Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

by Jung Chang

  But he paid no attention to me. He aimlessly picked up various pieces of heavy mahogany furniture and let them drop with seemingly little effort. In his insanity he had become super humanly agile and powerful. Staying with him was a nightmare. Many times, I wanted to run away to my mother, but I could not bring myself to leave him.

  A couple of times he slapped me, which he had never done before, and I would go and hide in the back garden under the balcony of the apartment. In the chill of the spring nights I listened desperately for the silence upstairs which meant he had gone to sleep.

  One day, I missed his presence. I was seized by a presentiment and rushed out of the door. A neighbor who lived on the top floor was walking down the stairs. We had stopped greeting each other some time before in order to avoid trouble, but this time he said: "I saw your father going out onto the roof."

  Our apattsnent block had five stories. I raced to the top floor. On the landing to the left a small window gave onto the flat, shingled roof of the four-story block next door.

  The roof had low iron rails around the edge. As I was trying to climb through the window, I saw my father at the edge of the roof. I thought I saw him lifting his left leg over the railing.

  "Father," I called, in a voice which was trembling, although I was trying to force it to sound normal. My instinct told me I must not alarm him.

  He paused, and turned toward me: "What are you doing here?"

  "Please come and help me get through the window."

  Somehow, I coaxed him away from the edge of the roof.

  I grabbed his hand and led him onto the landing. I was shaking. Something seemed to have touched him, and an almost normal expression replaced his usual blank indifference or the intense introspective rolling of his eyes. He carried me downstairs to a sofa and even fetched a towel to wipe away my tears. But the signs of normality were short-lived. Before I had recovered from the shock, I had to scramble up and run because he raised his hand and was about to hit me.

  Instead of allowing my father medical treatment, the Rebels found his insanity a source of entertainment. A poster serial appeared every other day entitled "The Inside Story of Madman Chang." Its authors, from my father's department, ridiculed and lavished sarcasm on my father.

  The posters were pasted up in a prime site just outside the department, and drew large, appreciative crowds. I forced myself to read them, although I was aware of the stares from other readers, many of whom knew who I was. I heard them whispering to those who did not know my identity. My heart would tremble with rage and unbearable pain for my father, but I knew that reports of my reactions would reach my father's persecutors. I wanted to look calm, and to let them know that they could not demoralize us. I had no fear or sense of humiliation, only contempt for them.

  What had turned people into monsters? What was the reason for all this pointless brutality? It was in this period that my devotion to Mao began to wane. Before when people had been persecuted I could not be absolutely sure of their innocence; but I knew my parents. Doubts about Mao's infallibility crept into my mind, but at that stage, like many people, I mainly blamed his wife and the Cultural Revolution Authority. Mao himself, the godlike Emperor, was still beyond questioning.

  We watched my father deteriorate mentally and physically with each passing day. My mother went to ask Chen Mo for help again. He promised to see what he could do.

  We waited, but nothing happened: his silence meant he must have failed to get the Tings to allow my father to have treatment. In desperation, my mother went to the Red Chengdu headquarters to see Yan and Yong.

  The dominant group at Sichuan Medical College was part of Red Chengdu. The college had a psychiatric hospital attached to it, and a word from Red Chengdu headquarters could get my father in. Yan and Yong were very sympathetic, but they would have to convince their comrades.

  Humanitarian considerations had been condemned by Mao as 'bourgeois hypocrisy," and it went without saying that there should be no mercy for 'class enemies." Yan and Yong had to give a political reason for treating my father.

  They had a good one: he was being persecuted by the Tings. He could supply ammunition against them, perhaps even help to bring them down. This, in turn, could bring about the collapse of 26 August.

  There was another reason. Mao had said the new Revolutionary Committees must contain 'revolutionary officials'

  as well as Rebels and members of the armed forces. Both Red Chengdu and 26 August were trying to find officials to represent them on the Sichuan Revolutionary Committee.

  Besides, the Rebels were beginning to find out how complex politics was, and how daunting a task it was actually to run an administration. They needed competent politicians as advisers. Red Chengdu thought my father was an ideal candidate, and sanctioned medical treatment.

  Red Chengdu knew that my father had been denounced for saying blasphemous things against Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and that Mme. Mao had condemned him.

  But these claims had only been made by their enemies in wall posters, where truth and lies were often mixed up.

  They could, therefore, dismiss them.

  My father was admitted to the mental hospital of Sichuan Medical College. It was in the suburbs of Chengdu, surrounded by rice fields. Bamboo leaves swayed over the brick walls and the iron main gate. A second gate shut off a walled courtyard green with moss the residential area for the doctors and nurses. At the end of the courtyard, a flight of red sandstone stairs led into the windowless side of a two-story building flanked by solid, high walls. The stairs were the only access to the inside the psychiatric wards.

  The two male nurses who came for my father were dressed in ordinary clothes, and told him they were taking him to another denunciation meeting. When they reached the hospital my father straggled to get away. They dragged him upstairs into a small empty room, shutting the door behind them so my mother and I would not have to see them putting him into a straitjacket. I was heartbroken to see him being so roughly handled, but I knew it was for his own good.

