The Cowshed

by Ji Xianlin

  But the glow didn’t last long. In the Three-Antis and Five-Antis Campaigns, our first major criticism campaigns, I “bathed in a medium-size tub,” as we said at the time, which consisted in making a public confession at a department meeting.[3] I came away feeling lighter, stronger, as though I had been cleansed of filth. Such were the thrills of thought reform. But the criticism campaigns rushed by, and before long I could barely keep up. We criticized Wu Xun. We criticized Redology, we criticized Hu Feng, we criticized Hu Shi . . . there was no end to these campaigns, which culminated in the Anti-Rightist Movement of 1957.[4] Although I had not been assigned any class labels or political “hats,” I was always anxious and on edge—those were unhappy days. But at the time, I had no misgivings about the mass campaigns. I went to criticism meetings every day and read all the relevant material. Incidentally, the airplane position had not been invented yet, so public criticism meetings were not the great spectacles that they became during the Cultural Revolution. Although I was puzzled to notice that the whims of the crowd were difficult to reconcile with Mao’s original directives, I never doubted Mao’s famous words: “If the Anti-Rightist Movement is a conspiracy, it is a conspiracy in broad daylight.”

  The flood of campaigns didn’t stop with the Anti-Rightist Movement. By the Lushan Conference of 1959, extreme leftism had already reached its climax, but the conference led only to another campaign in the Anti-Rightist Movement. In the three years of famine that followed, I and other intellectuals endured starvation without question or complaint. Indeed, the whole citizenry remained resolute, such is the unsurpassed resilience of Chinese intellectuals and the Chinese people.

  The Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966, was a necessary development of this earlier radicalization. After the revolution, a colleague in my department who had been part of New Beida told me that I wouldn’t have been persecuted if I had not been rash enough to speak up against the Empress Dowager. I got what was coming to me: Everything I owned was confiscated, and I was beaten, yelled at, struggled against, imprisoned, and nearly killed. But while I regretted it then, I am now glad I had a chance to experience the revolution— missing out on such a spectacle would truly be a cause for regret.

  I observed many things and thought many things while I was in the cowshed. And I gradually began to question why the intellectuals had been singled out. It is true we had many faults, but our accusers were not perfect. I didn’t know then what I know now, so my doubts remained superficial. But instead of blaming other people, such as those who instigated the revolution, I became intensely introspective. To borrow a Christian concept, I became overwhelmed by guilt.

  Whether other intellectuals felt the same way I do not know, but the effects of guilt on me were real. Before 1949, I had assumed that everything about politics was tainted and had made up my mind to avoid it. I knew little about the Communists, but I could see that the Kuomintang government was corrupt and would have to be overthrown. As I’ve said, the feverish self-criticism of the post-1949 political campaigns changed my attitude. I realized that not all political activity was tainted; the Communist Party, for instance, was motivated by genuine ideals. I also blamed myself for having selfishly pursued my own academic career thousands of miles away while my people were dying in battle against the Japanese. My scholarship, my scraps of erudition, if they could even be called that, were a source of shame to me. For a long time, I called myself a fruit-reaper, a parasite who had contributed nothing to my country but returned to pluck the fruit of victory. I wondered how I would ever make amends.

  I fantasized that another war against Japan would give me a chance to prove myself. I knew I was capable of fighting, of sacrifice. I devoured novels about World War II and about the Chinese civil war. I worshipped the soldiers and Communists they depicted, vowing to emulate their heroism. I threw myself eagerly into these childish fantasies.

  I had formerly despised personality cults. Before the war, I used to sneer at Kuomintang supporters for worshipping Chiang Kai-shek. As a student at Tsinghua University, I had met Chiang when we marched to Nanjing after the Mukden Incident and requested an audience with him. He had lied to us and we resented him for it. My former teacher, Mr. Chen Yinke, felt the same way about this man, as he wrote in a poem, “One who delights in flowers is saddened to climb high towers.”[5] Later, I moved to Germany during World War II, when the fascist cult of Hitler was at its height. The frequent use of the greeting “Heil Hitler!” puzzled me. A pretty teenage girl once told me, “Bearing a child of Hitler’s would be the greatest honor of my life!” I found the Hitler cult incomprehensible. I couldn’t help thinking: We Chinese people would never fall for a personality cult like that.

  I returned to China after the war, and three years later, the country was liberated by the Communists from Kuomintang rule. Many other intellectuals of my generation shared in the euphoria. Each year there were two grand parades at Tiananmen Square, on Labor Day and on National Day, which commemorated the founding of the People’s Republic. We always got up at dawn and assembled on the main campus of Peking University to march to a narrow lane near the Dongdan crossing. We would wait there for hours. When the parade began officially at ten, our company would march through Tiananmen to be inspected by the Great Leader. At the time, the three large gates to the square had not yet been demolished, and east of the gates, it was impossible to see either the main Tiananmen gate or the leaders. But once we had turned the corner past the gates, we could see the Great Leader, so the crowd, thousands strong, would begin to chant: “Long live Chairman Mao!” At first the phrase “Long live” stuck in my throat. But before long, because of my natural aptitude in crowd behavior, I too found myself shouting at the top of my voice, as though these words were the cry of my soul. I had fallen under the Great Leader’s spell.

