Spider Eaters: A Memoir

by R Yang

  On the evening before Aunty left (fortunately she had kept her old home in the city, to which now she could return), Father gathered our whole family together. Solemnly he made a pledge to her. He said that he would continue to support her financially for as long as she lived. Although for the time being she had to leave, she would always be a member of our family. She needn't worry about her old age.

  That was, in my opinion, the exact right thing to say at the right moment. Even today when I look back on it, I am proud of Father for what he said on that hot summer evening thirty years ago. By then tens of thousands of nannies were being driven out of their employers' homes in Beijing, and who knows how many in the whole country. But few people had the kindness and generosity to say what Father said.

  Aunty said nothing in return. But she was moved. From then on, she took our family to be her own. Instead of a burden, she became a pillar for our family through one storm after another. She did not quit until all her strength was used up.

  14

  Red Guards Had No Sex

  After Aunty left, I returned home even less often. Home was no longer the safe haven I once loved to hide in. Now it had become a nest of troubles, making me feel frustrated and vulnerable. So why not stay away from it? The things one's eyes do not see will not disturb one's heart.

  Starting in late August 1966, Red Guards were beginning to travel to all parts of China free of charge. Our task was to spread the idea of the Cultural Revolution. We were seeds of fire. Chairman Mao was the spring wind. The trains and buses were waiting for us. The only thing I needed to do was to make up my mind about a target place.

  I thought Guangzhou was a good idea, a semitropical city. Coconut trees stood tall, waving their fronds on the banks of the Pearl River. More than a hundred years ago, Lin Zexu, Emperor Daoguang's high commissioner, had confiscated opium from foreigners and destroyed it here. Later seventy-two revolutionary martyrs had rebelled against the Qing empire and laid down their lives for a dream of a republic. But for me, Guangzhou's attraction lay primarily in its geographic location: it was the southern tip of China, far away from Beijing. After I made revolution there, I could take my time and tour many other places on my way back.

  My mind made up, I asked my fellow Red Guards where they wanted to go. "Shanghai." "Hunan." "Sichuan." "Heilongjiang." One girl said she was going to Tibet and it took her a month to reach Lhasa. Another went to Yunnan and reached the border of Vietnam. In the end it turned out that nearly thirty Red Guards from rot wanted to go to Guangzhou. We formed a combat team.

  Overnight we obtained our train tickets. The next day we were ready to set off. No one in our team had any luggage. All I took for this expedition of over two thousand miles were the little red book, a fountain pen, a notebook, a couple of undergarments, a hand towel, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and thirty yuan that Father gave me. A grass-green canvas bag was large enough to hold all of these.

  We were not tourists. Our trip was not for fun and comfort. We were soldiers going out to war against an old world. In fact many of us thought at the time that this trip would be a turning point in our lives, the beginning of our careers as "professional revolutionary experts."

  From now on, we no longer need envy our parents for their heroic deeds in revolutionary wars and feel sorry because we were born too late. Like the forerunners we admired, now we are going to places where forces of darkness still reign and dangers lurk. We will enlighten and organize the masses, dig out hidden enemies, shed our blood, and sacrifice our lives for the final victory of the Cultural Revolution.

  Our train left Beijing in the evening. As we were given hard-sleeper tickets, we slept through the night. The next morning, I woke up at dawn. Too excited to go back to sleep. I sat down next to a window and put my left arm on the windowsill. The cool morning air rushed in and plucked at my Red Guard's armband, turning it into a small ball of fire. After a while I took off my cap and let the wind blow through my hair.

  By this time I had cut my hair very short. About two inches on top of my head and shorter underneath. Yet I was not the most radical female Red Guard at ioi. I knew that a couple of girls had shaved their heads, and they were very proud of it. I envied their courage, but I could not bring myself to do such a thing.

