Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

  I was keen to follow the fashion, so as soon as I was enrolled I rushed home, and from the bottom of an old trunk I dug out a pale-gray Lenin jacket which had been my mother's uniform in the early 1950s. It was a little too big, so I got my grandmother to take it in. With a leather belt from a pair of my father's trousers my costume was complete. But out on the streets I felt very uncomfortable.

  I found my image too aggressive. Still, I kept the outfit on.

  Soon after this my grandmother went to Peking. I had to stay in the school, having just joined the Red Guards.

  Because of what had happened at home, the school frightened and startled me all the time. When I saw the 'blacks' and 'grays' having to clean the toilets and the grounds, their heads bowed, a creeping dread came over me, as though I were one of them. When the Red Guards went off at night on house raids, my legs went weak, as if they were heading for my family. When I noticed pupils whispering near me, my heart started to palpitate frantically: were they saying that I had become a 'black," or that my father had been arrested?

  But I found a refuge: the Red Guard reception office.

  There were a lot of visitors to the school. Since September 1966, more and more young people were on the road, traveling all over the country. To encourage them to travel around and stir things up, transport, food, and accommodations were provided free.

  The reception office was in what had once been a lecture hall. The wandering and often aimless visitors would be given cups of tea and chatted to. If they claimed to have serious business, the office would make an appointment for them to see one of the school Red Guard leaders. I zeroed in on this office because the people in it did not have to participate in actions like guarding the 'blacks' and 'grays," or go on house raids. I also liked it because of the five girls working there. There was an air of warmth and lack of zealotry around them which made me feel soothed the moment I met them.

  A lot of people used to come to the office, and many would hang around to chat with us. There was often a line at the door, and some returned again and again. Looking back now, I can see that the young men really wanted some female company. They were not that engrossed in the revolution. But I remember being extremely earnest. I never avoided their gazes or returned their winks, and I conscientiously took notes of all the nonsense they spouted.

  One hot night two rather coarse middle-aged women turned up at the reception office, which was boisterous as usual. They introduced themselves as the director and deputy director of a residents' committee near the school.

  They talked in a very mysterious and grave manner, as though they were on some grand mission. I had always disliked this kind of affectation, so I turned my back. But soon I could tell that an explosive piece of information had been delivered. The people who had been hanging around started shouting, "Get a truck! Get a truck! Let's all go there!" Before I knew what was happening, I was swept out of the room by the crowd and into a truck. As Mao had ordered the workers to support the Red Guards, trucks and drivers were permanently at our service. In the truck, I was squeezed next to one of the women. She was retelling her story, her eyes full of eagerness to ingratiate herself with us. She said that a woman in her neighborhood was the wife of a Kuomintang officer who had fled to Taiwan, and that she had hidden a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek in her apartment.

  I did not like the woman, especially her toadying smile.

  And I resented her for making me go on my first house raid. Soon the truck stopped in front of a narrow alley. We all got out and followed the two women down the cobbled path. It was pitch-dark, the only light coming from the crevices between the planks of wood that formed the walls of the houses. I staggered and slipped, trying to fall behind.

  The apartment of the accused woman consisted of two rooms, and was so small that it could not hold our truckful of people. I was only too happy to stay outside. But before long someone shouted that space had been made for those outside to come in and 'receive an education in class struggle."

  As soon as I was pressed into the room with the others, my nostrils were filled with the stench of feces, urine, and unwashed bodies. The room had been turned upside down. Then I saw the accused woman. She was perhaps in her forties, kneeling in the middle of the room, partly naked. The room was lit by a bare fifteen-watt bulb. In its shadows, the kneeling figure on the floor looked grotesque.

