Out of the Gobi

by Weijian Shan

  There was a shortage of nearly everything in Beijing, even though the capital was still faring much better than the rest of the country. Rationing had been a fact of life in Beijing since I was a child. But now it covered more items, all the way down to furniture for newlyweds. For goods not subject to rationing, store shelves were frequently empty. Shirts and blouses made of polyester, for example, were not rationed like cotton products were. But they were in such short supply that whenever a store had some to sell, people waiting to buy them would form a long line. Most Beijing residents carried a wangdou, or net bag, wherever they went. It could be easily folded into a fist or carried in one’s pocket; although it was almost weightless it was very durable. If you happened to pass a store that had in stock something you needed, you would wait in line to buy it and use the net bag to take it home. In fact, people lined up to buy things even without knowing what was being sold. Because everything was in short supply, whatever other people needed had to be something you needed as well.

  In April 1974, on my second home visit from the Gobi, a few friends and I were wandering around Wangfujing, the best-known shopping street in Beijing. Someone in our group suggested that we play a prank. We found a broken window in a building on the street and a few of us formed a line under the window, as if waiting to buy something. Soon, more people began to queue behind us and the line grew longer. Initially some people asked us what was going to be sold there. We simply shrugged. People in the queue all wanted to know what would be sold but nobody had a clue. That did not prevent the line from growing longer and longer, and the longer it got the more people were attracted to join. Then, one by one, we slipped away from the queue. Looking at the long line of people standing below a broken window, we laughed our heads off. We were the bad boys from the Gobi then.

  * * *

  China in the mid-1970s was caught between two feuding factions in the leadership, both loyal to Mao. One, represented by Zhou Enlai, wanted to end the chaos, restore social order, and improve the economy. This was the old guard, the remnants of the pre–Cultural Revolution government. The other force, represented by Mao’s wife and her followers, continued to push for class struggle and to attack any policies or ideas that they perceived would breed capitalism. These were the radicals. Mao was the balancer. He needed the old guard to keep the country and the economy going. He also needed the radicals to carry out his continuous revolution. It was a tug of war between the old guard and the radicals, and which faction prevailed at any moment depended on Mao’s whim.

  I had returned to Beijing at a critical moment in China’s history. Earlier in the year, Mao brought back to power Deng Xiaoping. Deng, a member of the core leadership, had been purged in 1966. He had been accused of being the second-biggest capitalist roader in the country, after Liu Shaoqi. Liu had been officially expelled from the Party but Deng was only stripped of all his positions and exiled to Jiangxi Province, where he worked in a factory as a lathe operator. (He was said to have operated lathe machines in his youth as a work-study student in France.) Mao had allowed Deng to keep his Party membership. So he was down but not completely out.

  In January 1975, Deng’s time came again. Zhou Enlai, standard- bearer of the old guard, was stricken by bladder cancer and hospitalized. Mao needed someone else capable of running the country. After Deng promised to Mao never to reverse the verdict on the merits of the Cultural Revolution or challenge the accusations that had been made against him, he was made a member of the Politburo, vice chairman of the Party, first vice premier, vice chairman of the Party’s Military Commission (of which Mao himself was the chairman), and chief of staff of the armed forces. Despite all these titles Deng was still nominally under Zhou. But with the premier hospitalized, Deng took over Zhou’s entire portfolio of responsibility and was more or less running the show, with the blessing of Mao himself.

  Deng immediately took action to reverse some of the extreme leftist policies. “All-around rectification,” he said, was required to put China’s productivity back on track. He rehabilitated many deposed senior officials and appointed capable and experienced ones to positions of power. He wanted factory workers to go back to work, peasants to go back to the farm, professors to go back to teaching, scientists to go back to their research, and students to go back to their studies, instead of spending their time waging an endless revolution. He also wanted trains and buses to run on time. And his measures were producing some noticeable results.

  We could feel the changes. At BIFT, most of our time was allocated to academics, as opposed to the words of Mao. There were still some political study sessions but they were typically reserved for the afternoons or for an hour on Saturdays. I hated those sessions, as they bored me to tears and I considered them a total waste of time. I had been through enough and knew better than to take this kind of nonsense seriously. But I was not able to skip these study sessions. It was just not worth the risk to invite that kind of attention to myself. Fortunately, it was just an hour or two a week. Sometimes I would sit in the back of the room and read a history book while others stood up and gave speeches.

  * * *

  At BIFT, there was not much to do other than reading, studying, and some afternoon exercises. The campus was like a self-contained village. It was quite far away from the nearest store of any kind. There were no restaurants other than the cafeteria, which was closed after meal hours. There was no television or entertainment other than an occasional movie in the Big Film Studio, typically a foreign film meant to help us study languages. Even the bus stop was on the far side of a vegetable field. Without distractions of any kind, almost all of us immersed ourselves in studying from dawn to dusk. After dinner, students were seen studying everywhere on campus, talking to themselves or with each other loudly in some foreign language. Some students would stay in the classroom, using headphones to listen either to an English-language tape played on a recorder or, by changing a channel, to VOA or the BBC.

