by Wendy Liu
For Those Whose Concept of China Has Frozen in the 1970s and for Anyone
Who Would Like to Know About Today's China.
1. China Was Red...
China was red, idealistically and naively red, when I was a primary school girl in Xi'an in the early 1960s, proudly wearing a red scarf, the symbol of the membership of the Young Pioneers of China, the auxiliary children's organization of the Communist Party of China along with the Communist Youth League of China. It was such an honor to wear it, as we were told, because it represented a corner of
China's red national flag, dyed in the blood of the revolutionary martyrs. At every Young Pioneers event, the organization leader, usually a teacher, would lead the Young Pioneers' pledge. At the end of the pledge was the sentence starting, "To fight for the cause of communism," we, young pioneers, would raise our right fists and shout back in chorus at the top of our lungs, "Ready at any moment!" We emulated Mao's model soldier [Lei Feng] whose motto it was to "Be a screw that never rusts" in the revolutionary machine and were determined to grow up every bit as selfless and devoted as he had been to the noblest cause of the mankind: the realization of communism in the whole world. We sang on so many occasions a song called "We Are the Successors of Communism" and each time we sang, we felt sacred and important, like the rising sun of the socialist motherland.
China was red, fanatically and brutally red, in the late 1960s when the Chinese population was classified into two main categories according to family backgrounds, namely the "Five Red Types" (workers, poor peasants, revolutionary soldiers, revolutionary cadres and revolutionary martyrs), and the "Five Black Types" (land-lords, rich peasants, counter revolutionaries, bad elements and rightists.). Fortunately mine was one of the "right types" of families, my brother, a middle school student then, joined the Red Guard in the red storm of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" surging over and engulfing China. A whole generation of Chinese citizens were "making revolution" full-time, with schools closed down, with all book knowledge criticized as bourgeoisie, feudal, or counter-revolutionary, except Mao's works, of course, and with red hearts everywhere, not Valentines, but an expression of loyalty to Mao, the Great Helmsman. Among hundreds of thousands of Red Guard organizations with militant names like Red Rebellion Corps or Mao Zedong Thought Regiment, my brother's was called "Red Terror Brigade." Red was revolutionary. Red was status. Red was pride. Red Terror Brigade carried out surprise house-searches at night in homes of people of the "Five Black Types," smashing or seizing their properties and beating the owners up if the Brigade members felt like it. To Red Terror Brigade, what they did was revolutionary act. It was following Mao. It was part of the communist movement that would make the whole world red someday. However, my brother along with hundreds of thousands of his peers were banished later by Mao. No longer needed as the cannon fodder of the Cultural Revolution and with neither employment nor education opportunities for them in the cities, they were sent to the vast and poor Chinese countryside to "learn from the peasants," as the Great Helmsman had instructed, and to survive on their own wits and hands.
China was red, pathetically and foolishly red, in the depth of the Cultural Revolution around the start of 1970 when hundreds of thousands of Chinese families broke up, not because of marriage problems but because of the crazy political movement and government policies that scattered parents, children, husbands and wives to different parts of the country. My mother, father, aunts and uncles, all communist party members since their youth days in Yanan - Mao's revolutionary base in the 30s and 40s, were criticized, struggled against, detained or banished one way or another for their un-proletarian, un-revolutionary or un-Maoist sayings or deeds or merely their senior positions at work. I myself, a teenager now, was left behind and alone in the city to start my middle school, carrying the "Little Red Book" of Mao's quotations everyday as required, not to study so much as to devote hours everyday and sometimes long into the night, digging air shelter tunnels with hoes, shovels, baskets and pulleys under the schoolyard ground as part of Mao's "people's war" strategy to prepare the Chinese population against possible Soviet attacks.
China was red, pitifully and wearily red, by the time Mao died in 1976, despite all the longevity slogans, when the Cultural Revolution finally drew to an end. Even though the ultra-left "Gang of Four" led by Mao's wife [Jiang Qing] was toppled the same year, a remaining group of ultra Maoists insisted that the Party and the country must follow all the policies formulated under Mao and that whatever Mao had said must be adhered to, thus the term "Whateverists." At the same time, the "April 5th Incident," in which a group of Beijingers as well as hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens across the country had mourned former Premier [Zhou Enlai] publicly with wreaths and poems earlier that year to show their discontent towards the leadership, remained being labeled "counter-revolutionary." But China's redness for the first time was not
as monolithic as before. While celebrating the downfall of Gang of Four, the Chinese Communist Party as well as the Chinese people began to assess the Cultural Revolution and the heritage of Mao. Words like "redressing" "rehabilitation" "catastrophe" and "lost generation" were coming out of the closet all over the country. "Scar" literature, scars of sufferings from the Cultural Revolutionary years, began to flourish.
China was still red, but anemically and feebly red, in the immediate post-Cultural Revolution days. Years of all revolution and no production had left China's economy on the brink of total collapse. No Chinese citizens owned anything except their clothes (blue or army green baggy Mao style uniforms), bikes (black, sturdy and one speed for daily transportation), and maybe a small black and white television set if one were lucky. Almost everyone worked for the state for a nominal salary (mostly no more than 100 yuan a month) and lived in government-subsidized apartments more often than not without or with very limited plumbing. Things were so bad and shabby that when the Tangshan earthquake in north China buried a whole city and hundreds of thousands of its residents in the summer of 1976, the Chinese government felt it shameful to allow any international organization visit the location and inspect the damage, not to say ask for or accept any international assistance. Eerily, the big grumble and crumble were not just from the earthquake. They were the sounds of despair, grievance, and a deep collective sigh of the longing for change that had been pent up inside the Chinese people in their millions.
(To be
continued...)
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