THE COMPOSER

I first heard of composer Wang Xilin in 2001 when I was in Beijing for a book release party. While I was chatting with friends, Wang's name came up because the Beijing Municipal Government had just banned his concert series. Liang Heping, a guest I met at the party, had known the composer for many years. This is what Liang told me:

The Cultural Department of the Beijing Municipal Government had signed a contract with Wang Xilin in 1997, promising to raise funds and host a series of concerts featuring the composer's symphonies in 2000. Over the years, preparations went smoothly. A well-known Swedish violinist had been invited to grace the opening in Beijing.

At about 9 a.m., November 24, 2000, the rehearsal was about to start. As a courtesy, Conductor Tan Lihua invited Wang to say a few words to members of the orchestra. Wang, dressed up nicely for the occasion, walked up to the stage and declared in his resounding voice: The twentieth century is finally behind us. In the past hundred years, we witnessed many unforgettable events, such as the two world wars and the great many innovations in science and technology. However, I believe that the biggest event in the twentieth century is the fact that Communism has been painstakingly pursued and then relentlessly abandoned by mankind. Wang's remarks met total silence, but he was too preoccupied to even notice the shocked reaction. He bowed politely and exited the stage.

One week later, authorities in Beijing suddenly notified him that his concerts had been canceled. It was then that Wang realized the stinging consequences of his big mouth. He stormed into Liang's home, stamped his feet, and said regretfully: Damn, I should have added “except in China” to my statement . . .

During the Chinese New Year in 2004, I had the opportunity to hear Wang Xilin's Symphony no. 4 at Liang's house. The symphony, named Sorrows of the Century, had been banned three years before. Liang also played tapes of the composer singing Chinese folk songs as well as his improvised speeches. While listening to the tapes, I felt a strong urge to meet this legend.

With the help of Liang, I finally met Wang Xilin at the end of January. Wang, 67, was quite capricious. During the six interviews I had with him, Wang was shedding tears at one moment and then playing old tunes on his violin the next. He said those old tunes helped stimulate his fading memories.

WANG XILIN: I remember seeing an old Soviet movie. I've forgotten its name. It was made during the temporary political thaw following Joseph Stalin's death. In the movie, a kid questioned his father who had served as a prison guard under Stalin. The kid asked: When you worked inside the gulag, did you ever shoot any prisoner in the back? The father refused to answer but the kid kept pressing for answers. Eventually, the father couldn't stand the guilt and committed suicide by jumping out the window of his apartment building. This scene has stayed in my memory for many years. It reminds me of what happened in China under Chairman Mao. Nowadays, when I look at people walking on the street, I keep thinking to myself: Have they ever persecuted or tortured others? Have they ever betrayed their comrades and trampled on the bodies of others to advance their own political career? How many parents are being haunted by their blood-tainted hands?

LIAO YIWU: How do you assess your own past? Can we start from the beginning?

WANG: I joined the Communist army in 1949, when I was only twelve years old. I was a boy soldier and grew up in the big revolutionary family of the army. Those adult soldiers literally raised me. Since I was so young, the commander assigned me to a group of army musicians and performers, who taught me how to play all sorts of traditional musical instruments. Our job was to entertain the troops stationed in the northwest. I picked up things fast and soon made quite a reputation for myself. As I got older, the Party saw the potential in me and sent me to a music school run by the Central Military Commission. In 1957, I was admitted to the Shanghai Music Academy.

LIAO: It was quite a smooth ride, wasn't it?

WANG: I was really lucky. My civilian life started after I entered college. However, I still wore my military uniform and was quite active in the newly launched anti-Rightist campaign. Soon, I was elected chairman of the student union and head of the Communist Youth League. I despised those students whose sole focus was to study music, especially Western music. As a devout revolutionary, I treated the college as a place for political campaigns and physical labor. I frequently cut classes and volunteered myself at local communes nearby, working in rice paddies or digging canals. During the Great Leap Forward in 1958, we built a furnace in the middle of the college playground and tried to produce iron to support the country's industrialization campaign. It was so crazy.

In the first three years, I didn't learn much about music. It wasn't until 1960 that things started to change. The Great Leap Forward turned out to be a big disaster. The Party was forced to adjust its policy, and Mao's radical ideas temporarily took a backseat. Normalcy returned to school.

LIAO: Since you missed so many classes, what did you do?

