Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

  In Sichuan, Mao's delegates turned out to be my parents' old acquaintances, the Tings. After my family had left Yibin, the Tings had practically taken control of the region. Mr. Ting had become its Party secretary; Mrs. Ting was Party chief of the city of Yibin, the capital.

  The Tings had used their positions to engage in endless persecutions and personal vendettas. One involved a man who had been Mrs. Ting's bodyguard in the early 1950s.

  She had tried to seduce him several times, and one day she complained about having stomach trouble and got the young man to massage her abdomen. Then she guided his hand down to her private parts. The bodyguard immediately pulled his hand back and walked away. Mrs. Ting accused him of trying to rape her and had him sentenced to three years in a labor camp.

  An anonymous letter exposing the whole affair reached the Sichuan Party Committee, which ordered an investigation. Being the defendants, the Tings were not supposed to see this letter, but a crony of theirs showed it to them.

  They got every member of the Yibin government to write a report on some issue or other in order to check their handwriting. They were never able to identify the author, but the investigation came to nothing.

  In Yibin, officials and ordinary people alike were terrified of the Tings. The recurrent political campaigns and the quota system provided ideal opportunities for them to engage in victimization.

  In 1959 the Tings got rid of the governor of Yibin, the man who had succeeded my father in 1953. He was a veteran of the Long March, and was very popular, which made the Tings'envious. He was called "Straw Sandal Li' because he always wore peasant's sandals a sign that he wanted to keep close to his roots in the soil. Indeed, during the Great Leap Forward, he showed little alacrity in forcing the peasants to produce steel, and in 1959 he spoke up about the famine. The Tings denounced him as a 'rightist opportunist' and had him demoted to purchasing agent for the canteen of a brewery. He died in the famine, although his job should have meant he had a better opportunity to fill his stomach than most. The autopsy showed there was only straw in his stomach. He had remained an honest man to his death.

  Another case, also in 1959, involved a doctor whom the Tings condemned as a class enemy because he made a truthful diagnosis of hunger victims and the famine was officially unmentionable.

  There were scores of cases like these so many that people risked their lives to write to the provincial authorities to denounce the Tings. In 1962, when the moderates had the upper hand in the central government, they launched a nationwide investigation into the previous campaigns and rehabilitated many of the victims. A team was formed by the Sichuan government to investigate the Tings, who were found guilty of gross abuse of power.

  They were sacked and detained, and in 1965 General Secretary Deng Xiaoping signed an order expelling them from the Party.

  When the Cultural Revolution started, the Tings somehow escaped and got to Peking, where they appealed to the Cultural Revolution Authority. They presented themselves as heroes upholding 'class struggle," for which, they claimed, they had been persecuted by the old Party authorities. My mother actually bumped into them once at the grievance office. They asked her warmly for her address in Peking. She declined to give it to them.

  The Tings were picked up by Chen Boda, one of the leaders of the Cultural Revolution Authority, and my father's old boss in Yan'an. Through him, Mme Mao received them, and immediately recognized them as kindred spirits. Mme Mao's motivation for the Cultural Revolution had much less to do with policy than with set fling personal scores some of the pettiest kind. She had a hand in the persecution of Mme Liu Shaoqi because, as she herself told the Red Guards, she was furious about Mme Liu's overseas trips with her husband, the president. Mao only went abroad twice, both times to Russia, and both times without Mme Mao. What was worse, on her trips abroad Mme Liu was seen wearing smart clothes and jewelry that no one could wear in Mao's austere China.

  Mme Liu was accused of being a CIA agent and thrown into prison, barely escaping death.

  Back in the 1930s, before she had met Mao, Mme Mao had been a minor actress in Shanghai, and had felt cold-shouldered by the lite raft there. Some of them were Communist underground leaders, who after 1949 became leading figures in the Central Department of Public Affairs. Partly to avenge her real or imagined humiliation in Shanghai thirty years before, Mme Mao went to extreme lengths to find 'anti-Chairman Mao, anti-socialist' elements in their work. As Mao went into retreat during the famine, she managed to get closer to him and whispered much venomous pillow talk in his ear. In order to bring her foes down, she condemned the entire system under them, which meant the departments of Public Affairs all over the country.

