牛棚杂忆

As the construction of the Cow Shed was finished, we were "invited as guests" to live inside.

Living in it was not totally without value. Didn't some writers believe each fabric of life provides inspiration?

But my days in the Cow Shed are not easy to describe. "With an enormous collection of the seventeen history books, one finds it hard to get started on a review."[1] I thought a long time, and then an idea suddenly came to me. I should use the method called "discussing history by first introducing theory," which, considered almost as a fundamental law, had long been popular in China. Admittedly my theory could not be presented as a theory because I did not formally study this area, nor did I use classical sources. My theory was, in fact, an account of my experiences and observations together with some thoughtful analyses. I am sure my account is all based on facts, though it can hardly be called a piece of academic work. I think it is good to share it with the reader here. My writing may cause some suspicion and be dismissed as deceptive and shameless talk, but I can do nothing but ignore the risk.

What is my theory? In short it is the "theory of torture." I think what the "young revolutionaries" did in the Cultural Revolution boils down to one simple, fundamental guiding principle of torture. All the rhetoric they used was sheer hogwash, no matter what words they uttered in an effort to show their loyalty to someone or some revolutionary line. From the period of "condemnation and raiding homes" to the period of "reform through physical labor," this guiding principle prevailed everywhere and every minute. I will not talk about its psychological and ideological bases, as those have been discussed previously. The young revolutionaries' ways of torture were various and inconceivable, yet unmistakably effective. Of course the torture went through a process of evolution. In the beginning, though its perpetrators never departed from their resolve to persecute victims, they found themselves short of experience. They got over this dilemma by emulating what they learned from ancient novels of Chinese history. The book Stories of Judgment is a case in point, which I mentioned at the beginning of this book. At this time torture was developmentally primitive: simple, crude, direct and fragmented forms of slapping faces and kicking bodies, which its deliverers knew by instinct. But these youngsters were quick to learn from books and each other. Like the swift development of arms in wars, their methods of torture improved and expanded rapidly as the Revolution went along. More often than not, a new way to torture people was first invented in a university and then traveled nationwide at the speed of light. For example, hanging a board on a victim's neck was first invented at Beida, with which its creator should have applied for a patent. As a result, all "revolutionary rebels" joined forces, contributing respective shares, gathering ideas of the masses, refining from raw materials, and proceeding from the outside to the inside, the near to the far, and the few to the multitudes, and finally formulated a template of torture, illuminating and electrolyzing the universe. When a need for use arose next time, it would be very handy.

This history is a jumble of things. Actually I talked a little about it earlier in this book. Now I will focus on this topic in relationship to Beida's Cow Shed. To me the building of the Cow Shed is a good example of putting theory into practice.

Confucius says, "Action should be justified by a cause. Without declaring the cause, the action cannot be carried out without dispute and opposition." What should we call a host of criminals whose families were attacked and their homes raided? It was a paramount task in the Revolution to label us. Originally we were called "black gangsters," the term that the masses used to refer to us. But the term was not elegant. For some time we were addressed as "sons of bitches." But in comparison that label also was vulgar. We were once named "counter-revolutionaries." It was indeed a "legalized term." But for some unknown reason it was not widely adopted either. A few more terms suffered the same fate. So "labeling" was a knotty issue yet to be tackled. Once the Cow Shed was built, management required some standard procedure to be specified to us. The first day we moved into the Cow Shed, we saw a poster on the wall of each room entitled "Regulations for Labor-reform Persons." It listed in stern detail the rules we should obey. The poster seemed to have been written by a learned person. At that time no one had guts to propose for a rule of law. Our young "revolutionaries" were truly pacesetters who worked out impressive legal terms. I have to say that their initiative not only regulated our behavior but drew admiration from us as well.

An old saying goes like, "The wisest man may outline one thousand schemes but at least one of them must be flawed." "Regulations for Labor-reform Persons" was replaced, only two days after we moved into the rooms, with a new list, "Regulations for Labor-reform Criminals." The revision of two characters hammered the point home. What a clear and uncompromising usage of "criminals"! The sight of this term immediately reminded us of our social position that we were dismissed as social dregs and condemned to eternal torment and suffering. From now on we scholars, who had never had the nerve to rise in rebellion, would reform ourselves through physical labor, bear the label of criminal, and be extremely cautious about our behavior day and night as though treading on thin ice.

In reference to the reform, here are four lines of self-ridicule that I wrote,

"The building of the Cow Shed is complete,

Everything is arranged nice and neat,

The choice of name is finally decided on,

And the whole world rests in peace."

