Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  My request for liquid rice gave the Maoists the opportunity to reduce my ration. What was handed to me at mealtimes was no more than a half-container of gray-colored water with a few grains of rice floating on top. After a few days of this diet, I fainted. It was a mild guard who called the doctor. He gave me an intravenous injection of glucose and sent me with the guard to the prison hospital. I did not know what the guard said to the doctor privately, but the doctor gave her a written order. When I was brought back to the detention house, the regular dosage of sulfa drug was resumed and I was given a thick rice porridge with a piece of steamed bread at mealtimes.

  When I was again called to the interrogation room, the interrogator told me to read Mao’s latest directive three times. After I finished and sat down, he asked me, “Do you fully understand what our Great Leader Chairman Mao has said?”

  “I think I do,” I answered.

  “Explain.”

  “I think Chairman Mao wants everybody to know that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is a political revolution, not simply a revolution limited to the field of culture.”

  “That’s correct. What about the two continuations?”

  “The Cultural Revolution is the continuation of the class struggle the proletarian class has been carrying on against the capitalist class. It’s not a new struggle but the continuation of the same struggle that has been going on,” I explained.

  “What about the part concerning the Kuomintang?”

  “The Cultural Revolution is also the continuation of the class struggle carried on by the Communist Party against the Kuomintang, which has been going on since 1927.”

  “Yes, since you understand that, you should realize the seriousness of the situation. The Kuomintang is our enemy. After its defeat by our army, it took refuge on the island of Taiwan, protected by the United States. Until we have liberated Taiwan and brought the island under the banner of our Great Leader Chairman Mao, the struggle against the Kuomintang will continue. The Kuomintang must be destroyed to complete our Revolution. Our Great Leader is determined to liberate Taiwan, and our Vice-Supreme Commander Lin is confident we will succeed. But the capitalist-roaders led by Liu Shaoqi opposed them. They said the Taiwan problem was for the next generation. That’s a defeatist attitude. Our Great Leader believes the Taiwan issue is for our generation. It must be resolved now while the seasoned military leaders such as our Vice-Supreme Commander Lin, who have had the experience of defeating the Kuomintang before, can still lead our army to victory. The class struggle against the capitalist-roaders of the Liu Shaoqi clique is linked to the class struggle against the Kuomintang. Now that we have thoroughly defeated the Liu Shaoqi faction and power is once again concentrated in the hands of our Great Leader, we will deal with the issue of the Kuomintang. That’s why we must expose all Kuomintang sympathizers in our midst to prevent the formation of a fifth column for the enemy. The dregs of the Kuomintang must be isolated and watched closely so that they will not be able to do harm,” said the interrogator.

  “Your husband was a senior Kuomintang official,” added the older man from Beijing.

  “Not senior, only middle-ranking. But in any case, he elected to remain here when the Kuomintang went to Taiwan,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, yes, many Kuomintang officials did that. Some of them were deliberately planted here by the Kuomintang to do mischief. Each one of them will be closely examined.”

  “When my late husband became Shell’s general manager in Shanghai, his appointment had to be approved by the Shanghai municipal government. Surely the Party had already examined his case thoroughly at that time,” I told them.

  “That’s not enough. The man who gave approval might have been a capitalist-roader. We, the Revolutionaries, must examine everybody on behalf of the Party now,” said the interrogator.

  “As early as the days of the Chinese soviet, before the Long March, our Great Leader had already formulated a whole set of effective methods to deal with class enemies before our army started an offensive against the Kuomintang forces. At that time we put the important class enemies in prison, as we have done now during the Cultural Revolution. The others were given to the revolutionary masses to watch. We have also done that during the Cultural Revolution.” The young man from Beijing was obviously a student anxious to display his knowledge of Mao Zedong’s books. He was referring to Mao’s account of the preparations made by the Chinese Communist Party before military engagements against the Kuomintang’s encirclement campaigns, described in a 1936 essay entitled, “The Strategy of China’s Revolutionary War.”

