Premier Zhou loved the play and saw it three times. He told Yomei that she should produce more plays like The Rising Sun. “This is pioneering work,” he said. “There should be a second and then a third play of this kind.” He also urged her and Jin Shan to form another team of actors, so that The Rising Sun could be performed in various provinces as a model play that combined professionalism with the masses in the artistic production. Indeed, in this respect, the play was a trailblazer. Following Father Zhou’s instructions, Yomei and Jin Shan assembled a Cast B of actors, which soon began to perform in the provinces of central China together with Cast A. Wherever the two acting groups went, they were enthusiastically received. During the first six months of 1966, the play was performed 210 times and more than a quarter million people saw it. It made history in Chinese theater—no play had ever reached such a vast audience so quickly. The Ministry of Culture decided to make a movie of The Rising Sun, so without delay Yomei and Jin Shan returned to the oil field to plunge into filmmaking. More experienced in cinema than Yomei, Jin Shan wanted to follow the same format of the spoken drama production and avoid using professional actors in the film. Soon the two of them began auditioning people to find actors for the movie while working on the screenplay too.
Meanwhile, a lot had been going on in Beijing. In the early spring of 1966, the Central Experimental Theater and the National Youth Art Theater merged. Even though they were absent from the capital, Yomei and Jin Shan were both appointed as stage directors at the new theater. Now, after fourteen years, they were working in the same company again. They heard that a political campaign had begun in the newly established theater that had been partly triggered by Jin Shan’s proposal to put on the representative plays by Tian Han and Yang Hansheng. The plays had somehow become labeled as “poisonous weeds,” though in truth they were already modern classics of Chinese drama. It was said that Kang Sheng, the man responsible for political purges two decades earlier in Yan’an who operated behind the scenes most of the time, had masterminded this struggle in arts circles. He was in charge of the Party’s ideological work, and political intrigues were his forte and field of action. Yomei had known Kang Sheng for many years, and in the early 1950s Kang had written her long, obsequious letters that praised her productions and commented on traditional Chinese theater and arts in general. Apparently the sickly, conniving man had intended to curry favor with her because she had served as Mao’s interpreter in the Soviet Union, where Kang had assumed she had deep and extensive connections. He might also have believed that an intimate relationship between Mao and Yomei might develop, since many pretty women, given such an opportunity of being around the top leader, would make what they considered the best use of it, exercising their charm over Mao. Kang Sheng couldn’t imagine that Yomei would pay no mind to the Great Leader, not even treating him as an interesting man. Yomei always had misgivings about Kang’s warmth and friendliness toward her. She knew he and Jiang Ching were very close, and were both from Shandong Province, and that it was Kang Sheng who had in Yan’an introduced Jiang Ching to Mao, so Yomei had always been on guard when dealing with the wily Kang. Now, he seemed to have come to the foreground, helping Jiang Ching claw her way into the world of arts. Knowing the deep connection between Ching and Kang Sheng, Yomei and Jin Shan shared a strong foreboding, both afraid that something ominous might be in the offing.
They were further convinced when Father Zhou visited Daqing Oil Field in early May. The premier met them privately, and together they took a walk after dinner. He revealed to them that the situation in the CCP’s top circle was irksome, even precarious at the moment. A large political movement seemed on the way, so both of them must be very careful from now on. He urged them not to appear too close to the Zhous, because if his political opponents couldn’t hurt him directly, they might turn on some of those who worked for him or were related to him.
“Can I write to you like before?” Yomei asked, quite disturbed.
Zhou Enlai’s face dropped a bit. “Just be careful about what you say in your letters. Always assume that some other eyes will read your letters before they reach me.”
“Then I’ll try not to write if I can’t speak my mind,” said Yomei.
Father Zhou breathed a sigh, looking around to make sure no others were within earshot and sight, other than his guard behind them. He said under his breath to both Yomei and Jin Shan, “Just be alert and try to grow another pair of eyes on the back of your head.”
What he meant was that they must exercise their vigilance against political intrigues, which might come from every direction and which seemed to grow more rampant and more malevolent day by day. They had to learn how to protect themselves and avoid doing anything beyond the pale. The premier couldn’t tell them explicitly that the Cultural Revolution was about to break out. It was initiated by Mao as a way to incite the masses to smash governments at all levels and to take power back from Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping and their followers—the so-called capitalist roaders, those who pulled the revolution in a capitalist direction. Mao was willing to turn the whole country upside down as long as he could regain the supreme power in China.
