THE RIGHTIST

Feng Zhongci, 75, was my uncle Liao Enze's neighbor and friend. He lives in an apartment building near Chengdu's West Gate Train Station. Feng and his wife have two children, both of whom are married. In the 1950s, Feng was a promising leader of the Communist Youth League at his university. But during the anti-Rightist campaign, he was labeled a Rightist and lived many years in the desert region of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

I visited him on a recent August afternoon. His room was tiny and hot. He acted like an old-fashioned scholar, formal and overly polite. There was no air-conditioning in his apartment. During our conversation, both of us were sweating profusely, as if we were locked inside a dim sum steamer. Several times, I told him to take off his shirt, but he politely refused, saying it was improper to entertain a guest with a T-shirt on.

LIAO YIWU: I want to chat with you about the anti-Rightist campaign. I want to know how you became a Rightist.

FENG ZHONGCI: I don't have much to talk about.

LIAO: Uncle Feng, I've come a long way. You can't let me leave here empty-handed. You can at least talk about the political climate in that era, can't you? I didn't realize that over 500,000 innocent people were persecuted during that period. Most of them were intellectuals. Some got labeled Rightists simply because they had written a letter to a literary magazine or because they had expressed their doubts about the Communist Party in their personal diaries. That's pretty hard to believe.

FENG: What happened in the 1950s might seem strange and abnormal today. But in that era it was very common.

LIAO: Were you one of those who became Rightist because you had spoken out against the Party?

FENG: Not really. I came from a proletariat family. I was politically active and supported the Party wholeheartedly. At the beginning of the anti-Rightist campaign, I was ready to stand up and fend off any attacks against the Party.

LIAO: You aren't kidding me, are you?

FENG: No. I was head of the Communist Youth League at my university. I joined the Party in my sophomore year. Before my graduation in 1957, I was the first one to write an open letter to the Party and pledged to answer Chairman Mao's call and take assignment in the remote poverty-stricken areas. However, the Party secretary had a private conversation with me, saying that they needed politically reliable graduates like me to help with the anti-Rightist Campaign. They wanted me to stay on after graduation and take over the school newspaper. He said, We need to seize this important forum from the hands of the counterrevolutionaries.

LIAO: If you were so pro-Party, how did you end up being a Rightist yourself?

FENG: I became a Rightist because of my personal life.

LIAO: Lifestyle problems?

FENG: Please don't use that word to judge me. The word “lifestyle” has different interpretations at different times. In those years, you could be executed for having lifestyle problems. For example, if a guy had premarital sex with a female classmate, it could be a serious crime.

LIAO: If your Rightist label was not lifestyle-related, what was it?

FENG: I got it because my wife's family fell into the category of “reactionary bureaucrat and landlord.” Her uncle had served in the Nationalist government as a chief of the drug enforcement agency. He was executed not long after the Communist liberation in 1949. Her father, a big landlord, had made a young woman his concubine. So because of her family, my wife, Wenxin, shouldered a huge political burden at college. She tried to concentrate on her studies and kept everything to herself. She was quite antisocial. I was just the opposite, very gregarious. I had many friends. When I was with a group, I felt like a fish in water. But somehow I found myself attracted to Wenxin's aloofness. There was something mysterious and beautiful about her. I just couldn't get over her. I began to hang out with her in 1956.

LIAO: I can imagine the challenges of dating someone who was incompatible with you politically. My sister used to date a military officer during the Cultural Revolution. Before a military officer or a government official got married, the Party had to conduct thorough background checks on the future spouse's family before granting approval. My sister's boyfriend had to break up with her because my grandfather used to be a landlord. In your case, how could her questionable family background make you a Rightist?

FENG: This is how it all started. Initially, I tried to get together with Wenxin in the name of helping her with political studies. During our study sessions, I would engage her in conversations about art, music, and our families. Gradually, she began to open up to me. One time she told me that she was very close to her father's concubine. I immediately warned her to strengthen her political standing by separating herself from the decadent concubine of a landlord. She didn't say anything. One day, she suggested that we take a stroll outside the campus. After we were out on the street, she led me to a courtyard house inside a deep alleyway. She didn't tell me who we were visiting.

