A Sparrow's Voice

Chapter 9

2008-04-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

In late 1965, with the suppression of the drama, Hairui Dismissed from Office, we saw the birth of the Cultural Revolution. This was a play written by Wu Han, the vice-mayor of Beijing, who was a distinguished historian. His drama dealt with an administrative officer during the Ming dynasty who fought to rid the people of a tyrant and return farmland to the peasants. Hairui became a god in the people’s hearts, especially when he dared to criticize the emperor. For this major crime, he was dismissed from office. Wu Han’s drama was accused of using the past to criticize the present. Some party officials interpreted it as referring to the Lushan Meeting of 1959, where Marshall Peng Dehuai had been dismissed from office for criticizing Mao’s Three Red Banners policy. Eventually, Mao himself criticized the play by pointing out that its focus was on Hairui’s dismissal from office after championing the people. Therefore, Mao used this distorted logic to charge that Wu Han was anti-Party and anti-Socialist.

Shortly after the charges against Wu Han became public, a new element in Chinese politics, the four top ranking Party cadres now known as the Gang of Four began their own evil drama to seize supreme power. Making use of their various posts, these four wrote articles one after another viciously attacking Wu Han and declared him guilty of treason. However, some, such as Deng Xiaoping and Beijing’s mayor, Peng Zhen, saw the matter differently. They held the play to be a matter of academic discussion without any relation to Marshall Peng. They pointed to the historical lessons of the Stalin Era, and held that in academic matters we should seek truth through facts and everyone should be considered equal and without bias before the truth. They stated that in socialism, we should not make arbitrary decisions and force people to submit, but convince people by reason.

Mayor Peng Zhen tried to check the play’s criticism by
drawing it into a public academic discussion. After that effort,
one explosion followed another in the news. Mao charged that
authority in academic circles and education was still in the
hands of bourgeois intellectuals. The more the socialist
revolution advanced, the more the intellectuals would resist,
and the more their true anti-Communist and anti-Socialist faces
would be exposed. This simple idea became his bugle call
announcing the coming of the Cultural Revolution. He went so
far as to charge that many, like Vice-mayor Wu, although
members of the Communist Party, were in fact anti-Communist
Nationalists and sympathizers of the KMT. Mao also pointed to
the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party,
portraying them as “a sheaf of bad elements, where even a
needle or a drop of water could not get through.” Throughout all
of this ideological chaos, the original five person committee
which had recently been appointed to lead the Cultural
Revolution was suddenly dismissed with the announcement that
a new committee was to be established.

At this time in the evolution of the Chinese Communist
Party the four leading Party cadres who saw this period of
internal ideological strife and chaos as the perfect opportunity
to seize the leadership of the Cultural Revolution, began to do
so for themselves. It was under the great influence and behind
the scenes power of a mysterious third rate actress, Jiang Qing,
that the Gang of Four was able to solidify its control over the
Cultural Revolution Committee. This power hungry actress had
become the wife of none other than Mao himself. She was
joined in her quest for national prominence by Chen Boda, and
their two advisors, Kang Sheng and Wang Hong Wen. At that
time no one imagined the amount of power that Mao would
eventually permit this new Cultural Revolution Committee to
wield within Chinese politics, government, and society, to say
nothing of their permanent effect upon our culture. We would
all soon watch in horror as these four become the root of
China’s unprecedented suffering.

The first political battle of the Cultural Revolution
culminated in the fall of Beijing’s Mayor, Peng Zhen.
Newspapers throughout the country ferociously attacked the
Beijing evening newspaper serial Three Family Village. They
accused this serial of being part of an elaborately organized
attack on socialism, and they went on to speculate on its
motives. They insisted on digging up the root that grew deep
underneath it. This attack clearly focused on Beijing Mayor
Peng and the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist
Party. Everyone understood that the newspapers were the voice
of the Party, so they were shocked to read this attack on a part
of the Party. Once again, there was no way for the Chinese
people to know what was going on behind the scenes.
The newspapers told us what the Party liked or disliked,
but it was never their intent to tell us the truth or the facts. That
was never seen as their purpose We were perplexed and
shocked to see Marshall Peng (who was China’s Supreme
Commander in the Korean War), the Mayor of Beijing,
Vice-Mayor Wu, and a number of other senior government
officials, suddenly turned into anti-Communists and counterrevolutionaries
in rapid succession by the Party newspapers.

The melodies of the Cultural Revolution seemed strangely
discordant to most of our ears. What we had worked for nearly
two decades to build in China, now seemed suddenly poised
against itself and us. What was even more incredible, was that
impulsive, inexperienced teenagers would be the ones
encouraged to lead the charge of this new senseless revolution
against local officials and intellectuals. Such a devastating
political explosion in a great nation with more than 5000 years
of civilization shocked people all over the world as it’s bizarre
direction became clearer day by day.

A few months later, the May 16th Notification, a notice
of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and
formulated by Mao himself, was published by the Central
Political Bureau on that day in 1966. This notice gave us a
glimpse of the mysterious motives behind the growing confusion
of the new Cultural Revolution. “The representatives of the
bourgeoisie who have sneaked into our Party, government,
armies, and cultural circles, are a group of counter-revolutionaries
and revisionists. Once the conditions are ripe they intend
to seize political power and change the proletarian dictatorship
into a bourgeoisie dictatorship. Some of them have been seen
through and some of them have not. Some of them have been
trusted and fostered as our successors, for instance, the
characters of the type such as Kruschev. They are sleeping at
our side. Party Committees at all levels must pay full attention
to this.”

Then, the June 1st edition of the People’s Daily
contained a big character poster written by seven people
headed by Nie Yuanzi, the secretary of the Party Committee in
the Philosophy Department of Beijing University. The poster
strongly criticized the leading member of the Party in Beijing
University. It charged that he had “sabotaged the Cultural
Revolution.”

An editorial in the People’s Daily that same day, pointed
out, “A violent storm of Cultural Revolution has already surged
into being within our country!” And it added that it would soon
“sweep away everything” before it. On that same day Mao
ordered Nie’s poster publicly broadcast. It lit a blazing fire in
Beijing University that soon spread throughout the entire
country. On June 2nd, the People’s Daily published Nie’s poster
on the front page with the caption, “A big character poster by
seven comrades from Beijing University shows us a great
conspiracy.” The Commentator, in his article, then accused the
Party Committee at Beijing University of being an anti-Party
clique. He then called on revolutionaries to place themselves
under the leadership of the Party’s Central Committee, headed
by Chairman Mao himself, to “fight resolutely against those
black gangs going against the Party leadership.” No matter
what banners they held or what their status or seniority, they
were to be smashed completely.

Mao’s words, for he was the Commentator, backed by his
extraordinary prestige and influence, plus the inciting
admonitions of the People’s Daily, sent people all over the
country into sudden action. The results of these words were
sensational and exciting. Nie became a heroine in one day. All
universities and colleges followed the example of Beijing
University. Like an immitating wave, they drug out the first and
second rank leadership of the Party committees within their
schools too. Big character posters sprang up everywhere and the
nation’s educational order was totally disrupted.

Our school, in the heart of Beijing, was once again full of
big character posters, and there was no doubt that the first rank
level of the Party’s committee in the school was the designated
target. How could ordinary people tell the truth from falsehood
in these posters or newspapers? Since we had no legal system
to check the power of the Party or to proclaim truth, those in
power could make somebody guilty of whatever they wished,
whenever they wished. It was exactly as in the old Chinese
saying, “Give a dog a bad name and then hang him.” As I
looked at these incredible charges, I took all of these posters as
fictitious stories and curiosities. Yet, given the increasing
tensions growing all around me, I also tried to learn something
from them.

Later it became obvious, that even the Chairman of
China, Liu Shao-qi, was unaware of Mao’s true intentions when
he launched his Cultural Revolution. As a responsible
government official, he sent working groups to the schools to
control the revolution by establishing and maintaining order.
Mao himself originally agreed to these steps. As a result, these
working groups took the place of the local Party committees. It
was their function to lead the cultural revolution according to
the Eight Articles set down by the Central Committee of the
Party. Among other things, these Articles directed: “No big
character posters on the streets,” “Handle problems differently
at home than abroad, inside and outside a unity,” “Hold a
meeting inside the campus, but not outside,” “Don’t have
denouncing meetings on a large scale,” and so on.

However, the students, with Mao’s support, took these
official restrictions as efforts to suppress their revolution.
Therefore, once again with Mao’s support, they began to drive
the new working groups out of the schools shortly after they
were established. Quite a number of people, including many in
the working groups themselves, originally thought that those
who were against the Party working groups must, therefore, be
anti-Party. As the days passed the swarm of contradictions and
paradoxes increased and intensified, until eventually hostility
toward the working groups broke out with the ferocity of an
erupting volcano. The students at Beijing Post and
Telecommunications College were the first to drive their
working group from their school. Then, one by one, without
exception, the students at other schools did the same.
Up until this time, I had formed a good impression of the
head of our college’s working group, Mr. Chao. He appeared to
be a pleasant and reasonable army man. I sympathized with
him, for as an army man he was duty bound to carry out all
orders given to him by a higher authority. But he too, was soon
driven from his post in confusion and disgrace.

As the days passed, more and more of the population
tried hard to figure out Mao’s real intentions, for everyone
wanted to follow them correctly. Yet there were others, like the
Gang of Four, who tried hard to figure out Mao’s intentions, just
to take advantage of the situation and to fish in the troubled
waters. Of course there have always been people of that type,
and there always will be too!

We even had a couple in our school who proved to be a
prime example of this opportunistic side of human nature. I refer
to them as a couple, not because they were lovers, but because
they often echoed one another’s opinions. From the beginning
they played their roles as if they were in an elaborately staged
drama. A drama which required some very mean and ugly roles.
They understood their leader’s taste quite well, and tried to
impress him accordingly with how deeply their proletarian
convictions ran, and how very faithful they were to the Party.
To all who would listen, they loudly proclaimed their
convictions as revolutionaries and leftists. Therefore, on many
occasions they worked hard to participate in the center of the
action, on the Cultural Revolution side, of course.

Not long into the Cultural Revolution, the whole school
was about to go to Beijing University to view the big character
posters displayed there. Before we ever left our campus, these
two stepped out of ranks, struck a pose, and with forced anger
shouted in chorus: “Wu Jieqin, get out of the rank! Zhang Di,
get out! Guan Tian, get out!” We were told that we were not fit
and therefore not allowed, to see the revolutionary big character
posters. Then, a few days later, at a movie party on campus,
celebrating August 1st Day, the day the Chinese Red Army was
founded, these same two got up and told us that we had no right
to sit with the revolutionary masses. At meetings organized to
criticize and struggle against “the enemy” they would almost
always be the first to open fire, sometimes dominating the
entire meeting.

Their usual procedure was for one of them to stand up
and shout, “Wu!”, or some other victim’s name. Then, as if his
indignation was not expressed strongly enough, he would then
follow by banging his fist on the desk, often causing the glasses
or cups to shake frightfully. Then he might take out a notebook,
actually a diary, turn to the required page, and read aloud the
poison he had written there. Often he read that his victim on a
particular day and at a particular place had said something
counter revolutionary to someone. For instance, he might read
that his victim had once talked with someone saying that
“people are equal in front of the truth.” Then he might shout
even louder, “People like you will never be allowed to be equal
according to the truth! What did you mean? What did you want
to do? Confess! You must be well-behaved!”

Neither one of them ever seemed to realize that this
show perfectly revealed their true colors. This was exactly the
behavior expected of a spy who was attempting to record what
he thought might be useful later against his colleagues. They
went so far, and were so emotional, that their evil quality even
knotted the muscles and blood vessels in their faces. Their five
sense organs could hardly play a healthy positive role in their
lives any longer. They had become victims of their own deceit.
They thought nothing of making others suffer, or even die, if
only it served their personal needs to be successful in their
game of power.

On August 5th, Mao’s big character poster, “Bombard the
Headquarters—One of My Big Character Posters,” appeared in
the government Center of the Chinese Communist Party, the
Zhongnanhai. It was later published in newspapers across the
country. One article in the People’s Daily read, “How splendid
is this first big character poster of Marxism-Leninism in our
country!”

The newspaper commentary went on to stress, “In the
past two months, some leading comrades from the Center, as
well as from local groups, acted in contradiction by practicing a
bourgeois dictatorship based upon bourgeois principles. They
knocked down the Cultural Revolution on a grand and
spectacular scale. They confounded black and white, and
confused right and wrong. They surrounded and annihilated
revolutionary factors, and suppressed all challenging voices.
They carried out white terror. With stars in their eyes, they
boosted the arrogance of the bourgeois and deflated the morale
of the proletariat. How cruel this had been.”

From that moment on it became obvious that the
situation was becoming very serious, and there was no doubt
that this revolution would be long term and nation wide. What
puzzled many of us, and what we asked was, “Where was the
bourgeois headquarters and who was at its head?” We could not
imagine that Liu, our nation’s number two man, was the target
of this insanity. Then, several days later we saw our national
leaders listed in a new and mysterious order: Mao, Lin Biao,
Zhou Enlai, Tao Zhu, Chen Boda, Deng Xiaoping, Kang Sheng,
and then Liu. Liu moved from the second in command, to the
eighth! This was the first we learned that something sinister
had happened amongst our national leaders.

Five days after Mao’s poster was published, I talked with
a school friend who had just returned from a reception given by
the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party,
celebrating the 16 Decisions of the Revolution. He told me that
Mao, completely unexpectedly, appeared suddenly like a
phantom before those present. Since Mao had assumed the
status of a god in the hearts of the Chinese people, their blood
surged when they heard Mao speak to them. He would say,
“You should pay attention to the affairs of our nation and carry
out the Cultural Revolution to the end.” Tears rolled down their
faces. They stretched out their hands to touch Mao’s holy body.
Words were inadequate for my friend to describe the scene he
saw and the effect it had on the peoples’ spirits. It demonstrated
how Mao’s status had soared in the hearts of the Chinese
people. Mao’s thoughts, and his person, had actually become
deified, like some ancient emperor god from our past. The
people’s worship of him seemed unshakable. It was this blind
veneration that become one of the major causes of the most
horrible tragedy of our five thousand year history, the Cultural
Revolution.

As all logic and reason seemed to evaporate into a frenzy
of Mao worship, we suddenly found ourselves living in the hour
of the Red Guards. These young fighters of the Cultural
Revolution were first formed in the middle school attached to
Qing Hua University and were directly supported by Mao
himself. Like a prairie fire, such groups soon spread throughout
China. I encountered them first on our own campus. It was the
end of July and we were having a quiet supper in our canteen.
Suddenly, a stirring ear-piercing voice that we had never heard
before came over the loudspeaker. It was an unknown boy’s
voice full of belligerence. It made its point with an antithetical
couplet: “If the father is a hero, the son must be a brave man. If
the father is a reactionary, the son must be born a son of a bitch!”

We soon learned they had given their new campaign the
title, The Devil Will Be Depressed When He Sees It. Suddenly,
out of nowhere, groups of young Red Guards, from various
middle schools, assumed an aggressive air on our campus
advocating and arguing strongly here and there with those who
disagreed with their couplets. I wondered how this could have
all come about, for it was all so clearly preposterous. It had
become a study in living surrealism. A truly upside down world
ruled by adolescents. As I looked around me, most of these Red
Guards were disturbingly young, naive, and as impressionable
as western adolescents at a rock concert. They all wore
yellow-green second hand army uniforms and caps still blazed
with Mao’s famous red star on the front. Their main insignia
was a big red arm band printed with the three Chinese
characters meaning Red Guard.

If we felt compelled to argue with them about a couplet
we were first expected to tell them our family background to
prove we were qualified to enter into such a debate. This came
to mean that people of Black Five Classification would not even
be allowed to speak with them about the purpose of their
mission. The Black Five referred to landlord, rich peasant,
counter revolutionary, evil element, and Rightist. Upon first
seeing those almost baby-like Red Guards, I went up to them,
without any thought of personal fear, in the attempt to persuade
them that they were wrong. I answered their questions about my
background by saying that I only knew my father was out of
work since I had left home. It was just then that one of my
fellow workers in the library saw what was happening and
caught hold of me and dragged me hastily back to our office.
With concern and urgency in her voice, she said to me, “My
goodness! We worry about you. What would happen if they
were to ever learn of your background? Don’t do that again,
please!” Indeed what she said was true. They might have beat
me to death if they knew that I had dared to debate with them,
having the background that I had. I suddenly felt completely
helpless in any efforts I might have had to aid others in
understanding that the Red Guards were wrong. Completely
wrong!

This Couplet Debate, spread everywhere. First to other
schools in Beijing, then to the far corners of China. As I closely
watched the Red Guards, I saw children who had been well
trained to fiercely argue with people. They were so impulsive
and adamant that it sometimes seemed they would wipe out
anyone who dared to refute the viewpoint of one of their
couplets. It soon became obvious that the Red Guard movement
had become bigger than any of us had dared to imagine. So
fearsome had they become, that few of the population tried to
debate with these young scorpions set loose among us. Any of
those who did dare to raise a question had to be from the Red
Five Classification—worker, peasant, soldier, revolutionary
cadre, or family of martyrs. Even so, they still risked being
charged as traitors, as they often were. I remember one young
student from Beijing Middle School No. 2, who was eventually
tortured to death because he refused to yield to the insanity of
the Red Guards.

As I look back on those frightening days, I remember
with respect Deng Ling, the daughter of Deng Xiaoping, the
man who eventually became our nation’s leader. Most children
of senior cadres were spoiled by the many privileges they
enjoyed. No matter whether they were qualified or not, they
could get everything and anything because of their parents’
power. Many citizens were becoming very resentful of this
abuse of privilege. One morning among these Red Guards, by
our school gate, I was surprised to see Deng Ling arguing with
her sister about the absurdity of a couplet. She had criticized
the couplet strongly and was hurt to tears when, in retaliation,
someone consequently cursed her as a Rightist. During those
years that she was a student in our school, she always dressed
simply and lived a very plain life no different from any other
student. She always maintained this manner of life, even though
her father was on his way to becoming the leader of all China.
From the Red Guards’ first appearance, it was clear they
were destined to be the fighters starring in this revolution that
had no precedent in all of human history. Their oath was, “We
are the guards for our red regime. The Party Central Committee
and Chairman Mao are our patrons. To liberate the whole of
humanity is our duty-bound responsibility. Mao Zedong’s
Thought is the supreme directive of all our actions. We swear,
‘We shall resolutely shed our last drop of blood defending the
Party and our great leader, Chairman Mao!’” They held that,
“A rebel is a revolution,” and “The soul of Mao Zedong’s
Thought is to rebel.” They quoted Mao’s saying, “The myriad of
intricacies of Marxist principles boiled down to one phrase, ‘It
is right to rebel.’” Through this twisted concept of truth, they
had already assumed they were the dominating force of China.

~~~

On August 1st, 1966, Mao wrote in a letter to the Red
Guards at the middle school attached to Qing Hua University,
“Your actions show your just anger and rightful denunciation of
the landlords, revisionists and their lackeys who exploit and
oppress workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, and
revolutionary factions. It is right to rebel against reactionaries. I
express here my warm support...” With this overt support from
Chairman Mao, organizations of Red Guards suddenly sprang
up all over the country like bamboo shoots after a spring rain.
In Tien An Men Square, on August 18th, Mao received
Red Guards from all parts of China. I was not allowed to attend,
even though Tien An Men was very near to the Academy, but
the many TV cameras, newspapers, and friends who did attend
told me what happened. Millions of Red Guards gathered in the
square at five in the morning. Mao, in army uniform, reviewed
the Red Guard troops passing through the square. Then he
walked down from Tien An Men Gate Tower shaking hands
with the Red Guards. Tien An Men, highlighted by thousands of
waving red banners, became a sea of people hailing, “Long live
Chairman Mao!” A Red Guard girl from the middle school
attached to Beijing Teachers University came up to Mao and
gave him her Red Guard arm band, and Mao, on the spot,
tacitly approved her as the Commander-in-Chief of all Red
Guards. Her name was Binbin, which means, “urbane” or “not
forceful.” Mao said to her, “We should resort to force, but not
to urbanity.” So she changed her first name to Yaowu, which
means “resort to force.” As the months and years passed, this
petite teenage girl eventually did live up to her new name,
sometimes by even personally torturing her adversaries to death.

In the opening speech of this great rally, the head of the
Central Office for the Cultural Revolution, and member of the
Gang of Four, Chen Boda, called Mao a “great leader, great
teacher, and great helmsman.” Following Chen, Lin Biao said
in his speech that, “In this proletarian Cultural Revolution,
Chairman Mao is our great Commander-in-Chief.” From then on
we had to put up with the endless shouting of the title of these
Four Great’s whenever Mao’s name was subsequently
mentioned. Lin Biao took advantage of this occasion and the
simple-minded, curious, and impulsive young Red Guards. He
called on them to “Go all out to destroy all the old thought, old
culture, old customs, and all old habits of the exploiting
wealthy classes.” These then became the Four Old’s. He also
called on people all over the country to support the proletarian
revolutionary spirit of “dare to break through, dare to act, and
dare to rebel.” Thus was launched the Destroy the Four Old’s
movement on a national scale. It spread all over China with
amazing speed, and it wreaked incredible havoc on 5000 years
of rich and magnificent Chinese civilization.

There were big character posters on the streets the next
day urging everyone to “Declare war on the old world!” They
somehow rationalized as being part of the Old Fours any
modern western and Hong Kong styles of dress, including
high-heeled shoes, jeans, rouge, lipstick, permanent waves and
even long plaits of hair. They cut off high heels and long hair
and cut jeans to pieces wherever they happened to see them.
One day I went to the railway station to meet my sister
as she arrived from Sichuan. As I approached the main gate of
the station, I saw the Red Guards standing by the gate with
scissors in hand. I wondered what those scissors were for until I
saw two young women approaching the gate with their beautiful
long hair cascading down their backs. Immediately, the
revolutionary scissors answered my question. I heard the sound
of the scissors, “Katsa!” and the Four Old's were wiped out
before our eyes. The girls left wordlessly, with their beautiful
hair cut to their ears. However, they were luckier than the next
to approach the gate, a woman with a perm. In only a few
seconds she was left nearly as bald headed as a nun. She too
left wordless, but her tears spoke volumes.

At the end of August, we went to see the big character
posters placed around the sports circle in Xianlongtan Stadium.
When our school bus passed through Qian Men Street, which is
the main street running south of Tian An Men Square, a vast
sheet of red color blinded my eyes. All the shops along the
street were painted red to show they were not old, but brand
new Revolutionary Red! It was absurd how red everything was,
yet no one dared leave his shop in any color other than red,
because red was the color of the revolution. In a few days red
paint was out of stock throughout the city. So illogical had this
charade become, that there was even an attempt to revise our
traffic light signals. Red meant go and green meant stop!
Obviously the results of the short lived expression of Maoist
patriotism were numerous traffic accidents and massive disorder
throughout the land.

All the names of shops, institutes, organizations, schools,
and factories also seemed to be changing to take on new
revolutionary names such as East-is-Red Snack Bar,
Defend-the-East Hospital, Towards-the-Sun Art Association,
Workers-Peasants-Soldiers Restaurant, Ever-Red Middle
School, Four-News Barbershop, and so on. We could hardly tell
one from the other. They all sounded alike. Beijing’s best
known hospital, Union Hospital, opposite our school, was built
in the 1920’s with money from the Rockefeller Foundation. At
its main gate Red Guards had posted, “Long live the
revolutionary rebel spirit!” In front of hundreds of totally
confused onlookers, the Red Guards then took down the “Union
Hospital” sign and put up its new name, “Anti-Imperialism
Hospital.”

~~~

The Red Guards from the Art Middle School, which was
part of our university, rebelled first against the art culture itself!
They went first to the well known art gallery in Liulichang
Street that was famous for its display and sale of traditional
Chinese paintings, calligraphy and antiques. Its name, Yong
Bao Zai, over its main gate was quickly covered up. A new big
character poster was hung over the shop window. It read, “Yong
Bao Zai has been a black store for several decades. It exploited
working people’s sweat and blood, serving the bourgeoisie...
feudalist landlords. It never served socialism or workers,
peasants, and soldiers. It is an exchange for the black gang of
artists. We are now going to strike it to total ruin.”
Not long afterward, we were horrified to learn that Red
Guards from several other schools, stirred up by someone in our
own school, were coming to destroy all of our plaster cast
sculpture models which had been created from the originals of
classical Greece through the Renaissance on to the 19th
century. These very valuable models were stored in our
warehouse and brought out for teaching purposes only. They saw
these sculptures as the dross scum of western civilization,
especially Venus, because she was nude.

Fortunately, all of the Red Guards were not of one mind.
Many did not agree that these models were truly western dross.
However, they understood very clearly how difficult it would be
to stop their fellow teenaged Red Guards, once they were
committed to what they believed and that these beliefs created
pure-crazed action. Even though the inevitable seemed upon us,
we had to try something to avoid the destruction of our valuable
collection. At least we had to attempt to reduce the damage to
a minimum. Finally, as the purge became eminent, we decided
to take the initiative. We decided to receive the outside Red
Guards warmly and show them our enthusiastic support for their
revolutionary deeds. But, before they arrived, we would move
as many as possible of our most valuable models down into the
cellar to be hidden. When the Red Guards arrived, we
explained to the young zealots our need for teaching anatomy
and figure structure to our students, and asked their permission
to keep some of our models for those purposes. We went even
further by suggesting that to properly educate our students in the
values of the Cultural Revolution, we had to retain some
Western models enabling us to properly criticize this form of art
ourselves. Then together with the Red Guards, we carried out
our preselected victims, which were duplicate copies. These we
were ready to sacrifice to the Cultural Revolution in the middle
of our athletic field, the chosen execution ground.

In a line beside these mute victims, stood our older
professors. All were leading artists in Chinese culture, but were
now caricatured as masters of intimidation. They were labelled
as reactionary authoritative persons of learning. Their heads
were drooped in disbelief as young Red Guards hung label
boards around their necks. The boards read, Black Gang or
Reactionary Authority and so on. The full-sized Venus and
Michelangelo’s Dying Slave seemed to sob in sad sympathy. I
am sure they never expected to be executed so cruelly in this
culture rich in 5,000 years of art. And what did it mean for a
slave to be executed by a party of workers and peasants? With
people crowded around this spectacle, Li, the one who led the
Red Guards from outside our school, screamed himself hoarse,
accusing those mute enemies, Venus, Moses, the Slave... and
those poor old master professors. To everyone who had the
ability to listen, he shouted his story of how he was a victim of
these statues.

When he finished, the young crowd went into action.
Within minutes they had broken the statues from far off France
into hundreds of pieces and harnessed the remnants around the
necks of all those old professors, and threw the wooden bases
into a blazing fire. It created an erie scene, a type of sacrificial
rite. When the fire slowly died down, the old professors were
escorted back to their special dwelling labeled Niupeng,
meaning cowshed, as if they were some ominous monsters or
demons.

Finally, the Red Guards left shouting triumphantly,
“We’ll burn your library the next time we come!” Those of us
who worked in the library became anxious for the safety of all
the knowledge placed in our keeping. In desperation, we soon
built a brick wall around the windows to prevent anything
inflammatory from being thrown in from outside. We put up
slogans such as, “We should take care of our State’s property!”
and “Protecting our cultural heritage is our duty!” Then we
picked out all the duplicate copies of the libraries cherished
titles, together with any damaged books, and piled them up as a
potential sacrifice to await the Red Guards’ threat of eminent
return. We continued to wait through the coming months, but
fortunately this Red Guard faction never did return. No one
knew why. Their hands must have been too busy purifying the
rest of Beijing.

It was during this period of chaos that Lin Biao said in an
enlarged session of the Central Political Bureau that, “the basic
problem of revolution is the problem of political power. Once
the proletariat, the working people, have the power, they will
have everything. If they do not, they will lose everything... when
the proletariat seizes political power, the millionaires and
billionaires can be smashed at once and the proletariat will
have everything.” Then, the Minister of Public Security said in
an expanded session of the Beijing Public Security Bureau,
“Whatever rules we have provided, even from the public
security organizations or the state, don’t be bound by them... If
people beat someone to death, I don’t agree, but people should
hate with all their soul the bad ones among us. So use force if
you can’t dissuade.” One can see from these statements that the
beating, the killing, the searching of people’s homes, and the
confiscation of their property, all of it, all across the country,
came from above. People suffered everywhere and our local
leaders were paralyzed to do anything about it.

One afternoon, as I was walking in the Dongdan district, I
heard a group of Red Guards shouting as they sped past me on
their bikes. On every bike there was a red flag. Each of these
young teenagers looked as if they had all donned their parents’
old army uniforms. In their baggy official attire they had
become China’s new army. In this bellicose atmosphere, I saw
an almost nude, fat, yet muscular man of about forty on the
back of a pedicab under escort by members of this teenage
army. The man’s eyes were closed and he looked exhausted.
The rope binding him was so tight that it bit into his flesh and
bruised it here and there. Sitting by his feet was a boy about
eight, huddled tightly against his father. Where were they
taking them? Who was this man? Was he one of the Black
Five, a dissident, or a war prisoner? The poor child was so
frightened that the sight of him made my heart ache.
Standing there in a daze, I just couldn’t understand what
this hysteria was all about. Was this the revolution referred to
by Mao as, “A great revolution that touched people to their
innermost being?” People were beaten bloody while their
attackers shouted a quotation from Mao supporting their cruel
righteousness, “Revolution is not a matter of entertaining
guests, not a matter of doing embroidery, not a matter of writing
an article. Revolution is rebellion, a violent action.”
A terrible example of this teen violence let loose upon us
by our leader was an incident in which more than three
hundred, so-called black elements were killed at Daxin in
Beijing. The oldest among these elements, was eighty years,
while the age of the youngest traitor was only thirty-eight days.
What was that inhuman world that had become China! Of the
twenty-two families these young guards decided to punish, there
was not a single soul left alive after the bloody slaughter.
These were special Public events organized for
punishment. Some of these horribly bloody scenes were even
held in public theaters. From outside, we couldn’t bear to hear
the screams of those who were chosen for punishment within.

Not all were fortunate enough to get out of these places of
punishment alive. To show that the revolution was indeed a
violent action and meant to suppress any resistance that might
appear, they went on to established armed pickets. “Kill
without appeal” was their circular order. Taking these orders
literally, they set themselves up as reforming through labor
criminal courts, torturing and killing the innocent. The picket
members were from the families of cadres and army men, many
of them children of senior cadres. They had long accepted that
they themselves were zilaihong, innately revolutionary. This
naturally made them feel far superior to everyone else.

One morning, in the later days of the revolution, I visited
a middle school in Beijing that had set up such a criminal
court. Whoever had been brought there as a member of the
newly expanded Black Nine, or who even just had a different
point of view from their accusers, would be dragged into this
court and made to suffer all kinds of tortures, with such
picturesque names as kneeling on hot cinders, paint face with
paints, hanging test , sonorous kowtow, imitating an airplane,
burning hair, target practice, piercing through, and so on. The
pickets often carried banners with a theme slogan, “Long live
the Red Horror!” I also saw these same characters written on
the wall in their court room that day. But here these characters
were written in the blood of their victims. As I looked at these
ghastly traces of human blood dripping from the characters on
the wall, I felt the terror that was sweeping through our great
land. As I stood there in a sickened terror, it was as if my hair
was standing up in horror, knowing that my life was deemed
just as expendable by those young teenagers.

A graduate of this same middle school, Wu, had been
beaten to death because he had objected to that notorious
notion of blood lineage, which stated that if you were
descended from a landlord, you were as villainous as the worst
landlord in history. A retired worker over eighty, who had
worked in this school his whole life, was falsely charged as a
remnant of counter-revolution and then severely beaten. Then to
complete their task, they doused him with boiling water and
then whipped him with belts until he finally died. In our school
the Red Guards also beat some teachers, especially the older
ones, using leather belts with brass heads and with metal rods
to break their ribs. Those professors labelled Black Elements
were forced to do manual labor every day, regardless of their
physical condition. They were subjected to the cruelest public
criticism at any time and at any place the Red Guards chose.

One day, one of the best known artists in China, Ye, was
stopped by a young Red Guard as he labored on campus. Ye
was then denounced fiercely, then his head was lashed with a
belt until bloody. When the Red Guard finally left, Ye went to
the clinic for treatment, and then, in fear, quickly returned to
continue his assigned labor.

Many homes of the Black Nine were searched and their
private property confiscated for unknown reasons, to be given to
unknown people, to be used for unknown purposes. They took
all that they considered proof of one’s guilt or associated with
bourgeois decadence. Under the pretence of revolutionary
righteousness some also took valuables. A photo with a foreign
friend might lead to a charge of having illegal relations with a
foreign country or being a spy. Professor Chang’s diary kept
from the time he lived on his farm, caused him to be accused of
keeping a biantianzhang. This was considered to be a record of
loans, former land holdings, and confiscated property which
were secretly kept by a member of the overthrown classes who
were still dreaming of a return to power. He tried to defend
himself, but as in all defenses, it was in vain. The stronger your
efforts to defend yourself, the stronger their efforts to make you
suffer. They eventually forced him to confess, but in so doing he
suffered to the limits of his physical endurance.

I was much luckier. In 1951, 1955, and again in 1957,
most of my personal effects which would be likely to arouse
suspicion, particularly my photos taken in the United States,
were confiscated from me. I had sold my Smith&Wesson
revolver when I needed money in Shanghai early in 1949.
Otherwise I definitely would have still had it with me, since
shooting was one of my hobbies and I had never anticipated
what would happen if I were caught with a gun under the
Communist regime. I later learned that the most common
punishment for such a crime was to be beaten to death on the
spot by these young Guards. So, knowing the consequences, I
checked everything I had at home and threw some souvenir
American coins—pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters—plus
my air force dog-tags into a nearby pond. I wonder what
archaeologists will think a thousand years from now when they
find these coins and dog-tags. “How did all these come to this
part of the Chinese countryside so far from their home? Why
were they all on the bottom of this little pond? There was no
war between these two countries here.”

As I expected, they finally searched my home while I
was detained by one of the Red Guard organizations in our
school. The only thing they took was a photo of my eldest
brother in Taiwan, Wu Feng. This they thought proved that my
family’s background was reactionary. Anyone who was
determined to be from the families of former landlords were
sent by train back to their own countryside immediately after
their houses were searched and the incriminating evidence was
confiscated. At the train station, when they went through the
underground passage to the railway platform, those who were to
be shipped out were fiercely beaten by Red Guards who lined
both sides of the passage. Some fell to the cold concrete floor,
unconscious from the severe beating. The world famous writer,
Lao She, author of the great play Tea House, then an old man
of 70, could not stand the thought of continuing under such
tortures and drowned himself in the lake where I once worked
breaking ice, before they could take him away. Many famous
masters of literature and the arts, like Lao She, ended their
lives rather than endure such cruel persecution.