  She also took revenge on actors and actresses from the Shanghai period who had aroused her jealousy. An actress called Wang Ying had played a role which Mme Mao had coveted. Thirty years later, in 1966, Mme Mao had her and her husband imprisoned for life. Wang Ying committed suicide in prison in 1974.

  Another well-known actress, Sun Wei-shi, had once appeared decades before with Mine Mao in a play in Yan'an in front of Mao. Sun's performance was apparently more of a hit than Mme Mao's, and she became a very popular figure among the top leaders, including Mao.

  Being Zhou Enlai's adopted daughter, she did not feel the need to butter up Mme Mao. In 1968, Mme Mao had her and her brother arrested and tortured to death. Even Zhou Enlai's power could not protect her.

  Mme Mao's vendettas gradually became known to the general public by word of mouth; her character also revealed itself in her speeches, which were reproduced on wall posters. She was to become almost universally hated, but at the beginning of 1967 her evils were still little known.

  Mme Mao and the Tings belonged to the same breed, who had a name in Mao's China -zheng-ren, people persecuting officials." The tirelessness and single mindedness with which they engaged in persecution, and the bloodthirsty methods they used, were on a truly horrific scale. In March 1967, a document signed by Mao announced that the Tings had been rehabilitated and empowered to organize the Sichuan Revolutionary Committee.

  A transitional authority called the Sichuan Preparatory Revolutionary Committee was set up. It was composed of two generals the chief political commissar and the commander of the Chengdu Military Region (one of China's eight military regions) and the Tings. Mao had decreed that every Revolutionary Committee should have three components: the local army, representatives of the Rebels, and 'revolutionary officials." The latter were to be chosen from among former officials, and this was at the discretion of the Tings, who were in effect running the committee.

  In late March 1967 the Tings came to see my father.

  They wanted to include him in their committee. My father enjoyed high prestige among his colleagues for being honest and fair. Even the Tings appreciated his qualities, particularly as they knew that when they had been in disgrace my father had not, like some, added his personal denunciations. Besides, they needed someone with his abilities.

  My father greeted them as courtesy required, but my 'grandmother welcomed them with enthusiasm. She had heard lit He about their vendettas, and she knew that it was Mrs. Ting who had authorized the precious American medicines which had cured my mother of TB when she was pregnant with me.

  When the Tings went into my father's quarters, my grandmother quickly rolled out some dough, and soon the loud rhythmic melody of chopping filled the kitchen. She minced pork, cut a bundle of tender young chives, hashed an assortment of spices, and poured hot rapeseed oil onto chili powder to make the sauce for the traditional welcoming meal of dumplings.

  In my father's study, the Tings told him about their rehabilitation and their new status. They said they had been to his deparisaaent and been briefed by the Rebels there about the trouble he had gotten himself into. However, they said, they had always liked him in those early years in Yibin, still had high regard for him, and wanted to work with him again. They promised that all the incriminating things he had said and done could be forgot
ten if he cooperated. Not only that, he could rise again in the new power structure, taking charge of all cultural affairs in Sichuan, for example. They made it clear it was an offer he could not afford to refuse.

  My father had heard about the Tings' appointment from my mother, who had read it on wall posters. He had said to my mother at the time: "We mustn't believe in rumors.

  This is impossible!" It was incredible to him to see this couple placed in vital positions by Mao. Now he tried to restrain his disgust, and said, "I'm sorry, I can't accept your offer."

  Mrs. Ting snapped, "We are doing you a big favor. Other people would have begged for this on their knees. Do you realize what a spot you are in, and who we are now?"

