-wu-ma). Mao rarely spoke in public, and this remark, well publicized, was naturally followed like the gospel. At the third mammoth rally, on 15 September, when the Red Guards' atrocities were reaching their zenith, Mao's recognized spokesman, Lin Biao, announced, with Mao standing next to him: "R
ed Guard fighters: The direction of your battles has always been correct. You have soundly, heartily battered the capitalist-roaders, the reactionary bourgeois authorities, the bloodsuckers and parasites. You have done the right thing!

  And you have done marvelously!" At that, hysterical cheers, deafening screams of "Long live Chairman Mao," uncontrollable tears, and howled pledges of loyalty took possession of the crowds filling the enormous Tiananmen Square. Mao waved paternally, generating more frenzy.

  Through his Cultural Revolution Authority, Mao kept control over the Peking Red Guards. He then sent them to the provinces to tell the local young people what to do. In Jinzhou, in Manchuria, my grandmother's brother Yu-lin and his wife were beaten up, and they and their two children were exiled to a barren part of the country. Yu-lin had come under suspicion when the Communists first arrived, because of his possession of a Kuomintang intelligence card, but nothing had happened to him or his family until now. My family did not know about this at the time.

  People avoided exchanging news. With accusations so willfully concocted, and the consequences so horrific, you never knew what catastrophe you might bring to your correspondents, or they to you.

  People in Sichuan had little idea of the extent of the terror in Peking. There were fewer atrocities in Sichuan, partly because the Red Guards there were not directly incited by the Cultural Revolution Authority. In addition, the police in Sichuan turned a deaf ear to their minister in Peking, Mr. Xie, and refused to offer up the 'class enemies' under their control to the Red Guards. However, the Red Guards in Sichuan, as in other provinces, copied the actions of those in Peking. There was the same kind of chaos as everywhere in China controlled chaos. The Red Guards may have looted the houses which they were authorized to raid, but they rarely stole from shops. Most sectors, including commerce, the postal services and transport, worked normally.

  In my school, a Red Guard organization was formed on 26 August, with the help of some Red Guards from Peking.

  I had been staying at home feigning illness to escape the political meetings and frightening slogans, and was unaware that the organization had been set up until a couple of days later, when a phone call summoned me back 'to participate in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." When I got to the school, I noticed that many pupils were proudly wearing red armbands with gold characters saying "Red Guards."

  In these early days, the newborn Red Guards had the immense prestige of being Mao's babies. It went without saying that I should join, and I immediately submitted my application to the Red Guard leader in my form a fifteen-year-old boy named Geng who had been constantly seeking my company, but became shy and gauche the moment he was with me.

  I could not help wondering how Geng had become a Red Guard, and he was mysterious about his activities. But it was very clear to me that the Red Guards were mostly high officials' children. The head of the school Red Guards was one of the sons of Commissar Li, the Party first secretary for Sichuan. I ought to have been a natural; few pupils had fathers in higher positions than mine. But Geng privately told me that I was considered soft and 'too inactive," and must be toughened up before they could consider accepting me.

  Since June, there had been an unwritten rule that everyone should remain in school around-the-clock to devote themselves entirely to the Cultural Revolution. I was one of the few who did not. But now the thought of playing truant somehow gave me a sense of danger, and I felt compelled to stay. The boys slept in the classrooms so we girls could occupy the dormitories. Non-Red Guards were attached to Red Guard groups and taken with them on their various activities.

  The day after I returned to school, I was taken out with several dozen other children to change street names to make them more 'revolutionary." The street where I lived was called Commerce Street,. and we debated what it should be renamed. Some proposed "Beacon Road," to signify the role of our provincial Party leaders. Others said "Public Servants' Street," as that was what officials should be, according to a quote of Mao's. Eventually we left without settling on anything because a preliminary problem could not be solved: the name plate was too high up on the wall to reach. As far as I knew, no one ever went back.

  In Peking the Red Guards were much more zealous. We heard about their successes: the British mission was now on " Anti-Imperialism Road," the Russian embassy on " Anti-Revisionism Road."

  In Chengdu, streets were shedding their old names like "Five Generations under One Roof' (a Confucian virtue), "The Poplar and Willow Are Green" (green was not a revolutionary color), and "Jade Dragon" (a symbol of feudal power). They became "Destroy the Old," "The East Is Red," and "Revolution" streets. A famous restaurant called "The Fragrance of Sweet Wind" had its plaque broken to bits. It was renamed "The Whiff of Gunpowder."