Many years later, after the Gang of Four was smashed,
and the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were over, a former
schoolmate came from Shanghai and happened to meet me at
our school gate. He rushed over to me and hugged me tight,
crying, “My dear old Lao Wu, you are still alive. We thought
you were no doubt killed during those years.” Yes, as I thought
back on all that happened, I would have been dead if I were not
in Beijing. Especially if I had not been able to make my way
back to my own school, I would have never been able to escape
by sheer luck alone. But here in our school, my case had
cleared just in time. I had already paid for my sins through
years of imprisonment, and I was now in a position of little
importance. I was as controlled as a bird in a cage. Being caged
after those previously long years of imprisonment made me
suffer deeply, that is true, but at least I survived. The new
revolutionary forces were not very interested in me as a result.
It seemed their hands were too full persecuting others more
important than I who had not yet paid for their sins. Thus I
survived.

~~~

Many party leaders in other parts of China tried to stop
this uncontrolled violence in their areas, thinking that this was
not the right way to carry out a cultural revolution. The Red
Guards then met this official resistance by lodging formal
complaints against the regional leadership. Supported by Mao,
the Office of the Cultural Revolution, and the majority of their
fellow students, the Red Guards in Beijing began to establish
ties with students in other cities nationwide. They called it the
Great Contact. They would then travel around the country with
free transportation, board and lodging.

Soon our school auditorium, dining room, and classrooms
were full of Red Guards from all parts of China, most of them
looking very young and innocent, like baby students. Red
Guards from Beijing who went to other cities were considered
special just because they were from the capital, the place
where Mao lived. They were now suddenly free to carry their
revolutionary experiences, technics, and excesses to other
cities. The results were that the Red Guards from other cities
followed blindly whatever atrocities the Red Guards of Beijing
committed.

One day a big character poster appeared on the streets
that attempted to convince the public that the heads of the
reactionary bourgeoisie and the commanders of the bourgeoisie
headquarters who were attempting to overthrow the party of the
people were none other than the Chairman of China, Liu
Shaogi, along with Deng Xiaoping. I, like everyone else, was
totally shocked by such a notion. I slowly begin to realize that
this was a totally different kind of revolution from any that
China had experienced in the past. It was special because no
one, not even our leaders inside the red walls of Beijing’s
Zhongnanhai, the heart of China, knew what was really going
on, what would happen next, and where it would end. If these
leaders knew so little, how could the common people of China
be able to tell truth from falsehood in the affairs of our nation?
There was no way to know the inside stories, the true stories.
The newspapers, our only media, could only say what the
people in control wanted said at that time.

The organizations of public security, the procurate and
the courts were totally paralyzed. The Central Committee of the
Cultural Revolution had long since fallen into the hands of the
Gang of Four, and their personal directives were now, in fact,
our laws. The Red Guards were the executors. These rulers
alone were to decide everything, but that was logistically
impossible. Inevitably there would be conspiracies and tricks. It
was the same old story, thousands of years old. Treacherous
court officials would eventually seize power, then those loyal to
the sovereign would be murdered. The Gang of Four knew
history’s script very well. They used it to realize their own wild
ambitions, by taking full advantage of this chaotic revolution.
Step by step they had been favored and trusted by Mao, the
Supreme God of China. Of primary importance, they needed to
sweep aside all barriers against the realization of their personal
motives and ambitions. They made use of the naive innocence
of the young Red Guards’ blind faith in the Party and in the
person of Mao, their god. One after another of the senior cadres,
old marshals, and even founders of the People’s Republic itself
were persecuted to death. Their operating policy was the same
as I had experienced in 1957, “Give a dog a bad name and then
hang him!”

Having grown up in a movie family, I had watched Jiang
Qing, who was a movie actress before she went to Yanan to
join with the PLA. Now, she was dreaming of becoming the
Queen of the Red Capital, Beijing. I knew that she had run from
Shanghai to the Northwest and had become Mao’s wife, and
that seemed to indicate that she must have something very
special. However, she was still relatively unknown to the
people. But her words and deeds as the revolution wore on, put
more and more worry into their hearts. I was surprised when
years later, as the tempest of the Cultural Revolution
developed, she suddenly began to appear on more and more
important occasions. I never could understand why or how all of
our country’s senior leaders, with their long and rich
experiences of revolution, having met and survived so many
severe tests, suddenly found themselves under her control. How
did she come to such power? Why had no one sensed the
danger and stopped her? My final thought was always, if Mao
said “No!” she would be nothing. So why did he never say,
“Enough!”?

She persecuted to the death all who knew her dirty and
sordid past. After the Gang of Four had been smashed, I
happened to meet a well known movie director’s wife, Mrs.
Zheng, in a friend’s home. She was sobbing bitterly while
telling me the story of her husband’s death at the hands of Jiang
Qing. It was late one night in Shanghai. Suddenly, some
mysterious people forced their way into their home. The
intruders did not identify themselves, but they rummaged
through chests and cupboards. Every inch of space was
searched, and they took away all that they wanted. Her husband
was also taken away, never to come back again until after his
death. All of this it seemed, because he had been a close friend
of Jiang Qing while they were at a movie studio during the
1930’s. Mrs. Zheng said there was private and very personal
information in at least one letter Jiang Qing had sent her
husband. Years later she killed him to keep her dirty record a
secret.

Since everyone saw the purpose of the Cultural
Revolution from a different perspective, each person naturally
had a different point of view as to what it really was and what it
was meant to accomplish. Therefore, the many young
participants found themselves divided into numerous
confronting factions, each an independent Combat Team within
the Red Guards and with a different perspective. As the Cultural
Revolution developed in Beijing, the central conflict there
developed between two large groups, or Combat Teams, calling
themselves the Loyalists and the Proletarian Rebels. This type
of internal struggle, running throughout the entire Cultural
Revolution and across all of China, added even greater chaos.
In January, 1967, Mao made a command, “We’ll seize
back the power from those who take the Capitalist road.” The
Red Guards in Shanghai took the first action in response to
Mao’s words. They seized power from the Shanghai Committee
of the Chinese Communist Party. Almost immediately this
storm of power seizing swept all across the entire country,
regardless of whether the individual leadership was right or
wrong. If a Red Guard didn’t join the most radical movement he
was labelled as part of a Loyalist faction, and not part of the
Patriotic Rebel faction. Hostilities between the two factions
ultimately broke out into armed conflict. Each faction tried to
seize from the other the nation’s seal of power by force of arms,
thinking this would give them a substantial lasting power. Even
families were divided, putting father against son and mother
against daughter. Relations throughout the country were as
tense as if between enemies on a battlefield. It was almost as
though we were on the brink of another civil war.

School was suspended everywhere. Every empty space on
the walls of this many-walled city, and on every other open
place in our schools and streets, were filled with big character
posters. The city itself had become a wide open propaganda
battlefield for this bizarre revolution. Everywhere it had become
a youthful civil war filled with ignorance. Each side asserted
that they were the real rebels under the leadership of Mao. But
God only knew which side was telling the truth. I wondered to
myself as I read the posters, how could all those marshals, and
senior revolutionaries, who for decades had been held in such
high esteem by the Chinese people, suddenly turn into hidden
traitors, renegades, warlords, and even bandits? How on earth
had all of these things happened? How did they get away with
it?

Chapter 8

2008-04-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

What eventually became known as the tragic three year countrywide suffering, which lasted from 1959-1961 was caused not only by Party mismanagement, but also by natural disasters. Then, in the middle of our plight, the Soviets unexpectedly
stopped their aid, tore up all their contracts with China, recalled all of their experts and pressured China for payment of all its debts to them. But the Party’s erroneous policies added heavily to this disaster caused by those outside forces. We felt the severe consequences of many of these disasters in our isolated corner of the country. During it all, it was still impossible to know what was really happening outside of our immediate neighborhood. Each month our food became worse and worse. Eventually, for each meal we were given nothing but four ping-pong ball sized rolls of steamed dumpling made of a soft but rough grain I had never seen before. It was dark brown in color and a little bit sticky. Soon most of us got sick, and we knew it was from these mysterious rolls. I eventually grew thinner and thinner until I became totally emaciated.

One day I was carrying a pot of sulfuric acid to the workshop. All of a sudden my right leg lost all strength, and I fell to the ground. The pot broke and the flying acid burned my shoes and legs. It was as painful as a knife cutting into my
flesh. In my pain I hobbled as fast as I could to the nearest tap and washed my legs with water. Afterwards one of my legs collapsed again while I was walking. Seeing that this infirmity was getting worse, kind hearted Old Zhang ended my duties in
the workshop. He knew it was dangerous for me to work with those chemicals in such a condition. He sent me back to our cave dwelling in the old kiln to work as a night watchman. To prevent various types of disturbances at night, I was to sit by the door and keep an eye on the criminal prisoners. They often stole from each other and small brawls would result. However, my health continued to worsen. I couldn’t even lift my legs while walking, but moved ahead by pulling my feet along the ground. I had to detour whenever there was anything as small as a brick on the path in front of me. Now, compounding my fate, the lack of sleep from night duty made my condition even worse.

Everyone was starving. Our salt was restricted for fear of
dropsy. So hungry were we for salt, that once a former miner
mistook a bottle of NaS03 for NaCl. He was dead in less than
twenty minutes, even though we tried desperately to save him.
Given this extreme national situation, it was decided that
all home leaves would be canceled until 1962. In that year,
when home leave was first resumed, on my way home I stopped
to take a bath in a public bathhouse. People looked at me with
amazed and puzzled eyes when I took off my clothes. They
seemed to question, “What’s the matter with this man?” So I
went to the mirror to see what they saw. I looked like a photo I
remembered from a World War II magazine, a photo of a
survivor from the concentration camp at Auschwitz. I was a
good live model for an anatomy class, a skeleton with skin.
My wife burst into tears when she saw my body as I
prepared for bed. I had completely lost all sexual desire. There
was not a bit of it left. I put a pillow between my two knees
while I slept on my side, for it was too painful for my two big
knee bones to touch each other. We lay on the bed with our
eyes open, looking up at the ceiling and wondering what our
future was to be. What else could fall on us? That night seemed
ever so cold and so long.

Shortly after I was imprisoned, my wife could no longer
endure the growing hardship and the political and economic
pressures that came with her husband’s imprisonment.
Therefore, she quit her studies one year before graduation to
work as a stage designer in the art troupe attached to the
Ministry of Geology. An art troupe like this had to travel to
remote areas, so our baby had to be sent away to a nursery only
fifty-six days after his birth.

I eventually learned that his food, the facilities, the
quality of nursery care were also very poor during these three
years of disaster. My young son twice caught pneumonia. The
time I went to see him during my last home leave, the nurse
brought him to me in her arms with tears running down his pale
face. There was no response when he saw me. The nurse told
me that he’d had a high fever and began to sob for she felt I
would blame her for not doing her job well. She seemed to be a
nice, but very young nurse. I realized that it wasn’t her fault my
son was ill. But the tragedy for me was that I didn’t even know
how to hold him. While I hurried him to the hospital his two
little legs were exposed to the cold December air. A woman
passing by shouted at me, “Hey, the baby’s legs are bare!”
When I reached the hospital the doctor put my baby in a ward
for pneumonia patients.

The next morning my wife and I went to the largest
Beijing department store, and found the food section empty,
except for a little pastry of inferior quality. These pastries were
rationed, 250 grams per month for one family. Of course our
ration went wholly for our baby. That meant he could have 60
grams every weekend when he was home from the nursery, and
that would depend on his mother not being away on tour. We
left the store with our ration and went to the Sichuan Restaurant
for a meal with meat “to offer a sacrifice to our teeth.” These
were the only times I could eat meat, which meant only once a
year during that disastrous period. The price for a meal was ten
times higher than normal. Two dishes plus 400 grams of rice
cost at least half the average monthly salary. Yet people cared
little for money compared to their health. Food was necessary
to survive, at any cost. They tried to make the one meal take
the place of all those they had missed for so long. Most could
only afford such a restaurant meal once a month.

In her effort to strengthen me, whenever we were
allowed visitors my wife tried to bring me such nutrient
medicines as royal jelly and vitamins A and D. Such gifts to me
cut deeply into what she and my son needed to survive. I the
provider, was being nurtured by my wife. By early 1962, the
three year disaster was coming to an end, and my health began
to improve little by little.

One morning in the early summer of 1962, the Rightist
label was finally removed from seven of us. After such a long
and painful ordeal, I had no reason to be either happy or
excited. My school, which had promised to keep my post
available for me whenever my punishment ended, went back on
its word. As a result, I was required to remain at the Bei Yuan
Farm for prisoners until I could obtain a new position. My
sadness and disappointment were beyond words. But on the
bright side, there were now two significant differences between
us and the real prisoners—we received a regular salary and we
could go home every Saturday night. My salary was now 45

RMB per month, which was about $10 USD. During this time
however, we were still under the control of the Public Security
Bureau. Nevertheless, I rushed home and pretended to be happy
and excited about life in front of my wife. I took her to one of
the most famous restaurants in Beijing, and we enjoyed the
world famous Beijing roast duck in celebration of the day I
became free again.

The seven of us ex-Rightists were soon transferred to
another farm on the northern outskirts of Beijing. There we were
to do some farm work and serve as watchmen to prevent the
crops from being stolen. But to us, the most important aspect of
our transfer was the opportunity to eat as much good food as
possible. We were allowed to eat outside of the farm on
Sundays and would bring back lots of food to supplement our
meager farm rations on the weekdays. It seemed to work. Some
of us became pretty plump all at once. There was a special
nutrient called hydrolysis protein which was made available to
those who had starved during the three year disaster. Naturally,
everybody in our group used it, but no one knew for sure if it
really worked. But it really didn’t matter, we were all so happy
to have food again. Also, this was the first time that we had the
luxury of a real dormitory. After our daily work most of us could
be found playing poker (but not gambling) in what seemed like
luxurious quarters. I would just lay on my portion of those long
beds and study English grammar from the English Edition of the
Beijing Review.

While out on the farm, my watch post was located under
a big tree which was growing on the bank of a tranquil pond. It
was very quiet and I rarely saw people there. Only crops spread
across the land, along with the aromatic fragrance of many
plants familiar to me since I was a small boy. I lost myself in
thought in such beautiful surroundings and waited to be called
back to school. I wondered about my future day after day, but
nothing ever happened. To dispel the gloom gathering about my
heart I tried to enjoy and learn more about the nature around
me, to understand the place of humans in this world, and what
the world was coming to.

Coincidentally, I found the lives of a great number of
lizards of interest there. I also enjoyed the turtles as they raised
their heads above the water of the pond. The lizards ran back
and forth around me as I sat there day after day. When two of
them met there would often be a fight. They tangled together
with their tails sweeping around and their jaws gripping each
other. My limited knowledge never permitted me to know
whether they were fighting or making love. Sometimes, by the
time they were finished, part of one of their tails would be
broken off, but it would continue to twist and flop around on the
ground as if it had a separate life of its own. I would often catch
hold of one of them. Its skin was very soft and smooth, and the
look of its eyes and touch of its feet became endearing and
personal in my lonely world. They are like humans in some
ways. I was not frightened of them. They were so friendly. But
they didn’t have the evil thoughts and feelings that humans
have.

One sunny day, as I leaned against my straw shelter by
the pond, I saw a baby turtle. Its four feet were stroking
strongly and it swam vertically up to poke its head above water.
Before long, he swam to the bank and climbed onto the shore
attracted by the sunshine. He stretched his long flexible neck to
look cautiously around for anything that might harm him. Then
feeling assured, he drew his head back into his shell to enjoy a
warm nap. That poor shortsighted turtle never saw the human
being nearby nor imagined what that human being had in his
mind. The turtle was small, about an inch and a half long, and
cute. My heart murmured, “Don’t worry, I won’t harm you. I just
want you to be nice company for my son.” I approached him
quietly. As soon as I touched his shell his head darted out, but it
was too late. When I brought him home my wife put him in a
glass jar with water and placed it on the window sill. The next
weekend when I got home the jar was empty. I searched our
rooms in vain. Even though we lived on the fourth floor, we
searched the grounds downstairs too, but we never found him,
dead or alive. I was so sorry that I had taken him from his home
and brought him to this strange prison. His unknown fate
reminded me of my own. Like him, it seemed like I would
never know what my fate was going to be. This little turtle
didn’t understand why he was imprisoned and he wanted his
freedom, no matter the cost. My heart saddened as I realized
that I was no different than him.

One day, I was working on the roof of a small house on
the farm, when the house collapsed under me. Both my legs
were hurt so badly that I had to be carried to the dormitory. The
hospital treatment didn’t seem to help. I wrote a letter to my
wife asking her to buy the traditional Chinese medicine, No. 1
Miraculous Cure, diyilingdan. I had taken it once when I hurt
my shoulder during a swimming competition. It’s a reddish
powder in a small bottle, and it’s very effective. I took two
bottles a day, and I recovered completely after one week. It was
only twelve cents a bottle and was the best medicine for
muscle sprain I have ever known. To this day I still wonder
what it was made of.

That autumn, two of us from the seven reformed Rightist
were transferred to an ice cellar run by the Public Security
Organization. It was our job to break ice from Shichahai Lake
near Bei Hai Park. The ice was to be stored in the cellar and
then sold on the market in Beijing. Cixi, the last Empress
Dowager of the Q’ing Dynasty, loved the sea and wanted to
have it at her door step in Beijing, so she built Shichahai, or
the Shicha Sea for her personal pleasure.

I worked there day and night with several released
criminals. There were two open cellars, each 50 meters long, 30
meters wide, and 6 meters deep, and divided by a clay wall
down the middle. Every year when the lake froze hard enough,
work would begin at once. First we set up a hoist for
transporting the ice blocks from the lake to the waiting truck.
Then with a 40 pound iron tool we cut the iced surface of the
lake by hand into slabs ten meters square. Finally we cut the
ice slabs into about one square meter blocks to carry back to
the cellar. Using the heavy tool to cut the ice, we often slipped
into the ice cold water, so we would bring with us some wine in
hopes of warming up a little within our ice soaked clothes. The
trucks then hauled the ice blocks back to the cellar where we
piled them up in the deep cold rooms. For this work, we put iron
teeth clamps under our shoes to avoid slips and falls while
carrying the ice blocks down the sloping ramp into the cellar.
This cold heavy labor, which always ran late into the
night, created a level of fatigue that was indescribable.
Whenever there was the slightest break between another shift, I
hurried to our bedroom to sleep before our second shift of the
night began. No sooner would I touch my pillow than I would be
fast asleep. Then suddenly, in what seemed like seconds,
someone would shake me awake to begin my next shift. My rest
only lasted 20 minutes, but I felt like I had been in another
century.

When we were selling the ice the next spring, I was
sometimes ordered to deliver the ice on a flat-bed tricycle to
another part of the city. Twice, while making such deliveries, I
encountered former schoolmates. The injustice of my
punishment increased its weight on me as they pretended not to
see me passing by, looking straight forward with motionless
eyes and expressionless faces.

Then, in the late spring of 1963, I was sent away again,
this time to work as a stevedore for a truck driver along with
three released criminals. Late one night the driver ran over an
old woman sleeping along the side of the road and killed her.
This happened on a quiet country road and the old woman never
thought a truck would pass by on this very narrow road so late
at night. But such was the way many people were forced to live
in those days.

Most of the articles we loaded onto the truck from the
railway were chemicals such as hydrochloric, sulfuric, and
nitric acids, toluene, explosive gases and other dangerous
compounds. It was definitely not an easy job. Two of the
criminals were originally dock workers, and were well skilled at
what we did. Upon arriving for my first day on the job, after
taking a good look at me, their laughing eyes told me what they
thought—a newcomer from the academic circle. They just stood
there waiting for me to make a spectacle of myself. My first job
was to move several 140kg barrels. To their great surprise, in
spite of my smaller size, I didn’t show any signs of weakness.
They didn’t know I had once been an amateur body builder, so I
handled those heavy barrels with a skill that was totally
unexpected by them. What they didn’t know was that the
barrels had pushed me to the limits of my weakened strength.
After that initial display we became good friends and they
encouraged me greatly as long as we were together. Although
these men were not educated, being only simple and
straightforward laborers, they proved to be of better character
than many who were much more educated and sophisticated.

On May 3rd, 1963, our second child was born, my dearest
daughter Yi Meng. Three months after her birth my wife and
children were forced to move out of the urban districts of
Beijing. I learned later that there were instructions from high up
in the government that all family members of landlords, rich
peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, and Rightists,
were to move out of the capital. So they still considered me a
Rightist, even after all those years in reform confinement.
Because of all this, my wife was transferred to a primary school
attached to a drilling equipment factory in a rural area of Tong
Xian, about thirty miles east of downtown Beijing.
Finally, at the end of 1963, I decided to personally visit
the Central Art Institute to try and learn why I was still kept in
the prison factory system. The day I was finally given
permission to take a few hours leave from my duties to make
my inquiries, was also the day of the school’s annual New
Year’s Eve Gala. Eventually I located the member of the
Personnel Division who had sent me to jail. He arrogantly
denied that any public employment at the school had been
reserved for me. How could I argue with him? I had no signed
paper to prove this promise from the Ministry of Culture. Once
again there was nothing I could rely on to protect my rights. The
Party could determine right and wrong as they wished, just as
always. Those friends, colleagues, and former classmates I later
encountered at the party were as cold to me as if I had never
been in this world at all. They didn’t care whether I was alive or
dead. I really had become a non-person! They only cared that
they were the lucky dogs, given better alms by the gods and by
the Party. They sang and danced, but with something buried
deep in their hearts that they could never dare admit to anyone
else. “Once taken as a Rightist and imprisoned, there was no
return to the world of the Communist Party’s dynasty in modern
China.” For their own sake, nobody would dare pay attention to
me. It was truly a question of their own survival.

One night, several weeks later, our kind old team leader,
Zhang, stopped to tell me that they had contacted the institute’s
Party Committee about sending me back to the school, but that
the school had shown an icy manner toward the idea and
stressed their need to, “simplify the school’s staff.” We both
knew this was an excuse to keep me from returning. He added
sympathetically, “Well, forget it. You’d better try to do all you
can now to make your children a brighter future.” These words
implied that there was no future for me at the school. He
seemed to be right. I then tried to find a job in several places. It
proved to be hopeless. No one dared to hire me when they
learned about the trumped up charges on my record. I felt I had
once again been played as the fool. “What should I do?” That
was the question I asked myself all the way home after each
job application. Should I just yield to this reality and live only
for the sake of remaining alive? But wouldn’t this just make me
a real sinner against justice and truth like everyone else? I
suddenly realized that this had become a matter of fighting for
truth.

Strengthened by this new found conviction, I wrote scores
of letters in an attempt to reason with the Party Committee in
our school. There had to be a way to have myself removed from
this prisoners’ status. First, I stressed, as did the Party, that we
must implement the Party’s policies any time, any place.
Second, with regard to their excuse, the need to “simplify the
staff,” I told them that they could wash me out at any time after
I returned to the school. After all, I was still one of their faculty
even though I had been imprisoned. I argued it was a matter of
principle. These two grounds of argument proved to be so strong
that they eventually could find no way to officially refute them.
At 8 am on a hot summer morning, six years and 100
days after my imprisonment had first begun, I was lying in a
sound sleep after working my second shift from 5:30 p.m. to
1:30 a.m. I was awakened by an excited voice which told me
that the chief officer wanted to see me in his office
immediately. As soon as I stepped into his office he looked up
at me and said simply, “Get your baggage and go back to your
school.” Then he added, “Don’t involve yourself in anything
with any of the prisoners anymore. Good luck.”

Arriving back, the Sculpture Research Studio, where I
once worked, evoked painful memories. I felt like I was slowly
awakening from a long and dreadful nightmare. For the first
time in six years, I began to emotionally relax. The streets, the
people walking by, the sunshine, even the air seemed different.
Once again I was on this side of the world. However, I was not
definitely sure how my colleagues would greet me. The 1963

New Year’s Eve Party still burned deeply in my memory. What
I had expected happened. When I arrived at the front office I
met the same cold faces. A woman I had never seen before
received me and led me to a room that I was to share with
someone who was already living there. Suddenly, I recognized
him to be one of my former classmates, Guo. Even though he
was formerly a close friend, he just pulled a long face and
acted as if I were a complete stranger when he learned that I
was to be his new roommate. What seemed so strange was that
he too, had been labeled as a Rightist. He seemed to think I
was a natural born anti-Communist, much worse than himself or
any other Rightist in the school.

About an half hour later the woman from the front office
returned. The situation had changed abruptly. With a
hypocritical smile she said, “Comrade Wu, the library in our
school desperately needs an English resource man. You would
be particularly valuable there since you are an artist, and speak
English fluently. And since there aren’t enough commissioned
works to do here, we decided to send you to work in the library.
The library people have welcomed the news of your arrival. So
you can report there for duty right now.”

It was obvious she had talked the matter over with the
Personnel Division. I was just happy to finally have a position,
but I didn’t learn what was behind this assignment until I saw
one of the big character posters during the so-called, Socialist
Education Movement, which began three months later. There
were so many movements in those days, one after the other!
But that afternoon when I heard her instructions, I simply
picked up my United States serviceman’s traveling bag and left
without a word to my former classmate. I was so hurt I wanted
to leave that cold and dirty air as far behind me as possible. I
sensed that there would still be a very hard road ahead for me,
and that I could never know what my future would be. Anything
could fall upon me again at any time.

So, as instructed, I reported again to the Personnel
Division and was received with a cold professional air by
another woman, Zhou Lan, who was even harder in spirit than
the first. One who seemed proudly aware that she held people’s
destinies within her hands. She looked at me with a pair of
ruthless little triangle eyes and said, “You can share a room
with two other workers at the right corner of the playground.
Your salary is 56 RMB per month. It is lower than you
ordinarily should have, but after all you have been a Rightist.”
Again I left without a word. There was no use defending myself.
If they wanted to do something, they would do it. There is a
Chinese belief that a person with triangle eyes must be ruthless.
I don’t know if there is any scientific grounds for such a belief,
but it was true in this short woman’s case. A personnel
department ought to understand and know its people well
enough to bring their initiative and professional knowledge into
fullest play for the benefit of the institution. It should pay
attention to people and give them the help that would be of
benefit to all. But this woman did the opposite and seemed to
enjoy making people suffer. As a Party cadre she had lifelong
tenure in her position, like a tumbler toy she could fall over but
would always come back up again. I think this practice is a
fatal flaw in our political system. When an employer has no
right to hire or fire the employees under his supervision and
responsibility, then evildoers, supported by lifelong tenure, have
nothing to fear and can do whatever they please.

After nearly seven years of nightmare, and my new
position secured at the school, I finally was on my way home.
According to common sense I should have been very excited
and happy. It didn’t happen like that. I simply couldn’t be
happy. The thought of the long distance to my home from the
school began to hurt me deeply before I even left. The place
where our home was now located was the mark of my bitter and
humiliating past. Why couldn’t we still live and work in
Beijing? Why couldn’t we go back to where we belonged?
When I finally reached our door and knocked, the door opened,
and I read the same feeling on my wife’s face. I couldn’t find
the real happiness we deserved. Both of us felt that even though
the label of Bourgeois Rightist had been removed from me, I
was still considered a counter-revolutionary Rightist in the
Party’s eyes. We could feel that everywhere we were being
treated unequally. Our nightmare was not really over. Even
today, every time I go back to Beijing, I still can’t visit those
old places where once I had lived. They arouse such deep
feelings of pain within me.

In my desperate efforts to break this chilly feeling from
my wife and to calm her, I took her to a famous Sichuan
Restaurant to dine on her favorite foods. On our way, looking at
her weather-beaten face, I was lost in thought with the sad
feelings, “It has been nearly seven years! Not the one year I
had assured her of before I was taken away from home by the
police.” Criminals are given a specified sentence of
imprisonment, but not us—the political prisoner. It had tortured
us so badly. Every day and night we wished and prayed that we
would be free the next year, the next month, maybe even the
next day! I had suffered severely from this spiritual torture. But,
how had my wife passed through these long years? Alone,
without anyone to help her.

Not long before our baby daughter was born, one of the
authorities in my school came to her asking to use our house for
someone’s wedding. Since my wife was usually home from her
school only on weekends, this seemed like a reasonable
request. They knew very well that my wife could only say,
“yes”, as she was the wife of a political prisoner. They just took
this opportunity to exploit her. As the weeks passed by, they
never gave back our home, our furniture, or personal belongings.
My wife could only swallow this humiliating insult alone and in
silence. Even my little boy, Jiemeng, often being bullied by the
other children because of my crimes, had to suffer. Though he
was only six, he seemed to understand why his mother was
always forced to endure all of those humiliations. There had to
be something wrong with everyone! So, he was compelled to
swallow all of those insults in silence, just like we adults.
Today, I can still see this cruel scar in his personality. Often he
just keeps silent, alone in his own thoughts, but with a pair of
indignant eyes staring out at the world.

My wife could not continue her studies in the school any
longer. She had a new nursing baby and no income other than a
little school granted aid. The hardest thing to endure, however,
was the pressure of humiliation from everywhere around her.
With her now working in an art troupe outside of the region, she
was compelled to leave our new baby to a public nursery. Life
was so hard on her that she could barely survive.

By this time, the whole country was in the throes of a
terrible disaster. A half pound of dough was the only food ration
each month for my wife and our poor baby. In the nursery there
was more food for our child. Often she had little pickles with
rice as her only meal each day. There was also no spare money
for her to buy clothes for our son, so she saved every bit of old
clothing and sheets which should have been thrown away as
scraps, and made our child his cloths, bed sheets, shoes, any
thing she could make from this debris. One day she realized
that I needed more jackets, as I would be soaked through with
sweat during those hard days of laboring in the cold. She didn’t
have the money to buy new material, so she sent me jackets
she made out of two pieces of worn-out-old bed sheets,
connected at both sides by cloth strips. They served their
function to keep me warm, no matter how strange their
appearance.

Then in 1963, when all Bourgeois Rightist were required
to move out of Beijing, my wife was forced to move to Tong
Xian (Tong County). There was no one to help her with this
difficult move. She was then assigned to teach in an elementary
school attached to a large factory. People there all realized my
wife was the family member of a Bourgeois Rightist and that
was the reason for her transfer there. She continued to live and
work there with our two children, then finally with me, as a
second class citizen, until the day she died. She had been a
beautiful, lively woman, full of positive energy and smiles! She
had built a life of great expectations for her future, but then,
after years of grief and hardship, the most kind hearted woman,
my dearest wife Minghua, died of cancer when only halfway
through her life. Could it have been a broken heart? Could this
have been murder?

After my painful journey home, I returned to school to
begin my work at the library as an English resource specialist.
In truth, however, most of my time was devoted to cutting
stencils. While in the library I read English books when the
working hours were over, and then reluctantly went to my room
when exhaustion eventually overcame me. My room was
originally a small room for storing sports apparatus. All I was
allowed in this small cell was a wooden bed.

It was during this year that my son began primary school,
and my one year old daughter was enrolled in the same nursery
that my son had been enrolled in years before. I could take her
home from the nursery only on Saturday afternoons. Then I
would take her back to the nursery on Monday morning, for our
home was much too far from the nursery to bring her back and
forth every day.

One night around nine, I was abruptly told that my
daughter was very ill. I ran to her nursery as quickly as possible.
Arriving at that late hour I could not hire a car to take her
home. She had the measles and was running a very high fever. I
watched alone at her side and tried to cool the fever with cold
water and wet towels until daybreak. Then I was able to carry
her home by bus. There she fell into convulsions. In desperation,
I took her to the doctor at Xuanwu Hospital, a hospital well
known for its Department of Neurology. In an effort to stop the
convulsions, the doctor prescribed luminal to be taken for at
least two years and preferably a third, just to be safe. She took
the medicine for two months before I found that luminal had
serious side effects, one of which was a body function
imbalance. I quit this medicine at once, and searched every
possible way for an appropriate traditional Chinese medicine,
for those medicines have less or no side effects.

Finally I heard there was a very good Chinese traditional
doctor in a town only five miles from our home. But he was out
of work for he was labelled a counter-revolutionary and no one
dared to go to him for help. Of course, such labels meant
nothing to me. I knew the line drawn between ourselves and the
enemy all too well. I hurried to the doctor’s home for help.
Perhaps he was touched by my trust in him, for he received me
in spite of being prohibited from practicing medicine. He
carefully inquired about my daughter’s illness and then gave me
a prescription. It was for a traditional Chinese ready-made
medicine, Niuhuang Zhenjing. The name means a pill to sedate
infantile convulsion by bezoar of ox. This medicine worked very
well with only the slightest side effects.

In addition, I learned a useful emergency measure. My
daughter’s convulsions were easily triggered whenever she ran a
high temperature. So, whenever she caught a cold and became
even mildly feverish, I watched by her side with an acupuncture
needle in my hand. I would prick the needle into the point
called renzhong, located one third of the distance from the nose
to the mouth. I would prick her as soon as I saw the slightest
symptom of convulsion. The symptom would be checked in just
a few seconds. She has long since recovered completely from
these symptoms, and is now free of any seizures. After
thousands of years, there really is something to traditional
Chinese medicine, and in this instance I was very happy with
its results.

Within two months of my return from the prison system,
the nationwide Socialist Education Movement started up. In rural
areas it was called the Four Clean-Ups—clean up politics,
ideology, organization, and the economy. After all my years of
political suffering I was not looking forward to another
government movement with much joy. As a routine, the Party
called everyone to write big character posters to bring all
problems and troubles to light. All of a sudden the school
auditorium and the walls outside were filled with these posters.
People viewed these posters nervously and restlessly, uncertain
of what might follow. As in the past no one knew when, or if,
the movement might touch their own lives.

People continued to look at me with somewhat strange
expressions. My reappearance at this time caused my
colleagues to recall 1957, when they last saw me. I was to them
someone who was persistently anti-Communist, anti-Party,
negatively critical of the socialist system, a reactionary airman,
and a public advocate of “American imperialist style
democracy and freedom.” In short I was a Rightist and a
counter-revolutionary from head to toe. The question was now,
had I really changed after over six years of imprisonment, as
had been officially decreed? Had I been reformed into a brand
new person? Most people took their cue from the Party leaders.
Because I was still discriminated against, I must still be
suspect, so people steered clear of me. Those who had
succeeded in creating my crimes in the first place seemed
uneasy to see me again. They prayed I couldn’t stand up freely
any longer against them. It was very simple, if I was right that I
had been wronged, then they were wrong; and if they were right
then I must be wrong. It was simple. To them, I must be a
Rightist.

Even my former class mates kept their distance to avoid
getting involved in my troubles. Once Mrs. Xia happened to run
into me in the corridor. She greeted me and we had a little chat.
This small encounter later caused her to be criticized for not
drawing a clear line between us. I understood then that I was
still considered a Rightist by the Party. Only now it was without
a formal label. I had to live alone in my own world and learn to
enjoy it. I knew that I would be vulnerable to attack whenever
there was a new political movement. It was for this reason that I
felt I still had to get involved and know what was going on in
the school’s political sphere.

I walked around to look at the posters. Suddenly my
name struck my eye like a piercing bullet. It came from a
poster in the corner of our auditorium. I read it thoroughly,
missing not one word, paying the people around me no mind. It
was an accusation aimed at the head of the sculpture studio
where I used to work. His criminal act was that he held that I
should be allowed to come back to the studio from my
prisoners’ exile, and that he spoke in favor of my abilities. I
abruptly realized the conflict that I had walked into when I first
returned. He had pointed out that it was only their boycott that
kept me from my original post. All of this personal hostility and
criticism hurt my self respect very much. I swore in my heart,
“The day must come that I’ll breathe freely in vindication.”
It was not long before the whole school set off for Xingtai
City, in Hebei Province, to take part in the Four Clean Ups in
that rural area. A few people were left to look after the school. I
was chosen to be one of them because I had no right to take
part in such political affairs. I was kept working in the library,
which I did not object to, for I felt much better alone. I took this
as a favorable opportunity to read and learn. This unexpected
opportunity lasted for two years, until the spring of 1966, when
the next dreadful political movement began. This time it was
the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which proved to be a
terrible disaster without parallel in human history.

Chapter 7

2007-11-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

I continued to work as the prison artist until one
November evening. Without any advance warning, a public
security officer came and told me to prepare to leave for
Beijing the following morning. I was overjoyed by this sudden
and unexpected good news. For some mysterious reason, I
seemed to be the only lucky one chosen. Friends and fellow
Rightists surrounded me with their envying eyes. I was forced to
keep my joy locked in my heart as I met their sadness the next
morning. As we shook hands to bid farewell, I had no idea why I
was returning to Beijing. It was only later that I learned that the
National Exhibition of Reformed Criminals, organized by the
Public Security Ministry, needed an artist to do some sculpture
work for them. Someone remembered that I was a sculptor and
recommended me.

I still don’t know who that angel was who was watching over me.

On the train to Beijing when a passenger came over to
take the vacant seat next to me, my two plain clothes
bodyguards stopped him. One of them said seriously, and in a
tone of mystery, “Do you know what sort of a person he is? No
one is allowed to take this seat.” People all around suddenly
flung puzzled looks in my direction. I was not dressed as a
criminal, and they could not read any marks of criminality on
my face. No handcuffs. No look of shame or defeat.
Nevertheless, no one dared approach me for the duration of our
journey. However, while waiting for the car to pick us up in
front of the Beijing Railway Station, I began to feel better when
no one paid any attention to me, as though I were just one more
face in the vast Beijing crowd.

I was returned to Yonghe Palace, where I had been sent
that first day of my imprisonment. When I arrived, I learned that
many prisoners from different places around the country were
already being organized and divided into different groups for
various types of work needed for the exhibition. Soon after my
arrival my wife was allowed to pay me a visit. I was
overwhelmed with surprise and emotion as I received the news
that she was waiting for me in the reception room. Led by a
security officer, I stepped into this small room furnished only
with a bench and a table. There to my heart’s uncontained joy,
sat my wife looking up at me with a broad smile. With the
security officer standing nearby, I was too embarrassed to
embrace her and say all those things I desperately wanted to
say. I gave her all the money I had saved from my work on the
prison farm, only 105 RMB (about $30). Then I just sat in
silence listening to her telling me the many details about our
son. Suddenly, in what seemed like just seconds, our time
together was up. Value the time you have with your loved ones.

To this day, I still remember that forced smile on her
face when we parted. On my way back to our workshop, the
officer said wonderingly, “The relationship between you two
seems very good. Why are you two trying to get a divorce?” I
could not answer him as I stood there in utter shock. How could
I tell him that I did not know we were getting divorced? I never
dreamed that she would do that. How could she? But as I
thought about it, the more I understood why she was considering
it.

Something must have happened to her while I was away. She
must have been subjected to heavier and heavier political
pressure, especially since she was a Communist Youth League
member. They must have forced her to draw a clear distinction
between us. To this day, I truly believe that this was the main
reason she considered a divorce. But why had she never
mentioned this to me? However, she apparently had changed
her mind after asking the jail authorities about it, and she never
spoke about it with me. Even so, I could never blame her for
considering it. My misfortune really had caused her a lot of
suffering. I know there were many, many other families ruined
by similar situations.

Within a few days of my arrival, I was assigned to the art
section. There were seven of us altogether. Including Gu from
Tianjin, a mold maker, and Xu, an oil painter from the PLA and
a former student in my school. There were also three other oil
painters, one from the People’s Art Publishing House, and the
other two from Northeast China. It was an art section composed
entirely of Rightists. The exhibition site was to be in Di Tan
Park (Temple of the Earth Park), and our workshop was in one
of the auxiliary temples there. While there we were continually
guarded by armed soldiers. At first we marched up through the
streets and the park early every morning and back to our place
of detention every evening. We endured the puzzled stares of
the people watching us every step of the way. Fortunately, for
the convenience of our work, we were eventually moved to a
public dormitory close to the exhibition site itself, saving us the
torture of that daily humiliation.

Our public security officer, Lu, was from Shanghai. He
was an amateur boxer and painter, and was amazingly tall and
strong. He also seemed quite happy to have Rightists to guard.
Since we all lived, ate, and worked together, he eventually
came to know each one of us personally. He was openly
puzzled as to why we were labelled Rightist. One day after
work, on our way to the dormitory, he asked me, “How did you
become a Rightist? What were your offenses? I just can’t
understand why you have such a heavy punishment for being a
Rightist.” The more we were together, the more he understood
us. Often he led us to a bath house and even to the cinema after
work. I was very fortunate in that he seemed to like me
particularly. He often called to me in front of all the other
prisoners and would say, “Go buy some cigarettes and wine for
me,” or “Go make a sketch of a cloud pattern from the relief of
the Monument to People’s Heroes for your work,” and so on.
One day he even whispered a most welcome promise, “I’m
going to give you two hours to go home to see your wife and
baby.”

Home leave was perhaps the greatest difference between
criminal and political prisoners. Generally we could enjoy one
day’s home leave every two or three months, although during
1959-61, in what we called the years of disasters, we were
allowed only one. Finally, ten months after I had been
transferred from Xingkai Lake back to Beijing, I was given my
first one-day home leave. Fortunately, I was able to take a
shower and get my hair cut before going home. Even though I
was out of the jail, I still had the same persistently bad feeling I
had in the horrid railroad car when I was first sent off to prison. I
envied everyone I met on the street, for they were “free,” and I
knew all too well that I was not. I was a stranger amongst my
fellow countrymen.

My wife was still enrolled in the Central Drama Institute
and was without any real income. As I entered the gate that first
time, I was ashamed to find our new home to be a small room
of only twelve square meters, tucked away, not far from the
main gate of an old one story house. The room was in a mess
with housewares everywhere because of the lack of space and
the addition of a nursing baby. The sweet smell of the baby
lingered throughout the room. My wife was astonished when I
appeared suddenly in front of her. She hugged me and sobbed
bitterly in my arms. All I could do was stand there, heartbroken.
Holding her in my arms, a terrible guilt overpowered me. A
guilt for what I had put her through. Only four months after we
were married she was wronged by the Rightist label they placed
upon me. Her parents passed away when she was still a child,
and we had no relatives in Beijing, so she had to struggle daily
with her hard life, totally alone. She was alone in school with a
newborn baby. She was unable to earn more money, and there
were no sources of help available to her. But the severe
pressure on her mind and spirit was probably even worse than
her lack of money.

Once again I buried my personal sadness in my heart,
trying in every possible way to console and encourage her. My
four month old son was lying there calmly. Because of being
alone and her inexperience, our first baby caused her to be in a
continual rush and muddle. Since it was also my first
experience as a father, I soon made a fool of myself later that
night. When we went to bed I stopped my wife from nursing him
as she was accustomed to doing each night. I believed that it
would harm him to have something in his stomach before going
to sleep. I seriously thought it would be bad for his digestion.
Obviously, I knew absolutely nothing about caring for a baby.
But how could I admit that to my wife? And after my long
absence, my wife was evidently trying to give me the feeling of
being the head of our little family. Again and again throughout
the night we were awakened by his crying. I began to worry that
he might be ill, for he cried desperately. He just kept on crying
until the early morning when his mother finally relented and
gave him her breast. He calmed down immediately and I felt so
foolish and terrible as I realized that I had made my poor baby
suffer from hunger the whole night through. What a lesson for
me to learn. Seeing his thin weak body, I felt with conviction in
my heart that his weakness was because of me. Not just
because I was kept from being the father I should have been,
but because truth and justice were not respected in my life.

At eight that morning I was required to report back to my
prisoner’s world and leave my newly discovered son fatherless
once again. The pain in my heart became more than I could
hide as I walked slowly back to the imprisonment which had
become my life.

Back at the prison, the first task they gave me for the
exhibition was to depict in sculpture, the true story of the
political and social reform of a savage and cruel bandit named
Zhou. He had recently been released from prison and had
become a great example for the Party. Of course, he had
followed the Party’s wishes exactly.

The requirements for the exhibition soon became very
complex. It became evident that it would require much more
time and effort than expected. It was to be centered around an
electric revolving stage divided into fifteen smaller stages
arranged in series. All together there were to be more than two
hundred human figures. Each one had to be created in color,
complete with scenic backgrounds. In a word, they wanted to
make it as lifelike as possible, and I was required to complete
the entire exhibit within one month!

I found myself hard pressed to discover various new and
untried methods and techniques, or I would never be able to
meet these unreasonable demands. Initially I decided to make a
clay head from bandit Zhou’s photo. As quickly as possible I
made a mold from which I had fifteen copies made, one for
each scene. On these fifteen copies I was able to create
different expressions appropriate to each stage of the story’s
plot. Using this assembly line method, I was able to save a
great deal of time. Upon their completion, I painted them in
natural realistic colors. Now faced with the problem of fifteen
different bodies, I decided to experiment with wire frames
wrapped with hemp, rags, and cotton to create the illusion of a
clothed figure. This was the only way I could put clothes on
them, and still prevent any damage when the stage would move
suddenly. When the heads were joined to the flexible wire
bodies, I could then adjust them into any position required.
Though they were only 30 centimeters high, they still needed to
have everything from hair to shoes.

The first of the scenes I had to create was of a prisoners’
mass rally. Hundreds of sitting figures were required. To
complete this and the other fourteen scenes on schedule, I
positioned all the figures within the viewers perspective,
leaving out of sight all other parts in untouched clay, somewhat
like a two dimensional painting. Using such techniques I was
able to finish the work on time. Thankfully it was very well
received and the senior officer in the Public Security Ministry,
who was the Director of the Bureau of Reform Through Labor,
came especially to see my work. He was the person in charge
of the reform of criminals throughout China. Through talking
with him, I soon learned he had studied sculpture in Japan
before the war and had been in the same class with the Vice
Secretary of the Party Committee at the Central Institute of
Fine Arts.

It was later in 1958, while reading a newspaper, that I
first saw the slogans indicating the Party’s basic policies for
building the New China. They were called the Three Red
Banners. These banners were the General Party Line, the Great
Leap Forward, and the People’s Commune. Under these
guidelines the Chinese people were called upon to outstrip
Britain and catch up with the United States economy in just
twenty years. This great effort began with a nationwide program
of steel-production, an industrial-age foundation. In the
countryside every bit of iron, from the people’s cooking pans to
door knobs were collected to make steel implements in small
homemade furnaces.

The Party used many propaganda methods to keep the
people excited about the country’s future prospects. In
agriculture, extraordinary figures of grain output per mu
(mu=0.0027 acre) were reported every day. As I remember, it
was up to 130,000 jin (6500 kg.) per 1 mu. Once I even saw a
promotional picture of a boy lying on the top of rice stalks in a
paddy field. They were supposedly so lush and thick they could
hold his body up out of the water. According to the new rage of
the day, these great achievements were referred to as launching
satellites. The Soviets and Americans could launch their
satellites, but China was doing even greater things by launching
prosperity for her people. I wondered how we could truly raise
steel output by this simple method of recycling scrap and
personal articles. I couldn’t believe the astonishing reports of
grain output either. But people dared not show any sign of
disbelief or question. We learned that Marshall Peng De-huai,
the Secretary Minister of National Defense, did object and was
tortured to death. No one would dare say no to anything Mao
said or did. It soon became evident that this was the root of our
country’s tragedy. No one could ever be himself or herself
again. All lies must be accepted as truth.

At the end of August, just as I was finishing the urgent
work for the exhibition, I was called to Beiyuan Prison Farm in
north Beijing to do a huge statue of a brick layer. It was to be
about four meters tall. This would make it as tall as the flags
carried by the honor guards who were to lead the parade
celebrating the 10th anniversary of the New China. In addition
to the statue, they also needed a huge wooden banner about 12
meters long and 3.5 meters high with sculptured relief heads of
a worker, a woman peasant, and a soldier mounted on one
corner. The whole thing had to be light enough to be carried by
the honor guards. So, in frustration I was forced to quit my work
for the exhibition, which I was told was a much more important
task.

Mysteriously, the day I left the exhibition site I noticed
that our guard, security officer Lu, was conspicuously missing. I
remained puzzled by my friend’s mysterious absence until, a
year later I was told by another security officer that Lu had
been reduced to tears by the official criticism of his relationship
with me, and was ordered back to Shanghai. He had been
condemned for “serious Rightist deviation” and for his failure
“to draw a clear line between himself and the enemy,”
therefore “losing his class standing.” Their system divided the
people. My heart was crushed again. He had once said to me, “I
am very happy to have a friend like you. I’ll visit you as soon as
you are released.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but he had
risked all to reach out in friendship to me. To recognize his
cherished friendship I made a statuette for him. I called it “The
Boxer.” I also sent him an anatomy book. I knew that because
of his avid interest in painting, he could use the book as a
teaching tool to further his skills. Because I was a prisoner,
those who criticized him for his friendship to me could not be
blamed for their opinions. During those years in China, who
could know the real truth about anything, especially of my
innocence.

The Beiyuan Farm for prisoners was about two miles
beyond Beijing’s Gate of Triumph. During this period, it was
also used as a chemical factory. However, the concertina wire
on top of the walls and watchtowers at each corner clearly
marked it as a prison. I was put into the art section with about
ten other prisoners. The sculpture I had been ordered to create
was really beginning to worry me. To begin with, I didn’t know
where I could get the hard material stand and the support
frames for such a large and heavy clay statue. Then they told
me that the statue was to be carried in a parade and had to be
light! I was now forced to consider making a mold and then
casting the sculpture out of a very light material such as paper
mache, but I had no experience with paper mache. Once again,
the most difficult problem was the time allotted to complete the
project. It had to be completed within four weeks, ten days
before National Day, October 1, 1959.

It would be dreadful to fail in this very public assignment.
Since I was labelled a Rightist, there would be suspicion that I
failed on purpose. I tried very hard to complete this work as
assigned, one way or another, no matter what, but my anxiety
over my success took a terrible toll. I eventually became too
nervous to sleep or eat as I should. Because of the pressure, I
worked from early morning until late at night, sometimes into
early the next morning. Because of the pressure created by this
schedule, I was allowed to sleep at the workshop, even though
it proved not to be the best accommodations. The studio
workshop had originally been some sort of greenhouse, its floor
sunken below the ground and its windows placed just above the
ground. Its sole piece of furniture was two wooden benches and
a board consisted of my bed.

Getting immediately to work, I first made the frame and
armature for the 4 meter tall brick layer with the only material I
could get—wood. Of course, by itself, it couldn’t stand such a
heavy load of clay needed to make the mold for the paper
mache sculpture. So, instead I made use of the strong
supportive quality of wire. Even though all that I could obtain
was rather thin, it worked fine. Then I made a little experiment
in paper mache. First, I worked out a clay face in relief and
then layered it in a very absorbent rice paper. I cut the paper
into various sized triangular shapes and stuck six layers of them
to the clay relief to make a copy. It separated from the clay
mold underneath naturally when it dried, and the copy kept the
original form pretty well. In this manner, I found the solution to
creating a light-weight, four-meter tall figure.

It had taken tons of clay to model the entire giant figure,
and it was taking far to long to dry. In desperation I cut out a
small hole at the back and dug out as much of the clay from
inside of the statue as I could. Lessening the mass would
naturally help it to dry quicker. When it still dried too slow, I
cut off the upper part of the figure at the waist and dug more
clay out of the lower half. Finally, when they were completely
dry I rejoined the two parts and added the finishing touches. But
just as I completed the basic sculpture, I collapsed from
exhaustion and became very ill.

My temperature shot up to 41 degrees centigrade (105
degrees fahrenheit). I was too weak to stand up and almost lost
consciousness, so they carried me immediately to the clinic.
While being given a glucose transfusion, I heard the voice of
the public security officer, old Mr. Zhang, speaking to the
doctor, “You must bring him back to life at any cost!” Then he
ordered more and better food, including fruit, prepared for me.
With their kind help, my strength gradually returned.

No sooner was I on my feet than I ran back to work and
completed the finishing touches on the sculptures five days
ahead of the Tenth Anniversary National Day. For this I was
praised and rewarded in a mass meeting. I was given a towel, a
notebook, a pen, and 14 RMB ($8) as a reward. I had been
judged as a self-reforming activist by authorities. However, I did
not appreciate being praised as “well behaved in reforming.” I
was still a victim! I didn’t need anybody’s favor. I only wanted
to do whatever I had to do and do it well, especially since I had
to do it anyway. This had nothing to do with who I was and
what I thought politically. It all seemed so foolish!

After the sculpture for the National Day parade and the
works for the exhibition were completed, I was sent to work in a
chemical plant established for prisoners in north Beijing. It was
not a regular plant, but more like a primitive chemical
workshop with only the simplest facilities—some very basic
vats, beakers, flasks , and three different acids. Oh, yes, they
also were without all but the very poorest safety precautions.
Factories and farms had been set up throughout China, for both
prisoners and those who had been released after serving their
sentences. This captive work force was utilized to fulfill the
policy of reforming through labor, as well as providing
employment for those released from jail. Without such a
program, released prisoners found it almost impossible to find
jobs. But more importantly, their labor produced social wealth
while they were still kept easily under firm control. Some of
these prison factories, surprisingly, even won a certain positive
reputation for their products. The brand names of these goods
typically were something like Zixin, “turn over a new leaf,” Xin
Sheng, “new life,” or Zixin Lu, “the road leading to a new life.”
If you saw this sort of brand while shopping, you knew the
product was made by prisoners.

When I first arrived at the chemical plant, I was made a
warehouseman. The warehouse was only a small room packed
with chemicals which filled all available shelves and floor
space. This dismal hole was to be my introduction to poisonous
potassium hydroxide and combustible sodium. The former
looked like sweet dumplings, but I soon learned that one lick
would instantly send me to meet God. Outside the warehouse,
in a small temporary shed, there were about ten chemical flasks
sitting side by side on a small stand. The worker there was a
postgraduate student from Beijing Industrial College. One night
he lost his patience while transferring the sulfuric acid drop by
drop into a container, and rapidly poured in the last few ounces.
An earsplitting explosion shook the warehouse, setting it on fire.
There was very little time before the remaining chemicals
would explode, so I rushed into the warehouse and carried the
large pot of sodium out to a place upwind where I thought it
would be safe. Then I turned back to retrieve the remaining
dangerous chemicals one by one. I was close to exhaustion
when I finally heard the fire engine siren in the distance. Once
the firemen arrived, the fire was put out very quickly, but the
graduate-prisoner had been badly burned. Fortunately, he had
the good sense to roll on the ground to put out the fire on his
body, but the burns on his face were severe. When he got out of
the hospital I couldn’t recognize the handsome young man I had
once known.

While at the chemical plant, an abandoned brick kiln
become my new home, and criminals once again became my
roommates. As I looked at them each day, I could not suppress
a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. When I read about
criminals in the newspaper, and particularly when there were
photos, the criminals had always appeared to be fierce looking
devils. However, now that we were working together, eating
together, and sharing the same quarters, they no longer looked
quite so fierce. In fact, they were often very polite. Like
everyone else, they had parents, wives, and children. They must
have had their own loves and hates, their own expectations of
life. In our kiln there were thieves, hired murderers, and rapists.
Day in and day out, as I would look into the common, restless
and cold expressions of their eyes, I couldn’t help but imagine
the corruption which had filtered into their thinking. One of the
first things I noticed was how difficult it was for them to look
people straight in the eyes, like someone caught red-handed
stealing a bag of money. I even tried to imagine them in the act
of a crime, who their victims were, and especially some of their
own cruelties. When I thought that their victim might even have
been one of their own family members, my loathing and hatred
for them would overcome me as my blood would boil and I
wanted to dash at them and tear them to pieces.

Soon after moving into the kiln, I was transferred to work
in the drying house, where all the chemical products from the
workshop were dried. In the drying house there were rows and
rows of wooden shelves on which products were placed to dry
by central heating. It was smelly, and my throat felt continually
dry and uncomfortable, even though I always wore a mask over
my mouth. Because of the long hours it was particularly hard for
me to work the night shift. I often couldn’t keep from falling
asleep, and was often rudely awakened by the guard’s
threatening shouts.

It was while working in the drying house that I got myself
into some very serious trouble. Our drying house was too small
to dry all the products given to us, so, because I was in charge
of this building, I sent a prison worker to dry some of the
products out in the natural air on big bamboo trays. That night I
was awakened from a deep sleep by rapid shouting, “Wake up,
Lao Wu. Something serious has happened. Team leader, old
Zhang, wants to see you immediately!” I hurried to the drying
house and saw the team leader standing there in a rage. Zhang
was an old man of kind heart, a guerilla fighter during the war
with Japan. He was also the one who shouted at the doctor to
save my life at any cost when I was critically ill. He led me to
the place where the products were drying outside on the
bamboo trays, and then I saw for the first time that all the
products had turned yellow. They should have been white!
Clearly the containers had not been cleaned thoroughly. I knew
that this chemical product cost more than a hundred thousand
yuan per kilogram. What a huge loss! Kind old Zhang looked at
me, trembling with rage, but it seemed there was no way to
repair the damage.

I was devastated! By then it was already daybreak and I
was standing motionless, with tearing eyes. Seeing my personal
devastation, he waved me to go back to bed without another
word. Two days later I was sent to work in one of the dangerous
chemical workshops, apparently as a sort of punishment for my
carelessness. Although I was not the immediate cause, I was
the one in charge. But the lightness of my punishment caused
many of the other prisoners to say behind my back, that I got
special treatment from the public security officers, especially
old Zhang. What made their complaints even worse was that
while at the chemical workshop, I was appointed boss of a work
group, even though I didn’t know anything about chemistry.
The workshop was a large room furnished with three big
reacting pots, some enamel buckets, and a thermometer. We
put raw materials into the pots, then heated and stirred them.
We then took them outside to let them cool down and turn to
ice in the naturally cold weather. By the next morning all the
contents would have turned to crystal, which we then dried to
become the final product. We also worked with hydrochloric,
sulfuric, and nitric acids and we would find many burn spots on
our bodies and clothes from the splattering of these acids.
Whenever any of the acids splashed on us we had to rush to the
faucet and wash it away with water as quickly as possible.
Often it left a scar on our skin. One time, while prisoners were
busy mixing nitric acid with other chemicals in rows and rows
of large jars in an open outdoor courtyard, the danger became
very clear to me. No sooner had I walked through the thick
yellow smoke billowing up from the mixture, than my pants
legs had disintegrated into no more than a few strips of cloth.
We often looked like beggars with our clothes corroded
into tatters. We also produced a tart smell from our bodies,
even though we couldn’t smell it ourselves. Making all of this
worse, we were forced to work three full shifts a day.
Then, in those brief times when we weren’t working, rain
often disturbed our short and troubled sleep. Our kiln was not
only damp, but water leaked in everywhere through the many
open vents. So when it poured outside, it drizzled inside.
Sometimes the water would flood the lowered floor up to a foot
deep, and our shoes would be like little boats floating back and
forth across the room. We would all have to get up to drain the
water out, and then go to work the next morning with cold, sore
and fatigued bodies.

The work was also grueling and seemed endless. Often,
on my way back to our kiln, tired, in beggar-like rags, and
carrying my towel made bag holding my chopsticks and rice
bowl, I would hum my favorite songs I had learned in the
States. This recalling of warm memories seemed to fill my
lonely heart with comfort and summon the courage needed to
go on living in this world of stench and smoke.

In the early spring of 1960, I was finally given a one day
home leave. As luck would have it, my wife was touring South
China with her school troupe at the time. While she was gone
our poor son had to live in a nursery six days a week. Then, on
Sundays, he was looked after by a kind hearted nurse in her
home. So, when I stepped out of my prison’s heavily guarded
gate at eight o’clock that morning, I hurried to catch a bus
which would drop me near the nursery. Finally, near the Beijing
Hotel, I located my son’s nursery. It was a compound, with
houses built around a courtyard in traditional Chinese style.
As I reached the courtyard, I saw a little boy not more
than two standing by the door of the dining room across from
me, waiting expressionlessly for his turn to wash his face.
Although he was only a nursing baby when I last saw him, he
surprised me by rushing to my arms as soon as he caught sight
of me. He had just learned to walk, and as he ran, he seemed
likely to fall at any moment on the uneven pavement. He
appeared fearful, as if he wanted to throw himself into the
embrace of his parents and never let them get away again.
Everyone was amazed that he had recognized his father. One of
the nurses standing behind me said, “It can only be explained
by blood relationship.” How could he understand why he
couldn’t live nestled in his parents’ warm embrace in his own
home? He had suffered ever since he came into this world and
once again I felt that it was my fault. I held him so tight. Seeing
his body so frail, and his face pale, from malnutrition, I couldn’t
stop the tears from flowing down my cheeks.

After getting him cleaned up, we first went to a
children’s shop where I bought him a small toy. Then it was off
to a western restaurant in Dongfeng Market. He was too happy
to sit still, but skittered all around me. It was then I first
realized that a baby knows many things, even though he may
not yet know how to speak. My son amazed me after finishing
his first piece of bread and butter by suddenly bursting out,
haiyao!, meaning, “I want some more.” This was the very first
word I ever heard him speak. Not Daddy, but “more.” It didn’t
matter whether it was only a piece of bread or a tasteful piece
of fried chicken, he kept on saying “more.” Though I was happy
and excited to hear him talk, I was sad to discover that he had
learned to say nothing other than “more.”

After lunch we had our picture taken at Tien An Men
Square. Then, I happily strolled with him in my arms to a quiet
and secluded avenue in the former diplomatic district. There I
sat on a bench on the sidewalk, and he nestled in my arms and
fell fast asleep. The foreigners passing by looked at us with
smiles and curious expressions. They seemed to ask, “Look, is
that a man baby sitter just sitting there with a baby?” I felt
happy as never before, with my baby in my arms. The time
seemed to fly ever so fast, and before I knew it, it was time for
me to go back to that iron fence. He awoke abruptly and burst
out crying when I put him in the arms of his nurse. His cries tore
into me as if they were the concertina wire around my prison
walls. It was impossible to know when I would see him again. I
would gladly suffer more if only it would make it possible for
me to be with him.

One night, during our meal break, a political prisoner
friend of mine, Mr. Guan, was insulted by a notorious hoodlum
who had earned the nickname “Dragon” in the Chongwen
district of Beijing. Mr. Guan had been a lightweight boxing
champion, and could take no more abuse from the Dragon. No
sooner than the latter spat out, “You, damn Rightist!” than the
former’s fist was crashing into his accuser’s jaw. It was a
lightning fight that lasted only a few seconds. The Dragon, who
had never lost a fight in Chongwen, wanted to retaliate, but a
second punch quickly had him on the ground with a black eye.
He hadn’t touched the boxer and instantly lost any will to do so.
I thought, “Yes, among the strong there is always someone
stronger.” It also soothed my feelings, for I felt I was insulted as
well as my friend by the accusation, Rightist. All statements
from anyone about Rightists, I took personally.

After years of living among criminals, I eventually grew
skeptical of the possibility of them ever being reformed through
labor. They had their own satirical phrase, “erjingong,” a little
word play on Beijing opera that means, “entering the imperial
palace a second time.” So it is for all those put in jail for the
second time. It seems they could not help committing their
crimes again, especially the stealing and sexual criminals.
Those who were sexually promiscuous, particularly prostitutes,
did not change because of physical labor or because they were
condemned by traditional moral concepts. The doctors in the
prison clinics were themselves sexual criminals. One was from
the army and another from a very prestigious hospital in
Beijing. The latter was an x-ray physician. He took advantage
of patients x-rayed in a dark room, where he seduced and even
raped a number of women patients including several foreigners.
How would forced labor teach a person like him to resist sexual
temptation under those same conditions. It didn’t make any
sense in his case.

Chapter 6

2007-11-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

Walking out of that dreadfully dirty room, I met the cold-blooded triumphant eyes of those fellow students and faculty members who had worked so hard to convict me. In time it became known that they often sought personal gain by walking in other peoples’ tears and blood. They sat there gloating like conquering heroes.

But, I also saw other eyes deeply frightened by this storm around me. Their owners too had spoken out during the Party’s Rectification. Yet, they too had done their best to play the role of real revolutionaries by fiercely accusing me. Still, it was easy to see they were uneasy in their hearts. They could not be certain that they too might not be accused now that my verdict meeting was over. Through all of this, a wryly bitter Chinese proverb occurred to me, “Those who bow before me will survive and those who resist will perish.”

On my way home, at school, or on the street, my friends all seemed strangers from another world. I wondered who was the ghost, they or I? We were all walking down the same street, yet there seemed no relationship in space or time between us.
At home my life had become a nightmare. I felt like a child
forsaken by his mother, but even such a child would have some
possibilities for hope. He might find a shelter, a neighbor, a
relative, some way to live. Many had done so throughout
history. But, at this moment I felt that for me there was
absolutely no way. No future. No hope. I had no right to seek
opportunities on my own. Where was the law? The Party and
Mao were the supreme law, and they had turned their backs on
me.

A few days later the director of our studio, Ying Tai,
called me to his office and wanted to know what was in my
mind concerning the future, since I had been sentenced to
prison. I answered, “I wished I would be deported. I don’t care
where. My country has declared me a counter-revolutionary and
doesn’t need me anymore. I do not know if this is a possibility,
but this is what I really have been thinking.”

I knew it was an impossibly crazy thought. I am often a
fool, yet that was my true feeling. And, besides, at this point
what did I have to lose? How I wished for a pair of wings to fly
to a place where I could finally be myself. Mr. Ying stared at
me without words and dismissed me. To my surprise my answer
did not bring more trouble. I realized later that those careless
words could have created for me the title of traitor to my
country. To this day I have no idea why this new charge wasn’t
heaped upon me. Maybe I owe this bit of good fortune to the
understanding of Director Ying.

My pregnant wife returned from the Central Academy of
Drama on the Saturday evening following my conviction. I tried
my best to look undisturbed and put on a wry smile for her. I
could not let her share my suffering; however, I still had to tell
her what had happened. I tried to speak casually, “Dear, they
are sending me to reform through labor. It’s nothing. I promise
I’ll make friends and strive to come back to you as soon as
possible. No more than a year. Just think of it as if I’m going out
of town on business. Please don’t take it too seriously to heart.
Be strong. Know that I didn’t do anything unfair or improper to
our country or to you. Time will prove this.” My many efforts at
reassurance failed. Tears rolled down her face. My heart was
broken. It had only been four months since we were married,
and she was now pregnant. Soon she would be alone.
Completely alone to fend for herself in this cruel world.

From then on my foremost thought was how to raise
money to take care of my wife during the time I would be
imprisoned. My salary had been stopped already. I had been
receiving only 18 RMB (about $4) per month for living
expenses! But how could I find the money she needed? In
China we had no right to find a job on our own without the
authority’s permission. I couldn’t even become a peddler. It was
impossible. So, I was forced to save as much as possible from
my last 18 RMB.

Our studio had recently moved about three miles east of
the school. To save money I walked back and forth twice a day.
I accepted this as a form of punishment called, Laboring Under
Control. I prepared and ate gruel made from coarse maize for
lunch and supper every day my wife was not at home. I
permitted myself no other dishes but salt and two pieces of
onion. When I would try to eat more to keep from starving, I
often felt like vomiting. I was exhausted when I went to bed.
Day after day I worried about my wife and my unborn child. The
spiritual and physical suffering were nearly too great to bear. I
grew weaker and weaker, both physically and emotionally.
I sent letters to all of my close friends telling them about
my situation and that I had to break our contact to keep them
from future trouble. Having a friend labeled as an Ultra-Rightist
could only mean trouble. Nevertheless, one friend, Mr. Hu, a
classmate from the Zhejiang Art Institute, and now a
commander-pilot in the PLA Air Force, made many inquiries
and finally found my house and my wife while I was still in jail.
He kept in touch with me throughout the troubled times ahead.

What a special friend, especially considering that he was in the
PLA Air Force. A PLA pilot was never to have among his
social relations someone with my type of problems, nor even
with the wife of such a person. He was really a true friend in
deed. He gave me great spiritual support to continue.
May 6, 1958, is a day I will never forget. It was the day I
was forced to leave my wife and my home as a result of being
wrongly labeled an Ultra-Rightist, and an Anti-Communist. It
was the day that I became a specific target of the Proletarian
Dictatorship, that lasted until December, 1979. It was also the
day I left my studio art life behind, not to return again until
1983, 25 years later. It was the day I was forced to take the road
that ruined my youth and almost my entire life.

On the day before, I had met Ms. Zhao, the Party
secretary. She wanted to know if I had anything to say. “I don’t
see any point in saying anything since everything is settled,” I
replied. “But there is one thing I would like to say to you. I
know you are in a position to understand very well the charges
made against me, particularly the charge of my trying to usurp
the Party’s leadership.” Saying that, I turned and walked away.
At 9 a.m., May 6th, Shen Xin Zhong, the security cadre
of our school, led me to the car parked outside our home. As I
looked into my wife’s face, there were no tears. She just stood
in front of our door, stunned, looking again like the orphan she
always was, watching her only piece of family disappear. I
struggled to maintain my composure in front of her, eventually
getting into the car. I thought of nothing, but simply waited like
a sheep at slaughter, for whatever was to befall me. To allow
myself to be ordered about was all that I could do.
We drove to the police substation near our school to go
through some necessary formalities. The substation was already
crowded with criminals. I wondered how many were real
criminals, or how many were like me, trapped in a system they
could never understand. Men and women, young and old, I tried
to guess who they were and what crimes they must have
committed. Most of them did look like criminal offenders. It
was then that it hit me. I felt hurt and then angered that I was
seen as one of them, a comrade-in-jail, a criminal. Like the
others, I was ordered to be finger printed. Yes, I was now
identified as a true prisoner. When could I ever make the right
and wrong of these ten black fingerprints clear? Looking at
them through the shadows of time, how could future historians
and archaeologists distinguish the truth from them? Was I
doomed by history to be seen as a criminal?

After an eternity of these formalities, I was sent to a
place for temporary detention in the northern quarter of Beijing.
It was an old temple, originally a part of the Yonghe Palace. As
the car turned right off An Ding Men Avenue into a narrow
lane, our route zig-zagged and turned once more before we
reached the old palace, my place of imprisonment. It was
encircled by a brick wall, which was topped by a wire netting.
The heavy gate was closed. A small side door with armed
guards standing by it was opened for us. My life seemed to end
as I stepped through it.

As the door slammed shut behind me, every corner of my
mind screamed out that I had lost everything. The empty feeling
of loss crashed over me. The loss of my freedom overwhelmed
my whole body and soul. I had never felt such loss before. I was
sent first to a small office. The man in charge was about thirty
and, rather than the ever present uniform, was in plain clothes
and wearing glasses. His expressions appeared kind as he
questioned me. He asked, “Well, what’s your crime?” In reply,
my answer was simple and direct. “I spoke out during the
Party’s Rectification stating that we were short of democracy
and freedom; that the newspapers were not allowed to tell
people the whole truth; that Party members got undeserved
privileges; that conclusions on one’s personnel record should
be known to the person of record; that the Party’s Rectification
lacked good faith...” I was sure, that while I was saying all of
this, he was already aware of my crime, as it was known to all.
In reply he said only, “All right then, behave well in your
reforming labor.”

I was then placed in a room in one of the side chambers
of the old temple. It had been recently divided into two
compartments for prisoners. I shared a space roughly two meters
wide and six meters long (6’x19’) with fourteen other prisoners.
We slept on the ground, permitting each of us only about forty
centimeters space. We could only sleep on our side and turning
was almost impossible. We were packed like sardines in a can,
smelling at least as bad. I could not sleep at all the first night.
With my body stuck between men who were possibly
murderers or rapists, I reflected on the many surprising twists
and turns my life had taken. Suffering Japanese air raids, cold,
hunger, and my mother’s death when I was only thirteen. Then,
out of hatred for the Japanese invaders, I voluntarily joined the
Air Force to protect my homeland before I was seventeen. Then
I firmly left the KMT Air Force when the civil war broke out,
knowing that I could never kill my own people. I just couldn’t
do it. Then when the Communist Party took power, my heart
began to stir, yearning for a new China. I laid all my hopes on
the earthshaking changes the Communists were supposed to
bring to China. My heart brimmed with respect for each new
gloriously emerging thing they brought to our shattered land.
When I believed that foreign troops would invade our country
across the Yalu River during the Korean War, I again joined the
army. I would rather die than see China invaded again. Now in
1958, being investigated and then put, innocent, into jail, I
tried in vain to imagine a future where my people only had the
right to say yes but never no. The more I thought of this twist of
history, the more confused and depressed I became.

The next morning we were awakened from our restless
sleep at 5:30. For breakfast we were given a cup of maize gruel
and a small piece of pickle. Shortly after finishing our meal it
was time for us to stand and listen to the reading of the Party’s
policy toward criminals. Each of us were then required to recite
what we understood of these policies. This was called “To
integrate the Party’s policy with one’s own thought.” With each
word I spoke, I wondered how could one be assumed to be
saying what he really thinks when he had no right to say “No”?
So, in fact, there were no exceptions to our morning recitations.
We just said what the authorities needed to hear from us. I soon
learned that among the fifteen prisoners in my group, there were
petty thieves, gangsters, murderers, rapists, people with
counterrevolutionary antecedents... and Me! Most acknowledged
their guilt, yet would seldom relate any specific details.
There was one exception. A man in his fifties. A coal miner
from Mentougou, near Beijing. He enjoyed telling us how he
committed his crime. In graphic detail and still expressing
considerable excitement, he told us how he had sex with a
widow and her daughter at the same time in the same bed.
Shamelessly he confessed, “My legs feel like jelly whenever I
happen to meet a pretty woman. Then I can’t walk anymore. I
just can’t help myself.” So, he had been accused and convicted
as a bad element within society.

A few meters down the dark corridor from our quarters
there was a single cell with iron bars. Inside was a fat monk in
handcuffs and fetters. I heard that he refused to confess his
crimes, continually professing his innocence and shouting at the
guards. As punishment he was treated in this primitive manner.
The handcuffs got tighter and tighter and as the days passed,
eventually cut into his skin as he struggled hopelessly against
his bonds. I wondered if a real criminal would behave in such a
manner.

