Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  The voice of the young man in charge of the meeting was shouting at me amidst the noise, “Why did you laugh? Answer me!”

  “If you put on a comic play, you must expect the audience to laugh. It’s the natural response,” I answered. With my head pressed down, I had to talk to the floor. But I raised my voice and spoke clearly so that every person in the room could hear me. I wanted to show our ex-staff that there was no need to be frightened of the Maoists.

  “Take her out! Take her out!” the young man yelled. Then he led the others in the room to shout slogans against me.

  I was forcibly dragged out of the room, pulled through the courtyard like a sack, and pushed into the waiting car. A woman Revolutionary kept her hand over my mouth to prevent me from speaking, while the man did not relax his pressure on my head. I was pinned on the back seat of the car in an awkward position, with the woman perching on the edge of the seat and the man squatting in the narrow space between the front and back seats. But I was lighthearted. I thoroughly enjoyed breaking up their carefully planned meeting. I wondered what would have happened if I had sat there quietly. I did not rule out the possibility that Tao had been instructed to talk to me and incriminate me in some way to validate his lies. There must have been a reason, I thought, for the Maoists to have placed me next to him.

  It was my bad luck to find the militant female guard on duty when I returned to the cell. Needless to say, she had not kept rice for me. She did not take the handcuffs off my wrists. As soon as she unlocked the door, she gave me a hard shove that sent me lurching into the room, where I collapsed on the bed. Almost immediately, running footsteps could be heard in the corridor. The same male guard who had escorted me from the car came back to call me for interrogation.

  The guard was in a great hurry; it was difficult to keep up with him. When I reached the interrogation room, I was out of breath and my heart was beating wildly.

  There were no fewer than eight men in the small room, four seated on chairs placed along the wall opposite Mao’s portrait, the others crowded around the interrogator.

  The interrogator waved his arm towards the portrait. I bowed and nearly lost my balance. The floor heaved, and I closed my eyes.

  “Remain standing!” someone said, but his voice seemed to come from very far away.

  “Explain yourself! Why did you laugh?” another voice said in the distance.

  I tried to say something, but no word came. I must have fainted from hunger. When I opened my eyes, I found myself sitting on the floor supported by a female guard. My arms were freed from the handcuffs. The sleeve of my left arm was pulled up. The young doctor was standing over me, unscrewing the needle from a large syringe. He nodded to the interrogator and left the room. The female guard pulled me up and pushed me into the prisoner’s chair. She also left the room.

  My heart was still palpitating, and my lips were parched. But I felt better.

  “Now answer my question. Did you not see for yourself that the others are more enlightened than you are? They are coming over to the side of the Proletarian Revolutionaries. They have confessed everything. What are you going to do? Are you going to do the same and admit your guilt?” the interrogator asked.

  I was feeling stronger by the minute. What did the doctor give me? Was it just an intravenous injection of glucose, or was there something else in the syringe? Perhaps there was a stimulant. I was now wide awake, ready to fight.

  Before I could answer the interrogator’s question, someone interrupted. ‘What were you laughing at? Why did you laugh? It’s no laughing matter. To be accused of being a spy for the imperialists is a very serious matter.” It was the voice of the young man who had led the meeting at the technical school. I looked at him with curiosity.

  To my surprise, he did not look like the young industrial worker I had assumed him to be from his voice and vocabulary. He wore a jacket like that of an army officer, but without the red patches on the collar that denoted a member of the Liberation Army. His trousers were dark gray, made of good-quality worsted that would cost at least 30 yuan a yard, twenty days’ pay for an industrial worker. His hair was plastered down with grease, and his black leather shoes were carefully polished. On the wrist of his left hand a gold watch peeped from under the cuff of his shirt sleeve. He was a young man of about twenty-five with an air of self-importance. I was puzzled who he was and how he dared to appear so well dressed during the Cultural Revolution; the clothes he was wearing were denounced as the habitual attire of the capitalist class. Was he not afraid to be mistaken for a class enemy?

  Years later, I was to learn that his appearance was typical of the sons of senior army commanders. The khaki jacket was a hint that the wearer was connected with the armed forces and therefore above the law. The status of their fathers gave these young men the privilege of looking different from the other Revolutionaries they attempted to lead. Direct access to the seat of power through their family connections set them apart. In time they became the Mafia of Communist China as they plundered wealth, raped women, and organized black market and gambling activities.

  Those whose fathers were very senior in the military hierarchy became China’s biggest “back-door men” and “fixers.” They could arrange anything, from housing and jobs to import and export trade, because they could get things done through their own network of cronies without going through the established bureaucracy. Even merchants from Hong Kong anxious to get a good contract in China had to bribe these swaggering young men, often by giving them “jobs” enabling them to travel to and from the British colony and smuggle gold, silver, and antiques out of China, and TV sets, recorders, and watches into the country.

  “Answer! Answer!” the well-dressed young man shouted. I looked at him, and then I looked at the interrogator. But the latter was staring at the paper in front of him, seemingly annoyed that the young man had taken over the job of questioning me.

  “I laughed because it was funny,” I told him.