WANG: It was like waking up from a weird dream. I looked around and saw some of my schoolmates, whom I used to call “the bourgeois musicians,” were getting attention from the Party. Musicians, such as pianist Yin Chengzhong, became celebrities and patriots after they had won awards at international competitions. My classmates began to look down on me, treating me like a country bumpkin who seemed to major in physical labor.

It was also at that time that my family got hit with political problems. My physician brother had lost his sanity and starved to death in the famine. My sister, a former government official in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, was labeled a Rightist. She appealed her verdict, but the provincial government downgraded her even further, making her a counterrevolutionary. It was very upsetting. I decided to shun politics and focus on learning some practical skills. I began to take a strong interest in composing. In my final year, I met a professor who had just returned from the Soviet Union. Under his tutelage, I made rapid progress in Western music composition and soon became the top student in my class.

LIAO: I heard that you composed a well-known quartet while you were in school.

WANG: The professor who coached me was a pianist, and composition was not his specialty. So I learned everything from books. I read over thirty different types of books related to quartets, and took careful notes. In the summer of 1961, I literally moved into a music studio, sweated for over forty days, and finally completed a twenty-five-minute string quartet with three movements. I presented my work to Ding Shande, the dean of the academy. His daughter liked it tremendously. She was the head of a female string quartet group. Her group rehearsed and recorded the piece, which became quite popular.

LIAO: Your hard work certainly paid off.

WANG: I was surprised by the achievement I accomplished on my own. For the first time, I realized that I had found my calling. After graduation, I was assigned to the China Central Radio Orchestra, which specialized in folk music. I was quite upset because my passion was to compose symphonies. So I told the school authority that I wasn't qualified for the job because I didn't know much about Chinese folk music. At first, they ignored me. I simply stayed at the college guesthouse and bugged the Party secretary every day. Eventually, they couldn't stand it and reassigned me to the symphony orchestra.

LIAO: How did you get away with bucking authority like that?

WANG: I was young and quite fearless. That was the only time I lucked out. After I began working at the symphony orchestra, I immediately took on the task of composing my first symphonic piece. First, I requested a piano. Leaders at the orchestra thought I was overly ambitious and arrogant. They turned down my request. One day, I found an old piano in the corner of a warehouse. On the spur of the moment, I called some of my friends and asked them to help move the piano to my office. As we were carrying that big sucker over, I got stopped by an administrator who ordered me to return the piano to the warehouse. I did, but he reported me to the director. I got a terrible reprimand. The director accused me of being too individualistic. He sent me over to a village and ordered me to work in the field for one month as punishment.

In the fall of 1962, Chairman Mao initiated another political movement—the Socialist Education Campaign. Mao referred to the campaign as inviting Communist leaders to come downstairs from the bureaucratic tower and “take baths” to cleanse themselves. The campaign was first kicked off as a pilot project in agencies directly under the control of the central government. In the fall of 1963, the symphony orchestra held a meeting, welcoming staff to pour “hot water” and help “bathe” our leaders.

LIAO: Didn't Mao do the same in 1957, when he encouraged intellectuals to criticize the Party? He called his tactics “baiting snakes out of their caves.” When people took his bait, he smacked them right on the head.

WANG: I know. Most employees became cautious and numb to the campaign. At the kickoff meeting, many women nonchalantly knitted sweaters while guys simply lowered their heads, saying nothing. I was this hot-blooded idiot who felt compelled to stand up and offer leaders at the symphony orchestra a “hot bath.”

First, I questioned the Party's policy in music. The Party called on composers to create more revolutionary music, incorporate more popular Chinese folk and ethnic music into our work, and make symphonies easily adaptable for radio broadcasts. I said the current policy was restrictive, shortsighted, and detrimental to the development of Chinese symphonic music.

Second, I criticized the unfair treatment of musicians who had returned from overseas. I used the example of Lin Kechang, a well-known violinist and conductor. He grew up in Indonesia and had graduated from a music university in Paris. When Mr. Lin joined our orchestra, he was put under a deputy director who knew nothing about music. Mr. Lin felt miserable. I said: It's ridiculous to put a political appointee in charge of the works of musicians.

I went on and on for two hours. Initially, I was quite diplomatic and cautious with my words. Then, half an hour into my speech, I got carried away. My mind totally lost control and my criticism became more blunt. While I was talking, I saw the deputy director and several other officials were busily taking notes.

LIAO: I bet those guys were busy collecting material against you.

WANG: Yes, they were.

