“Moo. …” When we poked our heads into the “Dongzhou thatched cottage” that the famous Qing calligrapher He Shaoji had written about 200 years ago, we found it was now a cattle barn holding Dongmen Village’s dozen or so fat plow oxen. Buffeted by the overpowering odor of hot, fermenting cattle dung, we quickly retreated to the vast yard outside, with its luxuriant grove of bamboo resembling a mass of ink pens.
The histories record that the “Dongzhou thatched hut” had at one point been destroyed by the army of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but the extent of its decrepitude was still unexpected. He Shaoji’s poem described the cottage as once having a study, rostrum, corridor, pavilion, bridge, cassia tree, and tangerine grove. By the time of our visit in 1986, all that remained was the tangerine grove. The narrow slab and cobblestone lanes between the farmhouses were covered with a treacherous slurry of mud and manure, while bubbles of gas oozing from the inky fluid in the roadside drains imparted a funk of humid rot. Only the crumbling village archway and courtyard beams and gables testified to the village’s former glory.
During the Cultural Revolution, no one practiced calligraphy in He Shaoji’s home village, but there were still quite a few people with a fine hand, as evidenced in the reports on killings and the violent posters and banners displayed around the village. The Dongmen brigade had someone whose bold cursive rendering of the word “kill” was particularly reminiscent of He Shaoji’s style. He Shaoji once wrote a couplet that went, “Sitting up until the second watch, I fall asleep; with nothing in my heart, no fear of a knock at the door.” During the Cultural Revolution, someone changed the wording: “Sitting up at the second watch, unable to sleep; nothing in my heart but fear of a knock at the door.”
At noon on August 17, 1967, Dongmen Commune’s Red Alliance political commissar, Xiao Jiawang, called a meeting of “reliable cadres, party members, and some administrative cadres” from all brigades at the Gaoche production brigade. At the meeting, Xiao Jiawang made the usual “battle-readiness arrangements” to organize militia and enhance control over black elements.
For a week after the meeting, not a single killing occurred, but on August 23, factionalist struggle resulted in one killing. Then on the night of August 24, the moon’s reflection on the peaceful waters of the Xiaoshui River was spliced by the prows of two boats silently making their way toward Dongzhou. Two groups of people huddled in the boats: one group holding spears and sabers and the other group hogtied. When the boats reached the middle of the river, a murmured order broke the silence, and the people holding the weapons tied baskets of rocks around the necks of the bound individuals and then pushed them one by one into the river. With each splash, an eddy roiled as the river received its offerings. The victims were not gagged, yet no one wailed or cried for help and no one struggled; it was all inexplicably peaceful. Then, under the soul-stirring radiance of the starry sky, He Jiren, a landlord element from the Dongmen brigade, stood up and yelled out a slogan, his cries reaching far along the shore in the stillness of the night. His cries were still echoing when He Jiren was pushed into the river along with his 20-year-old son.
This “incident of the landlord element who yelled the reactionary slogan” became vivid teaching material for class struggle, and an additional punishment was exacted a few days later, when He’s wife and 12-year-old son were drowned in almost the same spot, making his the only family to be completely extinguished in Dongmen Commune.
What was it He Jiren yelled that brought such disastrous consequences? An informed source replied evasively, “It was a reactionary slogan, and a particularly vile one.”
“What was the reactionary slogan?”
“Something like ‘Long live Chiang Kai-shek.’ ”
During our reporting, someone told us that He Jiren had once said, “Chiang Kai-shek did well for himself. After losing this country, he ran off to Taiwan to eat and drink and bathe in milk, leaving us to take the blame.”
Of all the 9,000 people killed during the Daoxian massacre (including in the 10 surrounding counties), He Jiren was the only one reported to have yelled a “reactionary slogan” before he died. Yet, we heard another version as well, which was that before he was killed, He Jiren yelled, “Why are you killing us, you bandits!” This version seems more credible, but still made him culpable of “brazenly vilifying the revolutionary action of the poor and lower-middle peasants.”