  “What was funny?”

  “The whole thing you arranged was funny.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “Well, don’t you see? Tao was lying, and lying very badly. But you believed him, and you were going to let him go home to his family. Isn’t that funny?”

  “Tao wasn’t lying.”

  “Wasn’t he? Then you mean he was a real spy? In that case, you were going to let a real spy go home instead of punishing him with the death penalty or a stiff sentence? That’s even funnier.”

  “Never mind what’s going to happen to Tao. What about yourself? Don’t you want to go home?”

  “Of course I want to go home. I want full rehabilitation. I want an apology from the People’s Government to be published in the Liberation Daily in Shanghai and in the People’s Daily in Beijing. But I won’t lie. I’ll achieve all that by adhering only to the truth,” I said.

  I was looking at this well-dressed but rather stupid young man intently, wondering how he could have failed to realize that I laughed merely to break up his carefully arranged meeting. Suddenly he stood up and shouted in an excited voice, “Bow your head! Bow your head! I won’t let a class enemy stare at me with eyes like a pair of searchlights!”

  The man seated next to him, obviously a lackey, quickly stood up, walked over to me, and stretched out his hand to push my head down.

  “It’s my habit to look at the person I speak to. If I made you nervous, I apologize. Would you like me to sit with my back to you?” I turned my body to face Mao’s portrait on the wall, as the prisoner’s chair was nailed to the ground and could not be moved. From the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the interrogator. He was biting his lip to stifle a smile.

  “Now answer my question. Were you or were you not a spy for the British? Are you or are you not going to confess?” asked the young man.

  “I’m not a spy for anybody. I have nothing to confess,” I said firmly to the wall from which Mao’s portrait looked down on me. As I gazed at Mao’s face wearing wh
at was intended as a benign expression but was in fact a smirk of self-satisfaction, I wondered how one single person could have caused the extent of misery that was prevailing in China. There must be something lacking in our own character, I thought, that had made it possible for his evil genius to dominate.

  “You are a spy!” the young man shouted angrily.

  “I’m not.” I shook my head.

  “We have evidence you are.”

  “Produce it, then.” I turned to face him once more.

  “Didn’t you hear your ex-staff members this morning?”

  “That was no evidence. Just empty words of accusation made under duress.”

  “Don’t you worry. We’ll show you concrete evidence. One, two, three, four … a very long list of things you said and did. But by then it will be too late for you to win lenient treatment.”

  “A real spy shouldn’t be given lenient treatment. A real spy should be shot, whether he confesses or not,” I declared.

  The interrogator stood up and took over. “Go back to your cell now and think over everything you heard at the meeting this morning. They were not all lies. Some are serious matters. The situation you are in is no laughing matter.” He got up and walked out of the room. A guard came to lead me back to the cell.

  As I approached the women’s prison, I saw the woman from the kitchen in her white apron pushing the huge cart with layers and layers of containers of sweet potatoes for the prisoners. She was being helped by two Labor Reform Girls. Apparently another inmate was also being given rice; the two containers of rice and cabbage stood out amid the golden brown color of the potatoes. As soon as I was back in my cell, my portion of rice was pushed through the small window.

  My gums were now bleeding almost continuously. I had to rinse my mouth before taking food, or the food tasted of blood. Chewing had become more and more difficult. The cabbage was usually very tough. It took me a very long time to finish a meal. Because I had to return the chopsticks with the container before I could finish eating, I had been allowed to purchase a plastic spoon from the prison shop. Now I sat on the edge of the bed, scooped the rice and cabbage into one of the mugs, washed the aluminum container and chopsticks to give back to the woman from the kitchen, and started to eat my only meal of the day with the plastic spoon. While I ate, I reviewed what had happened during the day.

  In spite of being knocked about and handcuffed, I thought that on the whole the day had not been wasted. I had learned what had happened to the former members of the company’s staff and could see my own predicament in better perspective. I regretted that so many of them had succumbed to pressure, which must have been great, but I worried about others whose names I did not see on the Big Character Posters and who were not among the speakers denouncing me. I wondered whether they were still in this world.

  As for our chief accountant, Tao, I considered his behavior dastardly. But I had to forgive him, I believed. The sound of his sobbing was still in my ears. It was the cry of a tortured soul who had reached the end of his tether.

  The weather was decidedly warmer, and I had stopped shivering several days earlier. I wondered whether I should wash the warm woolen sweater I was wearing and put it away. I felt I must take great care of all my winter clothing, as goods like that were not available in the prison shop. God knew how long I would have to remain in the detention house. The struggle between the Maoists and myself was in fact a war of endurance. I simply must not die.

  Soon after I had got into bed, the guard on duty came to the small window. She pushed open the shutter gently and said in a whisper, “Would you like to take a hot shower?”

  What an unexpected and welcome offer! Prisoners were allowed one hot shower a month. In the winter months, when it was too cold to wash in the cell with cold water, I counted the days from one hot shower to the next. That afternoon, when I came back from interrogation, I had noticed that the female guards were going to the shower room one after another. This continued throughout the whole evening. Now, it seemed, they had all finished, so the guard was offering me the chance to use up the hot water that was left in the pipes.

