by Cheng Nien
Next morning the doctor gave me some sulfadiazine tablets. But I continued to waken during the night with coughing when the cell became unbearably cold. It was in the small hours of one morning that I overheard a whispered conversation outside my door. A former female interrogator was on guard duty. She had given me my medicine for the night and told me to go to sleep. Now I heard her talking to the woman locked in the cell opposite mine. Though their voices were very low, the prison was very silent, and I got the gist of their conversation. I was shocked to discover that the woman in the cell was an official of the Public Security Bureau and a former schoolfriend of the interrogator when they were both at the College for Public Security Officers. They were talking about the violent struggle at the office of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau after Mao’s wife Jiang Qing called upon the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries to “smash the security, prosecution, and law enforcement agencies.” They were saying that this person jumped out of a window, that person was beaten to death, someone else was taken to the hospital … It was obvious that the Public Security Bureau was in disarray and unable to function at all.
After listening to their conversation, I decided that the Cultural Revolution was going to be a long-drawn-out affair, with the Party officials Mao wanted to remove fighting for survival with cunning and desperation. For the time being, the radicals seemed to be winning because they enjoyed the support of Mao and the army. But unless the ousted officials were all to be killed, which was an impossibility, they would be bound to wait for a chance to stage a comeback. In the meantime, they would probably do everything within their power to sabotage every move made by the radicals. I thought the situation was extremely complicated and would surely remain unsettled for a very long time to come.
A few nights later, just before the prisoners’ bedtime, the guard on duty came to the cells again to tell the prisoners to sit quietly and listen to a broadcast. Through the loudspeaker, a man’s voice announced that the No. 1 Detention House had been placed under military control.
“All of you prisoners listen attentively! The revolutionary situation is excellent! The true supporters of our Great Leader Chairman Mao and the followers of his close comrade-in-arms Vice-Supreme Commander Lin have overcome all obstacles and have already overthrown the reactionary municipal government of this city! We are now in the process of taking over the whole country and will continue to exterminate all our enemies. The sludge and filth left by the old society have been thrown onto the rubbish heap of history. Our achievement is great, great, great! Our losses are small, small, and small! Some people say we have created chaos. Chaos is an expression of class struggle. Our Great Leader Chairman Mao has said, ‘A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.’ There is nothing wrong in sowing chaos to confuse the enemy. Some people say we have killed too many. Nonsense! We have killed fewer people than during the war against the Japanese imperialists and the war of liberation. In fact, we have not killed enough. There are still enemies lurking in dark corners. We’ll get them. Don’t underestimate our determination or belittle our ability to exterminate our enemies. We are Revolutionaries! We are not afraid of chaos and killing. They are the natural outcome of a revolution. They inspire our own side and send terror into the hearts of the enemy. We won’t fear even the collapse of heaven. The teachings of our Great Leader Chairman Mao will prop it up again.
“Our dear comrade Jiang Qing told us, ‘Smash to pieces the security and law enforcement agencies.’ We have done it! The Shanghai Public Security Bureau and all its subsidiary organizations are now under our control. This detention house was run by the revisionists and capitalist-roaders of the Security Bureau. It’s absurd the prisoners here should have such good treatment. You eat rice three times a day. You live better than the poor peasants. That proves the revisionists at the Security Bureau love the counterrevolutionaries better than the peasants. This is because they themselves are also counterrevolutionaries. From now on your ration will be cut to conserve grain. You do not labor. Two meals a day is ample. And you will eat sweet potatoes and other grains rather than rice. You won’t die. But if you do, it is no loss to the Revolution. We have plenty of people in China. We will not miss a few counterrevolutionaries!
“A lot of you have been here a long time already. But some of you have not confessed. You hope to slip through the net. This is sheer wishful thinking. The iron fist of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat will crush you without mercy if you don’t confess. Let that be a warning to you all!
“The policy of our Great Leader Chairman Mao is ‘Lenient treatment for those who confess, severe punishment for those who remain stubborn, and reward for those who render meritorious service by denouncing others.’ Tonight we will deal with some of the outstanding cases here to give expression to our Great Leader Chairman Mao’s policy.”
After a moment’s silence, he called out one name after another of prisoners sentenced to death because they had not confessed to their crimes. He gave such particulars as their age, address, occupation, and “reactionary” family background and described the “crimes” the prisoners had committed, all of which came under the category of “revenge against the proletarian class.” Those so-called crimes were in fact no more than statements of opposition to the Cultural Revolution or disparaging remarks against Jiang Qing, Lin Biao, or Mao Zedong himself. Then the man shouted at the top of his voice, “Take him out! Immediate execution!”
His voice was an inhuman roar, charged with cruelty. In spite of my rigid control, I shivered involuntarily.
The list of names of people to be executed went on and on. It was followed by a list of those sentenced to life imprisonment or to terms of twenty-five or more years in jail, all examples of “severe punishment” dealt out to prisoners who had not confessed fully or whose confessions were not considered adequate or sincere. Finally he read out a list of people given “lenient treatment” because they not only confessed but also rendered meritorious service by incriminating others. A woman was ordered to be released immediately because she had provided information leading to the arrest of several other people who had plotted to escape to Hong Kong. Others received short sentences of three to five years.