~~~

One day my wife came to be with me after she finished
school. She was only allowed to walk around outside the high
walls, repeatedly calling my name. She tried in vain to tell me
that our new baby was moving inside of her and that she missed
me terribly. I never heard a word she cried to me. Life was so
cruel to her. There was no one she could talk to about how
much she was suffering from her desperate life of loneliness.
She had become an orphan at age twelve. She was born in
Shanghai where her father had worked in a bank. He then
became a drug addict and finally ruined himself and his family.
In desperation, her mother committed suicide and her father
died not long after. Then she and her brothers and a sister were
taken to their eldest sister, Huihua Cheng, to live. After two
years of junior high education, she was accepted by the
Children’s Drama Troupe, which was attached to the China
Welfare Association founded by Madam Song, the widow of Dr.
Sun Yat-sen, Father of the Republic of China.

All members of the Children’s Drama Troupe were
teenagers. She was well trained by them and worked there as a
stage-artist when she was only 15 years old. They loved Madam
Song so much that they always called her “Mama Song!” I
believe those were her happiest days as she felt she had finally
escaped her bitter childhood. How could she know there would
be such disaster ahead of her because of me. I still regret that I
ever married and brought her into my suffering life. If I hadn’t,
things might have ended up differently for her. I still feel guilty.
I owe her so much. Now, many years later, I can never repay
her the love she deserves. Even writing this is too painful and I
am limited in the memories that the pain will permit me to
recall.

Finally, after two weeks in that foul 15 man cell, we
were transferred to the No. 1 Beijing jail in the southern quarter
of the city. That night we were put into four coaches following a
police car with a harsh and unpleasant siren and flashing red
lights. It was almost midnight, yet some people were on the
streets because of the warm summer weather. Looking out at
the many pedestrians as they walked the streets around us, I
again felt the deep pain of my lost freedom. The people outside
seemed so lucky and happy, no matter whether they were poor
or rich, or even handicapped. They seemed to eye us with such
a curious expression, as if to say, “Look at those evildoers!” As
we drove by, I wanted to cry out to them that there was
someone in this coach who was terribly wronged. That all of us
were not evil. But how could they know? Even though our
coaches passed them so closely, they might as well be on
another planet. None of the people on the street and in the
houses, buildings, and cars even cared about me and the deep
wrong I was forced to endure. I was completely alone.
Just before we reached the jail we passed a street and a
bridge. The street was named “Zixin Road,” meaning “Start a
New Life.” The bridge was named “Banbu Bridge,” meaning
“Half a Step.” It was as if the whole area had something to do
with reforming criminals.

We were then delivered to a real jail, the principal jail in
Beijing. There was razor wire netting on the walls, with
watchtowers on every corner, and of course those famous
iron-barred windows that the movies had made me so familiar
with. Now those terrible bars were to become a real part of my
life. It was not long before I learned that large numbers of
prisoners did not remain here, but were gathered here before
being sent onto the northeastern China frontier bordering the
Soviet Union. There, on the frozen tundra of the Siberian
frontier, was China’s coldest and most desolate place, Xingkai
Lake. This, I learned, was to be my final destination.

The day before we were sent up to the northeast, our
family members were allowed a brief visit with us in the jail
yard. We were asked to shave, be clean, and dress as well as
possible. One thing I was thankful for was that political
prisoners punished by reform labor, were not issued prison
uniforms, as were the true criminals. The criminals wore black
uniforms, black cloth shoes, and were shaved bald. They were
readily distinguishable from the political prisoners, who were
allowed to wear their own cloths and keep their hair. Before we
met our families, the public security cadres exhorted us not to
ask for too many things from home. We should do our best not
to put more burdens materially and spiritually upon our loved
ones than we already had. Rather we should give them hope for
a brighter future. A future where we would be able to start a
new life as soon as possible. Their language and concern
seemed genuine and touched me. I didn’t expect them to talk to
us like that. It was totally different from what I had seen in the
movies and read in books.

