by Fang Lizhi
Almost without exception, the students who were best academically were also the most active politically. I had joined the Communist movement very early, earlier than most of my classmates, but in high school I had never held any formal positions in the Federation of Democratic Youth. Things changed quickly in college. I was named immediately to be a small group leader and a branch member in the Youth League. These were lowly positions but were crucial as indications of the organization’s trust. (In Communist culture, “the organization’s trust” is a weighty thing; it anchors a person’s inner sense of security.) Later I was named to slightly higher-ranking posts, like Youth League representative and member of the Youth League general branch. These small promotions contributed much to the happy marriage between physics and Communism that I felt inside. The two were one.
My belief in Communism was utterly sincere. During my first two years in college I read some of Marx’s classic works, including A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and The Civil War in France, with meticulous attention. The books were powerfully persuasive to me. Their immutable, all-encompassing systematicity held great attraction for a young man who had recently set out in pursuit of ultimate truth in the world. Even now, my view of Marx’s underlying theories, if you peel off the Hegelian nonsense, is that they are consistent and cogent. Their simple, black-and-white conceptions of capitalism versus socialism and of the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie provide the same kind of theoretical value (as opposed to real-world value) that toy models offer. The works of Lenin and Mao did not give me that same expansive feeling that I found in Marx, but statements from Mao like “Only socialism can save China” and “Without the Communist Party there would be no new China” struck me as truths similar in nature to the laws of physics.
To us students, the Communist Party represented not only truth but moral authority. To get into the Party, a student faced three stringent tests: in political ideology, staunch belief in Communism; in academics, a superior record; and in moral character, not the slightest vulnerability. The admissions process required one to undertake a merciless dissection of every past thought and action that might contain any seed of evil, however minor, and then to take action to wash that seed away. Party admission, if it came, was a marvelous honor. It meant that one had transcended the foul mire of the ordinary world and had turned into a person made of special stuff, rather like a person qualified to vote for God.
The comparison to religion is not far-fetched. The Communist Party in that era, at least to us university students, was more like a realm of rapture than a political party. It was an altar higher than which there was nowhere to reach. All converts standing before it sought the indulgence and acceptance of its exalted authority by constantly applying its precepts while washing dust from their bodies, minds, and souls. And it was a convert’s duty, before the altar, to offer up all: one’s body, mind, and spirit; one’s misfortunes, sufferings, and sorrows; one’s joys, one’s loves …
My own romance grew from this context. Li Shuxian and I were in the same class in the physics department. She was on the organization committee of the Youth League, and I, an ordinary member, was entrusted to her management. On her first foray to exercise that management, she set out for the women’s dormitory to look for me. We first-year students had arrived on campus not knowing one another, and it was her duty, as soon as everyone had moved in, to go meet all the Youth League members in our group. She had been given my name orally, and from the sound “Lizhi” had guessed that the characters were li (丽) “beautiful” and zhi (芝) “mushroom,” a lovely and fitting name for this new comrade in the Youth League who—obviously—would be found in the women’s dormitory. Eventually she did find the real Fang Lizhi, and I think that that original miscue may have played a role in leaving her with an especially deep impression that Fang Lizhi was, emphatically, male. I, of course, simultaneously made the discovery that my Youth League superior, a person in a position to give me orders, was female. (By the way, we have always called each other by our full names, Li Shuxian and Fang Lizhi, both before marriage and after, which is why I do so in this book.)
Maybe every boy who goes to an all-male high school finds it difficult to accept the idea of taking orders from a girl. Something just doesn’t feel right. Although I accepted the authority of my boss Li Shuxian, I did not respect it. I started secretly to monitor her abilities. Could she really manage us? What made things worse is that I had been an ace student in high school and had developed a fierce competitive streak. I would not bow to anything that exceeded me, and still less was going to bow to such a thing if it were female. I had to win! Inaudibly, a serious competition between us was launched.
After the first few rounds I had to admit that my adversary was more than I had bargained for. First, I had to face the unpleasant fact that every time I got a good score on a physics test, she got one, too. I waited for her to stumble—only to find that I myself tended to stumble at the same spots. So in academics it was a draw. Then there was debate class. I had always liked the class, because I had a knack for coming up with fresh perspectives that won approval from my classmates. The trouble was that each time I raked in another little harvest of plaudits, Li Shuxian would stand up with a few words of cool rebuttal and cart away half of the bounty for herself. So there, too, things were a draw. In certain areas I demolished her, though. I could write poetry. On New Year’s Day in 1954, the university chose my poem “Raise a Wineglass and Think of the World” for broadcast all across campus. Unfortunately, though, there were other areas in which she demolished me. Like running. She ran the 800-meter distance on the women’s varsity track team.
