牛棚杂忆

19 COMPLETE LIBERATION

The last chapter is titled "Partial Liberation" while this chapter is called "Complete Liberation." I have chosen these terms for no specific reason. They are imprecise in meaning and not related to law. In addition the line between the "partial" and "complete" is arbitrarily drawn. I will leave the confusion to scholars of law and philosophy for clarification.

Let me get back to my story. Upon returning to campus, I had feelings of excitement and zeal. With these emotions I settled down to work, along with others, in Building 35. I speculated that this might be someone's new idea or a new regulation to be implemented, that is, each department's office being set up in a student dormitory probably in an effort to embrace the doctrine that students should "attend, run and reform colleges." Its essence was to let students control and reform professors and old intellectuals. One practice, formulated on the basis of this concept, was that freshmen and sophomores should be encouraged to write textbooks for juniors and seniors. There were other examples which I will not elaborate here.

Building 35 was a four-story dormitory building, in which female students lived on the third and fourth floors and male students on the first and second. A few rooms on the second floor were used as offices for the department and the Party's branch committee, with which I had nothing to do. I was assigned to work in an extremely cramped room on the left-hand side of the entrance to the building; the room had a large window facing outside. It was the door-keeper's room. I was supposed to be the doorkeeper, whose responsibilities were, first, to watch the building, then, to deliver telephone calls, and, last, to receive and deliver the mail.

The first job was both difficult and easy. My leaders told me to keep people who had no business to do inside from entering the building. I knew the faculty and staff members of the department, who had worked there for many years, pretty well and most of the juniors and seniors. The freshmen were new to me. How could I recognize those who came with no business to do inside? For this reason I'd better turn blind to those strange faces. So, wasn't this job both thorny and effortless?

The second job was like the first one. The easy part of it lay in that when the telephone rang I answered it. For the rest of the time I sat idle. What was difficult then? I gradually learned that the majority of the phone calls were directed to female students. Each time I delivered a call, I had to run upstairs to the third or fourth floor. It was good "upstairs-climbing exercise," which many athletic pros suggest. But the problem was the large number of times that I rushed up to deliver messages, ten to twenty times a day. Athletic training experts would find it demanding to complete such task. After I tried a few times, I was exhausted. Then I would stand outside the building and yell toward the upstairs. The method worked only partially. But my voice usually failed to reach the north parts of the building where some girl students boarded. This consequence did generate some trouble. However, I had to ignore the issue, for any alternative would physically push me to the limit.

The third job was quite easy. When newspapers arrived, I sent them up to the offices. When letters arrived, I stood them on the windowsills and let the receivers glance and pick them up.

Time flew like the river running its course, as I observed my three duties. At eight each morning I sauntered from Building 13 to Building 35 and returned home at twelve. At two in the afternoon I made the same trip and got back at six. I worked a full eight hours and walked ten-odd li. It was extraordinary physical exercise. I was not apprehensive about anything and was in good condition. I can't remember at what time my reduced salary had resumed the full amount that I originally received before the Cultural Revolution. At any rate I no longer feared about the living of my family. Now I did not have any teaching load, nor did I do any research. No one was audacious to write letters to me and call on me. I was free of distractions. I was overjoyed with the life of "the untouchable" (Indians of the lower social status). Life was then quite delightful.

•　Translating Ramayana

I was used to writing and uncomfortable with idling away time and accomplishing nothing. As a doorkeeper I was not engaged except for answering the telephone and receiving mail as I sat there alone, watching people coming in and going out. Gradually I got bored. "Without a business unprofitable to do, how can one while away a finite life?" I thought of these two lines by an ancient poet. Why couldn't I engage in some business "unprofitable" too? There were actually numerous choices to make in this regard. Of course some of them were forbidden practices to me such as playing mahjong. However, I had been living by the pen. After turning this issue over in my mind, I concluded that I just could not discard my old trade. In such circumstances writing was something that could be done. However, I was not at all in the mood for creative writing. Then the idea of translating flashed across my mind. It was feasible to translate something. I did not want to translate a short and easy text. I felt that door-keeping would probably be my "iron rice bowl."[1] Therefore, a long, abstruse text that could not be rendered easily was what I needed most. It would save the trouble of selecting texts from time to time. Even if the load of selecting a text could not be avoided once and for all, I could at least be favored with some sustained engagement. Why did I say translating was "something unprofitable"? It was because my translated work would never be accepted by a publisher. Could the translation be called something meaningful if the translator knew his work would never be accepted for publication? On the basis of these thoughts, I decided to translate Ramayana, one of the two famous Hindu epics in the world literature. It was a long work containing about twenty thousand odes in the clothbound edition. If one ode was translated into four lines, some of them being longer, the final work would contain at least eighty thousand lines, which was a fairly large undertaking that would keep me occupied for years.