As soon as we stepped out of the jail building and into
the large courtyard, I saw my wife with her swollen belly
standing off at a distance, among the vast crowd of anxious
family members. As they saw us enter the courtyard, they
pushed toward us like a rushing tidewater as soon as the guard
gave them the signal. Each one finding their kinsman from
among our desperate ranks.

~~~

My wife was accompanied by one of her classmates,
Ding Mi Xiang. With something in her hand she came up to me
with a smile that tried to conceal the sadness in her heart. My
mind was very confused and angry, yet I tried so hard to make
her feel that this trouble would soon be over and that everything
would then be okay again. She said very few words. Her face
revealed only a little reluctant smiling expression once in a
while. Then she left without saying goodby, only a turning of
her head back to me once every few steps. I did not know until
a few years later that she had burst into tears of grief as soon as
she left that dreadful place.

A few days later we were herded aboard a heavily
guarded prison train and began the hard trip of three days and
two nights to the Siberian frontier. The old box cars were far too
crowded for anything but sitting. We even had to sleep sitting
up, pinned against one another like bricks. There were no
sanitation facilities and the smell was awful, worse than the
foulest sewer. I felt suffocated. The air was dead toxic. It made
no difference if the train was moving very fast, the air around us
had a stench beyond words. Through a small crack in the train’s
wall, as I gasped for fresh air, I gazed longfully at every mile
that drug me further and further from my wife and the world I
knew. I looked out at the clouds wishing that they hid a God
who was coming to save me, and carry me away from this
nightmare. I felt miserable leaving my newly married wife
carrying my child, yet to be born in an unknown time and
place, and me buried in oblivion for a crime I didn’t understand.

When we finally reached our destination in Mishan
county, which had jurisdiction over Xingkai Lake, soldiers from
the prison farm armed with machine guns welcomed us at the
railroad station. When I finally stepped down from that dreadful
train rejoicing in the thought of breathable air, I looked straight
into a machine gun barrel. I understood that in those soldiers’
eyes we were all criminals. How could they know that they
were nervously aiming their loaded guns at an innocent artist?
We were immediately transferred into trucks for the
difficult ride out to Xingkai Lake, which served as part of the
natural walls of this outdoor prison. Driven down a rough and
rugged road into a land that seemed totally neglected by the
civilizing touch of man, we felt even more alone than ever.
There were no signs of cultivation, as there is nearly
everywhere else in China. Stranger still, there were no people.
So, along a road with water on both sides, sometimes
marshlands, sometimes a lake, we finally arrived at our new
home at the open prison planted in the middle of nowhere.

Xingkai Lake is located at the far edge of northeast
China. The north part of the lake was snatched by the Soviets
decades before and was now a part of the Soviet Far East, or
Siberia. It is a huge lake, more like a small sea and frozen so
hard in the winter, that any vehicle could drive across without
the slightest fear of the ice cracking. In 1969, there was a
military conflict in this area between the Soviet’s and the
Chinese, at which time the frozen lake held the weight of many
tanks without signs of the slightest crack. There, in that frozen
wasteland, we lived in row after row of inverted V-shaped straw
roof sheds, surrounded on three sides by the vast lake, making it
impossible to escape. The cold barren ground was our floor. We
covered it with straw to avoid sleeping on the frozen ground.
There is where we slept, with our heads to the middle of the
shed, our feet out to the edge where the straw roof reached the
ground. The smaller of us, like me, could stand in the middle,
the others were cursed with the need to continually crouch. Not
even the relative warmth of summer could bring relief. During
June, in the northern wastelands, daybreak occurred at three
o’clock. We had to be working from daybreak to dusk, so our
summer nights and our rest was very short.

Upon our arrival, our first task of manual labor was to
build a dike. From the first moment, everything was done by
hand, with only a few primitive tools to assist. Those who had
never before done such heavy labor, or who by nature were not
strong were crushed in both body and spirit by this reforming
through labor. We who were designated Rightist received a
small payment for our labor, unlike the criminal
offenders—even though we lived, ate, and worked with them. I
learned quickly to be skeptical of labor as a means of reforming
criminals. It was all too common for criminal prisoners, as soon
as they were released, to resume their crimes and be returned to
prison. But we Rightists, how was labor to reform us?
I put all my strength into the labor before me. This I did
to gain better pay to send on to my wife and unborn baby. I
earned the highest payment possible, 25 RMB, roughly $5
USD, a month. But my legs quivered and it was nearly
impossible to straighten my back because of the countless loads
of black clay I carried on my back day after day. I was
completely exhausted every time we returned to our hut from
the labor site. Fortunately, because of my physical training
while in school, I was able to stand the test of the many forms
of heavy manual labor inflicted upon my body as a prisoner at
Xingkai Lake. However, my back was badly damaged there and
I have since never fully recovered.

Fortunately, we found a plentiful stock of fish in Xingkai
Lake, so we often had fish included in our otherwise tasteless
meals. This heavy labor created big eaters out of all of us. I was
the smallest, still eating 400 grams (nearly one pound) of
steamed bread or noodles in a single meal!

One day I was called from my work to the general
headquarters of the prison. It seemed that artists were needed
for the nationwide exhibition celebrating the 10th anniversary of
the New China. I was sent to an isolated wooden house near the
headquarters building. There I was surprised to encounter among
the prisoners from another prison farm not too far away, some of
my former schoolmates and friends. In 1958, we were ordered to
help prepare the exhibition for this camp. Such exhibitions were
being prepared all over China to celebrate the achievements of
the New China. In our group there were designers, painters,
writers, a dramatist, a journalist, a photographer, a movie
director, and me. Almost all of us were labeled as Bourgeois
Rightist.

Compared to criminal offenders, in time we enjoyed a
relative degree of freedom and trust from the guards. We could
take a walk around our small hut and even obtain leave to shop
in a little drug store located on the prison farm. After working
all day, I often searched around our little hut picking up the
most beautiful pebbles I could find. Some were probably fossils
since I sometimes found what looked like fish eyes looking
back at me. This land had been part of a great inland sea many
centuries earlier. I gathered these unique and colorful pebbles
as presents for my wife. I even kept them safely hidden until I
could finally return home. By now it was summertime and the
mosquitos were terrible. It seemed they had never met we
humans before, but they sure enjoyed the taste. They would bite
and suck our blood even when we were running. The only way
we found to stop them was to slap them dead. We had swolled
welts all over our bodies, especially on our legs. But worse than
all the mosquitoes and poor physical conditions, was the
loneliness crushing down upon my heart.

As each day was swallowed by the next, and each week
by its endless next, I realized that I was not alone in my pain.
This dreadful place was a great equalizer where we all equally
suffered the horrid agony of our confinement. It was as if I was
in exile without a face, just as I had seen in Soviet films. In
reality, even the location was the same. At one point our prison
farm in China, and one just like it in Russia, were separated
only by a small river. The inhabitants on the other side were
prisoners, with the same hopeless lives just like us, and both
countries shared Xingkai Lake. In fact, we could throw a
package of cigarettes across this river to each other. Both
countries had devised the use of this Siberian waste-land to
crush the wills of men.

However, the one thing that made my faceless
confinement especially hard to bear, was the creeping fear that
I would never see my wife again. They would not, and probably
could not, tell me how long my term in prison would be. This
endless exile was as difficult for me as it was for all of the
other prisoners. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I
received a letter from my wife. She told me that on July 25th I
had become the father of a baby boy. Me a father! I had a son!
But who was he? What did he look like? It didn’t matter! I was
a father! I finally felt happiness once again! The joy! The
excitement! The reason to keep on going! My fellow Rightist
showed their congratulations with bouquets of beautiful wild
flowers which they had picked somewhere in our vast
desolation. That evening, my fellow prisoners asked me to sing
a song to commemorate such a happy event. So, with as much
bravado as I could muster, I wrote a poem:

Framed-up on this bleak and desolate lake,
I heard the magpie tell me, I was a father!
Grow up slowly, so slowly, my dearest baby boy,
So that you are sure to live a life of freedom!

Then I sang George Gershwin’s lullaby, Summer Time.

My eyes grew moist as I sang. I could not tell whether I was
happy or sad. My life was now intertwined with this innocent
new life somewhere hundreds of miles away. He was a part of
me but when, if ever, would I know the joy of seeing him? At
night I would think about him over and over while lying in bed,
for I wanted to give my son the best name I could. I felt very
excited and good when it finally came to me. It is composed of
the first character of his parents’ first names. I simply added
another symbol to them, which means “bud.” Doing this, his
name ended up as, Jie Meng. This name was to show that he
was the most treasured fruit borne from my wife and me. I was
so satisfied with this name, because it revealed the love
between the three of us. He and his mother were the only dear
ones I had left in this world.

My memories of those happy days before my marriage to
his mother, with the love letters which flowed between us,
always filled my mind. Whenever she knew someone would be
visiting Beijing, she always asked them to bring me some of
my favorite food. When she visited me in Beijing, we would
sing together while strolling along the streets or rowing a boat
on Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace. Then, we would often
hug and kiss each other in Zhong Shan Park—without the
slightest worry about the world around us.

Excitedly, I wrote to my wife the next morning and
enclosed a watercolor portrait of our baby I had not yet seen. A
portrait as my heart had imagined him to be. I also enclosed a
gift to him, a baby bib, which I bought from the small drug store
on the prison farm. My wife, and now our newborn son, were my
primary comfort and spiritual supports. They pulled and pushed
at my heart daily, and I missed and worried about them more
and more as the days, weeks and months continued to drag on. I
dreamed about them night after night.

Criminal prisoners had a set amount of time to serve on
their sentences, but we political prisoners had no such time
frame on ours. There was no way to know how long it would be
before we would be allowed to return home to our families. Not
knowing our fate was the worst form of torture for us. In those
days, I didn’t worry about what my future would bring, for I
knew that we Chinese could no longer build our own futures
ourselves, because we now had to follow whatever the
Communist Party demanded of us. So, the only concern for my
future was to return home. That was my only light at the end of
a very dark tunnel. The reunion with my wife and new born son.
In despair I often prayed for a pair of wings that would take me
back home and on to a place where we could live happily
together in freedom and peace.

It was during this period, after my son’s birth, that the
prison officials moved us into a tent close by the hall where the
exhibition was to be held. Our tent was also located by the road
not far from the headquarters. At that time, Xingkai Lake Farm
included eight branch prisons. Two of them were for women.
Every day on this road, all the prisoners passed by in rank going
back and forth to their manual labor. As the women passed by,
the men prisoners looked at them with hungry and lustful eyes.
As we looked closely, we saw the same hunger and lust in their
eyes staring back. Some of these women seemed to recognize
that our small group of Rightists were different from the
criminal offenders. This awareness seemed to intensify the
interest they showed in us with each passing day. Likewise, day
after day, the loneliness I felt for my wife and new family
continued to grow.

It wasn’t long before we learned first hand that Xingkai
Lake is one of the coldest places in China. It sometimes fell to
more than -45° centigrade (-49° fahrenheit). As the nights grew
colder, the criminal offenders were given fur hats,
cotton-padded coats, pants, gloves, along with a sort of
galoshes, and some sleeveless vests. They were also given a
special grass called Wula, one of the treasures of Northeast
China. This Wula grass was pounded into a pliable form, and
was then put into the cotton-padded galoshes as insulation,
making the shoes much warmer, almost like a down lining.
None of this, not even the simple treasure of Wula grass was
given to the political prisoners. We were left to survive the cold
through our own inventiveness.

Winter came early in the far north. By early October,
snow covered everything in sight. The world all around us was
white. The houses were soon nearly half buried. Often all we
could see was a little space hollowed out in the snow which
indicated the location of a door. The signboards, such as those
reading, “Administration Office” and “General Affairs
Section,” appeared like small hurdles in a field of snow. It was
then that I finally realized why all the doors opened inward, for
otherwise, we could never be able to get them open as the snow
piled up deeper and deeper in front of them. Night after night
the cold became unbearable, especially for those of us still
crouched in that flimsy hut. The arctic wind constantly blew
into our meager shelter, and the inadequate stove proved
hopeless in its efforts to warm us. I slept with my cloths on and
with the ear flaps to my fur hat down around my head. It was far
too cold to even go outside to relieve ourselves, so I was forced
to become inventive. I rigged up a rubber tube, one end by my
bed and the other extending outside through the bottom of the
tent. As the nights grew colder and colder, I grew even more
proud and thankful for the blessing of this bit of indoor
plumbing. Of course, everything that went outside at night soon
turned into ice and sat there all winter long!

On one very cold day, I was called, along with two other
artists, to the home of the prison warden. We called him the
supreme boss. He had a very large and comfortable home with a
very fine hunting gun hanging on his wall. In all of my misery,
until I stepped into his beautiful home, I had not stopped to
realize how good this desolate region of China was for hunting.
There were bear, marten, river deer, roe deer, hare, and many
other animals throughout this primitive land. Off in the most
remote forests, the great siberian tiger, the world’s largest cat,
still competed with man in hunting all of those fantastic
animals. And out below that massive sheet of ice, called
Xingkai Lake, plenty of fish could be caught wherever the
guards would bore a hole and drop a line. It took me awhile to
return to my senses and recover from the shock of such luxury
sitting in the middle of all our desolate misery. I then realized
that the supreme boss was “asking” us to paint a picture of the
beautiful future prospects of Xingkai Lake. Because of the
opportunity to act as free men, we were happy to accept the
assigned task, and we each knew that to paint it, we had to
look over the whole lake area on foot in the winter’s biting cold.
In just a few hours after leaving the warden’s home, we were
led by a former prison worker out to see the lake.
On our way to a primitive area of shoreline, we passed
through the Number 5 branch prison farm for women. The farm
was surrounded by an artificial brook, much like a moat,
designed to keep male and female prisoners apart. To my
observation, it didn’t seem to work very well. Despite the
danger, we all knew of a young woman who swam the brook
and made love under the stars to a male prisoner late one
summer night. Most of the women prisoners were petty thieves,
drug addicts, and prostitutes. However, I eventually met a girl
from Shanghai who claimed to have been sent there because
she wanted to choose her own job when she graduated from
college. She had the courage to refuse two jobs she was
assigned by the Party and, therefore, was forced to pay the
consequences for not obeying them.

After passing the women’s farm, it seemed as if we
walked all day before climbing over a small mountain and
suddenly there the lake was, like a small sea below us. Humans
were scarce in this very desolate part of China, which left
nature untouched in all her glory. A vast uninhabited land on
the edge of such a tremendous mass of humanity. Anyone could
settle there as a farmer without the slightest need for permission
from your neighbors. When we finally reached the hill
overlooking the lake, I was surprised and overwhelmed by its
significant vastness. Still to this day, it is the largest lake that I
have ever seen. It reached out onto the horizon like an endless
frozen desert.

Every now and then, on our daily trips to the lake, we
would encounter patrols riding on what seemed to be the most
beautiful horses I had ever seen. They looked like Arabians with
traces of some other breed, so different from the stocky, shaggy
horses of north China. The more days I spent traversing this
countryside, the more I realized how impossible it was for
anyone to escape from such vast surroundings, even if these
mounted guards did not try to prevent it. Its complete isolation
were the bars on our jail. Just a few weeks after completing our
study, a prisoner from our camp tried to escape by running
across the frozen lake into the Soviet Union. It was a terrible
winter’s day, which he counted on to hide his escape. When the
armed guards found him on the lake ice several hours later, he
was lying, helpless and motionless, in the icy cold almost
frozen to death. He was a talented young science teacher from
Beijing University who had also been wronged as a Rightist.
During his confinement at Xingkai Lake he had become
obsessed with regaining his freedom, unfortunately there was
nothing anyone could do. The distant image of a Soviet Union
less dogmatic than his homeland, offered him a glimmer of
hope. Unfortunately, it was a false hope created by the hopeless
reality of our situation.

One day, several months later, while in line waiting for
my lunch ration, I felt a head, just up to my waist, bumping up
against me. I looked down and there stood a young man who
had lost both of his legs. With two short crutches under his
arms, he waited for his ration like the rest of us. I watched his
short thighs swaying rhythmically suspended below his
crutches, as he balanced his meager ration. Upon inquiry I
learned that he was the young science teacher. When the patrol
finally found him, he was frostbit with cold on the frozen lake.
He had sacrificed his legs in his quest for freedom. A feeling of
dread pierced my soul. Could this have been one of our great
future scientists destroyed by this unjust campaign? Who knows
how important he might have been to our country.

Just a few days later, as I was walking down the main
road, an open truck rumbled slowly by me. In the back I saw a
prisoner lying in a pool of blood. He had no lower jaw and was
bleeding everywhere. It looked as if his jaw had been shot off
by the guard beside him. In this dreadful place, the guards too
were prisoners. Prisoners of desolation, just as much as we
were. They were under orders to shoot whoever tried to escape,
and shoot they did. However, I can truthfully say I never saw
any torturing of prisoners during my stay in this god forsaken
prison. There seemed no need for it here. In fact, most of the
public security officers I met seemed to conscientiously carry
out the policy of Revolutionary Humanitarianism. Generally,
they didn’t even personally humiliate the prisoners. Whenever
possible they tried to reason things out and avoid the use of
force. These guards were definitely not like those I had seen in
films or read about in books. Here we technically were not in
jail, for there were no cells. But in this prison of isolation, we
were forced to work hard to set up factories and additional
farms in the wasteland of the north. We worked all the time and
learned many new skills. Our achievements in these areas were
recognized and encouraged with small rewards. Our families
were even informed of our progress. Routinely we were
summoned in ranks to listen to talks of admonition from the
officers, who spared no words in telling us the Party’s policies.
We were also allowed to read the official newspapers every
day.

One of the elements of beauty in all of this desolation
were those wonderful pebbles and fossils to be found on the
lake shore. I thought they were the most beautiful and
marvelous in the world. One day a worker showed me a prize, a
remarkable cherry colored fossil. It lay, crimson in color, in a
tray of water. When he took it out of the water the red spiral
gradually turned to white, wrapping around the stone, like the
peeling of an apple from top to bottom, ring after ring until it
was all white. When he put it back into the water, it reversed
the process until, once again, it had regained its original
beautiful red color. Everyday at the lake I tried so hard to find
another like it. Whenever I walked along the shore, I searched
and searched for this wonderful prize for my wife and baby boy.
But always I searched in vain. Even this simple token of beauty
eluded me.

Chapter 5

2007-09-17T04:56:00.000-07:00

Late in 1955, yet another political movement was pressed down upon us from above. This time it was called The Campaign to Ferret Out Undercover Counter-Revolutionaries. I first learned of this new movement on a hot summer morning. I was studying in the library when Ms. Shi Cuo, came up to me. She was one of the Party cadres in our class. With a terribly cold face, she said, “Stop reading! Go back to your room and make a clean breast of your background and your problems. Write it down clearly and hand it over at once.”

We had studied in the same class together for almost six years. Still, her sudden change from love to hate was so abrupt that it left me totally confused. Why? What need was there for her to behave like that? What had I done that was so terrible? Soon after, I was notified that I was suspended from both my studies and my work, confined to my small room, and not allowed to communicate with anyone. I begged a fellow student, Zhao Yi, to take care of my little niece for me. How could such a child make sense of this investigation of her uncle.

In fact, she never did understand the sudden change that came
upon me. She just gazed at me with those big dark eyes as if to
say, “Tell me please, dear uncle, what’s the matter with you?
What’s this all about? What can I do for you?” Looking at this
lovely Little Pearl, I could say nothing. How could I explain
this insanity to a child? I hid my agony deep within my heart
and tried in every possible way to make her feel secure in
staying with me. But still, she could only wonder why her
uncle’s life had changed so suddenly, he sitting there writing all
day long rather than going to class like the others. No smiling,
no talking, and no singing, his brow constantly knit in
constrained effort. He didn’t take her to the zoo, cinema, or
anywhere else anymore. All I could do was to ask one of my
closest friends, Guo Rui, to take her to some of these places for
me.

Of course I was not a counter-revolutionary, especially
not an undercover one. I had done nothing wrong, and I had told
them very clearly and openly about my background when I was
in the PLA Air Force in 1951. I understood the need to
investigate those who had worked for a government they had
overthrown. But I had already been investigated. I could not
understand why they were continuing to treat me as a suspect or
as one who had concealed his past record. Why was it
necessary to put me under house arrest without any new reason
or evidence, and force me to clear myself again? I could do
nothing but write down all my background over and over again
in vain. They never really wanted to believe me, they just
needed an enemy. What more could I say?

It was as though it had become government policy to
formulate preconceptions, making false assumptions as a matter
of course or as a deliberate prejudice against whomever they
chose. When they read what I wrote, they always responded,
“What we want is your essential problems, not all of this. You
must clear yourself honestly or it will be no good for you!” Then
they would announce the controlling policy, “Leniency towards
those who confess their crimes and severe punishment to those
who refuse to do so.” I was frustrated and very vexed. What
could I do if no one believed me? The investigation was clearly
not based on any legal procedure. It was as if they needed to
extort a confession from me.

It was as though I had some exotic disease. People dared
not get in touch with me or even speak to me. People were all
afraid to appear involved with me, or even to be criticized for
straying from correct behavior by talking to me. They could not
judge the facts of my case because they could not know them,
but they did it anyway out of fear. All that they knew was the
Party’s attitude toward me. I spoke to no one for about three
months, and actually almost lost my voice for the solitary
cruelty. Several months later, after it was over and I tried to
speak, I uttered only a weak and raspy squeak.

Once acknowledged again, I was first called to the
personnel office. The person in charge told me that my problem
originated from my complicated social relationships. This
meant that all of my friends I had during the Kuomintang rule,
both during and after the war with Japan. They were especially
concerned with those friends I had in the army and my uncle
who was a high officer in the National Defense Ministry, and
also my friends in the United States. The party cadre in our
school concluded that while I was not classified as an enemy,
my case was still one of contradiction within the people’s view
and that I, therefore, must break all of these social relations. It
wasn’t until 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, that I began
to understand that these cadre were unable to reach a final
conclusion in their investigation of me. They could neither find
anything criminal in my past, nor rightfully charge me with any
specific crime. But neither would they trust me. So, they
resorted to what they called, Guaqilai. Which means literally to
hang something up until it has cleared out. In other words, I
would be under suspicion until the contradictions were resolved.
I didn’t understand it then, but in fact it meant that I would be a
man under their direct control for the next twenty-three years.
How could I ever escape the past experiences and relationships
in my life?

From that time, in 1956, all my former schoolmates and
all others in my institute, took me to be a suspect and kept their
distance from me. After this investigation was complete and I
left the personnel division office for the last time, I rushed to
Zhao Yi’s to get my darling Little Pearl, the only one in my life
who loved and believed in me, more so even than my wife.
This sudden resurgence of political trouble also caused
me to miss another treasured cultural opportunity. While I was
confined my fellow students traveled to different parts of China
to view our country’s ancient classical cave art. It hurt both my
career and my spirit to have missed such a valuable
opportunity. I was still so naive about the complex political
struggle then going on throughout China, not knowing there
were thousands more like me who were trapped throughout the
country in this political quicksand. We were all like bugs stuck
senselessly in place, like flies in sap. With a big shoe
suspended over our heads, we were all getting nowhere and
always in danger of being crushed.

My growing political disfavor was also eliminating me
from any assignments to do commissioned works of a
significant nature. It was an assumed part of the procedure for
the creation of a commissioned work that the artist would
personally study the subject or events that were to be the topic
of the work. Therefore, if I were to work on a military
monument, I would have to visit the army to observe and
understand my subject for the particular tribute. If the work was
commissioned from abroad, I would probably have to go abroad
to understand what was required of me in the work’s creation.
So, to the Party, the person who was assigned a commissioned
work must be politically reliable. Confronted with that logic, I
was only assigned works considered relatively unimportant,
such as decorative sculpture for gyms, hotels, or exhibition
buildings, but never something so important as the Chinese
Volunteers Monument in Korea.

In 1956, I was assigned to do a bust commemorating a
naval officer of the Song Dynasty from about 1000 A.D. His
name was Tang Fu, and he was the first man in the world to
recognize the principle of the missile and to employ it in battle.
My sculpture was placed in front of the History of Chinese
Artillery section of the China Military Museum in Beijing.
There was no recorded information about Tang Fu’s physical
appearance, so I had to create his image out of my own
imagination. I created an ancient Chinese military officer of
that period as I thought he should look. To give him an
animated appearance, I took helpful hints from the flamboyant
army characters in the Beijing opera. Through my work on
Tang’s sculpture, I was thrilled to see my own skills take a
great leap forward. Even though I knew I was not allowed
nationally significant projects, I still looked forward to many
other commissions that would prove my value to society as an
artist. But, at the time I was unaware that due to China’s ever
changing political landscape, this would be the last major
commission permitted to me until 1983, twenty-seven years
later.

~~~

The anti-Communist turmoil in Hungary and Poland in
1956 really stirred the political scene in China. Early in that
year, Mr. Jiang, the President of our school and an upright man
by nature, returned from a trip to Europe as a member of a
Chinese Cultured Delegation. His trip had made a strong
impression on him. He called on us, “To think things out
independently.” He advised, “As a student, one should not be
too involved in political activity, but should concentrate on
studying. Keep your mind free to think about and explore
various art forms.” From that moment a new emphasis on
studying, exploring, and researching became evident in our
institute. Our ideas became more lively, as the political
pressure seemed to ease.

However, it was later that year, after the anti-Communist
turmoil in Eastern Europe, that Mao published his article, “On
the Dictatorship of the People.” In this essay, Mao called on
the people to draw a clear distinction between themselves and
the enemy, between right and wrong. It became the theoretical
political basis for his later ruthless movements which were to
eventually plague China. People all over China were required
to study it as a document central to our national revolution. In
1957 it was followed by another article, the national
“Movement of Rectification of the Incorrect Style of the Party’s
Work.” In this essay, Mao called on the Party to solicit the
opinions, suggestions, and criticisms of the masses to aid in the
Party’s own rectification. To quiet people’s fears of
repercussion, the Party declared in meetings, newspapers, and
in other media, “Speak your mind and speak it without reserve.
Don’t blame the speaker, but be warned by his words.”
Regrettably, these words of free speech, like so many to come,
were empty promises. So began the great disaster in China’s
long and rich history. Time came to prove that this movement
was actually aimed at China’s intellectuals, in a continued
effort to discipline the ones who dared to say “no” or even say
“why.”

The Chinese people had been suffering year after year for
generations. We yearned for a change that would end the
suffering. I shall never forget what I saw, with both my eyes and
my imagination, that first day the Communist troops marched in
to occupy Shanghai. The dream of every Chinese seemed to be
coming true. In those early days our country was radically
changing. The contrast with the days before 1949 was sharp.
The discipline of the People’s Liberation Army, their
relationship with the citizens, and the relations between the
officers and their men was something I had never dreamed
possible in any army. Prices were stabilized. Drug taking,
prostitution, and gambling were wiped out. Farmers were given
land and our industry was reconstructed. Medical care that
people couldn’t even dream of before was now freely enjoyed.
Young people went to school without charge. Even their board
and lodging was free. I felt that for the first time in centuries,
our country was really free and independent and would never be
bullied by greedy warlords or foreign nations again. I was so
proud of all these great advances. But, as the years passed, we
began to feel that something was going wrong. Something was
not on the right path. Worst of all, we could not speak freely of
what we felt or saw. I believed that our nation’s direction in
international relations were far too extreme and dangerously
paranoid. Our relations with individual countries in the world
were stated as exclusively either positive in all respects or
negative in all respects. There could be no open international
dialogue or disagreement among fellow countrymen. Such
extreme views had to be based upon a form of prejudice. How
could they be based on fact?

So many times the government had told us to “lean on
one side,” in our political thinking. This meant lean to the
Soviets. But this soon provoked me to ask our political
instructor, Mr. Chao Xin, why the Soviet Army had taken all
the equipment from our large factories in Manchuria with them
when they withdrew from China after Japan’s surrender in 1945.
I had also heard that the Soviets killed our people and raped our
women. But Chao defended the Soviets. “It was for our sake
they stripped our factories. They tried to keep all that
equipment from falling into the hands of the Kuomintang. And
those savage acts of rape and murder were all rumors, slanders
spread by evil international enemies. I knew later that the
charges were true, but as I continued to ask for the truth, I was
threatened for being “anti-Soviet.”

On the other hand, I was also labelled as pro-American,
for I had told my fellow students what things had impressed me
while I was in the United States. It didn’t matter what was true
or not, right and wrong were determined by some higher
political need. Being labelled pro-American was a very serious
political charge during those days of the Korean War.
Later, I also saw many undeserved privileges given to
Party members, at the same time that China suffered under the
lack of our promised democracy, and the total disregard for our
human rights. But what could I do about such inequalities? I
could only bury my questions deep within my heart. I knew that
if I refused to do so, I would find myself in big trouble. I had
dreamed of our country being truly democratic, and people free
to speak their minds. Therefore, when the movement for Party
Rectification came and the Party announced its public policy
to, “never blame the one who speaks,” I poured out all that had
been built up in my heart for years. But of course, I was still too
naive to understand the meaning of political struggle and how I
fit into it.

There was an extraordinary amount of activity during the
early stages of the Party’s Rectification movement.
Newspapers, magazines, and the radio were full of discussion
which went on to stir still further discussion throughout the
nation’s streets, restaurants and homes regarding this curious
phenomenon, Rectification. People spoke freely for the first
time since 1949. They said what they had not dared to say
before. It was truly a public catharsis.

We were stirred, agitated, and happy that the Party
seemed to be so aware of all these many problems after all.
Meetings were held inside and outside of the Party. A new term
was added to our vocabulary, Open-door Rectification. The
more we openly talked the more excited we became. In
classrooms, on playgrounds, in dining rooms, on trains and
buses, even on their beds at night, groups of people were
ardently discussing China’s future and her various needs for
change. At a school meeting we had an organized discussion of
the status of sculpture in China. One of my former classmates,
Mr. Qiu Hai, then working for the China Youth Paper, was there
at the meeting, and asked us to compile an article based upon
our discussion for publication in his paper. We agreed to do it
and I penned the article, Save the Art of Sculpture. It was
published in the China Youth Paper in May of 1957. Later this
article became one of my great criminal acts. It was eventually
labeled as an article that ostensibly instigated and fomented
trouble.

We spoke our minds freely for a couple of months more,
then once again the mighty storm burst suddenly upon us. Our
first hint came in The People’s Daily, the tongue of the Party.
Without warning it indicated that the Party’s Rectification
movement was changing into a Struggle Against the Bourgeois
Rightist. The strong smell of gun powder was suddenly in the
air. The news began to focus on who was attacking the Party by
taking advantage of the Party’s Rectification movement. Who
was “viciously attacking the Socialist road, and who demanded
the Communist Party step down from the stage.” Supposedly
there was even someone in China’s vastness, named Ge Lumin,
who was wildly and arrogantly shouting that the people should
kill the Communists. All the other newspapers soon began
making other sensational claims against this mysterious Mr. Ge
as well. The published accusations against Ge were made in
letters supposedly from workers, peasants, and soldiers. Later,
however, both history and logic proved that most of these
criminal charges were fabricated, as may have been Mr. Ge
himself. The Struggle Against the Bourgeois Rightist, in fact,
became a nationwide movement to suppress those who
accepted the invitation to criticize the Party. A trap set for
those who said ‘no’ to what they believed was wrong. This
became a major turning point for the Chinese Communist Party
as it began a steady slide down from the pinnacle of its early
idealism. The movement began, in typical Chinese fashion, to
“persecute one person as a warning and example to a hundred.”
The consequences were catastrophic. China abruptly spun
backwards many years. People would not even dare to say “no”
again for many years to come. Once again the ground was being
prepared for an even greater suffering.

People read the newspapers. They understood that
China’s supreme authority had decreed that they once again
keep silent. Unable to contain my frustration, I spoke out once
more at a public meeting just a few days later. I said, “It was a
rectification without sincerity.” This was foolish on my part,
and I knew better by this time. I had avoidably added yet
another infraction to my growing list of “criminal acts.”
I began to realize that all those condemned in the newspapers
as rightist, anti-Communists, and counter-revolutionaries,
were those, like me, who had honestly pointed out simply
what they had seen as wrong in our society and in the Party. I
did not want to believe what was becoming more and more
obvious. It cast a dark and cutting chill over me. The warm
excited feelings and the hope I sincerely cherished just a few
months earlier, froze and disappeared into thin air.
Soon an editorial appeared in The People’s Daily signed,
“Commentator.” It was believed by all that the Commentator
was the supreme authority, most often Mao himself. This
editorial was entitled, “What It’s All For After All.” It pointed
out, “Though drunken, one’s real interest is not in wine.”
People often “had ulterior motives.” “The Bourgeois Rightists
are desperately attacking the Party.” “We must strike back!”
Thus, the so-called Struggle Against the Bourgeois Rightist
Movement officially began, and in earnest.

This was, in fact, all planned beforehand to prevent the
kinds of uprising that occurred in Hungary and Poland the year
before. A July newspaper article quoted Mao as saying, “The
purpose (of Open-door Rectification) was to let demons and
devils, ghosts and monsters air their views freely, and to let the
poisonous weeds sprout and grow in profusion so that the people
could take action to wipe them out.” In other words, the
Communist Party foresaw this inevitable class struggle between
the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, “...only when ghosts and
monsters are allowed to come out into the open can they be
wiped out; and only when poisonous weeds are allowed to
sprout from the soil can they be uprooted.”

The Party had worked out six criteria for setting the
fragrant flowers apart from the poisonous weeds:

1. Words and actions should help to unite, and not divide, the
people of our various nationalities.

2. They should be beneficial, and not harmful, to socialist
transformation and socialist construction.

3. They should help to consolidate, and not undermine nor
weaken, the people’s democratic dictatorship.

4. They should help to consolidate, and not undermine nor
weaken, democratic centralism.

5. They should help to strengthen people, and not weaken nor
encourage them to deviate from the leadership of the
Communist Party.

6. They should be beneficial, and not harmful, to international
socialist unity and the unity of the peace-loving people of the
world.

These basic principles were stated very abstractly. The
problems would come as people judged particular instances in
real life. If people can’t speak their own mind freely and,
therefore, have no right to defend themselves, how can one
judge what helps to unite or divide? What is actually beneficial
or harmful and how is that judged? What helps to consolidate or
undermine? What strengthens or weakens? How can these
questions be judged, evaluated, or even understood?
Yet these six criteria became the basis for the fabrication
of the many shocking accusations which would follow. If we
spoke out against some Party member that enjoyed undeserved
privileges, we would be accused of slandering the Party and
blackening the image of a Party member. We would be
violating criterion No. 5, and no one would admit or even dare
try to find out if our observation was true or not. There was no
justice.

Soon after Mao’s call in the newspaper, our institute held
a meeting for the Mobilization for Struggling Against Rightist.
Walking to the auditorium, I saw that everyone’s facial
expression was set and serious. No words passed from one to
another. The air was tense and quiet. People’s feelings were
complicated and confused. They sensed it was an ill omen that
the Party’s Rectification had been called off so suddenly and
now this Struggle Against Rightist was immediately launched
right on its heals.

Our school President, Jiang’s, position was particularly
difficult. He had to follow the Party’s order for us to throw
ourselves into this struggle even though he shared our feelings
and objections. Later he was actually labelled as the No. 1
Rightist in Chinese liberal art circles. The voice of the people
was now strangled just as we were learning to speak.

~~~

One morning, a few days later, I was preparing to hand
over the completed schedule I had drawn up for works of art in
process to Miss Zhao, the Party’s secretary in our studio. I
asked her when we should hold a meeting to pass on it. With
cold and deliberate seriousness, she ignored my question and
said, “Quit it and go at once to a meeting on the second floor of
the Art Research Building.” The two of us had once been close
as fellow students and colleagues, but, like Ms. Shi more than a
year earlier, her manner had turned one hundred and eighty
degrees. We were now total strangers. What caused the
change? I asked myself that question over and over again as I
put my things away and went up to the meeting. Her words gave
me a deep sense of foreboding of coming evil. Looking at her in
what I am sure was utter shock, I turned and left for the
meeting without a word. When I got there, I learned it was
called to Unmask and Inform Against the Offenders. Actually,
unknown to me, there had been some previous meetings to
prepare for this one, and to decide who were the Rightist targets
that needed to be exposed. Everything was already planned and
organized, even the sequence of statements by the accusers had
been prearranged. However, what shocked me most was that the
final verdicts on some victims had already been secretly
decided by the Party’s officials, and I was one of the victims.
For me and others there was no true legal procedure on our
behalf. Really, it did not matter whether we had said anything
or not during the Party’s Rectification. We were still accused as
Rightist.

This first meeting was only an overture of things to come,
with only preliminary matters discussed. They didn’t mention
anyone’s name. They didn’t need to, as everyone already knew
who they were speaking about—me. They went on to point out
that they had heard many anti-Party thoughts expressed during
the Party’s Rectification. What they then brought out as
evidence of guilt startled me. This evidence, for the most part,
was what had actually been said under the Party’s
encouragement in the Rectification meetings. I was puzzled by
why they had led us to do something, then later planned to
charge us for following their directions. What was going on?
Why?

The people’s responses to this sudden change in the Party
politics varied widely, but they could be roughly grouped into
three categories. First, were those so naive in politics that they
still thought white was white and black was black, and that
truth would always prevail in the end. These people were
comparatively calm and unperturbed in the early stages of the
meeting. However, they were the ones likely to be shocked the
most when they were wrongly accused as Rightists.
Consequently, during this movement they would likely behave
badly and be taken as the most diehard. Of course these people
defended themselves, constantly pressing for truth.
The second group were the worldly wise who always
played it safe. They were sensitive to political change and
knew when things were not going right. They had the sense to
be afraid of any developing force. They were restless and
worried. During this meeting’s struggle they basically kept
silent, only occasionally uttering a few words of criticism, or
taking one or two sniper’s shots at the victims to show they
stood firmly on the Party’s side, and thus pass safely through
the storm.

The third group were the opportunists, the chameleons.
Their philosophy was blatantly everyone for himself and the
devil take the rest. They knew how to take advantage of
everything that would serve their own interests. They danced in
all weather. During the Party’s Rectification, the saliva foamed
from their mouths as they spoke with vehemence of the Party’s
problems. They wanted it clearly understood that they were the
most revolutionary of anyone. But when the wind changed from
Rectification to Struggle against the Rightist, they completely
changed their faces within a twinkle of the eye. They shouted
themselves hoarse until they dropped from exhaustion to make
it known they would never live under the same sky with any
enemy of the people. They ranted against various anti-Party
speeches, speeches that were, in fact, just like those they
themselves had given during the Rectification. Utterly
shameless, they never blushed. They had to paint white as
black. To save their own hides in messy situations, they heaped
blame on others, sometimes even playing the butcher as well.
They had not the least trace of civilized human spirit.

After this first meeting I went on home, since there were
no more classes that day. I told my new wife—we were married
just four months earlier—all that had happened in the meeting
that morning. Of course she was puzzled and very worried for
my safety. I was comparatively calm, for I still mistakenly
thought white was white and black was black. I knew in my
heart that there should be nothing to worry about. I wanted her
to feel at ease as well. I had no real duties at the school for
several days, so I worked at home on class preparations. Then I
was suddenly asked to attend another meeting. It was only after
I reached the meeting room that I realized I was the subject,
the main target, of the meeting. I was identified as the
“chieftain of the anti-Communist party clique,” “the root of the
anti-Party.”

I had thought it strange that all along my walk to the
meeting no one would speak to me or even look at me. It was
as if I were a stranger, even though they had been my
classmates and colleagues for the last eight years. It quickly
became obvious that there had been a meeting about me
beforehand. It seemed as though everyone had to behave as
they did to show the Party that they knew right from wrong,
friend from enemy. In time I understood, that for them to do
otherwise would have gotten them into serious trouble. But at
that moment, I still felt very hurt. Crushed. Betrayed by my
fellow countrymen. On the wall were hung banners with such
slogans as, “Wu Jieqin must confess his crimes!” “Leniency
toward those who confess their crimes and severe punishment
for those who refuse to do so.” There were also cartoons, where
I was caricatured as the root of an old tree with ferocious
features. The caption read, “We have dug out the root of the
anti-Party.” Another pictured me fiercely striking the name of
the Party’s secretary from a list of Party leaders. The caption
read, “Tried wildly to usurp the Party’s leadership.” Even all
this did not make me really nervous, for I knew I was innocent.
It all seemed so preposterous. So totally irrational. How could a
nonparty member usurp the Party’s leadership? I did not doubt
for a moment that it would all be cleared up soon.

Those who presided over the meeting were my
colleagues who had become Party members. The atmosphere
was tense. Unknown to me, I was already a caged bird, since I
had previously been found guilty by the Party without legal
defense. People interrogated and accused me one by one, as
they had been programmed to do. Some even read from the
prepared scripts they held in their trembling hands, trying hard
to perform like well qualified actors or actresses. Impassioned,
they shouted themselves hoarse to show they were full of
proletarian feelings—that they stood firmly before the enemy.
Actually they were trying hard to protect themselves from also
being labeled as Rightist. They seemed to be saying very
loudly, “You see, I am 100% the revolutionary, the leftist.”

The following were the main crimes they charged me
with, which would nearly ruin the rest of my life:

1. Slandered by saying that the Chinese people did not have
freedom of speech. (Unfortunately it was true. The people had
the freedom to say only what conformed to what the Party
decreed.)

2. Vilified Party members by saying they enjoyed undeserved
privileges. (That was indeed the reason why so many Party
members had joined the Party.)

3. Slandered by saying there was no freedom of the press. (Not
slander, but truth. We could not know what really happened,
what was really the truth from what our newspapers told us.)

4. Slandered the socialist personnel system. (I thought one had
a right to see one’s own personnel record. This would be an
important means of avoiding mistakes and frame-ups. History
later proved that tens of thousands suffered brutally because
of unreliable personnel records.)

5. Charged that I said the Party’s Rectification lacked good
faith.

I was astonished as one after the other of these
accusations slammed into me with the full force of the Party’s
fury. All of these accusations were in a loose sense true, but
were not crimes, particularly not at the time they were
committed. Throughout the Party’s Rectification I had spoken
the evident living truth, and I was not alone in seeing and
voicing this truth. What I said was being said by the majority of
people during the Party’s Rectification movement. Why had
this truth become a crime all of a sudden? Gazing at my
classmates of many years, now attacking me jointly from many
sides, I found a harsh reality in their eyes. I could see that most
were also at a loss in this sudden change of reality. All they
wanted was to protect themselves from being drawn into the
coming storm, the great suffering ahead. The truth, right and
wrong, purity, conscience, morality, these did not compete with
their own personal fear. Forget them all! In some of their eyes I
was surprised to even see a sense of gloating over another’s
misfortune—pure evil. Some of the eyes belonged to those who
had been in the vanguard criticizing the Party just a few days
before. As quick as a blink of the eye they turned themselves
into heroes struggling against the Bourgeois Rightist. And, of
course, in some eyes I was saddened to see an honest belief
that they were fighting against the enemy. Everything to them
seemed to be a matter of course, without doubt. They were in
step and depended upon each other for survival.

For the first time the cold reality of China’s political
situation began to chill me. How was it going to be possible to
live in such a world? How would it be possible for me to say
straight out what I saw and what I felt? In the middle of it all, it
was now impossible to explain clearly to myself all that was
surging through my mind.

As the meeting progressed, I became aware that the
seriousness of my crimes was growing and growing. They had
even invented the charges that I had tried to usurp the Party’s
leadership—me, a nonparty member—and that I had raped
women. When I later found out that I had been secretly labelled
as a Rightist long before this meeting, I suddenly understood
that this meeting had only been designed to demonstrate and
confirm my previous secret conviction. Back then, of course,
Rightists had to exist to prove the need for the Struggle Against
Bourgeois Rightist, which in turn empowered the Party. Even if
they had to be created.

A key feature of such proceedings was that the accused
were never permitted to plead for themselves. Whenever I tried
to defend myself, I was stopped and they immediately tried to
force me to admit to the charges against me. After several
agonizing hours, the meeting finally ended with an order for me
to write my confession immediately when I returned home. I
knew that I was being terribly and viciously wronged. Knowing
that, I could not calm myself. I began to write at once and
continued until early the next morning. I had no lawyer to
consult. There was no legal procedure available to challenge
the ruling. No one dared show his or her sympathy. My new wife
stared at me with her big, but now puzzled and frightened eyes.
I was completely alone again in a hostile world.

The very next morning I presented my confession, which
became my appeal paper, to the campaign office of the
Struggle Against Bourgeois Rightist. Their response was to call
another special meeting on my case, this time called The
Meeting for Striking Off Evil Behavior. What irony that they
called me evil. They once again accused me of making vicious
attacks against the Party in the appeal I had just written.
Attacks in this meeting poured onto me from all sides. I was
like a cornered beast. They shouted at me, “You, the persistent
anti-Communist! You not only didn’t confess your guilt, you
dared to strike back! If you remain incorrigibly obstinate we
must put you under the proletarian dictatorship!” That veiled
threat of imprisonment was then made even more explicit, “If
you refuse, you’ll be severely punished” “You are an anti-
Communist in your bones. Don’t you dare deny it!” “Wu
Jieqin’s crimes are undeniable. His only choice is to confess he
is guilty!” “Down with the Rightist! He’s anti-Communist and
anti-people!” I quickly realized there was no way to reason
things out. I was cornered in a world of upside down reality.
From then on I said as little as possible.

On my way home I wondered, what was really going on?
Where would it end? Mao called us to “speak up boldly, to air
views freely, to put up big character posters and to hold great
debates.” So I did, and what was the outcome? Was it really
only a trap, as many had warned? What I had said during the
Party’s Rectification was true. It was how things stood, and the
difference between truth and falsehood was clear. But the point
of this meeting was to show that I, the accused, had no right
even to speak in my own defense. If only I could speak freely!
Then everyone could judge the truth of these charges very
easily.

Doubts and suspicions finally began to rise in my own
mind. We were disciples of Marxism, yet were we really to see
and do as Marxism prescribed, or were we to go in the opposite
direction? My accusers would not regard all the facts. They
deliberately blinded themselves to reality. The leaders of this
Struggle Against the Rightist who shouted at me knew the facts
well enough themselves. Most of them did as I did during the
Party’s Rectification. Where did all this come from? What was
really happening? Why?