Someone discreetly told us that He Jiren was a descendent of the calligrapher He Shaoji.1 Whether he was or not doesn’t really matter; if He Shaoji himself had been alive then, he would have been killed without compunction. And it is likely that, as in Zhou Dunyi’s home village of Loutian, He Jiren’s killers also included descendants of He Shaoji.
We mentioned He Jiren’s shouted slogan in passing while talking with a teacher surnamed Huang who had been a political commissar for the Revolutionary Alliance during the Cultural Revolution. Huang’s response was unexpectedly vehement: “That’s a complete fairy tale and an absolute lie made up by those people in the Red Alliance. A normal person simply can’t imagine the kinds of stories they came up with. Back then they said that our No. 2 High School [the Revolutionary Alliance headquarters] was a den of black elements. They said we had Chiang Kai-shek’s portrait hanging in the school and that the Kuomintang had air-dropped secret agents to secretly direct operations. They said we marched through the streets yelling, ‘Long live Chiang Kai-shek,’ and that killing black elements in the villages was killing the class brothers of the Revolutionary Alliance. The father of one of my students was the party secretary of a production brigade, and he made a special trip to the No. 2 High School to check out the rumors. I took him through every room in the school so he could see for himself. Nothing was displayed but portraits of Chairman Mao and Chairman Mao’s quotes! They made up these rumors in order to label us counterrevolutionaries and provide an excuse for attacking the No. 2 High School and killing every one of us.”
Huang’s remarks were naturally flavored by partisanship, but a Task Force report dated December 25, 1984, cited the same rumors about the Revolutionary Alliance and the No. 2 High School.
At the Dongmen Township office, the township’s current CCP secretary and the discipline inspection committee head told us of a tragic incident that occurred in the commune’s Wujiashan production brigade.
On September 2, 1967, a militiaman walking home to the Wujia brigade saw a young woman sitting alone on the tea hill. She didn’t look like a local, and when she saw him approach, she looked nervous. The militiaman stopped and questioned her, but the young woman refused to answer. Noticing rope marks on her wrists, the militiaman decided she must have done something wrong, and he took her back to the brigade for interrogation. In a stern voice he asked her, “Who are you? What is your class status? Where did you come from? Where are you going?” But the young woman stared at him in terror and didn’t speak. Finally he held a saber to her neck and said, “If you don’t speak, I’ll butcher you!” At that point she finally stammered out what sounded like “Guangdong,” and her accent sounded like she could have been from those parts. Since both parties spoke with heavy local accents, they couldn’t understand each other.
Unable to get any further with her, four militiamen escorted the young woman to the commune militia headquarters. The headquarters was too preoccupied with other matters, however, and told the militiamen to take the young woman back to the production brigade. By then dusk had fallen, and as they walked along the road, the militiamen looked at the darkening sky and began to think wicked thoughts. One of them, named Guo Chengshi,2 suggested, “Even the commune doesn’t want this girl, so there’s no point taking her back to the brigade. Let’s have some fun.” The other three agreed, and they stopped alongside a pond, stripped the young woman, and raped her. Afterwards, one of them said, “Now that we’re done, let’s let her go.” But Guo Chengshi said, “What if she comes back and makes trouble? Let’s just say she’s a black element and kill her.” So saying, they killed the young woman with rocks and a hoe and then dumped her body in the pond. Later, worrying that the corpse would be discovered, they went back and buried the body on the hillside. But the grave was too shallow, and eventually wild dogs dug it up and dragged parts of the body all over the hill, creating a horrific spectacle. The young woman was tall and thin and in her mid- to late 20s, but her name and hometown were never determined. How she turned up in Daoxian in August 1967 is likewise a mystery. In the records of unnatural deaths in Daoxian during the Cultural Revolution, only this record remains: “An unnamed woman from another place, aged around 30.”
Dongmen cadres told us that 78 people were killed in Dongmen Commune during the killing wind. The main people responsible in terms of inciting, supervising, or directing the killings were district People’s Armed Forces Department (PAFD) head Liu Houshan and district women’s committee chair Wei Suying, along with the commune’s Red Alliance leader, deputy CCP secretary, PAFD commander, accountant, and public-security deputy.