I had a stroke of luck. I didn't expect much when I asked the librarian of the Department of Eastern Languages to order a clothbound Sanskrit copy of Ramayana from the International Bookstore. As was well-known, it was very difficult to order foreign edition books in China at that time. To my astonishment, my order arrived in less than two months. The eight large, impressive volumes of the original text in Sanskrit were now in front of me. I couldn't believe the brand-new books were for me. It was my happiest moment during the Cultural Revolution. The garden plot of my heart, long parched, now seemed to turn bright green. The grin my face knew long ago now made a comeback.

However, I had to stay in the gate room and watch the door. How could I dare to bring the books from my home to the room? I still remained one of the "despised," though I did not know exactly to which scummy group I belonged. I still had "hats" on my head but did not exactly identify the sort of "hats" they were. But I felt I was wearing quite heavy ones. However, "one can always figure out a way out." Finally I thought of a "workable" alternative. To my mind, Ramayana, a long poem, should be translated into poetic language. But its Chinese version should not be in the ancient poetic form, nor in vernacular either. I always thought a poem should be written in rhyme, so I should translate it into rhyme. But it should be rhymed in current vernacular instead of the ancient form of rhyme. In sum, the translated text could be called "a rhymed poetic burlesque." Picking an appropriate rhymed word to end a line was challenging. I began spending the evening at home reading the original text carefully and translating it into a vernacular version in prose style. The following day on my way to Building 35 in the morning and at work when not doing the door-keeping and receiving phone calls and mail, I translated the vernacular version into a rhymed poem with lines of the same length. I usually scribbled the prose version on scraps of paper and left home for work, carrying them in my pockets. When my official business was slow, I took the scraps out, pondered on meanings and revised the early drafts. I looked dazed while mulling over the translating in silence. No one, except for the gods, could tell what I was doing. I found translating delightful, forgetting that I was an outcast and forced to be a door-keeper. Occasionally I looked up and saw, outside the door of the building, Chinese crab apples in full blossom on each side and other plants flourishing with a riot of color. They looked spectacular to me.

•　An Interlude

A warm and beautiful spring arrived, but my situation did not change for better. I tried to shake off disturbing thoughts and concentrate on my work assignment as a doorkeeper so that I could "hole up at home to engage in my own business."[2] But things did not happen as I expected. One thing or another kept popping up to unsettle my mind.

One day, when I looked out for no reason in particular, I suddenly saw a big-character poster written on the yellow paper and posted on a makeshift mat shed. The poster was a critical comment on the "May 16" members and bore the signatures of dozens of Department of Eastern Languages faculty members, some of them still staying in Liyuzhou, Jiangxi. Such criticism was not something new to me. So, at first, I did not want to read it. But, out of curiosity, I sauntered out of the narrow door of my room and went to the poster for a look. To my surprise, the poster leveled its attack at me; I had become a suspect involved with the "May 16" organization! Anyone with minimal Cultural Revolution experience is familiar with this notorious entity, an organization purely made up of a group of young people with revolutionary family backgrounds. I was not a young man, nor did I come from a revolutionary family. I was not a worker, or a poor and lower-middle-class peasant or a revolutionary government official. How could I possibly qualify for the "May 16" membership? I had nothing to do with the organization. The denouncement was totally off the mark. Indeed I could have ignored it with a scornful grin. But this time I simply could not remain detached. A few years earlier when I saw a big-character poster criticizing me for my writing "Beida's Campus Bathed in the Spring," I defied it with a derisive scowl. Now the nonsense did not deserve even a frown. I wondered whether such a fantastic lie would be seriously considered by the Revolutionary Committee of the Department of Eastern Languages and the PLA and Workers' Teams of the MTP. But the lie was not all that concerned me. Something even more ridiculous was yet to come. Amid the national clamor for uncovering the "May 16" members early in the Cultural Revolution, a leader of "Jinggangshan" made the shocking announcement that he was one of them. Then the dust quickly died down. It turned out that the so-called "May 16" organization had never existed at all. It was as absurd as Don Qixote fighting the windmill. It was the biggest of all jokes during the Cultural Revolution.

•　A Ludicrous Show

No matter how long the world was tossed about by the political and social roller-coaster and how violent the storm of the Cultural Revolution was in wrecking the nation, time never slowed down its firm, irrevocable ticks ahead. Soon, it seemed that the Cultural Revolution had run out of gas and rolled to a stop. Theoretically, the Revolution "thwarted the enemy," but, in truth, it basically played havoc with revolutionaries themselves.[3] To my mind, it would have been a lot better not to launch it at all. Now it was time to restore order. The top priority was to reorganize the Party. However, a member of the Workers' Team of the MTP, who was not a Party member, was chosen to be in charge of the Party's branch committee in the department. It was utterly preposterous.

