DESTROY THE FOUR OLDS!

Almost every Sunday afternoon Dad wanted to take a long nap in peace, and so he gave us thirty fen to rent picture books. Hand in hand, Ji-yong, Ji-yun, and I would walk down the alley to Grandpa Hong’s bookstall.

The alley on which we lived was famous for its handsome buildings, and it was wide enough for two cars to pass abreast. Like a tree with only one trunk, our alley had only one exit to the busy street. Five smaller alleys branched off the main alley on both sides, and each of these small alleys was lined with brownstone town houses. The houses were three stories tall and exactly alike, with square, smiling courtyards hidden behind their front gates, and small kitchen courtyards in the back. Once these had been town houses for wealthy families. Many of the original inhabitants still lived there, although now each building was shared by several families.

Grandpa Hong’s bookstall was on the corner at the entrance of our alley. All the children in the neighborhood loved the stall and Grandpa Hong, with his gray hair and wispy beard. He would look at us through his old yellowed glasses and smile. He knew just which books each of us liked best and that I would choose fairy tales, Ji-yong would get adventure stories, and Ji-yun would want animal stories. If you read the books at Grandpa Hong’s bookstall, you could rent sixty picture books for thirty fen. Two books for a fen! What a deal! After helping us with our choices, Grandpa Hong always gave us each an extra book for free.

Against the walls in the place were hard wooden benches that rocked on the uneven mud floor. We would sit in a row on one of these benches, each of us with a pile of twenty-one picture books, and read them, one after another. Then we would trade piles and read again. This was how I met many beloved friends: the Monkey King, the River Snail Lady, Snow White, Aladdin, and many others. Inside the bookstall I traveled to mysterious places to meet ancient beauties or terrible monsters. Often I forgot where I was. When the sky was almost dark, the three of us would have finished all sixty-three books, and Dad would have finished his nap.

This Sunday there were no other children at the stall when we arrived. We had just settled down to read when An Yi rushed in. An Yi and I had known each other ever since we were babies. She came to the bookstall quite often and knew just where to find me on a Sunday afternoon.

“Come on, you guys!” she wheezed. An Yi had severe asthma. “They’re breaking the sign at the Great Prosperity Market!”

We dropped our books and rushed out with her. This was our first chance to watch the campaign to “Destroy the Four Olds” in action.

Our beloved Chairman Mao had started the Cultural Revolution in May. Every day since then on the radio we heard about the need to end the evil and pernicious influences of the “Four Olds”: old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. Chairman Mao told us we would never succeed at building a strong socialist country until we destroyed the “Four Olds” and established the “Four News.” The names of many shops still stank of old culture, so the signs had to be smashed to make way for the coming of new ideas.

The Great Prosperity Market was on Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s busiest shopping street, only two blocks from our alley. Nanjing Road was lined with big stores, and always bustled with activity. The street was full of bicycles and pedicabs and trolleys, and the sidewalks were so crowded with shoppers, they spilled off the sidewalk into the street. We were still quite a distance away when we heard the hubbub and ran faster.

A big crowd had gathered outside the Great Prosperity Market, one of the most successful food stores in the city. It was full of good things to eat, with rare delicacies from other provinces and delicious items like dried duck gizzards strung up in its window. But today the window was bare. The store was deserted. All eyes were riveted on a dense ring of people in the street. Some young men were cheering excitedly for the people inside the circle, but half the crowd were merely craning their necks and watching.

We wriggled our way between the bodies.

Lying on the dirty ground inside the circle was a huge wooden sign, at least twelve feet long. It was still impressive, although the large golden characters GREAT PROSPERITY MARKET had lost their usual shine and looked dull and lifeless on the red background.

Two muscular young men in undershirts, probably salesmen from the store, were gasping next to it.

“Come on. Try again!” shouted the taller of the two.

He spat into his palms and rubbed them together. Then, with the help of the other, he lifted the board to shoulder height. “One, two, three!” They threw the board to the ground.

The board bounced twice but did not break. The two men threw the board again. Nothing happened.

“Put one end on the curb. Stamp on it. That’s bound to work,” someone suggested.

“Good idea!”

“Come on! Try it!”

Amid a clamor of support, the two men moved the board half onto the sidewalk. Then they jumped onto it. “One… two… three…” We heard their shoes strike the hard wood. But the board did not yield.

“Damn! This fourolds is really hard. Hey! Come on. Let’s do it together!” the tall fellow shouted at the crowd.

I looked at An Yi to see if she would like to join me, but while I was hesitating, the board became fully occupied. Ji-yong had moved faster and was one of the dozen people on it. They stamped, bounced, and jumped with excitement. One stepped on another’s shoes. Hips and shoulders bumped. We all laughed.