  Besides my hair, my face had been blackened by the sun. My limbs were firm and nimble. After riding the bike all over Beijing for two months, I had lost fat and grown muscles. My clothes had a sour smell of sweat day and night. My fingernails sheltered much dirt. When I took off my sneakers, my feet gave out a stench that was worse than that of the boys. I know Mother and Aunty would be very upset if they saw me like this. But I like it this way!

  A while later a boy and a girl who were about ten came over and I gave them some candies. They called me "Uncle Red Guard." Even their mother, who sat down on the opposite seat, did not seem to notice that I was not an "uncle." This was a nice surprise! I did not correct their mistake. Somehow I really liked the kids (who were only four or five years younger than me) calling me "Uncle Red Guard."

  Then the loudspeaker announced that breakfast was ready. Three Red Guards in our group volunteered to go to the dining car to get box meals for everybody. Later when we asked them how much we owed them, they said: "Forget it. Money is not important. Private ownership men tality is on its way out. Our money is yours. Your money is ours. We are comrades-in-arms. We are of the same family." This idea appealed to all of us. So from then on we took turns to buy meals for the whole team.

  Between meals there wasn't much for us to do except watch the landscape. The trip was long, over forty hours before we could reach Guangzhou. After a while we all got a bit bored. So we decided to make a revolution on the train.

  The idea was to inquire into the family background and class status of all passengers in sleeping cars and make those who were not workers, poor and lower-middle peasants, or soldiers give up their beds to those who were in hard-seat cars. Once we made this plan, we carried it out. No need to waste our time asking permission from anyone. Chairman Mao was our commander. We were his "little red devils." He put power in our hands. We were responsible only to him.

  So in less than an hour we purified the sleeping cars. Well, almost. It turned out that nearly half the passengers had problems in either one or both categories. We told them to leave. They obeyed. All of them except a group of five young men and women who were from Shanghai.

  As these people failed to see the significance of our revolutionary act, we tried to reason with them.

  "Workers, poor, and lower-middle peasants are masters of our country. So they should travel as masters, not as second-class or third-class citizens. Moreover, on this train, you see, some of them are old. Some are suffering from illnesses. Some have small children. You people are young and healthy. Is it right that you let them sit on those hard seats for two nights in a row while you sleep on these comfortable beds?"

  "Well," one of them talked back, "frankly I don't see anything wrong in that. If they want, they too can buy tickets for sleeping cars and have beds here. But they don't want to spend the money. They prefer to go hard seats. If that's their choice, you respect their choice. As for us, we have spent our money on the more expensive tickets, we are entitled to travel more comfortably. Our right is guaranteed by law. And law is sacred!" Thus a debate started between us in a sleeping car that was already half empty. Debate was what we Red Guards had been doing these two months. We all loved to debate.

  "You said `law is sacred.' That is not right!" I retorted. Point of needle against sharp blade. "Not all laws are sacred. We should do a class analysis first. If the laws are made by capitalists and landlords to protect their property and interests, they are not sacred to the revolution ary people! We ought to violate them! We need to abolish them! That is what revolution is all about! Otherwise how can old orders be toppled? How can workers and peasants ever stand up? Where would new China have come from? How can we liberate humankind? ... "

  The deba
te went on along this line. I thought our argument was very convincing. If it failed to enlighten our opponents, it was because they lacked proletarian feelings. After all, they were all from petty bourgeois families. Now they had run out of things to say. Yet they refused to budge. After a few minutes of tense silence, one of them burst out.

  "If you say giving up beds to workers and poor peasants is a revolutionary act, not a punishment, why don't you do it yourselves? Why do you order other people to do it? You are even younger than us! You don't really need the beds either. Red Guards should have the deepest proletarian feelings for the workers and peasants. Red Guards should set examples for others. Give up your beds first!"

  Hearing this, we all became indignant. What impudence! Now these people are not debating. They are attacking us! Is this class revenge? We must heighten our vigilance! Who has heard of such a thing: Red Guards get kicked out by a bunch of bastards from bourgeois families? Of course we won't let them have their way! We can't give in on a matter of principle!