In the fall of 1954 there was a campuswide competition to select Three-Good Students. Three-Goods were students who stood out in each of three areas: academics, moral behavior (which included, importantly, political performance), and physical ability. The phrase originated with Mao Zedong, responding to a request from another Party official, Hu Yaobang, for a good capsule phrase for such students. Twenty-eight Three-Good Students were selected that year on the Peking University campus, and seven of them were from the junior class in the physics department. Li Shuxian and I were two of the seven. This meant that after two years of head-to-head competition, she and I were still at a draw. My respect for her was born at that Three-Good moment. I didn’t come close to showing the fact in public, though.
After the stage of competition came the stage of platonic love. The Three-Good honor caused each of us to view the other as something special, but neither of us dared to use words, and we never tried to meet in private. Whenever chance placed the two of us in the same place at the same time, there was an unspoken understanding that one of us would look for a third classmate to join us. On the weekends there were dances. Li Shuxian liked them, and she danced well. I almost never went, and never once danced with her. I was no good at twirls or sashays, and I knew it.
But there was one time each day, at the same hour, when we did meet for a few minutes. We both studied in the university’s main library in the evenings, although not in the same place. I was usually downstairs, she upstairs, and there were always other classmates around us. At 9:45 a bell rang and the library closed. Everybody got up, donned backpacks, and headed into the night toward the dormitories. Outdoor lights were few, and the crowd in the darkness was like a river of shadows, no one’s face distinct. Still, guided by some kind of mysterious intuition, Li Shuxian and I always ended up finding each other. Then we floated with the river, shoulder to shoulder—but always at a safe distance of about six inches. We talked about the day’s homework, or something that had happened in class, never anything sentimental. When we reached the dorms there was a routine “good-bye” and separation, but what lingered, unspoken in both of us, was the anticipation of the next day, when amid that same murky stream, another two-way search would open.
We thought (at least I did) that this sort of budding romance should be an offering. Our feelings, our love
, should in the first instance—and perhaps entirely—be devoted to our faith and our enterprise, which was Communism. How could we, so soon, let the small matter of love between two people dilute that greater and more devout love? What’s more, I was our class president at the time, she was a member of the general branch of the Youth League, and we both wanted to join the Party. This was the time, if ever there was one, to offer our love to the Party.
Near the end of 1954, Li Shuxian’s application to join the Party was approved—before mine was. On the evening when I heard the news, I stayed away from the library and did not study physics all night. Instead I wrote her this poem:
Every day, the day gets its dawn
But a person gets only one life.
Every year, the year gets a May
But a person gets only one youth.
The dawn in early spring has its allure
And the life of youth glistens yet more
But, I ask: What can rival that special title that now crowns your youth?
Would you not say my blood, too, is as pure, as eager,
That my heart, too, is a seed of fire?
“Special title” meant “member of the Communist Party.” For me, romance and Communism had melded into one, just as physics and Communism had.
About six months later we finally walked out of the Platonic world and into the real one. It was May 1, 1955, International Labor Day, an important Communist holiday. In the evening, after participating in the cheering and dancing in Tiananmen Square, we slipped away from our classmates (no longer asking them to accompany) and, like many lovers before us, walked hand in hand to Zhongshan Park.
Wafting tree branches and glittering city lights in the distance lent an unfathomable tenderness to the dim calm. Suddenly, in the high vault of heaven, dazzling fireworks launched from Tiananmen rose, and rose higher still, then fell, one ball of light after another, spreading downward, surrounding us on all sides, wrapping us in a curtain of color. What could possibly be more sweet than this? How could anything exceed our feelings at that moment of support and love for each other?
Inside us, though, we were also carrying the seeds of disaster. These were buried in our other common passion, physics.
I cannot make clear in a few short sentences the many ways in which physics influences human life and society. I should stress, though, that science is much more than lifeless formulae. The spirit and philosophy of physics interact with human life and society in ways that cause some people to fear it, others to love it, and yet others to take abuse for it. You could even say, speaking of the abused, that physics is a new kind of Forbidden Fruit: eating it brings a person wisdom and suffering at the same time.
Skepticism is an indispensable starting point in physics. A person who cannot begin in skepticism, or who lacks the ability to raise questions independently, will never master physics. Physics does not ask you to memorize what is known to be true or false; it teaches you how to find truth for yourself and how to distinguish truth from falsity. Even for the truths handed down from the great masters, when it comes your turn to learn them, if you really want to “get it,” you have to start by doubting, by confronting the same questions yourself, and then making your own rediscoveries of the truths. Niels Bohr once pointed out that anyone who is not perplexed when first encountering quantum mechanics cannot possibly understand quantum mechanics.
In our university courses in Marxism, however, the starting point was very different. We were taught that Marxism is a science, indeed the science of all sciences, yet one of our teachers was fond of saying, “The best we can ever do here is to recapitulate Marx with elegance.” Something struck me as strange: Science is based in doubt, yet the science of sciences needs only recapitulation? How is that? This was the first little crack in my faith that “physics, romance, and Communism are three in one.”