(2) Our Living Quarters

Now I'm going to talk a little more about our living quarters, though I touched upon this topic earlier.

The "criminals" were arranged to fit into rooms in three rows of the one-story dwellings.

These dwellings were very simple in structure. A little better than thatched sheds, they might have been meant for temporary shelters at the time of construction. At a time when the university was short of classrooms, they were used to meet that need. Now classes had been suspended in universities across the country for nearly two years. At Beida many regular classrooms were left unused. Who would care for these shabby dwellings? Thus they were covered with heaps of earth on the floor and cobwebs on the walls. With low roofs and damp floors, the rooms smelt of mildew and were full of mice, geckoes, probably scorpions too, as well as other creatures. In other words the rooms contained all living creatures that depended on dark, moist environment for living. They were totally unfit for humans to live in. But we were not humans anymore. We were criminals. Any lodgings, no matter how rotten they were, should be accepted with gratitude. How could we raise unreasonable demands?

During the first days of our stay there, we slept on straw mats, which were spread over brick-paved floors, covered with an additional thin layer of straw that could not keep the moisture out. During the day the rooms swarmed with flies, and at night the constant drone of mosquitoes kept us awake. Each of us got mosquito bites all over the body and felt terribly itchy. Later we were provided some planks of wood, which we stuck under the straw mats; on top of that strips of cloth, dipped with DDT, were hung in each room for the purpose of keeping mosquitoes away. We were touched to tears by this "humanitarian concern."

Meanwhile our labor troop was greatly expanded, almost doubled in fact. We didn't know what caused the enlargement, nor did we want to know. What was the point of knowing the reason? I noticed a few "important" criminals joined us, such as Lu Ping. They had been housed in another place before, probably a small Cow Shed. Why they were sent here to be with us was unclear to me. Certainly a few new faces emerged in our rank, while others were familiar ones I had encountered at some torture sessions months earlier. Probably the "class struggle" rolled up new targets as its attack intensified. In fact I should say that our group grew larger and larger as we were steadily joined by new "criminals" from the time of the completion of the Cow Shed to that of its dismantling.

(3) Our Daily Life

From the time the "Regulations for Labor-reform Criminals" was enforced in the Cow Shed, inmates seemed to have a definite law laid down for them. Occasionally amendments were made, but basically they were uttered casually and never added in written form. Here we didn't have the "Congress of Labor Reform," so there was no voting procedure. The avoidance of such legislative red tape benefited the compound's administration, as the truth and law were the words, no matter what rolled off the tongue of those "reform guards," a term that I'm not sure whether is the official terminology or not.

Thus our life became standardized and strict with the enforcement of the "constitution" and verbal amendments. At six every day we had to get up, not earlier or later. As the bell rang, we slipped into clothes and raced out of the rooms. The first task was to run along the yard with the reform guards standing at the center and giving orders. I remember, by that time, the guards rarely held spears in their hands. Probably they felt secure in this place. Is jogging a beneficial exercise? Yes, it is, according to common sense. But we, a bunch of "labor-reform criminals," actually had plenty of physical exercise as we were asked to do manual labor from dawn to dusk and were denied any time for reading. What was the point of jogging? In addition we were "sons of bitches" who had been warned that the accusation that we had committed crimes was irrefutable because of the solid evidence: to redress any of our cases was absolutely impossible. We deserved a wretched death without redemption, so the daily physical exercise was perfunctory. The only rationale I found was the "theory of torture," which posited that the morning jog was a way of "tormenting," exhausting us physically before a whole day's work load was imposed upon us.

The jogging done, we first washed up at the running water faucet in the yard and then went to the Second Staff Cafeteria for breakfast. On our way there, more than one hundred of us generated quite a sight, our long line stretching along the road, our heads dangling in front of us as if we were mourning the deaths of our parents. According to the "verbal law," we were not allowed to walk with our heads held high. A violation would ensure us a bunch of fives on the back or a kick. Inside the cafeteria we were supposed to purchase the specified food, cone-shaped steamed buns of cornmeal and pickles. Things like deep-fried cake dough were "high-end luxuries" and totally forbidden to eat. By that time we had a monthly income of sixteen and a half yuan and a subsidy of twelve and a half yuan for dependents.[2] Even if we had permission to purchase the "luxuries," how would we have been able to afford them? How could we survive and live on this meager salary? As everywhere else, there were tables and wooden benches in the cafeteria. But they were supplied to "humans," not to us. We had to squat down under trees or on the steps outside the building to have our "meal." To dine on meat dishes, which were available at lunch and supper, was completely inconceivable for us. What we ate was salty cucumber or plainly stewed vegetables. After a whole day's hard labor, the non-meat meal could barely satisfy our appetite, so we filled our stomachs with cornmeal buns. Where could we manage to obtain additional food coupons at a time when the country had a food rationing system? It was the third time I had suffered from starvation. The first occurred in Germany while the second happened in the so-called "three-year hard time."[3] However, I had to make a distinction among the three times of hunger. During the first two I was only starved. But today's craving for food was aggravated by physical fatigue and threats of beating. Now those past hard years looked like paradise in the beyond and were remembered with a sense of jealousy.