  Her hair was in a mess, and part of it seemed to be matted with blood. Her eyes were bulging out in desperation as she shrieked: "Red Guard masters! I do not have a portrait of Chiang Kai-shek! I swear I do not!" She was banging her head on the floor so hard there were loud thuds and blood oozed from her forehead. The flesh on her back was covered with cuts and bloodstains. When she lifted her bottom in a kowtow, murky patches were visible and the smell of excrement filled the air. I was so frightened that I quickly averted my eyes. Then I saw her tormentor, a seventeen-year-old boy named Chian, whom up to now I had rather liked. He was lounging in a chair with a leather belt in his hand, playing with its brass buckle.

  "Tell the truth, or I'll hit you again," he said languidly.

  Chian's father was an army officer in Tibet. Most officers sent to Tibet left their families in Chengdu, the nearest big city in China proper, because Tibet was considered an uninhabitable and barbaric place. Previously I had been rather attracted by Chian's languorous manner, which had given an impression of gentleness. Now I murmured, trying to control the quaking in my voice, "Didn't Chairman Mao teach us to use verbal struggle [wendou] rather than violent struggle [wu-dou]? Maybe we shouldn't…?"

  My feeble protest was echoed by several voices in the room. But Chian cast us a disgusted sideways glance and said emphatically: "Draw a line between yourselves and the class enemy. Chairman Mao says, "Mercy to the enemy is cruelty to the people!" If you are afraid of blood, don't be Red Guards!" His face was twisted into ugliness by fanaticism. The rest of us fell silent. Although it was impossible to feel anything but revulsion at what he was doing, we could not argue with him. We had been taught to be ruthless to class enemies. Failure to do so would make us class enemies ourselves. I turned and walked quickly into the garden at the back. It was crammed with Red Guards with shovels. From inside the house the sound of lashes started again, accompanied by screams that made my hair stand on end. The yelling must have been unbearable for the others too, because many swiftly straightened up from their digging: "There is nothing here. Let's go!

  Let's go? As we passed through the room, I caught sight of Chian standing casually over his victim. Outside the door, I saw the woman informer with the ingratiating eyes.

  Now there was a cringing and frightened look there. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but no words came out. As I glanced at her face, it dawned on me that there was no portrait of Chiang Kai-shek. She had denounced the poor woman out of vindictiveness. The Red Guards were being used to set He old scores. I climbed back into the truck full of disgust and rage.

  18. "More Than Gigantic Wonderful News"

  Pilgramage to Peking (October-December 1966)

  I found an excuse to get out of school, and was home again the next morning. The apariment was empty. My father was in detention. My mother, grandmother, and Xiao-fang were in Peking. My teenage siblings were living their own, separate lives elsewhere.

  Jin-ming had resented the Cultural Revolution from the very beginning. He was in the same school as me, and was in his first year. He wanted to become a scientist, but this was denounced by the Cultural Revolution as 'bourgeois."

  He and some boys in his form had formed a gang before the Cultural Revolution. They loved adventure and mystery, and had called themselves the "Iron-Wrought Brotherhood." Jin-ming was their number-one brother. He was tall, and brilliant at his studies. He had been giving his form weekly magic shows using his chemistry knowledge, and had been openly skipping lessons which he was not interested in or which he had already gone beyond.

  And he was fair and generous to the other boys.


  When the school Red Guard organization was set up on August, Jin-ming's 'brotherhood' was merged into it.

  He and his gang were given the job of printing leaflets and distributing them on the streets. The leaflets had been written by older Red Guards in their mid-teens and typically had rifles like "Founding Declaration of the First Brigade of the First Army Division of the Red Guards of the Number Four School' (all Red Guard organizations had grand names), "Solemn Statement' (a pupil announced he was changing his name to "Huang the Guard for Chairman Mao'), "More Than Gigantic Wonderful News' (a member of the Cultural Revolution Authority had just given an audience to some Red Guards), and "The Latest Most Supreme Instructions' (a word or two by Mao had just been leaked out).

  Jin-ming was soon bored stiff by this gibberish. He started to absent himself from his missions, and became interested in a girl of his age, thirteen. She seemed to him the perfect lady beautiful, gentle, and slightly aloof, with a touch of shyness. He did not approach her, but was content to admire her from afar.

