The Cowshed

by Ji Xianlin

  On the way, I couldn’t bring myself to look up or make eye contact with anyone. I wondered what other passersby thought of me. I thought of “Public Execution,” the short story in which Lu Xun describes a criminal who can’t hear what people are whispering as they point at him. I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying about me either and wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  Eventually we arrived at our destination, which I recognized from the tiles on the floor as the main student cafeteria—the largest indoor venue on campus. We went in through the back door, and I saw a row of other victims standing there, facing the wall like meditative Bodhidharmas. I dared not look directly at them, so I couldn’t see who they were. But I could hear a few familiar voices. The crowd consisted of New Beida people; there would be no Jinggangshan supporters here. I waited. Suddenly, a slap rang out, but I felt nothing. Some other unlucky victim, then. Another slap rang out, and I felt my face burn. I was getting nervous. Then it was a heavy blow to my back, a well-aimed kick. It was only natural that New Beida should be hostile to me, since I had dared to oppose their leader, but some of my persecutors seemed to be motivated by sadism as well as revenge. Chinese sages have always stressed the superiority of man over beast. I find myself agreeing instead with Lu Xun, who pointed out that at least animals do not lecture their victims on why it is right that they be eaten. By contrast, think of man-eating humans and the excuses they invent. Beasts are more honest than the supporters of New Beida: They kill in order to eat.

  But these reflections came later. At the time I was petrified, like a hog awaiting slaughter. I was nervous and agitated, disoriented but still alert. Facing the wall, I could feel my ears tingle as I braced myself for more blows. I knew this was only the start.

  The show began. “Bring Ji Xianlin here!” they cried. Two Red Guards advanced toward me, twisting my arms behind my back and pushing my head down. They steered me into the leftmost corner of the stage. “Bend over!” I bent over. “Head down!” I lowered my head. But then I felt a blow to my back: “Lower!” I bent over further. A vicious kick: “Even lower!” Bending as far as I could, I wobbled and clutched my knees. More blows: “No holding your knees!” I held my arms out, all my weight shifting to my legs; I could barely stay balanced in the contorted position that I would later find out was the infamous airplane position. In the several minutes that the Red Guards had spent fine-tuning my posture, my legs were already exhausted. If I gave up and knelt down, I knew I would get a beating. I had to hold out.

  Suddenly I heard someone making a speech from the podium. I couldn’t see how many victims and Red Guards there were on the platform, or how big the crowd was, and I didn’t dare look up. But slogans rang out, and the room swarmed with people. I couldn’t hear the speech, but I was dimly aware that I was only a minor character, and the protagonist was an old cadre named Ge, who was a “Type 38 rifle,” a Communist who had joined the party at the beginning of the Second World War. He had served as the president of Hebei University and the vice president as well as Party committee secretary of Peking University. He, too, was being attacked because he had opposed the Empress Dowager. I was relieved to find that I was playing a supporting role. Ge was probably positioned to my right, at the center of the stage, but I couldn’t tell whether he was standing, sitting, kneeling, or holding the airplane position. I heard slaps, blows, kicks, and I could only imagine what he must be enduring. Perhaps someone was burning his skin with cigarettes.

  I was in a precarious position. My legs could barely support the weight of my body. My head began to swim and I was drenched in sweat. But I gritted my teeth and told myself: “Don’t give up! Think what would happen if you collapsed.” Suddenly, a gob of spit landed on my left check. Unable to wipe it away, I gritted my teeth and began to count to a thousand, to make the time pass more quickly. It felt as though the entire cafeteria had gone silent, and I was the only person in it, the only person in the university, in Beijing, in all China.