  There was no food served other than at mealtimes. There were no drinks other than hot water. Some students brought their own tea and poured water over the leaves. I say this because years later when I got to the United States, I noticed that students snacked frequently and had all kinds of drinks (although I found a glass of hot water difficult to come by). Our life was completely spartan, but I did not know it. To me, this place was so blissful, with enough to eat at every meal, central heating in deep winter, and a shower every week. I didn’t have to worry about being caught reading in my spare time. Indeed, we were expected to read and study as much as we liked, and I could do so in comfortable, well-lit rooms. I did not know what more to want.

  During my first month at BIFT, our deputy Party secretary stood up and outlined the curriculum for the next few years. Overall, he said, we would have a total of 158 weeks at school. Aside from school breaks, 115 weeks would be spent on campus and 33 weeks would be spent “learning from the workers”—traveling to the countryside or factories to work alongside the proletariat—as well as on “open-door schooling,” which basically meant internships and language practice. Compared to what I had heard about other schools, this meant BIFT students would actually get to spend a significant amount of time on their studies. It might be taken for granted anywhere else in the world that students were supposed to study. But this was quite unusual for China at the time, where for the previous 10 years it had been taboo to let study of a professional subject take priority over waging revolution. This renewed emphasis on learning was consistent with Deng’s new policies.

  This newfound liberalism would not last. At Tsinghua University, one of the country’s top universities, a dispute was brewing between the deputy Party secretary, Liu Bing, and two of Mao’s henchmen, Chi Qun and Xie Jingyi. Chi, an army officer, and Xie, Mao’s former secretary, had been sent to oversee the university. But they clashed with Liu and others, prompting Liu to write letters to Mao complaining about their behavior. The letters were entrusted to Deng Xiaoping to pass along.

&nbs
p; Mao interpreted the letters as being critical not just of Chi and Xie, but of his Cultural Revolution. In a strong public rebuke, Mao wrote, “The target of their letter is me.”

  What was not made public until a few months later was the rest of what he had said: “I am in Beijing. Why wasn’t the letter sent me directly? Rather it was delivered through [Deng] Xiaoping. Xiaoping is biased in favor of Liu Bing.” The problem at Tsinghua, Mao declared, was not an isolated incident but “a reflection of the current struggle between the two lines”—meaning, between the revolutionaries represented by the radicals and the bourgeois reactionaries represented by the old guard, including Deng.

  These words of Mao’s in November 1975 marked the beginning of yet again another downfall for Deng. A new leftist campaign to fight against “the rightist wind of reversing correct verdicts” began. The phrase “reversing correct verdicts” meant challenging the correctness and conclusions of the Cultural Revolution; it was something Deng had promised never to do. Now Mao said of him: “ ‘Never to reverse,’ it can’t be counted on.”

  Initially, this leftist campaign involved lengthy articles in the People’s Daily critical of “the rightist wind” and political study sessions that would challenge anything considered to represent such a shift in ideology. The articles did not name any names. But reading between the lines, all who followed politics knew that the campaign was aimed at Deng himself.

  Now the political study sessions took on a more and more combative and ominous tone. The education policy of China since I first entered elementary school had been to train students to be “both red and expert”: to be ideologically and politically correct as well as academically proficient. Now the Party secretary of our department kept reminding us of the importance of being “red.” Meetings were organized to criticize Deng’s new policies, which were interpreted as focusing too much on being “expert.” Deng’s name was never mentioned, although everyone knew who had initiated and pushed for those policies.

  I had no idea where this new political campaign against the rightist wind was headed or what would come of it. By and large, it had not affected the routine my classmates and I had settled into: going to classes in the morning, a nap after lunch, some study time and exercise before dinner, and then studying after dinner until bedtime. If people were excited and involved in the Cultural Revolution when it first began, by now most were numb to the endless political campaigns, and they participated in obligatory political sessions only perfunctorily.

  * * *

  On the morning of January 9, 1976, I got up to hear the radio playing funeral music. Soon the announcement came that Premier Zhou Enlai had died on January 8. Zhou had been a fixture in China’s politics, economy, foreign policy, almost everything, throughout my life. He had managed to keep the country together and to prevent it from descending into total chaos under exceedingly difficult circumstances. He was known to work extremely hard and to care about the welfare of common folks. Without him, who knew where the radicals would take the country?

  Zhou’s death brought grief to a nation already becoming more and more disillusioned with what the radicals represented. The radicals banned any public mourning of Zhou. This outraged the people and in defiance, hundreds of thousands of people walked to Tiananmen Square in the January cold to mourn Zhou. I went there that day to find numerous wreaths in tribute to Zhou piled high at the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, a 10-story obelisk in the middle of the square bearing an inscription in Mao’s calligraphy on its front and another one in Zhou Enlai’s handwriting in the back.

  After Zhou’s death, everyone who followed politics sensed that Deng was about to be removed from power once again. The leftist campaign in the media gathered momentum against the moderate and pragmatic policies both Zhou and Deng represented. The radicals had underestimated Zhou’s popularity and influence. Popular discontent was rising, made worse by the veiled attacks on Zhou by the official media.