  The psychiatrist, Dr. Su, was in his thirties, with a gentle face and professional manner. He told my mother he would spend a week observing my father before he gave a diagnosis. At the end of the week, he reached his conclusion: schizophrenia. My father was given electric shocks and insulin injections, for which he had to be tied tight onto the bed. In a few days, he began to recover his sanity. With tears in his eyes, he begged my mother to ask the doctor to change the treatment.

  "It is so painful." His voice broke.

  "It feels worse than death." But Dr. Su said there was no other way.

  The next time I saw my father, he was sitting on his bed chatting to my mother and Yan and Yong. They were all smiling. My father was even laughing. He looked well again.

  I had to pretend to go to the toilet to wipe away my tears.

  On the orders of Red Chengdu, my father received special food and a full-time nurse. Yan and Yong visited him often, with members of his department who were sympathetic to him and who had themselves been subjected to denunciation meetings by Mrs. Shau's group. My father liked Yan and Yong very much, and although he could be unobservant, he realized they were in love, and teased them charmingly. I could see they enjoyed this greatly. At last, I felt, the nightmare was over; now that my father was well, we could face any disasters together.

  The treatment lasted about forty days. By mid-July he was back to normal. He was discharged, and he and my mother were taken to Chengdu University, where they were given a suite in a small self contained courtyard.

  Student guards were placed on the gate. My father was provided with a pseudonym and told that he should not go out of the courtyard during the day, for his safety. My mother fetched their meals from a special kitchen. Yan and Yong came to see him every day, as did the Red Chengdu leaders, who were all very courteous to him.

  I visited my parents there often, riding a borrowed bicycle for an hour on potholed country roads. My father seemed peaceful. He
would say over and over again how grateful he felt to these students for enabling him to get treatment.

  When it was dark, he was allowed out, and we went for long, quiet strolls on the campus, followed at a distance by a couple of guards. We wandered along the lanes lined with hedges of Cape jasmine. The fist-sized white flowers gave off a strong fragrance in the summer breeze. It seemed like a dream of serenity, so far away from the terror and violence. I knew this was my father's prison, but I wished he would never have to come out.

  In the summer of 1967, factional fighting among the Rebels was escalating into mini civil war all over China.

  The antagonism between the Rebel factions was far greater than their supposed anger toward the capitalist-roaders, because they were fighting tooth and nail for power. Kang Sheng, Mao's intelligence chief, and Mme Mao led the Cultural Revolution Authority in stirring up more animosity by calling the factional fighting 'an extension of the struggle between the Communists and the Kuomintang' without specifying which group was which. The Cultural Revolution Authority ordered the army to 'arm the Rebels for self-defense," without telling them which factions to support. Inevitably, different army units armed different factions on the basis of their own preferences.

  The armed forces were in great upheaval already, because Lin Biao was busy trying to purge his opponents and replace them with his own men. Eventually Mao realized that he could not afford instability in the army, and reined in Lin Biao. However, he appeared to be in two minds about the factional fighting among the Rebels. On the one hand, he wanted the factions to unite so that his personal power structure could be established. On the other hand, he seemed incapable of repressing his love of fighting: as bloody wars spread across China he said, "It is not a bad thing to let the young have some practice in using arms we haven't had a war for so long."

  In Sichuan, the battles were especially fierce, partly because the province was the center of China's arms industry. Tanks, armored cars, and artillery were taken from the production lines and warehouses by both sides. Another cause was the Tings, who set out to eliminate their opponents. In Yibin there was brutal fighting with guns, hand grenades, mortars, and machine guns. Over a hundred people died in the city of Yibin alone. In the end Red Chengdu was forced to abandon the city.

  Many went to the nearby city of Luzhou, which was held by Red Chengdu. The Tings dispatched over 5,000 members of 26 August to attack the city, and eventually seized it, killing nearly 300 and wounding many more.

  In Chengdu, the fighting was sporadic, and only the most fanatical joined in. Even so, I saw parades of tens of thousands of Rebels carrying the blood-soaked corpses of people killed in bat ties and people shooting rifles in the streets.

  It was under these circumstances that Red Chengdu made three requests of my father: to announce his support for them; to tell them about the Tings; and to become an adviser and eventually represent them on the Sichuan Revolution Committee.

  He refused. He said he could not back one group against another, nor could he provide information against the Tings, as that might aggravate the situation and create more animosity. He also said he would not represent a faction on the Sichuan Revolutionary Committee indeed, he had no desire to be on it at all.

  Eventually, the friendly atmosphere turned ugly. The chiefs of Red Chengdu were split. One group said they had never encountered anyone so incredibly obstinate and perverse. My father had been persecuted to the brink of death, yet he refused to let other people avenge him. He dared to oppose the powerful Rebels who had saved his life. He turned down an offer to be rehabilitated and return to power. In anger and exasperation, some shouted: "Let's give him a good beating. We should at least break a couple of his bones to teach him a lesson!"

  But an and Yong spoke up for him, as did a few others.

  "It is rare to see a character like him," said Yong.

