Xiaozhou, your mother always said to me that it would be a good idea to put these matters down on paper, first of all in order to express them and make sense of them. She said in this way perhaps I can face some of my demons. You know I am a worthless heathen, but in my moments of weakness, some of your mother’s Christian ideas can seem very persuasive, haha. In fact, I must write this letter now because some things are going to happen soon. I will no longer be able to hide the truth or hide from the truth. Please forgive the quality of my writing, as I did not receive an education like you and Lianying did. Also, I am writing in very simple Chinese because I know you only got a B+ in Business Chinese 202 last semester, haha.
The inspiration for the home that I built for us in San Dimas came from the home I grew up in. My father was a wise, happy man, and also a man of culture, like I never had the chance to be. He was a scholar of the history of Peking opera, and he taught at a university in Beijing. He loved to write and sing. Mother was a former student of Father’s. They loved each other very much. These are the grandparents whom you never met. Now they have been dead for many years.
I also had an elder sister like you do. Her name was Ruyu: “like jade.” It was an inappropriate name for her because she was a tomboy, just like your elder sister used to be. It was also an unfortunate name for her for other reasons that I will write about later. But first, I will describe for you the times when we were a happy family.
My earliest memories are of a quiet life in the hutongs of old Beijing, in the center of the city. Do you remember the hutongs from when we visited a few years ago? We lived in a courtyard-style home in a winding, cobbled alley. I was born five years after the Communists took over Beijing, but the politics of the time had not penetrated the hutongs. We had a simple life. Mother made us breakfasts of fried-dough fritters and warm soy milk. Father rode his bicycle to the university. Ruyu and I would walk to school together. In the afternoons, after school, we played in the streets with our classmates. We played war and shot at each other with sticks that we pretended were guns. Often the other kids made Ruyu and me be the “running-dog Japanese” in the war because they knew we had learned some Japanese words from Father, who had studied in Japan when he was a young man.
It was not the most fun to have to be Japanese in the war games because after we lost (we always lost) our Communist liberators marched us through the hutongs with our hands on our heads. However, we got our revenge when it came to fighting crickets. Playing war was a fun game for little kids, but cricket fighting was the real action. Ruyu’s crickets almost never lost. Ruyu could sit still for a long time. She was very good at catching the fastest crickets. She taught me how to train them with a split piece of grass and feed them hot chilies to prepare them to fight.
Ruyu won a lot of candy and allowance from the other kids because of her crickets. One time she even won a blue bicycle from Pan Weiguo, the son of the family who lived on the other side of the courtyard from us, but Father made her give it back. Ruyu was upset, and she did not talk to Father for some days. After dinner, when he would wash the dishes and sing Peking opera for us, she would go into the other room and read a book instead of sitting at the table and drinking chrysanthemum tea with Mother and me like usual. Her protest lasted for about a week. Then Father brought her a box of peanut candies and sang her a song of apology that he had written for her. It was a humorous song, and as he sang it we all laughed until we were crying. Ruyu had a strong sense of justice and fairness, but she also loved Father more than anyone else. I was independent and naughty, and I liked to spend time by myself. Perhaps that is why I survived and Ruyu did not.
In the late fifties and early sixties there was already a lot of political turmoil. People who talked too much about politics or complained about the food rationing often ended up in trouble with the authorities. During the Socialist Education Movement, my second maternal uncle, a midlevel government official, was denounced as a reactionary and sent to the countryside to be reeducated. Mother was very close to her little brother, and she became a more reserved person after he was denounced. One time I saw her crying while reading a letter from him. I remembered my uncle for his excellent calligraphy, but the handwriting in the letter was uneven and ugly. I asked my mother to read the letter to me, but she refused.
Father was good at staying out of trouble. He always attended Party functions and kept his nose clean. He taught the new Revolutionary operas in the same energetic way that he had previously taught The Peach Blossom Fan and Sword of the Cosmos. He always put the family first and never objected to saying what people wanted him to say. Due to his discretion and humility, our family remained unharmed until after Chairman Mao proclaimed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966. At the time, I was ten years old.
At first we managed to keep up with the political tide. All university classes were canceled, so Father would stay home and play with us during the day. On the night that we heard about the campaign to destroy the Four Olds (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, Old Ideas), he took all his books of literature and put them into the stove one by one. Rather than get too upset about it, he sang an opera dirge as he did it and then stood up and brushed off his hands and told us that we must all adapt to the times. “Suí jī yìng biàn, suí yù ér ān,” he liked to say—“Adapt at every opportunity and be at peace with whatever you encounter.” Now you know where I learned the expression that I have repeated to you so many times.
Father’s good attitude could only take him so far. One very hot day in the summer of 1966, a group of Red Guards came through the hutong looking for Counterrevolutionaries and Bad Elements. These bands of former university students ruled competing territories amid the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Really they were young people with nothing better to do. Most of them wore their school uniforms with red bands of cloth wrapped around their sleeves. Chairman Mao had given them a great deal of authority and confidence, so they paraded around and sometimes beat people up.
When they came to our courtyard, they made our family and Pan Weiguo’s family stand in a line in the yard while they searched our rooms for signs of the Four Olds. Like most people, we only had good Revolutionary books and portraits of Chairman Mao on our shelves. They were about to leave for the next house when one young woman recognized my father.