The board refused to break. Even under a thousand pounds it did not give way. The crowd became irritated and started shouting suggestions.

“Take it to a carpenter and let him use it for something!”

“Let’s get a truck and drive over it!”

Someone started pushing through the circle.

“Hey, I’ve got an ax. Let me through! I’ve got an ax!”

We stood back to give the man room. He lifted the ax to his shoulder and paused. The blade flashed in the sunlight as it began to move faster and faster in a shining arc until it crashed into the sign. The wood groaned with the impact, and we all cheered. The man gave the sign another blow, and another. At last the sign gave way. With another groan and a crack it broke in two.

Everyone cheered. People rushed forward to stamp on what remained of the sign. An Yi and I had found a few classmates in the crowd, and we all embraced, jumped, and shouted. Although what we had smashed was no more than a piece of wood, we felt we had won a victory in a real battle.

Bathed in the evening’s glow, we jumped and giggled all the way home. Inspired by what we’d seen, we noticed that other stores we passed also needed to change their names.

“Look. This is called the Good Fortune Photo Studio. Doesn’t that mean to make a lot of money, just like Great Prosperity? Chairman Mao told us that was exploitation. Don’t you think this is fourolds?” Ji-yong asked enthusiastically.

“Right. We should change it to the Proletarian Photo Studio.”

“Here’s another one. The Innocent Child Toy Shop,” An Yi exclaimed. “Innocent is a neutral word. It shows a lack of class awareness. What should we change it to?”

“How about the Red Child Toy Shop?”

“That’s great,” I said. “And we should change the Peace Theater to the Revolution Theater. After all, without revolution, how can we have peace?”

We felt proud of ourselves. We were certain that we were bringing a new life to China.

So Grandma’s reaction was a surprise to me. At dinner I told her and my parents all about what had happened.

“My goodness!” she blurted out. “That sign cost the owner a fortune. They always said that since an especially auspicious date was chosen to hang the sign, the store has been prosperous for more than thirty years. What a shame! What a shame!”

“But Grandma, we have to get rid of those old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. Chairman Mao said they’re holding us back,” I informed her.

“Besides, Grandma, there’s no such thing as an auspicious date. That’s superstition, and superstition is fourolds. And the name Great Prosperity is very bad. Great prosperity means to make a fortune, and making a fortune is what bad people do. Right?” Ji-yong tilted his head toward Mom and Dad.

Mom and Dad looked at each other and then turned to Grandma.

“Yes, Ji-yong is right,” Mom said, and shook her head.

Even my little sister, Ji-yun, knew that the old superstitions were silly. Like not sweeping the floor on New Year’s Day so you would not sweep the god of wealth out of the house, or eating a spring roll so you would roll the money in. I told Grandma what I had heard from my classmates. “An Yi said her uncle knew a family who spent a lot of money when their grandma died. First they had to keep vigil by the coffin for a week. Then after the burial they had to have a banquet and serve bean curd to the relatives every seventh day for seven weeks, and on the forty-ninth day they had the last banquet, all just so the soul could get into heaven. Then they burned spirit money so that the dead person would have money in heaven. What good does all that do? Besides, there is no such thing as heaven. It’s these old ideas that are holding the country back.”

Ji-yong and Ji-yun and I talked about the new shop names we had thought of. Mom and Dad did not say anything. They did not seem very enthusiastic about the new campaign. That was surprising, because they had been very enthusiastic about previous movements. When I was little, Chairman Mao had challenged the nation to catch up with England and America in steel production. Mom had helped me collect scrap iron to make steel, and even let me donate our cast-iron kettle to the cause. When natural disasters had caused food shortages, Chairman Mao had urged us all to produce food. Mom had helped me grow pots of seaweed on the balcony, as all my classmates did. Chairman Mao’s campaign to “Destroy the Four Olds” was even more important than the others. The newspapers and the radio said so. I knew the movement was vital to our country’s future, and I did not understand how Mom and Dad could not be interested in it.

It was almost unbelievable. Within a couple of days almost all the fourolds shop signs had been removed. The stores we had talked about had all been renamed. Red banners now hung over the doorways as temporary signs, with the new names painted in black or white. The red cloths were not as nice as the old signs, but their revolutionary spirit brought a new energy to the whole city. It seemed to me that the very air had become purer with the change.

What excited me and my friends most, though, was that the Peace Theater really did become the Revolution Theater, as we had said it should. We felt like real revolutionaries at last.