~~~

An exciting city full of smiling faces had suddenly
disappeared from the streets. Who knows how many people,
how many dear ones, were then caught in this growing national
culture of suffering? That same day, from an apartment in a
grey building near my home, I overheard a woman’s sobbing
cries mixed with the same harsh accusations that had been
shouted at me in my meeting. I felt a strong bond of sympathy
and understanding for her, even though I knew nothing about her
other than that confusing discord of terrible sounds. I knew what
she was suffering through. She could do nothing but cry. My
heart felt her pain. We never knew that this could fall upon us,
as our idealism had not prepared us for this level of insanity.
For day after day I was isolated as if I were a most
hideous enemy. No one would dare to even look at me. The
pressure weighing down on my mind grew heavier and heavier
with each passing day. Then came a terrible day in the middle
of winter. I was called to another meeting at the same place as
the last. When I entered the building I once again felt the tense
atmosphere and noticed some unusual people were in
attendance. Something extraordinary was obviously about to
happen. Leading persons in our school’s administration were
participating. No one uttered a word. No facial expressions were
shared with me to soften the steel cold chill in the air. I felt as
though I was appearing as a guest at my own execution.

The presider, one of my former classmates, broke the
deadly quiet, reading the verdict from a paper laid out before
him, “He is persistently anti-Communist, anti-revolution, and a
member of the Three People’s Principles (of Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s
1911 revolution) and the Kuomintang. He has been trained in
the United States, and has bombed liberated areas while in the
KMT Air Force. He has taken advantage of our Party’s
Rectification Movement and slandered our Party desperately.”
Then the criminal acts I previously listed as forced upon me
were read. “He is an Ultra-Rightist. Approved by higher
authorities, we hereby declare that he is sentenced to reform
labor...”

I felt darkness all around me. Everything stopped. I could
only hear my own heart pounding. No attorney, no right to
defense, no one else dared to challenge the verdict. My life was
now to be thrown away by the country and society I loved so
much. I knew there was nothing for me to do but keep silent.
The Party would do whatever it felt was needed. To whom
could I appeal for justice or help? Would they exile me to a
distant land, away from my family? But how could I leave my
world, my motherland, even though it no longer wanted me? I
mechanically held the pen and signed my name to the verdict
as they insisted. There was no use any longer resisting the now
inevitable. The results would be the same whether I signed or
not. I was a sparrow in a cage, with no hope to live freely to
fulfill my own life’s destiny and dreams.

Chapter 4

2007-09-09T05:41:00.000-07:00

By the end of 1948, it was clear that the Kuomintang Government was going to lose the civil war to the ever growing numbers joining the Communist Party. The Kuomintang Governmental organizations and schools were already beginning their move to Taiwan. It was then that I met my eldest brother, Wu Feng, at the Shanghai Movie Studio. He was on his way to Taiwan with the Jian Qiao Air Force Academy from Hangzhou. He was an air cadet in the Academy’s 27th Class and had been a bomber pilot. That was the last time I saw him. Since 1949 we have lost contact, although I have continued to try to find him in vain. I often wonder if he is still alive. This is the natural and painful result of civil war.

Families everywhere throughout China were divided and scattered never to be reunited again. By April, 1949, we saw many government troops with tanks and guns retreating from the front. Refugees began pouring into Shanghai from the North. In the air the smell of gunpowder was strong and pervasive. The sound of gunfire rumbled nearby day and night. After sunset we sometimes climbed up onto the roof to watch the tracers flash through the night skies. We would tune our radios to the Communist broadcast, and the announcer’s speech and voice would seem both majestic and honorable, particularly when compared to the announcer on our local station.

At daybreak on May 24th, I was awakened by someone
shouting, “The People’s Liberation Army is infiltrating
Shanghai!” I was full of curiosity and ran immediately into the
street. I wanted to have a look at these Communists as they
marched into the city. What I saw was just ordinary men, like
me, only in uniform and carrying weapons, not the Red Bandit
Devils I had heard so much about. Most of them were just like
the men we would see everywhere in the rural areas with
tanned, weather-beaten faces. They didn’t look like the Evil
Communists described in the newspaper or in other media. They
didn’t look like men who advocated, “sharing property and
wives together,” or who, “disown their close relations,” and
who even, “killed others without batting an eyelid.” These were
the simple men, grassroots, the heart and soul of whatever party
they wanted to protect. They wore yellow-green cotton
uniforms, cloth shoes, and hanging from their shoulders were
rifles, machine-guns or “Tommy Guns,” taken from the
Kuomintang troops. Their ration was a long narrow sack filled
with parched rice. The only sign indicating which of those were
officers was a pistol with a red strip of cloth fastened at the end
of the pistol’s grip, which was holstered at their shoulder or
waist.

Their faces were expressionless as they marched by the
movie studio. Their eyes sunken. They had traveled a great
journey by foot, often walking both day and night to reach
Shanghai. Still we could feel their suppressed excitement. With
a warm smile they would refuse the tea, hot towels, and food
the people offered them all along the street. The PLA’s “three
disciplines and eight cares” did not allow them “to take even
one needle or thread from the people.” Their appearance so
impressed me that I followed their march into the city center.
When I came to Dongping Road, near the center of the city, I
noticed that some soldiers already there were holding their
rifles while others dozed, stretched out on the ground just in
front of one of President Chiang Kai-shek’s homes. They would
rather sleep on that cold ground than in any way infringe upon
the people’s rights. They paid for anything they broke and when
they accepted anything to eat from the people they left a
special paper note that was redeemable for money from certain
Communist organizations. Soon they marched on to the south,
looking like an army I had never seen or heard of before. How
wonderful it would be if they would keep this heroic spirit to the
end.

A few days later, one of their cultural troupes performed
in our film studio. The Yaogu, waist drum dance, was
particularly splendid. I had never seen such a vigorous
performance before. The drums were tied onto the waists of the
dancers, who beat them with two sticks and established a
surging, powerful dancing rhythm. It was an inspiring
representation of the new will and fighting spirit of the Chinese
people, which I greatly enjoyed and wanted to be a part of.
Shortly after the performance, an enormous parade which
included most all of the population of the metropolitan area was
mobilized by the new Communist officials. I joined the crushing
waves of this parade and felt as never before, that I was really a
part of our country’s future. I breathed strongly and freely in
overwhelmed excitement. These events gave me a sense of
profound change ahead for China.

One month later, I saw announcements in the newspaper
for enrollment in institutions of higher education. They revived
my hopes for more education, which was really what I always
wanted to do. I was able to sign up to take the entrance exam
for the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, which was my first
choice. I felt very nervous, because I had no formal training in
music. I just loved singing, that’s all. The scene at the
examination hall was what I had feared. Most of the teenage
candidates carried with them various instruments, with which
they had trained for many years.

I felt inferior and I soon completely lost my confidence. I
left the hall just before the examiner, Miss Zhou, called my
name for the singing audition. I was then faced with my second
choice—fine arts. I didn’t have any training in the fine arts
either. I had won first prize for a bamboo carving when I was a
middle school student and scribbled a little horse, house, ship,
and airplane for my mother when I was a child. Finally, there
were only a few days left before the entrance exam. I didn’t
know what to do with the charcoal that Mr. Xu, the artist at the
movie studio, gave to me so I could begin to practice drawing. I
did learn something about how to make an accurate contour. It
was a case of “dig a well only when one is thirsty.” Meaning
doing something only at the last minute.

Zhejiang Institute of Fine Arts, formerly the National Art
College, was located in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang
province. On the day of the examination, I was again faced with
my own lack of experience. As time was running out for the
drawing test in the examination hall, an examiner found me
still making the outline of the plaster head. He urged me, “Hey,
time will be over soon. You should hurry with the shading.” I
said nothing and kept on with my task. I didn’t know how to
shade. I had no choice but to concentrate completely on making
the contour of the head as finely accurate as possible. On my
way back to the movie studio, I thought I was done for again. I
was beginning to wonder what I could try as a third choice
when the news came that I was admitted to the Institute of Fine
Arts. I was very surprised. Later, I was told that my outline of
the head was exceptionally accurate!

Several days later, at the end of the oral part of the
exam, I was asked if I had any questions. I reluctantly told the
examiner that I had none of the financial resources necessary to
enable me to attend his school. With a kind smile, he assured
me I would receive a grant. My tuition, board and lodging were
to be free. I was ecstatic! He told me, “It’s a new China. Now
everything will change for the better!”

I was almost penniless by that time, and there were
things I needed before I could begin school. I went to see one of
my old bosses at the movie studio. By this time, my cousin had
moved to Hong Kong, so I was without influence there. I asked
for one month’s salary in advance, which was only two silver
dollars. Even though I was familiar with the behavior of the
rich, I was surprised when this boss, Mr. Ren, dug some small
change from his pocket and handed it to me with the words,
“Well it’s all I’ve got. It’s all for you.” It wasn’t even enough to
buy a few bottles of Coke! I felt totally humiliated. It was as
though I were no more than a beggar to him. I threw his money
to the floor and left. Fortunately, my fellow assistants in the
movie studio came to my support with five RMB
(approximately $0.25). I was touched by their gesture of
generosity and sacrifice, for they had only a little more salary
than me. I will never forget those friends, Guo Yi-yao and Wu
Hua.

Once again, I had seen ugly features of the rich. Those
who had so much but shared so little. By this time I had grown
to detest the crowded and old city of Shanghai. Greed for
material pleasures had bent people out of the shape of
humanity. They would cringe before anybody who fed them, but
also put on airs and insult those below them with two-faced
hypocracy. I once went into a shop to buy a shirt that I had seen
in the window display. When I asked the salesman to show it to
me, he smugly looked up and down at the cheap t-shirt and
plain cloth pants I was wearing because it was summertime,
and said scornfully, “Didn’t you see how much it cost?” For an
angry moment I would have paid ten times the price to make
him jump to obey me. Everyone seemed to think they were
better than anyone else. I was happy to be moving on.

On the train ride to the art institute in Hangzhou, one of
the most scenic cities in all China, I made many new friends
from different parts of China. Most of them were younger than I,
for I was already twenty-two, but at last I was on my way to
being a college student.

Zhejiang Institute of Fine Arts sat on the shore of the
world renowned West Lake, just to the west and at the foot of
Gu (Lonely) Hill. Two embankments divided the lake into Inner
and Outer West Lake. These two embankments were named
after two great ancient poets, Bai Juyi and Su Dongpo. The
scenic views had all been given poetic names such as, Autumn
Moon Over the Calm Lake, The Moon Reflecting in Three
Ponds, Orioles Singing from the Waves of Willows, and so on.
Of the many pagodas and temples located around the lake, one,
the Yue Temple, commemorated the Sung Dynasty hero, Yue
Fei. In front of the temple an image of the treacherous Prime
Minister, Qin Gui, who fatally injured Yue Fei, kneels in stone.
I saw how alive history is to the Chinese when I saw men stop
to urine on his statue whenever they passed by.

The excitement of the moment was nearly more than I
could contain. We were the first college students of the New
China! Since I had left school eight years before, I was so
happy that such a long dream was finally becoming a reality.
Everything in my world seemed to glow with a new freshness
and sense of hope. I studied with great eagerness, including the
history of social development and political economy. These
subjects brought home to me how relations between various
types of peoples developed into a complex society, both on a
macro and micro level. I learned quickly, earned high marks,
and was soon selected in my political class to be a bridge
between the teacher and students by serving as a tutor. In art
classes, I began to study drawing from plaster models, and led
by our instructor, we often went to places in and around the city
to sketch from nature.

At the institute, our days were busy, but our nights were
usually free. In the evenings I watched young couples walking
among the waves of weeping willows that grew along the lakeside
embankments, sitting under a tree on Lonely Hill, loafing
with elegant leisure on the shore of West Lake, or even hugging
and kissing in the pavilion in the middle of the Lake. It was a
quiet and peaceful land of romance that seemed to be created
for lovers and art students. The pain of so many terrible recent
wars seemed a century away, as did my years of struggle to get
into school. My dream had finally come true, and it was
everything I thought it would be.

~~~

Within a few months a close friend of mine, then
studying in the National Art College in Beijing, asked me to
transfer and join him there. Beijing, once the ancient and now
the modern capital of China, had great appeal for me. So at the
end of 1949, when my first semester ended, I requested a
transfer and it was granted. When my train entered Hebei
Province on the way to Beijing, I saw many passengers wearing
gauze masks. I wondered if they could all be medical workers
until we pulled into the city, and I realized this was a common
means of protection against the cold. This was my first time in
Northern China.

I was so excited to be in Beijing, which still retained the
antique flavor of the old imperial capital. The old walls still
completely surrounded the city. The many gate towers were all
impressive architecturally. Jian Lou (Arrow Tower), with its
many apertures through which the home guards could shoot
arrows on an attacking enemy, stood imposingly due south of
Tian An Men Square. The names of these gates announced the
emperors’ desire for peace and stability. Tian An Men means
Gate of Heavenly Peace; Di An Men, Gate of Worldly Peace;
Zuo An Men, Gate of Peace on the Left; You An Men, Gate of
Peace on the Right; Guang An Men, Gate of Universal Peace;
Yong Din Men, Gate of Eternal Stability; De Sheng Men, Gate
of Triumph; and Zheng Yang Men, Gate Facing the Sun. In
1949, camel caravans carrying goods for trade still moved
leisurely into the city through these ancient gates.

In addition to these imposing towers, I was fascinated by
the many decorated archways at many crossroads within the
city itself. Two of these grand arches stood just west and east of
Tian An Men, right in the middle of Changan Road, restricting
the traffic with their regal size. It was the architecture and
beauty of The Forbidden City, the Palace Museum, and the
Temple of Heaven that I loved the most. Our school, the
Central Institute of Fine Arts (the Central was added to the
name after the Communist Party took power to show central
control), was located in the area of east Beijing, where the
supreme commander of the Qing Dynasty once had his
residence. Actually, our Institute was directly under the
leadership and control of the Central government.

Located just opposite our school was the Union Hospital
built by the Rockefeller Foundation in the early 20’s, which is
still one of the finest hospitals in China. In addition to these
exciting sites, I also soon discovered many scenic spots
outside, but nearby the city, especially the monumental and
overwhelming Great Wall. Beijing’s vastness and many
beautiful parks made me feel large-minded and peaceful,
compared to the claustrophobic feeling created by the crowded
intensity of commercial Shanghai.

My first meal in Beijing was wowotou, a northern dish of
steamed bread (or dumpling) made of coarse grained wheat,
instead of the familiar soft white rice of the south. Before
leaving Hangzhou some fellow students, trying to frighten me
with the harshness of northern life, described wowotou as coarse
and tasteless. From its name and their description, I anticipated
something small, hard, and wizened. I was surprised to discover
that I enjoyed my very first mouthful. Soon I also came to like a
variety called jinyinjuan, or gold and silver roll. It’s a steamed
bun made with three flours, wheat, yellow corn, and soybean.
It’s not only fragrant, sweet, and tasteful, but very nourishing.
What a pity it grew unpopular because it was thought to be a
food of the poor.

The Central Institute of Fine Arts was formally
established under the Central government only on April 1, 1950.
Xu Beihong was the first president, and he was the best known
artist and art educator in China. He and some other Institute
professors had been trained in Europe around the same time that
my uncle had been there. Our school was divided into
departments of oil, traditional Chinese painting, sculpture,
applied art, graphic art, and art history. The Department of Folk
Art and Mural Painting was just added in 1980. The school was
run according to traditional European models. One hour every
morning was devoted to foreign language study, and the next
three hours were devoted to professional courses such as
drawing as the basis for painting, sculpture, and print-making. In
the afternoon we had such courses as anatomy, coloring, art
history, literature, and politics.

Since the Chinese Communist Party was the power of the
state we were asked to follow the path of socialist realism. Art
must serve the people—the workers, peasants, and soldiers. It
was our task as young artist, to portray them in revolutionary
history, struggling to build a socialist country. Mao’s writings on
art were our guiding principles. No other portrayal of art was
allowed. All students were to experience the life of a worker,
peasant, and soldier for about two months every year. It was
called “learn through the life of the working people.” Then we
were expected to complete a work of art representing this life
experience upon our return to school. This narrow perception
naturally caused our art to become formally repetitive and
monotonous, and with little of the vital expression required to
create good if not great art.

When the new China was founded, Mao called on the
Chinese people to lean to one side, meaning the Soviet side.
Hence the Soviet’s influence was overwhelming in our art.
Soviet art books and magazines dominated our libraries.
Because of the Soviet teaching method, we changed to use
pencil rather than charcoal. Training courses in oil painting and
sculpture were set up only under Soviet experts. I highly valued
the valor of the Soviets in the war against Fascism and their
continued support to our country, yet I felt there was something
missing in their lopsided method of teaching. One day in a mass
rally welcoming Soviet experts, one Soviet artist, a leader of
the delegation, challenged us, “Let’s launch an art competition
between the Soviets and Chinese. But you’ll never surpass us...”
His smug words and manner stung my national pride so sharply
that I quit attending my Russian language class. This cultural
arrogance was to trouble me for many years to come.

During our 1950 summer vacation, the school called on
us to take part in the Land Reform Movement. Nearly the entire
student body responded to the call. However, two close friends
and I were attracted to a summer camp at the beach, which was
organized by the China Students’ Union and the Central
Committee of the Communist Youth League of China. My
friends and I had a wonderful time at the seaside in Qinhuang
Dao. We particularly enjoyed the Peoples Liberation Army’s
restaging of the Attack on the Plum Fortress that originally took
place in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province during the recent Civil War.
But when the three of us returned to school we noticed that
something was very strange. We were treated as politically
backward elements. I can tell you today, that the absolute
viewpoints of the philosophy of class struggle confused right
and wrong from its very inception.

Because I chose the Communist Youth League Camp at
the beach instead of a work camp in a peasant village, this
shadow enveloped my life like a dark and stormy cloud from
then on. People looked at us with cold eyes. We were even
criticized in some meetings, without directly mentioning our
names, for having not shown any concern for the land-reform
revolutionary movement. This reform was regarded as the single
epoch-making change for the Chinese peasant. In this regard, I
can understand why we were criticized, even though at the time
I was too young and ignorant about politics and the situation of
the Chinese peasants. However, from this very first national
political movement, the Communists showed their absolute
viewpoint toward the so-called Class Struggle. It often confused
and twisted right and wrong in their judgement of individual
people based upon their class status (which they were born into
without choice). Therefore, in this first land-reform movement,
they simply targeted the landlords and rich peasants as the
enemies of the people. The Communists became so
preoccupied with the class struggle concept that they were
willing to sacrifice at any cost, any productive members of the
country. The ultimate results of this movement were the
summary executions of many innocent people, primarily
because of the hard work they had accomplished throughout
their lives and the various material rewards that were gained as
a result of it!

If your family background was bourgeois, landlord, or
even a rich peasant, you were automatically seen as a second
rate citizen. If you had once served in the former government,
especially in the army, not to mention being trained in the
United States, you were considered worse, even though it was
to defend your motherland from the Japanese invaders. I and
many others, were seen as an alien-class element, a dissident
with counter-revolutionary antecedents. They didn’t care when
we joined the army or who we fought. People were suddenly
ranked as citizens by petty irrelevant distinctions. So began my
new understanding of the Communist Party.

I was soon surprised to learn that because I lost the
support of my parents when I was still a child and spent much
of my early life taking care of myself, I was not seen as nonbourgeois.
Instead I was criticized for my individualist-heroism.
Suddenly, Party organizations and its members were
everywhere. We could be reported to authorities at anytime by
the people around us. Whenever I did something on my own
initiative, I was charged with liberalism. I soon learned that
there was now an -ism label for anything that suited the Party.
My personal resentment of the arrogance I had seen in the
Soviet experts once caused me to ask pointedly about the
Soviet’s removal of heavy machinery from our factories in
Manchuria at the end of World War II. Therefore, I was then
criticized for being anti-Soviet. When I told my fellow students
about my experiences in the United States, it was taken that I
was advocating American imperialism, sham democracy and
material civilization. There was no longer any room in our
society for any individual expression or experience. This sudden
change in the Party’s attitude came so quickly following their
victory in the civil war that I was totally unprepared for it.
It’s reality soon struck home when my first work was
placed in a school exhibition. It was a watercolor. I tried to
make the patches of color show the fierce struggle of the scene
and left the people in the painting unfinished. Even that was
criticized as being bourgeois decadent expressionist art simply
because it was my work. I couldn’t understand the purpose of
such criticism, and the pride I had so strongly felt in the New
China just a year before began to crumble away piece by piece.
I had said what I felt and I was branded with bad -isms. I was
abruptly labeled as being, “Incompatible with the New China.”
No one was allowed to say no to what was seen, done, held or
dictated as correct by the Communist Party. This dictated
conformity was one of the main causes of my later great
tragedy. I have felt very constrained ever since this initial
realization of what was happening all around me. But even my
constraint became cause for criticism. “Now that China is
liberated all the people are happy but him. He feels constraint.
It must be class-feeling.” As the Revolution ceaselessly rolled
on, my life seemed doomed to be crushed under it’s dynamic
force.

In October, 1950, China sent her volunteers to the
battlefield of the Korean War. I went as well, “to Resist U.S.
Aggression, Aid Korea, Protect our Home, and Defend our
Motherland.” I once again voluntarily joined the Army Air
Force. At first I wasn’t accepted, but I applied again and again,
because I thought I should go. It was my duty as an army man. I
didn’t understand why they continually refused me. I was too
naive in matters of politics.

Eventually I was accepted and trained at an Air Force
Academy in Northeast China. The next spring a new political
movement, called Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries, was
launched on a nationwide scale. All the cadets were required to
make a clean breast of their past records. We were each
required to tell our life stories at meetings held daily. When my
turn came, all of my personal effects and experiences were
inspected. They took everything they wanted, including my
priceless photographs. I never saw any of them again. Among
the photo’s were several taken while I was in training in the
United States, including some street scenes and even some
with Millie. I told them, as they asked, everything about my
family, my social connections, and my life before the new
China ever came into existence. When I finished telling them
my story, I saw in their faces that something seemed very
wrong.

They spoke one after the other, criticizing me sharply,
and making detailed inquiries. I realized later that the Party
members and their activists had met earlier to determine my
case. They said, “Wu Jieqin is from a reactionary bureaucratic
family. He was a KMT airman trained by the United States
imperialists, and his social relations are very complicated. In a
word, he had a clear record of being anti-Communist and
against the people.” I was utterly confused. I wondered why my
family should be labeled as bureaucratic? Just because my
father and uncle both graduated from the political opposition's
military academy? Or because they had run a cinema? What in
my record was anti-Communist or against the Chinese people?
Is it because I joined the KMT Air Force to fight Japan? Or just
because I trained in the United States? Yes, I had friends in all
walks of life, all around the globe. So what?!? Even if some of
them got into trouble, was that my responsibility? Why should
these experiences bring me so much trouble and make me an
untrustworthy person? It was not fair. It was not right! What sort
of logic was this? As the sickened feeling in my stomach grew
deeper and deeper, I realized that there was no use trying to
defend myself, so I just kept silent.

The next day a mass meeting was held, but I was not
allowed to attend. I heard later from a fellow cadet that I was
cited as an example proving the need for a movement to
Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries. I was no threat to them nor
did I have any desire to control them, but I was officially
considered a Kuomintang airman—a counter-revolutionary
element—who had snuck into the People’s Army.

After a few more very difficult and confusing days I was
sent back to my school. The night of my departure, I couldn’t
sleep. I was so confused. I felt deeply wronged. Still I didn’t
realize the key point at issue here, so I just kept right on
walking blindfolded straight ahead, as though toward a dark
unseen abyss. There was little else I could do.

On the train returning to Beijing I saw about two hundred
fellow cadets suffering the same fate, washed out by the PLA,
almost all because of their family backgrounds. Most were
young men and women only eighteen or so. They seemed so
simple and so earnestly in love with their country, their
motherland. What could the Communists be thinking? This new
viewpoint of class struggle shredded everything everywhere into
utter chaos. You had to beware, it could crop up any time, any
place, with anyone—and it did!

~~~

Because I had missed the previous year due to my cadet
training, when I returned to the school in June of 1951, I was
asked to do a figure drawing to see if I could keep up with the
progress made by the rest of my class. I chose to do a drawing
of the school’s plaster model of Michelangelo’s Dying Slave. I
was happy to see that my former classmates were also
interested in my success. They also hoped that we could
continue to study together. Our Dean of Studies, Professor Wu
Zuoren, now the Chairman of the China Artists’ Association and
the Honorary President of the Central Institute of Fine Arts,
came to judge my completed drawing. After studying the
drawing, he finally looked up and said, “Fine, go back to the
same class.” Upon hearing this, my classmates hugged me with
joy. This was what I wanted to do, study art and sculpture.
That summer the school also received a government
commission to complete a special project. To our excitement,
we were to design the Exhibition of Interchanging Commodities
from Towns and Counties in North China. This exhibition was to
take place in Tianjin, not far east of Beijing, where they
provided us with free board, lodging, and recreation. The whole
faculty and student body became involved in this exciting
project. We traveled to Tianjin by train and settled into the
former British Club where the old race track was designated to
be our work site.

One morning, shortly after our arrival, I witnessed a
unique ceremony. The project organizers lowered the British
flag and then raised the Chinese in its place. It was powerful
being there to witness the symbolic ceremony representing the
fact that we Chinese, had taken this club over from the British.
Since our country had been humiliated by so many foreign
powers for such a long time, we all completely felt happy and
proud of being Chinese as our flag was raised and confidently
flew at the top of the flag pole.

Our new project required that we create huge sculptures,
posters, billboard illustrations, and art lettering, all being part of
a single integrated design. Each artistic discipline had to work
very closely with all the others. Our minds were stimulated, and
our thoughts shared. Regulations and restrictions seemed much
less important here than when we were at school. Everyone
brought their individual abilities and wisdom into play for the
good of the group effort. It seemed as though we were realizing
a method of teaching art which was finally worth exploring.
Those two months of open creativity not only produced a
harvest of good art, but also a sound and definitive education in
the collective spirit. We worked not only for our own personal
fame and gain, but also with pride in serving the people of
China.

Then, in the winter of 1951, Mao launched a national
campaign against what he called the three evils—corruption,
waste, and bureaucracy. Taking advantage of the winter
holidays, students were sent to various places as members of so
called Tiger Hunting Teams. With six other students I was sent
to the Art Supply Service then attached to our school. It was
housed two miles from the campus. I worked there under the
office of the Campaign Against the Three Evils. The entire staff
and all the workers were organized to study Party policies
attached to this campaign. The staff was then called upon to
make a clean breast of their crimes and accuse others they
knew to be criminals as well. These crimes included
embezzling, forgery, theft, bribery and other white collar
crimes. Some suspects were already being locked up in isolated
rooms within the offices. Most of those locked up were directors
on various levels. Some were even old Party members from the
early Yanan days. We had no mercy on those we saw to be
“criminals.”

I learned from the newspaper that corruption and waste
had become very serious problems indeed. It also revealed how
Party cadres had degenerated from revolutionary heroes into
grafters. The best example we were told of was two senior
cadres, the secretaries of the Tianjin Prefectural Party
Committee, Liu Qing-san and Zhang Zi-shan, who were even
sentenced to death for their crimes. The Party wanted to show
that its own members were not exempt from justice. In showing
this, they concurred with the old Chinese belief that it was best
to execute one as a warning to a hundred. What a crime.
In February 1952, most of my fellow students were finally
called back to school to begin the spring semester. For some
reason, I was kept working on the campaign until May. I found
no more tigers, but I did find a little rat who embezzled a
camera and slightly more than a hundred renminbi yuan (about
$100 USD). I supposed that was considered worth three months
of my time.

At the end of each academic year the topics for our
Experiences of Life projects would often be assigned by the
department directors. However, this year in 1952 we were free
to choose our own topics, as long as we used plaster paris and
they were realistic in form. Because I love children and feel
familiar and comfortable with their ways and character, I
decided to reflect the great changes that had taken place in the
New China through the depiction of a child born after the
founding of the People’s Republic. First I carefully observed
several children at the kindergarten near our school. Then I
focused on the most distinguishing characteristic of
children—their ability to imitate. I decided to show how our
world had changed by depicting what children were imitating.
They were no longer imitating smoking, stealing, or killing as
they had when I was young. So I decided to portray a little boy
of three or four wearing baby overalls and trying hard to put on
the steelmaker’s gloves of his father. This very healthy boy was
meant to make a strong contrast to those pale thin children who
suffered from hunger and cold that I had seen everywhere before
the New China was created. My efforts were a great success
and this work won prizes and warm popular acclaim. Accounts
of it were published in Hong Kong and the Soviet Union. But I
knew clearly that my basic modeling skill had a long way to go
and was not yet mature. The time I spent in the army had cut
into my study time and this left me feeling far behind where I
wanted to be in my artistic development.

This was also the first time I had ever been paid for my
art. I was surprised to receive money from various sources
because of this work. With this new wealth, I became the first
student in our school to buy a radio. Some of my fellow students
even teased, “It seems you can live on this work your whole
life!” Finally I realized that I could say things through my art
which could touch the lives of others and be appreciated by
them. This was an awesome discovery for a young student.

~~~

When I graduated at the end of the 1953 spring semester,
we were again sent to factories and rural areas to learn from the
lives of workers and peasants. Students of the Sculpture
Department were divided into two groups, one of which was
sent to a small country village called Hegezhuang about 60
kilometers to the west of Beijing. The other group was sent to
the Shijingshan Iron and Steel Works Factory. Any student
whose family background was not considered good or who had a
record of social or political problems was sent to the
countryside. Naturally, I was in this group.
In the impoverished mountain area of Hegezhuang, we
lodged separately in the houses of poor and lower-middle
income peasants. Our lodging was termed the three
togethers—eat together, live together, and work together. I was
assigned to live with the Deputy Party Secretary of
Hegezhuang. There were four people living in his home; Deputy
Secretary Pang Xianyi, his mother, wife, and a sister of
eighteen. They lived in a very poor and shabby one-story house
built of sun-dried mud bricks, with an irregular dirt floor and a
thatched roof. With only two rooms and a small kitchen of
about two square meters, it was a dark and dreary house with
very little furniture. The two kangs, built-in heatable brick beds
connected to the cooking range, served as a place to eat meals,
to read, and to do various household chores. The only other
significant furniture were two simple benches. Meat, rice, or
even wheat were a rare treat anytime during the year. Their
standard diet was a steamed bread of very coarse corn mixed
with a flour made from various types of beans. Life for Pang
Xianyi and his family was very hard, even before I moved in.
As soon as we arrived in Hegezhuang, we began working
in the fields every day from early morning until sunset.
Whenever our work permitted, we also made many sketches of
the peasants at their tasks. Sometimes to liven the drudgery and
monotony, we sang and played our musical instruments in mass
rallies. The peasants thoroughly enjoyed our life among them,
for they evidently had no recreational life at all before we came
to Hegezhuang.

Almost every evening Deputy Secretary Pang Xianyi, sat
on his kang—brick platform—in his room after the day’s heavy
labor in the fields, and sang A Child Cowherd. This is a song
about a boy who once lived in the village named Wang Xiaoer.
One day in 1942, he was watching the grazing cattle in the Tai
Hang mountains, when a band of Japanese invaders came upon
him and ordered him to lead them to where the local guerrillas
were hiding. Little Wang deliberately led them wrong, into a
dead end. The angry and brutal enemy killed and mutilated him
with their bayonets, then threw his body down into the valley
below. The people of his village created this song to pay tribute
to his memory and loyalty. He had such a great spirit at so
young an age! The story of his fate saddened me, but his
courage made me proud. Proud to be Chinese! Each time I
heard Pang sing this song it became harder to cool my hatred
for the Japanese. That hatred grew even stronger when, each
day, I would see scattered throughout Hegezhuang, several
houses which were still burned and left in ruin by those cruel
invaders.

I soon discovered these peasants to be a sincere and
down to earth people. My host family treated me as one of their
own, especially the kind old mother. For more than sixty years
she had lived such a hard life and saw my time with them as a
bright spot amongst all the drudgery. When mealtime came she
would say to me, “Lao Wu, go get your sister to have a meal.
She is watching the cattle somewhere around back.” She made
me feel like I was part of her family. The day finally arrived,
however, when we were scheduled to leave and return to
school. It was an unforgettable day. Mother Pang pulled me
aside and untied a cloth-wrapped little treasure bundle, one
cloth layer after another. When she untied the fourth layer,
there appeared a small handkerchief, and inside it were a few
coins. She took my callused hand and squeezed her money into
it. How could I accept such a gift knowing it was her only
savings? This was enough money to buy a kilogram of meat.
After struggling for the proper response, I said, “Mother Pang, I
don’t need any money at present. Please keep it for yourself,
but thank you very much.” I immediately saw from her eyes
that my words hurt her. She needed to show her affection for me
and I soon realized that I had no choice but to accept her
generous gift. Then, she also gave me some eggs which she
would never permit herself to eat. I was so moved by her
expression of affection that I couldn’t find the appropriate words
to tell her of my gratitude. So, in silence with my heart swelling
up inside of me, I accepted her gifts. Whenever possible, over
the following years, I would take that 30 mile bus trip back to
visit her and to present her with gifts from Beijing. Knowing of
her life of hardships, sacrifice, and generosity affects me to this
day.

The purpose for sending students to live in the
countryside was to create an understanding of the peasants, to
learn from them, to reflect on the excellent qualities of their
lives and natural way of living with little, and to interpret those
things into art for the world to see. I remember one day, when
we were in a field seeding beans, the way that Pang’s wife
planted beans caught my eye. Each step forward was graceful
and productive as she sowed the seeds before her. Her
movement reminded me of the Chinese proverb, “Every man is
the child of his labor.” Staring at her in the field that day, I
made up my mind to make her the subject of my graduation
project. When the sculpture was finished I was pleased with
both its content and form. However, my professor seemed to
feel differently. Fortunately he still graded it with an A, even
though his comments were all negative.

Through this criticism, I began to understand how
difficult it is to be an artist. What on earth is the criterion for
measuring the value of any work of art? The fate of any work of
art seems always controlled by those authorities within the
field, or sometimes by critics completely beyond the world of
art. I thought such control was abnormal and could only be an
obstacle to the development of any art form. These
contradictions began to torment me as they would for the rest of
my life. Like so many artists before me, I eventually learned
that there was nothing I could do but create my art and hope
that it would touch people’s hearts and minds and that they
would understand and appreciate it.

~~~

Upon returning to school from the countryside, I was
surprised to discover that a troupe of young actors and actresses
from the Shanghai Children’s Art Theater was rehearsing day
and night in our auditorium. This troupe was a subdivision of the
China Welfare Association, which was founded by China’s
vice-chairman, Madam Song Qingling, the widow of Dr. Sun
Yat-sen, the father of modern China. All the performers wore
uniforms, with the boys in blue pants and white shirts, and the
girls wearing blue skirts and white blouses. Most of the girls
wore their hair in pigtails. Among them, I was immediately
caught by the beauty of one young actress. She had a lovely
and touching face that I could not get out of my mind. Her
name was Minghua, and she was an eighteen year old whose
main job was stage art designer. We had many opportunities to
get together as we showed each other our departments and
talked about drawing. Because she was the most beautiful girl
in the theater, many of the other boys in our school aggressively
pursued her and asked her to walk with them in the park, go
boating, or to see a movie. I didn’t worry, for I believed love to
be a natural happening, and if she was really interested in
someone she would show him in one way or another. If it was
meant to be me, we would both know.

About two weeks after our return, the theater group was
to leave for Korea to entertain our troops. The night before,
Minghua and I happened to run into each other while she was
preparing to go up to her room. Suddenly I blurted out, “Could
we meet again?” “Well, we can at least write,” she answered,
while looking back at me as she went up the stairs. Not long
after that, her first letter came to me from the Korean battle
front. I was so happy! Of course I replied to her without delay. It
was autumn at the time, and in the letter I enclosed a beautiful
colored maple leaf to show my budding affection. Then, for
several years to come, after the troupe returned to its home in
Shanghai, love letters shuttled back and forth between us.
During this period of love and courtship, I accepted a position
as an associate professor and began to feel confident about my
future. I was doing everything I could to make it better.
In the summer of 1956, Minghua was sent to study at the
Shanghai Institute of Theater. It was a great chance for us to
come together, as it was possible to obtain student transfers
between our two sister schools. So, I went to the Central
Institute of Theater and applied for her transfer to Beijing. She
was finally able to move to Beijing at the end of 1956, and we
married in January 1957. Since the loneliness of my mother’s
death, this was now my life’s happiest period.

Our marriage, born in an era of idealism and turmoil,
unfortunately had too many obstacles ahead to succeed. The
beauty and passion of our early relationship eventually turned to
a bitter fruit, which spoiled in the withering political climate in
the years to come. But to a young couple in love, our school
life together that year was the best of times. We had dancing
parties on weekends. I sang in the Beijing Teachers Chorus and
sometimes even conducted our own school chorus. I introduced
classical music to our cultural activities and taught some songs
to our students. Besides all this extra curricular activity, I still
kept up my physical training, including swimming and body
building. Also that year, to give our students some general
military knowledge, a class of military physical training or
Sports for National Defense, as it was called, was added to our
curriculum. I was sent to the Navy Club to learn how to coach
our students in the use of life boats, or Sampans, which hang
from the side of ships. In this course I also learned the
government policy for building our naval force, elementary
knowledge of the navy and its ships, and the identifying
characteristics of all kinds of warships. But my main course was
how to operate a Sampan.

Once I became the coach I picked sixteen of our
strongest students, eight men and eight women, to begin
competitive training. Twice a week we would train on the lake
in Beihai, or the North Sea Park. Empress Dowager Cixi, the
last true ruler of the Qing Dynasty, wanted to be near the sea,
so the lake was called the North Sea. During these training
exercises I acted as both coach and helmsman. Upon
completion of our course, the government organized a sampan
race between all of the universities and colleges of Beijing.
Finishing second, less than one second behind the Sports
Department of Beijing Teachers University, we were extremely
proud of our accomplishment. In my excitement, I wrote a song
to tell the story of our memorable training experiences. Several
of the students added poems, and we called it “a chorus with
poems.” For our gala celebration I conducted our school chorus,
who were all dressed in borrowed navy uniforms. As they sang
and recited what we had written, they were very well received
by the entire faculty and student body. When the Beijing
Teachers University heard of our performance, we were invited
to perform there as well. We all felt honored by our success and
the praise we received. I was once again accepted by all, in
spite of my past, or so I was beginning to think.

