6
This Piano Was Acquired by Exploiting the People
To all revolutionary intellectuals,
Now is the time to fight.
Let us unite.
(Dazibao of 1966)
The East is red
The sun has risen.
Mao Zedong has appeared in China.
He is devoted to the people’s welfare.
He is the people’s great savior.
(Anthem from the Cultural Revolution)
Early one June morning in 1966, the music that woke us was louder than usual. Jolted from sleep, I sat straight up, filled with a sense of foreboding. We were scarcely out of bed when we were instructed to assemble in the Conservatory’s auditorium.
“Professors, workers, and students,” our director began, as an article from that day’s newspaper was being handed out, “we have just received some very important news. Please read this immediately. We must discuss it.”
The article was a reprint of a Dazibao2 that had been written a few days earlier by a certain Nie Yuanzi, a philosophy professor at Beida, Beijing’s largest university. In the article, Nie violently denounced the university’s rector and the municipality of Beijing, accusing both of being revisionists. To defend the Cultural Revolution, she called upon the Chinese people to take up arms.
The reaction in the hall was one of astonishment. The Revolution was in danger! Discussions continued afterwards outside, and we met to examine Nie Yuanzi’s article in greater depth.
Each time someone began to speak, I couldn’t keep myself from trembling: someone was going to accuse me, I was sure of it. My father had hidden something about his past, and it would be revealed; I’d be thrown into the abyss. I tried to calm myself down. We had to trust in Mao, he was right, he was by definition right. It couldn’t be otherwise.
But the target was someone much more important—the Conservatory’s director. I was overlooked that day. The few students who had taken charge of the discussions insinuated that she might be a revisionist and an anti-revolutionary. The Conservatory immediately split into two groups: those defending the director and those opposing her. I joined the ranks of the supporters. The person who had made me write my self-criticism, who accompanied us on every Shang shan xia xiang—how could she be against Chairman Mao?
This was explained to us: because of the Conservatory’s leadership, we had received a bourgeois education, which had cut us off from the lifeblood of the New China—its peasants, soldiers, and workers. The sentimentalism of the works we had been taught had led us to become egotists, concerned only with elitism. We had forgotten about class struggle and had placed ourselves above the proletariat. In doing so, we had jeopardized the central goal of the revolution: to bring dignity and well-being to the oppressed. Hence, we had been trained to be enemies of the revolution and thus enemies of the people.
Wasn’t this in fact true? we asked each other. I thought back to the old peasant woman who had suffered so much in her youth, and her gratitude to Chairman Mao for everything he had done for her. Under the erroneous guidance of our professors and their admiration of foreign music, we were in the process of cutting ourselves off from her, and didn’t people like her matter the most?
The agitation grew. Dazibaos, denunciations, insults, and abuse: the extremist students progressively took over, organizing meeting after meeting, fanning the flames. Most of them were from high-ranking Communist families and had been admitted to the Conservatory based on their political merits rather than on their talent. They were excellent students when it came to general subjects, but their lackluster musical gifts put them in an uncomfortable position with the best of our music professors.
The very professors who were to be targeted next.
We were told to gather on the sports field. When I arrived, I saw our teachers on their knees on the running track, surrounded by Red Guards.3
“Comrades, here are the guilty ones!” yelled a Red Guard.
He turned towards them:
“You are all bourgeois intellectuals. Because of you, professors, the Conservatory is betraying the Revolution. Because of you, this place has become a temple of elitism. Because of you, a student attempted to commit suicide!”
My heart nearly stopped. I thought he was going to ask me to step out of the crowd. But no, he continued his litany of insults. I caught my breath while the Red Guards required each professor to deliver a self-criticism. They were forced to bow ever lower before us. When the oldest ones attempted to straighten up, a blow to the neck pushed them to the ground.
“That’s not enough! Delve deeper! You are hiding things. Give us details!” they shouted at each person in turn.
Then the violence escalated: the Red Guards took off their belts, swung them above the kneeling professors, and struck them. The buckles scraped, cut, and dug into them.
From a distance, I could see the men and women on their knees. By now, most were bleeding. A violin instructor’s head had been gashed open. He was bald, and the blood dripping from his wounds turned his head completely red. He looked close to death. I was afraid, but at the same time I was ashamed of my fear. To bolster my courage, I thought constantly of the face of the old, oppressed peasant woman. One had to chose between classes—that was the law of the Revolution. I chose to side with the oppressed over the bourgeois and the petit-bourgeois. The bloody scene horrified me, but this was the price one had to pay for New China’s future.
The bloodbath went on and on. Each self-criticism ended with blows and wounds.
“He is guilty,” one of the Red Guards decided.
“He is guilty,” we had to reply in unison, before endlessly shouting, our fists in the air: “Long live Mao and the Revolution!”
I saw Professor Pan in the crowd. He was too young to be on the running track with the other professors, but he no doubt sensed that his time would come. The self-criticism session came to an end. The Red Guards doused each professor in ink, then flour and water, before parading them in front of us as we shouted:
“Long live Mao and the Revolution!”