After breakfast we went out and waited for work assignments. We all became draft horses. At that time campus maintenance crews had long given up work. They were now supervisors and jailers. When they were given work assignments, particularly heavy and filthy ones, they came to the Cow Shed and took some of us, the "labor-reform criminals," off for the tasks. As brigade leaders in the countryside who managed draft animals, the workers now became supervisors, bossing us around and doing nothing themselves. The Beida working class was really riding high after the founding of new China.

Another important thing will always stay in my mind. Each day when we left for work, we were supposed to write on a board hung on a tree trunk the "supreme directive" that we had learned to recite. This directive often came as a long discourse. Each "criminal," no matter what kind of work or where to work for the day, was supposed to be able to recite the directive free of errors. Any reform guard could stop one of us in any place and ask him to recite. If an error was committed, the "criminal" would at least receive a slap on the face or a harsher punishment for the unfortunate day. Occasionally we were called into the office. According to the regulation, we then had to say loudly, "Reporting," and stand firmly with the head lowered. Then the reform guard usually picked the first sentence from a paragraph of Mao Zedong's quotations and read it, while we were supposed to complete the rest in recitation. If we blurted out a wrong character, a punishment as described above would unquestionably ensue. A professor of geophysics was quite old. He could memorize all mathematical equations but seemed unable to add anything else to his brain, even the holy "supreme directive." Many a time I saw him beaten black and blue with two swellings right below his eyes. I felt sorry for him, as I did for myself.

What was the purpose of reciting the quotations? Some people might have thought we were hardened criminals, whose reactionary nature would deny reform of any sort. Accordingly the "revolutionaries" came up with a method similar to studying the Scriptures that Jesus Christ used in teaching his disciples. It was said that the method was powerful. Unfortunately I felt ashamed that the method did not have any effect on me. But I unflinchingly believe in the "theory of torture," my scholarly contribution, as the best explanation for the forced recitations of quotations that has been produced so far. Actually the reform guards, themselves, were skeptical of the reforming power of reciting the "supreme directives." Revolutionary as our supervisors were, they could barely recite the quotations without an error themselves. One of them often blurted out a lead-in sentence wrongly but without realizing the error. In completing the quotation, I sometimes committed slips of the tongue because of being nervous. Aware of the fact that the guard was unable to detect the problem, I got away with errors by not being stupid enough to make a correction. If I had been dumb enough to confess to the mistake, wouldn't the reform guard have felt hurt in his pride? The consequence would have been inconceivable.

Since that time we had started reciting quotations while working, which pushed our already intensified physicality and psyche to the brink of collapse.

In terms of the nature of the work I did a colossal number of jobs. I remember a couple of work sites in which I worked the longest. The place that first comes to my mind is the Northern Material Mill, a work unit controlled by the "New Beida Commune" with all of its workers being diehard supporters of the "Old Dowager." We "labor-reform criminals" were treated differently on the basis of our original factional inclinations. I had a double identification, a "labor-reform criminal" and a former member of "Jinggangshan". For the second background, I received some "special treatments," which means more verbal abuse. Here we carried wayward bricks from one spot to the side of a little pool in the mill and then stacked them neatly to keep them from tumbling down. These bricks were heavy and could kill you if you got hit by them. So we were particularly cautious in handling them. After the work was finished, we were sent to pull nails out of old boards. In doing this work, a lot lighter job, we were allowed to sit on stools, which gave us tremendous pleasure and struck us as good fortune. When we completed the work inside the mill, the next assignment was to carry sand from a large mound outside the mill, prepared for construction, to another place. At the Northern Material Mill I worked for a few weeks. Here I should make a note. Those who worked there were only a small fraction of the convicted population working here. Because I have no idea about what assignments other people had, I will keep the discussion to our group.