The only production brigade in Dongmen Commune that had no killings was the Beimen brigade. The reason was that the CCP secretary of that brigade, Ding Jinlong, never arrived at “mature consideration” of the killings. The absence of killings doesn’t mean that no one died, however. The Beimen brigade had a former Kuomintang insurrectionist named Feng Fei who committed suicide, anticipating the worst after having been publicly denounced on several occasions in the past due to his historical problems and overseas relations.
On August 21, 1967, Wanjiazhuang Commune called a meeting of reliable leading cadres from its production brigades. Commune CCP organization committee member Jiang Zhi presided over the meeting, with public-security deputy Liao Chengyuan delivering a “battle-readiness report” on the “grim situation” of class struggle in the commune, and calling for a crackdown on “troublemaking black elements” as in other districts: “With the class enemies so aggressive in our commune, we can’t be softhearted; this is a battle to the death, and if we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us.”
After the meeting, the Wuzhou and August 1st brigades took immediate action to implement the spirit of the meeting by killing “one or two troublemakers.” The other brigades just watched from the sidelines, however, and after discussing this, Jiang Zhi, Liao Chengyuan, and other commune leaders felt the need for a larger meeting to mobilize the masses and develop struggle against the enemy.
On August 24, the commune called a meeting of CCP members and cadres during which commune secretary Zhong Qiqi communicated the spirit of the upper-level directive and Jiang Zhi reported on the killings in the Wuzhou and August 1st brigades: “This was an excellent revolutionary action by the poor and lower-middle peasants! Now that action is being taken everywhere, what are you waiting for?” A cadre who attended this meeting told us that when Jiang Zhi said this, the masses became agitated and everyone began talking at once.
After the meeting adjourned, May 1st brigade CCP secretary Jiang Fangru requested instructions from Jiang Zhi: “At our brigade’s primary school, Liu Fucai [a teacher] is mounting a campaign to establish ties among class enemies, and we want the commune to send him away.”
Jiang Zhi quickly took Jiang Fangru to see Liu Fucai’s direct superior, primary-school principal Huang Xisheng, and said, “Principal Huang, we want you to transfer that person Liu Fucai. There are too many black elements in our brigade for us to manage, and Liu Fucai is having a negative effect here.”
Huang Xisheng said, “Secretary Jiang, the brigade wanted him transferred and we should have done it, but now it’s the Great Cultural Revolution, and we can’t transfer him. Since he’s teaching at your brigade’s school, it’s up to your brigade to manage him. If the masses say he should be publicly denounced, then do that, and if he should be killed, then kill him. Once he’s been killed, we’ll bring in a better one.”
During our reporting we learned that Liu Fucai was not a troublemaker and was a diligent teacher. His only fault was a fondness for good students, and his failure to discriminate between “socialist grass” and “capitalist seedlings.” The production brigade’s school included two particularly good students from class enemy households, and during his visit with parents, Liu Fucai tended to linger a little longer in the homes of these good students, never imagining that this would have such disastrous consequences.3
Jiang Fangru explained Liu Fucai’s killing this way: “Our brigade didn’t intend to kill him but just to have him transferred. We didn’t even want to kill the other class enemies. But then there was an incident of a class enemy running off and joining the bandits in the hills to mount an insurrection. At that point we realized that we had no choice but to kill people, so we finally requested instructions from the commune and did away with all of them.”
What had happened was that on the morning of August 25, a class enemy offspring named Jian Liuming from the May 1st brigade attempted to escape, fearing that he would be killed and unaware of the dense network of sentries and watchmen all around him. Captured before he even left the brigade, he ended up dead and pulled Liu Fucai and others down with him.
After breakfast, the Wuzhou brigade sent invitations to the cadres and militia of all the production brigades to attend an on-the-spot killing rally like that in the Qixin brigade. Having been commended for killing a black element on August 23, the Wuzhou brigade was ready to kill another batch, and Liao Chengyuan and others wanted it done with great fanfare in order to puncture the arrogant bluster of the class enemy and kindle the flame of revolution throughout the commune.
