City Gate, Open Up

by Bei Dao

  In the winter of the same year, Mou Zhijing saw a small-character poster on the street with the heading “Family Background Doctrine,” and from the address listed on it tracked down Yu Luowen; the two talked animatedly, and, inspired, Mou Zhijing decided to letterpress a one fen per copy tabloid-format newspaper that could bring this article to more readers. On January 18, 1967, the Secondary School Cultural Revolution News launched; the text of “Family Background Doctrine” took up three printed sheets, and was signed “Beijing Family Background Problem Research Group”; its real author Yu Luoke, Yu Luowen’s older brother, became the chief commentator for the paper.

  At the time, though, even the eighteen-year-old editor in chief, Mou Zhijing, wasn’t sure who had originally written the piece. He later recounted his impression of Yu Luoke upon first meeting him: “He looked a little peculiar — short with a prominent hunchback, pale face, his eyesight severely myopic, eyeglasses formed two perfectly round circles, and yet his gaze cut right through you, his voice sonorous, revealing a deeply intelligent and humorous individual. . . . It was the thick of winter. In the little hut he built beside his home and called the ‘ice cellar,’ I felt it to be exceptionally warm. . . .”

  The supply of Secondary School Cultural Revolution News couldn’t meet demand, the print runs continuing uninterrupted. For a period of time, people from every part of the country poured through the gate of Middle No. 4, their anxious and expectant eyes like the bubbly foam on a vast ocean. Altogether six issues were published, until the Central Committee of the Cultural Revolution publicly criticized “Family Background Doctrine.” Mou Zhijing convened an editorial meeting, saying that whoever wasn’t prepared for the ultimate sacrifice must quit at once. No one flinched; everyone remained true to their task.

  Yu Luoke was arrested near the end of 1968; under the ruling of the court of law, he was executed on March 5, 1970, at age twenty-seven. Before his arrest, he told Mou Zhijing, “I feel I must apologize to you — you’re so young, and I’ve dragged you into this.” Then he entrusted Mou with a “letter to be delivered to Chairman Mao.” Unfortunately, this letter passed between many hands and secret hiding places, until at some point it was lost.

  In the autumn of 1975, Liu Yu and I, while on a trip to Wutai Mountain, ran out of money. Passing through Datong on our way back to Beijing, I found Mou Zhijing, then working at the railway station, and borrowed five kuai from him. That night at his dormitory, Mou Zhijing played his accordion in a manic frenzy, eyes squinting, mouth stretched back in a grin, as if intoxicated, or possessed.

  11

  Zhao Jingxing was one grade below me, though intellectually quite above me. By the time he turned eighteen, he had already read the complete works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin; Das Kapital he had read six times; Hegel, Kant, Feuerbach, among other giants of Western philosophy he knew intimately; plus, he had already finished writing his Critique of Philosophy and Dialogic Outline on Political Economy, among other book-length manuscripts. Following the frenetic ebb and flow of people’s revolutionary reading habits, a group of students at the affiliated girls’ secondary school at Beijing Normal University excerpted some of Zhao Jingxing’s writings, printed a mimeographed booklet of them, and circulated copies among the student body. I still remember the first time I read it — though I could recognize every single character, to my complete astonishment, I couldn’t grasp the main concepts, the lines of text a confusing jumble in my mind. Anger swelled within me, directed toward this young buck who shared my family name.

  Zhao Jingxing was born into an impoverished family. His father worked as a tailor. He often went around shirtless wearing only Burma-crotch pants, revealing his dark complexion and rolls of fat. His family didn’t have the slightest connection with any kind of literary culture, and yet he became a most formidable philosopher.

  Zhao Jingxing openly fought against the Up the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement, writing big-character posters that were pasted onto the school bulletin boards. He thought that the average population increase per acre of land would inevitably be a more serious burden for peasants and farmers, as the crises cities faced would be passed on to them. Full of youthful vigor, he spoke his mind with no fear of repercussions, indifferent to his own personal safety.