LIAO: What was the Party's reaction to your speech?

WANG: Several days passed and nothing happened. Then, a rumor started to circulate, saying that I was the ringleader of a counterrevolutionary clique within the orchestra. I tried to find out more from my coworkers, but people shunned me like a disease. Zhang Haibo, the first flutist at the orchestra, was the only friend who still talked with me. He and I secretly met at a small restaurant one night, and I had the opportunity to vent my frustrations and fear about the rumors. He was very sympathetic and told me to be cautious.

In the next four weeks, I was like an eagle locked up in a cage covered with black cloth, feeling trapped, tortured, and clueless. Finally, in the fifth week, the Party leaders felt they had tortured me long enough with their silence. They sent me a note, saying that the director wanted to see me. When I walked into his office, the director stared at me from behind his desk. That steely look made me nervous. He uttered a sigh, like a father to his wayward son. Well, the director had joined the Communists in the 1940s. He was a seasoned revolutionary. From the look of things, I could tell that he probably wanted to save me.

The director opened his mouth, uttered another sigh, and said softly: Comrade Xilin, do you know that your speech was a serious political mistake? Why didn't you discuss it with me before the meeting? As your supervisor, I could have told you what to say and what not to say. Right now, it's too late. The nature of your mistakes has changed. Your speech has been considered a direct attack against our Party.

His words scared me. I cried. The director continued, You strayed away from the revolutionary path and pursued a bourgeois goal of composing music to pursue fame. You are as arrogant as a rooster, oblivious of the rules and the criticisms of the masses. You removed a piano from the warehouse without permission and created a bad precedent. After receiving reeducation through labor, you still stick to your old ways. You are hopeless.

Several times I felt the need to defend myself, but the director waved his hand to stop me. Then he offered me an olive branch: Despite the fact that you have gone in the opposite direction and seriously hurt the revolutionary feelings of the masses, the Party will open its arms to embrace you, but on one condition—you have to openly admit your mistakes. Comrade Xilin, the Party raised you in the army and sent you to school to study music. Do you know that it takes three thousand peasants working for five years in order to feed and support a student in college? How could you do this to the Party and to the great masses who have fed you?

I was in a state of total shock. The director talked to me for over one hour. In the end, he told me to dig deeper into the root cause of my mistakes and beg forgiveness from the masses and the Party.

I was touched by his willingness to save me. I had witnessed the punishment the Party had dished out to those Rightists back in 1957. I didn't want that. So I promised, with tears flowing and nose running at the same time, that I would do some serious inner examination.

During the next several days, I wrote day and night nonstop. It was ten times more intense than composing my music. I condemned myself multiple times. I piled up a list of the most vicious words to curse myself. I called myself a stinky bad egg. I used all the political jargon available, such as “individualistic, bourgeoisie, and Right-wing opportunist” to label my mistakes. I truly believed that I deserved hundreds of slaps on my face and hundreds of buckets of shit over my head. Like many intellectuals in that era, I sucked up to the Party, hoping that I would be exonerated. When I finished, the report was almost as thick as a small book.

LIAO: My father used to do the same thing. During the Cultural Revolution, he compiled more than a hundred things which he claimed were his crimes. My father grew up in a landlord's family. When he was two years old, one tenant used to carry him on his back and take him to a market. My father even listed that as his “willful exploitation of the working class.”

WANG: We were all baring our hearts to the Party. After I submitted it to the director, he asked the Communist Youth League to organize a staff meeting inside a big performance studio. The sound quality there was excellent. In front of over a hundred people, I read aloud my self-criticism. My talk lasted two and a half hours. Several times, I had to stop to wipe my tears. In the end, I felt dizzy and it was like my throat was on fire. Everybody was quiet. I thought they were really touched by the thoroughness and sincerity of my speech. Then—

LIAO: There was a power outage?

WANG: Don't I wish it! Someone stood up. It was Niu Jun, the secretary for the Communist Youth League. He played Chinese bamboo flute in the orchestra. He spoke with his piercing tone: That is so fake. Let's not be deceived by Wang Xilin's confession. Let's fight back against the attacks by Wang and his counterrevolutionary clique.

After Niu Jun sat down, a municipal government representative stood up and set the tone: Comrade Niu is absolutely right. Wang Xilin's father was a county sheriff under the Nationalist government. His sister is a convicted Rightist and counterrevolutionary. He covered it up and snuck into our revolutionary ranks. Now, after years of hibernating, he finally jumped out to attack our Party. Comrades, remember what Chairman Mao teaches us: “Never forget class struggle.” This is a class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. We need to be tough. Meanwhile, I also urge everyone sitting here today to examine his or her behavior and to see which camp they want to be in.

