THE YI DISTRICT CHIEF'S WIFE

The Yi ethnic group, with a population of over seven million, is one of the fifty-five minorities in China today. Most Yi people live in the southwestern provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi, farming and raising livestock. Before 1949, the Yi people were stratified into four different castes, with Nuohuo, meaning Black Yi, as the ruling class. The other ranks were considered Black Yi's subordinates. According to a Chinese government report, the rank of Nuohuo was determined by blood lineage, and used to make up 7 percent of the total Yi population, but owned 60 to 70 percent of the arable land. In the early 1950s, the government sent work teams to the Yi region and launched the Land Reform movement to end what the Communists called “oppression and exploitation” by the Nuohuo class.

In December of 2005, I visited a Yi village in Yunnan. My guide introduced me to Zhang Meizhi, a Nuohuo and the wife of a former district chief. Zhang was eighty-four years old, but in good spirits. When I arrived at her house, she stood up from her chair, her back hunched but her wrinkled face beaming with a smile. I sat down with Zhang and her two children—daughter Yang Sixian, 59, and son Yang Siyi, 57.

LIAO YIWU: I passed by a big traditional courtyard house that stood tall and imposing in the middle of the village. My guide told me the house belongs to your family. When was the last time you lived there?

ZHANG MEIZHI: In the early 1950s. After the Land Reform movement started, the newly founded Poor Peasants Revolutionary Committee forced us to move into a cowshed.

LIAO: Could you tell me what happened? The Land Reform movement affected the lives of millions of people. However, that part of history is gradually fading from people's memories. All the history books say that the Land Reform movement enabled the Communist Party to change China's unequal system of land ownership. However, there is no mention of the brutal fact that over two million people were executed at random.

ZHANG: I don't know if my story will help young people learn history. But, on a personal level, I lost over ten family members in that chaotic period.

LIAO: Let's start from the beginning. How many people were there in your family?

ZHANG: I had quite a large family. On my husband's side, he had two brothers. The eldest one used to be a well-known political figure in the region. He left home at an early age and attended the Yunnan Provincial Military Academy. In 1935, at the age of twenty-five, the governor of Yunnan appointed him to be the chief of Deqin County. As you know, for someone who grew up in a remote and isolated region like Zehei, becoming a county chief was a big deal.

In the old days, Deqin was overrun with triads and gangsters. They colluded with local officials to bully the innocent. After he assumed office, the eldest brother took tough measures and cleaned up the area in no time. He gained quite a reputation for himself. The Nationalist government even awarded him a medal for his good work. He was a strong believer in the old government under Chiang Kai-shek, and there was no way he would have switched his loyalty to Chairman Mao's Communist government. Luckily, he had died before Mao's army came. Otherwise he would have been tortured and executed. The second brother served as a sheriff in the Sayingpan region. My husband followed in the footsteps of two of his brothers' and served as the Yongshan district chief. In my family, I had two siblings. My brother, Zhang Yinxin, became the chief of Zehei Township. I had a sister who was married to a local landlord.

In 1952, when I turned thirty-one, a work team from Deqin County arrived in our region to mobilize local peasants to join the Land Reform campaign. Peasants were encouraged to speak out against the landlords and former government officials and confiscate their property. A week later, the work team arrested my husband and my brother. They locked the two of them up in the Zehei Elementary School for a few days and then transferred them to a county jail.

LIAO: What happened to you and the rest of the family?

ZHANG: During the first couple of weeks, the work team left us alone. One day in September, however, several militiamen showed up at my house. They said I had to join my husband and brother at a speak bitterness meeting and to hear my fellow villagers tell stories of their sufferings under my family's oppression. They tied my hands behind my back and then escorted me to the playground. When I got there, I saw many villagers had already gathered there. They were shouting slogans. The militiamen ordered me to stand in front of the crowd, side by side with a dozen former landlords or rich peasants. The stage was about ten meters away, right behind us. I turned around and saw my husband and my brother. They were kneeling on the ground, their arms and legs tied up with thick ropes and their mouths gagged with rags. A narrow black bamboo slate stuck out from the back of their collars. In the old days, I had seen criminals who had those bamboo slates in place before being sent to the execution grounds. I immediately realized what was going to happen. And I started to cry.

