Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  “I would like to stay, thank you very much,” Da De said.

  We had supper together. After helping me with the washing up, Da De said goodbye. I took 400 yuan from the drawer and said, “Da De, it has been a pleasure knowing you. You are a very intelligent young man. I hope you will have a happy life. This is my wedding present for you. Perhaps you can buy something useful with it.” I handed him the money.

  He didn’t say a word, obviously overcome with emotion. After standing there for a moment, he accepted the money from me and left.

  17

  Rehabilitation

  FOR SO MANY YEARS I had waited for Mao to die. When I was in prison, I was desperate enough to pray for it to happen. Now that he had really died, I did not know how to proceed. The prospect of having the men responsible for my daughter’s death brought to justice was just as remote as ever.

  While I watched the political scene closely, I resumed regular English lessons for my disabled girl student, who came every other day in the mornings. Crippled from childhood by poliomyelitis, she had been barred from regular schools but had learned to read and write from her mother, who was a nurse in a large hospital. After our lessons, she would thank me politely, pick up her crutches, and slowly make her way down the stairs and out into the street to return home on foot.

  As I watched her struggling with her disability, I could not help thinking of the irony of life in China. The misfortune of her illness had insulated her from the mainstream of Chinese life and protected her from the political experiments of Mao Zedong. But healthy and normal young people, including my daughter, were led by the Great Helmsman on a twisted road of frustration and anguish as they struggled to become a part of Mao’s socialist new society. Scores of them like my daughter had died, while others, including ex-Red Guards like Da De, had been victimized. Being disabled, my student did not go to school and was bypassed in the agonizing search for China’s destiny. Consequently she was mercifully spared.

  My student hoped to become an English teacher at a secondary school, as Da De had done, to earn a living for herself.

  “I can’t depend on my mother all my life. She’ll retire soon. My teacher’s salary would be a great help to supplement her pension,” she said to me when she asked me to help her prepare for the teacher’s examination.

  Teaching her became my main occupation. But I was watching and waiting for an opportunity to petition the People’s Government to investigate the death of my daughter. I had long ago made a draft of the petition I wanted to send and had written it in the language of socialist China. Since then I had looked at it many times, changing a word here and adding a sentence there. The question was when and to which organization I should submit the petition.

  On the morning of October 8, I awoke at my usual hour of six o’clock. I opened the door to the balcony and saw that it was a fine, crisp autumn morning with a few tufts of white cloud floating in the blue sky. Looking down, I saw my disabled student standing outside the front gate. When she saw me, she gestured for me to come down.

  Quietly I went down the stairs, walked to the front gate, and opened it. My student’s visit to me at this early hour was most unusual. I thought it best not to disturb the Zhus. When I stepped outside, she came close to me and whispered, “I’ve been waiting for you. I don’t want the Zhus to know I’m here, so I didn’t knock on the door. My brother in the militia was called suddenly for emergency muster last night. There is going to be a war. I thought I should warn you to stay at home.”

  I looked up and down the street and saw that it was deserted. I asked her, “War? War with whom?”

  “I don’t know. Last night several men came and told my brother to go with them immediately. They told my mother that the militia had been put on alert. We are not supposed to tell this to anyone. But my mother and I thought I ought to come and warn you, as you are alone.”

  I thanked her and watched her hobble away before returning to my apartment.

  The news brought by my student was really extraordinary, I thought. I could not imagine any country attacking China or China initiating an armed conflict against any country at this time. Yet she had told me that the militia had been put on alert.

  I had a Shanghai-made transistor radio. Sometimes at night when the weather was good, I could get international news bulletins from either the BBC or the Voice of America if I pressed my ear right against the set and listened carefully. I took the radio to the bathroom, closed the window and door, flushed the toilet to cover the initial noise of the shortwave, and switched on the set. Apart from static, I could not get anything at all. When A-yi came, I questioned her about conditions at the market. She made her usual complaint about shortages. I tuned the radio to the local station, hoping that if there was an announcement I would not miss it. Then I took out my notebook and spent the morning copying down and reciting Tang dynasty poems, a wonderful occupation, I had found, to take myself away from my immediate surroundings.

  The day passed uneventfully. After supper, I heard Mrs. Zhu calling me in the garden. When I went to the balcony, she told me that the Residents’ Committee had called a meeting; we were to go over immediately. I hastily picked up my stool and joined her to walk across the street.

  The room was packed, and the atmosphere was rather tense. It was so unusual for the Residents’ Committee to call a meeting at night that people sensed something extraordinary had happened. Everyone waited expectantly for enlightenment. There was none of the usual whispering and yawning; even the smokers were refraining from lighting their cigarettes.

