Many friends have asked me why, after all I went through, I did not hate Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution in those years. The answer is simple: We were all brainwashed.
To us Chairman Mao was God. He controlled everything we read, everything we heard, and everything we learned in school. We believed everything he said. Naturally, we knew only good things about Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Anything bad had to be the fault of others. Mao was blameless.
When I started to write this book, I asked An Yi’s mother if she had hated Mao when she was forced to climb the factory chimney. “I didn’t hate him,” she told me. “I believed that the Cultural Revolution was necessary to prevent revisionism and capitalism from taking over China. I knew that I was wronged, but mistakes happen under any system. If the country was better for the movement that persecuted me, I was still in favor of it. It was only after Mao’s death that I knew I was deceived.”
It was only after Mao’s death in 1976 that people woke up. We finally learned that the whole Cultural Revolution had been part of a power struggle at the highest levels of the Party. Our leader had taken advantage of our trust and loyalty to manipulate the whole country. This is the most frightening lesson of the Cultural Revolution: Without a sound legal system, a small group or even a single person can take control of an entire country. This is as true now as it was then.
Thirty years have passed since I was the little girl with the red scarf who believed she would always succeed at everything. I grew up and moved to the United States, but still, whatever I did, wherever I went, vivid memories of my childhood kept coming back to me. After thinking so much about that time, I wanted to do something for the little girl I had been, and for all the children who lost their childhoods as I did. This book is the result.
This book tells of my experiences between the ages of twelve and fourteen. I have presented my family as it was, but in order to protect the privacy of friends and neighbors mentioned in the story, I have changed their names and some details of their stories.
And what happened since then?
A few months after our ransack the revolutionary situation in the theater changed again. The Rebels who had taken control lost power to a new group. Most of those who had been detained were released, including Uncle Fan, Aunt Wu, and Uncle Tian, who was detained right after our ransack because of the letter. Dad finally returned home too. He was still considered a landlord, and was put to work as a janitor; Mom still had to write self-criticism reports because she would not break with Dad; and Grandma still had to sweep the alley twice a day, but at least we were all together again.
Our class status continued to hold us back. Because of our political background I was denied another opportunity to become a stage actress, just as Ji-yong was not allowed to become a trumpeter nor Ji-yun a singer. But we never gave up. When the schools reopened after the Cultural Revolution, we all went to universities to finish our education. Both Ji-yun and I became teachers, while Ji-yong worked in a watch factory.
In 1980 my father was finally cleared. Not only was the charge that he was an “escaped landlord” dropped, but an old decision made during the Antirightist Movement was reversed as well. Only then did I learn the whole story. As a university student Dad had risked his life by joining the Communist Party when it was still an illegal, underground organization. During the Antirightist Movement of 1958, Dad had expressed some disagreement with Party policies, and as a result he was forced to resign from the Party. Although he was never officially classified as a rightist, he was denied promotions and major roles, and his career was ruined. In 1980 he was “rehabilitated” and appointed Vice President of the Children’s Art Theater. I looked at his gray hair and felt sad rather than happy. I knew he loved acting more than anything, and knew that nothing could make up for all the years he had lost.
The years of disappointments finally made me move to the United States. Now the whole family is here, except for Grandma, who died in 1992 at the age of ninety-eight. Ji-yong lives in Seattle, where he works in the tourist industry. Ji-yun teaches in a community college nearby, and my parents live with her family and enjoy the company of their two grandsons. And at long last my father has been able to do some acting.
Song Po-po died of a stroke not long after I came to America.
Sometimes when I think of all we went through, I can’t help feeling that it was only by the grace of God that we were saved. My parents and Grandma all admitted that at times during those dark years they contemplated suicide. Without God’s blessing they could never have survived.
As for the others in my story, in the early 1970s nearly all of my contemporaries were sent to the countryside for “reeducation.” According to Mao, this was supposed to benefit both the young students and the farmers. The students would learn to respect the working masses, and the farmers would learn new technology from the students. Like the Cultural Revolution, this did not work out as it was supposed to. After ten years of sacrifice in the primitive countryside most of these young people returned to the city with little education, few skills, and no beliefs. All regretted the waste of their youth, and all have struggled to start over again.
Chang Hong worked for many years on a state-run farm near Mongolia. Her brother died while she was there. At the farm she met her husband. Ironically, he was a black whelp, the son of a former capitalist. Eventually they returned to Shanghai, where Chang Hong was able to move into a factory job.
An Yi’s asthma prevented her from being sent to the countryside, and all these years she has been working in a small factory. Bai Shan spent years in the remote countryside near the Russian border, but now he is the business manager of the Shanghai branch of a foreign company. Lin-lin went back to school and became a doctor at a factory clinic. In the recent economic upheavals her factory closed, and the last time I saw her she was still unemployed. Du Hai is working in a factory near our childhood homes, and I saw him once at a distance. I’ve never heard what happened to Yin Lan-lan.
Except for a few who actually killed people, hardly any “revolutionaries” have been punished for what they did during the Cultural Revolution. Those who persecuted others, even beat or tortured them, were victims too, after all. They all believed they were doing it for Chairman Mao. In fact, many were caught on the wrong side in the power struggles and were persecuted in their turn, just as Du Hai’s mother was.
I once fervently believed in Mao and the Chinese Communist Party. After all the experiences I have told about in this story, and many more painful and frustrating experiences afterward, I left China and moved to the United States in 1984. I was thirty years old. I started at the bottom. I had no money, no friends, and hardly any English. I was willing to take on the struggle to establish myself in a new country because I knew that was the price I would have to pay for the freedom to think, speak, and write whatever I pleased.
During my first few years in the United States I was continually astonished at the freedom Americans enjoy. One Halloween evening I was watching the parade at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. I was amazed to see that all the celebrators were enjoying themselves so freely. They had no fear of being criticized by their bosses or arrested by the government for expressing themselves, even if they criticized or mocked the president.
After my graduation from the University of Hawaii in 1987 I worked for a hotel and resort chain for several years, then for a health care company. Despite my success and promotions, I was not entirely happy. I realized that although I have adopted a new country, I cannot forget China. I wonder about China’s present, and I worry about her future. I have realized that despite all my suffering, I cannot stop loving the country where I was born and raised. Feeling as I do, it seemed natural for me to start my own company, East West Exchange, to promote cultural exchanges between the United States and China. If I can help Americans to understand China, and the Chinese to learn about the United States, even a little, I will feel very rewarded. I will have contributed something to my country, China, and my home, America.
I hope this book will be part of that mission.