In order to renew activities of the Party's organizations, reestablish-ment of the administration of Party members was of paramount importance. I don't know since what time and on what regulations that all Party members (except the Gang of Four) had lost their Party membership. To be reinstated, each Party member had to go through a certain kind of procedure, something like a review and discussion by non-Party members and approved by leading authorities. This certainly was a significant matter. Probably the PLA and Workers' Teams of the MTP of the Department of Eastern Languages (of course, including that non-Party-member worker) decided that one Party member from the department should be chosen as a model so that the procedure could be followed for all Party members. Apparently such a candidate would have huge obligation. For what qualifications should the model Party member be selected? First, he had to have a revolutionary family background. Second, he needed to be faithful to the Party. With these two conditions, a Party member, surnamed Ma, whom I mentioned before as having a poor, lower-middle-peasant family background, was selected after careful consideration and discussion. Ma originally was the person I meticulously chose, when I was the department head and academic advisor, to be my teaching assistant and successor. Now that I had become a "counter-revolutionary bourgeois scholar," I was a hard-to-come-by touchstone for testing his loyalty to the Party. In the Department of Eastern Languages, no one, except for him, was qualified as well or favored by such an opportunity for the "showing." Who could not regard his selection as the best choice?

One afternoon, I remember, I was told to go to the No.1 Student Cafeteria for a meeting, along with other faculty colleagues of our department. We brought out little wooden stools with us. The hall of the cafeteria was empty after the dinning tables were moved away and set along the walls. We put down our wooden stools on the spacious floor and were seated. At the front of the hall stood a few large tables loaded with a bunch of miscellaneous things. I took a look and saw some wool coats and pants, a radio (at that time radio sets were rare and precious, not as widely available as today) and other odd things. Like other "revolutionary people," I was trying to figure out what was going to happen. But I did not feel like browsing the items. The whole situation seemed to be like a flea-market. Beside those things was a pack of mimeographed teaching notes written on coarse paper. At first I did not know what kind of teaching notes they were. Nor did I understand why items of such inferior quality were put side by side with fancy suit pants. I was ignorant about the role the objects would play at this first meeting for the resumption of Party functions. Seated there, I was perplexed and anxious about what would happen.

After all the people arrived, the host declared the beginning of the meeting. He first talked about the purposes and procedures of the meeting and then asked the selected model Party member to address the audience or to make "self-criticism," which actually meant the same thing. Ma stood up and walked to the front, stern and resolute. Then he began to talk about how he had refused to be the Golden Boy and Jade Maiden under the guidance of a bourgeois scholar. To clarify the confusion, by the way, the Golden Boy and the Jade Maiden were paper-made human figures to be burned at funerals in old China. Obvious to all present, the bourgeois scholar was meant to be me. It dawned on me that the performance was aimed at me. I was at once surprised and at ease because I had experienced things of this kind many times. Ma, my former "favorite student" and "successor," angrily denounced the evil bourgeois thoughts which I, the bourgeois scholar, wanted to instill in him in the disguise of academic instruction; he, also, deplored his moral deterioration in seeking a comfortable life thereafter. When condemning himself for almost forsaking his own class origin, he appeared eyes tearing and voice quivering. Pointing at the items displayed on the table, he wanted everyone to believe the evidence was undeniable. When his emotion hit a peak, he snatched up the pack of teaching notes; it turned out that they were in Sanskrit; he tore them to pieces in rage. The scraps of paper drifted like butterflies down on the floor. In my mind the next to be shredded would be the gaudy woolen suit pants and the radio! In a flash of mind, he was abruptly balked, his hand not stretched out. The suit pants and radio were still lying there, motionless and glittering with beauty. I was shocked, so were all those present, I believed. His ripping violence was presumably the climax of that day's drama, worthy of a standing ovation, which, certainly, did not occur. I was at loss to laugh or cry, so were, probably, all present, when a hush fell over the crowd.

A farce thus ended.

On the way back to Building 35, a discussion started among the participants in the meeting, "Why didn't he tear the suit pants, which best symbolized bourgeois thoughts of comfort and ease, instead of the Sanskrit teaching notes, which could hardly be described as representative of evil thought?" I, too, reflected for a long time on this event. Ma, an "artist," had been at Beida for more than ten years. When with me in the past, he was as meek as a sheep. Earlier in this book, I described his performance during the Cultural Revolution. But that demonstration insufficiently displayed his considerable talent. Only two people had made known their identity by signing their names on the big-character posters that expressed the writers' political opinion at Beida. Both signees, including this young man, were from the Department of Eastern Languages. His remarkable behavior at the meeting quickly became a "delightful" topic for gossip and the butt of jokes. These reactions reminded me that I once had criticized him at a group meeting, when I first "messed around" in a faction organization as a "revolutionary person," by saying he did not look like the family member of a revolutionary martyr, nor resemble a poor peasant. Maybe he took my remarks to heart. Could anyone deny that what later transpired was relevant to his desire for revenge?