My friends and I had grown up with the stories of the brave revolutionaries who had saved China. We were proud of our precious red scarves, which, like the national flag, were dyed red with the blood of our revolutionary martyrs. We had often been sorry that we were too young to have fought with Chairman Mao against the Japanese invaders, who tried to conquer China; against the dictator Chiang Kai-shek, who ruthlessly oppressed the Chinese people; and against the American aggressors in Korea. We had missed our chance to become national heroes by helping our motherland.

Now our chance had come. Destroying the fourolds was a new battle, and an important one: It would keep China from losing her Communist ideals. Though we were not facing real guns or real tanks, this battle would be even harder, because our enemies, the rotten ideas and customs we were so used to, were inside ourselves.

I was so excited that I forgot my sadness about the audition. There were many more important missions waiting for me. I felt I was already a Liberation Army soldier who was ready to go out for battle.

Ji-yun and I were walking home. The street was crowded with the bicycles of people coming home from work and with electric trolley buses blowing horns and crammed with passengers.

As usual, Ji-yun had not done very well at her piano lesson. “You have to pay attention to your teacher,” I was telling her. “He told you to slow down when you got to the end of the last verse, but you sped up. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Now, what did he say about the new piece? What kind of mood is it?”

“Happy?” Ji-yun guessed.

I sighed. “He said it was stirring. That’s a lot more than just happy. You have to pay attention. You really embarrass me. You—”

The sight of some high school students distracted me. Two boys and a pigtailed girl were walking toward us. They were young, no more than three or four years older than me. They walked slowly through the bustling crowd, looking closely at people’s pants and shoes. My sister and I stared at them with admiration. We knew they must be student inspectors. The newspapers had pointed out that the fourolds were also reflected in clothing, and now high school students had taken responsibility for eliminating such dress. For example, any pants with a leg narrower than eight inches for women or nine inches for men would be considered fourolds.

A bus pulled up at the bus stop behind us. Quite a few people got on and off. As the bus pulled away, we saw a crowd gathered at the curb. “Oh boy, they found a target.” I took Ji-yun by the hand and dashed over.

“… tight pants and pointed shoes are what the Western bourgeoisie admire. For us proletarians they are neither good-looking nor comfortable. What’s more, they are detrimental to the revolution, so we must oppose them resolutely.” One of the boys, the one who was wearing glasses, was just finishing his speech.

The guilty person was a very handsome man in his early thirties. He wore dark-framed glasses, a cream-colored jacket with the zipper half open, and a pair of sharply creased light-brown pants. He had also been wearing fashionable two-tone shoes, “champagne shoes” we called them, of cream and light-brown leather. They were lying on the ground next to him as he stood with one foot on the ground and the other resting in the lap of the student measuring his pants.

The man kept arching his foot as if the pebbles on the sidewalk hurt him. He looked nervous, standing in his white socks while the inspectors surrounded him, holding his hands submissively along his trouser seams. Occasionally he raised his hands a little to balance himself. His handsome face blushed scarlet, then turned pale. A few times he bit his lips.

One of the boys was trying to squeeze an empty beer bottle up the man’s trouser leg. This was a newly invented measurement. If the bottle could not be stuffed into the trouser leg, the pants were considered fourolds and treated with “revolutionary operations”— cut open.

The boy tried twice. The girl waved her scissors with unconcealed delight. “Look! Another pair of too-tight pants. Now let’s get rid of the fourolds!” She raised the scissors and deftly cut the pants leg open. Then, with both hands, she tore the pants to the knee so the man’s pale calf was exposed.

The crowd stirred. Some people pushed forward to have a closer look, some nervously left the circle when they saw the scissors used, and some glanced at their own pants. As the girl started on the other leg of the trousers, the boy with the glasses picked up the man’s shoes and waved them to the crowd. “Pointed shoes! Fourolds!” he shouted.

“But I bought them in the Number One Department Store here. It’s run by the government. How can they be fourolds?” the man cried out in despair.

“What makes you think that government-owned stores are free of fourolds? That statement itself is fourolds. Didn’t you see all the shop signs that were knocked down? Most of those stores belonged to the government.” With a snort the boy dropped the man’s foot and stood up. The man lost his balance and nearly fell over.

The crowd gave a burst of appreciative laughter.

Encouraged, the three students enthusiastically began cutting open the shoes. All eyes were focused on them. No one paid any attention to their owner. I looked at the man.

He stood on the sidewalk, awkward and humiliated, trouser legs flapping around his ankles, socks falling down. A tuft of hair hung over his forehead. He looked at his pants, pushed up his glasses nervously, and quickly glanced around. Our eyes met. Immediately he turned away.

The students cheered and triumphantly threw the mutilated shoes into the air.

The man quivered. Suddenly he turned around and began to walk away.

“Wait.” One boy picked up the shoes and threw them at the man. “Take your fourolds with you. Go home and thoroughly remold your ideology.”