  Just as my comrades and I were about to counterattack, the train pulled into a big station. Wuhan or Changsha, I don't remember exactly which. When the carriage doors opened, it became clear that in the hard-seat cars as well, Red Guards were making a revolution. They too had checked out the passengers' class status and rounded up a group of capitalists, landlords, and other bad elements. Now they were driving these class enemies off the train.

  The "snake demons and cow ghosts" were all old men and women, driven out of Beijing by the revolutionary masses. All had been severely beaten on the train. As they walked past our window on the platform, one old woman especially caught my attention. She had what the Chinese called "looks of good fortune," which means she was rather heavy. Now her weight and her bound feet gave her a great deal of difficulty as she walked. Her hair was completely white. From her head blood poured down like a stream. It fell on her white shirt. The shirt was a mess. Although she looked ready to drop to the ground at any moment, a female Red Guard about my age was still thrashing her on the head with an iron-buckled army belt.

  I could not watch such a scene. Yet I could not turn my eyes away from it. In my heart of hearts I really pitied the old woman and wished that I could do something to save her, although rationally I believed that violence was both inevitable and necessary to a great revolution. "This poor old woman," I thought, "she's on her last legs. She will probably not be able to make it. Her family in Beijing and her relatives in the countryside will never find out what happened to her. Actually it is better that they never find out! That female Red Guard is really something!"

  Finally the bell rang and the train started to move. I heaved a sigh of relief and turned to face our opponents once again. But to my great surprise, I found that they had all disappeared. They must have sneaked out of the sleeping car after they saw what happened on the platform. So the victory belonged to us, as it always did. But this time it was not so sweet. We lost our chance to win the debate. And debate was a great way to kill time.

  Today as I write about this incident, I am amazed by how honest people were in 1966. On that train who would know if they lied about their family background and class status? Most of them were traveling alone. There was no way for us to verify what they said. And we did not even intend to. We simply took their word for it. Yet so many people told us the truth, and we punished them for it. Ten years down the road such an incident would be unthinkable. By that time, almost all Chinese had learned to tell a few lies. We could lie with confidence. We could lie with passion. At first it was to protect ourselves. Then we got used to it. Today millions of people in China are cheating one another, telling big and small lies without blushing, to gain something, to brag, or just to make fools of others. Who is to blame for this degeneration of our moral character? The Chinese Communist Party? The Western influence? But what about us? What about me? It pains me to think about what I have done to the younger generation who cannot believe that once upon a time people had been so foolishly honest in China ...

  When we arrived at Guangzhou, we stationed ourselves temporarily at a middle school. We decided that as "professional revolutionary experts" we should spend a few days investigating the situation before we mobilized the people. So by day we went out in small groups to middle schools, universities, and various work units to read dazibao and talk to people.

  In early September, Guangzhou was still as hot and humid as a huge steamer. The local people were all wearing shorts and T-shirts. Most of them had no shoes on. Even so they'd much prefer to sit in the shade and fan themselves with round palm-leaf fans. Old people drank Noon Tea, a very bitter herb tea, and the kids ate red bean ice to drive the fire out of their bodies.

  When we went out, however, we always put on the complete outfit of a Red Guard: army uniforms with long sleeves and long pants, caps on our heads, belts around our waists, armbands, army sneakers, canvas bags, and little red books. The local people looked at us with amazement as well as sympathy. Sweat rained down our foreheads and soaked our clothes. But we would not wear skirts, blouses, and sandals. Anything that would make girls look like girls was bourgeois. We covered up our bodies so completely that I almost forgot I was a girl. I was a Red Guard. Others were Red Guards too. And that was it.

  Thanks to the outfit, once I almost fainted on the sports ground of a middle school, where I talked to a thousand people about what had happened recently in Beijing. In those days we were all such vehement speakers that we could easily go on for hours, talking about class struggles, line struggles, struggles inside the Party and outside the Party. Elaborate on historical lessons. Analyze the revolutionary situation in and outside the country. Discuss policies and strategies. Stir the audience till they shed tears and ground their teeth. On that day my speech lasted more than three hours. Afterwards the audience had many questions.