As we entered the shadowy courtyard, I saw a woman squatting by a well, hand-washing clothes. She had long black hair and long slender fingers. She had quite an elegant figure. When she smiled, her pale face exuded a kind of sadness. That woman was Wenxin's stepmother, the concubine. She poured tea for us. Wenxin then begged her stepmother to play the piano for us. She wiped the dust off a piano in a corner of the living room and played a variation on “The Sky in the Communist Regions Is Brighter”—the revolutionary song that we had sung hundreds of times in large groups. She probably did that to ingratiate herself with me. She either knew I was a diehard Communist supporter, or she simply wanted to show that she was in tune with the times. Strangely enough, that uplifting revolutionary song totally changed character under her long elegant fingers. The tune became rottenly bourgeois, with so much tenderness, elegance, and sadness, as if it had been a woman's whisper and sigh on a quiet starlit night. For a brief moment, I was mesmerized.

After I walked out of that courtyard house, I began to question myself. As a Party member and the head of the Communist Youth League, how could I have succumbed to her decadent music so easily? Where did my political upbringing go?

LIAO: Were you really that radical?

FENG: Yes. I was. But, on the other hand, I was a college student. Before 1957, the stuff they taught at colleges was not as radical and dogmatic. We had some access to Western books and were allowed to listen to Western music, which had some positive influence on me. Anyhow, as I was wrestling with my political beliefs, Wenxin grabbed my hand and said: She likes you. Otherwise, she wouldn't play the piano for you. I said angrily: This was the first time that I had come into contact with a member of the decadent ruling class. Are you trying to corrupt me? So I turned around and walked away. Wenxin was still standing inside the alleyway, which seemed darker and frightful. To me, she was like someone standing in the shadows of the past. She caught up with me and said: Let me tell you the story of my stepmother. Before she married my father, she had a lover. He was her music teacher. Her family strongly opposed the relationship because the teacher didn't have any money. Eventually, she bowed to her family's pressure and became my father's concubine. After their marriage, my father realized that he couldn't really change her mind about her music teacher. So he gave up on her. After the revolution in 1949, she and my father filed for divorce. Then she went to look for her lover, who had relocated to the central city of Xian. When she got there, she found out that her lover had already died of tuberculosis. All she saw was his tomb. The experience devastated her. Two months later, she returned to Chengdu and has lived alone since. Before my father passed away, he had forgiven her and gave her that courtyard house. She had never gotten over the death of her lover and started to lose her sanity. She would cry and laugh for no reason. Since she and I were of similar age, I felt a lot of sympathy for her. I come occasionally to take care of her.

After listening to Wenxin's story, I was kind of touched. It was like a bourgeois movie produced during the pre-Communist days. So, I asked her: Why are you telling me this? She shrugged her shoulder: I try to bare my heart to the Party. You can report me if you want. I don't care.

I felt so hurt by her mean remarks. I turned my head away to hide my tears. At that moment, I also experienced something that I had never felt before. I was in love with Wenxin.

LIAO: Did the Party interfere in your love affair?

FENG: Not at the beginning. Luckily, very few people knew about our relationship, and my meetings with Wenxin were not that frequent. Then, in 1957, Chairman Mao introduced the campaign called “Let one hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend.” Many intellectuals responded with enthusiasm. Through lectures, published articles, and big-character posters people around the country began to voice their views and question the leading role of the Party. Initially, Chairman Mao welcomed the criticism. With his endorsement, local officials were quite tolerant. Meanwhile, the dissenting voices from intellectuals got louder and the criticisms became more severe and radical. Some even suggested the end to the one-party rule and called for the establishment of a Western-style democratic system. I still remember the remarks of Ge Peiqi, a well-known scholar from the Beijing People's University. In one of his articles, he said that China belonged to the six hundred million Chinese, including the counterrevolutionaries. China didn't belong to the Communist Party alone. It was wrong for the Party leadership to assume that “the Empire is mine and I am the Empire.” The Communist Party shouldn't be too arrogant, naively thinking that if the Party collapsed, the whole country would collapse. That was not the case. Those who opposed the Communist Party were not traitors . . . Ge just went on and on. Criticisms like Ge's had far exceeded the government's limit of tolerance.

At my university, many students actively joined in the national chorus of criticism. Like I mentioned before, Wenxin was a quiet girl and had never been active in politics. But I encouraged her to speak her mind. Eventually, with my repeated encouragement, she summoned her courage and stood up at a departmental meeting. She said: The Communist Party has long advocated the idea of democracy and equality. That meant students with a nonproletariat family background should be able to enjoy equal rights. During my four years at the university, I have endured all types of discrimination. I was denied the opportunity to join the Communist Youth League. I work really hard and have gotten top grades. But I have been accused of being a bourgeois scholar. Chairman Mao has said on many occasions that the Party should offer a way out for children of nonprogressive families, as long as they draw a clear line between themselves and their landlord or capitalist parents . . .