After the loudspeaker was switched off, the threat in that man’s voice reverberated in my ears. Never in my life had I heard anything so shocking. The thought that this person was now in charge of the No. 1 Detention House and of my own fate frightened me. The night, already icy, seemed to get even colder. Spasms of shivering ran through my body while I waited for the guard to tell me to go to bed. The other prisoners, I thought, were probably frozen with fear too, as there was not the slightest sound of movement anywhere.
The door at the other end of the corridor banged, and I heard the sound of leather boots echoing down the passage. The small windows of the cells along the corridor were being opened and shut. There were shouts of “What about you? Have you confessed? Did you confess everything?” The heavy footsteps drew nearer and nearer. I braced myself for an unpleasant encounter. The footsteps stopped outside my cell. The shutter of the small window was pushed open. I heard the sound of rustling paper and the voice of a male guard saying, “It’s this one.”
“Come over!” The guard sounded even more severe than usual, perhaps to impress the Military Control officer.
Through the opening, I could see only a pair of black leather boots and the lower part of the uniformed body of an air force officer, not his face or head. But I pictured him in my mind’s eye as having what we Chinese call a villain’s face with “horizontal flesh.” We believe a man’s face reflects the life he has led, so a wicked man would end up having an unpleasant face with “horizontal flesh.” Somehow, thinking of him in these terms encouraged me. I felt that whatever he was g
oing to say, I could cope with it.
“Why haven’t you confessed?” It was the voice of the man who had made the broadcast.
“I haven’t committed any crime. How can I confess?” I replied.
“Nonsense! You are a spy of the imperialists. Do you want to be shot?”
“I expect the new authority of this detention house to release me after examining the facts and finding me innocent.”
“You are dreaming! Do you think we are fools? You’ll never be released if you do not confess! Didn’t you hear the other cases of those who did not confess? They are dead,” he shouted vehemently, “dead! Do you hear?” Then he said something to the guard, who took out his bunch of keys and unlocked the door.
“Come out!” the guard shouted.
I stepped out of the cell, uncertain what the man in the air force uniform was going to do to me. He was already halfway down the corridor heading for the entrance. I followed the guard after him, but before we had taken more than a couple of steps, there was a heavy thud and commotion overhead. Several voices called, “Report! Report!” Others were yelling, “Come quickly! She is bleeding!”
Low hysterical laughter came from another direction, rising to a shrill cry. With the corridor shrouded in shadows under the dim light, the scene took on a sinister aspect. The guard stopped abruptly, pushed me back into the cell, snapped the lock, and hastened upstairs.
I heard footsteps of several guards running to the cell above mine. “Take her out!” the voice of the air force officer shouted overhead. “How dare you threaten the Dictatorship of the Proletariat with suicide! Did you think you could get out of confessing by bashing your head on the toilet? Your act proved you are guilty. You will be punished without mercy.”
There was a girl’s voice sobbing and mumbling, and the sound of people moving about. Then silence.
After some time, a female guard came to order everybody to bed. When she came to me, she said, “Why are you standing here?”
“I’m waiting to be called for questioning,” I said.
“No more questioning. Go to bed!”
It seemed that I had been forgotten in the commotion overhead. I wondered what unpleasant fate would have awaited me if the girl upstairs had not chosen just that moment to bash her head on the cement toilet. While the method she used could not have resulted in her total escape from persecution, it demonstrated how desperate her mood was after listening to the broadcast. In fact, attempts at suicide were seldom successful at the No. 1 Detention House. The only person I heard of who actually did succeed was a young and talented surgeon, Dr. Song, the son of a vice-mayor of Shanghai. I was told that he painstakingly sharpened the handle of his toothbrush by grinding it on the cement floor and then used it to pierce his artery. It was revealed after Mao’s death that the Revolutionaries had put the young doctor in the detention house and tortured him to make him denounce his father.
Next day, the prisoners were not given any food until mid-morning. It was dry rice with boiled cabbage. In the afternoon, a portion of boiled sweet potatoes was pushed through the small window. On subsequent days, this alternated with strips of moldy dried sweet potato boiled in water. Since I found this impossible to eat or digest, on those days I had to be content with only the midmorning meal. After some time, hunger became a permanent state, no longer a sensation but an ever present hollowness. The flesh on my body slowly melted away, my eyesight deteriorated, and simple activities such as washing clothes exhausted my strength.