  "Is it right to beat people?"

  "Are all books feudal, capitalist, and revisionist except Chairman Mao's works? Should we burn all of them?"

  "Are all cadres capitalist-roaders?"

  And so on.

  It was past three o'clock in the afternoon. The sun was a big ball of fire. No. It was a huge bag of hot, long needles as a Chinese folktale describes it. The needles attacked my head. Suddenly my ears started ringing. Things turned yellow and green in front of my eyes. I was short of breath. Dizzy. I had to sit down before I finished my answer to avoid making a scene in front of all those people.

  At night we all returned to our base. We slept in the same classroom, boys and girls, young men and young women. The oldest among us were eighteen, the youngest fourteen. Female Red Guards on one side and male Red Guards on the other. No screen, no sheets, nothing was put up to separate us. It was not necessary. At night we did not take off our clothes. We did not have sex or even think about it.

  Sex was bourgeois. No doubt about it! In my mind, it was something very dirty and ugly. It was also extremely dangerous. In the books I read and the movies I saw, only the bad guys were interested in sex. Revolutionaries had nothing to do with it. When revolutionaries fell in love, they loved with their hearts. They didn't even touch hands.

  Of course at the time it never occurred to me to ask: if our revolutionary parents had nothing to do with sex, where did we come from? In fact, I was too ignorant about human reproduction even to raise such a question. The subject had never been taught at school. Nor was it ever discussed at home. So I did not know what the word "sex" really meant. But I knew from Aunty's stories, the books I read, and the news that it had caused women to commit suicide and men to be executed or locked up in prison for ten, fifteen, twenty years. Recently it had also caused many officials to fall from people's esteem. So I sincerely wished I'd never have anything to do with it, just as we Red Guards should not smoke or drink alcohol.

  At that time I thought my conviction accorded with Chairman Mao's teaching that a revolutionary should be "a pure person, a noble person, a virtuous person, a person who is free of vulgar d
esires, a person who is valuable to the people." These shining words came from his famous essay "Serve the People," which we had memorized. Only years later did I realize that such an attitude toward sex in a woman had another name, an ancient one. It was chastity, my dear Aunty's name. "Guard thy body like a piece of jade." This notion undoubtedly belonged to the "four olds." Yet somehow instead of breaking it, my fellow Red Guards and I had defended it as if it were a sacred teaching of Chairman Mao. What happened on the fifth night of our sojourn in Guangzhou might be understood in this light.

  On that night, two female Red Guards who were senior students did not come back until after nine o'clock. We were beginning to worry about them. Then we saw them return with a "captive," who was a big, stout man in his thirties. They explained to us why they had "arrested" this man.

  In the afternoon the two Red Guards got lost in the city. Because of the directions this man gave them, they ended up in an abandoned cathedral in the suburbs. In twilight the two young women wandered about the ruin, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to get back to the city. Around them the weeds were tall and the trees were casting long shadows. The wind rustled and insects chirped. Suddenly they heard a commotion behind them. It turned out that a group of local people had seized a man.

  It was the same man who had given them the wrong directions; then he followed them all the way to the cathedral. The female Red Guards did not notice him, but the local people, whose revolutionary vigilance had been heightened, became suspicious. They knew that rape had been committed on this site.

  Hearing this, I was shocked. Rape! In my mind, it was a crime almost as bad as murder. So we interrogated him. What he said about his name, age, and profession has escaped me completely. We must have inquired into his family background and class status too. Probably he did not belong to the Five Red Categories (workers, poor and lowermiddle peasants, revolutionary cadres, revolutionary servicemen, revolutionary martyrs), or else what happened that night might not have happened. In my memory even his face is fuzzy, like a picture out of focus. The only thing I remember clearly is the pair of white cotton shorts he had on that night.