  “You should understand your own position in the struggle between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang. You are on the side of the Kuomintang by virtue of your family background and your husband’s association with them,” the older man from Beijing said.

  “I’m afraid you are quite wrong. I’m not involved in the struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party at all. I regret that the Communist Party and the Kuomintang had to fight each other, killing innocent Chinese people and destroying our national wealth in the process. As a Chinese I hope for peace and unity of the two political parties to work for the common good of the country,” I declared.

  “We will achieve unity after we have crushed the Kuomintang,” said the student.

  “If you are not a sympathizer of the Kuomintang, if, as you say, you are not involved in the struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, why did you have your photograph taken in front of a Kuomintang flag?” asked the interrogator.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about. I’ve tried very hard to guess, but I simply can’t. Why don’t you tell me what it’s all about? There must be some misunderstanding,” I said with sincerity.

  “Think back to 1962. What happened in 1962?” asked the interrogator.

  “I don’t know what happened in 1962, except that was the year I lost my mother.”

  “That’s right!” declared both men from Beijing. “You had better confess and tell the whole story.”

  “Do you mean you want to hear about my mother’s death?” I asked them incredulously.

  “Yes, tell the whole story. Confess everything,” said the interrogator.

  I was puzzled. I had no idea what they were driving at. But since they wanted to know, I told them about my mother’s death.

  “I was called to Nanjing by my mother’s neighbor, who telephoned me. When I got there, I found my mother unconscious after suffering a heatstroke. It was July, and the temperature was persistently about ninety-five degrees. We called an ambulance and rushed her to the hospital. At first she got better. But she developed pneumonia and died of heart failure.”

  “Did your brothers come to Nanjing too?”

  “Yes, they came with their wives.”

  “What did you do after your mother died?”

  “Being the eldest, I arranged her funeral.”

  “You indulged in superstition. That’s another proof you’re a real reactionary,” said the younger man.

  “Superstition” is the word habitually used by Communist officials when they refer to any kind of religious practice.

  “My mother was a devout Buddhist, so I arranged for her to have a Buddhist funeral,” I said.

  “You must have done something illegal. The Buddhist temples were all closed after the Great Leap Forward Campaign, and the monks dispersed. Yet you managed to get several monks for your mother’s funeral,” said the interrogator.

  “I got the monks with the help of the man in charge of the Buddhist Research Institute in Nanjing.”

  “They are only allowed to perform religious services for foreign visitors from Southeast Asia, not for Chinese.”

  “The man I saw decided to help me because I begged him,” I said. How well I remembered my prolonged negotiation with the man at the Buddhist Research Institute in Nanjing! I obtained the services of the monks by making a large donation, which I was not sure was allowed officially. Final
ly he agreed to provide me with six monks to recite the sutras at my mother’s funeral.

  “You are guilty of reviving superstition at your mother’s funeral. Your brothers and sisters-in-law are guilty too because they did not stop you. You also put the names of your sisters in the United States on your mother’s tombstone. You failed to draw a line between yourself and the traitors who chose to live abroad. All of these things prove beyond doubt you are a reactionary,” the young man said.

  “My sisters in the United States are also my mother’s daughters. It’s a Chinese custom to put all the children’s names on the tombstone.”

  “We’ll talk about all that later on. Now tell me, what did you do after your mother’s funeral? After you left the cemetery, where did you go?” my interrogator asked. All three of them now seemed to become excited. The two men from Beijing were staring at me intently.

  “We returned to her house to sort out her things.”

  “Before you returned to her house, where did you go?”

  “Nowhere. We returned to her house directly.”

  “Did you not go to the Sun Yatsen Memorial after your mother’s burial?” asked the older man from Beijing.

  “No, we were all so sad and exhausted.”

  “Confess!” The young man suddenly banged the table.

  “What do you want me to confess? The funeral of my mother has no political significance.”