One summer I was sent to carry coal in the dormitory area. Trucks carried coal from somewhere to the campus and dumped it all over the ground. When the trucks were gone, our jobs started, as we swept up, carried baskets of coal to a nearby place, and heaped the coal into a mound in order to save space. This work was rather demanding, both physically wearying and filthy. For the two elders, carrying a basketful of coal chunks or powder weighing more than one hundred jin and sometimes going up the coal mounds were, by all estimates, extremely demanding tasks. When the wind started to blow, we were covered with coal ash all over the body. In the past we had never walked into a place like this. Now things had changed. We felt quite comfortable about the situation because nothing offended our sense of personal hygiene. One old Muslim, who shouldered a basket with me, was a former underground Communist veteran who risked his life doing revolutionary work at Yenching University in Beijing before 1949.[4] When the reform guards were not around, he whispered in my ear, "Our doom is set now. Chances are that we will be sent to a remote area to labor for reform for the rest of our life." This was a prevailing concern. What could I have thought otherwise?

Later I did other jobs. For a time I worked along with our group in the rice fields, which later became the Shaoyuan Guest Compound of today, carrying rocks and digging up the soil. One day one old professor from the Department of Western Languages and I were sent to fix an underground water pipe outside the eastern wall of student dormitory Building 35. This time a worker joined us. He did the major part of the work while we two old men were only his "teaching assistants," helping him by carrying cement bags around and handing him spades. This worker did not utter any word of hostility, though he pulled a long face throughout the time. I felt deeply indebted. After the decade of turmoil I often saw him ride his bike through the campus. Each time I would pause and gaze at him in gratitude as his figure faded into distance.

At other times I was sent to do a variety of things such as repairing houses and pulling up weeds, which I will not talk about in detail.

Because this part of our life was dubbed "labor reform," our primary occupation was manual labor. Of course we could not avoid meeting reform guards at work as well as in performing other daily routines. Wherever an encounter happened we had to follow the head-lowering rule strictly. Usually we did not know whomever we met. But the first few words tossed out toward us from the opposite direction were invariably those of swearing, which were used as customarily as Americans say "hello" in greeting. However, the difference was that the "greeting" we received here was supposed to be replied in silence. The vocabulary they used was rich. Beside the four-letter words frequently used there were colorful varieties of slur like "you bastard" and "you son of a bitch." If a reform guard had not started his hailing to me with a derogative remark, I would have felt skewed and disquieted.

(4) The Evening Admonishment Speech

I shall make a formal note here: the evening admonishment speech was the greatest and most brilliant innovation that the reform guards had designed.

I talked previously about the routine life of our reform and also touched upon many inventions reform guards developed in supervising us. Except for a few staff members and workers, the majority of our bosses were students. I had no idea about these students' academic progress. But their performance in managing the Cow Shed would certainly have pulled an A for the course they took from me as their teacher. In the past our teaching was basically separated from reality. As the University's pedagogies should take the brunt of the blame, we faculty members were hardly free of responsibility either. In the Cow Shed the students put theory into practice and displayed a myriad of talents, leadership skills, administrative strategies, forewarning-speech rhetorical proficiencies, quibbling, fact-distortion and false charges competences, and many more. In addition our young leaders were rather determined and courageous in conducting violence and especially quick with their fists and feet when flogging and kicking us. Their expertise stunned and eclipsed us teachers.

The evening admonishment speech showcased their gifts.