Soon the meeting began. Two militiamen pushed our heads down. One Communist official in military uniform went on the stage and shouted slogans: “Death to our class enemy! Long live the victory of the Land Reform!” The whole crowd raised their right arms and followed in unison. Then, after the shouting died down, the official declared through the microphone: These two class enemies on the stage have been sentenced to death by the village committee. The execution will be carried out immediately. His words drew a wave of loud cheers. Then the loudspeaker started to blast revolutionary songs. The militiamen pushed my husband and my brother off the stage. My group was ordered to follow them to the execution ground by a river. A large crowd walked behind us. After we arrived, the militiamen put me about two or three meters away from my husband and made me watch. Then two guys shoved my husband and my brother down on their knees, pulled the bamboo slates out from inside their collars, pointed a rifle at their chests, and then bang, bang, fired two shots. The sound of the gunshots was so deafening. My brother was a big guy. After he was shot, his body tilted a little but didn't fall immediately. A second militiaman stepped up and fired two more shots at his chest. Blood spewed out and splashed all over. The guy was startled by the blood. He kicked my brother's body really hard, wiped the blood off his arms, and cursed loudly. Then I saw my brother slump to the ground, next to my husband. He and my husband lay on the ground, head to head. Blood oozed out of their chests. Under the bright sunshine, their faces looked calm, as if they were whispering to each other. Two militiamen grabbed my hair and made sure that I saw the whole process. I tried to close my eyes. But my torturer propped my eyes open with his fingers. Tears ran down my cheeks. I tried to tell myself to be brave. But I couldn't. I just screamed and then passed out.

Someone poured cold water on me. I woke up and saw two militiamen prodding open the mouths of my husband and my brother with knives. So I yelled: What are you trying to do? One guy kicked me and said: Shut up. We are going to cut their tongues out. I screamed with my hoarse voice, Take my tongue if you want. Please keep their body parts intact. One militiaman hit my head with the butt of a rifle and knocked me unconscious again.

LIAO: Why did the militiamen want to cut out the victims' tongues? Was it some sort of execution ritual?

ZHANG: No. I was told later that a leader in our village wanted the human tongue to treat his illness. The leader had been bitten on the thigh by a dog. The wounded area became infected and wouldn't heal. Local doctors prescribed all sorts of herbal remedies and none of them worked. Then a feng shui master recommended cutting human tongues into pieces, drying them in the sun, and grinding them into powder to spread on the infected areas. The feng shui master said the powder had been very effective.

LIAO: Did it work?

ZHANG: No, it didn't. He had probably caught rabies, but in those days, nobody knew what was going on. There was no Western doctor in the village. The tongues didn't heal his wounds. Instead, his health got worse. He soon died. The local government held a big memorial service and made that bastard a revolutionary martyr.

After the execution, they dumped the bodies of my husband and brother at my house. I washed the blood off them and sent one of my children to tell my parents in a nearby village. That evening, three of my relatives came, took our door off, stacked the bodies on top, and carried them to a location up on the mountain. Since it was dark, they couldn't see well. They simply dug two shallow holes and buried them in a hurry. A couple of days later, when I went up there to check the tombs, I saw their bodies had been dug up by wolves. All that was left was a pile of bones.

LIAO: Can I take a look at the court verdict against your husband and your brother?

ZHANG: My family never received any court papers. In those days, the work team acted like members of the triad. If they decided that someone deserved the death sentence, they simply called a public condemnation meeting and then had the person executed on the spot. Over thirty people were killed like that in this region. We never heard about things such as court rulings in the 1950s. People's lives were at the mercy of the local officials.

LIAO: Those practices were very common in other parts of China too. It was a very tragic and brutal era.