When our class discussed what we should present for the
school’s New Year’s Party, I suggested a circus. But since none
of the others had ever seen a real circus, and I had seen only
one, a German circus in Shanghai, I was chosen to be the
director. According to the abilities of my fellow students, I
organized a variety of acts such as rope dancing, flying knives,
plate spinning, jar balancing, jumping through rings of fire,
figure-shaping in the air, weight-lifting, conjuring the bear, and
of course clowns. Naturally, in most of our acts, the show would
have to depend on illusion. We would have to “pass fish eyes
off as pearls,” even though there would be many in our
audience who knew better.

On the day before our performance we created a splendid
playbill, with portraits of all the actors and actresses crowned
as prize winners in the XXth World Youth Festival. We asked
our dean to be our Honorary Chairman. When the New Year’s
Eve celebration arrived, our circus had suddenly become the
main event of all the festivities. After all of the other activities
were completed, the announcer solemnly proclaimed, “And the
last event of the evening is a great and glorious circus!” The
audience hushed, eyes glued to the front, waiting for the curtain
to rise. Unexpectedly, the sounds of a march came from the
entrance behind the audience. No sooner had all the lights
come back on and the audience turned to look for the source of
the music, than all of the circus performers and their band came
marching from the rear, through the audience and onto the stage
led by Professor Ai, our Dean.

Just after the flying knife act, someone from the audience
sent a note forward saying, “We think the flying knives should
be canceled from future performances. It is really splendid, but
far too dangerous.” This gave us an indication of how successful
we were in creating an illusion for our audience, and that’s all
it was. Just an illusion! I had chosen a young student, Miss
Zhang, whom for this show we named Lindaiyu after the slim
and beautiful central character in the famous poem, Dream of
the Red Chamber. Standing with her back against a large board
she stretched her arms out to the side. We had textured the
board to hide the slots we made for the daggers to pass through
on both sides of her neck, the outside of her ankles, and
underneath her armpits. We then mounted the daggers to the
back of the board below the slots so that when they popped
through the board, they appeared as if they had been thrown by
the actor. We used large rubber bands to pull and fix the
daggers to the back of the board where we had someone hidden.
The actor throwing the dagger also had a rubber band inside his
sleeve. When the drumbeat and accompanying music hit a
crescendo, the dagger flashed downward as the actor appeared
to throw it. The eyes of the audience rapidly followed the
assumed trajectory of the knife to its beautiful target. At the
same instant the person behind the board released the
appropriate dagger fixed behind the board so that it assumed its
prearranged position in the front of the board. This was done six
times. Six times they fit precisely, and six times the audience
went wild with disbelief and satisfaction with the trick.
Since weight lifting had given me the strongest muscles
in our group, I held the ladder in the act, Beauty Shaping the Air.
When the curtain rose I appeared from backstage holding Miss
Yang high over my head. She was the lightest member of our
sculpture department, and was from Taiwan. As I put Miss Yang
down, two people brought me a large ladder about five meters
high. I balanced the ladder upright and walked around the stage.
We had fixed a thin iron bar over the top of our stage curtain.
As I sensed I was under the bar I imperceptibly hooked the
ladder to the bar while pretending to continue balancing it.
Then, in pace with the music, Miss Yang stepped from my
thigh up to the ladder, shaping the air with graceful gestures as
she climbed higher and higher. My extraordinary strength and
superb balancing skill was all an act. An illusion which went
undetected. The audience went wild again!

Unexpectedly, our performance that evening was a huge
success. The audience was so excited and pleased that we were
asked to do another performance before representatives from all
the universities and colleges in Beijing, the Central Committee
of the Communist Youth League, and even the China Acrobatic
Troupe. If the applause of this audience was an appropriate
measure of our skill, we were just as successful the second time
as we were the first.

In the summer of 1953, after my graduation, I enrolled in
a postgraduate course for two more years. Our course of study
was centered around a work study program which enabled us to
put our art into practice. During this period we were
commissioned to do architectural sculpture for the Soviet
Exhibition Hall, the Overseas Chinese Hotel, the Astronomy
Observatory, various gyms, and so on. We received some extra
income from these commissions, and so were enabled to
establish the Sculpture Research Studio, which we located on
the Central Art Institute campus.

~~~

For the summer of 1954, the China Students Union
organized a true vacation at the seaside resort of Beidaihe for
all college postgraduates, assistants, and instructors. Beidaihe
is located in Hebei province of Northeast China, and has a truly
picturesque beach. While there we were boarded in a primary
school about half a mile from the sea, and I was selected as
one of the lifeguards. Every morning the lifeguards would search
out the best place to swim and erect bamboo poles in the
seabed about a couple hundred meters from the shore, marking
the boundary of the area we thought safe to swim. Every pole
was topped with a red flag and swimmers were not allowed to
go beyond them.

One day after our noon nap, I returned routinely to the
beach with my friend, Gu. It was high tide and a crowd of
people had gathered just beyond some of the poles. A lifesaving
boat was just leaving the beach. As we ran up to the crowd we
were told that a young girl about seventeen had been swept
away by the tide while washing her feet on the shore. As we
watched, the lifesaving boat tried in vain to find her. While
people were talking excitedly, someone shouted, “Look! There
she is! Over there!” We all turned to follow where she was
pointing. About two hundred meters from shore we could see a
black splotch of hair floating up and down with the waves.
As a responsible lifeguard, I ran through the surf, jumped
into the sea, and swam with all of my strength and speed. I had
to do all I could to save her. Finally I reached the girl and
immediately froze. For the first time in all of the excitement I
was struck with fear! I had saved a number of people from
drowning in the past, but I had never brought a dead person out
of the water before. The body had already bloated and its color
had changed to blue and purple. What was I to do? I couldn’t
return without her. I tried to grab only the hair, reluctant to
touch the cold body. But as I grasped her hair, the waves tossed
her body into me with all its force. I twisted away as if I had
received an electric shock.

Suddenly I realized that everybody on shore was
watching me. I could only grab her hair and swim desperately
with my other arm. The next several minutes seemed like an
eternity. As I finally approached the shore I broke through the
waves, and her brother ran out to help me. He fought his way
out into the water, took her by the waist and walked ashore with
her clutched tightly to himself. Could I have held her so tightly?
I felt ashamed of myself as I watched him walk away with her.
What if she were my sister? Perhaps that is what blood
relationship meant. I didn’t know, and I couldn’t explain it to
myself. It was my job to rescue her, and I had failed. In many
fitful nights since, I have dreamed of that girl and touched her
lost soul. Her hair moving in slow languor up and down in the
waves. Her cold blue body rubbing up against my bare skin. It
was a nightmare.

While we were away on summer vacation, our school set
up two training courses under the leadership of Soviet experts.
One was in oil painting, the other in sculpture. Successively
throughout the year, students were sent to the Soviet Union for
advanced study. I soon discovered that the candidates were all
named by Party authorities, not by the faculty. We had to be a
Party member to apply. Ability was not the primary
requirement. Four students in our department were Party
members, and one of them was a rather poor student too! Even
worse, he was very mean and self seeking. We understood early
that many people applied for Party membership, not out of
devotion to the Communist cause, but for selfish purposes such
as these. It was a means of acquiring special rights and
privileges. Such people often spoke in a tone of extreme
zealotry to show themselves off as fervid revolutionaries. Yet
anyone who knew them well could see that this was not their
true pitch. They were two-faced and only concerned about
themselves. If we dared to speak against them, we would
suddenly find ourselves in deep trouble for giving Party
members an ugly image and, therefore, slandering the Party.
We could be publicly criticized and even punished. In short, I
learned we could never say “no” to the Communist Party. Its
authority was absolute, and its so-called brilliance,
righteousness, and superiority were to be obeyed by all.
Needless to say, I was never sent to study in the Soviet Union,
and neither were the most talented artist in our department.

Later that summer I was surprised to receive a letter post
marked Sichuan. It was from my younger sister May. The last
time I had seen her she was waving a tearful goodby to me from
my aunt’s house. That seemed like a lifetime away. Like so
many others in the chaos of war, we had lost contact in 1945.
Then, one day she saw my art work in the local newspaper. She
was so pleased with my success she decided to send her four
year old daughter to me in the escort of my aunt and cousin
who were to be soon moving to Beijing. She hoped I might
provide a better opportunity in life for her than she was able to.
I went immediately to the personnel office for the special
permission required to look after her and to keep her in my
dorm room. To this day I am deeply grateful to the kindhearted
Mrs. Wang who finally found a way to waive the prohibiting
rules. My young niece was called “Little Pearl.” She was a
very sweet and lovely girl who quickly became the pet of our
school.

As strange as it sounds, my niece ended up living with
me and three fellow students in a small dormitory room. Every
evening while I reviewed my lessons at the desk, she would
read a children’s book by my side. Then the two of us slept with
our heads at opposite ends of one small bottom bunk bed. Later
in the year I sent her to a kindergarten not far from our campus.
Every morning about seven I took her there and then I went to
pick her up at about five. Because of the love and devotion I
showed her, the attendants in the kindergarten thought I was her
father. I went to the tailor’s to have her dresses made and
shopped for nutrients and whatever else I felt she needed. Every
Sunday I took her to a song and dance performance created
especially for children. As the weeks turned to months I often
heard her sing a song from these performances as she climbed
the stairs to our room after playing with the students outside.
Sometimes she would imitate a dance she had seen somewhere
before. Her funny, lovely movements, that pair of big dark eyes,
her prominent forehead and chubby face with her lips pursed up,
all made me happy as I grew to love her more and more each
day.

As time went on, she suffered when I had to attend class
or some required meeting which forced me to leave her alone in
our room. If the people in the next room were free, I would ask
them to take care of her. At the meetings I would find myself
very absentminded and would dash back to our room as soon as
it was over to see if she was all right. It broke my heart when I
sometimes found her sobbing alone, immersed in her loneliness
and fear. Often I had to ask several girl students to take her for
a bath, for we only had a public bathhouse. She also proved to
be a well qualified model for a sculpture I created for an
exhibition at the Communist World Youth Festival in Budapest,
Hungary. So, I had to admit that in spite of the extra burden she
created on me, she definitely earned her keep!

Chapter 3

2007-09-03T05:32:00.000-07:00

In March, 1945, nearly six months after I joined the Air Corps, we finally left Bombay aboard an American military cargo ship, setting out on the last leg of our journey to the United States. Because of the constant threat from the Japanese navy, we sailed south for several days, then east, and off the southern shores of Australia and New Zealand in very rough seas. This was my first time at sea, and though I considered water my special friend, I became very sea-sick. With each roll of the ship I became sicker until I was sure the roll would probably bring death. But instead I just got sicker still. All over the ship the crew had placed big oil barrels for us to vomit into.

Even the gluttons had no appetite. Everywhere men lay sick on their beds. My bed was down on deck three. After several days, I eventually became accustomed to the rolling and tossing of the ship and relaxed by laying on the outer deck looking at the sky and the ocean all day long. The cool splatter of water on my face from the waves, cut through by the prow, was a special pleasure. So too, the rhythmic sound of the waves striking against the prow and then turning back again into the sea. Nothing but sky and water, and the radar—a new thing to us—turning round and round against the blue sky above us. The scene reflected a rich, serene, but lonesomely poetic flavor. During these endless days of leisure, many memories of childhood played across my mind. Then, as I tried to imagine how what I was then experiencing would effect my future, I realized that all my hopes depended on our defeat of the Japanese invaders. My way to the future could open only after that was achieved. But what would that future be? I had no idea.

Once again I had the opportunity to encounter many
Blacks amongst the American troops. Because of the leisure
time we had together, their musical talent impressed me even
more than it did while I was in the hospital. They seemed to
have either more, or special, musical genes inside of them. One
morning I watched a Black soldier mopping the deck when a
jazz song came out over the loudspeaker. He was like a wound
up musical robot that started to dance with the music. His body
twisting, rising and then falling with the melody unlike anything
I had ever seen except in American movies. All while
continuing to mop the deck! He had a bright smiling face and
hummed along rhythmically with the music as he danced. He
composed a symphony of changing movements, all on time. My
heart beat strongly with him, but my body remained in an
embarrassed stillness. Only my eyes revealed my fervor and
passion for every move he made. I looked forward to arriving in
America and being able to listen to new jazz tunes everyday. I
wanted to understand and appreciate it more and more. Jazz
had been misunderstood in China. It was, and sometimes still
is, seen as a decadent music of the bourgeoisie, which is not
fair to the music, nor to the Black musicians that created and
can play it.

I have tried to help the Chinese people understand jazz,
and once in 1974 translated an article, “How Jazz Began.” Not
until the 1990’s have many people in China begun to really
appreciate jazz. When, in 1985, the American trombonist Irving
Wagner performed in concert at the Central Conservatory of
Music in Beijing, I watched the audience’s growing fascination.
By the end, I saw as they understood the power of the music
when it grew stronger and more sure throughout the song.
Wagner played jazz versions of Blue Skies, Sunny Side of the
Street, and Blue Heaven. All were very popular songs, and very
familiar to me, in which I found a new excitement from his
talented interpretations.

Our voyage half way around the world to America was
peaceful except for one day, near New Zealand, when we
realized a Japanese submarine was following close behind our
ship. The alarm sounded on all decks, and we prepared for an
attack. Fortunately for us, two New Zealand destroyers soon
appeared and escorted us out of danger. I went up on the deck
to see those two beautiful light-grey ships on either side,
guarding and protecting us from the sharks in the water.

Because we were so often on alert for Japanese ships, we
were forced to spend most of our thirty-one day voyage from
Bombay to Los Angeles below deck. There was no fresh air nor
any sunlight down in the belly of the ship. Not my cup of tea. It
grew extremely hot, especially as we travelled north across the
equator. The only relief from the heat was in the toilet room
where the big water pipes gave off faint traces of cool air. We
slept four high in hammocks that sometimes flipped completely
over when big waves caught the ship from the side. Dishes,
cups, and plates on the long dining tables constantly slid from
one end to the other. Climbing the little ladders was always
difficult because the ship would randomly lurch or roll. We
would step, the ship would lurch, our foot would miss the step,
and the force of gravity would cause our leg to bang against the
iron railings, leaving terrible bruises. Our whole world moved
continually. Up and down, side to side, back and forth, for over
a month.

One warm day some tragic news came to us while we
were below deck. One of my fellow cadets, a quiet man from
North China, had just committed suicide by going up on deck
and jumping into the sea. I hurried up to the stern as soon as I
heard, but could only see the endless churning waves of our
wake that had already engulfed him in his sea grave. All on
board our ship were helpless to find or save him. He had
received a letter back in Bombay telling him that his father had
been buried alive by the Japanese. I couldn’t imagine how bad
that had made him feel. Enough for him to give it all up. He
had been in a very depressed state from the moment we began
our ocean voyage. Practically all the sons and daughters in
China of that generation carry with them their own sad
memories of what the Japanese had done to their families and
loved ones in those times. Down in the low, suffocating cabins
on board ship, I would hear horror stories as we laid in our
hammocks gazing into the darkness. So much sadness could be
seen in many of the soldiers’ eyes. Looking at the waves that
swept away my friend, my desire for revenge grew stronger, but
first I was going to the light of America for training.

On board ship in April 1945, I woke up earlier than usual
to the sound of mounting commotion coming from everywhere
throughout the ship. When I finally got up on deck to see, it was
already full of people looking with excitement at the horizon.
Understandably, the Americans were much more outwardly
excited than we, because soon they would be reunited with
their families after countless months, even years, of bitter
battles in far off lands. We all watched as a dark thread of color
appeared on the horizon. Shouts echoed across the ship. “We’re
here!” “At last!” “Los Angeles!” “Home!” Amidst the shouting,
many began to sing, “God bless America, land of the free...”
Yes, a new and very strange world was now upon me.

~~~

People? Where were all the people? My first impression
when I stepped ashore was that there were far fewer people than
I had expected, the streets seemed quiet, almost deserted, tidy
and clean, while the life and work around me seemed to
proceed so efficiently. Southwest America seemed totally
lacking in people at that time, or at least compared to all the
people throughout China. As we disembarked, we were lead
directly from the ship to a train. It felt as though I were in a
very strange world, very unlike what I had expected. The
novelty of its uniqueness affected me strongly. The people in
the cars on the highway,which was parallel to the railway,
waved and smiled at us. This sudden friendliness caused me to
feel very warm and happy to be there. I knew that this change
of events was to become the opportunity of a lifetime.
From Los Angeles, our train headed for San Antonio,
Texas, where a United States Air Force preparatory base was
located. Once we reached the station there, I finally saw the
cowboys I knew from the American movies of my childhood.
But I was disappointed not to see the revolvers on their hips,
that I had seen in so many westerns. Still, they fascinated me.
They seemed so natural in that vast empty land. The weather in
Texas was warm and sunny. Upon our arrival at the air base, we
desperately wanted to see the many strange sights, but instead
we were isolated from the rest of the base for a health check.
We were told that this was mainly to prevent the spread of
infectious diseases from tropical Asia. A red ribbon on our
sleeves marked us for quarantine. We were not allowed to get
in touch with anyone already here, nor go outside our own
designated area. There were also French as well as American
air cadets in our quarantine area.

The quarantine lasted for two weeks. But this, on top of
our thirty-one days at sea, made us go almost mad from a sense
of isolation and oppression. Then suddenly, one day we were
free! Like horses escaping from the confines of a small corral,
we ran aimlessly everywhere! We had to see this new
wonderful world! We went to the movies, shopped at the PX,
tasted Coke and 7-Up. For me, I enjoyed the jukebox the most. I
only had to put in a nickel, press the number of the song I
wanted, and like magic, the machine played the song I wanted
to hear! The first song I selected was, You Belong to My Heart,
by Bing Crosby. To be able to hear such a famous song by only
pressing a button was beyond belief.

One day on the air base we roamed into a building that
was very quiet, as if it was abandoned. Soon, one of us
discovered that none of the usual urinals were in the toilet. We
realized immediately that this was a WAC’s, women only,
barrack. We were all frightened, for fear of being caught in the
act of spying. When we stepped out onto a balcony, we looked
down on a group of women, skimpily clothed, lying on the grass
below us! Sunbathing! We started to run for the exit at once.
Based upon our traditional moral concepts, we didn’t want to be
seen as hooligans or ill mannered. Immediately peals of
laughter, not screams of indignation, followed us as we ran from
the building. I couldn’t understand American women. They were
so strange. How could they react so casually to the shameful
act we had just committed?

We were located on a very large training base that was
divided into a number of sections. Every section had its own
theater, PX, swimming pool, laundry, and so on. Bus routes also
circled the base. Professional and amateur entertainers often
performed for us, but one was unforgettable. It was a water
ballet, presented when this art form was still in its early stages
of development as a form of entertainment. Beautifully shaped
girls swimming to music. I never imagined I would see such a
sight. I shall never forget their freestyle Blue Danube. I was
completely enchanted by it.

Everything was so new to me. As a soldier on a military
training base in the middle of a terrible war, I was surprised by
our first instructional class. It was not on aircraft or flight safety,
but on sex. A sex educational film! It told a story of three air
cadets having sex with girls in what looked like rooms in a
nightclub. The first cadet had taken the appropriate preventative
measure beforehand, so his behavior was considered all right.
The second took preventative measures afterward, and nothing
happened to him either. But the third took no preventative
measures either before or after he had sex. The film then told
how he soon became infected with a venereal disease. His
health grew worse and worse, and his illness interrupted his
study as a cadet, and created a great deal of trouble in his life.
On the day of his final flying exam he had a dizzy spell and
crashed into a tree. While his friends celebrated receiving their
certificates, he was lying in the hospital, his whole body bound
in bandages and plaster. He did not graduate, and it was a long
time before he recovered from his injuries and the dreaded
venereal disease. How very strange this all seemed. Our first
impression was that our health was more important than how
well we fought. America’s strange new values were to affect me
for the rest of my life.

When we returned to our barracks, the poster on the wall
of the toilet room caught our eyes with a new force. The letters
VD were superimposed in bold print on a picture message. The
movie and the poster combined left the impression that to
Americans, sexual love is a natural need, but one must first
learn to prevent VD and be safe. My friends and I became
careful, but we also learned to be sure we didn’t go to the clinic
on Mondays. This was because the American doctors insisted
on giving all of us a preventive shot on Monday, whether we
needed one or not. They knew that Chinese soldiers were
embarrassed to tell them what they had done the night before,
so they just gave us a shot to be sure.

The relations between males and females was quite
different than in China, as were the moral concepts, as we
began to understand them. In America, these relations seemed
so free and natural. Boyfriends and girlfriends were everywhere,
even among the teenagers we saw. It seemed as if courtship
was not used as a means for seeking a spouse, but rather for a
source of immediate pleasure only. Fun! If a couple was really
in love with each other, then sexual activity seemed to be a
natural result. It didn’t seem to matter if they are married or not.
This was all so different!

The movie theater, which was open most of the day and
evening, was a favorite place for lovers. Young couples would
hug and kiss throughout the movie, or until their hearts were
content. It seemed as if they were in a world of their own, not
aware of anyone else around them. No one interfered or felt
embarrassed, and the elders often smiled back with what
appeared to be their blessings.

When a young man whistled to show his admiration for a
girl, it was seldom taken as an insult. In fact, sometimes the
girls even responded with a smile. They could make friends of
the opposite sex very easily, on any occasion, at any time! A
man could get a date with a salesgirl, even while he was
buying a soda or a shirt, if she felt the same desire. Even on our
air base you could see lovers two by two on the lawn, but
especially on the weekends in the summer time, and until late
at night.

Life in America was becoming very intense for me. With
nearly three hours of physical training every morning, we were
tired when we came to the last and my favorite event,
swimming. If we hesitated on the edge of the pool, the
American coach would push the hanyazi (land ducks) among us
into the pool from behind. I was in the best condition of my
whole life because of this training and the nutritious food. I had
never before consistently eaten such nutritious foods! Most
Chinese, un-familiar with western food, did not find it tasty, or
easy to eat. I don’t know why, but it always seemed good to me.
Cold drinks, ice cream, candy, cakes, salad, macaroni and
cheese, all became among my favorite foods!

Throughout my entire life, music has always soothed me.
This is especially true when I feel blue or in trouble. However,
at no other time in my life did I feel this so strongly as I did one
Sunday morning in America. Our Air Force drill instructor came
into our barracks for a surprise inspection. He walked up to the
bed next to mine, took a quarter out of his pocket and tossed it
onto the bed to see if it would bounce. I was scared that my
bed, not as tightly made up as my neighbor’s, would never pass
this impossible test. I felt nervous as he walked menacingly
toward me. Suddenly he saw the guitar on my desk against the
wall behind my bed. He picked it up, handed it to me, and
commanded, “Play something.” I felt embarrassed. I was just
beginning to learn, but with my poor English I couldn’t explain.
So I plucked up my courage and played Aloha Oe, a song I had
just learned from my friend Li. When I finished the instructor
nodded his head, said something that I could not understand,
and walked away without checking my bed. Music had played
its magic power in my behalf once more, even if the music was
rather poor.

In July of 1945, we were transferred to Scott Field,
Illinois. While there, we would spend nearly every weekend in
nearby St. Louis. I remember my first Sunday there, which
impressed me more than I had ever expected. We traveled on a
Greyhound bus, which had a figure of a running dog on its long
body. (During my second trip to the United States, forty years
later, I again saw these Greyhound buses everywhere, still
painted with the same running dog on the side.) We traveled
through Belleville and then crossed an immense bridge over the
Mississippi River. Once in downtown St. Louis I had my picture
taken by a stranger who suddenly stepped in front of me. He had
me sign a receipt, gave me a copy of it, and then charged me
fifty cents. Three days later my photograph arrived at my base
by mail. An interesting composition—a bewildered Chinese air
cadet walking with an inquisitive smile in a strange American
city. Though the quality of the photograph was poor, this photo
became very precious to me as the years passed by. But that
photo, with many others like it snapped in America, were
eventually taken from me when I was being investigated many
years later in China. Sadly, I have never been able to get them
back or to ever see a one of them again.

The amount and manner of private selling in America
amazed me. How natural a free market seemed to be there.
When we were on the San Antonio Air Base, an American
instructor learned that we wanted to buy some musical
instruments. He said that he would buy them for us. Two days
later he and his wife returned in their pretty car with all the
instruments we requested. They brought a clarinet, guitar,
trumpet, saxophone, and even a violin for me. They were all
second hand, and we did not know the market value, so we paid
what he asked. I gave him $75 dollars for a very good violin.
Another day at Merced Field, in California, an American
soldier, a stranger to us, brought a dozen different types of
second hand pistols to our barracks to sell. I bought a
Smith&Wesson revolver with a lengthened barrel for only fifty
dollars. I began to understand this way of making money, not
just the barter of goods for goods, as I had grown used to in war
torn China, but actual cash for a product or service.
While in St. Louis I went to the Arena, an amazing place
designed just for people to have fun. It was built with a
swimming pool and a skating rink, and included all those
automated machines that take your picture or record your voice.
I saw these machines everywhere and they made a deep
impression on me. They became obvious symbols of the gap
between China and the developed countries, and I felt sorry,
and then angry. The Chinese are not incompetent compared to
these other peoples! The explanations for this, I realized, was
both historical and political. The more I saw, the more I built
hopes in my mind for the future of China when the war was
over. But meanwhile I sang a song, I Can’t Begin to Tell You,
recorded it and then I took my own photo, all in less than ten
minutes! It was all so unbelievable.

My first time roller skating at the Arena was more fun
than I ever expected. Skating to the pleasantly rhythmic music,
I stayed till the final number, “Good night, sweet dreams.
Tomorrow is another day. Good night. Sweet dreams,
sweetheart...” It was 11 p.m., closing time.

By that time I felt hungry and went to the only snack bar
close to the Arena. I was surprised to see that I was the only
customer. A kind old lady behind the counter asked me what I
wanted. I did not know how to name any American foods in
English other than Coca Cola, bread and butter. So I looked at
her helplessly. Then I think she said, “Would you like to try
chili?” I nodded and thought that if Americans could eat it, I
could too. When she brought this highly seasoned dish of beef,
chilies, beans, and tomatoes it was very much to my taste for
the food in my hometown is also very highly seasoned. Over the
table of my booth, there was a little wall jukebox with 24
buttons on it. I put in a nickel and pressed the button for my
favorite song. Then, as soon as the music began to play, my
nickel dropped out of the machine into a little slot in the
bottom. There was some-thing wrong, or maybe right. I checked
all of the jukeboxes for nickels and collected almost fifty cents
from them!

For a young Chinese airman who couldn’t speak English,
I had some rather interesting experiences. That night, on the bus
ride back to the base, I felt tired from such a big day and fell
fast asleep sitting in my seat. I woke up abruptly, shocked to
find a pretty blonde sitting on my lap. I was very embarrassed
and didn’t know what to do. She was about eighteen and wore a
pair of the brown and white saddle shoes which were then
popular with students. She hugged me, smiled, and then
murmured something I couldn’t understand at all. The other
people in the bus also smiled warmly at me with good will.
When the bus stopped, she gave me a kiss, jumped up from my
lap, and got off waving goodbye to me until she quickly
disappeared from sight. I sat there motionless, my face burning
the rest of the way to the base. My roommates laughed and
pointed at my face as soon as I stepped into our barracks. “Hey!
What sort of girl did you run into tonight? Such a lucky guy!” I
wondered how they all knew about it. I hurried to the bathroom
and saw in the mirror the red lipstick on my cheek, neck, and
collar. She must have kissed me for a long time while I was
still asleep!

What did this mean? Was she a loose girl? A prostitute?
If that had happened in China I would be sure that she was. But
of course she wasn’t. She was a good girl, clean, innocent and
artless. It was wartime. A baby faced airman from the allied
nation of China asleep in a bus alone. She probably wanted to
show her sympathy and affection to let me know that I was not
alone, that’s all. In any case, she had certainly warmed my
heart.

I often spent time at the Arena after that delightful first
experience. One day I went swimming, as my love for water
could not resist it. I saw people diving from the high board on
the tower, which tempted me to have a try. But when I climbed
to the board and looked down, I realized that it was much
higher above the water’s surface than I had thought it was when
I was down below. The people in the pool appeared so small
that they looked like ants floating in a small bowl of water.
Many were watching me as I searched for the courage to jump.
Perhaps they were curious to see how the Chinese dive. Perhaps
they thought that I was a practiced diver, since I went right up
to the highest platform. I was nervous and wanted to back down.
But what a disgrace it would be to withdraw now, before all
those who were watching me. So I had to do it, and try not to
make a poor exhibition of myself or have an accident. I tried to
calm myself and concentrate exclusively on how to keep my
body in good form and balance while diving. I roughly
estimated the time from the platform to the water, and then off I
went. I tried my best not to lose control, but my heart seemed to
go in the opposite direction, or at least stay up on the platform.
I felt like an arrow when I finally hit the water. My hands
seemed to touch the bottom of the pool as soon as I cut through
the surface. As I rose to the surface along the wall of the pool,
my head became sandwiched between two legs, and I felt the
legs pinch my head willfully. When I finally surfaced, I heard
laughter all around. A young girl was looking at me and
laughing gleefully. Unable to explain or apologize, I was
embarrassed. I could do nothing but flee from the pool at once
and change back into my clothes. Still her charming laughing
face would not let me flee. I went back to the upper fence on a
balcony overlooking the pool, leaned against it and looked for
her. She was lying on her back off to one side with an older girl.
They smiled sweetly when they saw me looking down on them.
They whispered to each other, rose to their feet, and went to the
dressing room. I realized that they were planning on coming to
me. Instead of happiness, I felt even more nervous. How could I
keep company with them with a sealed mouth, unable to speak
English. I did not want to look like a dummy in front of girls. So
I sneaked away hoping they would retain a pleasant first
impression. The young woman’s great beauty and my inability
to speak caused me to lose courage completely. This was a
reflection of my belief, do everything well or not at all. Still, I
wanted to have such a nice girl in my company, so I turned
around to try and find her again. It was in vain. I was too late.

~~~

August 14th was Air Force Day in China. But August 14,
1945, was especially unforgettable. All the Chinese air cadets
at Scott Field were celebrating our holiday at Chongqing
Restaurant in St. Louis at 6:00 pm when the radio music
stopped suddenly. After a brief pause, we heard the voice of the
United States President, Harry Truman, come over the radio
loud speaker. As he began to speak, everyone became very
silent. Then he told us that the Japanese had unconditionally
surrendered to the Allied Army. No sooner had the President’s
voice stopped than excitement overcame the people both inside
and outside of the restaurant. I hurried into the street. A stream
of people carried me to the center square of the city. With the
traffic at a total standstill, I was drawn into the sea of faces.
Servicemen and girls kissed wherever they happened to meet. It
was another great American adventure for me. While lost in
thought, a girl of about sixteen suddenly hugged and kissed me.
The stream of people swept us along together and allowed me
to give her only a smile in return.

People massed at the big square. People leaned from the
windows of buildings along both sides of the streets, shouting
and throwing brightly colored paper flowers and ribbons. Like
others, my new young girlfriend and I were part of this feverish
scene. Searchlight beams swept around and around the
darkening sky. Laughter bubbled through the singing. Tears
rolled down people’s faces amidst sweet music. I remember that
the wine and excitement made my mouth feel dry. We tried
hard to get two bottles of Coca Cola from any place that sold
drinks, but they were all full of more people than I had seen
since I had come to this country. Suddenly, people were
everywhere! Clearly it was really a carnival day. Happiness
filled the entire city. I stayed until early the next morning.
When I returned to our base, I saw an American air crew
joyously tearing up suddenly outdated wooden signboards and
shouting, “No more war!” Oh, that their proclamation was true.
It is too bad history has proven them young and naive.
We remained on the base to finish our training, even
though the war was over. Before long I, who could only utter a
few English words, actually had a real girlfriend. Her name was
Millie. We came to know each other while skating at the
Arena. Millie in English sounds like the Chinese word moli
meaning jasmine. So, I thought of her as Jasmine. Pairs of girls
and boys often came to skate at the Arena. Millie and her
girlfriend smiled their acceptance when my friend, Tan, and I
first gestured for them to skate with us. Millie’s friend, a tall
girl of sixteen, pretended to be eighteen, just as I had done to
join the army. She later became Tan’s girlfriend. Millie
seriously explained to me one day that unlike in China, when
children become adults, they are independent and have full
rights, including the right to sexual relations. Their parents no
longer have responsibility for them. This surprised me, but
helped me to understand the many confusing things I had seen
girls do in America.

Both of these girls were very nice, honest and full of
tender feelings. We often went to a restaurant, movie, skating
rink, or the park together. They tried as much as possible to
make us feel warm and comfortable in this foreign country, and
did their best not to refuse our emotional needs. They
understood that we were far away from home. I was once told
that during World War II women and soldiers were seen as two
respectable flowers. I’m not sure if that is true, but in our case it
seemed to be. Millie once took me to her home in an old
residential quarter of town, along a narrow street with dim street
lights. The house inside was simple and crowded with old
furniture. Even though the family had a sofa, refrigerator, and
other things we Chinese considered expensive luxuries, they
were considered poor, below the average American income.
Late one night when I escorted Millie home, I saw people
sleeping on the sofa. They turned the sitting room into a
bedroom, just like most families did in China.

Millie once led me into the sitting room and sat on my
lap in front of her parents! For a Chinese this was hard for me
to believe. In China, even married couples dared not do such
things. Here it seemed so natural. Even parents seemed happy
to see this public display of affection. It was as though love
were a holy human right with which no one should intervene. I
saw lovers hug and kiss each other in the cinema, parks,
streets, and everywhere. Once I stood at a bus stop waiting for
my bus to arrive, and a young couple on the platform were
kissing as if nobody else was there. Yes, I thought, all human
beings have the same feelings, the same needs. Some see love
for what it is and express it publicly, but others hide it in the
dark, insisting on secrecy. Perhaps that suggests different moral
standards. I don’t know. But Millie taught me openness and she
made me feel so warm and cared for, like I had never felt
before. She cured much of my homesickness.

After I left St. Louis, Millie wrote to me, sending me
beautiful Valentine’s Day cards with her picture in them. I had
very happy memories of our time together and of my stay in St.
Louis. We lost touch in 1949 when the Communist Party took
power in China. Then I lost her address during the following
years of turmoil.

I learned that Americans are frank, open and warmhearted.
They are bold and put their ideas and feelings into
practice. On Christmas or New Year’s people would often ask if
I were homesick and invite me to join them in their homes for
the holiday. Donald Lewis was a sixteen year old high school
student, helping his father in the snack bar in the Arena during
his summer vacation. One day when I ordered some ice cream
we started to talk and we became instant friends. From then on
I would always make a point to go see and visit with him
whenever I was at the Arena. A few months later he invited me
to spend Christmas in his home with his parents and older
brother. He later helped to organize a teenage dance that I was
invited to, and in the spring I also went to a baseball game with
him and his family— I believe the game was between the St.
Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs. That was the first time I had
seen a baseball game and I found it to be very interesting,
especially the uncontrolled excitement of the crowd.

I was also surprised by another example of American
hospitality. One afternoon, after class when I was strolling alone
down a country road by our base, a car pulled over and stopped
in front of me to offer me a ride to my destination. When I said
that I was just taking a walk, the elderly couple invited me to
have coffee in their home about two miles further down the
road. I was happy to accept their kind offer and thought it would
be an interesting experience. Their home was a very
comfortable single-story house with nice furniture. They had
three children, a seventeen year old daughter and two older
sons. They asked many questions, but I could only smile back.
Sometimes I understood one or two simple sentences, but even
then I would just nod and shake my head. I couldn’t tell them
anything that might interest them about China. I was like a
mute and hated that I could not understand or communicate
more!

To this day, I still miss my American friends Eddy,
Millie, and Donald. The last I heard of Eddy he was discharged
in 1945. I believe he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and I would love
to find him again. I was luckier in renewing contact with
Donald Lewis. Bob Mestemacher came to Beijing in 1988 with
a group to study art at my school. I told him about Donald, and
was surprised to find they had gone to school together in St.

Louis and had been in the same class. What a small world!
Bob videotaped me as I talked to Donald. Then he called
Donald when he returned to the United States and sent him a
copy of the video tape. Donald then sent letters and photos to
me in Beijing in January, 1989. To bad it wasn’t possible to
email each other back then.

Of course not all my experiences in America were
pleasant. Once Tan, his girlfriend, Millie and I were about to
get into a taxi to go to the Arena when a drunken American GI
in a great rage saw us and came bounding toward me. He began
shouting, “Damn Chinese, no sooner we beat the Japs then we
get caught in your dirty civil war! We don’t want any more war,
do you hear me?” No matter how right or wrong his words, I
couldn’t handle his insults. When he tried to push me I dodged
quickly to one side and threw him down using the momentum of
his own weight. Before he realized what had happened to him,
my friends pushed me into the taxi and we drove off. Millie
tried to comfort me by explaining that he was drunk and did not
speak for most Americans. I resented his insult just the same,
but I also felt badly that Chinese soldiers, after eight years of
bitter fighting against a foreign aggressor, now faced the terrible
prospect of fighting their fellow country men. I shouldn’t have
blamed the drunken American soldier, but his words had cut
deeply into my heart.

In those war years everything in America seemed so
cheap. Cigarettes were only three cents a pack. Coke Cola was
a nickel. Even sex was available cheaply. My fellow cadets
readily learned to smoke, gamble, and go whoring. I seemed to
be the lone exception. I would spend my free time reading the
magazine, Health and Fitness, both to improve my English and
because I was deeply engaged in body-building and continued
to do so until the age of forty. Somehow I remained successful
in my resistance to those popular temptations.

Most of my life in the States was also full of music. The
jukebox was one of my best friends, which is where I learned
the words to the songs I liked the most. I would carefully try to
hear all of their words and then began to learn them. I bought
records, never missed a movie that was a musical, and went to
band concerts on weekends with my American friends. That is
how I became familiar with George Gershwin, Irving Berlin,
Jerome Kern, and all of America’s better known popular singers.
Fifty years have passed and I still cherish those lovely songs of
the 40’s. For years I have sung them to myself and taught them
to my children, my friends, and my students. Through the dark
years that were to follow, I would even sing the Air Force
anthem, “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder, Keep the wings,
level and true...” Those songs sustained my spirit during the
days I was imprisoned in 1957 and later during the cultural
revolution. So, through the years I have always tried every way
I could to find the words of songs I couldn’t completely recall
from those early days.

Years later in February, 1984, I was on a train to
Chengdu from Beijing. A young American couple walked down
the aisle looking for their berths. I could see they didn’t speak
Chinese, so I asked, “What can I do for you?” As they handed
me their tickets I discovered that their berths were located right
below mine! Yet another one of life’s mysterious coincidences
had taken place. There were six sleeping berths in one
compartment, three on each side. They were the only two
foreigners on that train and they seemed very happy to have a
fellow traveller who spoke English. We talked a lot and sang
the songs of the 40’s together. With their help I regained the
words of “Summer Time” and “As Time Goes By.” You can
imagine how happy this made me feel.

After the war’s end, we remained in the United States for
another nine months for the continued training required to
complete our cadet course. During this time, I discovered that
America is really a beautiful country, and that part of its charm
is its multinational diversity. I once visited New Mexico and
found that it has a distinctive and exotic atmosphere. Most of
the people that I saw on the street were Mexicans. Oriental skin
and hair, but western shapes and eyes. The girls were beautiful
and dressed in vivid colorful clothing. Their Mexican music and
the folk songs of a Latin American style appealed to me
immediately. There I also saw the last, and worst, movie of my
American stay. It was a rather senseless fighting film of the old
West. The hero was all-powerful and fought from the beginning
to the end without ever losing. Now that I reflect back, it must
have been made for teenagers.

Before we left the United States for China we were taken
on a memorable trip to Yosemite National Park in California.
The dense forest spread peacefully through the quiet clean
mountains. There in the middle of the forest was a tree larger
than any I’d ever seen before. I was told it was the second
largest tree in the world, and it was still growing. Unbelievably,
cars drove on a road running through a large opening cut in its
base. There we also saw native American Indian women selling
their handicrafts at the bus stop. Their skin color, facial contour,
and hair reminded me of the Mongolian women back home in
China. So, I was happy to buy a few souvenirs and postcards
from them.