  One day the pupils in his form were summoned to go on a house raid. The older Red Guards said something about 'bourgeois intellectuals." All members of the family were declared prisoners and ordered to gather in one room while the Red Guards searched the rest of the house.

  Jin-ming was appointed to watch the family. To his delight, the girl was the other 'jailer."

  There were three 'prisoners': a middle-aged man and his son and daughter-in-law. They had obviously been expecting the raid, and sat with resigned expressions on their faces, staring into Jin-ming's eyes as though into space. Jin-ming felt very awkward under their gaze, and he was also uneasy because of the presence of the girl, who looked bored and kept glancing toward the door. When she saw several boys carrying a huge wooden case full of porcelain, she mumbled to Jin-ming that she was going to have a look, and left the room.

  Facing his captives alone, Jin-ming felt his discomfort growing. Then the woman prisoner stood up and said she wanted to go and breast-feed her baby in the next room.

  Jin-ming readily agreed.

  The moment she left the room, the object of Jin-ming's affection rushed in. Sternly, she asked him why a prisoner was at large. When Jin-ming said he had given permission, she yelled at him for being 'soft on class enemies." She was wearing a leather belt on what Jin-ming had thought of as her 'willowy' waist. Now she pulled it off and pointed it at his nose a stylized Red Guard posture while she screamed at him. Jin-ming was struck dumb. The girl was unrecognizable. All of a sudden she was far from gentle, shy, or lovely. She was all hysterical ugliness. Thus was Jin-ming's first love extinguished.

  But he shouted back. The girl left the room and returned with an older Red Guard, the leader of the group. He started yelling so much his spittle splashed on Jinming, and he too pointed his rolled-up belt at him. Then he stopped, realizing that they should not be washing their dirty linen in front of class enemies. He ordered Jin-ming to go back to the school to 'wait for adjudication."

  That evening, the Red Guards in Jin-ming's form held a meeting without him. When the boys came back to the dormitory, their eyes avoided his. They behaved distantly for a couple of days. Then they told Jin-ming they had been arguing with the militant girl. She had reported Jin-ming's 'surrender to the class enemies' and had insisted that he be given a severe punishment. But the Iron-Wrought Brotherhood defended him. Some of them resented the girl, who had been terribly aggressive toward other boys and girls too.

  Still, Jin-ming was punished: he was ordered to pull out grass alongside the 'blacks' and 'grays." Mao's instruction to exterminate grass had led to a constant demand for manpower because of the grass's obstinate nature. This fortuitous by offered a form of punishment for the newby created 'class enemies."

  Jin-ming pulled up grass only for a few days. His Iron Wrought Brotherhood could not bear to see him suffer.

  But he had been classified as a 'sympathizer with class enemies," and was never sent on any more raids, which suited him fine. He soon embarked on a journey with his brotherhood sight-seeing all over the country, taking in China 's rivers and mountains, but, unlike most Red Guards, Jin-ming never made the pilgrimage to Peking to see Mao. He did not come home until the end of,966.

  My sister Xiao-hong, at fifteen, was a founding member of the Red Guards at her school. But she was only one among hundreds, as the school was crammed with officials' children, many of them competing to be active. She hated and feared the atmosphere of militancy and violence so much that she was soon on the verge of a nervous collapse.

  She came home to ask my parents for help at the beginning of September, only to find they were not there: my father was in detention and my mother had gone to Peking. My grandmother's anxiety made her even more scared, so she returned to her school. She volunteered to help 'guard' the school library, which had been ransacked and sealed, like the one at my school. She spent her days and nights reading, devouring all the forbidden fruits she could. It was this that held her together. In mid-September, she set out on a long tour around the country with her friends and like Jin-ming she did not come home until the end of the year.