  Traffic was in confusion for several days. For red to mean "stop' was considered impossibly counterrevolutionary. It should of course mean "go." And traffic should not keep to the right, as was the practice, it should be on the left. For a few days we ordered the traffic policemen aside and controlled the traffic ourselves. I was stationed at a street corner telling cyclists to ride on the left. In Chengdu there were not many cars or traffic lights, but at the few big crossroads there was chaos. In the end, the old rules reasserted themselves, owing to Zhou Enlai, who managed to convince the Peking Red Guard leaders. But the youngsters found justifications for this: I was told by a Red Guard in my school that in Britain traffic kept to the left, so ours had to keep to the right to show our anti-imperialist spirit. She did not mention America.

  As a child I had always shied away from collective activity. Now, at fourteen, I felt even more averse to it. I suppressed this dread because of the constant sense of guilt I had come to feel, through my education, when I was out of step with Mao. I kept telling myself that I must train my thoughts according to the new revolutionary theories and practices. If there was anything I did not understand, I must reform myself and adapt. However, I found myself trying very hard to avoid militant acts such as stopping passersby and cutting their long hair, or narrow trouser legs, or skirts, or breaking their semi-high-heeled shoes. These things had now become signs of bourgeois decadence, according to the Peking Red Guards.

  My own hair came to the critical attention of my schoolmates. I had to have it cut to the level of my earlobes. Secretly, though much ashamed of myself for being so "petty bourgeois," I shed tears over losing my long plaits. As a young child, my nurse had a way of doing my hair which made it stand up on top of my head like a willow branch. She called it "fireworks shooting up to the sky." Until the early 1960s I wore my hair in two coils, with rings of little silk flowers wound around them. In the mornings, while I hurried through my breakfast, my grandmother or our maid would be doing my hair with loving hands. Of all the colors for the silk flowers, my favorite was pink.

  After 1964, following Mao's calls for an austere lifestyle, more suited to the atmosphere of class struggle, I put patches on my trousers to try to look 'proletarian' and wore my hair in the uniform style of two plaits with no colors, but long hair had not been condemned as yet. My grandmother cut it for me, muttering all the while. Her hair survived, because she never went out at that time.

  The famous teahouses in Chengdu also came under attack as "decadent." I did not understand why, but did not ask. In the summer of 1966 I learned to suppress my sense of reason. Most Chinese had been doing that for a long time.

  A Sichuan teahouse is a unique place. It usually sits in the embrace of a bamboo grove or under the canopy of a large tree. Around the low, square wooden tables are bamboo armchairs which give out a faint aroma even after years of use. To prepare the tea a pinch of tea leaves is dropped into a cup and boiling water is poured on top. Then a lid is sunk loosely onto the cup, allowing the steam to seep through the gap, bringing out the fragrance of the jasmine or other blossoms. Sichuan has many kinds of tea. Jasmine alone has five grades.

  Teahouses are as important to the Sichuanese as pubs are to the British. Older me
n, in particular, spend a lot of time there, puffing their long-stemmed pipes over a cup of tea and a plateful of nuts and melon seeds. The waiter shuttles between the seats with a kettle of hot water which he pours from a couple of feet away with pinpoint accuracy.

  A skillful waiter makes the water level higher than the edge of the cup without it spilling over. As a child I was always mesmerized watching the water fall from the spout. I was rarely taken to a teahouse, though. It had an air of indulgence of which my parents disapproved.

  Like European cafes, a Sichuan teahouse provides newspapers on bamboo frames. Some customers go there to read, but it is primarily a place to meet and chat, exchanging news and gossip. There is often entertainment storytelling punctuated with wooden clappers.

  Perhaps because they had an aura of leisure, and if people were sitting in one they were not out making revolution, teahouses had to be closed. I went with a couple of dozen pupils between thirteen and sixteen years old, most of whom were Red Guards, to a small one on the bank of the Silk River. Chairs and tables were spread outside under a Chinese scholar tree. The summer evening breeze from the river fanned out a heavy scent from the clusters of white blossoms. The customers, mostly men, raised their heads from their chessboards as we approached along the uneven cobblestones that paved the bank. We stopped under the tree. A few voices from our group started to shout: "Pack up! Pack up! Don't linger in this bourgeois place!" A boy from my form snatched a corner of the paper chessboard on the nearest table and jerked it away. The wooden pieces scattered on the ground.

  The men who had been playing were quite young. One of them lunged forward, his fists clenched, but his friend quickly pulled the corner of his jacket. Silently they began to pick up the chess pieces. The boy who had jerked away their board shouted: "No more chess playing! Don't you know it is a bourgeois habit?" He stooped to sweep up a handful of pieces and threw them toward the river.