  This is an honest account of my intellectual journey. If the existence of oceans can be inferred from a drop of water, or the universe from a grain of sand, then it may be true that other intellectuals at that time acted in a similar way. If nothing else, our ordeals demonstrate that Chinese intellectuals, both old and young, are consumed with love for our country. For centuries, our intellectual heritage has been deeply rooted in patriotism: This is a distinctive trait that makes us different from intellectuals in other countries.

  “Who has realized that life is but a dream?” the military strategist Zhuge Liang asks in Luo Guanzhong’s fourteenth-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. And he continues, “I have known this all my life.” Unlike Zhuge Liang, I am not adept at seeing through the waking dream that is life. Even after I had been imprisoned, I continued to support the Cultural Revolution. But then I discovered that, as the Western saying goes, “All that glitters is not gold.” While in the cowshed, I met some of the soldiers and workers who had been sent to support the leftist faction at Peking University, the former objects of my infatuation. “All citizens must learn from the People’s Liberation Army!” “The proletariat must take the lead in everything!” I had believed in and obeyed all these slogans. But upon actually meeting these soldiers and workers, I realized that some of them were arrogant thugs who knew nothing about politics. I immediately came to my senses. To be sure, no one is perfect. But I never imagined that the objects of my worship would act so despicably. As materialists, we should be transparent and pragmatic; we cannot deceive ourselves. I must say that although we intellectuals had our faults, we cannot have been the worst offenders.

  After all my ramblings I want to emphasize that the persecution of intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution was unreasonable, indeed indefensible. For the vast majority of those who were persecuted, it is not a thing of the past. For myself, I suppose I am glad to have had an unforgettable experience in the cowshed. But even now that my paltry successes have surrounded me with a cacophony of flattering voices, I sometimes think: I should have committed suicide. That I did not do so is a stain on my character; my very existence is cause for shame; I am living on borrowed
time. I know such thoughts can lead to no good. But I can’t deny these thoughts and I may as well record it here.

  This brings me to my third question: Have the victims of the revolution given voice to their bitterness? Evidently not.

  To answer this question fully, I must return to 1949. I have already written about the emotional state in which I and other intellectuals found ourselves; I would like to add a note on the Chinese diaspora. Chinese living overseas felt the Liberation of the motherland as a seismic change in their own lives. The diasporic communities seemed quite patriotic, and as patriotism peaked in 1949, scores of young people braved the grueling and dangerous journey home. Like the native intellectuals, they were willing to dedicate their lives to China’s progress. Many Chinese scholars gave up superior living standards and research conditions overseas to return to China. Among them was Lao She, the prominent novelist and playwright who later took his own life during the Cultural Revolution. They were all proud of their country and full of optimism, seeing a bright future for China and for themselves.

  Then the mood shifted, extreme leftist thinking took over, and the diasporic intellectuals’ overseas connections became an excuse for persecuting them. Even a child can see that someone who used to live abroad of course retains friends and connections from that time. Our supposedly leftist leaders seized on this argument to label people as special agents or foreign spies. No one was safe. The Cultural Revolution only made things worse. How many upright, patriotic people were wrongly accused? Some were persecuted to death. Those who were still alive hurried to leave China. They had fought to return and were now fighting to leave. I myself witnessed many such cases. Anyone with half a brain would realize what a loss this was to our country. These intellectuals were sad to leave China, like any child who has to leave his parents. But many felt they had no choice but to flee.

  Of the intellectuals who stayed as well as those who didn’t, who has given voice to their bitterness?

  A brand of so-called scar literature concerning the Cultural Revolution emerged some years ago. As far as I can tell, the authors of these books were young people who cannot be said to have many “scars,” while those whose scars are deepest have chosen, for their own reasons, not to vent their outrage. This suppression of the past cannot be ignored; it threatens to endanger China’s progress.

  Today we stress the importance of social harmony, without which the economy cannot grow, and politics cannot fulfill its intended function. But while many intellectuals, and older intellectuals in particular, are still filled with resentment, the true unity and harmony we need has not been achieved.

  Although intellectuals still harbor bitterness, earn a pitiful salary, and cannot help grumbling sometimes, they are genuinely loyal and as patriotic as ever. Yet someone prominent recently said, in light of the dissolution of the Soviet Union: “Chinese intellectuals are no more than hairs on the skin of imperialism.” These words are only hearsay, of course, but the reports may be true. Does the person who said this have the slightest conscience? His words are troubling.

  If one of his kind gains political power, no intellectuals will be left standing.

  My final question is: What made the Cultural Revolution possible?

  This is a complicated question that I am ill-equipped to answer; the only people in a position to tackle it refuse to do so and do not seem to want anyone else to try. I think their refusal runs contrary to the attitude of truth-seeking that a materialist should have. If we were to address this question seriously, the whole country—including, of course, the intellectuals—would be deeply grateful. They would put aside their baggage and march on ahead, working collectively toward the harmony and progress of our socialist society.