ZHANG: My family tragedy was far from over. During the next two years, I lost more family members—my niece's husband, who had served in the Nationalist government, was also executed. In despair, my niece lost her mind and choked her three children to death with ropes. She then gulped down two bottles of rat poison and killed herself. My husband's second brother, the sheriff, and his two sons were shot to death at similar public speak bitterness sessions. My mother was branded as the lazy wife of a rich landlord. The militiamen dragged her through the street during a parade. Her body couldn't take the torture. She died shortly after. My father was locked up inside a warehouse where he was beaten constantly. One day, when the militiamen were asleep, he hanged himself from the ceiling with his belt. I had a brother who was executed at the age of twenty, a week after he got married.

LIAO: You probably know I also grew up in a landlord's family. My grandpa was also badly tortured during the Land Reform movement . . .

ZHANG (sobbing): I know we were not alone. Why did the government murder so many people? What crimes had we committed to deserve this? After all these years, I'm still haunted. In the middle of the night, I constantly wake up from nightmares and shake with fear.

LIAO: Could you tell me how you managed to survive those horrible years?

ZHANG: Following the execution of my husband and brother, the militiamen came again to get me. They locked me up for over forty days. Whenever there was a public speak bitterness meeting, the militiamen would drag me out in front of the podium, with hands tied behind my back and my head down. I had to carry a big cardboard sign on my neck. The cardboard sign said “Wife of the Evil Landlord.” I would be asked to confess the crimes of my husband. I was an ordinary woman who had spent most of my time at home with the kids; how was I supposed to know what crimes my husband had committed? I simply read a prepared statement drafted by the work team. Also, they confiscated all of my property. They accused me of hiding money and dug holes all over the dirt floor of the house to look for it.

While I was away at the detention center, nobody was home taking care of my kids. My youngest daughter died of starvation. She was only two years old.

LIAO: How many children did you have?

ZHANG: I had seven children, four boys and three daughters. The first two were my stepchildren. By the way, I was nineteen years younger than my husband. His first wife had died. When the Communists came, my elder stepson, Yang Siyuan, had turned nineteen and was a student at a county college. After I was detained, the village committee accused him of harboring evil intentions of killing Communist soldiers. Good heavens! He was a bookish young man too timid to even touch a gun, never mind kill people. You know, in those days, there was no way for us to defend ourselves. He simply ran off and hid inside the mountain for two years. My second stepson, Yang Sipu, was barely sixteen. A neighbor reported to the authorities that Sipu had written anti–Land Reform slogans on the wall of a latrine. Since our neighbor belonged to the Poor Peasants Revolutionary Committee, the authority believed everything he had said about my son. My poor Sipu was sentenced to seven years in jail.

At the beginning, my two stepsons had taken care of their little brothers and sisters, who were between the ages of ten and two. Then, after the eldest one escaped and the second one was imprisoned, the rest of my kids simply went out begging and searched for food in the field or in trash cans.

My eldest son's escape made the village committee really mad. The village chief sentenced him to death in his absence. He put my stepson on the most-wanted list and posted his picture everywhere. He said that my stepson had gone up the mountain to join the triad and collaborate with the Nationalist forces in the hope of overthrowing the local government. Then the committee vented all their anger at me. It was during the rainy season. There was water everywhere. My torturers forced me to kneel in a water puddle on broken bricks and pieces of charcoal. It felt very painful initially, then both of my knees became numb. Look at the scars on my knees now. Even today, I still feel the pain here. One time, they hung me from the ceiling, pulled my hair, and slapped my face with shoes. They even pulled several of my teeth out. Can you see? I don't have many left.

LIAO: Where did your eldest son go?

ZHANG: I thought he had run off to some faraway place. When I was released and got home, my third son whispered to me, I know where my big brother is hiding. It turned out that my eldest son was hiding inside an old vegetable cellar on the other side of the hill, not too far from us. He stayed in the cellar during the daytime and came out to look for food in the field at night.