After the rally, Jiang Fangru asked for militia from the Wuzhou brigade to help the May 1st brigade carry out its own killings, since some people at the May 1st brigade had a conservative mindset and needed a “hard shove from behind.” On learning of the Wuzhou on-the-spot killing rally and the militia’s assistance with killings at the May 1st brigade, Jiang Zhi said over and over again, “Excellent!” and told them, “You have to notice that all the brigades are monitoring each other; don’t let information leak out, and if it does, handle it appropriately.”
After this, the Wuzhou and May 1st brigades each killed another batch. All of Wanjiazhuang Commune’s 15 production brigades carried out killings during the “killing wind,” but the Wuzhou production brigade killed the most, at 31, and the May 1st brigade killed 13.
We’ll now turn to two of the commune’s other brigades.
The first is the Yanhe production brigade, which didn’t initially implement the spirit of the August 21 commune killing conference. Commune accountant Zhang Guirong went to the brigade on August 23, and finding everything peaceful and quiet he scolded a brigade cadre: “People are taking action all over the county, so what’s your brigade waiting for?”
The Yanhe brigade was then criticized with some other production brigades at the August 24 commune meeting where the Wuzhou and August 1st production brigades were praised for their enhanced awareness and quick action. The commune leader said, “This is a major event involving millions of heads hitting the ground. … Some of our comrades are softhearted now, but when the time comes, it will be too late for crying.”
After the meeting was adjourned and the Yanhe cadres returned to their production brigade, CCP secretary He Shengzhi and deputy CCP secretary Jiang Liuluan felt a need to proceed with caution, so they called a cadre meeting on August 26 to discuss the killing issue. Everyone felt that since the upper level had spoken, they had to kill a few, especially since other brigades were already killing people and they were in danger of falling behind. At a meeting of cadres and core militia members the next day (the 27th) with Jiang Liuluan presiding, a list was drafted of people to kill, but problems arose over the specifics. They’d planned to kill one or two troublemakers, but Cultural Revolution Committee (CRC) chairman He Defu pointed out, “If we’re going to kill, better kill them all and not leave any black elements behind. The other production brigades have been so ferocious, what are we afraid of?”
Poor-peasant association (PPA) chairman He Tiancheng said, “If we kill the adults, what about the young ones?”
He Defu said, “Don’t think about too much at once; kill the adults first and then we’ll deal with the kids.”
One CCP committee member had great misgivings: “If we just kill whoever you say, isn’t there a danger of error? A few years ago we had the Five Winds,4 and all that rashness resulted in a lot of errors, didn’t it?”
He Shengzhi said, “What the fuck is wrong with killing a couple of class enemies? The worst that will come of it is self-criticism, and I’ll do that, so you don’t have to worry.”
After a commune cadre said the brigade’s poor peasants could decide what to do, agreement was reached to kill all the class enemies. When the class enemies were led out to be killed, an old poor peasant bachelor took a fancy to a female landlord element and asked the brigade if she could be spared. Considering the hard life the bachelor had spent without a wife, the brigade leaders agreed and declared, “Condemned female landlords who agree to marry poor or lower-middle peasants will be spared, but the marriage must take place immediately.” The other 13 people were killed.
The second production brigade I’ll mention is the July 1st brigade. There’s no need to go into the commune mobilization meeting, brigade meeting, and further discussions, which proceeded the same as with the Yanhe brigade. Instead I’ll relate a story: on August 26, the brigade’s peasant supreme court pronounced a death sentence on a black-element offspring named Liao Chengmao. When he was led out to be killed, Liao’s mother, Jiang Zhiying, followed behind him weeping and scolding. Fearing that Madam Jiang was too foolish to see the danger of her actions, someone pulled her aside and said, “Just stay here and do your crying. If you keep following him, you’ll be killed, too.”
But Jiang Zhiying refused to listen to reason: “They might as well kill me. Once they kill my boy, who will take care of me? Either way, I’ll die.”
The Task Force comrade who told us the story said, “What else would an illiterate village woman go on about? It was, ‘What has my boy done wrong? Why are you killing him? Whatever numbskull hurts us is going to die for it!’ Back then, no black element even dared breathe too loud, and here she was ranting and raving. The result was predictable. The brigade’s public-security head said, ‘Jiang Zhiying is too unruly. If we don’t kill her, we’ll never be able to manage the other black elements.’ Several militiamen went over and beat and kicked her until she couldn’t cry anymore and then dragged her like a dead dog to the hill behind the village, dumped her and her son into an abandoned cellar, and buried them alive.”