  At the second struggle session held in what was once the biology lab, the master of ceremonies thundered out, “Zhao Jingxing! You wolf with a savage heart, you go too far criticizing Chairman Mao! If this is tolerated, then what cannot be tolerated!” Zhao Jingxing first quoted the exact sentence from the exact paragraph on the exact page from the two-volume set of Marx and Engels: “To critique is to learn; to critique is precisely the making of revolution.” He went on with the courage of his own convictions: “I’ve built on four aspects of Mao Zedong’s thought,” and then expanded on each point with perfect lucidity.

  His speech could be said to have made the stones shatter and heavens shake. For instance, “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is the eruption of social contradictions”; or, “The progression of socialism into the phase of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is like the engine of a train wobbling left and right, unaware of where it’s going.” He wrote in his diary, “The emergence of a new stage of history will accompany the underground movement of the people.” In Dialogic Outline on Political Economy, he wrote, “The commodity economy must be allowed to break open the planned economy.” Such heretical ideas at the time were seen as a treasonous offense, and naturally incurred a range of punishments.

  At Shi Kangcheng’s house near the end of 1968, I ran into Zhao Jingxing’s girlfriend, Tao Luosong, an Upper 2 student at the Normal University’s secondary school. She wore a long, white dress totally out of place with the times. To this day I still remember her saying to me: “Zhao Jingxing isn’t anti–Chairman Mao.” Along with his abstruse notes on philosophy, some passages of love letters he wrote to Tao Luosong circulated: “Young girl, before you stands an eighteen-year-old philosopher.”

  Tao Luosong was quite a beautiful girl. One resident in the Baiwanzhuang (“Millions Village”) district of Beijing, however, claiming to be a “handsome man and a beautiful-woman appraisal expert,” gave her a score of only 79 percent. It eventually came out that this self-proclaimed expert’s standard of beauty was the Venus de Milo and Michelangelo’s David.

  Yifan and I practiced shooting an air gun at my place, the targets discarded photographs that included head shots of ourselves, while a copy of Red Flag magazine served as a padded trap behind each target so that the ammo could be reused. Zhao Jingxing had recently asked us to take a portrait of Tao Luosong, and without thinking we used a discarded photo of her as a target. Who knew how this information leaked out. One day, Zhao Jingxing came over to borrow a book and said, “I wanted to talk to you about Tao Luosong — do you two hate her for some reason?”

  The winter of 1968 passed with particular frigidness as one big snowstorm followed another. Study Six grew more and more cheerless and desolate; most of the boarders had left for the countryside to live and work with production teams. The campus showed few signs of life, students were sparse, and the big-character poster shed totally empty and deserted save for a few notices strewn here and there.

  In one of the smaller courtyards, the workers’ propaganda team brought four students into custody for questioning. Zhao Jingxing, one of the Ministry of Public Security’s “most wanted criminals,” was among them. He always seemed to be smiling, whether immersed in a book or soaking up the world around him with his musings. His interests eventually took a sharp turn from philosophy to political economy.

  Apart from Zhao Jingxing, two other students from our class, Liu Huixuan and Shi Kangcheng, were bound next to him. For separate reasons, either publicizing or opposing the “theory of the bloodline,” they were both detained, two paths leading to the same destination. Students guarded them, turning a blind eye. I often visited Shi Kangcheng,
giving him books or delivering letters, and seeing Liu Huixuan I’d also say hello. The four of them got along well together, tending the fire from morning to night, passing the iron poker between them, exchanging updates on the case or knowledge discovered in a book.

  In February 1970, Zhao Jingxing and Tao Luosong were both chained and thrown into prison.

  12

  Beginning around October 1966, the rebel factions in the Beijing secondary schools gradually supplanted the Cultural Revolution’s early-stage Red Guards (now known as the Old Guards) and entered the mainstream; divisions within the factions, however, quickly became apparent. In the spring of 1967, two Central Committee senior official addresses on the third and fourth of April led to the formation of the two factions. The April Third Faction, also known as the April Three-and-a-Half Faction, was the more moderate of the two, and as mentioned before, the one to which the New Middle No. 4 Commune belonged.