  Suddenly I became aware of the roar of slogans again. The session had ended. Before I had a chance to catch my breath, I was seized by the neck and arms, and herded onto an open-top truck. I realized that the show wasn’t over, and that we were going to be publicly paraded. Again, I was flanked on either side by a Red Guard clutching me by each arm. I could see nothing. People in the crowd began to throw stones at me, hitting my face and body. I was aware of being kicked, punched, spat on, and yet I was unable to fight back. Despite having lived near campus for nearly twenty years, I couldn’t tell where the truck was going. I felt like a sailboat lost at sea or a fox surrounded by hounds. The slogans were making me dizzy, and I gave myself up for lost.

  Eventually someone—either a student or a worker—kicked me off the cart. I fell to the ground and was trying to get up when an elderly worker came up and punched me in the face, making my nose and mouth bleed. I knew this man. He wasn’t worthy to be a member of the proletariat. He would later be nominated to welcome the troops of the 8341 Special Regiment on behalf of the workers of Peking University, a choice that horrified me—but that is another story. Right then, I panicked: My nose and mouth were full of blood. “Leave!” the man barked. I was free to go, and felt like a death row prisoner in the old novels receiving a pardon. I recovered somewhat, and realized that I had lost my hat. I also appeared to be wearing only one shoe, but I hobbled home anyway. My family was shocked to see me in such a state, but overjoyed that I had made it home alive.

  That was the first struggle session I had experienced in my fifty-odd years. It made me feel just how cruel human beings could be to each other, but it also saved my life. If I could survive this, I decided, I had nothing more to fear. Then I realized how narrowly I had escaped death. If the Red Guards had arrived half an hour later, I would have already climbed the wall into the Old Summer Palace and taken my pills. In fact, if I had been a little less stubborn about airing my views, the New Beida leaders in my department wouldn’t have decided I needed to be taken down a peg, and I would be lying dead among the rushes. I realized that being stubborn toward wicked people has its advantages; after all, I am only alive now because I was too stubborn before. It turned out that I could endure greater pain than I had realized. Was choosing to live a good idea or a rash one? Even today I don’t know for sure. Either way, if I was going to live, I would have to be mentally prepared for many more struggle sessions.

  I still wonder who invented the struggle session. It may well have been a collective invention, but if it could be patented, the inventor would deserve a prize for his idiocy as well as his genius. Struggle is very much a spectacle, but what purpose does it serve? In imperial times, judges pierced their victims’ fingernails with bamboo picks or had them flogged or tortured on the rack in order to extract confessions. But there was no need to make the victims of the modern struggle session confess that they were capitalist-roaders or counterrevolutionary academic authorities since their crimes had already been broadcast via megaphones and enumerated on big-character posters. Perhaps the inventor of the struggle session was a purist, an aesthete pursuing art for art’s sake, or struggle for struggle’s sake. Perhaps he was a sadist. To have created the airplane position he must have been an inspired aeronautical engineer. It is terrifying to think that the struggle session was invented not by a beast but by a human being.

  Having narrowly escaped suicide meant I was available to be struggled against again. My own department’s sessions began several days later, and there I was the star of the show. The process was the same. A rap at the door and two Red Guards (one less than the previous time) wearing red armbands stormed in and hauled me off to the Foreign Languages Building. I faced the wall, unable to see anything, only hearing the loud clamor. There were two others facing the wall, but this time they played supporting roles while I was the protagonist. I felt proud that the session was running smoothly, the department so well organized. Suddenly there was a great shout: “Bring Ji Xianlin here!” I was only a few steps from the podium, but wit
h four hands twisting my arms behind my back and a few more on my shoulders, those few steps took a long time as people crowded around me, their fists raining down on my body. Eventually, I was pushed onto a familiar stage. I had stood there many times as the head of the department; now I was a counterrevolutionary and prisoner. A woman led the crowd in chanting slogans. “Down with the counterrevolutionary Ji Xianlin!” she cried, the crowd then repeating it in response. I was called a variety of epithets like “the Kuomintang hanger-on,” “the capitalist-roader,” and so on. I seemed to have earned just about every counterrevolutionary title in existence.