What was the "evening admonishment speech"? Each day after dinner all the "criminals" gathered between the two rows of the single-story houses in the Cow Shed and listened to a man deliver a speech. This man, probably one of those Commune chiefs, was seldom around in the yard during the day. But the speaker was repeatedly replaced with a new one at a few day intervals. I had no idea about the rationale behind the substitution. The speaker usually addressed a different topic each day, because the purpose of the presentation was not for teaching us some revolutionary doctrines, which otherwise would have been repetitive in the following evening. Structurally each speech focused on the "study of torture," the application of this subject of learning. The speaker prattled on, catching short braids or fault-finding on us, literally. We all had many "braids" on the head. Even if we didn't, they could make us wear some. Primarily the braid usually came in two kinds, the trifling error that was made during the day and the so-called "problem" that was detected in the report we wrote about our thoughts after one day's work. We all worked hard, not because we were "fundamentally revolutionary" but because we were afraid of our supervisors' fists and feet. When one is bent on nit-picking, false charges can be ready made. Each day one unfortunate Cow Shed "mate" of us was picked up by the reform guards and reprimanded during the evening admonishment speech. Meanwhile, our reports of thoughts were also placed, as a top priority, on the daily agenda. In a country like China, in which learning is both respected and taken advantage of, turning a word game into a way of life and finding an error in documents like our reports were as easy as turning one's hand over. In Chinese history well-known cases of being wronged by false charges are plentiful. The Qing emperor Yongzheng once had a minister executed on the charge of the fact that the official had reversed the word order when writing the phrase "Your Majesty is cautious and conscientious about your work from night till morning" instead of following the original order "Your Majesty is cautious and conscientious about your work from morning till night." In fact the stylistic uniqueness did not weaken the feeling of respect the original phrase carried. But the minister's imprudence enraged the emperor and cost the official his head. Our reform guards had much higher IQs than ancient emperors. The error picking on our reports was carried out strictly to make sure one victim was singled out for the evening admonishment speech of the day. Whoever unluckily caught the searching eye of the reform guards could expect an evening of hell.

The speech was usually delivered this way. We stood silently in four rows in the small yard. Then the roll was called. I have gone through thick and thin in life and nothing in particular has left a print on my mind as indelible as the event that happened on every of those evenings. I won't forget it for the rest of my life. One professor had returned home from overseas. He was over sixty and plagued with a sustained sickness. Though bedridden he was carried to the Cow Shed in some way. He was at death's door, having flat lost the ability to work. He even could not get up for his meals. So he was permitted to "reform" in bed. The place for our evening gathering was outside his room. Each time his name was called, a feeble, hoarse, trembling voice drifted out of his room, "Yes, here I am." Shaken to the soul each time, I was on the edge of tears.

Standing outside his room, the rest of us were nervous. Usually the speaker called the name of one of us aloud. Before the man stepped out of the line, two sturdy young men walked up and pulled him out with his arms twisted high on his back and a fist pressed on the back of his neck, exactly the way used at torture sessions. Smacks on the face and kicks followed as the piercing sounds of beating soared across the nightly sky. But a heavier punishment included a blow that knocked a man to the ground and a foot that stomped on his back. Certainly the revolutionaries' popular saying of "stepping one thousand feet on the back" exaggerates the case. Such episodes are also part of my study of the "theory of torture."

Such a spectacular event could only be seen during the Cultural Revolution. Aren't our people interested in talking about things for which China ranks first in the world? I should say some of those past claims deserve further debate. However, what happened in the Cow Shed could definitely rank first with respect to sightseeing.

The evening admonishment speech in the Cow Shed became hot news, spreading quickly overnight and attracting large crowds on campus. The gathering was as grandiose as the change of imperial guards at Great Britain's Buckingham Palace. Every day when standing in line at this moment, I was very scared of being singled out as the target. Occasionally I stole glances sideways and saw, outside the mat fences, a few small mounds covered with human figures in the dim light of the road's electric poles. In the bushes and under small trees surrounding the yard, crowds by the hundreds stood silent. They came to groove with the exciting scene, an opportunity even more difficult to obtain than witnessing the change of British imperial guards riding on impressive horses with tall hats on their heads, a tradition maintained for hundreds of years. It was a shame that this splendid campus view at the top university in Beijing, the capital city of China, existed for only a few months. Otherwise it would have brought in huge tourism revenues for the country.

Another sight also was worth looking at, but our visitors unfortunately didn't have the patience to wait until the wee hours. Otherwise they would have been fascinated with the more terrifying occurrence. This spectacle was occasional and not every one of us living in the Cow Shed was lucky enough for a view. One night I went out to relieve myself and saw some figures in the yard, each standing under a tree with the arms stretched out as if trying to embrace something. Actually they were embracing the air, nothing else. I had no idea how long our Cow Shed mates had stood there sustaining that position. I have never tried that position myself. But I thought it was somewhat like the jet plane posture. If I had been ordered to perform it, I probably could have held it hardly for a quarter of an hour. I wondered how many hours they had stood that way and at what late hour they would be released. The residents in the Cow Shed knew well that, at this moment, nothing could be said and these miserable guys should be left alone. I rushed back into my room. But the images of those victims repeatedly came back to me in dream for the rest of the night.

(5) Strange Regulations

In the Cow Shed we had the "Regulations for Labor-reform Criminals" as the constitution plus some other rules, laid down by word of mouth, as I said before. Now I'd like to cite two examples for further explanation.