  August 11, 1967, a day the sun blazed down so bright. The Beijing Old Guard Chorus rehearsed the “Long March Song Cycle” in the Middle No. 4 cafeteria, conducted by Liu Huixuan, who would interrupt in a rage whenever the musical phrase rose to the climax: “Crow-black clouds that cover the sky won’t last / The red sun will release its rays of light forever and ever.” During breaks, the chorus of boys congregated outside the school gate to bask in the sun.

  That day I gathered with other students at the main gate’s reception office to copy big-character posters — as there was no need at the time to keep watch over the school’s entrance, the reception office had been requisitioned for other uses. The sound of idle chatter trickled through the open window, followed by raucous jeering and booing, then a sudden exchange of shrill curses, a chase, and a fisticuffs. I watched them drag someone past the school gate as they punched and kicked him, but then, while hauling him up by his four limbs, his head accidentally thudded against a tree. Reportedly, two boys from another school were trying to catch up to a demonstration march and, passing by on their bikes, had a run-in with the chorus — one escaped and the other had been captured.

  This stirred up a veritable hornet’s nest. Their foes belonged to the Beijing Civil Engineering School’s Flying Tigers Team, die-hard followers of the April Third Faction, their combination of fearlessness and fighting prowess known far and wide. As a life had been lost in the violence, they armed themselves to the teeth and marched to the Beijing Garrison Command with the corpse raised, and staged a protest. Word spread that the Flying Tigers Team were on their way with the intent to kill.

  What happened next can only be described as the original blitzkrieg: First, a furious bombardment of stones and rocks descended on the campus with relentless force, thunderously pounding the earth, smashing the roof tiles and windows. Members of the Flying Tigers Team stormed through the school gate, soldiers splitting into two routes of attack, rapidly occupying the higher vantage points, three sentries posted every five paces on top of the courtyard wall, the campus sealed off. Wicker helmets protected their heads; their hands wielded spears fashioned out of steel pipe. After the vanguard troops cleared the way, their main forces rushed in, lining up row after row into a square phalanx, murderous cries shaking the skies, a coffin raised at the rear.

  The Old Guard Chorus fled to the western end of the cafeteria. Fortunately, the New Middle No. 4 Commune and the Flying Tigers Team were part of the same big family, and through some persuasive pleading, we managed to slow down the advancement of their great army.

  Then, suddenly, a figure dashed out from the side of the dorms’ little courtyard, empty-handed and barefisted, hurling out a torrent of abuse and obstructing the path of the army. It was the conductor Liu Huixuan. Instantly, a dozen Flying Tigers surrounded him, spears pointed toward him from four sides and eight directions; under the rays of the sun, cold light glinted off the metal tips. Teacher Tian Yong, the head of our class, led some of us over to Liu Huixuan, whom we shielded with our bodies as we implored him to calm down, pulling him slowly back to the little courtyard, his verbal invective continuing on uninterrupted.

  The army appeared to be an ascendant tide, the coffin a boat, circling around the vortex on its forward surge. Liu Huixuan appeared again, this time coming out from the cafeteria, leading a chorus of straggling troops shouting slogans, though once they caught sight of the great army pressing onward along the borders in a forest of spears, Liu Huixuan commanded the troops: “Lay down your weapons and retreat!” The chorus boys threw away their clubs and fled for their lives; schoolgirls shrieked in a confused mass. We tried our best to separate both sides, urging the chorus to take off their military uniforms, shed their obvious Old Guard appearance, and mix into the crowds. A few hid inside the cafeteria or along the narrow path by the courtyard wall, waiting for a chance to scale it and escape. Because of our attempts to intervene, the bloody battle only resulted in a few minor injuries. The greatest loss the Old Guards suffered involved their manganese bicycles parked outside the cafeteria, smashed to smithereens.