Some of the guards disappeared. New guards came to work wearing the red armband of the Revolutionaries. Early in the morning, at midday, and at night, I would hear them shouting to each other, “Long live our Great Leader Chairman Mao,” and chanting his quotations. The newspaper reported a new ritual observed by all Chinese people: “Ask for instructions in the morning, check your action with Chairman Mao’s teachings at noon, and report everything at night.” Apparently everyone went through this formality in front of an official portrait of Mao. To ask for instructions was to read passages from the Little Red Book, to check was to read again from the same book, and to report was also to read from the same book. In short, three times a day, every day, every Chinese, except babies, had to read from Mao’s book of quotations. The newspaper published articles discussing whether one should do it when one was alone at home on Sundays. The conclusion was that one should not neglect going through the ritual even when one was lying in bed sick. Fortunately for us, this absurd practice was the privilege only of the approved “masses” and was not allowed for class enemies locked in prison!
Military Control had restored discipline. There was no more fighting or arguing among the guards. And they came on duty promptly. But it also created a frigid atmosphere. The guards no longer chatted with one another as they had done before. If one guard was alone with the prisoners, he or she seemed more relaxed. But whenever two were on duty together, they seemed to be on guard, almost as if each one feared that the other would report his or her behavior to the Military Control Commission.
There were new schedules for the prisoners besides the changed mealtimes. Every morning, the entire prison listened to news bulletins, first from the Central Broadcasting Service in Beijing and immediately afterwards from the Shanghai Broadcasting Station. Frequently, the prisoners were lectured through the loudspeakers. At such times, lists of those getting “lenient treatment” and “severe punishment” were read out to encourage the rest of us to confess. Whenever the loudspeaker was switched on, the guards walked from cell to cell to make sure the prisoners were listening.
One of the loudspeakers was just outside my door. The din was deafening. With the guard watching, I could not put my hands to my ears to shut out the noise. When Sunday came around, I asked for scissors, cut up a tiny piece of cloth, rolled the broken fibers into two small balls, and used them as earplugs when there was a broadcast. While they did not stop the noise altogether, it was sufficiently muted to be bearable.
From time to time, I was called to the interrogation rooms for special indoctrination and questioning by militant guards who seemed to enjoy the confidence of Military Control. Only selected prisoners received this treatment, I noticed. Whether we were the most hated class enemies or the most intransigent, I had no way of knowing. The guards used these occasions to abuse me verbally, calling me a “dirty exploiter of peasants” or a “running dog of foreign imperialists.” They attacked me for my family background, for my job with Shell, and for my “resistance to reeducation” in not confessing to my “crime” readily. They would bombard me with questions but did not wait for me to give any answers. They would tell me I would be shot soon or that I would be kept at the detention house for the rest of my life.
I soon discovered that there was no need for me to do anything except listen, as the guards never stopped speaking once I entered the room. After several similar sessions, it dawned on me that their performances were solely for the purpose of establishing themselves as bona fide Revolutionaries. I was placed there merely as a necessary stage prop for their act. I concluded that even the militant guards who appeared so confident felt insecure in the atmosphere of suspicion created by the Cultural Revolution, when long-trusted Party leaders were suddenly condemned as “hidden enemies of Communism” who had “raised the red flag to oppose the red flag.”
One day, the prisoners were allowed outdoor exercise. When I stepped out of the door of the women’s prison, I saw ex-director Liang and several other men digging up the flower beds. This sight did not surprise me, for the day before I had read in the newspaper that Mao had said flowers and decorative plants were a softening influence that undermined the revolutionary spirit of the masses. The same report also said that in Mao’s own garden in the former imperial palace, Zhongnanhai, only apple trees and sunflowers were grown since they had practical economic value. During this period of the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s personality cult was such that every word of his, no matter how insignificant, was applied and
implemented with alacrity. Conversely, nothing could be done if Mao had not pointed the way.
In the distance, I saw other men and women sweeping the drive and carrying buckets of water towards the kitchen. From their appearance and the rather clumsy way they were working, I knew they were the Party intellectuals of the detention house, like ex-director Liang, being reformed by physical labor. Mao had said that the more knowledge a man had, the more reactionary he would become, unless he purged himself through arduous physical labor.
Years later, I heard that during the Cultural Revolution millions of men and women had been ordered to give up their jobs in the cities and settle in rural areas to receive reeducation through physical labor. Those intellectuals allowed to remain in the cities were assigned the work of common laborers in their organizations. It was the practice of that time to have medical doctors emptying bedpans in the hospitals, professors cleaning toilets in the universities, and artists and musicians building walls and repairing roads. While they were doing all these things, they had to attend struggle meetings and political indoctrination classes at which they had to abuse themselves by “confessing” to their “crimes.” Indeed Mao’s abuse of intellectuals reached an unprecedented level of cruelty during the Cultural Revolution. It very nearly destroyed China’s tradition of respect for scholarship. During that time, anywhere in China, a man found reading a book other than Mao’s four slim volumes ran the risk of being labeled an opponent of Mao.
When I reached the exercise yard, the guard told me to weed the ground with my bare hands. Since it was winter, only a small patch was growing at the foot of the wall facing the sun. But the ground was frozen hard. It was slow work to get the weeds out without tools. When the guard returned, he kicked the small pile of dead weeds at my feet and yelled, “Is this all you have done? You didn’t dig out the roots.”