As Father Zhou hinted, in late May the Cultural Revolution broke out, and on some level this began to reshape everyone’s life and throw the entire country into a lawless state. All remaining performances of The Rising Sun were called off, and all the actors were sent back to their work units. Changchun Film Studio wrote to Jin Shan and Yomei and revoked the movie contract. All these setbacks, in fact, might have just been repercussions of more ruinous happenings in the top circle: apparently someone had intended to deliver a blow to Premier Zhou by striking down his pet theater project, embodied by The Rising Sun. Again, Yomei could see the traces of Jiang Ching’s hands behind this.
Then they heard from their work unit, the new theater, which summoned both of them back to Beijing to “join the Cultural Revolution.” They had no choice but to return. Having heard that schools and colleges in the capital were in chaos, they decided to let Little Lan stay in Sartu for some time, where education continued and life was still normal and safe and where the girl was treated as Yomei’s daughter. She already had many friends and would be helped and protected by the people of the oil field. Above all else, she could stay with the Nius, who had become close friends of her parents. So Yomei and Jin Shan went back to the capital in early summer without Little Lan.
They found Beijing in chaos and could feel tension in the air. Everywhere there were Red Guards from the provinces, and their presence made the city appear younger, teeming with youthful faces. Many groups of the Red Guards raised flags emblazoned with slogans like “Right to Rebel!” “Wipe out Evil Elements!” “Carry on Class Struggle!” “Defend the Party’s Central Committee!” Those young people swarmed into the capital to get reviewed by Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square, where waves of flags surged like a red sea. Hundreds of thousands of them had come, traveling free and getting free board and beds along the way as well as in the capital. The whole country seemed to be on the move, the youngsters wearing army jackets and caps and scarlet armbands, their waists cinched with leather or canvas belts. They trekked on foot or rode buses and trains to Beijing. Even the Red Guards leaving the capital after being reviewed by Mao didn’t go home directly, and instead they’d headed for other places to mobilize the masses to join the revolution, which was like a firestorm swallowing the whole land.
Soon after Yomei returned to the capital, she received a note from Jiang Ching inviting her over the next weekend, saying they’d have some important matters to discuss. Both Yomei and Jin Shan were agitated by the invitation, which was like a summons. They couldn’t fathom what the woman had up her sleeve, yet Yomei had no option but to go and meet her.
She had heard of the success of Jiang Ching’s opera The Legend of the Red Lantern, which had premiered in Beijing the summer before. It had garnered numerous rave reviews and also been hyped as a revolutionary model play. Even Chairman Mao saw it and praised the performance, so the opera became a feather in Ching’s cap. Ever since being back in Beijing, Yomei had avoided seeing the opera, unwilling to have anything to do with it. Now in her meeting with Ching, she’d better not touch this topic. If it came up, she must provide a reasonable excuse for not having seen the play. Perhaps she could say she’d been far away in the northeast and missed out on the performance.
She went to the Zhongnanhai compound to see Jiang Ching. The moment she sat down in her office on Mao’s premises, Ching came in and shook hands with Yomei, smiling without opening her mouth. She told a servant to bring some fruit. In an instant, a wisp of a woman, in her early twenties and with a bony face and two short pigtails, stepped in, carrying a single huge pear and two porcelain plates stacked together. She put the fruit on a table and unwrapped a napkin to produce a stainless-steel knife that was about a foot long, with a curved blade. She was ready to peel the giant pear in front of Ching and the guest. Yomei was astonished by the size of the knife, which looked more suitable for slaughtering hogs.
She was also amazed to see such a golden pear with a smattering of russet specks on its skin. It weighed more than three pounds, she guessed. Never had she seen such a humongous fruit. “What kind of pear is this?” she asked.
“Dangshan pear from Anhui Province,” Ching said. “We received a couple yesterday.”
Ching motioned for the servant to go ahead. Wordlessly the woman began peeling—under the blade a ribbon of the peel unfolded while the white flesh was being revealed. On the other plate the peel piled up without a break. It extended many feet long, and was coiled up in whorls. Within a minute, the peeling was done. Then the woman cut half of the pear into cubes the size of tiny match boxes and put toothpicks on them and placed the plate on the tea table between Ching and the guest.
