by Cheng Nien
The room was narrow and long and rather dark, with only a small window, like the one in my cell, high on the back wall. Two men, dressed in the baggy and faded blue cotton Maoist uniform worn by nearly all men in China except senior officials, were seated behind a wooden counter under the window. About two yards away, facing the window, was a heavy wooden chair for the prisoner. The room was very dark, but the little light that came through the window was focused on the spot where the prisoner sat. I noticed that the walls were dusty, the cement floor was black with damp, and the wooden counter and chair had been rubbed into a neutral color of gray.
After I entered the room, one of the men said, “Read the teaching of our Great Leader Chairman Mao from your book of quotations.” The quotation he selected was the same one used by the Red Guards when they came to loot my home.
“ ‘When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns still remain. We must not belittle these enemies.’ ” I read the quotation in a firm voice, conscious of the fact that the two men were watching me closely. I tried not to show any sign of nervousness lest it be interpreted as a sign of guilt.
“Sit down,” the man said, pointing to the prisoner’s chair.
As I turned to sit down, I saw a small window rather like the one in the door of my cell, only perhaps a little larger, in the wall behind the prisoner’s chair. I concluded that the interrogations carried out in the room were monitored by someone in the corridor.
I sat down on the heavy wooden chair and looked at the two men behind the counter. They had the pale faces of men who worked indoors with little chance for exercise. Unlike the man who registered my arrival, these two men, despite their rather shabby appearance, exuded an air of authority and self-confidence common to men of official position. They were quite relaxed, almost casual; of course, interviewing a prisoner was just routine work to them. I assumed the one who spoke to me was the interrogator and the one with sheets of paper in front of him was the secretary.
After I was seated, the interrogator looked past my shoulder at the small window behind me and gave a barely perceptible nod. It seemed my initial perception was correct; a man was indeed outside listening in on my interrogation. Disappointment overwhelmed me for a moment. It seemed the interrogator was just an intermediary and I was not going to see my real antagonist after all. How I wished I could deal face to face with the man who had treated me so unjustly and have his features carved on my memory, never to be forgotten!
In a low voice that was almost bored, the interrogator asked me my name and other personal particulars. Then he looked up, raised his voice, and asked firmly, “Do you know what this place is?”
“I suppose it’s some sort of prison or concentration camp, since everybody is locked up.”
“You are quite right. This is the Number One Detention House, a prison for political prisoners. This is the place where counterrevolutionaries who have committed crimes against the People’s Government are locked up and investigated.”
“In that case, I should not have been brought here,” I declared firmly.
He was not perturbed by my remark but went on calmly, “You are locked up here precisely because you have committed a crime against the People’s Government.”
“There must have been some mistake,” I said.
“The People’s Government does not make mistakes.”
“You are not an irresponsible Red Guard. You are a government representative. You can’t make wild accusations like that.”
“It’s not a wild accusation.”
“You will have to provide some evidence to prove what you are saying.” I was deeply disappointed that the long-awaited interrogation was turning out to be just like the sessions I had had with the Revolutionaries before my imprisonment.
“Of course we have the evidence,” the interrogator bluffed shamelessly.
“Produce it, then,” I said sarcastically, calling his bluff. “Why waste time having an interrogation? Why not just produce the evidence and punish the culprit?”
“You must not underrate the masses. The Red Guards and the Revolutionaries can obtain all the evidence we need. Nothing can be hidden. Those who have made mistakes or committed crimes are making confessions and providing denunciations of others. They want to earn lenient treatment by confessing and to receive rewards by incriminating others.”
“I don’t believe you could possibly have any evidence against me, not because I fail to understand the nature of the Proletarian Cultural Revolution or because I underestimate the power of the masses. It’s because I don’t think you, or anybody else for that matter, could have something that simply doesn’t exist. I have never committed any crime; how could there be any evidence to show that I have done so?” Because he had lied about having evidence, I had gained a moral advantage over him. It reinforced my self-confidence.
“It would be an easy matter to produce the evidence and punish you. But that is not the policy of our Great Leader. The purpose of this interrogation is to help you change your way of thinking and to give you an opportunity to earn lenient treatment by confessing frankly so that you can make a clean break with your criminal past and become a new person.”
“I’m not a magician. I don’t know how to confess to something that did not happen.”
“Perhaps you are not ready yet. We are patient. We can wait.” He fixed his gaze upon me and spoke slowly so that his implied threat of long imprisonment would sink in.
“A million years would make no difference. If something didn’t happen, it just didn’t happen. You can’t change facts, no matter how long you wait.” I also spoke slowly and firmly to make him see that he had failed to frighten me.
“Time can change a person’s attitude. A woman like you would not last five years in this place. Your health will break down. Eventually you will be begging for a chance to confess. If you don’t you will surely die.”
“I would rather die than tell a lie.”
“Not at all. To want to live is the basic instinct of all living things, humans included.”
“I will obey our Great Leader Chairman Mao’s teaching. He said, ‘Firstly, do not fear hardship, and secondly, do not fear death.’”