I felt like dying. Before I joined the army, the Party knew everything about my family. They had cleared me of any connections with my parents. I just couldn't handle the new accusations. I collapsed onto my seat like a sand castle at high tide.

LIAO: I thought the director wanted to save you and give you a second chance.

WANG: That was what I thought too. Later on, I realized that it was orchestrated by the local municipal government because they wanted to “kill the chicken to intimidate the monkeys.” They wanted to make sure that no one in the orchestra dared to challenge the Party again. I became the unfortunate sacrificial chicken.

LIAO: Did the director talk with you again?

WANG: Yes. In the period between the fall of 1963 and the spring of 1964, I was ordered to do self-criticism at every public meeting and almost every staff member had the chance to denounce me. Soon, they ran out of material. One day, the director called me again to his office, with the same fatherly look, the same gesture, and the same sigh. After I had experienced months of nightmarish public condemnation and isolation, the director's fatherly look was quite comforting. I began to cry like a child who has been beaten up by bigger kids on the block.

He said: Comrade Xilin, I hope you have learned something from the past month. Don't blame other comrades for their tough attitude toward you. You should be thankful. The Party has confidence in you. Our Party has successfully reformed the last emperor of the Qing dynasty and many former senior Nationalist officials. If those big shots can change, so can you.

My tears just kept flowing. I thanked him profusely. Then he said: We know that you constantly hang out with some members of this orchestra and vent your complaints against the Party. We know everything. We want you to describe in detail every conversation or meeting you have had with other people. Honesty will get you leniency.

Sensing the hesitancy in my eyes, the director patted me on the shoulder and said: The Party needs to help other comrades who have committed similar mistakes. Don't feel guilty. This is a serious class struggle and you are doing them a favor by bringing them back to the Party. After this campaign is over, all of you will be treated as good comrades.

I was a strong believer in the Party's policy—Cooperation leads to leniency. So, I made a list of one hundred incidents where my coworkers and I had made inappropriate remarks about the Party and leaders of the orchestra. In the process, I betrayed my friends, such as the first flutist Zhang Haibo and trumpeter Chen Yingnan.

LIAO: Under the circumstances, I guess you didn't have too much of a choice.

WANG: It was a total betrayal. I had too much faith in the Party. After I submitted my list, which I titled “My Second Confession About the Counterrevolutionary Clique Within Our Symphony Orchestra,” the director asked me to read it aloud at an all-staff meeting.

LIAO: You called your friends members of a counterrevolutionary clique?

WANG: Yes. The director implied that associating my mistakes with a more serious criminal label would make me sound more sincere. Anyhow, on the list I included my friends and a lot of other people. I didn't even dare to raise my head. I simply read the list mechanically. The meeting became very tense. Initially, people held their breath, waiting to hear who would be the next to be implicated. It was like I had one hundred grenades hanging around my mouth. Each time I uttered an item, I could hear an explosion in the audience. Soon the volume of their responses got louder and louder. One woman suffered a nervous breakdown right there. Let me give you an example of what I put in the list: On the morning of September 6, I bumped into so-and-so. I heard him cursing the Party secretary for not allocating him a new apartment. Then, on the evening of January 19, so-and-so told me over lunch that he thought the deputy director was a jerk.

I finally finished the reading in three hours. As I was uttering a sigh of relief, the whole studio was filled with anger. Each time I mentioned a new name, that person would jump up and try to interrupt me, calling me a liar. They called me all sorts of names—“a vicious Rightist, a hypocrite who deserved to be cut into pieces.” People also started to bite one another with vicious accusations. In the end, my counterrevolutionary clique became bigger and bigger. More than thirty people were implicated. If it hadn't been for the security guards, there would have been fistfights. I would have been trampled to death.

My confessional list moved the whole campaign to a new stage. In order to clear their names, people started to expose the “crimes” of others. For a while, people were spying on one another, trying to collect damaging material to destroy one another.