“That man is a university professor,” she shouted, pointing at Father. “He knows old operas, and he can speak Japanese!”
The leader of the Red Guards pulled Father forward by his shirt and asked him whether he could speak Japanese.
“It is true that I was a university professor, but I don’t really speak Japanese,” he said quietly, without looking up.
Some of the Red Guards shouted that he was a liar, a Japanese collaborator, and a Counterrevolutionary, but the leader silenced them with a sharp movement of his hand. He was peering into my father’s face. He was a tall and handsome young man. After a few tense moments, he took my father by the arm.
“Come with me,” he said. The other Red Guards grabbed Father and took him out of the courtyard, pushing and pulling. They called him a Bad Element and a Capitalist Counterrevolutionary. That day I learned from the handsome leader of the Red Guards that if you listen carefully you can often tell when people are lying. We did not hear anything about Father for five days.
On the sixth day after the Red Guards took Father away, a teenage girl with a red band on her sleeve came to the courtyard and announced to us in quite formal terms that Father’s trial would take place the next morning in the sports field at the university where he used to teach.
When we arrived at the sports field the next morning, there were many people there already. It was a hot and dusty morning. Father was fourth in the queue of defendants. The first three trials were difficult to watch. They followed a pattern: The defendants started out proud and defiant, but with the Party cadres, the Red Guards, and the crowd unified against them, they soon wilted and confessed. They hit themselves and pledged loyalty to the Party as the crowd hurled trash and verbal abuse at them. All three were sentenced to reeducation through labor.
When it was Father’s turn, a Red Guard brought him in front of the university’s Anti-Rightist Revolutionary Committee and made him kneel in the dust. He looked thin. His face was streaked with dirt, and his head had been shaved. He had a bloody bruise on his temple. He stared at the ground.
The Committee Head explained to Father that he had a black background and he was being charged with holding Counterrevolutionary and Bourgeois sentiments. Some former students of his, including the girl who had first accused him of speaking Japanese, came forward to “struggle” against him by denouncing him. They said how he had tainted their minds with his Bourgeois tastes. One young woman said that Father loved opera more than he loved Chairman Mao.
Then Pan Weiguo’s father came forward and said they had lived in the courtyard with us for more than twenty years. He said it was true that Father had attended university in Japan. When the Committee Head asked him if he could verify that Father was a Counterrevolutionary who held Bourgeois sentiments, Pan Weiguo’s father said yes in a quiet voice. The Committee Head asked him if he could speak up. Pan Weiguo’s father did not say anything. The Committee Head asked him again. Finally Pan Weiguo lifted his finger and pointed at Father’s face. He spoke in a loud, clear voice so nobody would misunderstand him: “Li Yujun, you are a Counterrevolutionary and a Capitalist, and I struggle against you.”
The people in the crowd pointed at Father and shouted the same thing. The Committee Head made a show of quieting the crowd and giving Father a chance to defend himself, but he didn’t. He must have known it would be no use. He immediately confessed in a lifeless voice. Ruyu started to shout something, and Mother clapped a hand over her mouth and held my sister against her body in an iron grasp.
I remember feeling like I was watching somebody else’s nightmare. Later, I learned that it was very unusual that Father had been detained by the Red Guards and brought back to his university. The relationship between the Red Guards and the Party officials who tried him was unofficial and ambiguous, and perhaps the Red Guards had been deliberately dispatched to collect Father for some other reason, some reason hidden in his Counterrevolutionary background.
But whenever I asked Mother what that reason was, she simply shook her head and said that talking about the past was a waste of time.
The Committee Head told Father that he was a Counterrevolutionary and he would be sent to a labor camp to be reeducated. He said that Father should be ashamed of polluting his family, his neighbors, and his country with his Bourgeois tastes. Father finally looked up.
“I draw a clear line between me and them,” he said.
Some people in the crowd laughed derisively. The Committee Head scolded Father for his lack of understanding of Revolution. It works the other way around, he explained to Father. Then he called for Li Yujun’s family to come forward. He told Father to kneel facing us, so Father turned in our direction.
We had been standing toward the front of the crowd, but everybody backed away from us in that moment, and suddenly we were alone before the Committee Head as well. Then the man addressed Mother.
He asked her whether she would struggle against the Counterrevolutionary Li Yujun.
Father nodded his head to her. She was crying quite terribly. Through her tears, she told the Committee Head that she would draw a clear line, but he made her say it again directly to Father.
The crowd cheered for her to do it.
“I draw a clear line between us,” she said to Father.
My sister was also crying. She wrenched herself free from Mother’s grasp and ran to Father. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Father pushed her away from him but she kept trying to embrace him. People in the crowd were shouting. A few people threw garbage and stones at Father and Ruyu. One woman stepped forward with a jar of black ink and splashed it onto their clothes. Then some Red Guards came and pulled Ruyu off of Father. They held her by her arms and forced her to kneel beside Father. The Committee Head told my sister that she had to draw a clear line if she wanted to remain in Beijing with her mother.
Ruyu was still crying. There was black ink on her clothing, and some of Father’s blood was smeared on her neck. She pointed at the Committee and then at the crowd. She shouted at them that they were all False Revolutionaries. She said that Father hadn’t done anything wrong, and that he was the person who loved her the most. There was more jeering and rock throwing, and then the Red Guards pulled Ruyu away from Father and dragged him away, and I never saw him again.