The man took his broken shoes in hand and made his way out of the crowd, his cut pants flapping.

Someone chortled. “He’ll have holes in his socks when he gets home.”

I watched the spectators disperse. The students strutted proudly down the street.

Ji-yun tugged on my arm. “Come on. It’s over.”

I took her hand and we headed home in silence. “That poor guy,” I finally said. “He should know better than to dress that way, but I’d just die if somebody cut my pants open in front of everybody like that.”

School had just let out. No sooner had we left the classroom than the rain began to pour down in huge drops. Those of us who hadn’t brought umbrellas scurried back into the classroom.

“Gosh! I should have brought my yang-san like Mom told me to.” An Yi gasped for breath while brushing the rain off her clothes.

“An Yi, you’re spreading the fourolds.” Yang Fan popped up behind her and spoke half jokingly. I was surprised. Yang Fan was usually so hesitant to express an opinion of her own that we called her Echo.

“What? What do you mean?” An Yi asked indignantly.

“You just said yang-san for ‘umbrella.’ Isn’t that spreading the fourolds?”

“Are you kidding? If yang-san is fourolds, then what about ‘raincoat’?”

Several other classmates laughed and gathered around An Yi and Yang Fan.

Yang Fan’s smile faded into embarrassment.

“What’s so funny? That is fourolds.” Du Hai stepped onto a chair and sat heavily on a desk. “Yang means foreign. Yang-san means foreign umbrella. They were called that because before Liberation we had to import them. Now we make them in China. So why do you still call it a yang-san? Doesn’t that show that you’re a xenophile who worships anything foreign?” Du Hai reveled in the new phrase he had learned from the newspaper.

Du Hai was trouble. He was mischievous and a terrible student, but he was hard to beat in an argument. Most important of all, his mother was the Neighborhood Party Committee Secretary, and so no one wanted to offend him.

He looked at us and we looked at him.

“First of all, this yang means sun, not foreign. And this yang-san means sun umbrella, parasol, not foreign umbrella.” I didn’t even look at Du Hai while I corrected his mistake. “If you want to talk about fourolds, Yang Fan, you always say yang-huo for matches. That really does mean foreign fire. So aren’t you spreading the fourolds too?” I sneaked a glance at Du Hai as I supported An Yi. Everyone laughed.

Yang Fan did not expect my attack and was caught short. She looked to Du Hai for help.

“Well, you always say good morning and good afternoon to the teachers.” Du Hai struck back. “That’s fourolds too, don’t you know that?”

“What’s wrong with saying good morning to the teachers? They teach you and you should respect them,” An Yi fired back before I could stop her.

“Respect the teachers? That’s the nonsense of ‘teachers’ dignity.’ You two are typical ‘teachers’ obedient little lambs,’ do you know that?” Du Hai recited more phrases from the newspaper.

The world had turned upside down. Now it was a crime for students to respect teachers. I couldn’t keep calm.

“We’re ‘teachers’ obedient little lambs,’ are we? Well, what about you, Du Hai? You’re full of the fourolds. On the last arithmetic test you only got twenty-six out of a hundred, and you said that your stupidity was due to your sins in a former life. Isn’t that what you said? Isn’t reincarnation a superstition?” I raised my voice.

“And you also said that the fortune-teller told you ‘small eyes, large fortune.’ Isn’t that fourolds too?” An Yi kept pressing hard.

Du Hai’s tiny, squinty eyes got even smaller. “That… that was just a joke. Anyway, I’m not as full of the fourolds as you are. You always say, ‘Listen to the teachers, listen to your parents.’” He wheezed in an expert imitation of An Yi, and all of our classmates burst into laughter. Du Hai and Yang Fan looked immensely pleased with themselves.

“Jiang Ji-li, your family has a housekeeper. That is exploitation. You’re a capitalist.”

“An Yi, you use facial cream every day. That is bourgeois ideology. And your long hair is, too. Shame on you. Why don’t you get your hair cut short in a revolutionary style?”

Du Hai and Yang Fan took turns attacking us, so quickly and fiercely that An Yi and I did not have a chance to reply. Everyone laughed at our helplessness.

“Well, the rain’s stopped. Let’s go home.” Feeling they had the upper hand and wanting to quit while they were ahead, Du Hai and Yang Fan picked up their schoolbags and swaggered off. The rest of the crowd followed them out, still shouting with laughter.

We two were left alone, angry and helpless.

“What’s wrong with using skin cream and wearing a braid?” said An Yi, stamping hard on the ground.

“But maybe they’re right about the housekeeper,” I admitted as we slung our schoolbags over our shoulders. “I guess I’ll have to tell Mom what they said about Song Po-po.”