  Glancing at the table, I saw a kitchen knife, a basket of half-burned letters, and a photograph of Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling with a red cross on it. I nearly fainted with dismay. I was as good as dead: This evidence of my so-called crimes could easily incite the crowds to tear me to shreds. But since there was no escape, all I could do was wait and see what would happen next.

  After all the chanting, the chairperson read a long list of Mao’s sayings—“Making revolution is not a dinner party,” “Your enemy won’t go down if you don’t strike him down,” and so on—either to inspire the crowd or perhaps to frighten the victims. When he had finished reading, another man made a passionate speech enumerating my crimes. It sounded like Wang, the student of Thai who had been part of the raid on my house. I was still holding the airplane position and my legs throbbed with pain. Although I had to concentrate on maintaining my balance and was barely listening, I could tell that the speech consisted of nothing but lies and slander. When Wang grew passionate, the audience broke into cries of “Down with Ji Xianlin!” There was a palpable sense of righteous anger in the room. Soon people circled around again to punch and kick me. I had heard someone else being beaten while I played a supporting role, and now it was my turn. I wondered what I must have looked like, but I couldn’t see my own bruises and wounds. Then someone heaved me off the floor and the crowd continued to beat me. I couldn’t have held the airplane position even if I tried. I recognized Zheng, who studied Hindi; Gu, who studied Korean; and Wang, who studied Thai. Zheng was a fast talker and a trusted lieutenant of Nie’s; Gu and Wang were strong young men. Setting them on a helpless old man like me was overkill— even a robust woman could have overpowered me. It was like slaughtering the proverbial chicken with the knife used to butcher an ox.

  The struggle session went on and on. I must’ve made for a good show. Finally, when everyone had had their fill of struggle, I heard someone cry: “Take Ji Xianlin away!” I was marched out of the building as more blows rained down on me. The audience rushed out after me, ready to give me another thrashing. Eventually, a lecturer of Arabic named Luo said something that calmed them down. By the time I reached the Democracy Building, the crowds had given up their chase. Only then did I realize that I hurt all over, and my face was sticky with blood and sweat. I walked home, having survived yet another violent encounter.

  REFORM THROUGH LABOR BEGINS

  THE PEAK SEASON for struggle sessions lasted from the winter of 1967 until the early spring of 1968, a period when there was one every few days. By then I had grown used to them, and I valued my life too much to consider suicide again. That was the first stage of our ordeal; in the second stage, from the early spring until May 3, 1968, we were also forced to perform hard labor.

  When the season began, every department was organizing struggle sessions, and anything could serve as an excuse for struggling against someone. I, for instance, was often attacked for my work in the Peking University Union, which I was involved with for many years; the first official commendation I ever received was for union activity. When Beijing was liberated, I joined the Communist society for professors, which later combined with other staff organizations to form a union. It was said that the workers of Peking University were reluctant to form a union with intellectuals, since they considered themselves the vanguard of the proletariat, but that they were pressured from above to accept this arrangement. In any case, I was elected to various roles within the new union. During campaign season, I made the rounds of the university press, hospital, and various schools, canvassing votes like an American politician. I was full of optimism back then, and enjoyed working alongside my younger colleagues and staying up all night to prepare the halls for our assemblies. I sometimes asked myself how intellectuals stood in relation to the workers, the vanguard of the proletariat. I was once given the authoritative explanation that intellectuals are not workers but that they belong to the working class. Not being any good at Marxism-Leninism, I wondered how one could belong to the working class without being a worker. But although I didn’t understand this explanation, I accepted it so as not to make waves in the delicate relationship between the professors and workers. After Peking University was relocated away from the city center in 1952, I continued to devote myself to union work. Only three or four professors had ever been named chairman of the University Union, and I was one of them.