In the days that followed, the violence spread. We lashed out against the teaching staff. We wrote one Dazibao after another, each day searching for something new to say, whether it was based on fact or not: “It is our professors’ fault that we have had a bad education!” “The father of our Russian professor translated Chiang Kai-shek!”
Professor Pan was no longer spared. A number of Dazibaos found fault with him. “Pan Yiming has given us a bourgeois education. He invited us to his home. We ate bourgeois food there. He took us traveling.” “Pan Yiming had us work on Chopin’s Ballade No. 2. He told us, without criticizing it, that the piece was inspired by a poem composed by the Polish bourgeois intellectual Adam Mickiewicz.” We wrote so many Dazibaos that there was not enough room on the walls for them to remain posted for more than a day.
Our professors were paraded all day long in the school’s courtyard or made to clean the toilets. The most senior among them were suspected of collaboration with the old order; they suffered the worst abuse. Our teachers no longer dared speak to us, and fled when they caught sight of a student. We no longer addressed them, either. When I met Professor Pan, I didn’t say anything and pretended I didn’t know him. Now I understood that what he had given me was nothing compared with the damage he had inflicted by educating me to be an intellectual.
Some didn’t survive. Like a number of other major Chinese intellectuals, two piano teachers from the Shanghai Conservatory—Gu Shengying and Li Cuizhen—decided to take their own lives.
After having been beaten and humiliated in public, Gu Shengying killed herself, along with her mother and brother. It was rumored that she had turned on the gas, sat down at her piano, and played Chopin’s Funeral March. The news of her death came as a terrible shock. She was a very beautiful, delicate woman who had performed at the very first concert I ever attended. That evening, she had interpreted Chopin’s Scherzos with sim
plicity, fluidity, and lightness of touch. As I listened, I had made a wish: one day I hoped to be able to play like her.
She was followed by another legendary musician: Li Cuizhen. When I was very young, people often asked: “Do you know who is the only Chinese pianist to have all of Beethoven’s thirty-two sonatas and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in her repertoire?” She had dedicated her life to music, and was a role model for us all. She had put on her loveliest concert attire—in which she had given so many magnificent concerts—and ended her days.
Why would such a great artist refuse to take the path that was leading us to socialism? Why hadn’t she trusted in Chairman Mao? Her choice was a sign of cowardice. Every day, at each meeting and in each self-criticism session, we were told: the Revolution is in grave danger, the class struggle must continue. If not, the traitors of the proletariat will reestablish the old order. At sixteen years old, the only thing I could do was to believe this. It was a question of survival, but also one of ideals: at that age one yearns to give oneself, body and soul, to a great cause. And wasn’t the well-being of the proletariat a worthy cause?
The Conservatory had drifted into such a state of anarchy that the Central Committee decided to step in. I was on the front lines, standing at the school’s entrance, when twenty soldiers arrived to reestablish order. We cheered them on, calling out our encouragement. The army had now become my role model. I admired them—the Chushen hao, those with “good family backgrounds”—they were courageous, dedicated, and selfless. I was impressed by their uniforms. For me, like many others who were followers rather than leaders, the fact that the military had taken charge of the Conservatory was more than just reassuring: it was an honor.
We were immediately told to assemble in the auditorium for a meeting. A soldier urged us to see reason:
“Order must be restored here! Students, you are not solely in charge of the Revolution!”
A semblance of calm was restored. Each class was placed under the authority of a soldier. To calm the extremists’ enthusiasm, the army interrogated them about the details of their own activities over the “last seventeen years”—as the expression went—that is, since 1949.
But the lull in the storm was short-lived. A new rift appeared, between those who supported the soldiers and those who opposed them. The latter maintained that the army’s intervention was anti-revolutionary. They wrote to Madame Mao, accusing the military of stifling the Revolution. Mao himself took the students’ side, proclaiming that investigations into what they had done in the “last seventeen years” should stop; the only thing that mattered was their support for the Revolution today. A few days later, an order from the Central Committee came down: the soldiers were to vacate the premises.
One by one, I was deprived of my reference points: first the director, then the army…Clearly, I didn’t understand a thing about either the Revolution or the class struggle. I was tired of always being on the wrong side, losing each battle, making a mess of everything. My friends kept repeating that Mao was always right, that the best strategy was to follow him, even if it wasn’t always clear where he was leading us. So, we followed. It was the safest way—the only way—to reassure ourselves. We had to go forward, abandon music, heed Chairman Mao’s call, and seize the initiative of the Revolution.
The soldiers’ departure foretold disaster.
In late July, a directive from the Ministry of Culture ordered the suspension of all classes at the Conservatory. The “Conservatory without music” became the “Conservatory without teaching.”
Soon after, it was announced that Mao was going to deliver a key speech in Tiananmen Square. Before hundreds of thousands of frenzied young people brandishing The Little Red Book, a group of students presented Chairman Mao with an armband with “Red Guard” written on it. By accepting it he officially gave the movement his blessing. The most extremist students at the Conservatory now believed they had taken power with Mao’s public and unconditional support.
