by R Yang
To our angry question of why he had tricked our two comrades into the deserted cathedral, he could not gave a satisfactory explanation. That convinced us that he had harbored evil intentions toward our class sisters. We closed in on him. Hands on hips. Fingers pointed at the tip of his nose. Some were already unbuckling their belts. Our questions became sharp.
"So do you hate Red Guards? Tell us the truth! Or else we'll smash your dog head!"
"Yes. I hate the Red Guards."
"Then do you hate the Cultural Revolution too? Do you want to sabotage the Cultural Revolution?"
"Yes. Yes. I hate ... I want to sabotage ... "
"Are you a class enemy?"
"Yes. I am a class enemy."
"Are you a Nationalist agent?"
"Yes. I'm an agent. I came from Taiwan."
"Do you hope the Nationalists come back?"
"Yes.Ido..."
"Do you have guns?"
"Oh yes. I have guns. I have grenades too. I even have a machine gun."
"And a transmitter-receiver to contact Taiwan?"
"Sure. I have a transmitter-receiver."
"Where did you hide these?"
"I buried them in my backyard. You come with me. I'll take you there. You can dig them out."
As the interrogation went on, the man confessed that he had committed all the crimes we could think of. The words that dropped out of his mouth turned into facts in our minds. And these "facts" fueled our hatred toward him. He was no longer a suspect. He had become a criminal, a real class enemy. We started to beat him.
The next thing he did was a real shock to all of us. In a shower of fists, kicks, curses, and thrashes, he suddenly straightened up and pulled his white cotton shorts down. He had no underwear on. So there was his thing, his penis. Large and black. It stuck out from a clump of black hair. To me it seemed erect, nodding its head at all of us.
I couldn't help staring at it. I was dumbfounded. I was embarrassed. I was furious. My hands were cold and my cheeks were on fire. For a few seconds none of us moved. We were petrified. Then the dike burst. Torrents of water rushed out. All the female Red Guards ran out of the classroom. We stayed in the corridor. The male Red Guards charged forward. On their way they picked up long bamboo sticks to hit him.
We all hated him! I could not tell who hated him more. The female Red Guards hated him because he had insulted all of us. The male Red Guards hated him too, because he was a scum of their sex. By exposing himself, he had exposed all of them. They were stripped. They were shamed. This time they beat him hard. No mercy on him. He did not deserve it. He was a bad egg!
The sticks fell like rain. In a few minutes, the man dropped to the ground. The sticks stood in midair. Then someone pulled his shorts back up. After that we streamed back into the classroom. We looked. He did not move. He did not breathe. This man was dead!
We stared at one another, in dismay. How can a man die so easily? It's unbelievable! Now we are in trouble. Big trouble! We'd better call the public security bureau immediately. This man was a class enemy anyway! Right? We recorded his confession. Of course he did not sign it. That might be a problem. But everyone in our team is a witness. We all heard him confess to these terrible crimes.
So we braced ourselves and called the municipal public security bureau (the police) of Guangzhou. We told them that a man had just died here. In fact, he had been beaten to death by us. We begged them to send someone here to investigate the case. "Please come as quickly as possible!" Our voices were shaky as we pleaded.
At the other end, the policemen demanded to know who we were. So we told them that we were Red Guards from Beijing. Hearing this, their voices suddenly became warm and cordial. They said that they were zaofanpai, the rebellious faction, who had seized power at the public security bureau. They trusted Red Guards who came from where Chairman Mao was and they firmly supported our revolutionary act. Therefore they believed that there was no need to investigate this case any further. The case was closed. They would call up the crematorium and ask them to remove the corpse.
Hearing this, we all felt greatly relieved. Who could believe that we were let off the hook so easily? In fact, it was too easy. We began to feel uncomfortable. Thus we tried to persuade the policemen that at least they should send someone here to record the case. "No. It is not necessary." That was their answer. So that was it.
For the rest of the night, I could not sleep. Not because I was afraid of the ghost. The way I was brought up, I did not believe that there were such things as ghosts. It was my thoughts that disturbed me and kept me awake.
What a pity this man died! But really he was so stupid! If he had said no to all our questions, I'm sure he would have been alive. Maybe the answer would make some of us angry and he'd get beaten. In that case, well, he'd just have to stand it stoically. If he could bear the pain and show us he had courage, even if others wouldn't, I know I'd have put in a word for him and somehow saved his life. Red Guards all admire heroes. My comrades are not unreasonable. But this man, he was anything but a hero! He was such a coward! What a pity he understood nothing about us Red Guards!
Besides, even if he'd said yes to our questions, if he hadn't done that abhorrent thing, pulling down his shorts and ... he would not have been beaten to death. At least not so fast. So in the final analysis, everything he said and did was wrong! It was his own fault he was beaten to death. He was so sordid! So disgusting! A real rapist and counterrevolutionary, he deserved what he got, every bit of it!
So after we killed this man in the evening, I killed him once more at night, in my mind. I killed him because I had to, or else I would not be able to sleep. When I passed my death sentence on him in the court of my heart, I forgot the fact that I never believed his confession. None of us did. That was why we never bothered to go to the address he gave us to check out the backyard. The policemen at the public security bureau did not even ask us about his address. Perhaps they too assumed that he was a liar.