After Wenxin finished, I clapped my hands loudly, but only a few people joined in the applause. I could see displeasure on the face of many student leaders. I had always followed the Party line closely. At that meeting, I miscalculated. I naively thought that by speaking her mind, Wenxin could get other people to understand her better. She could get more sympathy from her classmates. Little did I know that I had gotten Wenxin into trouble.

One month after Wenxin's first public speech, the political climate turned dramatically. Chairman Mao came out and declared that the movement had brought out the most dangerous class enemies who had previously been in hiding. With those remarks, the anti-Rightist campaign followed. One after another, many intellectuals fell from grace. The purge soon spread to my university. Students were mobilized to expose and report on their classmates and teachers. The school authorities compiled a list of those they considered to be potential Rightists and distributed it to all the departments. The Party secretary asked students and faculty to select the Rightists through voting. Wenxin became a top candidate for Rightist.

LIAO: Wasn't it ironic that people were actually asked to decide who should be persecuted by casting their votes?

FENG: Yes. In this way, the decision would reflect the will of the people. On the day when the vote was cast, the Party secretary of my university showed up and presided over our department meeting. Of course, there were lots of grievances against me. Some questioned my relationship with Wenxin. Since I was on his priority list for promotion, the Party secretary defended me furiously with blatant lies. He said: Comrade Feng contacted Wenxin frequently upon secret instructions from the Party. Many of you here might have thought that Wenxin is a quiet student. But she harbors deep hatred for our new China. That snake, in the form of a beautiful woman, has finally been exposed in broad daylight. We wouldn't have been able to accomplish this without the hard work of Comrade Feng. The Party is considering granting Comrade Feng the honor of “Outstanding Leader of the Communist Youth League.” I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Wenxin stood up, looked in my direction with extreme anger. Her face turned ashen and then she collapsed to the floor. Ignoring the stares from people in the room, I carried her in my arms and dashed to the school clinic. Even as I was doing that, the Party secretary continued with his lies: Comrade Feng is doing the right thing. Even though Wenxin is a member of the enemy, we need to help her out of our revolutionary humanity.

LIAO: That was quite dramatic.

FENG: Well, before Wenxin regained consciousness, I left the clinic in a trance. Then leaders of the Communist Youth League came to talk with me. They wanted me to review the list of Rightists in my department and then sign off on it. With my signature, they were going to submit the list to the city government. I refused to sign the paper, which included Wenxin's name. When the Party secretary and the president of my university heard about it, they came to my dorm and tried to talk me into signing it. I knew that my refusal could jeopardize my future. But I was quite stubborn and didn't budge.

The university president warned me: The Party has spent many years training and nurturing you. You should understand your boundary and don't trash your future. I retorted: The Party should be honest and transparent. Why would the Party secretary lie about my relationship with Wenxin? The president patted me on the back and said, Don't you know that the Party secretary tried to protect you from the criticism? I didn't agree: Wenxin should be treated as our ally. She has betrayed her family and is willing to join the revolution. But the president laughed at me: Don't be fooled by her act. If she is as progressive as you have suggested, why did she take you to visit her father's concubine? She attempted to entice you into her world and corrupt your revolutionary spirit. We know everything you and she did. I was flabbergasted. The Party secretary continued: You are the one who is insane at the moment. You would throw away your political future for the sake of that woman.

I became incensed and started to argue with the president: I don't agree with the charges against Wenxin. I swear to the Party that she is nowhere close to being a Rightist. The president banged on the desk and yelled at me: You'd better think before you open your mouth. Your judgment has been clouded by your emotions. For a young hot-blooded guy like you, it's understandable. But human emotion has to succumb to reason and political thinking. Chairman Mao teaches us, there is no such thing in the world as pure love. You can't love an enemy. I was so irrational and blurted out something that I had never said before: I love her. The Party secretary looked at me and softened his tone: OK. You have to make a choice between that woman and the Party. I said again, very firmly: I love her.

Two weeks later, I was expelled from the Party and was labeled a Rightist as well as a bad element.

LIAO: Were you officially dating Wenxin at that time?