Here are two of the rules, "Walk with the head held down and sit with no legs crossed."

I'm not a scholar of law. But I've lived in many countries and read some articles about laws. I have never seen or heard any rule that prohibits pedestrians from holding the head up. Except for a person with a crooked neck, the ordinary human is sure to walk with his head held straight up.

But here in the Cow Shed at Beida, our supervisors denied us the normal way of walking. I wonder how they made up that extremely bizarre rule. Did they pick it up from an ancient text secretly handed down from ancestors? Or from some inscription on a stone tablet like those mentioned in The Outlaws of the Marsh? Or was it a spark of talent? I was not able to figure out the answer. Anyway, it was the law and had to be strictly obeyed.

Walking with the head held down was complied with not only in our rooms but anywhere in and outside the Cow Shed. We had to take particular caution when talking to a reform guard. If someone defied the rule, the consequence would be inconceivable. A smack in the face would be considered a lenient treatment. Probably a sound flogging, or even a knocking-down on the ground, should be assessed as an appropriate response. With this risk in mind, I always fixed eyes on the ground or the feet of a reform guard when standing in front of him. Therefore I could tell exactly what shoes he wore that day but had only a vague idea about his face. At work, for example, when I carried the coal basket, the head could be held up. Otherwise the work could not be done. One day we were in line for dinner. For one reason or another, which I did not know for sure, I looked up, probably for one tenth of a second at most. Immediately the man marching us to the cafeteria shouted at me, "Behave yourself, Ji Xianlin!" Instinctively I expected to receive a slap in the face or a kick. Fortunately I was spared the strike this time. From that day on I was particularly cautious and never failed to "behave myself."

In terms of the second rule, almost everyone sits with his legs crossed. It is the normal sitting position. People prefer it because it releases one from weariness. But it was prohibited in the Cow Shed. I remember I read a book which said Yuan Shikai never sat with his legs crossed.[5] He always sat straight, legs closed up, in a dignified manner. Probably, as a military man, he had got into that habit. We were "labor-reform criminals," a group of ordinary people, not like him, the Hongxian emperor.[6] How could we be able to do that?

There is another event that is also noteworthy. As I said earlier, we were deprived of the human faculty of laughing. How could that happen? It did not result from implementing the "reform constitution," nor was it the consequence of complying with a paramount order of the reform guards. It utterly grew out of our own desire. Let me put it in another way. Can a person be able to laugh when his security is threatened with the possibility of sustaining tortures at any time? In the Cow Shed laughter was not heard. If somebody laughed, the sound came from a reform guard. Occasionally laughter shot up from the silence of the Cow Shed, which was dead as an ancient tomb, and sounded as clear as a melody, striking note of liveliness. But how did we find a laughter in such circumstances? I had no idea about others' feelings. Like an owl hoot at deep night, a laughter usually sent shivers down my spine.

[1] The seventeen history books, a collection of history books of Chinese ancient history written by Wang Mingsheng (1722-1797): The Records of the Historian, The History of the Han Dynasty, A Sequel to the History of the Han Dynasty, Records of the Three Kingdoms, The History of Jin Dynasty, The History of the Song State, The History of the Southern Qi State, The History of the Liang State, The History of the Chen State, The History of the Wei State, The History of the Northern Qi State, The History of the Zhou State, The History of the Sui Dynasty, The History of the Southern Dynasty, The History of the Northern Dynasty, The New History of the Tang Dynasty, and The History of the Five Dynasties.

[2] Sixteen and a half yuan could only maintain a living of survival on food by that time, in which an ordinary factory worker had a monthly income of about 40 yuan. Ji received the monthly income of 340 yuan as a Professor of Rank One before the Cultural Revolution.

[3] The "three-year hard time," a severe famine, as has been documented officially, across the country during the period from 1959-1961.

[4] Yenching University, the first American missionary university in China, founded in 1919 and located in the western suburb of Beijing; in 1952 it merged into Peking University, when the latter moved to the former's location from downtown Beijing; one of the founders of Yenching University and its first president was John Leighton Stuart.

[5] Yuan Shikai (1859-1916), an important Chinese general and politician, who abdicated the last Qing Emperor of China, came to power as the second president of the Republic of China following Sun Yatsen, and proclaimed himself as the "Great Emperor of China" on January 1, 1916 under the era of Hongxian or literally "Abundant Constitution."

[6] See the previous note.