Several months after his disappearance, the momentum for Land Reform gradually weakened. The most wanted posters of my son were torn down. People seemed to forget about him. The militiamen still dragged me to speak bitterness meetings and denounced me for the same crimes again and again. I became accustomed to the humiliation. During the day, my family was ordered to grow buckwheat on a small piece of land on the far side of the mountain. So I used the opportunity to dig a small cellar in the far corner of the field next to a big tree. My younger sons and I moved a stone slab on top of the entrance, spread a thick layer of soil on top and planted buckwheat seeds. When the buckwheat grew out, nobody could tell there was a cellar under there. We also planted lots of bamboo nearby and drilled holes inside the bamboo trunks so they could all serve as ventilators for the cellar. When it was finished, we secretly moved my eldest son in there.

LIAO: That sounds like a pretty risky and complicated project.

ZHANG: Well, we had to come up with some clever ideas. Otherwise, we wouldn't have survived. Every day, I would strap some extra food, such as steamed buckwheat buns, boiled potatoes, or corncobs, on my children's legs. After we got to the field, we would slip the food down to him. For two years, my son almost forgot how the sun rose or set. He lived like a worm. The cellar was damp. He got skin sores all over. Initially, he wore his clothes. Later on, he didn't even bother and wore nothing. As time went by, he had almost turned into a ghost. He had shoulder-length hair. His arms and legs were covered with inch-long gray hair, like mildew on a piece of rotten tofu. Once in a while, as the buckwheat stalks were waist-deep, I would wait until dark. When I had made sure nobody was around, I would open up the cellar. He would poke his head out. I hugged him and combed his long gray hair, which was overrun with lice. Each time I saw him, I would burst out crying. He would look around and cover my mouth with his hands.

He was always hungry for food. Each time, even before I had the chance to bring the food out, he would desperately grab my pockets and ask for it. Then, he would wolf the potatoes or corn bread down. He would always choke. When that happened, he would straighten his neck like a snake to allow the food to slip down. Then, after he finished all the food, he would jump out of the cellar like a monkey, and plunge his head down into an irrigation trench nearby to drink water. One time, as he was drinking, he suddenly heard something. He immediately jumped right back into the cellar. His hearing was sharp like a dog's.

I never dared to stay with him long for fear that the village militiamen could check up on my house at night. Before I left, I would whisper to him: Siyuan, Ma needs to go. I will come back later. He would nod his head, and whimper: “Ah—ah.” He could hardly talk like a human being. After I walked out of the buckwheat field, I turned around and saw he was still watching me. One day, I waved my hands, asking him to go down the cellar. But he mistakenly thought I was giving him a “danger” signal. He jumped around and disappeared. He was literally like those savage creatures that scientists said they had discovered in the rain forest here.

LIAO: Have you ever seen the famous movie The White-Haired Girl? As you know, in the movie, a poor girl was raped by an evil landlord. Her dad was beaten to death because he couldn't pay back a debt. She ran away and ended up living on the mountain like a savage. Over time, lack of nutrition turned the girl into a white-haired woman. Eventually, Chairman Mao's army came to her rescue and executed the landlord. That propaganda movie motivated generations of Chinese to join Mao's revolutionary campaigns against the evil, ruthless landlord class in China. He Jingzhi, who wrote the story, was promoted to be the deputy director of China's Propaganda Ministry. Who would have thought that your family had the experience in reverse?

ZHANG: The movie presented such a warped view of people who owned land. In those years, I used to think to myself: As long as the Communists were in power, my stepson would never have the chance to see the light of the day.

LIAO: Did your stepson get caught?

ZHANG: By the fall of 1954, my stepson had stayed inside the cellar for over two years. My third son had turned twelve. He was very close to his eldest stepbrother and would constantly sneak up to the field to meet him. At the beginning, their meetings would last a couple of hours. Then, gradually, he started to visit often and stay there longer. I became really worried. I tried to discourage my third son from going there too often. I said it would mean death if his brother was discovered. He promised that he would not visit again. But, when I wasn't home, he continued with his secret visits. It was harvest-time. Everyone was busy in the field. The militiamen somewhat relaxed their control over their class enemies. Because of that, I became a little complacent and didn't monitor my third son as closely as I should have.