This aroused an intense reaction in the production brigade, and when a meeting was held to discuss killing a second batch, the head of the women’s association, He Xinhua, pointed out, “We all have sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, and we should understand how others feel. Seeing loved ones killed is bound to cause antagonism. This talk about drawing a clear distinction is all a lie, and sparing offspring won’t work. If black elements are killed, won’t their sons and daughters take revenge? In my opinion, we either kill none or all of them.” The majority of those in attendance agreed with her view. The original plan had been just to kill a few class enemies, but ultimately their families weren’t spared, either, and a total of 17 people were killed.
After attending the district “strategy meeting” on August 19, the first thing Futang Commune director Ding Tianzhi did was send the commune militia to the Dongyang production brigade to apprehend Xiong Guanyi, a landlord and pre-Liberation counterrevolutionary.
This 29-year-old commune head later told me he was feeling the pressure of being “entrusted with a mission at a critical moment.” With the Futang Commune CCP committee paralyzed and mass confusion reigning among cadres and ordinary commune members, the bulk of responsibility had fallen on Ding Tianzhi’s shoulders. Ding had always taken his revolutionary responsibilities seriously and had acted with vigor and speed, but the Cultural Revolution had kept him guessing.
Although young, he had plenty of experience with campaigns big and small, including actively participating in the Anti-Rightist movement, the campaign against Rightist deviation, the rectification of incorrect work styles, and rectification of the cooperatives, as well as the Socialist Education movement. It could be said that he had grown up in these campaigns, and as soon as the Cultural Revolution began, it was second nature for him to stand at the frontline of struggle. But soon after the “Sixteen Articles” were issued, the Cultural Revolution work groups that the county had sent to every work unit were withdrawn and replaced with liaison officers to direct operations at various work units, and students from outside the county wearing Red Guard armbands rushed in to “establish ties” and inflame the masses. Everything devolved into chaos overnight as big-character posters went up attacking “Liu Shaoqi’s reactionary capitalist road” and calling for the Daoxian CCP committee to be reorganized or even “bombarded.”
Ding Tianzhi observed all this with an inward smile. After taking part in the Anti-Rightist campaign, he knew all about “luring the snake from its den” and how to make class enemies expose themselves. And as he predicted, after this latest batch of “reactionary slogans and big-character posters” came out, the county CCP committee held rallies, meetings, and conferences to arrange a campaign to “seize Rightists and push production” and to criticize “political pickpockets.” Those who had launched frenzied attacks against the CCP immediately became objects of opprobrium.
But Ding Tianzhi never dreamed that soon afterward, the “political pickpockets” would spring back to life as “young militant Red Guards” and “valiant revolutionaries.” It was thoroughly confusing. When the two radically opposing mass rebel organizations emerged in the county, Ding Tianzhi took the side of the Red Alliance, never anticipating that the Revolutionary Alliance would gain the upper hand in the county seat and force the Red Alliance to withdraw to Yingjiang.
The constant reversals regarding which faction was in favor at any given time were enough to bewilder even China’s canniest political minds. Experienced as he was in class struggle, Ding Tianzhi was still just a young rural cadre, and in August 1967 he was convinced that the Revolutionary Alliance would have a lifespan no longer than a rabbit’s tail: wasn’t the CCP bound to rely on “strong revolutionary roots and shoots” such as him rather than those cack-assed sorts? Experience had deeply impressed on him that personal advancement required being groomed and trusted by the CCP, and this was earned through performance in campaigns. The crux of excellent performance was first of all a firm class standpoint; second, keeping in lockstep with his leaders; and third, an enhanced spirit of class struggle. Ding saw Futang Commune plagued with infiltration by Revolutionary Alliance forces, especially in the Dongyang production brigade adjoining Daojiang Town, and the district meeting had called on commune leaders to take drastic measures to put the class ranks in order and cut off the black hand that the Revolutionary Alliance was extending into the countryside. All this was in Ding Tianzhi’s mind when he ordered the arrest of Xiong Guanyi, a move that would puncture the arrogant bluster of the class enemy while serving as a sharp warning to those in the Dongyang brigade who were making overtures to conspire with the “Revolutionary Alliance bandits.”