“Now try this, Yomei,” Ching said.
Yomei picked up a piece and took a bite. It was juicy, sweet, and fragrant. “This is yummy. Thank you so much, Ching. This is the first time I’ve tasted Dangshan pear. What a treat!” She also thanked the servant, who left noiselessly with the peel and the core and the wrapped knife. The uncut half of the pear was still sitting in the plate on the table.
“Take as much as you want, Yomei,” Ching said and gave a tight-lipped smile.
“Thanks. I must have a second.” She picked up another piece.
“Yomei, I saw your play The Rising Sun,” Ching said with her chin lowered to her neck. “It’s really impressive, and I love it. What a cunning play. It seems simple and small, but it has tremendous resonance and extensive ramifications.”
“Thanks very much for your generous words.”
“Now I’m wondering if we can collaborate to turn it into a Beijing opera.”
Flabbergasted, Yomei stopped chewing and didn’t know what to say. Ching pressed on: “Like I told you, together we can make a revolution in China’s theater. Your new play could serve as a harbinger of China’s new revolutionary drama.”
At last Yomei found her words, saying, “I cannot decide on my own, Ching. You see, I’m not the author of the play, which was a collective effort. I was listed merely as an adapter. If I treated it as my own work, people at the oil field would be outraged and say I have appropriated the fruit of their collaborative labor. It will be unethical for me to do that. I’m sorry, Ching, I’m not at liberty to use this play freely. My hands are tied.”
Jiang Ching’s face fell, pinkish patches appeared on it, and her upper lip curled. She said, “For so many years I’ve been eager to work with you, Yomei, but you’ve never honored my wish. You know that patience has never been my strong suit. I’m tired of repeating my requests and can’t cozy up to you forever. So for heaven’s sake, take this as my last invitation.”
That struck Yomei dumb. She stared at Ching’s face, on which a malevolent smirk emerged. Ching rose and said, “I used to think we could work together as a pair—you were in charge of spoken drama while I ran Beijing opera. Now it looks like I’ll have to fight alone and within the field of Beijing opera. This is a warrior’s fate, to go on fighting alone.”
“I’m sorry, Ching. I wish I could join you.”
“Because of your refusal, we won’t be able to do much in spoken drama, which is the last stronghold of reactionary artists. What a pity—that a red and trustworthy expert like you cannot be of much use to us. You know, Chairman Mao always appreciates you.”
“I’ll do my best to make myself useful for the revolutionary cause and also to live up to his appreciation.”
In spite of turning Jiang Ching down firmly, Yomei felt quite rattled. Jin Shan was also startled, believing that The Rising Sun was dead unless they let Jiang Ching harvest the fruit of so many people’s collaboration. No matter what, he and Yomei would not allow that to happen. Yet he knew Ching’s personality. She used to pursue some male directors doggedly, willing to do anything for them, including sleeping with them, so as to secure a major role in the plays they were directing. He told Yomei that Ching would surely wreak vengeance on her, though he couldn’t tell in what fashion. So they’d better be more vigilant at work and keep a low profile.
At last the revenge came, like a bolt from the blue. In mid-June the Red Guards at the People’s University ransacked the school leaders’ offices and detained Sun Yang. They even denounced him publicly in the Culture Square, forcing him to stand on a stool and wear a papier-mâché dunce cap and a heavy wooden placard on which were inscribed “Capitalist Roader” and “Traitor.” Those words, together with his name, were crossed out in red ink, as if he were about to be executed. The placard was so heavy that the steel wire cut into the flesh of his neck. The Red Guards also paraded him through the campus, where big-character posters were everywhere, condemning Yang and the other school leaders as “a black gang.” Yomei had never seen so many political writings handwritten in big characters and posted on walls in public spaces. What a bizarre way for the masses to express themselves and expose others. Among the denounced, Yang had been singled out as a special target because he was labeled a foreign spy. What was even more outlandish, the Red Guards fabricated their own charges against him, which said he had been developed by the Japanese Chrysanthemum Bureau, one of the four major Japanese intelligence agencies, when Yang was studying in Japan, and later the Chrysanthemum Bureau had planted him in Yan’an, at the side of Zhu Deh, to collect intelligence for the Japanese Imperial Army. No wonder he still had some nipponized mannerisms, such as often bowing to others, which actually gave him an air of sophisticated humility.