That little devil also became bold. In late October, he stayed with his stepbrother for over three weeks. I was worried to death and went up there to bring him home, but he didn't want to leave. My stepson begged me: Please let him stay with me for a couple of more days. If it hadn't been for my little brother, I wouldn't know how to speak anymore. I will try to teach my little brother how to read and write here. He is a very smart kid. I sighed and thought to myself: My third son had been deprived of fatherly love at a young age. His eldest brother was like a father. If he wanted to be close to Siyuan, how could I be so cruel? So I yielded to their wish.

For the next week, several of my kids took turns smuggling food up to the mountain. Then, in the evenings, I started to have nightmares of the blood-tainted bodies of my husband and brother again. I woke up many times in a cold sweat. I sensed that something ominous was going to happen. My premonition was right. Two days later, two village militiamen showed up at my door for a regular inspection. One guy noticed the absence of my third son and questioned me. I lied and said he had gone to visit a relative in the morning.

He slapped me hard on the face: You sneaky wife of a landlord. Why didn't you report to us? Which relative did he go visit? He must have gone to carry out counterrevolutionary activities.

The village immediately reported the information about my missing son to the county. Officials there issued an order to put my family under the supervision of my revolutionary neighbors. During the day two people followed me to the field, and at night they tied me and my kids together with a long rope in one bed. So there was no way we could go see and deliver food to the two brothers.

Later on, my eldest son told me that they had waited for four days, without anything to eat and drink. They knew something had gone wrong and didn't dare to come out. At one time, they had to drink their own urine. On the fifth day, they couldn't take it anymore. They climbed out. Since it was right after harvesttime, all the buckwheat stalks had been burned. There was nowhere to hide. They crept around like mice. They got some water from a ditch and dug out several big sweet potatoes in a field nearby. They survived on the food for a couple of more days. After that, they were made bold by their success. They got out again and entered another field to steal sweet potatoes. Little did they know the militiamen had posted guards there. As the two of them were sitting stark naked, munching on their food, the guards jumped out and aimed their guns at them. But my stepson's look startled one of the guards. He began to scream, “Ghost, ghost!” As the two guards were shaking with fear, my two children jumped up and tried to run away. The guards fired shots at them. The first bullet hit my stepson's shoulder and he fell. His younger brother was scared and lost control. He threw himself over his elder brother. Then my stepson said the militiamen fired the second, third, and fourth shots. The bullets hit his younger brother in the back and then the head.

By the time the militiamen realized that they were safe, they walked up and saw that my twelve-year-old son's body had been turned into a bloody mess. They pulled my stepson out from underneath the body and forced him to carry his brother's body all the way to the office of the village chief. News of my son's capture spread fast. Soon many people got up and crowded around the chief's courtyard. People wanted to get a glimpse of the “savage man.” It was like a circus. They dumped my younger son's body in front of my house. Then they shackled my stepson's legs, tied his arms, and locked him up in the village warehouse.

The next day, people around the whole region had heard that a counterrevolutionary savage man had been captured. On the third day, a countywide public meeting was held. Amid the noises of gongs and drums, my stepson was paraded onto the stage. The rest of my family was forced to stand next to him. His skin was pale; his long gray hair had reached his waist. Several of his teeth were protruding out of his mouth. Even his siblings were a little scared and embarrassed by his grotesque look. I felt so sorry and sad. People yelled and threw rocks at him. Many wanted to get closer to touch him. Since he had been in the dark for so long, he wasn't used to the light. He became blind for over a week before his eyesight was restored.

LIAO: I remember you mentioned that your stepson had been sentenced to death in his absence.

ZHANG: By that time, the Land Reform campaign had pretty much ended. I guess the leaders in Beijing must have realized they had killed too many people. They ordered village leaders to go easy and reduce the number of their random executions. As a result of the relaxed political environment, the village committee resentenced my stepson to life imprisonment. He was sent to a prison in the provincial capital of Kunming. Before he left, I went to see him. He kept telling me: I killed my brother. I owe my life to my brother. We hugged each other and cried. My stepson ended up spending thirty years behind bars. In the early 1980s, when the government reversed his verdict, he was already in his fifties. After his release, he got a job at a machinery factory next to the prison.