The first victims were the Chushen bu hao. At first, I kept a low profile, but I quickly understood that I was of no interest to the Red Guards. Mama Zheng, the man who had looked after us like a mother, was much more interesting prey.
The extremist students went to the infirmary, the very place where, for so long, he had taken care of us. They forced him to his knees and shouted insults:
“What were you doing in Indonesia, you dirty dog? Why did you come to China? Why did you give your fortune to the Conservatory, you stinking bourgeois? Spy!”
The old man didn’t know what to say. He wept, voicelessly.
That night, there was a thunderstorm over Beijing. We couldn’t sleep because of the thunder and lighting, the wind and the rain. We lay silently awake in the dormitory listening to the storm—together, and yet so alone.
In the morning, we learned that Mama Zheng had hung himself from a tree in the courtyard, in front of the infirmary.
We didn’t dare look at each other, but we remembered the storm and the sky’s fury. Images of Mama Zheng came back to me—how he would rub my hands when I was eleven, his glasses of hot water that had done me so much good. I felt that something unimaginable had occurred.
And yet, at that time in my life, I could no longer separate the guilty from the innocent, the victim from the torturer. Deep in my heart I asked Mama Zheng: Why didn’t you trust Chairman Mao? Why, like Gu Shengying and Li Cuizhen, did you lack courage?
Shortly thereafter, the Conservatory’s siren went off at two in the morning. We awoke with a start and were ordered to assemble immediately in the auditorium. This time it was Cunzhi, one of my schoolmates and a wonderful bassoonist, who was on stage. He was tied up and surrounded by six Red Guards—five women and a man—who had begun to beat him with their belts even before our arrival. The Guards waited for the hall to fill up. It was absolutely silent. Then, a girl addressed the crowd:
“Comrades, something extremely serious has occurred. This worthless Cunzhi has tried to oppose the regime. We have found a rifle and a Guomindang flag in his possession!”
At this, the Red Guards began to kick him mercilessly.
“I am innocent, I don’t understand any of this! I am loyal to Chairman Mao!” Cunzhi moaned.
Each of his denials was met with another kick or blow from a belt. He could no longer speak. Finally the Red Guards dragged him by the arms out of the hall. Mercifully, Dapeng—a trombonist who was politically very well regarded—discretely intervened:
“Leave him be or he will die.”
The Red Guards ordered us back to our rooms. We were rigid with fear; it was impossible to fall back to sleep. Who was guilty? Who was completely above suspicion? I could not stop thinking about my family and its past.
At dawn, I rushed to my parents’ home.
“Mother, is there a rifle in the house?
My mother had no idea what I was talking about.
“Why, do you want to shoot someone?”
I persisted:
“Mother, has anything of a compromising nature been hidden in the house?”
Finally I described what had happened at the Conservatory. I was terrified that the Red Guards might have followed me. She told me that my father was being held at the university under close surveillance.
For a few seconds, we were silent, sharing the same thoughts.
“Xiao-Mei,” she said, “we have nothing to feel guilty about. The only thing that could be considered dangerous for us is the piano. We have to get rid of it.”
I agreed. We had to sever our connection with this symbol of the past. There was no point in holding onto it: we were not going to put ourselves in danger because of a piano.
My mother went out and flagged down the first Red Guards she met. She asked them to help her get rid of the piano immediately. They came in and took a look.
“Out of the question,” they said. “We’re not touching it.”
A worthless thing, too heavy to move, was their assessment. There was onl
y one thing to do: we gathered up all the old covers we could find and piled them on the piano to make it look like a cupboard. One cover, then two, then three! The more we tried to hide it, the larger it grew, or so it seemed. It was no longer visible, but its presence was more apparent than ever. As a precaution, we hung a Dazibao on it:
“This piano was acquired by exploiting the people,
through their sweat and blood
We want to return it to the people.”
A few days later, at the end of August 1966, the violence reached a new height. The People’s Daily appealed to the Red Guards: “One by one, drive out the old parasites, the bloodsuckers hiding in the shadows.” This time it was quite clear: the Red Guards weren’t going to come get me at the Conservatory, but rather, at home.
7
A Bonfire of Bach
A revolution is not a dinner party; it is an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
(Mao Zedong)
I was at home with my mother, my grandmother, and my two younger sisters late one afternoon when we heard a noise outside. Someone began to hammer on the door. We jumped in fear, looking at each other. When I opened the door, I found myself face to face with five members of the Red Guard:
“Your father is a criminal. We are interrogating him at the university, and he has begun to confess. As of this moment, he has no rights. Are you hiding anything here?”
“No,” my mother answered.
“That’s a lie.”
The Red Guards entered and scrutinized each of us in turn. Then, wordlessly, they began to ransack the apartment. We silently remained standing, stiff with fear, waiting.
“Are these yours?”
The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations Page 6