The Red Guards incarcerated Yang in the basement of the school’s main building and beat him every day to extract information needed by the leaders at the Central Committee of the Cultural Revolution. They told him that he must expose his former boss Zhu Deh, who was nothing but an old bandit, not a hero that Yang had eulogized in the biography he’d written. It was whispered that Chairman Mao had blown a fuse when he saw the hefty book describing Marshal Zhu Deh as the founder of the Red Army. To Mao’s mind, Zhu Deh had been closer to a warlord who had contradicted him time and again in the CCP, ever since the mid-1920s. To present Zhu Deh as the founder of the Red Army was to undermine Mao’s leadership of the armed forces. As Mao had declared repeatedly: “Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” For decades Zhu Deh had been a thorn in Mao’s flesh, but there’d been no way to get rid of him, thanks to Zhu’s seniority and reputation in the Party and the army. That accounted for the detainment of Sun Yang, which was a way to strike Zhu Deh from the side. In Mao’s eyes, Yang had been Zhu’s lackey and loud eulogist, and as such he must be reined in and silenced.
Yomei was devastated by her brother’s arrest. At this point she was still unsure whether his punishment was part of Ching’s revenge. She could tell that Kang Sheng and Jiang Ching both resented the biography Yang had written of Zhu Deh. But the old man was so revered, few people in the Party could touch him. Yomei and Jin Shan talked about such a turn of events, and both believed that there must be some bigger power behind Jiang Ching and Kang Sheng who intended to bring down Zhu Deh. Evidently it was Mao behind them, because Zhu Deh was ranked well above Jiang Ching and Kang Sheng and used to be together with Mao. Now that a major biography had been published as if to erect a verbal monument to the old man, Mao couldn’t tolerate such a personality cult—nobody in the Party should surpass him in reputation. He alone should occupy the limelight and get all the acclaim. But Yomei and Jin Shan could talk about the labyrinth of this power struggle only between themselves, not daring to voice their opinions and conjectures to others.
Yomei tried hard to get Yang out of the Red Guards’ clutches, but to no avail. She went to see Uncle Zhu Deh and found him very upset by Yang’s arrest, but the old man couldn’t figure out a way to save him either. Zhu Deh had even asked Premier Zhou, who headed the Central Committee of the Cultural Revolution, though he seemed like a figurehead who was unable to manage the mass movement at all. The premier was only drifting with the bloody torrent of the revolution. It was Jiang Ching and her clique who ran the committee. Zhu Deh asked Zhou Enlai to intervene on Yang’s behalf, but Zhou had just grimaced and said his intervention might only backfire. He told Zhu Deh, “Many people could have remained safe, but because of my intervention, they got hurt and even destroyed.” Though somewhat puzzled by Father Zhou’s equivocation, Yomei felt he might have his reasons.
Then more trouble flared up for Jin Shan and Yomei. Big-character posters appeared on the bulletin boards at the theater, then everywhere, even inside the lobby and the corridors of their office building, even on the street, where mats were fixed on trees and utility poles so that more posters could be pasted to them. The accusers called the Youth Art Theater and the Central Experimental Theater “a pair of citadels of the bourgeois artists,” mentioned many plays produced by them as “poisonous weeds,” and also listed many leaders of the theaters as reactionaries and capitalist roaders. Among the condemned, Jin Shan was naturally ranked at the top, since he already had some historical baggage on his back. He was named as a diligent disseminator of feudalistic and bourgeois sentiments. His wife, Sun Yomei, was his helper and a sympathizer of the Soviet revisionism. The two were a really a corrupt pair and even strolled around arm in arm publicly without shame and often spritzed themselves with reeky, exotic perfumes. Someone also pointed out that Yomei preferred coffee to tea—“she is a Russian slave and a worshipper of foreign stuff.”
Those condemnations upended their world—Yomei felt as if heaven and earth had traded places. She couldn’t help but wonder what sort of revolution this was. It was more like an act of mass destruction; so many people, suddenly possessed by vengeance and schadenfreude, had degenerated into fearless and bloodthirsty fiends who were relentless in exposing each other to save themselves. Yomei tried to hold her tongue, convinced that she hadn’t done anything wrong and should be safe. Over the years the two theaters had produced so many revolutionary plays and earned the public’s respect and support. So how could the Red Guards overnight turn them into sources of “poison and spiritual corruption”?