In 1984, my daughter Sixian took a long-distance bus and went to Kunming to see her stepbrother. When her brother was taken away, Sixian was only a little girl. By the time of their reunion, she was already in her mid-thirties and had three kids. Sixian brought her infant son with her. Look at this picture. It was taken the second day after my two children got together. He was still wearing his work overalls, and carried his little nephew. He was smiling. It was so rare to see him smile.

Before my stepson ran off to hide in the cellar, he had a girlfriend. Actually, they had gotten engaged a year before. That poor girl never married anyone else. After my stepson was released, she officially moved in with him and they lived together for another twenty years. They never had any kids. Three years ago, my stepson died of kidney failure. My daughter-in-law moved back home with us. She doesn't want to talk to anyone about her past or her late husband.

LIAO: How do you feel about all this now?

ZHANG: After so many deaths and so much suffering, my heart has become numb. I can't believe how I have managed to live to be eighty-four. That's quite a miracle. I guess the suffering has made my body and mind tougher. During the past fifty-some years, I was implicated in countless political campaigns. They put me through all sorts of tortures. I thought of killing myself many times. I hated myself for bringing disasters on my children. As you know, because of me and my family, my children were not able to finish high school. They were denied job opportunities in the city. I grew up in a family with generations of educated people. We had a glorious family history. I used to keep a record of my family history. The Poor Peasants Revolutionary Committee dug it out and burned it. My house was so thoroughly searched that there was no place for a mouse to hide.

LIAO: Do you harbor hatred against those who tortured you in the past?

ZHANG: I know the Land Reform was an inevitable trend of the time and there was no way for ordinary people to avoid it. I don't blame anyone. Of course, I dare not blame the Party and Chairman Mao. Even though the government has never officially apologized or reversed their verdict against my family, I'm trying to make peace with the past. By the way, I have been converted into a Christian. I found comfort in God. God has taught us forgiveness. Right now, fortune has started to smile on my family again. My children didn't get to receive formal education. But my grandchildren have turned things around. Several of them have been able to attend universities since Deng Xiaoping came to power. Three of them are now in Kunming and have gotten good jobs. Two came back and have taken up important positions in the county. Those two are now famous in the region for being intelligent and capable, just like their grandparents in the past. The descendants of my torturers constantly come to visit me with gifts and flattering words. Rather than calling me “the wife of the evil landlord,” they now address me as “the Respectable Grandma.” One guy was here last week and kept calling me grandma. He said: Grandma, you have good karma and enjoy such longevity. I almost puked. This guy's grandmother used to beat me up. But unfortunately, she died during the famine of the 1960s. For some reason, that made me feel really sad. That poor woman! She was five years younger than me.

LIAO: Do you think those who persecuted you in the past will tell their children about the past?

ZHANG: I doubt it. Do you think murderers would brag to their children about their “heroic” past? Even the Communist Party now seldom mentions its past and encourages people to move forward. We are moving forward. Last year, one of my grandchildren, the one who is a senior government official here, held a banquet in the dilapidated courtyard of my old house. We prepared over ten tables and invited all the former landlords who had shared a similar fate. The majority of them had passed away. Their descendants came. We also invited some former revolutionaries who showed great humanity during the many political campaigns. I specifically asked my daughter to invite our former tenant and helper, Mr. Sun, to sit at the head table, next to me. During the Land Reform campaign, the work team members repeatedly told him to denounce us publicly and beat us. But he just sat there, refusing orders. He was persecuted for not drawing a clear line against the landlord class. On that day, I personally thanked him in front of everyone, and kept putting food on his plate. I told my grandchildren to take care of his family and donate money to support his granddaughter's education.

That banquet became the topic of the village. Many people weren't invited. They simply watched on the side. The younger generation had no idea what that meant. But the older ones certainly knew. We even lit firecrackers and prayed for good luck. We used the occasion to claim our family name back and to appease the sad spirits of my murdered relatives. After the banquet, I called my college-educated grandchildren together and asked: Was it too showy? They said, There is no need to worry, Grandma. Let bygones be bygones. Our family has finally seen a new day.