~~~

In May, 1946, after over a year in cadet training, we
bade farewell to the United States in Seattle. As I stood on the
deck of our ship, I realized how reluctant I was to leave this
beautiful land. Still, I was naively excited over the prospect of
returning home and going to school at last, now that we had
finally won the war. The bright future of China absorbed my
thoughts, as I believed it could now only get better. I believed
that we could soon be as strong and prosperous as America. But
only a little more than a month after my return from the United
States the civil war conflict that the drunken American GI
cursed me for, broke-out into open warfare. My dreams were
lost and my heart broken. The calamity-ridden eight-year War
of Resistance against Japan had taken a terrible toll on China
and her people. Our motherland was a giant wasteland of
devastation. Everywhere people were in undescribable
destitution. Was there not to be even a breath of respite? Must
brother now fight brother? Where was the hope? What should I
do? I was both angered and distressed.

I didn’t know the right and wrong of this conflict, and
really didn’t care. I understood nothing about the politics. I
didn’t even know what a Communist was. Why were they
called the commi-bandits in China? What did they look like? I
simply never could aim my gun at my own brothers.
When I had joined the expeditionary army, it was
stipulated in explicit terms that all volunteers would be
discharged in three years and recommended for admission to
institutions of higher learning. With that as my motivation, I
made up my mind to leave the army when the time was up, and
go on to school. But the government was to throw its promise in
my face. After three years, in 1947, I handed the authorities my
discharge petition. The result was a resounding, “No!” The
reasons given were, first, I was not in the expeditionary army
any more, but now in the air force. Second, it was a time for
suppressing the Chinese Communists and all military personnel
were needed. It didn’t make any sense to me, what difference
was it if I was in the army or navy? “Discharged after three
years of service,” was for us, the volunteers. There was no use
trying to reason with the military authorities, and any efforts to
do so would only bring big trouble. I felt that there was only one
choice left for me, and that was to go my own way, which I
thought was the right thing to do.

One January day in 1947, just by chance, I saw in a
newspaper advertisement the name of my cousin-in-law, Xia
Yun-hu, as the producer of a movie. I thought he might be a
way for me to at least get considered by a school. Being very
desperate, I went to his office at the Continent Movie Company
in Shanghai to ask for help. Even though we hadn’t seen each
other for many years, he was very encouraging. He was all for
my dropping out of the army and boarding in his home until I
could find a job and a place of my own. I headed for his home
without hesitation and changed my name from Wu Chiachi to
Wu Jieqin, the one I now use. This new name is homophonic
with my former name, because I wanted my English certificate
from the U. S. to still be recognized. My new name also reflects
how much music means to me. The last part, “qin”, is the
generic name for stringed and keyboard instruments.
After leaving the army I stayed at my cousin’s home, still
hoping for a chance of getting into school, although I knew it
was nearly impossible. I had no money of my own, no
immediate family financial support, and no state support. My
only hope was now my cousin-in-law. He was very rich. I could
not find the courage to speak to him about my financial need
for school until one morning I happened to find him sitting
alone in his parlor. He encouraged me by asking, “What do you
think about your future?” The time seemed right. I answered
wistfully, “I wish I could go to school.” “Oh no,” he said, “I
think you’d better get a job.” My heart sank. I understood it was
too much to expect such a distant relative to support my dream
of going to school. After all, my cousin was only his concubine.
His wife would be unhappy and resentful if he supported his
concubine’s family member. I realize now, many years later,
there was yet another reason. With all the daughters in the
house I was not welcome. I did not know what to do. I was
uneasy in the house when his wife was home and resolved to
leave as quickly as possible and find a new place to live.
In a state of total frustration, I would often wander the
streets alone for hours. One day I was having lunch at Kai Fu
Restaurant with my close friend Zhang, when a man
approached from the next table. He heard our chatter and
realized that we were all from the same province. Once he
understood our need for help in finding a job, he showed his
concern as a fellow townsman by telling us of an organization
called, the Students’ Society. He told us that the leader of this
society was a man of power and influence. If we were to apply
for membership in this society, the leader, Mr. Liu, would help
us. In our desperate state, we did not hesitate in our decision.
We needed a job too badly. We did not realize until the day we
were asked to go through a rite of acceptance at Mr. Liu’s
home, that the Students’ Society was actually a part of a well
known secret society called, Qingbang (Blue Faction), an
organization of truly mysterious motives. It was a mutual
support fraternity originally formed by people of the lower class
struggling to make a living.

Mr. Liu was a pleasant old man from north China. With
his young wife he welcomed us and led us into the sitting room
of his home. There, hung on the front wall, was a silk scroll
with the name of the Students’ Society founder, Pan, written on
it. Incense burned on the desk before the scroll while big red
candles burned on both sides. A new member was to kowtow
(kneel on all fours with our heads touching the floor) to the
society’s ancestor, Pan, and then to Mr. Liu. But knowing our
family and social background, Mr. Liu advised us before the
ceremony, “You don’t have to kowtow. A simple bow will do.”
He may have also felt that two men still in Air Force uniforms
would look and feel ridiculous kowtowing to an old man.
We learned later that Mr. Liu was once the secretary to
the Kuomintang Minister of Finance, Kong Xiangxi. Then he
became an assistant director in the Central Bank of China. As
time went on, I visited him more often as a friend than as a
member of his organization. He recommended me to a number
of positions, but none worked out. I soon recognized that since
the war’s end he had lost his power and influence. Still, I liked
and sympathized with this kind hearted old man just the same. I
continued to visit him in his loneliness long after I lost hope in
his ability to help me find a job. One day he and his young
wife, formerly an actress, politely indicated that they would be
pleased if I would consider marrying their elder daughter, who
was then living in Chongqing. She was the daughter of his first
wife. I was embarrassed, for I was still very young and had not
the least desire to marry. Besides, I still had no job. My great
ambition was still to go to school. I said nothing in response to
their request, but they understood. The matter was tactfully
never brought up again, and we continued to be close friends
until I entered the Zhejiang Institute of Fine Arts after the
People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. After that we
lost touch.

While still living at my cousin’s, I traveled to visit a
friend in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. This is a small city
between Shanghai and Nanjing. One day while there, I
happened to pass by the Junior School of the National
Conservatory of Music. The jumbled sounds of different
instruments came from inside its walls. I couldn’t help but turn
and go on in. The students were children aged from about six to
eleven. All wore the same yellow cotton padded overcoats.
Some wore the coats of adults and looked very funny, but
charming nevertheless. I saw the terrible meaning of
malnutrition in their baby faces. But their wonderful musical
performances touched my heart deeply.

Roaming freely through the school, I came upon an older
boy playing the piano. When I appeared in front of him he
stopped and smiled with embarrassment. We chatted and I
understood that most of the children were orphaned during the
war against Japan. They came from an orphanage in Chongqing,
so they could all speak the Sichuan dialect. Learning this, I felt
even warmer towards them. The young pianist’s name was Bai
Zhemin and he went on to introduce me to one of his closest
friends, Gao Jinhua, a nine year old violinist. Soon I became
fond of them both and, during my stay in Changzhou, I took
them to my friend’s home with me whenever they were free. I
also took them to the cinema, bought toys for them, and played
games with them. Almost every day but Sunday I found time to
visit their school and listen to them practice.
We kept in contact from that visit until 1957 when I was
imprisoned. In 1951 they became among the original members
of the First Philharmonic Orchestra of the People’s Republic of
China. Then I would miss very few of their regular Sunday
concerts. Gao Jinhua would grow up to become the first violinist
and a conductor of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra of
Beijing. Bai Zhemin went on to play the clarinet and eventually
emigrated to Hong Kong.

During these difficult months my cousin-in-law still
would not help me go to school. His wife was not happy with
my residence in their house. One day he led me to his movie
studio and suggested I become a trainee to a movie
cameraman. It was impossible to refuse his offer. The next day
he moved me out of his home to the studio. I was disappointed
from the beginning. A trainee served in fact as his master’s
servant for an unspecified number of years. He was not
permitted to work with the camera until he had mastered all of
the techniques, yet they would not really teach me any of these
techniques. A camera-assistant named Hu, from Brazil, had
worked as an assistant for eight years without ever being
allowed to work independently behind the camera. The
cameramen jealously guarded their profitable monopoly on their
work. It was very frustrating for me, as I am a doer, not an
observer.

Soon I was forced to make up my mind to get out of
there. I had to try every possible means to get into school. With
my small allowance I had bought some books and began to
study English. I began to believe that my best chances for
schooling would be in the United States. I knew it was almost
impossible for someone like me, with no money, no financial
support, and no social status, to have such a chance. But I kept
on dreaming. After all, I had been to America once, why
couldn’t I go again?

One day at the studio, in the fall of 1948, my cousin-inlaw
told me that my third uncle had just returned from the
United States. The next morning,with my heart filled with hope,
I went to see him. He lived in a house with beautiful
surroundings in the western part of Shanghai, which was
formerly the French concession. A plain clothed guard answered
the gate bell. He demanded my identification and a letter of
introduction. I had neither. After confirming by phone that I was
his master’s nephew he let me in. As I looked at all that
enveloped me while being led in to him, I wondered what work
my uncle could be doing that brought him such luxury and
service. I waited in the parlor for ten minutes before my uncle,
still in his nightclothes, appeared. I asked during our talk what
he did in the United States. He casually answered that he had
“been in the States on a study tour and now was running some
newspapers and magazines.” It wasn’t the truth of course. I
discovered the truth in 1950 after the Korean War broke out. By
chance I saw some photos in the window of the Xinhua Book
Store that exposed the United States’ training special agents of
the Kuomintang. My uncle, Zhen Xiling, was pictured as one of
the administrative heads of the KMT Ministry of National
Defense in Secret Affairs.

When he eventually understood what I had been doing for
the past few years and what my expectations were, he said he
would send me to one of his friends in San Francisco who
owned a large ranch. His friend had been swindled out of eighty
thousand U. S. dollars by his former assistant, so he needed
someone he could trust. Needless to say, I was overjoyed by
this sudden and unexpected turn of good fortune. My uncle said
I would have to be patient and wait for his telephone call,
which he would make to me after he completed the
arrangements and all the formalities, including a visa from the
United States Embassy. I waited day and night until early one
morning in the spring of 1949. I could wait no longer, finally I
went to see him. As I stepped into the parlor I saw the house
was in chaos. People rushing to carry things in and out, upstairs
and downstairs. My uncle spoke hurriedly to me, “I’m leaving
for Sichuan right away. The plane is waiting.” He went
immediately back to packing. The air was very tense. I still
didn’t realize what my uncle was up to. All I could see was that
my hopes were vanishing like soap bubbles. Turning, with my
heart in my throat, I left without a word.

By this time I had reestablished contact with my father,
but he was very poor and weak by then. I felt compelled to
reach out and help him even though he had virtually destroyed
our father-son relationship. I sent him a watch, my uniform and
an overcoat. I soon discovered that he sold them all for alcohol.
In those days my income was only two silver dollars a month,
just enough for my meals and incidental expenses. Yet he
continued to beg me to send him money. The only way I could
do as he wished was to sell something, and the only things I
had worth selling were the violin and the revolver I brought
from the United States. So, I took my beloved violin to the
Mayhui Music Instruments Store in downtown Shanghai. The
shopkeeper looked it over and pretended little interest. “Well,
twenty,” he said. That was lower than the lowest price in his
store. The highest was 240 Jinyuanquan (the new currency
issued by the KMT). Even though I knew little about the value
of violins, I was sure it was worth much more than what the
shopkeeper was offering.

While I stood there not knowing what to do, an old
couple came in and asked the shopkeeper to show them the
best violin he had. They were not satisfied with the instrument
he brought out to them from his private quarters. When I noticed
their continued dissatisfaction, I went up to them a little
embarrassed and asked, “Would you like to have a look at
mine?” They looked it over carefully and asked how much I
wanted. This put me on the spot because I had no idea what it
was worth. Then I thought since mine was to their liking, that
meant mine was better than the best one in the shop. So, if I
asked the average price of the violins in the store, it would not
be unfair to this old couple. As soon as I said 150 Jinyuanquan,
they took me to their home on Xia Fei Road to get the money.
The furniture, paintings, and sculptures told me that this was
the home of artists. The master’s name was Pang Xunqin, and
they had a son and a daughter. It was their son who would be
receiving the violin.

Later, one morning early in September, 1949, as a new
freshman in Zhejiang Institute of Fine Arts, I waited in front of
the auditorium for the opening ceremonies. To my surprise, I
saw Mr. Pang, my violin buyer, waiting there also with the
faculty. As it turned out, he was a well known professor at the
institute. What a small world! He greeted me, “You are new
here, aren’t you?” He also recognized me at once. His two
children were also new students. His son, Pang Jun, told me
later that the Shanghai Philharmonic Society offered them 2500
Renminbi yuan for the violin, but that he had refused. In 1950,
2500 yuan equalled approximately $10,000 while 150
Jinyuanquan equalled only $400. Still not bad for my $75
investment. Whenever I saw him playing my violin that year, I
felt both very proud and sad.

The money I got for my violin and the $80 more I got
from selling the revolver lasted me for about six months. Then I
was again very short of money. Once the civil war broke out
inflation was incredible and the money just wasn’t lasting like I
thought it would. This run away inflation lasted until the
Communist Party was able to take complete control of the
county. During this turbulent period we had to carry a sack of
money to buy a pair of shoes. One day I went to a small
restaurant for noodles. When I ordered a second bowl, I found
the price had gone up! In just a blink of an eye I had to pay
more for the same thing. I began to realize that it was vanity
under such circumstances to think of going to school or
especially abroad. I continued to fall into total despair.
My most rewarding activity during this period was
bodybuilding. I had known my coach, Zhao Zhugang, since I
was a boy. He owned the Shanghai Institute of Bodybuilding. I
took my training course very seriously, never missing an
exercise. My dedication earned me the nickname Pin min san
lang after a Robin Hood type figure from the classic novel, The
Outlaws of the Water Margin, who was noted for his willingness
to disregard even his own life in his enthusiastic devotion to a
task. Mr. Zhao was so pleased with my enthusiasm and progress
that he actually waived my tuition. This dedication repaid me
with a very strong, well muscled body that helped me greatly to
survive the many years of hardship that lay ahead.

Chapter 2

2007-09-01T19:19:00.000-07:00

May 3, 1939, was a day I will never forget. I was sitting
in drawing class at about ten in the morning, when the air-raid
sirens began to sound. For the previous two months the sirens
had sounded frequently, but no enemy planes had ever
appeared. But because Chongqing had become China’s wartime
capital, we were all very nervous and this time all classes were
suspended. I hurried home, but no sooner had I run out of
Zhongshan Park, than I heard the rumbling of Japanese planes
and the sound of bombs exploding in the distance. As the
explosions drew closer I could feel them in my heart and smell
them in the air. Then they began to explode directly around me
and the earth shook under my feet as I continued to run home.

There were screaming people everywhere and the street was
full of smoke as buildings burned wherever I turned. I ran as fast
as I could and finally reached home and threw myself into my
mother’s arms. She immediately began to scream in horror. I
stood there with blood all over my clothes, face, arms, and
hands. But I felt no pain. After some frantic searching, we
discovered that I was not even hurt, and that I had been
splattered with someone else’s blood while running through the
streets.

My family, nearly thirty of us, hid in the basement under
the theater stage. We hadn’t been hiding very long before
billowing smoke and even sparks found their way into our
hiding place from the outside. My mother was the first to notice
the impending doom and began to cry, “Get out quick! They’ve
dropped incendiary bombs!” Mother was right and we all ran
out from the basement into the burning and chaotic street. It
was packed with people, all of them running, shouting, and
crying. All of the houses around us were burning, and
everywhere I looked, scattered about the street were the many
dead and wounded from the strafing and bombing of the
Japanese airplanes. Because my mother had been trained to be
a nurse by the Christians, she was able to help many people.

Soon though, we were forced to run for cover with the crowd
back up the hill toward Zhongshan Park. Meanwhile, the
firemen remained to fight the flames raging throughout the city,
and their sirens and bugles sounded like sad crying animals
over the screams of the people around us. I felt desolate, but I
was not as frightened as the adults. This was a new experience
for me. It was exciting and aroused my curiosity, much like a
great adventure in one of my uncle’s movies. But even so, I
knew the horror was real. Fortunately for us, the Japanese
planes did not bomb and strafe in waves that day as they would
in the days to come, or many more innocent people would have
been killed.

We reached Zhongshan Park at last and waited in the
open until dusk when the all clear was finally sounded. Hoping
to calm the people, government officials came to talk to us and
hand out bread. My family escaped with only a slight loss
compared to what we would lose in later attacks. The strangest
loss was a millstone, flying from somewhere, which tore a huge
hole in our roof and landed on my parents bed. Also, many
valuables, including our woolen sweaters, were stolen by
pillagers who, like maggots, took advantage of the death around
them to feed off of the pain of others.

Fear and disorder still prevailed early the next morning
as the smell of sulphur and smoke hung everywhere about the
city. Those who had the opportunity joined relatives in the
country. We also fled, to my Uncle Wang’s home outside the
city, hoping to escape the next air raid. On the ferryboat at
Chao Tian Men (Facing the Sky Gate), one of my younger
brothers urged, “Be quick! The enemy planes will come again
soon!” He was quickly scolded for saying such a thing, because
the elders thought it was a bad omen to say such things in the
morning. Whether bad omen or foresight, my brother was right.
The Japanese bombers appeared only a few minutes after he
was scolded. On this day, the bombing was worse. Ever since
then, May 3rd and May 4th have become synonymous with
memories of the days the Japanese fire-bombed the wartime
capital of China. We know what is meant when people ask,
“Where were you on May 3rd and May 4th?” Or when one
says, “My parents died on May 3rd, May 4th.” Even today,
elders understand when someone says, “I have not returned
home since May 3rd, May 4th.”

Many years later, in 1986, I received a letter from an
American friend, Roy Gridley. I first met him and his wife
Marilyn in Beijing in 1982. He is younger than I, and before I
told him my story he had known about the Japanese bombing of
Chongqing only through his memories of the movie-news. In
1939 I did not yet know about the Flying Tigers or Victory-Mail.
But like the ancient Chinese poet Tu Fu, we Chongqing
Chinese thought of the geese flying in their V-formation as
bringers of good news. Roy sent me this poem in his letter:

May 3-4, 1939

Too late now for geese
Bringing their V-Letters
Like Flying Tigers to Chongqing.
Too late for Ginger Rogers
Dancing a-top Chinese captions
On the war-lord patrolled
Theater screen
Downhill from Zhongshan Park.
Now, no sounds of weeping sirens,
No fear of strafing Nippon Vultures
Bombing the craggy, crowded city,
No blossoming anti-aircraft fire.
It’s no longer black-and-white
Movie-tone to me, who now await
Fresh news upon a breeze blowing
Across the Jialing
From Liang-feng Hill.

I was now twelve years old when we were forced to
temporarily live with my Uncle Wang for about four months.
His home was north of the Jialing River, about five miles from
Chongqing. During that time, my uncle was able to purchase an
old house on a small plot of land at the top of a gentle slope
called Liang-feng Bao (Cool Breeze Castle). This was another
five miles from Uncle Wang’s other country home, and my
father soon built a new house for us there, which was right next
to the old one on the same plot of land.

The countryside in Sichuan is beautiful, and Liang-feng
Hill (Cool Breeze Hill) was a deserved name, but sometimes it
was not just breezy, but actually stormy. Our home sat on top of
the hill, surrounded on three sides by a dense bamboo grove.
There was a courtyard in front, and next to the courtyard was a
beautiful pool of about 60 square meters. At the north and south
ends of the pool there were huge banyan trees stretching their
limbs out over the green water, creating a picturesque scenery.
A variety of trees also lined the path up to the houses. One
beautiful tree was a Mengzi, whose leaves gave off a strong
and delicate fragrance. I would often wrap my fishing bait in
these leaves to give it what I thought would be an alluring
smell. All around our property were terraced fields, and the air
was filled with the mingled scents from many plants. It was
easy to feel relaxed and happy in this refuge far from the fire,
screams, and death of Chongqing.

Unlike in Chongqing, the birds sang merrily everyday.
Especially sweet were the sparrows who would sing to us every
morning. It was as if a bomb had never fallen on Chongqing. As
the sparrows sang their clear true song, a species of thrush
played in the bamboo groves and flocks of lark and magpie
clustered and chattered in the banyan trees. Around the broadbeans
growing in the garden on the left side of our house, the
hudou and broad-bean birds would fly and congregate looking
for what they could steal. They are half the size of a sparrow,
always in groups, and always singing rich clear melodies. Yet
another, most beautiful bird with emerald green feathers, often
flew by our home. It was probably a species of parakeet drifting
down from the deep canyon forests. In flight it would flap its
wings twice, then enter into a graceful glide with its long tail
trailing behind as it squeaked overhead, contrasting sharply to
the sweet clarity of the sparrow’s voice.

I developed a love for the natural wildlife in Liang-feng
Hill, except for the snakes. I remember that in the summer of
1942, when I was fifteen, I alone killed seven snakes, some big
some small, some poisonous and some nonpoisonous. A fierce
fight in our kitchen between our dog and a boa constrictor
awakened us late one night. The sounds of barking and a
horrible thrashing sound brought us running from our beds.
Groping for a flashlight, I opened the kitchen door. There coiled
on the floor, was a huge boa as thick as the mouth of a cup. It
was already wounded and our dog, Silver, was further
encouraged in his attack by my sudden appearance, lunging at
the terrified snake with even greater zeal. With his deadly sharp
teeth, Silver made sure the snake could offer no further
resistance. Fortunately the boa was nonpoisonous, otherwise it
might have proven disastrous for our over-zealous dog.
We named him Silver because of his frosty white color.
He was our best hunter and a good friend to me. One day when I
came home from school, a maid-servant suddenly warned me to
be careful of him. What she said frightened me and I ran to find
him. When I found him, he was lying alone in a corner of the
courtyard. He did not greet me with his usual wild-with-joy
shaking head and wagging tail. He just laid there, with no
expression in his eyes or body language at all. He
acknowledged my approach, but he then just rose slowly and
limped away. My young heart was crushed and I felt sure he
wanted to tell us, “Please don’t touch me. I might infect you.”
He had distemper. That night he left the house and never came
back. When I was told a week later that Silver had been killed
by someone who feared his disease, tears of grief rolled down
my face. It was like I had lost my best friend.

These years in the country were also my first
acquaintance with peasants and their way of life. Everyday I
saw them toil on the land from dawn to dusk for their landlords.
Yet what the landlords gave back in return for their life’s labor
could not begin to fill the peasants’ stomachs. Often they could
only afford one quilt for an entire family. Underwear was
unknown to the girls, and they wore only the minimum of outergarments
as well. Many fled from starvation to become beggars
and prostitutes in the cities. Whenever I encountered one of
them I felt ill. I would give a bowl of rice to a local beggar
when I could, but I knew it was of no lasting use. My efforts
wouldn’t change anything. It would only enable them to live
through the night, then the hunger would begin again. I often
wished I could become the richest man in the world to help all
the desperately poor people around me to live a better life. Of
course I didn’t know what caused such poverty. Because of
what I was told, I poured all my hatred out on those rich
landlords, profiteers, and corrupt government officials who
seemed to suck the very life out of the poor. I thought I could be
one of the famous heroes, from some of the books I had read,
who had robbed the rich to help the poor. While young, it is
very hard to understand why such suffering is taking place in
your own back yard.

Meanwhile, even after moving out to Liang-feng Hill,
family life went from bad to worse. The root of the problems
was still opium. Again and again our elders lost the chance of
reopening our cinema or even getting another job, as they lay
on the bed under the influence of that horrid opium. We lived
on selling things such as family jewelry, films, movie
projectors, fur coats, shoes, and anything else we could. It was
as if in some drug induced vision, they knew what horror the
future would bring to those who worked hard, were selfemployed,
and showed any evidence of wealth. Those servants
who were employed by my family were left idle as the
household deteriorated in a downward spiral. Wet-nurses were
maintained long after the babies had grown to be children. One
of them even joined her masters and became an opium addict
herself. She would lie on the bed with Uncle and Aunt smoking
opium all day long. There she would sleep in a daze until late
at night, or rather early the next morning. Then the inevitable
happened. She began a sexual relationship with Uncle, while
Aunt tacitly approved. The woman aborted one baby, and then
eventually another. My two elder brothers had become so
ashamed and indignant at being part of such a decadent family.
Together we all made up our minds to leave that house for good
as soon as we could.

By this time in 1940, the Japanese began bombing
Chongqing in earnest. This carnage was a coercive tactic to
make our President, Chiang Kai-shek, cease his resistance and
surrender totally. They wanted to clear the deck in China so
they could direct their military energies toward the growing
Pacific War. The air raids against the city increased with
intensity as the enemy began to bomb in waves. We called it
“fatigue bombing.” We couldn’t sleep or even prepare our
meals without being interrupted by the sound of incoming
bombers and their deadly messages, and we were miles from
the city.

Finally, the Air Defense Headquarters developed some
much-needed measures. They made use of the distinguishing
feature of Chongqing as a mountain city. Poles fifty meters
high, were set up on selected mountain tops around the city.
When the enemy’s planes took off from Enshi in Hubei province
to the east, they were still more than five hundred miles from
Chongqing. When word came to the government that bombers
had left the Japanese air base, huge red balls were raised up the
poles. We called them the red lanterns, because they were
shaped like old court lanterns. They could be seen from all
sides for dozens of miles. When the people spotted the first red
ball, they knew they had just enough time to prepare food and
water, and gather any necessary clothing. The first person to
spot the ball rushed to tell all his neighbors. We called the first
red ball the “pre-alarm.” When the Japanese planes reached
Wanxian in eastern Sichuan, they were about three hundred
miles away. Then the second red ball would go up. At the same
time the sirens sounded one long and two short blasts. When the
planes were no more than fifty miles away, the two red balls
were brought down and the sirens’ emergency alarm
sounded—one long blast followed by continuous short bursts.
Within minutes of hearing the emergency alarm we
began to hear the rumblings of the Japanese planes approaching
to the east. We didn’t dare stay in the house, even though we
were ten miles from the center of the city. We would hide in a
hollow place beneath a large rock which projected out from a
hillside about half a mile from our house. On summer nights
when the bombers came, we walked in the moonlight along
narrow dikes of land that divided the water-filled rice paddies,
making our way toward our rock shelter. In a silent and single
file line, we walked and listened to the frogs singing, thousands
of voices—as one fell, another rose—not unlike a modern rock
chorus. Even though the expressions on the faces of the adults
revealed their increasing terror with each step, we young boys
shivered with a nervous, childish excitement.

A sadness hung heavy in the air after the siren began its
cry. The cliff faced east, so we could see the bombers
approaching from over the horizon and then passing just above
our heads on their return. During the daytime raids, I would
count them one by one. Usually there were twenty four or thirty
six planes per wave, with two to three waves per raid. Within
seconds, we could hear the screaming of the bombs as they
were dropped from the planes onto the people in Chongqing.
Then we would hear a sudden concentrated explosion. After a
few of these raids, we knew that if the bombs were released
right over our heads they would fall directly on Chongqing. We
also knew how far ahead of us they needed to be dropped if
they were going to fall on us. So, once the planes had passed a
certain point, we all felt safe if we hadn’t heard the screaming
terror of the falling bombs by that time.

Out of necessity, as the days wore on, our ears became
very well trained. Eventually, we could roughly calculate the
number of planes and even the type, and even whether they
were Japanese or our own, by the rumbling sounds of their
engines. The Japanese mostly used a two-engine bomber, Type
96, nicknamed the “Vulture.” They felt so secure, they did not
even have fighter planes escort them. Our fighter planes that
were sent up to meet them were old British Hawks and Russian
E-15’s and E-16’s. Later we had American P-39’s and P-40’s,
the planes of the Flying Tigers. Later still, there were twinfusalaged
P-38’s and P-51 Mustangs.

Unfortunately, we never seemed to have enough planes
to match the Japanese onslaught. Even so, the Chinese pilots
proved to be very brave. One day I counted 108 Japanese planes
flying overhead. This was the most I had ever seen at that point
in the war. A single Chinese plane, by itself, with no other
support, challenged all 108 of them the best he could. We
watched this lonely E-16 dive more than once firing into the
pack of bombers. On his fourth pass, the massed gunfire from
the bombers hit him. A small blossom of fire burst from his
plane. It went into a spin and we watched with excitement and
cheers as the pilot parachuted to safety. Later we learned,
however, that he had died of his wounds. We all felt
downhearted. Watching his challenge as we had, it was like a
personal defeat as is often the case with war.

The Japanese knew we could never match the number of
their planes. They swelled with arrogance in the bold manner of
their attacks. One day a single Zero fighter flew back and forth
over our area trying to locate the anti-aircraft guns that were
hidden only 500 meters from our house. In his search he flew so
low his plane almost touched the treetops. Our gunners became
so enraged by his boldness that when the Zero gave up and
turned its back on them they were emotionally compelled to
fire at him across the treetops, in spite of their orders not to.
Immediately the plane turned back around at the renewed
evidence of the guns’ presence. I watched in excitement as our
guns immediately lay flat again under their camouflage. Then
the damned Zero swaggered arrogantly away. These were the
repeated experiences that increased my resolve to eventually
join the air corps. I resolved to avenge these insults and shoot
every Zero in the sky.

We had only a few of these anti-aircraft guns with which
to defend Chongqing. There were four German .76 caliber guns
in place near our home. We soon made friends with the guns’
communication squad, which was even briefly stationed in our
home. The soldiers let me stand nearby and watch when they
practiced shooting their guns off into the distant mountainside. I
would just stand there next to the guns and feel like I was
already one of those soldiers defending my country. During the
many Japanese daytime raids we would watch as the antiaircraft
shells exploded in the sky around the bombers like big
white flowers in a vast blue field. But I was even more intrigued
by the search lights criss-crossing the sky over the city at night
looking for the bombers. To this day my heart still aches
because I only saw two Japanese planes shot down during those
many raids on Chongqing. One was a lead plane of a bomber
squadron with an eight man crew aboard, and I remember the
shock of learning the unbelievable news that one of the crew
was from far off Italy!

One of these massive raids proved especially destructive
to our family. The Japanese decided to fire-bomb Chongqing
again. The result was the inevitable mass destruction, with
more than a hundred homes and businesses left in flames across
the city. It was in that raid, on June 9, 1939, that our theater
was burned to the ground. Nothing was left. Even with that cruel
and desperate raid, neither the Chinese people nor our family
were cowed into thoughts of surrender. Ultimately this is always
the response when defending your motherland. About a year
later, on a fine summer morning, the Japanese planes flew over
again, dropping not bombs, but leaflets, like large snowflakes
blowing in the wind as they fell from the sky. These poison
snowflakes carried an ultimatum demanding once again that
Chiang’s government stop resisting, and come to the surrender
table. In a rage of national pride, we all tore the leaflets into
pieces and threw them back into the sky—to be carried away
by the wind.

My mother eventually became panic-stricken with severe
anxiety attacks as the air raids continued month after month.

Her heart problems seemed to grow worse and worse with each
raid. As her condition worsened, she became too sick to even
walk to the cliff shelter with the rest of the family. She could no
longer bear the heart-shaking roar of the anti-aircraft guns,
especially when they began to fire without warning. So, during
the raids I would place myself where I could view the guns and
my mother sitting outside her room, both at the same time. As
soon as I saw the flash of the firing guns and before hearing the
roar, I would signal to her. This helped prepare my mother for
the noise to come, making her feel a bit easier.

Obviously, during those years, all of our schools were
closed because of the air raids, so as students without a
classroom, we often spent our days gathering wild mulberries,
fishing or hunting. Once on a sunny morning I was lying on the
grass watching the clouds drift by when I spotted a small
sparrow attacking several eagles. I had never seen so many
eagles at one time before. I was amazed, because a sparrow is
no match for even one eagle. But this sparrow was so nimble
and quick, diving with such speed and agility, the eagles were
baffled. He would dive from great heights like an arrow shooting
through the sky. As I watched him, I thought of our tiny Chinese
air force which flew with such courage against the mighty
Japanese. I admired him so much that I engraved a new name
on my slingshot: White Sparrow. Like the bird, I again resolved
to join the air corps to fight the eagles in our skies.

While living in the Chongqing countryside, we often saw
hares, foxes, wild ducks and other fowl around our house. My
oldest cousin-brother Yan-hua, once even captured a young
leopard. Another time, near our house, we surrounded and tried
to kill a fox. We had a German double-barrel shotgun, two rat
killing air-rifles, and from my uncle’s former French bodyguard,
a big revolver. Yan-hua, age twenty-five and the chief of our
group, had the shotgun. Two older cousins chased the fox
through the woods and left me, the youngest, with the big
revolver at a fork in the road to prevent the fox from escaping.
As planned, the fox came running toward me. I hid behind a
tree and lifted the revolver, too big and heavy for my young
hands. Unfortunately, I forgot to click on the firing hammer, so
when I pulled the trigger the gun jumped, fired, and where the
bullet went I didn’t know. The fox ran faster and never looked
back as he darted into the woods.

One bright autumn day we went to hunt wild ducks on the
Changjiang River. On that stretch of the river, there was a huge
rock islet jutting majestically out of the water. There we spotted
a small flock of ducks sunning themselves on the west side of
the rock, so we found a small boat and rowed around to the east
side of the islet, out of sight from the ducks. Leaving the boat
behind, we climbed the rock and crept quietly toward the ducks.
We aimed and fired! The startled ducks took flight in all
directions, but three were hit and fell into the churning water.
We hurried to the boat and rowed quickly to pick them up, but
they had vanished. The current was so swift they disappeared
only a few seconds after hitting the water.

Swimming was always one of my favorite sports. There
was a pond nestled in a quiet valley near my Uncle Wang’s
house. It was formed by a mountain stream that flowed down to
the Jialing River. It was a fast flowing stream, cascading down
from the slopes above at almost forty-five degrees, with its bed
full of exciting bumps and hollows. I was fond of sitting in the
water upstream and sliding down its slick course into the pond.
However, the bumps and hollows created some definite trouble
for my buttocks. But I was glad the hollows were there just the
same, for in them I found tiny fresh water shrimp and small
crabs which I ate raw on the spot.

One summer my mother took me to a fortune teller who
told her that I should stay away from water or something bad
would happen to me; perhaps I would even drown. I hated this
woman for telling that superstitious nonsense to my vulnerable
mother. Of course, something bad did happen to me. That was
the fact that my mother forbid me to go swimming anymore.
Still, I secretly went swimming anyway. One day when I came
back from such a swim, mother asked, “Dear, where have you
been all afternoon?” I assumed an indifferent pose and
answered, “Oh I’ve just been playing with some boys on the
slope and picking wild mulberries.” Then mother drew me to
her side, held out my arm with her left hand, and scratched
along my forearm with her fingernail. Following her fingernail
was a clear, white strip where she had scratched away the film
left by the river water. I had no rebuttal. From then on after
swimming I was very careful to wash the muddy river film from
my body. Then when mother scratched my arm, she felt more at
ease and wore a satisfied smile.

But one day I barely escaped with my life. During the
summer, the river often rises suddenly because of the piandong
yu, or heavy eastern rains. When this comes, you can hear the
roar of the waterfall in the lower reaches of the river above
Chongqing from quite a distance away. That day I had not
noticed the sudden rise in the river, and in the excitement of
my sport I did not think of the danger. After just a few strokes
out into the cool water, the undertow caught me. It felt like
driving a car and the brakes stop working. Instinctively, I swam
hard for shore, which was only five meters away. Fear increased
my strength, but the current fought against me. I won the
struggle, but I reached the shore only thirty meters from the
waterfall. My legs were like jelly, as I lay exhausted on the
river’s bank just thankful to be alive. You can be sure I never
told mother about that swim or near catastrophe. It would have
only re-enforced her beliefs in the superstitions.

During those years in the countryside, we had a cook
named Fu who was the strangest old man I’d ever seen. He was
about sixty-five, tall, thin and very healthy. He had tanned,
wrinkled skin, but only a few scattered teeth. His face was
always flushed and his eyes were bloodshot from all the wine
he drank. Almost every night in the dark he went to fetch water
in the valley with only the moon for light. “Aren’t you afraid of
ghosts?” I once asked when he returned from one of his nightly
fetches. With pretended reproach, he said, “How could there be
a ghost in this world? I’ve never seen one in all of my sixty-five
years!” In this way, the realistic old villager inoculated me
against any future fearful belief in ghosts.

He was optimistic and humorous. He gave crazy nicknames
to the boys in our family which he would rhyme in
Chinese into a jingle:

Even-handed the Eldest
No Needs the Second
Flurry the Third (that was me)
Joker the Fourth
Next Back
32
King of Hell the Fifth
Bed-Wetter the Sixth, and
Crying All Day the Last.

We called him Yaksha because of a strange habit he had.
He usually fell asleep before eleven at night. Then, when the
big clock in the sitting room struck eleven, he would begin to
sing in his sleep. He sang songs from the local opera,
accompanying himself with sounds like an orchestra. A Yaksha,
in Buddhist lore, is a helper of the demons in hell. We thought
this old man must be a spirit from the nether world the way he
sang in his sleep.

Yaksha had no wife, which could have explained his
irresistible desires. A forty-year old widow also helped in our
house. One night we boys were playing hide-and-seek, and I hid
in a corner behind a door. Then I heard a rhythmical groaning
coming from Yaksha’s bamboo bed in the kitchen. I peeped
through the crack between the door and the frame. What I saw
amazed me so much I froze. There lay old Yaksha and the
widow, stark naked. The moaning grew shorter and quicker until
together they broke out in a strange, strong groaning sound.
Then, suddenly all was mysteriously quiet and calm. What I
saw and heard created a strong sense of mystery and of course a
great sensual appeal. I had seen them flirt and touch, but I had
never before seen anyone doing what they were doing that
night. The next morning I told my two elder brothers about it,
and I was surprised that it was not news at all to my eldest
brother.