The emotional ups and downs of the campaign took a heavy toll on my mental health. I started to lose control of myself at several public meetings. The daytime denunciation meetings extended into my dreams. I would scream in my sleep. When I was awake, I would draw the curtain and became afraid of sunlight. I was in constant fear of getting arrested. Each morning, when the loudspeaker in the courtyard started blasting the famous revolutionary song, “Chairman Mao Is Our Savior,” I would jump out of bed, shaking with fear. This paranoia has haunted me for twenty-some years. Even today, when I see a big portrait of Chairman Mao, I literally have goose bumps.

LIAO: Did you seek treatment?

WANG: Initially, they said I was afraid of light because I had harbored too much darkness in my heart, and that I was paranoid about getting arrested because I hadn't come clean about all my crimes. Finally, as my illness worsened, they realized it was for real. So they sent me to a mental hospital. The mental illness seemed to run in my family. When my sister was charged with being a Rightist, she had similar symptoms. In my case, I was doing better after getting treatment. At the same time, the number of public meetings was reduced because people were tired of hearing the same crap over and over again. Soon, they seemed to have forgotten about me. I had more time to myself. So I became restless and began to write music again. I finished a symphony, which I named The Yunnan Musical Poetry.

LIAO: I've heard it before. It was a great piece.

WANG: After over twenty years, the piece was finally recognized. I recently won the first prize at a national music contest. It has been played in thirty cities around the world.

LIAO: It is amazing you could compose that masterpiece under those difficult circumstances.

WANG: If it hadn't been for my music, you would have seen me in a mental asylum today.

LIAO: Let's continue with your story. What happened afterward?

WANG: In April of 1964, the Communist Youth League officially expelled me from the organization. The next day, the director called me to his office. Once again, he said with that fatherly tone: Comrade Xilin, you did a good job admitting your mistakes and exposing the mistakes of others. Considering your positive and cooperative attitude, we have decided to assign you to work for a music and dance troupe in rural Shanxi Province. This will give you the opportunity to thoroughly reform yourself.

LIAO: How could you still trust that guy?

WANG: Don't forget that I started receiving Communist education at the age of twelve. I was very brainwashed. I bowed and expressed my gratitude to him. You know what? Some of the friends that I had betrayed got worse treatment. Many members of my so-called counterrevolutionary clique were assigned to the desert regions of Gansu Province. So far, I haven't had the guts to contact any of them.

LIAO: Did you take the assignment?

WANG: Of course. Amazingly, I didn't feel depressed at all about my change of fate. I packed my belongings and left for Shanxi the next day. The troupe I worked for was on tour all the time. They traveled from village to village. Each time we arrived at a place, I would cook, prepare hot water for the actors, load and unload trucks, set up the stage and play an extra if needed. I believed that doing menial jobs would change my stinky bourgeois outlook on life.

Several months later, the local leaders realized that I could compose. They ordered me to write lyrics for a choral piece. I did. There were four chapters: “Praising the Stalwart Commune Members,” “The Leaders of the Local Party Are Excellent,” “The New Look of Our Village,” and “Three Communist Flags Wave in the Wind.” Then I was in charge of conducting a chorus of twenty people and an orchestra of thirty musicians. At the opening, many local leaders showed up. They loved my work. The head of the local propaganda department praised me in front of the audience by saying: Wang Xilin has gotten rid of the burdens of his past and he will have a bright future.

For a while, I thought I was finally getting a new lease on life. Then the political climate changed fast. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution started. The local Red Guards checked my personal files and uncovered my past problems. Within days, I was brought back to the public denunciation meetings. All the good work I had done was considered new crimes which aimed to deceive people. Remember the propaganda chief who praised me at the concert? He was accused of being a capitalist admirer and was locked up in a cowshed. Since he liked the lyrics I wrote for the chorus, the Red Guards condemned my work as blades of poisonous grass.

I was the lone enemy in the performance troupe. They paraded me around, with a dunce cap on my head and a black cardboard sign around my neck. I had some new criminal labels: “An escaped Rightist, a hidden counterrevolutionary, a class enemy who covered up his family history . . .” All the self-criticisms I had written before amounted to nothing. I started all over again. The political instructor, who was illiterate, monitored me every day. To regain their trust, I used the same trick. It was like writing a symphony: I put myself as the C major, the main theme. I condemned and slandered myself mercilessly. Then, I divided up people around me in different minor themes or variations.

LIAO: Did it work?

WANG: Through self-criticism, I made myself an odious enemy of the people. Big-character posters were pasted all over the walls of the county office building. Most of them were directed at me. I was reassigned to take care of the boilers.