When the militia went to arrest Xiong Guanyi, Xiong was working busily in the fields for the “double rush” planting and harvesting. He had been a routine target in every political campaign, and he was surprised and uneasy when the Cultural Revolution went on for more than a year without any moves being put on him. When the commune finally came for him, he felt almost relieved to see things proceeding as normal, never anticipating that this time he’d actually be killed, and in a particularly brutal fashion.
On August 21, the commune convened a “four chiefs” meeting, after which the Dongyang brigade’s peasant supreme court sentenced Xiong Guanyi to death on August 23. In order to maximize shock value, they carried out the execution with explosives. According to our inquiries, Xiong Guanyi may have been Daoxian’s first victim subjected to “flying the homemade airplane,” given that this term came into common usage only following his death.
Ding Tianzhi later said, “We put Xiong Guanyi under control to implement the spirit of the district conference and to strengthen control over black elements; it was entirely justified at the time. The district’s on-the-spot [killing] meeting required every commune to seize one or two classic cases. Our commune was no exception, and we were obliged to make Xiong Guanyi our first target of attack. This was a historical error, and there’s no reason to make anyone take personal responsibility for it. If we hadn’t killed Xiong Guanyi, we’d have killed someone else, and if I hadn’t authorized it, someone else would have. In any case, compared with other places, Futang Commune was one of the most lightly affected by the ‘killing wind.’ We killed fewer people in our entire commune than a single production brigade in other communes.”
Although we can’t categorically accept Ding Tianzhi’s claims, we have to admit he was right to some extent. Among Daoxian’s 37 communes, the majority had 100 to 200 killings, with a small minority killing as many as 400 to 500. Futang, with only 24 killings, came in second from last.
Another victim in the Dongyang production brigade was a 19-year-old black-element offspring, Liang Xianlian, who was killed on August 26. It is said that this young woman was a local beauty who was also blessed with brains and talent and that the county theatrical company had considered recruiting her, but she hadn’t passed the political vetting. Local villagers said, “It’s a pity she was handicapped by her landlord background; otherwise she would have gone far.” Back then, most girls in Daoxian’s villages married at 17 or 18 and always before 20, but Liang Xianlian had ambitions beyond her status and wouldn’t consider a match that was beneath her, while men with better backgrounds wanted nothing to do with her. A few years earlier, even with her political disadvantages, she would have been snatched up by some commune leader or leather-shod townie, but now even the most covetous didn’t dare take her. Secretary Shi Xiuhua had taken a hit to his career by marrying a landlord’s daughter while serving as a cadre down south, and no one else wanted to follow his example.
Liang Xianlian should have had enough self-awareness to realize that she would have to settle for what she could get. Others with slightly better political backgrounds and somewhat inferior personal qualities could hope to escape disaster by focusing on humble motherhood, but an unattached person such as Liang Xianlian could easily go astray, and it was rumored that she had sneaked off to the No. 2 High School to join the Revolutionary Alliance and to accept their counterrevolutionary assignment to “establish ties” in the countryside. It was as if she were tired of living, a mouse toying with a cat’s tail—she was doomed!
The leaders of Shangguan District paid close attention to the Liang Xianlian problem, and a special meeting attended by Shangguan District PAFD commander Liu Houshan and several commune leaders on August 18 reached the unanimous conclusion that Liang Xianlian was a classic case of a “black element plotting overthrow” in Shangguan District and required decisive measures. After the meeting, militia apprehended Liang Xianlian and locked her up in the Fengjia Elementary School (by then the stronghold of the Shangguan District PAFD) for interrogation.