  If we refuse to study this problem, we leave it to foreigners to continue to do so. As Confucius put it: “If ritual propriety has been lost at court, seek it in the villages.” Some foreigners are studying the facts objectively and reaching solid conclusions. Regardless of whether their work addresses the most crucial issues, honesty is better than lies. But others harbor ulterior motives. They muddy the waters, spreading rumors and false accusations. Though they are like “ants trying to move trees,” as the saying goes, and though it is unlikely that their warped version of events will influence anything, it can lead to no good.

  Where have we come from, and where are we going? I believe that the issues are clear. These are my thoughts and my ramblings come to a close.

  Author’s Afterword

  I WORKED INTERMITTENTLY on a first draft of this book between March 4, 1988, and April 5, 1989, but only this spring was I seized by the desire to copy out a final manuscript. Today is June 3rd, and it has taken me about three months to nearly complete a revision of the first draft.

  I originally told myself that I would simply write an objective account of what happened, without bitterness or rancor. But I am, after all, a human being with emotions, and I found it impossible to avoid tears and outrage as I was writing; I felt I needed to accept these emotions as part of the story if I wanted to be true to my experience. The largest difference between the first and final draft is that there are fewer tears and less outrage in this version. I would have preferred the original version, but I decided to tone down my writing in order to avoid stepping on people’s toes.

  A careful reader will be able to tell that there are three kinds of characters mentioned in this book: some are anonymous, some are referred to by surname, and only a few people are referred to by their full names. In the first two cases, I have elected to preserve the privacy of the individuals concerned; only where I am convinced that certain individuals pose a threat to our socialist society do I record their names as a warning to others.

  In the years since the Cultural Revolution, I have never taken revenge on any of these people, even though my position as department head was restored and I was named to national political positions. I could have made life difficult for my former enemies, and I hope the individuals alluded to in this book understand that I have written it as a purely historical document. I continue to value the relationships we were able to build before and after the Cultural Revolution.

  I have written a total of about eight million characters in my lifetime, about 70 percent of which were written after the Cultural Revolution. Had I succeeded in my attempt to commit suicide at the time, none of these works would have been written. Was surviving the revolution a stroke of good or ill fortune? Even now, I cannot say I know the answer to that question.

  —JI XIANLIN

  June 3, 1992

  Appendix: My Heart Is a Mirror

  I WAS BORN too late to witness the beginning of the twentieth century. But in seven years’ time, I will have lived to see the beginning of the twenty-first. My physical and mental health suggests that there is no reason I shouldn’t survive to see that day. Being nearly contemporaneous with the past century, I think I qualify to write an essay entitled “China in the Twentieth Century and I.”

  Each person’s heart is a mirror reflecting the changing times, and mine is no exception. I consider myself to be quite an observant person, and the reflections in my mirror may not be the most detailed impressions of historical events, but they are not the cloudiest. I believe that my memories accurately reflect ninety years of twentieth-century history.

  I was born in 1911, in the year of the revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty: Two months and four days after I was born, the last emperor lost his seat on the Dragon Throne. I sometimes joke that I am a closet royalist. One of my earliest memories is of villagers speaking of the “imperial court” in tones of awe long after the Qing dynasty had crumbled. I had no idea what the court was. As for the emperor, he seemed to be both god and man, an extremely powerful animal.

  That was the reflection of the dying Qing dynasty in my heart’s mirror.

  My hometown is in Qingping County, which is now part of the city of Linqing, well known for being one of the poorest parts of Shandong. I was born into a fa
mily of penniless subsistence farmers. My grandparents died before I was born, so I never met them and never experienced a grandfather’s love. They left three sons, of whom my father was the eldest, and the seventh eldest male among his cousins. The youngest of my uncles, who was orphaned almost from birth, was given to another family and surnamed Diao from then on. The two remaining brothers, my father and uncle, were alone with no one in the world they could rely on. They were penniless and constantly hungry. When the hunger became too overwhelming, they would go to the jujube woods and eat rotting jujubes from the ground. I don’t know much about this period of their life, because neither of them spoke of it—perhaps it was so harrowing that they were unwilling to reawaken old memories or to leave their children with images of such grim poverty.

  The two brothers would starve if they stayed in the village, so they decided to try their luck in the big city and find a way of surviving there. The nearest city was Jinan, the capital of Shandong, where they were simple country bumpkins who didn’t know a soul. Possibly for the same reasons, they never spoke of their difficulties during this time, and I never asked about them.

  My uncle, the younger of the two, was eventually able to eke out a living in Jinan, surviving by the skin of his teeth like a blade of grass among the rocks. The brothers agreed that my uncle would stay in Jinan where he could earn money, and my father would return home to become a farmer. They hoped that my uncle would make a name for himself. That way, even if he didn’t become rich, people would respect him, and he would win honor for himself and their father and mother.

  But being a farmer requires land, and their family had no land. My father somehow managed to survive and even started a family. Perhaps my grandfather had left him half an acre of land. Again, I don’t know exactly how he scraped by.