  “The funeral of your mother has no political significance, but your going to the Sun Yatsen Memorial with your brothers to have your photograph taken in front of a Kuomintang flag had a great deal of political significance. You wanted to pledge your loyalty to the Kuomintang. At that time, in 1962, the Kuomintang was planning to attack the mainland,” said the young man.

  The allegation was so absurd that I wanted to laugh. But I knew the situation was in fact very serious. To talk to these ignorant men was a strenuous effort, and I had so little strength because of my poor health and inadequate diet. Throughout each interrogation, I was suffering severe pain in my mouth. Already I was so exhausted that I felt faint. But I had to go on talking to try to clear myself, even though I had no idea how they had formed their absurd suspicion of me in the first place.

  “Please be reasonable. First of all, are you sure there was a Kuomintang flag at the Sun Yatsen Memorial? If there was no flag there after the Kuomintang left Nanjing, you will know we couldn’t possibly have had a photograph taken in front of one. Secondly, even assuming there was a flag and assuming you are correct in your allegation that I wanted to impress the Kuomintang in case they came back to the mainland, would the Kuomintang accept my declaration of loyalty simply because I could show them such a photograph? The Kuomintang officials are not fools. Wouldn’t they become extremely suspicious of my motives, since they knew very well my late husband and I had elected to remain here in 1949 and did not follow them to Taiwan?”

  “They would believe you. You are already an agent for the Kuomintang,” the young man declared.

  “If indeed I were already an agent of the Kuomintang, I would have no need to prove my loyalty to them. You contradict yourself in your allegation.”

  Both the men from Beijing shouted, “You must confess that you did in fact have a photograph taken with your brothers in front of a Kuomintang flag at the Sun Yatsen Memorial in Nanjing.”

  “Please ask my brothers and sisters-in-law. They’ll tell you it did not happen. We never went to the Sun Yatsen Memorial in Nanjing at all.”

  “We did ask your brother at the Foreign Trade Institute in Beijing. At first he also tried to deny everything. But when the Revolutionaries made him see the right path to take, he confessed everything. He said it was your idea to go to the Sun Yatsen Memorial. He also said it was your camera that was used to take the photograph. You had the film developed in Shanghai and sent him a copy of it. Do you still dare to deny it?” the young man shouted.

  My heart sank. It was pure fabrication, of course. What had the Maoists done to my poor brother to make him lie like that? I could imagine the agony he must have gone through before he succumbed to their pressure.

  To meet this extremely serious situation, I enlisted the help of Mao’s Little Red Book. Raising it in my hand, I said, “Our Great Leader Chairman Mao taught us, ‘Rice must be eaten one mouthful at a time; a journey must be undertaken a step at a time.’ I beg you to obey his teaching in this case. Please go to the Sun Yatsen Memorial in Nanjing and see for yourselves. The Sun Yatsen Memorial is managed by a government department in Nanjing and visited by foreigners. There simply couldn’t have been a Kuomintang flag there so many years after the Kuomintang left Nanjing. Please go there and see for yourselves. If you should find a Kuomintang flag, then come back and punish me. I can’t run away.”

  The two men from Beijing simply stared at me while the interrogator stood up and said, “You may now go back to your cell and think the matter over.”

  Perhaps, I thought, he at last understood the logic of what I had said and decided that the only way to resolve the problem was for the two men to go to Nanjing to see for themselves. I hoped they would do just that. When they found no Kuomintang flag at the Sun Yatsen Memorial, they would return to Beijing to report. Perhaps that was what actually happened, for many weeks passed and I was not called again.