  Strangely, during the Cultural Revolution, my union record counted against me instead of for me. The workers’ logic must have run as follows: The proletariat might have been generous enough to permit a professor to join a workers’ organization, but allowing him to become a leader within it was a travesty. I would happily confess to being a capitalist intellectual because I could see that I often possessed selfish bourgeois inclinations—not that the workers themselves were perfectly selfless. But I was baffled by the battle cry: “Down with the capitalist intellectuals in power!” If an intellectual became a professor, a department chair, a vice principal, or even a union leader, he was not in power. The university administration, run by Communist cadres, held all the real power. As far as I could tell, they worked hard to implement Party policy thoroughly, and didn’t deserve to be denounced as capitalist-roaders. Now the intellectuals were facing similar accusations.

  As soon as the students began to persecute me, the workers joined in. They were all physically stronger and more revolutionary (that is, more brutal) than the students. In their spare time, they all enjoyed popular comedic art forms such as crosstalk, but since a struggle session made for better entertainment than a good evening of cross talk, they would not miss an opportunity to organize one.[1] Sure enough, two workers soon pounded on our door to haul me off to a struggle session. They were both on bicycles, but since I didn’t have one, they had to get off theirs and escort me like a foreign dignitary, one on either side of me. Unfortunately, I was in no mood to appreciate the honor.

  The rumor was that the workers were going to struggle against all three professors who had each served, at one point or another, as chairman of the University Union. That would make for a rare spectacle, like watching the most famous singers of the time share a stage. Unfortunately, one of these professors had already been transferred to the Academy of Sciences, and the other couldn’t be found, so they were left with me. Instead of just evading work, they thought up the idea of replacing the struggle session with an indoor procession held in a large hall so that more people could satisfy their curiosity by joining in the spectacle. I didn’t dare look up or say anything, so I couldn’t tell how many bystanders there were, but from the laughter and shouting, I could tell that the performance had attracted quite a crowd. The workers lived up to their reputation as men of deeds rather than words: Instead of making long speeches, they limited themselves to punching and kicking and pelting me with stones. I was relieved at not having to hold the airplane position.

  But the furor over my union work would not end so quickly. The masses were constantly driven by the fear of missing out on something new, and next the Asia-Africa Institute decided it wanted a piece of the action. The institute had been established on the orders of the Ministry of Education before the start of the Cultural Revolution, and Lu Ping himself had asked me to serve as its nominal head. I had few responsibilities and hence no reason to quarrel with anyone at the institute—in fact, we got along quite well. But now that I was being attacked, th
ey wanted a chance to demonstrate their own revolutionary fervor, even if it meant kicking someone who was already down. They hauled me off to a small room in the institute at the southern end of campus. I wasn’t impressed. The slogans were halfhearted, there was no kicking or punching, and I barely held the airplane position at all. The speeches were 90 percent nonsense and 9 percent lies, with 1 percent remaining as a grain of truth. If I were grading struggle sessions, this one would fail—I couldn’t give it any more than a 3 out of 10.

  There were so many struggle sessions that it would have been biologically and psychologically impossible to keep track of them all. At one in my own department, I recall glimpsing members of both Jinggangshan and New Beida among the spokespeople. Although the two factions fought violently using spears and other improvised weapons, you could barely tell them apart. Both were extreme leftist groups that subscribed to ridiculous metaphysical principles, and both declared their loyalty to the Red Queen, Madame Mao. Now that they had found a common enemy in me, they were united in their hatred. The following words had been found in my confiscated diaries: “Jiang Qing gave New Beida a shot of morphine, and now they’re acting cocky again.” This was deemed highly disrespectful and altogether unforgivable. Having grown used to struggle sessions, I had become a more discerning participant. In this case, I noted that the spokespeople were not very clever and the speeches poor. Even from where I was, holding the airplane position, I couldn’t help despising them. But watching the two factions come together to attack me also made me reflect that I myself had proved susceptible to partisanship, as demonstrated by that very line from my diaries. I was outraged to think that the faction that I had supported was now turning against me.