  I jumped out of bed, grabbed my soapbox and towels, and followed her to the shower room. While I stood under the spray of warm water, washing my hair and my body, I marveled at the changed attitude of some of the guards since the day I had been bold enough to defend their former leader, Liu Shaoqi. When I emerged from the shower room, I slipped into the cell quietly. Soon afterwards, the guard came and snapped the lock.

  It rained the next day, not the chilly drops of winter that crystallized into ice on the ground, nor the angry torrent of summer thunderstorms. It was the gentle drizzle that softly soaked the earth to awaken the trees and flowers, warning them of the approach of spring. I had always loved that wet smell of the earth after a day of spring rain. It seemed so full of hope and the promise of beautiful scented flowers and green shady leaves. The departure of winter, the relatively better food and vitamin pills, and the relaxed attitude of some of the guards combined to make me feel less on edge. I found myself more optimistic about my chances of surviving the ordeal and less worried about the future.

  My feeling of euphoria continued the next day. When I was called again for interrogation, I walked with almost sprightly steps. This time only the well-dressed young man and the young worker were seated behind the counter.

  After I had entered the room and the guard had closed the door, the young man raised his arm in the direction of Mao’s portrait. I bowed. He told me to read the following quotation: “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting pictures, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely, and so gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an act of violence with which one class overthrows another.”

  “Do you love England better than you love China?” he asked.

  “I’m a Chinese citizen. Of course I love China better,” I answered.

  “If we leave out the matter of citizenship, would you still love China more?”

  “Chinese blood flows in my veins. Of course I love China more. I have always been a patriotic Chinese.”

  “Were you in the United States in 1940?”

  “Yes, I was there for a few months.”

  “Did you make speeches when you were there?”

  “Yes, I made some speeches about the Japanese invasion of China.”

  “We have information that you also made speeches in praise of the British war effort. You spoke on a radio program in New York. You were heard by some of your former Yanjing University friends who have now confessed and provided us with this information. Probably you also spoke at other places. In any case, when you returned to Chongqing, you made a propaganda broadcast from the Kuomintang radio station. You said the British imperialists were heroic people with great courage who would never give up until they won the final victory. Did the British government ask you to make propaganda for them? Were you already recruited by the British in 1940? Answer me!”

  “I went to New York from England on a British passenger steamer. A number of the passengers were interviewed on a radio program. The interviewer asked me questions about Britain. Naturally I answered truthfully,” I said.

  “You made propaganda for Britain.”

  “During the war, Britain and China were on the same side.”

  “Not in 1940. The British were helping the Japanese then. What you did proves beyond doubt that you were a British spy as long ago as 1940.”

  “Nonsense. I was just a Chinese visitor in Britain who was moved by the courage and resolution of the British people in the face of overwhelming odds when Britain stood alone to resist Hitler’s plan to conquer all of Europe.”

  “Listen to you! You are at this moment echoing the propaganda line of the British imperialists. We think you love Britain better than China.”

  “You can think whatever you want to, but you will have to prove your accusation against me.”r />
  “We will prove it. We will prove that your claim of patriotism is false. It’s for the purpose of covering up your evil deeds.”

  He took a small brown folder from under the counter and held it up to look at. All I could see was the back of the folder; I wondered what it was that he was looking at with so much assumed concentration. Suddenly he turned the folder around. I saw that it enclosed a black-and-white photograph of myself dancing with a Swiss friend in the early fifties, when the French Club was still in existence in Shanghai. An unemployed photographer snapped pictures of the guests of the club and offered them copies for a yuan each. To help this man, we all bought the pictures. When the Red Guards came to my house, the photographs were in the storeroom. They must have taken them all. My Swiss friend was an excellent dancer who knew many fancy steps. In the picture, he was teaching me something new and we were both laughing.

  “Do you call that patriotic?” the young man said severely, as if I had been caught doing something terrible.

  “What has dancing got to do with patriotism?” I was genuinely puzzled.

  “You were dancing with a foreigner. And you looked quite happy dancing with a foreigner. That’s decidedly unpatriotic.”

  “Is dancing with a foreigner unpatriotic?” I was rather taken aback by his line of attack. But I recovered in a moment and saw how I could turn the argument in my own favor. I went on, “I didn’t know dancing with a foreigner was not patriotic. But I must accept your superior judgment, as you are an enlightened Marxist and a Revolutionary. However, if I was not patriotic, at least I was useful. That’s to my credit, don’t you think?”

  “What do you mean, you were useful?”

  “Well, as you have just said, dancing with a foreigner was not patriotic. By dancing with my Swiss friend, I was making him unpatriotic, because to him surely I was the foreigner. If by the simple act of dancing I can make others unpatriotic, isn’t that being useful? Think of the possibilities from that point on. You can simply send me to dance with all China’s enemies all over the world and let me make them unpatriotic. Then, without firing a single shot, all of them are done for. How could anybody be more useful than that?” I was so overcome with mirth that I had some difficulty speaking the last few words clearly.