Still the air raids continued. Still we all went to hide
under the rock. Still there was no school. In fact, I did not have
the opportunity to return to school again until I was thirteen. By
this time I needed to make up two years of primary school, so I
used my elder brothers’ books to create my own lessons. When I
was finally admitted to Jianchuan Middle School, nine miles
from our home, it was necessary for me to become a resident
student. I came home the very first weekend and stayed close to
my mother the entire time. By this time she had grown
extremely weak from her illness, so as we approached our
house after our short walk together, I held her arm and halflifted
her up the slope. When I first did this she was startled,
then she smiled happily as if she thought, “Look my dearest is
grown up now. How strong he is!” Even so, two weeks later I
was struck down with an attack of appendicitis. My mother took
me to a hospital in Chongqing, but refused to give them
permission to operate. In those days it was still a dangerous
operation, and she was very fearful. She had me undergo a long
treatment with medicines instead. As a result, I missed yet
another year of school as I spent weeks in bed and months of
convalescence.

~~~

It was during that summer in 1941 that my mother,
frightened and exhausted by the endless waves of Japanese
bombing, was confined to her bed, never to get up again. In
little more than a month she left us forever. She was only thirtythree.
For the first time I knew the true pain of a broken heart
and of total loss while only fourteen.

The day before my mother died was my aunt’s birthday.
That evening the rest of the family was preparing for the
birthday celebration, so I was the only one left by her bedside.
For a long time mother did not utter a word. Then, in a last
radiance of the setting sun, she spoke clearly to me saying,
“Dear son, today is your aunt’s birthday. Go have fun, and
hurry.” At such a moment how could I run outside and play?
Instead I bent over her failing body, never wanting to leave her.
I felt her arms turning cold. I had heard that when the limbs
become cold the person is going to die. Dread began its attack
on me. I held her arms in mine and tried to warm them by
pressing them against my face. I realized it was hopeless, but I
prayed for a miracle. If the Budisatva Goddess Guan Yin, really
existed, she would save mother now. She had to! I needed
Mother so much! I went to the bamboo forest, knelt facing the
west, and prayed that Guan Yin would use her greatest magic to
help my poor mother and stop the endless bombing.

But no one could save her, not even Guan Yin. She
lingered on through that night and into the next day. Late in the
afternoon she began to struggle. I hurried to locate my father,
which took me some time. He was sitting under the big Yong
tree by the pond reading a novel. I couldn’t believe he would be
sitting there reading a novel while mother was dying. I will
never be able to wipe that painful image from my memory. He
didn’t seem to have the least ounce of human feeling for his
own wife. Even animals feel more compassion at such a time
than he showed that day. It showed me that his heart was empty
and cold as a winter stone. He was in shock and I hated him
from that moment on. Mother was at her last gasp when father
finally came to her. She urged him to clear the flem from her
throat for it was suffocating her. When he did, with it came her
last breath.

Perhaps my mother had begun suffering from my father’s
terrible temper and neglect early in their marriage, and then
continuing through the years as his humanity degenerated
further and further with his addiction to opium. I watched her
die in pain, with her eyes dreadfully wide open as if in terror. I
burst into tears, my heart was torn apart. All of my world
seemed to depart with her. Crying, I threw myself upon her dead
body, wanting never to part from her again. She was the only
loving and stable thing I had in my life.

After Mother’s death, I changed into a boy of very few
words, weighed down with sorrow and easily carried away by
my emotions. My mother would not have died if she’d had a
good husband. Of that I was sure. In the meantime our family
circumstances continued to go from bad to worse. Father took
one of Uncle’s maids, a slave girl named Xiuqin, as his wife
only five months after Mother’s death. Xiuqin was only two
years older than I. We had often played together and my older
brother had always loved her very much. His hidden love for
Xiuqin became a very painful secret after she married Father.
She was certainly not the legendary cruel stepmother.

Rather she was a kind-hearted country woman, the daughter of
a very poor peasant. Xiuqin had two companions who were also
sold to my family when they were children. One died of an
early illness and the other eventually became a prostitute,
frequently entertaining the soldiers in the back of our theater.
As the family continued to change I knew there was nothing
much left for me at home, and I knew I would soon have to
leave and learn to fend for myself.

That following year, when I was fourteen, I attended my
first semester of junior middle school in Chongqing. As our
situation continued to deteriorate my father was soon unable to
afford the expense of my board and lodging. This became very
evident after he lost his job as the head of the local highway
department. He was fired because of his corruption and his
opium addiction. That ended any hopes of my formal schooling
until I entered Zhejiang Art Institute in Hangzhou eight years
later.

During this period, as the cursed opium and the cruel
Japanese continued to destroy our lives, we began to live in
cold and hunger. Often we had only water, and no food. The
endless aching in my stomach would keep me from sleeping.
When I would step from the table that served as my bed, my
legs trembled with weakness. Once we collected wheat husks
and bran and boiled them in water, but what we ate went
straight through us. It did not digest at all. By winter, there was
no bedding left. My table-bed was covered with ragged cotton
wadding that offered only the barest protection from the cold. I
huddled up, muscles drawn tight, the whole night. I would wake
up in the morning exhausted.

Later in the bitter days of spring, I contracted malaria.
We couldn’t even afford a doctor or a stay at the hospital. The
treatment I eventually received only furthered my illness. It
depended purely and solely on fright. At night my superstitious
older cousins and an old widow servant would yell and hit me,
trying to surprise and scare the malaria out of my body. It didn’t
work. In fact it nearly destroyed what strength I had left in me.
Then, one day, during a malaria attack, they claimed
that I must climb to the top of the mountain near our home. I
did as they said, climbing three miles along a very narrow path.
I shivered, first my body then my heart. My shivers led to fever.
I became more and more tired, weaker and weaker. I sweated
profusely. Although I despaired, I endured with dogged will. My
legs weighed a thousand pounds each. I collapsed completely
when I finally reached the top. Tears of pain streamed down my
face as my eldest brother carried me home on his back. Once
again, the ordeal proved to be no cure. My face become pale
and swollen, my body weakened. I suffered from malaria for
nearly two more years.

During this desperate time my cousin by marriage, Guihua,
came to visit from Chengdu. She was my only source of
human warmth. One night under the lonely Yong tree, where we
buried my mother, she suggested to me, “Why don’t you go to
your grandma? I can buy you a train ticket.” Qianwei, where
grandmother lived, was a long way off, in far southwestern
Sichuan. I kept my head down and didn’t utter a word. I couldn’t
accept help from a female cousin of my own generation. My
pride and self-respect stood in the way.

Soon after, late one night I was awakened from sleep on
my table-bed by her warmth and gentle kisses. She held me
tight. I hadn’t felt so loved since my mother’s death. Gui-hua
became my first love at age sixteen. She was nine years older
than me and I began to depend on her love to get me through
each day. Before long, however, my cousin Yan-hua, her
husband, joined her from Chengdu. I was so jealous, I hated him
and did not want to even look at him. When he arrived I left
home sneaking through a little hole in the back wall of the
house. He was very puzzled by my disappearance and
remarked, “It’s strange that my third brother does not want to
see me?” Only Gui-hua knew why. In the weeks that followed
she tried every possible way to meet me and give me her love,
but in a month she was gone with her husband, leaving me only
her gold ring to remember her by.

Not long after that, my Aunt Man, my mother’s third
sister, said she would take care of me. She never came to our
home because she hated my father, but I met her in the house
of a friend, Mrs. Fu. Aunt Man told me she would help me go to
school and I was very happy at this prospect, but then I thought
of my younger sister May who had never been to school. I was
afraid that father, who was gambling and smoking opium, might
sell her as a slave. I begged my aunt to take May to our
grandma before she would take me or considered sending me to
school. She promised me she would. The next morning, without
letting my father know, my sister and I crept out of the house
and set out to Aunt Man’s. Poor May, her entire luggage was no
more than a little bundle of underwear. We crossed the Jialing
River on the ferry. We stopped at a food stall where I bought
her favorite sweet dumplings made with fermented glutinous
rice. Then we came to another small shop where I bought her a
handkerchief with the little money I had saved.

When Aunt Man took her into the house I did not follow
for I knew I would cry. I turned my head and walked painfully
away. I saw May turn and look after me, tears streaming down
her face. I felt a lump in my throat, but I could only wave to her
with a fake smile and tell her to take care of herself. When I
was out of her sight I stood on a corner and wept bitterly. Later
she wrote that she did not use the handkerchief, but kept it
under her pillow. I would not see May again until Beijing, 1968,
twenty-five years later.

Aunt Man wanted me to attend Meng-Zang Middle
School, a Two Nations School for Mongol and Tibetan
minorities. It was a public school without charge and she had
the connections to get me admitted. Aunt Man was a hottempered
woman, often flying into rage at the slightest
provocation. She was always ready to put people in their place
with a vicious sneer or a crushing dressing down. My cousins
and I knew her temper well before I eventually went to live
with her, so this side of her personality was no surprise.
The day I took the entrance exam for Meng-Zang Middle
School, it was extremely hot. Chongqing in the summer was
known as one of the three “stoves” of China. A play called
“The Foggy Chongqing” also celebrated its almost daily heavy
fog. After the exam I walked down the hill toward Changjiang
River from the school with the sun directly overhead. Hungry
and weak, I suffered a heat stroke before I got to the river.
Dizzy and sweating, I fell to the ground unconscious. I woke up
on a lawn under a tree, a middle-aged woman squatting beside
me and smiling warmly. “Do you feel better, boy?” “Oh yes, I
feel all right now, thank you, aunt.” She asked about me and
my family, and then she insisted on accompanying me to Aunt
Man’s. I was deeply grateful to her but could not find a phrase
to express my gratitude when we parted. I still have not
forgotten the lovely dimple on her cheek and her warm gesture
of kindness in such a harsh cruel world.

I did not immediately realize that she had cured me with
a treatment called “Jiusha.” To do this you lie the heatstroke
victim flat on their back, bend your forefinger and middle finger
like a pair of pliers, then wet them in water or oil and
repeatedly pinch the victim’s neck and elbow to relieve blood
congestion. This works for both sunstroke and fevers. When I
saw signs of my slightly ruptured blood vessels in the mirror I
suddenly realized what she had done for me.

But when I walked into the sitting hall, Aunt Man
immediately began to scold me for being late, never giving me
a chance to tell her of my stroke. I could not stand her temper,
and I only grieved all the more over the loss of my mother. My
aunt’s offer of help for me to go to school was beginning to
come at too high a price. Without explanation, I finally left her
forever. Now I regret that I left like that. As I grew older I came
to understand her. She was really a good-hearted woman. She
wanted to help me grow up healthy and educated, but her bad
temper made her impossible to live with. I wasn’t alone either,
for my cousins all felt the same way about her.

I had no where else to go, so I returned to my father’s
house. When he found out that I had arranged for my sister to go
to grandma’s, he was furious. He poured a stream of abuse on
me and knocked me about my head and face. I remember
thinking, never again will I take his abuse. I’d had enough,
especially with my mother’s death only a year before. I was
fully aware of the situation around me and what horrors were
developing everywhere. In his blind, selfish rage, he even
threatened to sign a paper breaking off our father-son
relationship. He always thought only of himself. His family
meant nothing to him. With pain and deep sorrow weighing
down upon my heart, I ran out of the house and threw myself
upon my mother’s grave. I blamed the Japanese for her death
and hated them with a passion. How many Chinese families
were ruined by Japan’s murderous attacks upon us? At sixteen
what could I do about this growing blood-debt? I swore then and
there that sooner or later I would avenge my mother and my
people. I was the first of six brothers to leave home. I changed
my name from Shuhua meaning from Sichuan, China, to W u
Chachi, meaning a thoroughbred horse of the Wu family. Soon
my next younger brother left to join the Youth Army. Following
in my footsteps, as his role model, he also changed his name to
match with mine. Then my oldest brother joined the Air Corps.
On December 7, 1941, all the newspaper headlines
shouted news of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
This unprovoked act of aggression against another peaceful
people made my anger even hotter. Years later I cheered with a
vengeance when the headlines shouted much better news, “500
American Planes Bomb Tokyo!” I didn’t care if they
exaggerated. It felt so good to think of Tokyo getting a taste of
Chongqing’s terror and death.

By 1943, Japan had planned to create a safe corridor
from the northeast to the southern border of China through
which it could move troops and supplies on its road of
aggression in southeast Asia. To achieve this, it mounted a
large scale offensive against southwest China. Also, Japan
knew that if it could readily supply its troops in the south it
could cut off Chiang’s supply lines and force him to eventually
surrender. Liuzhou in Guangxi province and Dushan in Guizhou
province fell in quick succession. Chongqing was seriously
threatened and the situation was becoming critical. This danger
to our homes fired up the patriotism of all the students in our
local schools.

I read in the Chongqing newspaper that the Northeast
University students in Sichuan’s San Tai county petitioned the
government to allow them “to throw aside the brush” and join
the army in its fight against the Japanese military. The students
could no longer bury themselves in their books at such a fateful
time in their country’s history. Throughout free China students
volunteered one after the other to join the army. In November,
the government decided to establish an expeditionary army
along the India-Burmese border. The student volunteer unit from
Northeast University was formally named, The Training
Regiment of the Military and Political Ministry, and became
the predecessor of the infamous Chinese Youth Army. Much
excited by the news of these events, I immediately rushed out
to enroll my name at the Military Services Office located on
the other side of the Jialing River, halfway up the mountain.
Politely the enlistment officer refused to accept me when
they read on my school report that I was only sixteen. Eighteen
was the minimum age for enlistees. Discouraged, I turned my
back without a word. Back home I changed the 16 to 18 and
went back to the Military Services Office the next day. I was
once again received by the enlistment officer. He wore
eyeglasses and had a proud military bearing. He looked about
thirty. I was sure he didn’t remember me from among all of the
faces he encountered every day. He very carefully looked over
the report on my first half year at middle school. I held my
breath waiting for him to decide. When I noticed that his face
showed some evidence of goodwill, I felt more at ease.
Finally he spoke, “Well, your technique in altering the
character sixteen is not bad, but you’ve come back much too
soon. You are impatient. I haven’t yet forgotten your look of
disappointment from yesterday.” He paused. It was as if he
didn’t have the heart to torment me while I stood there
speechless. I didn’t beg or try to defend myself, although I was
very anxious. “Listen young fellow, neither your age nor your
school record meets the enlistment requirements.” He paced
back and forth, but something in his manner encouraged me.
Finally he said, “Although you do not meet the formal
requirements, you do have strong patriotic feelings and
determination. Ok boy, register here tomorrow morning.” I
bowed deep and low, then ran for home. All my surroundings
suddenly seemed much brighter.

I was excited! I finally had something to look forward to
in my life. We must win over the Japanese. I must bring credit
to the Wu family. The next day with purpose, I climbed the
narrow path on the cliff above the river and came to the gate of
the military service office. Once in the courtyard I saw lots of
people already there, nearly 150 when I arrived and over 1800
by the end of the day. They were all from different parts of
Sichuan. Most of their faces were very youthful and friendly. It
felt as though we had known each other for years, and fighting
for our country was a common vision we all shared. After
signing some papers, we were issued new cotton-padded
uniforms, canvas shoes, toothbrushes, canteens, and towels. I
happily threw away father’s old green coat that had barely kept
me warm. Finally I was back in durable clothing again, it had
been a long time. I also felt happy and confident with the
energy of the other young men who were now my comrades. It
was the uniform, all the same for each, that made us feel
closer.

We were formed into companies of about 120 men each.
The companies were then assigned to the three battalions which
made up the regiment. I was in 7th Company, 2nd Battalion of
the First Training Regiment. With its ranks in good order, the
regiment set out along the narrow path down to the Jialing to be
ferried across the river, and then marched the fifteen miles east
to a beautiful place called Affectionate Couple Bridge. The
area around the camp was known by the name of this bridge
and was, in its geographical characteristics, just as poetic as its
name, with undulating hills, woods everywhere, murmuring
streams, and birds singing. It was a true paradise to my
desperate soul.

Our training camp was located in a basin in the middle of
these rolling hills. It had a vast rectangle of level land at the
bottom of the valley to serve as our parade and training ground.
On one side were rows of one-story houses which had been
converted to serve as our barracks. On the other side were large
slogan boards admonishing “Fight the Japanese to the End” and
“We Must Win the War and Reconstruct the Country.” We
went through our basic preliminary training here for about three
months. The training was hard, especially since I was one of the
youngest and shortest men in the regiment. I looked ridiculous
in my bulging padded uniform, shouldering a .38 Wuhai rifle,
its Japanese style bayonet nearly as long as I was tall.
The 1st Independent Company was made up solely of
male college and university students. The 2nd Company was
made up of women, about 80% of whom were students from
high schools and universities. The rest of the regiment was
made up of about 60% high school students and the remaining
from all walks of life—farmers, shopkeepers, even a monk with
a shaven head and six ritual marks on his skull called jieba.
Many carried their own painful family histories of blood and
tears. Scores who had fled the Northeast or Shanghai with just
their lives, told of parents killed, sisters raped, and homes
burned. One of my comrades, Mr. Wang, was from Nanjing. He
told the most terrible story of all. How the Japanese ruthlessly
massacred Chinese civilians during their early occupation of
Nanjing. More than 300,000 were executed in the cruelest
manners imaginable, and over 60,000 women were raped. His
aunt was one of them. His story made my blood boil! How could
a people so rich in art and culture become such savages?
Our instructors were new graduates from the Kuomintang
Central Military Officers Academy at Chengdu, and were
overflowing with the fresh enthusiasm of youth. During our three
months of training, we were also visited by several delegations
of high ranking military leaders who brought us official
greetings and words of appreciation from the government. We
looked forward to those visits because they always brought
many welcome foods with them, including live pigs and
chickens. On those days we would have a “Sacrifice to the
Teeth,” known as a dayaji, or a meal with a large ration of
meat. During those early months, and throughout the war, we
seldom had meat, only a small portion once a month. Those
leading military figures who visited us included such men as
Zhen Dongguo, the Commander of the Chinese Expeditionary
Army in India and Burma, who later rebelled in 1948 during the
second Chinese civil war, He Yingqing, the Minister of
National Defense, and Vice-Minister Bai Chongxi.
But the visitors who impressed me most were five
delegates from the “800 Warriors.” They were soldiers of the
29th Army, the brave defending force made famous in the battle
of Shanghai in 1937. Led by Colonel Xie Jinyuan, they held
their position at the Four China Bank warehouse, north of
Shanghai, and never surrendered. When the Japanese flags were
raised all around them, proudly they raised a lonely Chinese
flag smuggled into them by a young woman student named
Yang, at the risk of her own life as she swam with it across the
Suzhow River. These brave Chinese warriors shared their
resolute hope and pride with the people of Shanghai. In my
heart, I worshipped these heros to this day. I often sing to
myself the “Ode for 800 Warriors.” But when I first saw these
resolute heros standing on the platform in front of the drill field
of our camp, I felt sorry for them. They looked malnourished
and sick. They had not been given the care that they deserved.
After seeing and hearing those heros of the “800 Warriors,” our
spirits said, “We will return to our homes only when all of our
enemies are wiped out!”

As we prepared to defend our country, we felt strong and
alive in our camp. Our common cause against the Japanese
enemy united people from all over China. A student from Fudan
University in Shanghai wrote a very patriotic song and taught it
to the whole regiment. It was soon adopted as our regimental
song. These words illustrate the fervor and resolve we all
shared:

“Follow us! Join the army!
Go to the Expeditionary Army.
Go to sing. To put on a play. To write an article.
Go to be an interpreter, to build a bridge of languages.
Bring the culture of school to the army camp.
Apply the knowledge of books to the battlefield.
Don’t just mouth high-sounding words.
Cast away illusions!
Be earnest and down-to-earth.
We face all difficulties,
With determination and guts.”

Aside from the intense training—drills, rifle practice,
physical workouts, maneuvers—the atmosphere of the camp
was also one of romance. The peaceful privacy and seclusion
we found in this wooded valley were favorable for lovers. The
2nd Independent Company of 150 women was a natural target
for their male comrades-in-arms. Every night I would see pairs
of lovers in the woods, down the slope, or along the stream.
Remember, the place was named Affectionate Couple Bridge. I
had my own opportunities one after another. There was a
desirable girl from Fudan University, attractive, smoothskinned,
and plump figured whom I never had the pleasure of
strolling with. She was nicknamed Bus because of her many
lovers. “Whoever had a ticket could ride.”
After about four months, in April, 1944, when we had
completed our rigorous course of training, we were asked to fill
out a paper indicating which branch of the services we would
prefer. I wanted to learn to drive, so I wrote in my wish to
become a truck or tank driver. In case of death I chose seaburial,
because of my love for the sea. So far, I have never
driven a tank nor been buried at sea, but I’m only seventy, so
there is still time.

Then the Aviation Commission came to our camp just as
we were preparing for our departure for India. I was quickly
reminded that I had wanted to fly a plane long before I wanted
to drive a tank. I was chosen immediately because of my record
and physical condition, and then transferred to the Air
Preparatory Training School in Tongliang County, two hundred
miles west of Chongqing. This was in a range of the Ba
Mountains—undulating hills, green and luxuriant. There our
barracks were hidden in the woods, with a beautiful stream
nearby. Crazy about swimming, I never missed a chance to
enjoy a quick dip at the end of the day.

One day I climbed into a tree that stretched out over the
stream. Without knowing the water’s depth in that area, I dove
in without thinking. Fortunately, I always open my eyes under
water. As soon as I hit the water I saw the stream bottom
dashing towards me. I pulled up quickly, but my face scraped
against the rock and sand covered bottom. At first I didn’t
realize that anything had happened, but when I finally climbed
out of the water I felt my face burning. It was bleeding heavily
and I had learned my lesson.

Water appreciates my feelings for her. I love her and she
loves me, even curing me of my malaria. Since the age of
twelve I had malaria attacks. None of the many cures I tried
had worked. Then, one day as I walked along the stream some
of my fellow cadets asked me to join them for a swim. At first I
hesitated, because I had a malaria attack the day before. From
previous experience I fully expected another at about three or
so that afternoon while we would be swimming. I had not yet
taken any quinine for it that day and I was afraid if I got into
the cold water the attack would come on again. Then I thought,
“Forget about it! It is bound to happen whether I go swimming
or not.” I simply wanted to swim. So, I jumped in with my
friends and had a great time. The malaria did not come that
afternoon and it has not returned since! I still wonder about this
miracle. That’s why I feel so grateful to the water. What else
could have finally cured my malaria?

~~~

One day, all of us collectively joined the Kuomintang
Nationalist Party (KMT) at an oath-taking rally. It was by order
and not by choice. We never received party cards, but we were
told that in order to join the air force we also had to become a
member of the KMT. Because of that simple policy, I have
suffered tremendously since the Communist Party took power,
being seen as a member of the opposition. However, even if I
had joined the KMT of my own free will, or realized early that
one was “anti-Chinese,” I still don’t see why I should be made
to feel guilty or to suffer retribution. The KMT was the
governing party of the People’s Republic of China, which had
the force to unify the country after the chaos following the
overthrow of the emperor and the warlords.

In July, 1944, we were transferred to Fenghuang
(Phoenix) Hill, a suburb of Chengdu about one hundred miles
northwest of Chongqing. At the foot of the hill was a United
States air base. Since we were allies, we let America build
bases on our land to fight against our common enemy. These
bases were very valuable to the war effort because they were
much closer to Japan than any base on U.S. territory. This was a
P-46 Thunderbolt base. While there, I often sat on the grass
watching the training flights. One day there were three P-46’s
up in the sunny blue sky. They dove and then climbed high, so
high they were lost to my sight. I remember the roar of the
planes was like a beautiful score of music. As I listened and
watched, suddenly one of the P-46’s was in trouble. It came
diving down, but could not pull up. It hit the ground with a loud
crash and exploded into fierce flames. Some of my fellow
cadets ran out to the crash, but I didn’t want to see such a
depressing sight up close. About a half hour later I sadly
watched as a jeep carrying two American pilots, faces bathed
in tears, pass me on the road. I knew why they wept and I
wanted to weep with them.

In September, 1944, while still at Fenghuang Hill, we
were ordered to take a physical examination in the air corps
hospital. A few days later they announced the names of those
picked to become members of the Fifth Group of Air Cadets for
training in the United States. This training was authorized by
the United States Lend-Lease Law. I was chosen and could not
have been more excited. I had never dreamed I might one day
see the land so familiar to me from the movies, magazines, and
music I had grown up with. Who would have thought I would
really get to see the United States for myself. Once a starving
teen age boy in central China, I was now going to the United
States! I felt very lucky!

As soon as we completed preparations, we first flew back
to Chongqing to go through the necessary official formalities,
including the issuing of American visas from the American
Embassy. Then back at Xinjin Air Field, also near Chengdu, the
only field large enough for B-24’s, B-17’s, and B-29’s, we
boarded our B-24 troop plane, and began our flight through the
Himalayan Mountains. The Himalayas are mountains of
enchanting but majestic beauty unlike anything I had seen
before. Such height, such precipitous cliffs, and so much snow.
They were so high that we had to fly through, not over them.
Even in late September, most were already white with snow.
For our trip to India, the first leg of our journey to the United
States, we were loaded onto six bombers, with twenty cadets in
each plane. As we climbed higher and higher into this world of
ice and snow, it became bitterly cold in the plane and we were
forced to stay wrapped in all of our heavily padded clothing.
But once through the mountains and into the golden skies of
India, the temperature rose quickly. After the cold we felt
scorched in the sun beaten planes. This was now the beginning
of my only hope for the future. A new life with a purpose and
direction. The only pain I felt as I left China was for my sister,
May.

~~~

This was my first time in a foreign country. Everything
around me struck me as new and captivating. My image and
knowledge of India was not as familiar to me as my knowledge
of America. Everything seemed so exotic. The only Indians I
had ever seen were the Indian guards at the front of the British
bank in Shanghai. Also, I had imagined the romance of The
Song of India by Rimsky-Korsakov, to represent the sounds and
mood of India. As I stepped down out of the plane, hot air
mixed with the aroma of tropical plants greeted my senses. My
first sight of the Indian people gave me a strange feeling.
Brown-black color, big sunken eyes, long hands and feet, and
“bloody” teeth. Only later did I learn that the red teeth were the
result of chewing binglang (areca or betel nut). Many of the
women were beautiful, with stream-lined curves of different
sizes. They seemed very elastic with large fully developed
breasts, huge liquid eyes, and frequently bare footed.
Sometimes I met them as they gracefully carried water on their
heads, costumed in their beautiful saris that revealed the soft
roundness of their bodies. They were irresistibly attractive to a
young Chinese lad.

We lodged in a Chinese Air Corps hostel in a place
called Dumdum located just over the Indian-Chinese border, not
to be confused with the airport in Calcutta. The hostel was a
simple thatched cottage structure. There were also tents
scattered about the area. In the searing heat we could hardly
wait to put on light khaki uniforms replacing the heavy cotton
padded ones we had worn in China. Soon we were served our
first meal of long-grained rice from Thailand along with canned
beef and beans. I thought this strange meal must be typically
American. I think because of that I liked it very much, even
though most of my friends didn’t. But I didn’t like the running
water, which smelled awful and the mosquitos who were
numerous and huge, and seemed intent on eating us alive. I
wondered how the Indians could sleep at night without netting
wrapped all around them.

On our first night in India, we were plagued with a
strange new type of trouble. Monkeys broke into our tent and
ransacked everything that wasn’t packed away. They made a
complete mess of all we had left out. The next morning some of
us intended to launch a counter attack and give the monkeys a
lesson. Just as we were about to leave, an old Chinese
serviceman at the hostel stopped us. He cautioned us sternly
that the monkeys were regarded as divinities and must never be
harmed no matter what the provocation. Luckily he stopped us,
or who knows what trouble we would have gotten ourselves into.
After breakfast we then decided to just go for a walk.

The countryside around Dumdum looked impoverished,
bleak and desolate. Just a short way out of the village along the
road, we found an old rusty tin can hung up in a latrine fenced
off by a straw screen. The can was full of water. When I
returned to the hostel I was told that this was for washing our
hands after using the latrine. I also learned that it is because of
their toilet practices that many Indians never use the left hand
to make food or shake hands.

While walking that morning, we came upon a small
market and couldn’t help but notice a basket with a strange
smell of rotting fruit. There I bought a dozen fresh oranges for
one rupee. They were different from any I had known in China,
all very large and green with the peel easily broken away from
its fruit. In the dusty heat they were very sweet. As we
continued to explore the town, we were surprised when we
came upon a little grocery run by a Chinese from Shandong
Province. Meeting someone from our homeland in this strange
place made us feel very happy. In my excitement I bought a
pair of boots from him, and he told us over and over what care
we must take while in India. He advised us of many things we
should and should not do. For example, he told us we must
never eat pineapple that had been crawled over by a poisonous
snake, but of course we never learned how to know if a
poisonous snake had crawled over our pineapple.

After a few days we boarded a train and were transported
to a United States Army Camp in Calcutta. This larger camp
was at the better known Dumdum air base just outside of the
city. On our way to Calcutta, we reached an expansive river
and for some unknown reason our train stopped for about an
hour. Most of us got off to get some much needed fresh air. We
stood and looked at the tree-lined riverbanks and played hand
signing games with the friendly Indian children who surrounded
us. By this time India had become a battlefront in the Pacific
War against Japan. China, America, and Britain formed the
Allied Army pitched against them from the bases in India. So,
also traveling with us were discharged American soldiers who
were going to join us later on the same ship from India to
America. When the train stopped at the river, one of them ran
toward us when he saw that we were Chinese. He greeted us
with his thumb up and shouted, “Ding hao!” which means,
“First rate!”

This friendly American soldier told us how brave the
Chinese 38th Division had been when it fought shoulder-toshoulder
with them against the Japanese in Burma. He was
about nineteen, clever, and always cheerful, with a square,
smiling face. He was from Cleveland, Ohio and his father was a
farmer. He proved to be very interested in learning Chinese. He
took out a little notebook with all the Chinese words and
phrases that he had already learned and proceeded to add what
we began to teach him. He was a quick learner, especially with
the dirty words. His name was Eddy, and had served as a
machine gunner. Once his unit lost a battle in Burma and he
was chased into the jungle by the Japanese. He ran and ran
until he came to a cliff above a river, where his only escape
was to jump. Fortunately, he was a good swimmer and escaped
certain death by the skin of his teeth. He and I became good
friends from then on. He called me “Baby” because I was not
only young, but I was also a soldier cursed with a childish face.
While our train was still stopped, a cargo ship came
along from the upper reaches of the river and tied up on a dock
nearby. The ship’s deck was loaded with tanks and next to one
of them I noticed a Chinese soldier standing alone. I wondered
if he could be one of my former comrades with the volunteer
expeditionary army. I knew that some of my friends were in the
tank corps here, so I wrote a brief self-introduction note and
gave it and a coin to an Indian boy standing nearby, motioning
for him to take it to the man on the ship. I watched the boy run
onto the ship and hand the note to the soldier. I could see him
clearly as he read it. Suddenly he grabbed a pair of binoculars
and turned them on me. He immediately began running toward
me with lightning speed. It was like the old Chinese saying,
“No coincidence, no books.” Meaning that without the
coincidences of life there would be no need to write a book.
There would be nothing of interest to connect us.

The soldier on the deck turned out to be one of my
closest friends from my company in the Training Regiment,
Mr. Li from Inner Mongolia. He was dark-skinned, good-natured,
and a very muscular fellow. After our reunion, we talked over
what we had done since we had been separated. He told me
how their troops rescued the British army when the Japanese
encircled them in Lasu, Burma. We couldn’t talk for as long as
we wanted because his ship pulled out again after just a short
while. We parted and have never seen each other again since. I
have often wondered if he lived through all those brutal battles
which were to soon follow in India and Burma.
While on the train we received rations that were made
for American servicemen overseas. They came in a rectangular
boxes marked “B” (breakfast), “L” (lunch), and “S” (supper).
The box also contained cigarettes, chewing gum, and what
surprised us most, condoms! That was a strange and mysterious
matter for a young man from an ancient culture with strict
moral concepts of sexual behavior. We had no formal sex
education at all. I sensed that I had really come into another
world. After all, because these condoms were in with our
breakfast, it appeared that the Americans thought that the
sexual act was as right and proper as eating a meal.

Whenever our train stopped at stations along the way to
Calcutta, lovely young girls sang to us accompanied by
accordions. This is how they earned their living. One young girl,
about fourteen, sang a sweetly piercing melody. I felt a sorrow
in her singing beyond description, even though I couldn’t
understand a word. Whenever I feel blue I still hum the moving
tune I heard coming from her lips. When I do, her lovely
melancholy face reappears before my mind’s eye to this day. I
often wonder why she appeared so sad.

When we finally reached Calcutta, we had nothing to do
but wait. Sometimes we went into the city to see the sights.
Calcutta was a very large city, very much like Shanghai in
scale and status. But there was a notable difference. Who would
think of white cows lying in the middle of a main street in
Shanghai. I was surprised to learn that these white cows were
sacred. In China, we would have eaten every one of them! After
wondering around for an hour or so, I bought some souvenirs
from a Chinese-run jewelry shop—an ivory elephant, a rabbit
figurette, and a bracelet made from Indian coins, annas,
threaded one by one into a charming piece of jewelry. In China
twelve animals are used to characterize the years in which
people are born. The rabbit is the animal representing the year
of my birth. I kept these exotic souvenirs for many years, until I
finally gave them to my girlfriend at the Hangzhou Institute of
Fine Arts.

As we passed rows of little cottages going out of town
toward the base, heavily made-up women waved and shouted to
us, “Three rupees! Three rupees!” while they raised three
fingers. To a small group of naive Chinese boy soldiers this
seemed a very cheap price for one night of love a world away
from home. They asked just twice as much as the cost of a roast
chicken, but none of us dared to accept their tempting
invitation. Though some of the women were very attractive, the
thought of the dirty surroundings we saw everywhere made us
afraid of disease.

One day I did not feel very well so I went to the U.S.
Army Clinic on the base. The American doctor took my
temperature and sent me to the hospital with a temperature just
above 37 degrees celsius, about 100 degrees fahrenheit. By the
time I finally got checked into the hospital I felt fine, even
without the help of any medicine. The doctors were evidently
concerned about an infection by tropical ameba. While in the
hospital, my friend Eddy came to see me. I was surprised to
learn that he too was a patient, but he didn’t seem like most of
the other soldiers there. I was glad to have his company. He
treated me like a brother, tucking me in, and waking me in the
mornings. He was fond of drinking and gambling by any means,
cards, dice, anything. He often won at playing cards. But what
surprised me, was that he sent all the money he won gambling
home to his family. That made him more lovable in my eyes.
More Chinese I suppose.

Most patients were no more seriously ill than I was.
Therefore, with lots of energy to spare, we made fun all day.
When the blonde American nurse in our ward turned her back to
us, Eddy would make a face and say, “No good. Her buttocks
are too big.” However, I thought she was pretty. Besides, she
was warm and patient with us. Once we played cards with some
black American soldiers who had a separate ward. They did
some card tricks. I knew that western people as a whole were
better than us at playing poker. After all, it is a western game.
Still, we Chinese wouldn’t be outdone. I had an idea. One of my
friends would use his cigarette as a signal. I divided the poker
deck into three portions and let one of the black soldiers pick a
card and put it into the portion he chose while my back was
turned. I then followed the signal of my friend’s cigarette and
found the card right away. They never caught on as we played
this trick on them over and over again. They looked at each
other bewildered with mouths wide open. Even though we still
couldn’t beat them at poker, we laughingly showed them that
we were better at card tricks.

We also discovered that there were also many organized
recreational activities in the hospital. I soon learned a strange
new game with cards covered with numbers and piles of
buttons, called Bingo. I proved to be much better at this fun
game of luck than I ever could be at poker. After all, I won a
smoking pipe the first time I played. After celebrating my
victory, I gave it to a friend because I did not smoke. But the
biggest prize of my hospital stay was that I finally began to
learn English from the lyrics of American popular and folk
songs. Through years of watching American films I had become
familiar with its strange sounds, but I never had the opportunity
to learn any words. Then one day a sentimental song came to
my ears through the loudspeakers in the ward. It was Always
sung by Dinah Shore. Her voice was sweet and husky. It
touched my heart, and I became anxious to learn to sing it. The
melody was easy, but the words gave me trouble—“I’ll be
loving you, always. With a love that’s true, always...”
I knew nothing of English but the alphabet and some
phonetic pronunciation. I had bought a very small pocket
English-Chinese dictionary in the Chinese district of Calcutta
and began to look up each word one by one. I soon could sing
the words and began to understand what they meant, but I still
couldn’t comprehend some of the sentences. The way they were
constructed was so different than in Chinese I did not have any
introductory schooling in English and this made my learning the
language take twice as long. While most of my friends in the
army had graduated from college or university, or at least high
school, my lack of education also caused me to feel inferior.

But I thought that by learning English I would advance my
education and eventually my opportunities to do what my
friends could do. I studied behind their backs, for fear they
would look down on me. The second song I learned was, I Walk
Alone (because to tell you the truth, I’ll be lonely...). I first
heard it sung by a black soldier singing with a soldier band one
night at the hospital. To this day, those first English language
songs are still favorites of mine. Music always was the master
of my feelings. It can bring all my passion into play more than
any of the other arts. I have to say it taught me English.
While in the hospital I was surprised to discover that
Eddy was a drinking lush. When I was eventually released from
the hospital, he often slipped from his room and asked me from
the inside of the hospital fence, “Baby, please buy me a
couple of cans of beer.” Then I would run to get khaki colored
cans of army beer, cold from the PX. When I handed them to
him through the fence, he would look around to be sure no MP’s
were watching. Then like lightning he would slip them inside
his gown and grimace as their cold surface touched his skin. As
soon as he was released from the hospital he ran first thing to
the PX to get drunk, wasted. That night he fell to the grass
outside the bar and slept there until the next morning.

After five weeks in Calcutta we were transferred to
Bombay to await our ship to America. On the train a big fat
strong Indian man in traditional dress, got into a fight with one
of the British soldiers. He was fearless and his strong fists beat
the British soldier bloody. I thought this would cause great
trouble since the British still ruled India, but to my surprise,
nothing happened. Afterwards, everything went on as it had
before. This was so different from what we thought of the British
back in China.

We were soon settled into a British army camp in
Bombay. The camp was huge, but the food and
accommodations were much worse than those we had in
Dumdum. However, Bombay is a much more attractive city
than Calcutta. It is a port city with beautiful white buildings
along the seashore, facing a blue sea capped with an even bluer
sky. After settling in, my friends Zhao, Li, He, Jiang, and I took
a taxi into the city. The taxi driver thought since we were
foreigners our pockets must be bulging with money. He
overcharged us again and again. When Zhao Zhong-heng, a
boxer and wrestler from what is now Beijing University, asked
him to take us to a nice brothel, he grew even more greedy and
really overcharged us. At that, we all grew very angry. When he
stopped the taxi for a traffic light, Zhao reached over and took
the keys out of the ignition, stopping the car, hoping the driver
would be charged by the police for blocking traffic. He gave the
keys back only after the driver begged for mercy. Finally he
drove us where we wanted to go without even the slightest over
charge.

I could not imagine that the building he took us to was a
brothel. It was a huge elegant white building with a beautiful
lawn, surrounded by an impressive white wall. A middle-aged
Indian woman answered the bell, welcomed us, and led us into
a luxurious sitting room where we sat anxiously waiting to see
what would happen next. Soon, down from the upstairs rooms
came five girls, one for each of us. I was surprised that we were
all well paired. My partner was very young and quite attractive.
She looked only fourteen, like a girl not yet grown up enough to
be working a brothel. The other four were well developed and
very sensual. They sat on my friends’ laps and hugged them. I’d
never been in such a place and did not know where to go with
my eyes. Still what I saw stirred my heart and my loins. My
young girl sat speechlessly on my lap, just looking at me,
maybe because of my silly, shy and self conscious behavior. I
didn’t dare look directly at her. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t
know what to do. I heard Zhao say, “I can’t sit here any longer.”
Then they all got up and took their girls upstairs.
On his way up the stairs, Zhao turned and pointed at me
telling the middle-aged lady in English, “He won’t. He’s too
young.” My girl turned and went away without a word. I sat
there alone and embarrassed while my friends satisfied their
desires in their respective rooms upstairs. After about an hour,
they finally came down in pairs. I tried to imagine how each of
them did during their time in the arms of those sensuous girls.
Then I looked carefully into the face of each girl to see if there
was any sign of change of satisfaction in them. The more I
looked at them, the more I was provoked to thoughts of love
and passion, while being angered at Zhao for taking this
exciting opportunity away from me.