  My brother Xiao-her was almost twelve, and was at the same key primary school I had attended. When the Red Guards were formed in the middle schools, Xiao-her and his friends were eager to join. To them the Red Guards meant freedom to live away from home, staying up all night, and power over adults. They went to my school and begged to be allowed into the Red Guards. To get rid of them, one Red Guard said off-handedly, "You can form the First Army Division of Unit 4969." So Xiao-her became the head of the Propaganda Department of a troop of twenty boys, all the others being 'commander," 'chief of staff," and so on. There were no privates.

  Xiao-her joined in hitting teachers twice. One of the victims was a sports teacher, who had been condemned as a 'bad element." Some girls of Xiao-her's age had accused the teacher of touching their breasts and thighs during gym lessons. So the boys set upon him, not least to impress the girls. The other teacher was the moral tutor. As corporal punishment was banned in schools, she would complain to the parents, who would beat their sons.

  One day, the boys set out on a house raid, and were assigned to go to a household which was rumored to be that of an ex-Kuomintang family. They did not know what exactly they were supposed to do there. Their heads had been filled with vague notions of finding something like a diary saying how the family longed for Chiang Kai-shek's comeback and hated the Communist Party.

  The family had five sons, all well-built and tough looking They stood by the door, arms akimbo, and looked down at the boys with their most intimidating stares. Only one boy attempted to tiptoe in. One of the sons picked him up by the scruff of his neck and threw him out with one hand. This put an end to any further such 'revolutionary actions' by Xiao-her's 'division."

  So, in the second week of October, while Xiao-her was living at his school and enjoying his freedom, Jin-ming and my sister were away traveling, and my mother and grandmother were in Peking, I was alone at home when one day, without warning, my father appeared on the doorstep.

  It was an eerily quiet homecoming. My father was a changed person. He was abstracted and sunk deep in thought, and did not say where he had been or what had been happening to him. I listened to him pacing his room through sleepless nights, too frightened and worried to sleep myself. Two days later, to my tremendous relief, my mother returned from Peking with my grandmother and Xiao-fang.

  My mother immediately went to my father's deparunent and handed Tao Zhu's letter to a deputy director. Straight away, my father was sent to a health clinic. My mother was allowed to go with him."

  I went there to see them. It was a lovely place in the country, bordered on two sides by a beautiful green brook.

  My father had a suite with a sitting room in which there was a row of empty bookshelves, a bedroom with a large double bed, and a bathroom with shiny white files. Outside his balcony, several osmanthus trees spread an intoxicating scent. W
hen the breeze blew, tiny golden blossoms floated softly down to the grass less earth.

  Both my parents seemed peaceful. My mother told me they went fishing in the brook every day. I felt they were safe, so I told them I was planning to leave for Peking to see Chairman Mao. I had longed to make this trip, like almost everybody else. But I had not gone because I felt I should be around to give my parents support.

  Making the pilgrimage to Peking was very much encouraged and food, accommodations, and transport were all free. But it was not organized. I left Chengdu two days later with the five other girls from the reception office. As the train whistled north, my feelings were a mixture of excitement and nagging disquiet about my father. Outside the window, on the Chengdu Plain, some rice fields had been harvested, and squares of black soil shone among the gold, forming a rich patchwork. The countryside had been only marginally affected by the upheavals, in spite of repeated instigations by the Cultural Revolution Authority led by Mme Mao. Mao wanted the population fed so that they could 'make revolution," so he did not give his wife his full backing. The peasants knew that if they got involved and stopped producing food, they would be the first to starve, as they had learned in the famine only a few years before. The cottages among the green bamboo groves seemed as peaceful and idyllic as ever. The wind gently swayed the lingering smoke to form a crown over the graceful bamboo tips and the concealed chimneys. It was less than five months since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, but my world had changed completely. I gazed out at the quiet beauty of the plain, and let a wistful mood envelop me. Fortunately, I did not have to worry about being criticized for being 'nostalgic," which was considered bourgeois, as none of the other girls had an accusing turn of mind. With them, I felt I could relax.