  After everybody had arrived, a middle-aged official of the District Party Committee got up and read a resolution passed by the Politburo. The gist of it was that “revolutionary action” had been taken on October 6 by the 8341 Regiment stationed at Zhongnanhai (the Central South Sea, former winter palace of the Manchu emperors, at present homes and offices of the Party Politburo members) to arrest Jiang Qing and her three close associates, known collectively as “the Gang of Four.” The document said the decision to take action had been made by the acting chairman of the Central Committee, Hua Guofeng, with the agreement of the defense minister and senior statesman of the Communist Party, Ye Jianying. The arrest followed a Polit buro meeting at which the decision had been approved unanimously, in order to preserve Party unity and prevent the disruption of the work of building socialism. The statement claimed that when Mao was alive he had already perceived the problem presented by the Gang of Four and had declared that it must be resolved. This part of the resolution seemed to me solely for the purpose of forestalling criticism that punitive action was taken against Mao’s widow only twenty-six days after his death by men who had cooperated with her while Mao was alive. The wording of the document stopped just short of claiming that Hua Guofeng was carrying out Mao’s orders when he arrested Mao’s widow.

  The resolution was not long. As soon as it was read, we were told that since it was late, discussions would take place next time. We could go home. There were no cheers, no boos. Nobody said a word. We trooped out of the room just as we had come in—with passive faces, heads slightly bowed to avoid unwittingly speaking with our eyes, moving slowly so as not to show excitement. We behaved as if we had no feelings one way or another because we were afraid. The news we had just heard was too startling, almost unbelievable. We were accustomed to sudden reverses of policy by the Party, but nothing like this had ever happened before. To play safe, it was best not to appear to react. Besides, Shanghai was in the hands of the radicals, as we all knew. Most of the local officials were their followers. Perhaps even the man who read the document to us was a Jiang Qing appointee. Shanghai people were wily; they did not wish to risk trouble by untimely laughter or cheers.

  Mrs. Zhu and I walked home together in silence, each with her own thoughts. When we opened the front gate, we saw her militia son standing on the terrace.

  “You are home already?” asked the mother.

  “Yes, it’s all over,” an
swered the son.

  I entered my part of the house and locked the door. As I walked up the stairs, I started to smile. By the time I entered my room, I was thanking God fervently. But I cautioned myself not to be overoptimistic. Obviously the arrest of the Gang of Four was the result of a power struggle within the Party leadership. It did not necessarily mean that Hua Guofeng was going to repudiate the policy of Mao. I very seriously doubted he knew any other way to govern China. Nevertheless I spent a restless night speculating on the future and composing petitions seeking my own rehabilitation and the investigation of my daughter’s death.

  Next morning, Mrs. Zhu told me that Lu Ying had called. “There is going to be a city wide parade in support of the Politburo resolution to arrest the Gang of Four. We are to assemble this afternoon at two o’clock at the Residents’ Committee office to pick up flags and slogans,” Mrs. Zhu informed me.

  I had never taken part in a parade before. The very idea of marching in formation carrying little flags and shouting slogans was abhorrent to me. I resented being herded and used in such a manner; I considered it an infringement on my privacy, if not an attempt to compromise my personal dignity. Of course, I had been able to maintain such a lofty stance all these years simply because no one had asked me to take part in a parade. Now that I was told to join one, I suddenly found it difficult to put my objections into language others could understand. While I hesitated, wondering how best to refuse, Mrs. Zhu added rather impatiently, “You will come, of course. Everybody is joining in. No one wants to be taken for a supporter of the Gang of Four, you know.”

  “I don’t think I can walk nonstop for several hours,” I said rather lamely.

  “We old ladies are required only to parade in our own district. It won’t be for more than an hour, Lu Ying told me.”

  Wouldn’t it be a great joke if the radicals in Shanghai who, Da De told me, “hated my guts” were to turn against the Gang of Four and denounce me because I refused to join a parade to demonstrate the Shanghai people’s support for their arrest? The nimble-footed Party activists were very good at assuming new stances when the Party suddenly reversed its course. Many of them were known to hop right on the new bandwagon and become the guiding light for new directions, though of course there were some inevitable casualties. I realized I had no alternative. I had to take part in this parade, my very first and, I hoped, my last.

  The Residents’ Committee ladies must have worked very hard overnight to get the flags and slogans prepared. When I got to the committee premises at two o’clock, they were piled high on the table, ready for paraders to pick up. Lu Ying told me to line up with the ladies who generally sat in our corner. It was the shortest line and the quietest. Nearly all of us and our families had been victims of the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps we had more reason to rejoice than the retired workers, the members of their families, and the young people waiting for employment. But none of us was even smiling. We had been knocked about, kicked around, and told so often that we did not belong but were merely tolerated in the shining new society of socialism that we no longer felt a part of what went on around us. We knew that in the eyes of good Communists we were an ill omen and harbingers of dangerous ideas, so that we had to be consigned to permanent isolation. Even in a parade, we had to be organized in a formation of our own. However, under our seemingly wooden exterior of unconcern, there was in fact a heightened sense of alertness born of the instinct for self-preservation.

  The parade started. Our contingent brought up the rear. As we passed through the door to go into the street, each of us accepted a paper slogan attached to a bamboo stick. Mine was a simple message saying, “Down with Jiang Qing.” In the street, we halted for a moment to be addressed by a young activist. He told us that he would walk beside our group; whenever he shouted slogans from his sheet of paper, we were to repeat them after him. Then several young people with red banners, flags, drums, and gongs took up position at the head of the column. At a signal from the young activist, we started marching four abreast, shouting slogans after him. The contingent of workers and youths soon left us to join other paraders in the center of the city; we remained circling the area in which I lived.