  My father's anger rose. He said, "Whatever I have said or done I take responsibility for myself. I do not want to get mixed up with you." In the heated exchanges that followed, he went on to say that he thought their punishment had been just, and they should never have been trusted with important jobs. Stunned, they told him to be careful what he said: it was Chairman Mao himself who had rehabilitated them and had called them 'good officials."

  My father's outrage spurred him on.

  "But Chairman Mao could not have known all the facts about you. What sort of' good officials" are you? You have committed unforgivable mistakes." He checked himself from saying 'crimes."

  "How dare you challenge Chairman Mao's words!" exclaimed Mrs. Ting.

  "Deputy Commander Lin Biao said: "Every word of Chairman Mao's is universal absolute truth, and every word equals ten thousand words"!"

  "If a word means one word," my father said, 'it is already a man's supreme achievement. It is not humanly possible for one word to mean ten thousand. What Deputy Commander Lin Biao said was rhetorical, and should not be taken literally."

  The Tings could not believe their ears, according to their account afterward. They warned my father that his way of thinking, talking, and behaving was against the Cultural Revolution, which was led by Chairman Mao. To this my father said he would like a chance to debate with Chairman Mao about the whole thing. These words were so suicidal that the Tings were speechless. After a silence, they stood up to leave.

  My grandmother heard angry footsteps and rushed out of the kitchen, her hands dusted with wheat flour into which she had been dipping the dumplings. She collided with Mrs. Ting and asked the couple to stay for lunch.

  Mrs. Ting ignored her, stormed out of the apartment, and started to tramp downstairs. At the landing she stopped, turned around, and said furiously to my father, who had come out with them, "Are you crazy? I'm asking you for the last time: Do you still refuse my help? You realize I can do anything to you now."

  "I want nothing to do with you," my father said. "You and I are different species."

  Leaving my startled and fearful grandmother at the top of the stairs, my father went into his study. He came out almost at once, and carried an ink stone to the bathroom.

  He dripped a few drops of water onto the stone and walked thoughtfully back into the study. Then he sat down at his desk, and started grinding a stick of ink round and round the stone, forming a thick black liquid. He spread a blank sheet of paper in front of him. In no time, he had finished his second letter to Mao. He started by saying: "Chairman Mao, I appeal to you, as one Communist to another, to stop the Cultural Revolution." He went on to describe the disasters into which it had thrown China. The letter ended with the words: "I fear the worst for our Party and our country if people like Liu Jie-ting and Zhang Xi-ting are given power over the lives of tens of millions of people."

  He addressed the envelope to "Chairman Mao, Peking," and took it to the post office at the top of the street. He sent it by registered airmail. The clerk behind the counter took the envelope and glanced at it, maintaining an expression of total blankness. Then my father walked home to wait.

  20. "I Will Not Sell My Soul"

  My Father Arrested (1967-1968)

  On the afternoon of the third day after my father posted his letter to Mao, my mother answered a knock on the door of our apartment. Three men came in, all wearing the same baggy blue uniform like clothes as every other man in China. My father knew one of them: he had been a caretaker in his department and was a militant Rebel.

  One of the others, a tall man with boils on his thin face, announced that they were Rebels from the police and that they had come to arrest him, 'a counterrevolutionary in action bombarding Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution." Then he and the third man, who was shorter and stouter, gripped my father by the arms, and gestured to him to go.

  They did not show any identity cards, much less an arrest warrant. But there was no doubt that they were Rebel plainclothes policemen. Their authority was unquestionable, because they came with a Rebel from my father's department.

  Although they did not mention his letter to Mao, my father knew it must have been intercepted, as was almost inevitable. He had known that he would probably be arrested, because not only had he committed his blasphemy to paper, but there was now an authority the Tings to sanction his arrest. Even so, he had wanted to take the only chance there was, however slight. He was silent and tense, but did not protest. As he was walking out of the apartment, he paused and said softly to my mother: "Don't bear a grudge against our Party. Have faith that it will correct its mistakes, however grave they may be. Divorce me and give my love to our children. Don't alarm them."