Jin Shan remained calm in appearance, having gone through numerous denunciations and condemnations before, but Yomei couldn’t stomach this kind of far-fetched smearing. She often felt her gorge rising at the thought of those groundless accusations and at how people confused rhetoric with facts. It was hard for her to remain taciturn—she’d always been outspoken and aboveboard, like someone transparent. Furthermore, she had always been red, born and bred, and known as the Red Princess since the Yan’an days. How could she have become “a black-hearted reactionary” all of a sudden? This made no sense.
When she finally expressed her objection and complaints, the revolutionary task force at the theater believed she had the wrong attitude, and, regardless of the specific issues she brought up, they just attacked her more viciously to subdue her. She didn’t know that many of her colleagues had already gone through this kind of maltreatment and had been made tame and obedient. On account of her stubbornness, she had become a special target, and both she and Jin Shan were ordered to join “the black gang,” who would be denounced publicly. The revolutionary task force ordered them to admit their wrong deeds and crimes and reform themselves through menial labor, including mopping floors and stairs, cleaning toilets, wiping windows with rags, and sweeping the front and back yards and the parking lot.
One afternoon in late August, a band of Red Guards led by a teenage girl came to the theater. Together they wanted to discipline “some reactionaries and evildoers.” Most of the actors and staffers held back at the sight of them and remained quiet and bowed their heads and kept busy working to make themselves unnoticeable. Somehow the girl commander caught sight of Jin Shan and demanded, “What kind of family are you from?”
He answered, “My father was a small businessman, but he died when I was one year old.”
“Businessman, huh?” the girl went on, scowling. “That means he was a capitalist, so you’re a son of a capitalist. No wonder you’ve become a reactionary.”
Yomei glared at the moon-faced girl, wondering at how ridiculous this was. Then the teenage leader, the girl, caught her resentful eyes, stepped up to her, and demanded, “How about you? What’s your role at this theater?”
“I’m a director,” said Yomei.
“Doing what?”
“Staging plays.”
“So you have produced plenty of poisonous weeds, one patch after another?”
Yomei didn’t bother to respond, just looking her in the face.
“What’s your family background?” the girl persisted.
“Revolutionary martyr.”
“Revolutionary martyr, is it?” Her slitted eyes raked Yomei up and down. “Then you have betrayed your red origins and become a black element in our society.”
“Ludicrous,” Yomei grunted contemptuously.
That incensed the girl, who waved at the Red Guards behind her and ordered them, “Teach her a lesson to set her straight!”
Two teenage boys rushed up and grabbed hold of Yomei’s arms. Then, with a large scissors, they began cutting her hair. She struggled to resist, but more Red Guards joined in and restrained her. They dropped clumps of her hair to the floor, and in a wink of an eye they opened a naked cross on her crown, which they called “the yin-yang hairdo” due to the contrast between her black hair and her whitish scalp now.
In fact, the violent act was gratuitous. The Red Guards were just passing by and had no idea whom they manhandled. They cut Yomei’s hair for fun and to punish her stubborn attitude. But such a random act cut her to the quick. After they’d left, she looked at herself in a mirror, then began sobbing. With ravaged hair, how could she go home?
Jin Shan found a flabby wig from a pile of stage costumes in a back room and told her to put it on. Quietly the two left for home. That night, Jin Shan clipped off the rest of Yomei’s hair so that her head became bald, but it was still in fine shape, round and smooth. He was amazed that even without her luxuriant hair, she still looked as elegant as a model nun. He said, “My, you may have been a princess in your previous life. Nobody can destroy your beauty. Even without your hair, you still look so beautiful.”
“Well, beauty is truth and truth is beauty,” she said with slight irony. “Damn, I’m still so arrogant.” She tittered.
“Besides an arrogant heart, what else do we have as an artist? We’re all megalomaniacs in a way.”
“That’s right. I can see you are similar to me. At heart, you look down on those in power. Many of them are mere clowns in gorgeous caps and gowns.”
He laughed without a word and went on clipping the soft hair on her nape.
Every day they went to the theater to work, but all they did was mop floors and clean bathrooms. They were also expected to read the big-character posters hanging all over the place. They used to enjoy strolling along Chang’an Avenue between the theater and their home and often go out for a walk after dinner, but nowadays they didn’t go anywhere after work and only stayed home.
Even so, they were not left alone. There were all sorts of people who came to their house on the pretext of special investigations.