  "It is not right to punish him. He would not bend even if he were beaten to death. And to torture him is to bring shame on us all. Here is a man of principle!"

  Despite the threat of beating, and his gratitude to these Rebels, my father would not go against his principles. One night at the end of September 1967 a car brought him and my mother home. Yan and Yong could no longer protect him. They accompanied my parents home, and said goodbye.

  My parents immediately fell into the hands of the Tings and Mrs. Shau's group. The Tings made it clear that the attitude staff members took toward my father would determine their future. Mrs. Shau was promised the equivalent of my father's job in the forthcoming Sichuan Revolutionary Committee, provided my father was 'thoroughly smashed." Those who showed sympathy to my father were themselves condemned.

  One day two men from Mrs. Shau's group came to our apartment to take my father away to a 'meeting." Later they returned and told me and my brothers to go to his department to bring him back.

  My father was leaning against a wall in the courtyard of the department, in a position which showed that he had been trying to stand up. His face was black and blue, and unbelievably swollen. His head had been half shaved, clearly in a very rough manner.

  There had been no denunciation meeting. When he arrived at the office, he was immediately yanked into a small room, where half a dozen large strangers set upon him. They punched and kicked the lower part of his body, especially his genitals. They forced water down his mouth and nose and then stamped on his stomach. Water, blood, and excreta were pressed out. My father fainted.

  When he came to, the thugs had disappeared. My father felt terribly thirsty. He dragged himself out of the room, and scooped some water from a puddle in the courtyard.

  He tried to stand up, but was unable to stay on his feet.

  Members of Mrs. Shau's group were in the courtyard, but no one lifted a finger to help him.

  The thugs came from the 26 August faction in Chongqing, about 150 miles from Chengdu. There had been large-scale battles there, with heavy artillery lobbing shells across the Yangtze. 26 August was driven out of the city, and many members fled to Chengdu, where some were accommodated in our compound. They were restless and frustrated, and told Mrs. Shau's group that their fists 'itched to put an end to their vegetarian life and to taste some blood and meat." My father was offered up to them.

  That night, my father, who had never once moaned after his previous beatings, cried out in agony. The next morning, my fourteen-year-old brother Jin-ming raced to the compound kitchen as soon as it was open to borrow a cart to take him to the hospital. Xiao-her, then thirteen, went out and bought a hair clipper, and cut the remaining hair from my father's half-shaved head. When he saw his bald head in the mirror, my father gave a wry smile.

  "This is good. I won't have to worry about my hair being pulled next time I'm at a denunciation meeting."

  We put my father on the cart and pulled him to a nearby orthopedic hospital. This time we did not need authorization to get him looked at, as his ailment had nothing to do with the mind. Mental illness was a very sensitive area.

  Bones had no ideological color. The doctor was very warm.

  When I saw how carefully he touched my father, a lump rose in my throat. I had seen so much shoving, slapping, and hitting, and so little gentleness.

  The doctor said two of my father's ribs were broken. But he could not be hospitalized. That needed authorization.

  Besides, there were far too many severe injuries for the hospital to accommodate. It was crams ed with people who had been wounded in the denunciation meetings and the factional fightng. I saw a young man on a stretcher with a jl third of his head gone. His companion told us he had been hit by a hand grenade.

  My mother went to see Chen Mo again, and asked him to put in a word with the Tings to stop my father's beatings.

  A few days later Chen told my mother the Tings were prepared to 'forgive' my father if he would write a wall poster singing the praises of 'good officials' Liu Jie-ting and Zhang Xi-ting. He emphasized that they had just been given renewed full, explicit backing by t
he Cultural Revolution Authority, and Zhou Enlai had specifically stated that he regarded the Tings as 'good officials." To continue to oppose them, Chen told my mother, was tantamount to 'throwing an egg against a rock." when my mother told my father, he said, "There's nothing good to say about them."

  "But," she implored him tearfully, 'this is not to get your job back, or even for rehabilitation, it's for your life! What is a poster compared to a life?"

  "I will not sell my soul," answered my father.

  For over a year, until the end of 1968, my father was in and out of detention, along with most of the former leading officials in the provincial government. Our apartment was constantly raided and turned upside down. Detention was now called "Mao Zedong Thought Study Courses." The pressure in these 'courses' was such that many groveled to the Tings; some committed suicide. But my father never gave in to the Tings' demands to work with them. He would say later how much having a loving family had helped him. Most of those who committed suicide did so after their families had disowned them. We visited my father in detention whenever we were allowed, which was seldom, and surrounded him with affection whenever he was home for a fleeting stay.

  The Tings knew that my father loved my mother very much, and tried to break him through her. Intense pressure was put on her to denounce him. She had many reasons to resent my father. He had not invited her mother to their wedding. He had let her walk hundreds of agonizing miles, and had not given her much sympathy in her crises. In Yibin he had refused to let her go to a better hospital for a dangerous birth. He had always given the Party and the revolution priority over her. But my mother had understood and respected my father and had above all never ceased to love him. She would particularly stand by him now that he was in trouble. No amount of suffering could bring her to denounce him.