  When I came home later that afternoon, I found both of my parents gone. My grandmother told me my mother had gone to Peking to appeal for my father, who had been taken away by Rebels from his par anent She did not say 'the police," because that would have been too frightening, being more disastrous and final than detention by Rebels.

  I rushed to my father's deparl,nent to ask where he was.

  I got no answer except assorted barks, led by Mrs. Shau, of "You must draw a line from your stinking capitalist-roader father' and "Wherever he is, it serves him right." I forced back my furious tears. I was filled with loathing for these supposedly intelligent adults. They did not have to be so merciless, so brutal. A kinder look, a gentler tone, or even silence would have been perfectly possible, even in those days.

  It was from this time that I developed my way of judging the Chinese by dividing them into two kinds: one humane, and one not. It took an upheaval like the Cultural Revolution to bring out these characteristics in people, whether they were teenage Red Guards, adult Rebels, or capitalistroaders.

  Meanwhile, my mother was waiting at the station for the train that was to take her to Peking a second time. She felt much more despondent now than six months before.

  There had still been a chance for some justice then, but it was virtually hopeless now. My mother did not give in to despair. She was determined to fight.

  She had decided that the one person she had to see was Premier Zhou Enlai. No one else would do. If she saw anyone else it would only hasten the demise of her husband, herself, and her family. She knew that Zhou was far more moderate than Mme Mao and the Cultural Revolution Authority and that he exercised considerable power over the Rebels, to whom he gave orders almost every day.

  But getting to see him was like trying to walk into the White House, or see the Pope alone. Even if she reached Peking without being caught, and got to the right grievance office, she could not specify whom she wanted to see, as that would be taken as an insult to, even an attack on, other leaders. Her anxiety grew, and she did not know whether her absence from home had already been discovered by the Rebels. She was meant to be waiting to be summoned to her next denunciation meeting, but there was a possible loophole. One Rebel group might think she was in the hands of another.

  As she waited, she saw a huge banner with the words "The Red Chengdu Petition Delegation to Peking." Clustered around it was a crowd of about 200 people in their early twenties. Their other banners made it clear they were university students, going to Peking to protest against the Tings. What was more, the banners proclaimed that they h
ad secured a meeting with Premier Zhou.

  Compared with its rival Rebel group, 26 August, Red Chengdu was relatively moderate. The Tings had thrown their weight behind 26 August, but Red Chengdu did not surrender. The power of the Tings was never absolute, even though they were backed by Mao and the Cultural Revolution Authority.

  At this time, the Cultural Revolution was dominated by intense factional fighting between Rebel groups. This had begun almost as soon as Mao had given the signal to seize power from the capitalist-roaders; now, three months later, most of the Rebel leaders were emerging as something very different from the ousted Communist officials: they were undisciplined opportunists, and were not even fanatical Maoists. Mao had instructed them to unite and share power, but they only paid lip service to this injunction.

  They verbally attacked each other with Mao's quotations, making cynical use of his guru-like elusiveness it was easy to select a quotation of Mao's to suit any situation, or even both sides of the same argument. Mao knew that his vapid 'philosophy' was boomeranging on him, but he could not intervene explicitly without losing his mystical remoteness.

  In order to destroy 26 August, Red Chengdu knew it had to bring down the Tings. They knew the Tings' reputation for vindictiveness and their lust for power, which were widely discussed, in hushed tones by some, more openly by others. Even Mao's endorsement of the couple was not enough to get Red Chengdu to fall into line. It was against this background that Red Chengdu was sending the students to Peking. Zhou Enlai had promised to receive them because Red Chengdu, as one of the two Rebel camps in Sichuan, had millions of supporters.

  My mother followed the Red Chengdu crowd as they were waved through the ticket barrier onto the platform where the Peking express was puffing. She was trying to climb into a carriage with them when she was stopped by a male student.

  "Who are you?" he shouted. My mother, at thirty-five, hardly looked like a student.