  We met a group similar to ours from a neighboring Residents’ Committee. Otherwise we just walked through the quiet, shabby streets without attracting attention or creating a stir. Perhaps we did not have revolutionary charisma; our demonstration was definitely not a success. The young activist gave up on us after a little over an hour, and we were allowed to return to the empty Residents’ Committee office. There we hastily laid down our slogans and fled home, not waiting for further orders.

  “Did you know we were nearly in a civil war?” Mrs. Zhu asked me after we gained the seclusion of our garden and closed the front gate.

  “Really? When?” I asked her.

  “The militia was mobilized and issued weapons. They were to march to Beijing to rescue Jiang Qing. But news of a possible uprising leaked out. The regular army surrounded the city. They had to give up. My son told me it was touch and go.”

  “It’s lucky he didn’t have to fight,” I said.

  “Indeed. Wouldn’t it have been tragic if our son had died for Jiang Qing after what we went through during the Cultural Revolution?” she said.

  Soon afterwards I heard that the radical leaders in the city had been removed from office. Some people said they were taken into custody pending investigation; others said they were merely confined in a special place to write confessions that would be used against the Gang of Four at a public trial. Not long after these rumors, new leaders were appointed to head the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee and Party Secretariat. These men’s fate during the Cultural Revolution had been very similar to that of Hua Guofeng. They had suffered denunciation by the Red Guards in the initial sweep but were soon reinstated and “came to the side of Chairman Mao’s correct policy line.” This phrase meant that they had confessed and denounced Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. After that, they were given positions as senior officials and collaborated with the radical faction headed by Jiang Qing. Their appointment was symbolic of Hua Guofeng’s brief four years in power, during which no real change of policy took place and radicals occupying official positions at the base level were not removed.

  The Eleventh Party Congress was held in August 1977, while the entire country was engrossed in a campaign of denunciation against the Gang of Four. At this Party Congress, Hua Guofeng reached the zenith of his power. Not only was he elected chairman of the Party’s Central Committee but he also became the chairman of the Party’s Military Commission, the official commander in chief of China’s armed forces. His portrait now hung side by side with that of Mao Zedong in public places. In the newspaper reports, he was referred to as “Wise Leader Chairman Hua” to differentiate him from the late “Great Leader.” Clearly a new personality cult was in the making, carefully promoted by the remaining radicals in the Party and government, who saw in Hua Guofeng a possible protective shield for their survival.

  The Party Congress reaffirmed that it would “hold high the great red flag of Mao Zedong Thought,” and Hua Guofeng pledged that he would carry out “all Chairman Mao’s policies” and obey “all Chairman Mao’s directives.”

  At the same time, the Party Congress named the commander of the 8341 Regiment responsible for the arrest of the Gang of Four, Wang Dongxing, a vice-chairman of the Central Committee. It was a reward for his contribution to Jiang Qing’s downfall. It was said that the three men of the Gang were told to attend an urgent Politburo meeting and were arrested upon their arrival at the meeting hall. But Jiang Qing had refused to attend. Wang Dongxing had to go to her home and personally put the handcuffs on her.

  Wang Dongxing was a longtime bodyguard of Mao. He was given command of the ten-thousand-man 8341 Regiment guarding Mao and other Politburo members living at Zhongnanhai because of his loyalty and devotion to Mao. It was said that his most outstanding service to Mao was bringing to his master’s attenti
on an exceptionally beautiful woman, Zhang Yufeng (Jade Phoenix), whom he placed on Mao’s special train. She became Mao’s concubine and was given the official title “secretary in charge of daily life.”

  Zhang Yufeng was the last of a succession of young females who had shared Mao’s bed. The Chinese people knew but never dared to talk about the fact that their “Great Leader” was a womanizer. In his dotage, the self-styled successor of Marx and Lenin, and the symbol of progress and enlightenment, believed, as some Chinese emperors had believed, that sexual liaisons with young virgins enhanced longevity in an old man.

  Hua Guofeng was not a strong ruler. Relatively junior in the echelons of power, and until recently almost unknown to the public and the Party rank and file, he had neither grass-roots support nor a group of trusted administrative assistants to place in key positions. Without such a power base he could not rule effectively.

  During 1977, China was in effect split into pockets of power controlled by local military commanders and Revolutionaries who interpreted Mao Zedong Thought in their own way and ignored directives from Beijing. At the same time the country was paralyzed by economic stagnation. The people had lost confidence in the Party as they watched ten years of infighting and listened to the official denunciations of one leader after another.

  The arrest of the Gang of Four was like the lifting of the tight lid of a boiling cauldron. Very quickly it overflowed. People with grievances came out to demand redress. There were demonstrations and protests by both individuals and groups. Crowds gathered outside government offices, sometimes all night long, waiting to be received by reluctant officials. Buildings were besieged. Angry young people exiled to the rural areas demanded the right to return to the cities. The walls of public buildings were covered with Big Character Posters relating personal tragedies and demanding justice. These were eagerly read by the people, who added large posters with stories of their own grievances.