After the staging of the "model" farce, the Party members of the Department of Eastern Languages gradually resumed their regular activities in their individual Party branches. I was not interested in what they did, because such involvement still was none of my business, and today I just cannot recall it either.

•　The Resumption of My Party Membership

A long time went by, and its exact length was not calculated until the resumption of Party membership for all Beida members was almost completed. The work left only three cases unsettled, one of them mine. If a list of the three was posted, my name would certainly be at its bottom, or as the popular saying goes, "I am behind Sun Shan, who comes last on the list of the scores of the examinations."[4]

One day the men in charge of my department's Party organization suddenly decided to talk to me. I knew I now had to take my turn with respect to the issue of Party membership. By then I had worked a long time in the Hindi Teaching Section, instead of doing the door-keeping job. The department leaders, a PLA officer and the Party general secretary, told me that the department would not only restore my full salary but also give me all my back pay that had been withheld for years. Of course the news filled me with gratitude. I decided to pay the Party membership dues with this returned money. Then a thick wad of banknotes worth 1500 yuan was handed to me by a comrade, a man of integrity, from our department. I immediately gave it to the Party general secretary of our department without counting it. That comrade told me another sum of 4000 to 5000 yuan would be returned to me later.

I can't remember whether the Party's branch committee of the department held a meeting to discuss the resumption of my Party membership. One day the leader of the PLA Team of MTP and the Party general secretary for the department summoned me to their office. The latter asked me, "Have you ever considered the nature of your problem?" Taken aback, I was tongue-tied. In terms of ideological faithfulness, I was weak in many aspects. In reference to my political background, I did not join any KMT or reactionary organizations in the past. So I should have said I had a clean record. At that point I was at a loss, before the PLA officer quickly switched to another topic to smooth over the embarrassment and wind up the talk. A little while later, an official in charge of the political propaganda or organization of the Party's branch committee, who just had been transferred from the Department of Chinese, told me the branch committee had decided to renew my Party membership but also to punish me with a two-year probation within the Party. I flared up. Just because I was against the tyrannical "empress," a temporary ruler of Beida, I was falsely charged, persecuted, put in custody, tormented at torture sessions and narrowly survived in my late years. When nothing offensive was found in my background, they disposed of me through a charge that had no evidence at all to back it up. How integrity was trampled upon! How justice was ignored! How disappointing this Party organization was! Seeing my rage, the official suddenly turned stern, remarking, "Would you like to delay the discussion of this issue until the next branch committee meeting?" To be frank, I was extremely disillusioned. I had endured hard times, waited and hoped against hope, expecting the sun to rise again in my political life. When finally the day arrived, it was such a hope-dashing result. I was utterly tired of this business. Enough was enough. But it would never be possible for me to sign the "I have no objection" paper right after the decision of the Party's branch committee. If I put "objection" on it, I would ask for tons of trouble to come. I turned the issue over and over in my mind and finally told the official, "It's unnecessary to hold another meeting!" I picked up the pen and wrote with my signature "Basically, I have no objection!" I said to the official, "My word 'basically' should be clear to you." Then I thought, if I was on a two-year probation within the Party there would be no point of turning in the amount of 4000 to 5000 yuan yet to be returned to me as my Party's membership dues. Consequently I later got back the sum and kept it for myself.

Now I have told the story of the resumption of my Party membership.

[1] The "iron rice bowl," a popular phrase for the planned economic system that was implemented in China from 1949 to 1978.

[2] A popular saying, meaning concentrating on one's own work.

[3] It "thwarted the enemy," a quotation of Mao Zedong popularly used in the Cultural Revolution; originally the quotation goes, "The Revolution plays havoc with the world, but it thwarts the enemy and train the people."

[4] "I am behind Sun Shan, who comes last on the list of the scores of the examinations," a popular saying that comes from Guoting Notes, written by Fan Gongcheng of the Song Dynasty. In the story Sun Shan leaves home to take the imperial examinations. He is entrusted with the son of one of his native villagers, who is also an examinee. When Sun Shan comes back home and is asked by the father of his fellow examinee about the son's performance, Sun Shan answers, "Sun Shan bottoms the list of the examinees, but your son is behind Sun Shan."