“That quotation was not for the likes of you. That was for the Liberation Army soldiers,” he said indignantly.
“Marshal Lin Biao said, ‘The teachings of our Great Leader have universal significance and are applicable in all circumstances.’ ” A subtle change had taken place in my mood since the interrogator had given me the moral advantage by lying. I was beginning to enjoy this interrogation now. It was a lot better than being left in a dark, damp cell with no one to talk to.
There was a moment of silence. The interrogator again looked past my shoulder. Then he said, “You are audacious. But you can’t talk your way out of your difficulties. The only way out for you is to assume a correct attitude of sincerity. It’s my duty to help you come to a full understanding of the policy of the government and realize that you have no alternative to showing sincerity of repentance by giving a full confession. Do not belittle the Dictatorship of the Proletariat! This interrogation room is the equivalent of the People’s Court. You must take everything said here extremely seriously.”
“Am I not to expect justice from the People’s Government?”
“Justice! What is justice? It’s a mere word. It’s an abstract word with no universal meaning. To different classes of people, justice means different things. The capitalist class considers it perfectly just to exploit the workers, while the workers consider it decidedly unjust to be so exploited. In any case, who are you to demand justice? When you sat in your well-heated house and there were other people shivering in the snow, did you think of justice?”
“You are confusing social justice with legal justice. I can tell you that it was precisely because my late husband and I hoped that the People’s Government would improve conditions in China so that there would never be anybody suffering cold and hunger tha
t we remained here in 1949 rather than follow the Kuomintang to Taiwan,” I told him.
“In any case, we are not concerned with the abstract concept of justice. The army, the police, and the court are instruments of repression used by one class against another. They have nothing to do with justice. The cell you now occupy was used to lock up members of the Communist Party during the days of the reactionary Kuomintang government. Now the Dictatorship of the Proletariat uses the same instruments of repression against its own enemies. The capitalist countries use such attractive words as ‘justice’ and ‘liberty’ to fool the common people and to prevent their revolutionary awakening. To assume a proper attitude you must get all that rubbish out of your head. Otherwise you will get nowhere.”
What he said was not new to me or to anybody who had lived in China and followed events since 1949. It was the accepted Marxist theory of class struggle. “The army, the police, and the court are instruments of repression used by one class against another” was said by Mao Zedong in his essay “On the Dictatorship of the People’s Democracy.” In the fifties Mao Zedong and his propaganda machinery used “the Dictatorship of the People’s Democracy” to describe the Communist regime in China. The facts of history have demonstrated, however, that the Communist regime in China was a dictatorship by Mao Zedong until his death in 1976. Mao’s essay “On the Dictatorship of the People’s Democracy” was published on July 1, 1949, to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. That essay actually heralded and justified a series of political campaigns and large-scale arrests of men and women suspected of being hostile to the new Communist regime.
I saw that the interrogation was getting nowhere. As long as the interrogator did not ask concrete questions, nothing could be clarified. There was no point in my engaging in theoretical arguments over Marxism. One either believed in it or one did not. There was no middle way. My own outlook and my values had been formed long ago. I did not believe in dividing people into rigid classes, and I did not believe in class struggle as a means to promote progress. I believed that to rebuild after so many years of war, China needed a peaceful environment and the unity of all sections of society, not perpetual revolution. I could not change these beliefs. Unfortunately the interrogator would not see that, at least not at the moment. At the moment, he hoped to confuse me, to overcome my resistance with a combination of threats and arguments. The session was going to be protracted and tedious. My head was throbbing from my cold. I decided to let him talk on and hear him out.
After a moment’s silence, the interrogator went on. “The first requisite to confession is an admission of guilt. You must admit your guilt not only to the People’s Government but also to yourself. The admission of guilt is like the opening of the floodgates. When you admit sincerely that you are indeed guilty, that you were opposed to the People’s Government even though you pretended not to be, your confession will flow out easily.”
He stopped for a moment and looked at me searchingly to see my reaction. He had said “opposed to the People’s Government.” Of course I had been opposed to some measures of the People’s Government, such as large-scale arrests of innocent people, declaring a man an enemy just because of his class origin, etc. But I never talked about any of these things to anybody. And certainly I never tried to do anything about them. I only hoped that when the regime achieved maturity and experience, it would mellow. The interrogator was trying to instill in me a feeling of guilt because he knew very well that every citizen in every country opposes some measures of his or her government at one time or another. He hoped to manipulate me psychologically. But I saw through him at once, so I just sat there without any expression on my face. In my mind I thought of all the aspects of the People’s Government’s work that I fully supported, such as the improvement in public hygiene and the resettlement of the homeless. On the whole, I thought of myself as a supporter of the People’s Government. This assessment of my own positive attitude towards the Communist regime bolstered my courage to resist the interrogator’s attempt to promote a sense of guilt in my mind. It proved invaluable in all the years I spent in prison.