What the interrogation entailed, whether it involved torture, and if so by whom, could not be determined by the inquiries 19 years later, since the dead cannot bear witness, but it has been ascertained that Liang Xianlian was forced to confess that she had engaged in “counterrevolutionary activities” to expose the reactionary activities of the Revolutionary Alliance. She is unlikely to have satisfied her interrogators, however, because she’d never actually been involved in the Revolutionary Alliance. A former Revolutionary Alliance leader told me that “I have no impression of Liang Xianlian participating in any Revolutionary Alliance matters, and I think it unlikely. Although we maintained the party’s policy that ‘class status was not a choice, and one could choose one’s own road,’ and we would not reject the participation of a person with a bad family background in the Cultural Revolution, we were under harsh attack from the Red Alliance, and in order to avoid providing them with a pretext for gossip, we normally wouldn’t let any black-element offspring from the villages join us. We mainly developed our membership among the poor peasants and the grassroots cadres.”
On August 25, 1967, the district notified the Dongyang brigade to fetch the reactionary organization member Liang Xianlian, after which the brigade’s peasant supreme court ruled that “the people’s wrath could not be assuaged except by her death.” It is said that some of the militiamen holding Liang in custody felt it would be a great waste to let such a prime specimen be killed without enjoying the pleasure of her company, and they ensured that they would be freshly imprinted on her memory when she went to meet the King of Hell. After being gang-raped, Liang Xianlian flew to Paradise on the “homemade airplane” on August 26.5
Following the killing of landlord element He Lin on August 29, Liang Xianlian’s 26-year-old brother, Liang Xianlang, was killed on September 4, followed by his wife, Zhou Pingzhou (age 20), on September 10. Like her sister-in-law, Zhou was gang-raped and was reportedly killed mainly to shut her up afterwards.
Of the five people killed in the Dongyang brigade during the “killing wind,” the Liang family made up 60 percent, and all that was left was the siblings’ 46-year-old mother and her grandson, Liang Yueming, less than three years old. After the killings, the elder Madam Liang took her grandson with her to Daojiang, where she married a shipping-company worker surnamed Jiang. Liang Yueming took his step-grandfather’s surname and was raised by the older couple. His subsequent story makes one bemoan the random cruelty of fate and the complexity and darkness of human nature. Later in this book I will take the opportunity to tell readers more about him.
For now, we turn to Futang Commune’s Wuxing production brigade.
Prior to the communization movement, the Wuxing brigade was known as Wuhou Village, and it has reclaimed that name in recent times. It’s named after the ancient Wuhou (Five Immortals) Temple on Wulao (Five Elders) Mountain next to the village, which was built by a Tang-dynasty official named Yang Cheng in honor of five immortals who asked him to do well by the people of Daozhou. Yang Cheng (735–805) had been sent to Daozhou after being demoted by Emperor Dezong, and The History of the Tang records that he governed benevolently and was greatly loved by the people of Daozhou. Yang gained particular fame for abolishing the practice of sending dwarfs to serve the emperor’s court as an amusement, an incident immortalized in a highly regarded poem, “The People of Daozhou,” by the great Tang poet Bai Juyi. The people of China are so sincere and easily satisfied; whenever anyone does the least thing for them, they continue to express their gratitude through succeeding generations. But perhaps the Five Immortals genuinely blessed and protected the people here, because during the “killing wind,” only four people were killed in the Wuxing brigade.
After attending the commune’s “four chiefs” conference on August 21, 1967, brigade CCP secretary Jiang Longxiang decided that none of the brigade’s black elements had misbehaved enough to be killed; if anyone was acting up, it was some of the brigade’s poor peasants, but killing them wasn’t an option. Of course, Jiang Longxiang couldn’t openly say anything of the kind because this would be a standpoint problem that would be interpreted as taking the side of the class enemy, which would put his head on the block. This prudence caused Jiang to proceed slowly, and he did nothing at all for several days.
Eventually Jiang noticed that other brigades were enthusiastically killing people, and the commune had already telephoned twice asking the Wuxing brigade for its killing figures. This compelled Jiang to call a meeting of the brigade’s cadres, and a decision was reached to kill a class enemy named Hu Rong and one other. When it came time to make the arrests, only Hu Rong was apprehended, the other fellow having apparently gotten wind of the matter and run off. Jiang Longxiang was infuriated: “We already reported two killings [to the commune]. Now we have to find one more to meet our quota.” They decided to kill two class enemy offspring, Zhou Deji (age 16) and Hu Rongquan (25), and then a 53-year-old middle peasant named He Qingming. The Task Force investigated the killing of He Qingming and determined it to be a revenge killing by the brigade’s deputy CCP secretary, Wen Shicai, who had been criticized by He during the Socialist Education movement.