  The pent-up anger was waiting for an opportunity to erupt.

  * * *

  April 5, 1976, was Qingming Day, or tomb-sweeping day, a day in Chinese tradition to pay respect to dead relatives. Numerous people before and on that day brought flower wreaths to Tiananmen Square to pay tribute to Zhou. The authorities, now consisting largely of the radicals because Deng was already sidelined, ordered the wreaths to be removed and burned every night. This only prompted more people to come to the square.

  On Sunday, April 4, I went to the square to see what was going on. Never before had so many people congregated there in defiance of official orders. I told my classmates this was history in the making. I took with me a small secondhand camera, a Shanghai 58-II. By the time I arrived the square was already packed with people. More were pouring in from all directions, individually and in processions. At the head of each procession, marchers carried large wreaths. The most striking was a procession of workers from the Beijing Factory of Heavy Machinery, who marched behind a heavy truck, carrying on a crane a gigantic wreath made of steel. The wreath must have been at least four meters (~13 ft) across. The night before, the authorities had cleared and burned all the wreaths in the square. Everyone understood the message of the iron wreath: “Try to burn this one!”

  The high base of the monument was once again buried beneath piles of wreaths and flowers. White paper flowers left by the visitors covered the ground like newly fallen snow. Pieces of white paper written with essays and poems hung everywhere, on lampposts, on trees, and on fences. Some of the poems were beautifully written, poignant and daring. One such poem read:

  I want to cry but noisy devils are yelling

  I am sad but wolves are laughing

  Pouring wine to commemorate the hero

  Raising my brow as I draw out the saber.

  Everyone knew the “devils” and “wolves” in the poem referred to Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and the other radicals in the top leadership. Another poem read:

  There is a bridge on the Huangpu River

  The river bridge is rotten and wobbly

  Asking Premier Zhou

  To demolish it or to burn it down?

  Huangpu River is the main river that runs through the city of Shanghai, where radicals in the top leadership were from. The name of Mao’s wife, Jiang, is the same character as “river.” One of her followers was Zhang Chunqiao, and “qiao,” the last character of his name, is the character for “bridge.” Therefore, it was clear to anyone that the rotten and wobbly “river bridge” referred to Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, and the radical gang from Shanghai.

  Other poems and essays attacked Jiang and other radical leaders more directly. Few targeted Mao himself, although a couple of bold ones did allude to him by referring to the cruel rule of Shi Huangdi of Qin, the first emperor of unified China, who reigned during the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). The insinuation was lost on no one.

  It was later estimated that at the peak there were two million people in the square. People were packed together, shoulder to shoulder, a boiling sea of blue and green. As I worked my way through the crowd to read this essay and that poem along the fences and on the trees, I saw people continuing to pour in from all sides, carrying large wreaths of flowers. The singing of “The Internationale” could be heard everywhere, over and over again. But in spite of the large crowd, people were orderly. Here and there, a man would stand on the base of a lamppost to give a speech, reading from a script and attracting a group of people around him. The crowd was so dense, I was not able to move close to hear clearly what was being said. But it was obvious the speakers were all angry and they raised their fists defiantly in the air as they spoke.

  As I mingled with the crowd walking from one part of the square to another, I felt swept up by the atmosphere. Many of the words in the speeches, banners, and poems broke taboos as they attacked the powerful radicals. But the crowd was emboldened by its own size and there seemed to be confidence that the will of the people would somehow prevail. I also felt a t
inge of excitement and hope. I didn’t see how the will of so many could be defied.

  On the night of April 4, 1976, the authorities ordered that all the wreaths be cleared out of the square, which was washed clean in the early hours of the morning of April 5.

  * * *

  On Qingming Day, April 5, I arrived in the square in the afternoon with my classmate Chen Min. The crowds were much smaller than on the previous day, but there were still hundreds of thousands of people in the vast square. There were far fewer wreaths at the base of the monument. There was a small crowd, a few dozen people perhaps, in the southeast corner of the square near a redbrick building, which as I later learned housed the command center of the military’s Beijing garrison. Earlier in the day a small mob of angry people attacked the building and set it on fire. They also overturned and burned a few police cars parked outside it.

  As darkness gradually descended on the square, the crowd began to thin out. Suddenly, at about 6:30 p.m., the loudspeakers affixed on the tall lampposts in the square began to blare. It was the voice of Wu De, the mayor of Beijing. He said that there were bad people in the square who were engaged in counterrevolutionary activities of destruction and making trouble. He urged the revolutionary masses not to be fooled by these bad elements and to immediately leave the square. His speech was repeatedly blared from the loudspeakers. I didn’t see any bad people, and we certainly didn’t consider ourselves to be bad people.

  At about 10:30 that night, Chen Min and I decided to leave to catch the last bus for campus. Just then, I noticed multitudes of workers in tight formation marching into the square. They wore the same work clothes as everyone else but they all carried clubs in their hands. I thought they were there to protest. “Look,” I said to Chen Min. “The workers are rising up. The leadership can’t stop this thing now.” I was quite excited as we left the square.