FENG: No, we were just friends. She liked me but certainly not as a boyfriend. She was just grateful that I was willing to talk with her since none of her classmates wanted to have anything to do with her. Wenxin changed my political views. Before the Communists came, my family was so poor that I had to beg on the street. One time, I knocked on the door of a landlord, asking for food. The guy let his dog out to chase me away. As the dog was barking at me, I barked back. I ended up biting half of the dog's ear off. That incident made me hate that landlord. After 1949, the Communists told me that it wasn't that specific landlord who was merciless. The whole ruling class was evil. Since then, I started to despise all people who belonged to the landlord or capitalist class. But talking with Wenxin helped me see things differently. I no longer believed in Mao's “class struggle” theory.

LIAO: So what happened to you?

FENG: Have you read the American writer Edgar Snow's book, Red China Today? In the book, the author interviewed an American-educated Chinese intellectual who had returned to China to join the revolution. That intellectual became a Rightist. This is how he described his experience: “Everybody in my bureau, from the office boy or scrubwoman up, can tell me how bourgeois I am, criticize my personal habits, my family life, my intellectual arrogance, the way I spend my leisure, even my silences. I have to sit and take it . . . Some people prefer suicide rather than submit to it. It took me years to get used to it but now I believe it has been good to me.” This is exactly what happened to me and Wenxin. After graduation, I was denied a job. I stayed at home and had to attend public denunciation meetings. In the old days, I was the one who was in charge at those meetings and always criticized others. Then, as a Rightist, I was the target all the time. Like the guy in Snow's book, I got used to it, especially after I had kids.

LIAO: Did you ever regret your decision?

FENG: No. Many people felt sorry for me, for what they called “my sudden irrational act.” But I think it was a good thing. Between the Party and a woman, I picked the latter. People need to put their personal life first, don't you think, young man? We joined the Communist revolution so we could live a better life, have enough to eat, marry a beautiful woman, and raise a family. This basic concept was totally distorted in the Mao era. All we talked about were the abstract ideas such as the Party and the People. Private lives were considered something disgraceful. You can't marry the Party or the People, can you? We used to hear phony stuff like “So-and-so has been nurtured by the Party and the People.” What do the Party's breasts look like?

I would really regret the rest of my life if I had signed the paper and supported the Party's decision to punish Wenxin and other Rightists. Things have changed today. We really should thank Deng Xiaoping for ending the era when humans lived like ghosts, devoid of any feelings or emotions.

LIAO: How did you make Wenxin love you?

FENG: After I became a Rightist, I was somehow at peace with myself. I wrote her a love letter. One night, I snuck out and stopped by her stepmother's house. I pushed the letter in through a slit in the door and rushed back home. I sent five or six letters that way and never got anything back from her. I made lots of inquiries and found out that Wenxin had been exiled to a state farm in Aksu, in Xinjiang. So I went to look for her. I took a train, and then a long-distance bus. By the time I got there, I had literally no money in my pocket. I begged my way around. Then I was detained by the local police for migrating without a permit. They were going to send me to a detention center in the middle of the Taklimakan Desert. I told them that I was looking for Wenxin. It so happened that the detention center was not too far away, on the northwestern side of her farm. Authorities contacted the farm, found Wenxin, and confirmed my story. The day they dropped me off at her farm, I saw her picking cotton in the field. Her face was so tanned and she looked healthy—reform through hard labor had done some good to her health. Anyhow, when I called her name, she hardly recognized me. It took her quite a while to realize that the guy with the disheveled look in front of her was her beloved Feng Zhongci.

The rest is just history, nothing extraordinary. We were both Rightists. In that sense, we were quite a match. Since I went all the way to court her, she couldn't reject me, even though I wasn't her ideal companion. After we asked permission to marry from the authorities at her farm, they were quite accommodating. They issued her a travel certificate and granted her two weeks of vacation. So we came back to Chengdu and obtained our marriage certificate from the city. Then, after the wedding, we both applied for the cancellation of our city residential permit and moved to Xinjiang. A counterrevolutionary couple was willing to relocate to China's frontier to support the socialist revolution. Nobody had objections to that. Since Aksu was so far away from the political center, our lives were really unaffected by the ensuing political campaigns. In the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping reversed the Party's earlier verdict against Rightists, we brought our two Xinjiang-born kids back to Chengdu and reunited with the rest of our families. This is pretty much my life. I have to say that right now, I'm pretty contented.