In 1968, at the peak of the Cultural Revolution, local factory workers took over the county government to clean out “a capitalist citadel.” They rounded up all of the disgraced county officials, former landlords, and me, and threw us in a warehouse, which used to be a Japanese army concentration camp. We slept on the floor. Our windows were nailed shut. Our captors practiced what they called “using physical torture to touch the souls.” Beatings were quite frequent. In my group, a guy named Cao Yuzhu had been a lighting engineer for the performance troupe. One time, he had said jokingly to his intern that Vice Chairman Lin Biao looked too sick to lead the country. The intern reported him to authorities. Cao was arrested on charges of slandering the successor to our Great Leader. When the Red Guards paraded Cao on the street, they hung all sorts of lightbulbs around his neck to make fun of his work.

During the day, we were forced to work in the fields. Whenever there was a public criticism meeting, we immediately dropped our work and showed up on the stage in our usual jet-plane positions.

Oftentimes, all the bad guys were strung together and we walked from county to county. Most of the meetings took place in the village square or inside big warehouses. Sometimes, we had to attend smaller meetings at someone's home. That was the most painful. After my usual confession of how I was afraid of light, people would kick us or slap us since we were in close proximity. Some sadistic folks would order me to kneel on wooden boards filled with nails. Kids would pull my hair or ears.

One night, it was almost 11 p.m. I heard a knock on the door. I got out of bed and opened the door. Before I knew what was happening, someone attacked me, blindfolded me, tied my hands behind my back with ropes, gagged me with a piece of dirty rag, and dragged me away like a hostage. I could sense that I was led outside into the field. Then they pushed me down into a big hole on the ground, with lots of loose dirt under my feet. I thought I was going to be buried alive. So I moaned and groaned in despair. A few minutes later, I could feel warm water pouring down on my head. Someone peed on me from above. Then they pulled me out of the hole and took me to a warehouse. Two young guys pushed me against the wall, took the rag out of my mouth, grabbed my head, and banged my face against the wall. My nose was broken like a ping-pong ball. Then I heard a familiar voice behind me: Did you steal the little box from the archives office?

I could tell the voice belonged to Zhao Baoqin, a member of the performance troupe. Realizing that they were only looking for a stolen box, I became somewhat relaxed. I told them no. They took off my pants and whipped me a dozen times until I was bleeding. It hurt so much. After two hours of beatings, they still couldn't get anything out of me. So they let me go. The next morning, I found out that two other disgraced officials had similar interrogations the night before.

LIAO: Did you ever think of escape?

WANG: Many times. For several years, I followed the performance troupe. All the actors would sit on the horse-drawn cart. A couple of counterrevolutionaries like me would walk behind the cart, carrying luggage and props. We traveled all over the region, regardless of rain or snow. It was very hard. Eventually, there were rumors saying that all the counterrevolutionaries would be sent to jail. So I discussed this with two other “bad guys” and we planned our escape. I secretly bought a pair of rainproof shoes and a water bottle. As we were ready to implement our plan, my mother showed up. She was in her seventies. As a little girl, she followed the ancient tradition and bound her feet.

My mother carried a small sack of flour, a big porcelain bowl, and some clothes. She stayed at my dorm and waited for me to come back. But an official went to my dorm and told her: Your son is a counterrevolutionary. He is under investigation; you are not allowed to stay with him. My mother was so confused: My son joined the Communist army at the age of twelve. How could he rebel against the Communist Party?

I was then released temporarily so I could find a hotel for her. My poor mother didn't want to spend money on a hotel. She repacked her stuff and left the next day.

In the mid-1970s, after I regained freedom, I used to go visit my mother once a year in the city of Lanzhou. She helped raise my sister's two children. I would send her fifteen yuan [US$2] a month.

Upon her release from the labor camp, my sister was transferred to a rural village outside Lanzhou. She continued to suffer humiliation at public meetings. A couple of times, she ran back to my mother's house in the city to visit her children. But the street committee found out and they sent her back.

My mother died on January 13, 1978. Before her death, she suffered from bronchitis and heart problems. We couldn't afford to put her in the hospital. But a friend of mine, who was also a musician, had married a high-ranking army officer. With her help, the hospital admitted my mother. Three days later, my mother, who used to live frugally in slums, became really uncomfortable and kept saying: Take me home. It's too expensive here. Before I had the chance to move her, she died. I hired a horse-drawn cart, sent her body to a crematorium, and brought her ashes home. She was eighty-two years old. Her hands were like dried tree bark, distorted from years of hard work.