The first time the little crack appeared in public was on February 27, 1955. The occasion was the First Congress of the Youth League of Peking University. Sessions were held in the auditorium of the main administration building. The topic of the congress was the work and responsibilities of the Youth League, and the mode of discussion borrowed a page from Marxism class: elegant recapitulation. In fact, the Party leaders had already determined all of the League’s plans, and the objective of the speeches was just to inculcate the messages. The main message was that the Three-Good program is good—more students should compete for the honor.
I was one of the physics department’s representatives to the Congress. Li Shuxian was not officially a representative but attended in her role of deputy secretary of the Youth League’s general branch. The physics department at the time had more Three-Good students than any other department; fully a third of our delegation were Three-Goods. After day one of the congress, though, we were all bored. We were Three-Goods ourselves, but so what? Did that mean everybody else had to be one, too? We didn’t think so. Why homogenize people? Didn’t scientific creativity come from trying to be distinctive? We decided to revolt. Out with the boredom! To be sure we got everybody’s attention, we plotted to seize the podium the next day.
The chair of the next day’s meeting was the secretary of the Peking University branch of the Youth League, Hu Qili. (Hu was eventually promoted to the Central Committee of the Communist Party but was purged after the Tiananmen events of 1989.) The next speaker after Hu was to be Ni Wansun, general branch secretary for the physics department. Our plot was that when Ni was about halfway through his talk, I would jump up on stage, take the microphone, and start ad-libbing. Ni was our coconspirator, so this much of the plan went smoothly. For a few minutes neither Hu Qili nor any of the several hundred delegates in the audience was aware that anything was going awry. Only the physics delegation knew that a coup was under way.
My first ad-libbing point was that the congress so far had been deadly dull and needed a much livelier atmosphere. Next I said that the real question we need to be asking is, “What kind of people does the Youth League want us to become?” Simpleminded, rule-following bookworms—or thinkers with independent minds? Should the Youth League’s goal be that everybody gets all the right answers in every subject, or that all young people learn to think for themselves and be distinctive?
I spoke in a voice somewhat louder than normal, and to call my tone “inflammatory” would not have been unfair. After I finished, some physics students from the class below ours, the sophomores, came up on stage and continued in the same vein, adding fuel to the flames. The agenda for the session was by now so thoroughly disrupted that the next scheduled speaker did not know what to do and declined to ascend the podium. A buzz engulfed the audience. Hu Qili, as chair, then came to the microphone to say that the questions the physics students had raised were very good and warranted discussion by the whole group. The afternoon’s agenda was changed to small-group discussions of the question, “What kind of people should our education produce?” The Peking University newspaper reported the day’s events, with approval.
We had won. And yet, just as our spirits were peaking, a senior in the physics department came over and said, “You people are in for it.” He sympathized with us but wanted us to be warned that our view was “incorrect.” He told us about a meeting he had attended in 1951 whose purpose had been to criticize “bourgeois tendencies” among professors. “Independent thinking” had been the main item among the incorrect bourgeois tendencies.
At first we thought this student was too nervous and set his warning aside. How could independent thinking really be a mistake? But sure enough, the next day the university Party Committee announced an abrupt end to the “small-group discussions” that had just been born. Then, a week later, another meeting was convened. Every Youth League member who had attended the congress was summoned to the auditorium. This time there was only one speaker—Jiang Longji, the university’s Party Secretary. He spoke for five hours without a break. He started with history and moved to the present, then spoke of foreign countries and m
oved to China, then spoke of old people and moved to the young. He said that the question “What kind of people should our education produce?” needed no further discussion because the Party’s policy on education had already answered it with perfect clarity. There was no need for “independent thinking” because Marx, Lenin, Mao, and the Communist Party had already thought so well on behalf of the people that there was no possible way to do any better. Why waste energy on redundant questions?
Ni Wansun, who was a Party member, was officially criticized. So were all the other Party members who had taken part. The university newspaper published a self-criticism. I was spared formal criticism, probably because I was not yet a Party member.
Our little rebellion was quashed but did not bring major disaster upon us. This was, in part, just luck; our caper occurred when no great class struggle was going on. About two years later, Ni Wansun, Li Shuxian, and I participated in another rebellion, which in substance was much milder. That one, though, took place during the fever pitch of a class-struggle campaign, and this made disaster inevitable. Ni paid for it with twenty-two years of his life. (I’ll return to this story in the next chapter.)
I joined the Party on June 1, 1955, four months after the skirmish at the Youth League meeting. I found it odd that all through the process of my entering the Party, no one asked me to make a self-criticism about my inflammatory speech. Ni Wansun was one of my sponsors for Party membership.