by Weijian Shan
I later learned that I had been quite mistaken. These marchers were a workers’ militia. They were there to clear out the protesters at the order of the authorities. The commander of the Beijing military garrison had personally decided to delay the deployment of forces until late at night, when there were fewer people in the square, or we would have been caught up in it. The militiamen surrounded the square from all sides and, at about 11 p.m., moved in toward the monument at its center. They arrested a few hundred people; many were beaten up. The protests were suppressed.
* * *
On the evening of April 7, the central radio station broadcast two decisions made by the Party’s central committee. The first declared the April 5th Movement, as it became known, to be a “counterrevolutionary incident.” The second declared that Deng Xiaoping had been the “black hand” behind the event. Those who went to the square knew that the mass protest was spontaneous. But for months the official media had been attacking Deng without naming him, only referring to “the capitalist roader who does not repent till his death.” Now the gloves were off. Deng, the central radio announced, had been stripped of all his positions within and outside the Party. Once again, however, he was curiously allowed to keep his Party membership. For some reason, Mao always had a soft spot in his heart for Deng, treating him differently from almost all those purged from power in the history of the Party.
Back at school, as in every work unit in Beijing, there was a hunt for those who had participated in the April 5th Movement. It was well known I had gone to the square, because I made a point of urging others to go as well. But other than observing what was happening, as millions of others did, I did not take part in any activities that were considered counterrevolutionary, such as distributing leaflets, posting articles and poems, or burning down the police command center. And of course, I wasn’t alone.
Still, someone must have told on me. The Party secretary of the English department, Lu Zuwen, called me into his office. He came right to the point: “Did you go to Tiananmen Square?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, defiantly, “I went there several times and I don’t see anything wrong with it. As you know, millions of people went there. I don’t think they were all counterrevolutionaries.”
“Did you take notes of the essays and poems posted there?” he asked. One was supposed to surrender such notes if one had them. I remembered the photographs I had taken at the square, which I had developed and kept at my parents’ house. Those photographs could get me in a lot of trouble.
“I didn’t take any notes,” I replied, “but I memorized the ones I read.” I was thinking, “You can confiscate notes people took. But how do you purge them from my memory?” Then I proceeded to recite for him some of the poems.
Mr. Lu stopped me with a gesture of his hand. Then he stared right into my eyes and he said, “Can you keep quiet and not tell people about what you have memorized?”
At that point I realized he was not trying to get me into trouble. To the contrary, he was trying to protect me. I looked at him, feeling ashamed of myself for having judged him and for being so foolishly defiant. I was quite sure he and I thought alike, but as the Party secretary of the department, he had to go through the motions of carrying out his duties. He was taking a risk himself by not only letting me off the hook, but also by warning me not to be foolish. I felt so grateful and so much respect for him. I thanked him before taking my leave.
Such was the public sentiment at the time. Popular discontent went beyond anger at Jiang Qing or weariness of an unceasing revolution. It represented a final disillusionment with Mao himself. Since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mao had enjoyed the status of a savior. Despite his disastrous policies, his stature among the people had not diminished; in fact, it was only enhanced and mythologized to dizzying heights. By the start of the Cultural Revolution, he was worshipped like a god. His words were deemed the ultimate truth. Anyone who disagreed with him or whoever he did not like were immediately perceived as bad actors—in a word, evil. Few questioned his leadership or his infallibility.
But now people were increasingly skeptical. The revolutionary zeal was long gone. Those of us who had experienced the hardships knew that real life was much more ugly and harsh than the utopia promoted by official propaganda. The nonstop political campaigns had become tiring and seemed pointless. Revolution did not fill empty stomachs.
Deng’s efforts to rectify the excesses and disorder in all walks of life were welcomed by the populace. Under his stewardship, industrial and agricultural production was up, trains began to run on time, scientists and scholars were back to do research, and the military had been streamlined—all in about one year’s time. But much remained to be done and even Deng lamented the problems were “piled up to become too heavy to be restored to normal.” But now he was fired again. Where was China headed? Nobody knew, and the public mood was pessimistic and gloomy.
* * *
The summer of 1976 in Beijing was particularly hot. I found it difficult to sleep. I often had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the washroom with a basin and pour cold water over my head to cool down.
Shortly before 4 a.m. on July 28, 1976, I was awakened by a powerful jolt that almost threw me out of my bed. The shaking continued, accompanied by loud noises, as I was trying to come to my senses. Just then Chen Min, whose bed was below mine, yelled, “Earthquake!” Immediately we all bolted out the door of our dorm, down the stairs, and out of the building into the open air. I could not remember how I jumped off my bunk bed to get out of the building so quickly.
All of us were in our underwear and bare-chested, as it had been so hot when we went to bed. There were a few more powerful jolts, and then the quake stopped. For a long while, we milled around in front of our dorm, a lot of people without much clothing on. Nobody dared go back into the building to fetch clothing in case more aftershocks came.