  During the Cultural Revolution, the Revolutionaries traveled all over China at public expense to “investigate the crimes of the class enemies” under their charge. They used the opportunity for sightseeing and visiting friends and relatives. Some of them prolonged their trips or took roundabout routes to include famous scenic spots on their itinerary. Since Shanghai was a favorite city for shopping for all Chinese, the Revolutionaries always wanted to come to or pass through it. When the two men from Beijing came to Shanghai, they actually passed through Nanjing. I thought they had deliberately avoided stopping there to check the matter of the flag at the Sun Yatsen Memorial because they were afraid they might have to turn back if they found there was no Kuomintang flag. Each session of my interrogation took only a couple of hours at the most. They had the rest of the day free. Since their travel expenses and hotel accommodations were paid for by the Revolutionary Committee at their place of work, they enjoyed a free holiday for over a month. In fact, the opportunity to travel was one of the perks given to the more aggressive Revolutionaries to encourage their loyalty to the Maoist leaders.

  Alone in my cell, I could not help thinking over and over again about this strange episode. At first I was indignant that my own brother should have behaved so badly under pressure. But when I thought of his life since the early fifties, the difficulties he had had to endure for so many years, and the degree of persecution a man like him must have been subjected to during the Cultural Revolution, my sense of outrage evaporated. A deep feeling of sadness and compassion for this unfortunate man took its place in my heart. I could only assume that some Revolutionaries, overzealous to unearth as many sympathizers of the Kuomintang as possible, had invented the story and planted it in my brother’s mind for him to confess. But before they succeeded in doing that, they must have really damaged his reasoning powers. Normally my brother was neither stupid nor disloyal.

  My brother had worked as an economics expert in the Ministry of Foreign Trade in the early fifties, one of a group of outstanding young economists the Communist Party invited back from British and American universities where they were doing research. His job was to analyze and write reports on world economic conditions. He was given senior rank and good treatment. However, it soon became apparent that although his work was appreciated by other experts working in a technical capacity in the Foreign Trade Ministry and its agencies abroad, he failed to satisfy the requirements of the Party, which through the Party secretary of his unit controlled his life. The reports he wrote did not bear out the Party propaganda line that predicted impending doom for the capitalist world. Those were unhappy years for my brother. In trying to find a compromise between the facts as he knew
them and the lies he was required to tell to justify the Party line, he became a very silent man, speaking very little and smiling very seldom. It seemed that no matter how hard he tried to please, unless he fell in with the Party line completely, the Party secretary was always exasperated with him. Once the man declared bluntly, “I simply can’t afford to allow optimistic reports on the economy of any capitalist country to be sent out from this office. You are subverting the Party if you go on writing like this.”

  When the Anti-Rightist Campaign started in 1957, the Party secretary saw it as an opportunity to get rid of my recalcitrant brother. Much was made of the fact that he had done graduate work in England and for a brief period of time had worked as personal assistant to a senior Kuomintang minister. He was subjected to many grueling hours of struggle meetings, isolated in his office for several months, not allowed to go home, and questioned continuously by a throng of Party activists, day and night, without sleep, in what was known as the tactic of “exhaustive bombardment.” The Party activists did not succeed in making him a “Rightist,” mainly because they could find no evidence that he had criticized the Party, but the ordeal left him a broken man with an ulcer. The last trace of a smile left his face, his hair turned gray, and he acquired a faraway look in his eyes. He was then only thirty-seven.

  Realizing that he was unwanted at his office, my brother asked to be transferred to another job. Angered at his failure to brand my brother a Rightist, the Party secretary of his unit declared that my brother was too proud and needed a period of time with the peasants to improve his socialist understanding. He was sent to a village outside Beijing to raise chickens. Living conditions were primitive; he was allowed to go home only once a month. But he enjoyed being away at last from the Party bureaucrats. He took the job of raising chickens seriously and soon established a reputation for having chickens that were fatter and produced more eggs than anyone else’s. Whenever he returned to the village after visiting his family in the city, he would bring back an armful of books and cases of equipment for various experiments to improve his work. The peasants flocked to his dwelling, anxious to get his advice and to talk over their problems with him. This situation offended the Party boss of the village. He urged the Ministry of Foreign Trade to send my brother elsewhere.