LIAO: What happened to your sister?

WANG: She is now in her seventies and looks older than my mother. She is still quite insane, talking to herself all the time. It's horrible.

LIAO: In China, musicians are low-class performers for hire. Few dare to challenge authorities. Many musicians, writers, and artists have become favorites for being the Party's mouthpieces. For example, poet He Jingzhi became the minister of culture for writing revolutionary poems filled with lavish praise for new China. Singer Hu Songhua became famous and enjoyed the “People's Artist” title for thirty-some years for singing one song, “The Song of Praises.” Master Wang, you had superior skills and possess all the qualities to be a “Red” artist like He Jingzhi and Hu Songhua. Yet you ended up getting purged not only in the Mao era, but also under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. I guess it has a lot to do with your honesty. Maybe you should learn to be a little shrewd?

WANG: I have never stopped trying to suck up to the government. But my voice is too loud and my mouth is too big. As I said earlier, my trouble began after the two-hour speech in 1962. For fourteen years, I was detained, interrogated, beaten, humiliated, trampled, and abandoned. Even so, I have always tried to use my music to please those in power. During the Cultural Revolution, I composed many revolutionary lyrics while working in the boiler room. Those lyrics included “The Red Sun in My Heart,” “Revolutionary Rebels Are Not Afraid of Violence,” and “Walking on the Wide Path of the Cultural Revolution.” No matter how hard I tried, the Party never gave a damn. You know, for many years, we Chinese were forced to accept the notion that our beloved Party was more endearing to us than our parents. From my experience, I think the Party is worse than an ugly ruthless stepmother.

LIAO: I heard your Symphony no. 4 a couple of weeks ago. The symphony combines some local mourning tunes in Anhui Province; I mean the suona music is so haunting. Then there were the angry dissonant sounds of drums and bass . . . Your music is so autobiographical, harsh and dark.

WANG: Damn right. My music is devoid of tenderness or love. It's like a big dark lake, which contains all the mud, tears, blood, sighs, and screams from its surrounding rivers. That's why it's heavy, deep and dark. Some sissy artists used to say that love is everything. That's total bullshit. When your right to live is being threatened, where do you get love? On June 4, 1989, when soldiers opened fire at students and residents, one thousand shouts of love couldn't even stop a single bullet.

LIAO: Aren't you a bit too harsh on humanity?

WANG: In those turbulent times, I craved love and humanity. One time at a public meeting, I stood on the stage in a jet-plane position for four hours. My body hurt and my mouth was dry. After the meeting, an old lady came over and handed me a bowl of water. The bowl was not very clean and the water tasted a little weird. But she was so brave to care for a class enemy like me . . . Many years later, I still think of that bowl of water. Unfortunately, I didn't get too many of those warm and fuzzy things in life.

LIAO: You look like a tough guy, but you are really quite sentimental and vulnerable inside.

WANG: From my appearance, people think I'm very tough. I'm tall and have a loud voice. But inside here, I'm constantly begging for mercy from my captors. Time after time, they ignored my begging. In the past, I have requested the government many times to reverse its verdict against me. My requests have gone unanswered for many years.

But, music has sustained me. For many years, authorities in China despised twentieth-century Western music: Igor Stravinsky's works were considered too decadent, Richard Strauss was reactionary, and Dmitri Shostakovich a monster! We were at least fifty years behind the West in musical development. It wasn't until the 1980s that China opened its door to the West. We Chinese finally realized that there was so much that we had missed.

Since the late 1970s, I've been trying to catch up. I have produced over thirty different types of works. I have written Symphony no. 3 and no. 4. I'm writing no. 5 now.

LIAO: I have read several news stories about the success of your music abroad. Your symphonies have been played in over twenty countries. People here seem to be indifferent to your works. I can't believe you get paid ten yuan [US$1.30] per hour for teaching a class. An orchestra here fired you because playing your symphonies didn't bring them a profit.

WANG: We are going from a dogmatic Communist society to a commercially driven one. Everyone is busy making money. They don't hear the sufferings and pains of my generation. That indifference doesn't change me or my music. I compose for a different reason. I'm composing a series of elegies for the whole nation, for the millions of victims who died uncalled-for deaths or suffered under Maoism. If Shostakovich's music was testimony to the horrors of the Stalin era, my music will be . . . I don't want to finish the sentence here. I guess my music will come in handy on Judgment Day because it is eternal.