In contrast to the Wuxing brigade, the Lijiayuan production brigade killed more people than any other in Futang Commune, with seven deaths including one suicide. After brigade CCP secretary Wu Yongmao attended the commune’s August 21 “four chiefs” meeting, a landlord couple, Wei Zhengfu and Tang Yuan’e, were sent to their deaths on a “homemade airplane” on August 25. An informed source said, “Our production brigade had no experience and didn’t know how to do it. They tied Wei and his wife together back to back and then stuck a bundle of dynamite between them with a detonator cap and fuse, like they did when working on the reservoir. Then they lit the fuse, but too much dynamite was used, and flesh and blood flew all over the place. It was absolutely horrific.”
Perhaps because this scene was so hair-raising, greater mercy was shown to two other landlords, Nie Lianjie and Chen Yangrui, who were killed with knives instead. The next day (August 27), two more people were killed: a middle-aged rich peasant, Wen Shaofu, and his wife, Yang Yueying.
A rich peasant named Chen Fashou, fixated on the horrific deaths of Wei Zhengfu and his wife, hanged himself on September 1 when the militia knocked on his door to summon him for a production brigade admonishment meeting.
On August 29, Futang Commune held an enlarged meeting of more than 300 cadres to call a halt to the random killings. The meeting was held against the background of two events: the first was the Red Alliance’s Political and Legal Work Conference. Although this meeting led to a second wave of killings in Daoxian, some districts and communes actually did hold meetings to curb the killings, and Futang Commune was one of them. Second, the 47th Army’s 6950 Unit had entered Daoxian at noon on August 29 to disseminate Mao Zedong Thought and stop the violence. At the commune’s August 29 meeting, one of the commune’s leaders, Tang Xianshu, said, “We can’t just go around killing anymore. Anyone who kills will be held accountable. Even if it’s someone guilty of heinous crimes, a file has to be submitted to the upper level for permission before they can be killed.”
As the meeting was about to adjourn, however, the commune’s CRC chairman, Liu Anxian, stood up and said, “After listening to so much at this meeting, each production brigade should think it over. It’s still a good idea to kill a few troublemakers. Once your hair’s wet you need to shave; those who deserve killing should be killed, and if the poor peasants agree to it, you don’t need to report it to the commune, just decide for yourselves.”
After that, the Libu brigade pushed through three more killings, and three other people were killed at other brigades.
The Libu brigade had been slow to take action during the killing wind, mainly because its leadership ranks were rather slack. After brigade leader Cao Fakai attended the “four chiefs” meeting at the commune on August 21, he delayed holding a meeting until August 27, and some of the more conservative cadres prevented agreement being reached on whom to kill. It was finally decided to lock up black element He Gaochang and his son, He Rensheng, as well as middle peasant He Runsheng, and to deal with them after requesting instructions from the commune. However, when it came time to arrest them, all three men had fled. Clearly, an insider had leaked the information, in spite of commune leaders saying that anyone who tipped someone else off would be punished as a traitor. An investigation was planned, but it immediately became clear that there were too many suspects; the investigation would only disrupt local harmony, and if the miscreant was identified, he would have to be killed, so finally the matter was dropped. (To this day, the informant has never been identified.)
When Futang Commune held its meeting on August 29 to stop the killings, commune leaders said that the three fugitives from Libu had been caught, and the brigade was told to go fetch them, causing a great loss of face. After the three men were brought back, the brigade’s cadres met to discuss how to deal with them. Since the commune leaders had already said there could be no more random killings, everyone just looked sheepishly at each other without speaking. Finally, PPA chairman He Nengchang stood up angrily and said, “Here’s my opinion: kill them! If they hadn’t run off, we could be lenient with them, but now that they’ve run off and we’ve brought them back, how can we let them go? If you’re all afraid to take responsibility, I will, and if someone has to make self-criticism later, I’ll do it.” There seemed nothing more to say, so that night the three men were killed and their corpses were dumped into the river.