  Recalling how he came to write his novella When the Afterglow in the Clouds Fades, the renowned author Liu Huixuan said, “At the time, there was an activist organization at our school called the New Middle No. 4 Commune, echoing the Paris Commune, that opposed our faction. A student in the Commune, Yang Xiaoqing, had accumulated many deep grievances against us, and whenever we saw him we’d exchange angry glares. Then violence invaded our school, a massive fight broke out, and in the middle of the melee, I found myself trapped in a tight encirclement. Yang Xiaoqing risked his life to rescue me. And although we still exchanged glares afterward, it was understood as ‘sticking to principles.’ In my heart, however, I respected him, and revered him. . . .”

  13

  In the spring of 1968, some uninvited guests arrived at the school and went straight to the Revolutionary Committee Office for the Educational Revolution in the former principal’s office at the southeast courtyard; a sign hanging above the doorway read “Secondary School Red Congress War-fighting Department Liaison Office,” this committee also functioning as the April Third Faction’s only standing body.

  Because the guests, students from Beijing Normal University, carried with them a letter of introduction from the Central Cultural Revolution Group, they acted with arrogance, moving the tables and chairs around with a ruckus. The purpose of their visit was to investigate policies of revisionism relating to the college entrance exam system, namely, to figure out how the old exam system suppressed the children of workers and peasants and protected the children of the Five Black Categories, those classes of people whom Mao deemed enemies of the revolution.

  A former student guidance counselor, Qu Datong, managed the college entrance exam and replied to their questions with fear and trepidation, knowing well in his heart that the revolution had been under way for almost two years and he had yet to face any serious combat. After reading the letter of introduction, he remained silent for a moment before letting out a long sigh, saying, “I fear I will disappoint all of you.” The plain fact of the matter being that though the average score for Middle No. 4 students’ college entrance exam hovered around 95 percent, those who did not come from a good family background and yet scored at that level or higher were filtered out. He said, “Let me tell you, a form is inserted in the front pocket of each student’s file, and in the upper right corner of the form any secondary-school political leanings are indicated; if a rejection is recommended, your score can soar into the open skies and you still will not be admitted into the university.”

  Qu Datong himself was the son of a Kuomintang major general, and having persevered as a guidance counselor at an eminent school, knew its profoundest secrets. Upon seeing the look of astonishment on the faces of his guests, he became more complacent: “Let me give you an example: You know who Qian Weichang is, yes? The prominent scientist and professor who is also a big rightist. His son Qian Yuankai lacked the proper political credentials, and so even though
he received high marks it made no difference, no university admitted him. This is the reality of the party’s class line.”

  Qu Datong had been the Upper 3 head teacher for Qian Yuankai’s class, and had once made a promise to Qian Yuankai that the family background problem would not influence his continuing education. And so Qian tried to test into Qinghua University and ended up receiving the second-highest score in the whole northern region — and indeed, not one university accepted him. In September 1958, Qian joined the Mt. Shijing Iron and Steel Works to serve as an unskilled laborer, two years later becoming a lathe operator, all the while continuing to study on his own through his toils. His passion for photography led him to build his own camera equipment, and in 1968 he transferred to the Beijing Camera Factory, where he worked his way up from technician to chief engineer, and eventually became a leading authority on camera technology and the practice and theory of photography.

  After the calamity of his college exam rejection, Qian Yuankai’s father said to him, “Opportunities to attend school are dependent upon others, but studying, reading books, putting what you learn into practice, together make up the principal classroom for gaining knowledge; the power to learn at this school can only be seized by your own hands, it is something no one else can ever deprive you of. Let learning become a kind of life habit, which compared to any badge bestowed by a prestigious university is of much greater importance!” These words he always kept close to his heart.

  As for life’s bitter wine, he initially brewed it with his teacher and couldn’t share it with others. But many years later, for any school-related reunion, once word go out that Qian Yuankai would be attending, Qu Datong beat a strategic retreat of many leagues.