Soon the day broke. I was in a hurry to go home to find out if everyone in my family was all right. Fortunately, some buses were running. There were thousands of people in the streets, as few dared to venture back into their homes. I arrived home to find everyone outside. Thankfully, no one was hurt. By then, however, reports of casualties started to come in. Falling tiles had killed one faculty member of our institute as he tried to escape from his home. Fearing aftershocks, since we could not go back inside our homes, we built shelters outside. It was summertime, warm enough for people to spend the night outdoors. But there was not enough room in the open space by our home for everyone, so our family set up a tent a couple blocks away, on the wide pavement of Chang’an Boulevard, along with numerous other families. Temporary shelters of all colors, shapes, and materials covered the pavements on both sides of the boulevard. People only went back to their homes to cook their meals. The streets of Beijing became a giant refugee camp, as people were constantly on alert for another quake.
It took a few days for the news to trickle in of what had exactly happened. The epicenter of the earthquake was in Tangshan, a city of more than a million people about 200 kilometers (∼125 miles) to the east of Beijing. The quake measured 7.8 degrees on the Richter scale and was rather shallow, just 12 kilometers (∼7.5 miles) beneath the surface of the earth. It immediately flattened the entire city, cut off all power, and plunged the area into complete darkness—a total blackout. Because the quake also knocked out all lines of communication and severely damaged the roads, the authorities in Beijing didn’t know what had happened until several hours later, when someone drove the four hours from Tangshan to Beijing to report the disaster. It was another six hours before military rescue teams could reach the city. The earthquake claimed the lives of about 250,000 people and seriously injured more than 150,000, including the father and two sisters of my future wife, whom I had not yet met.
The entire city of Beijing came to a halt, because it was not safe to go back into the buildings. All schools were closed, and most workplaces shut down as well. For months, p
eople camped outside, too scared to go back to their homes. Thankfully, there was no shortage of either food or water.
* * *
In September 1976, classes for a new semester resumed, and I went back to campus. We moved into the former girls’ dormitory next to the soccer field, which was now divided in half to house both male and female students. In this building we slept seven people to a room, in four sets of bunk beds, which was an improvement from our old dorm. The building was made of rather thin concrete slabs, so thin in fact that when people ran in the hallway, the footsteps could be heard throughout the floor.
One night shortly after we moved in, someone on my floor ran to the bathroom. Hearing the rumbling noise of his footsteps, one of my bunkmates awoke and yelled, “Earthquake!” All of us jumped out of our beds and bolted out, which triggered a chain reaction. Within a few minutes the entire building was emptied and a crowd of people, men and women, stood outside in their underwear wondering what had happened. It was early September and getting a little chilly outside. Eventually, people went back to their rooms, still feeling jittery. But from that night on, running in the hallway was prohibited.
* * *
On the afternoon of September 9, 1976, I was studying in the classroom when Chen Min pulled me out into the hallway. He had a secret to tell me. He leaned close to my ear and whispered, “The chairman has passed away.”
This was shocking news. In the photographs of him in the newspapers, Mao had appeared frail and senile. But his health, as that of all state leaders, was kept a secret, and the official media always did their best to present him as healthy. I didn’t know where Chen Min heard the news, but he would not have told me unless he had been absolutely certain it was reliable. We calmly went back to our own desks to wait for the news to become official. Soon there was a notice that we should tune in to the radio for a major announcement at 4 p.m. The broadcasting system in our classroom was switched away from headphones to the loudspeaker. We were all waiting at our desks.
At 4 p.m. sharp, came the sound of funeral music. All in the room immediately knew Mao had died. Even before the announcer came on, the entire classroom burst into tears. I was crying, too, affected by the others. But I had long harbored the forbidden thought that China’s misery would not be over as long as he lived. I felt a tinge of excitement and hope: China was now in uncharted territory. How would the future be different?
* * *
Back in April, after Deng had been blamed for the Tiananmen Square protests and removed from power, Mao had named Hua Guofeng as the new premier. Hua came from Mao’s home province of Hunan. He joined the Communist forces during the Anti-Japanese war, much later than the first generation of Communist leaders such as Mao, Zhou, and Deng. Hua was 55 years old now, and Deng Xiaoping was 72. Mao had probably selected Hua because he thought his mediocre abilities and achievements would be no threat to anyone, as well as for his loyalty. He was a compromise between the old guard and the radicals; neither group would be able to live under a prominent figure from the other faction. Because of his meteoric rise, he was a relatively unknown factor to the populace.
Hua would surprise everyone.
After Mao’s death the most pressing matter for Hua was how to deal with the already defined Gang of Four, which is how the clique of radicals associated with Mao’s wife Jiang Qing would come to be known: The group included Jiang, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen. Mao himself had given them this name. At one time or another he had suggested that they should try to work with others in the leadership, and not just to isolate themselves as a “gang of four.” It wasn’t a term anyone outside the inner circles of the top leadership had heard before, but it would stick. Zhang and Yao were both writers from Shanghai, and they had been among the most ardent and fervent promoters of Mao’s ideas. Wang was a worker from Shanghai who had led a Rebel faction at the start of the Cultural Revolution; Mao made him a member of the Politburo and vice chairman of the Party in 1973. As such, he was considered Mao’s heir apparent at one time. But Wang, as the Chinese saying goes, was like a piece of tofu held by a string—he could not be lifted up—and eventually Mao gave up the idea of making him his successor. Nonetheless, he remained in his position in the central leadership.