The next morning, we moved out of the middle school to Shengwei, a big yard in which the provincial Party committee of Guangdong was located. This big yard, like the one I grew up in, was guarded by armed Liberation Army soldiers. The soldiers, however, would only stop "masters of the country" at the gate. "The servants of the people" came in and out on four wheels, saluted by the guards. We were Red Guards from Beijing; when we insisted that we station ourselves here to spread the fire of the Cultural Revolution, eventually the soldiers were told to let us enter and exit as we wished.
So we moved in. We put up at a place called bingshi (the ice room), where we could buy red bean ice any time of the day. After we settled down, we went out to see the big yard. It was rather nice with a large lake surrounded by blooming jasmine trees. Thousands of tiny snowwhite flowers. The breeze here was fresh and cool, laden with fragrance, while the air outside was hot and suffocating, carrying a hundred city smells and noises. Here it was quiet, like a Shangri-la. But that was why we came. We came to break the bourgeois peace and stir up a red storm right at the headquarters.
From the investigations we made we concluded that the atmosphere in Guangdong province was not right. Everywhere we went, there was no smell of gunpowder and no battle cries of the Cultural Revolution. Only the soft singing of Yue opera and the bone-melting Guangdong music. Restaurants and markets were still full of people, eating, drinking, chitchatting, and shopping around. Numerous privately owned stores were doing good business all over the city. Capitalism was thriving here. In our opinion, the root of the problem was Zhao Ziyang, the first secretary of the Communist Party committee of Guangdong province. We decided that we would "grant him an interview" and try to persuade him that things should not go on like this in Guangdong.
Soon a meeting was arranged between Zhao and representatives of Red Guards from Beijing. Throughout the meeting Zhao was bombarded by questions and criticism, for others shared our opinion about the class struggle situation in Guangdong. Soon drops of sweat began to show on
his forehead, despite big electric fans running at top speed in the conference room. He took out a handkerchief and wiped them. At that meeting, Zhao was extremely cautious. He talked very slowly. His attitude was patient and amiable. "Red Guard young generals," he called us from time to time. But that doesn't mean that he was going to take our advice. In fact, he resisted us and refused to give in on any of the issues under discussion. That frustrated and irritated us. Eventually the meeting ended with no results.
At the end of the meeting, I was convinced that Zhao Ziyang was no good and beyond help. He was one of the worst high-level Party officials who was determined to champion capitalism in China. A big red umbrella covering all the bloodsuckers and parasites in Guangdong! (Little did I foresee that twenty-three years later sitting in front of a TV, I would consider him one of the best Chinese leaders who did not want to kill people at Tian'anmen to save the rule of the Party.) All right then. Since Zhao Ziyang refuses to change the ways he "leads" the Cultural Revolution in Guangdong, we will take that leadership away from him and do things our way! We do not need his permission, nor his cooperation. Let him be the jade Emperor sitting up on high for the time being. We will be the monkey and turn his heaven upside down. Let's see who has real power.
So we sat down and drafted an order, which demanded that all privately owned shops and restaurants in Guangzhou City go out of business on that very day; those who dared ignore our order would be responsible for all the consequences. Next, we took the article to a printing factory. The officials there did not dare interfere and the workers supported our revolutionary act. They put other jobs aside and printed out ten thousand copies of our order.
After that, we called the transportation team in the big yard for a vehicle. A jeep soon arrived. We loaded the leaflets onto the jeep and drove through the entire city. The leaflets flew out from the back of the jeep, falling like snowflakes. People in the street fought with one another to grab them. Children ran after us. Many of them. Their bare feet drummed the street. Their hands stretched out. "Gei-zang-wo! Gei- zang-wo! (Give one to me!)" they shouted eagerly in chorus. The news spread like wildfire. On busy streets, at shopping centers, blocks were set up. Local Red Guards, loudspeakers in hands, read our order in Cantonese dialect. That was also part of our plan.
We returned to our base after dark, feeling really good about ourselves. Now revolution had been made. No more hotbeds of capital ism in Guangzhou. Socialism won ... But just as we were congratulating ourselves, a group of cadres filed in with big portfolios under their arms. They said that they came from the municipal government: since late afternoon it had been surrounded by hundreds of shop owners who demanded that their privately owned shops be taken over by the state.
"Good! Then the state should take them over."
"But it's not so simple. The city doesn't have the money to take over these businesses. You see, if these privately owned shops were taken over by the state, the shop owners and their assistants would all become state employees. In the future, no matter whether their shops make money or not, the city has to pay them fixed wages, plus health insurance, welfare, benefits, old-age pensions, provide housing and child care for them ... That is why the owners of these shops are eager to have their shops taken over by the state. That means from now on they'd all have iron rice bowls ... "
This was something we had not thought of. But we were unwilling to call the whole thing off, or else our revolution would be aborted. So we talked with these officials into the small hours. On our side, we lectured them on the danger of capitalist restoration and the great significance of the Cultural Revolution, telling them not to let economic concerns cloud over political ones. They, on the other hand, showed us statistics and calculated the costs that would be incurred by such a change. Our rhetoric soared in the sky. Their argument crawled on the ground. Our speeches never converged.