The interrogator continued. “The thing for you to do is to look over your own life and examine your family background. Find your correct place in the political and economic structure of our socialist state. Where do you stand? With the working people and the Revolutionaries or with the class enemies? You do not need me to tell you that you came from a feudal family that owned an enormous amount of rich agricultural land. For generations, your family exploited the peasants and lived off the riches they created. Your grandfather, your father, and your husband were all senior officials of reactionary regimes that cooperated with foreign imperialism, exploited the people, and opposed the Communist Party. You yourself decided to work for a multinational foreign firm though you were offered the opportunity to become a teacher at an educational institution of the people. It’s seventeen years since the Communist army liberated Shanghai. Scores of Chinese with backgrounds like yours have changed their mode of life and fallen in line with us. What did you do? You just went on as if nothing had happened. You carried on arrogantly in your old lifestyle, wore the same bourgeois clothes, and even dared to speak English in public and maintain friendly contact with a large number of foreigners here and abroad.
“Did you think your attitude of intransigence could pass unnoticed? The proletariat has been watching you for years. Our Great Leader said recently, ‘The eyes of the masses are clear and bright as snow.’ Do you still think you can hide anything from us?
“You are an intelligent woman. Do you honestly think we would let you out of here without succeeding in completely transforming your way of thinking?
“You have been here nearly two months already. I must admit you surprised us with your adaptability. Nevertheless, no matter how nonchalant you appear, you must find the living conditions in the prison cell extremely trying. Winter will soon be upon us. I do not believe you have ever passed a single winter in an unheated room in your whole life. That cell is going to be very cold. Then there is the coarse food you often find difficult to swallow. We have observed that. And what about your daughter? Do you not miss her? Do you not often wonder what is happening to her?”
He paused again. But when I continued to maintain silence, he went on. “First of all, we want you to write your autobiography. Nearly everyone in the country has done it, but we could find nothing like that in your file. Write everything down clearly. Do not try to whitewash yourself. Do not try to hide anything. We will check what you write with the material we already have about you. If you omit anything, we will think you are not sincere. Write in chronological order, starting with your family. We will make an assessment of your political standpoint and your sincerity from what you write.”
The man taking notes got up and handed me a roll of paper. After I had accepted it, the interrogator said, “If this paper is not enough, the guard on duty will give you more. She will also give you pen and ink. You are not allowed to make a draft. You are not allowed to throw away the paper on which you make a mistake. Hand it in with the rest when you finish.”
He looked at me with great seriousness and said, “Think over carefully everything I have said today. When you have finished your autobiography, give it to the guard on duty. We will call you again.”
The door of the interrogation room opened, and a guard appeared. I followed him through the long corridor back to my cell. I had no way of knowing how long I had been gone, but it seemed ages. I was hungry, tired, and very disappointed.
My wet sheet was spread on the stacked beds, which I used as a table. I picked up the cake of soap to rub on it. When I had finished, I called to the guard on duty, “Report!”
She came to the small window and handed me a pen and a bottle of ink.
“May I have my sheet washed now?”
“Laundry time is over. You can keep it for the next time.”
“But it’s we
t, and I have soaped it. It’s not hygienic to keep a wet sheet for a whole month,” I said.
She did not wait for me to finish speaking but banged the small window shut and walked away.
During the afternoon, however, she came repeatedly to the peephole to look into the cell. After several trips, she opened the small window and asked me, “Why are you not writing?”
“How can I write? I’m worried about the wet sheet. It will smell. I haven’t another sheet to use.”
Perhaps to ensure my getting on with writing my autobiography as the interrogator wanted, she relented and got the Labor Reform girl to take the sheet. It was returned to me the next day, clean and dry.
The guard continued to come regularly to the peephole to look into the cell. To give the appearance of writing, I laid one of Mao’s books on my lap, placed a sheet of paper on it, and put the ink bottle beside me. After that, the guard left me alone.
Before writing anything, I had to ascertain what the interrogator hoped to achieve by ordering me to write my autobiography. His excuse that all other Chinese had done it was not a valid one. Although I had never been asked to write an autobiography, I believe the police in my district had a detailed record of my life already, as they had for everybody else who lived there. Obviously the interrogator hoped that the autobiography would provide some material they could twist and use against me.
A point that puzzled me was that I was not the only Chinese woman in Shanghai who had carried on with a comfortable lifestyle, worn traditional Chinese dress instead of the Mao suit, and kept foreign friends. But I had been singled out for imprisonment. No doubt the others had suffered at the hands of the Red Guards and probably had their homes looted. Maybe they had been beaten up. But I did not think they could all have been arrested. There was in fact much in the situation that was still a mystery to me. It would be foolish to plunge in and write frankly about myself and my life, revealing my innermost thoughts and standpoint. Besides, I had known cases of men being asked to write autobiographies over and over again. When discrepancies were found, the men were enmeshed in deep suspicion. Obviously the only thing I could do was to write a simple record of my life giving the bare facts in chronological order. If I was asked to write my autobiography again, I would have no difficulty in producing an identical version.