As one of his first orders of business Hua visited Marshal Ye Jianying, one of the old guard sidelined but not kicked out by Mao. Ye had effective control of the military. The two of them enlisted Wang Dongxing, the director of the office of the central committee, or Mao’s chief of staff. Wang controlled the PLA’s No. 8341 garrison, whose mission was to protect the state leadership.
On October 6, 1976, less than one month after Mao’s death, Hua and his allies made their move. Early that morning, Jiang Qing and other members of the Gang of Four were arrested. The coup d’état was a complete success. They put up no resistance. The event became referred to as “smashing the Gang of Four” in the annals of the official Chinese history. The victors of the power struggle labeled them the Gang of Four to suggest Mao was against them. The truth was that Jiang Qing and her supporters were in power only thanks to Mao’s support. When Mao died, their fate was sealed.
The next day, Hua Guofeng was named by the Politburo as Chairman of the Communist Party, Chairman of the Party’s Military Commission (equivalent to the position of commander in chief of the armed forces), and Premier. No other person before or since had held all these top positions at once, not even Mao.
News of the Gang of Four’s arrest trickled down the hierarchy over the following two weeks. But word of mouth spread fast, especially in Beijing, where so many high-ranking officials resided and had access to secrets from the top. Those in the know whispered it to others, always while reminding the listener to keep it a secret. No one did, of course. The arrests came on a Wednesday. I heard about them by Friday. The following day, as Chen Min and I were leaving campus for the weekend, we came across our head English teacher, Wang Keli. He was walking his bicycle along the path through the vegetable field toward the campus as we were walking in the opposite direction. We stopped to chat with him. When we told him that Jiang Qing and her followers had been arrested, he could hardly believe it.
“It’s true,” we assured him. Teacher Wang was so excited that I saw tears well up in his eyes.
“I feel things haven’t been right these years,” he said, before walking away happy.
When the news was officially announced, about a week later, Beijing broke into celebration. People poured into the streets to celebrate. Every drop of liquor in the city was sold out in a day. October was also crab season. People bought them in sets of four, one female and three males, each symbolizing a member of the Gang of Four, to smash them to pieces and pick out their meat. Crabs were soon sold out, too. People celebrated with banquets, eating crabs and drinking baijiu, a strong Chinese liquor, all over the town and all over the country.
In spite of his courage and decisiveness, Hua Guofeng clung to the legacy of Mao and insisted the country continue to follow whatever Mao had said and decided. It would take another two years for Deng Xiaoping to return to power and for Hua Guofeng to fade into the background of Chinese politics. But it was Hua who removed the radicals from power and cleared the way for Deng’s return. Soon real change would begin.
Chapter 19
Roads to Rome
In July 1977, Deng Xiaoping was once again brought back into the Party’s leadership, under China’s new leader, Hua Guofeng. Initially Deng’s agenda included only the military, foreign affairs, and education. He moved swiftly and restored the college entrance examination system, which had been suspended since 1966.
There were more than 10 million applications for the college entrance exams that year, and 5.7 million people eventually took part. Of those, only 272,297 students were accepted, a rate of less than 5 percent. The new students ranged in age from 13 to 37, which reflected the gap in schooling created by the 10-year Cultural Revolution.
The Construction Army Corps syste
m was dismantled. The “educated youth” who had been sent down to the countryside gradually returned to the cities, including my friends from the Gobi. But it was hard for them to find a decent job; their lack of formal education left them severely underqualified. Many of my friends struggled to find their footing once they returned.
With the leadership’s most radical elements purged following Mao’s death, changes could be felt throughout the country, but slowly, because Hua Guofeng favored a policy that adhered to whatever Mao had said and done. His legitimacy and power came from Mao, who had designated him as his successor; it was not surprising he remained loyal to Mao and whatever Mao represented. The rest of the new leadership, particularly a faction of pre–Cultural Revolution senior leaders led by Deng Xiaoping, held opposing views. They did not renounce Mao, but they were willing to publicly question his policies. All their experiences and suffering during Mao’s political campaigns had taught them that the only test of the truth was not what Mao had said but what worked or did not work in practice. The reality was that many of Mao’s policies had been complete failures, disastrous and ruinous for the nation as well as for its people.
In December 1978, after what amounted to a well-publicized debate over Mao’s legacy, Deng became the de facto leader of the country. Hua Guofeng, who had resisted changes to Mao’s policies, was gradually sidelined, although he is remembered for changing the course of history as the leader of the coup d’état against Mao’s wife and her gang of radicals. Deng was free to move ahead with a new policy focused on reform and openness. He knew that to develop, China had to depart from the Soviet-style centrally planned economy and move in the direction of a market-based economy. It also had to abandon its isolationist stance and form better relations with the West.