Yet before daybreak somehow they managed to persuade us that the time was not ripe yet for such a drastic move. Or maybe we were not persuaded, but we gave in because we were so exhausted that our minds shut down. We no longer cared about the order we had given. Anyway we had dealt capitalism a fatal blow and the bloodsuckers should know that their days were numbered. Besides, we had not expected that the adults, government officials, and those shop owners would take us so seriously. The mere fact that the officials thought we had authority and came to negotiate with us gave us satisfaction. So in the end we agreed that we would not enforce the order immediately, which actually meant that we would never enforce it.
Although we were unable to wipe out the privately owned enterprises in Guangzhou, we did set Zhao Ziyang's backyard on fire. Some cadres here got our message about the Cultural Revolution. They were inspired. They turned themselves into rebels. Others remained in the old camp and were called baohuangpai (loyalists). Colleagues argued and fought against colleagues. Old friends fell out. Couples debated at night, for they had joined different teams. Kids rebelled against their parents. Red Guards blew the wind and spread the fire. The big yard boiled up like a huge pot of porridge.
Our influence reached to as far as Zhao Ziyang's home. His children, a boy and a girl who were both in elementary school, came over to us. They said that they wanted to rebel against their father. They offered to take us to their home to ambush their old man. We declined their offer and told them to teach us some Cantonese instead. So they taught us how to count from one to ten. We became good friends. Zhao's children were naive. They trusted us. We liked them. In spite of their father. Or maybe because of their father. After all, we were of the same roots. Our parents had all been revolutionary cadres. Only recently some of them had become capitalist-roaders.
While children were naive, adults could be really mean and base when their vested interests were in jeopardy. This we found out from a dazibao that accused us Red Guards from Beijing of smoking, drinking, stealing public property, and sleeping together, which meant having sex. Shameless fabrications pure and simple! The last charge was especially vicious. In China this was the most effective weapon to ruin a person's reputation, making him or her, especially her, as odious as dog shit.
Needless to say, we were all infuriated. If we could get hold of this rumormonger, we would bombard him with cannonballs and fry him in boiling oil, shoot ten thousand arrows through him, and smash his dog head ... But the dazibao was anonymous. At the end, it merely said "several revolutionary people." We did not know whose dog head to smash. Even so, we could not afford to ignore it. Our reputation might be ruined by these lies. In this big yard, few knew us personally but many would read this dazibao. This was the first time I realized that dazibao did not always reveal the truth. It could tell lies and spread rumors too! It might be used by people to make a revolution. It might also be used by some to make personal attacks. Often it was impossible for readers to tell which was which. It could do irreversible damage to innocent people.
So we wrote a dazibao overnight to refute the charges. This dazibao I remember quite clearly. At the time, I felt it was absolutely convincing. Today, however, its logic really escapes me. Our main argument was this: since we were all Red Guards whose families belonged to the "five red categories," naturally we were endowed with all the good qualities: We had profound class feelings toward Chairman Mao. We hated class enemies. We were determined to carry the Cultural Revolution through ... By the same token, we were immune from all bad habits such as smoking, drinking, stealing, and having sex. Those who had attacked Red Guards anonymously with such malicious slanders must be harboring dark motives. Revolutionary people should heighten their vigilance and be aware of those who were pulling strings behind the scenes. This, we concluded, was a new and desperate move made by the capitalist-roaders. We vowed that we would leave no stone unturned to get to the bottom of this matter.
Perhaps the threat we made worried the higher-level officials. Soon afterwards, we were invited to talk with Wu Zhipu, deputy Party secretary of central southern China, who was Zhao Ziyang's superio
r. This old man was even more patient and amiable than Zhao Ziyang. For hours he listened to our criticism of Zhao. Then he offered to arrange another meeting for us to "help Zhao Ziyang face to face."
"No. We have no time to help him. We have more important things to do." I do not remember what those important things were. Looking back on it, I think by that time I was really fed up with political struggle that was very different from what I had imagined. It was not just theories and manifestos, inspiration, debate, and noble sacrifice. It was a fight for power, ugly and ruthless. Enough was enough. Before September was over we decided to leave Guangzhou.
By the time we left Guangzhou, my fellow Red Guards and I were all in bad shape. In my case, I lost my voice completely. No matter how hard I tried, no sound would come out of my throat. It was a weird experience. I guess it was the result of too many excited speeches and debates, battling others with Chairman Mao's quotations at the top of my voice. Perhaps too little sleep and irregular meals had something to do with it too. Sometimes we would not sleep for two or three nights. Sometimes just a single meal or no meal for a whole day.
In fact, I consider myself very lucky to be alive. Shortly before we left Guangzhou, one night, a group of Red Guards, I among them, walked along Zhongshan Street. It was well after midnight. The city was asleep. The street was dim. I was exhausted. My feet were like rocks. I fell behind. Another girl named Wuliang, who was only fourteen, was with me. After a while, we literally fell asleep in the middle of the street.