The systematic push for killings by commune cadres made Gongba Daoxian’s deadliest commune, even though it got a relatively late start. The first of Gongba’s production brigades to begin killing people was Guangjialing on August 20, 1967; by then, more than 80 people had been killed elsewhere in Daoxian.
August 18 was market day for Gongba Commune, and when the Guangjialing brigade’s militia commander, Yang Buzhao, went to the market, he ran into commune People’s Armed Forces Department (PAFD) commander Zeng Qingsong and Cultural Revolution Committee (CRC) chairman Mo Jiakun. Zeng and Mo invited Yang to the commune office, where they told him all about the “enemy situation” and instructed him to find out if his brigade had any “troublemaking black elements,” and if so, to “gain the advantage by making the first move” and “killing one or two.” After returning to his brigade, Yang Buzhao quickly reported Zeng and Mo’s instruction to brigade Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary Jiang Youyuan.1 That night, the brigade called a cadre and militia meeting and decided to strengthen surveillance over black elements and hold denunciation rallies for some “troublemakers.”
Apparently there was no talk of killings at that point; the “killing wind” had just begun blowing, and killings were still being done discreetly. However, the next day a landlord named Yang Meiji ran off,2 and Yang Buzhao and public-security head Yang Caiji decided someone must have tipped him off. It was intolerable that the class enemy could have infiltrated the ranks of the poor peasants, and this called for decisive measures. Black elements He Qingsong, Xiang Jiaqi, and Yang Jingcheng were detained, and the decision was made to do away with them, but CCP secretary Jiang Youyuan said, “We have to request instructions from the commune first.”
On August 20, Yang Buzhao telephoned the commune and requested instructions from CRC chairman Mo Jiakun. A vigorous young man of 25, Mo repeatedly praised the “elevated awareness and quick action” of Guangjialing’s poor peasants and said, “This is the excellent revolutionary action of the poor and lower-middle peasants, and we fully support it; the commune will hold a meeting to commend you.” The Guangjialing production brigade killed the three black elements that night.
| Brigade | Date | Killings |
| Fulutian | Aug 23, 27 | 31 (2 suicides) |
| Jingtang | Aug 26 | 14 (2 suicides) |
| Majiangkou | Aug 23, 30; Sept 6–7 | 18 |
| Taohuajing | Aug 25, 27; Sept 9 | 48 |
| Jialuzhou | Aug 25 | 29 (1 suicide) |
| Shazihi | Aug 27 | 19 (6 suicides) |
| Jinjidong | Aug 23, 26, 30 | 45 |
| Yanhetang | 52 | |
| Lianhuatang | Aug 25 | 29 (1 suicide) |
| Mujingdong | Aug 23, 27 | 8 |
| Huangjia | Aug 23 | 9 (2 suicides) |
| Xinyouzha | Aug 25 | 25 (1 suicide) |
| Shangyunba | Aug 25 | 13 (2 suicides) |
| Majialing | Aug 25, 30 | 33 (3 suicides) |
| Gongba | Late August | 35 (6 suicides) |
| Houjiangqiao | Aug 25 and soon after | 19 (4 suicides) |
| Fengcundong | Aug 26, 30 | 18 (3 suicides) |
| Xiahudong | Aug 24 | 3 (1 suicide) |
| Zhonghudong | Aug 23 | 18 (4 suicides) |
| Shalejiang | 3 suicides | |
| Changjiangwei | Aug 27, 31 | 27 (3 suicides) |
| Caoyutang | Aug 24 | 7 (1 suicide) |
| Guangjialing | Aug 20 | 22 (1 suicide) |
Gongba Commune CCP secretary Deng Changchu and deputy CCP secretary Liu Fubao had attended the meeting that Gongba District leaders held on August 21 to brief commune heads, PAFD cadres, and mass organization heads on killings elsewhere. The commune then followed up by holding a “revolution meeting” for production brigade cadres on August 23 to implement the spirit of the district meeting. Zeng Qingsong presided and along with Mo Jiakun delivered a speech inciting killings. The Guangjialing brigade was singled out for praise, and other brigades were told to follow its example. In most cases, brigade cadres held meetings back at their brigades soon after the meeting and began arranging killings. Meanwhile, Zeng and Mo took command at Gongba Commune and directed operations over the telephone, while Liu Fubao, commune accountant and Red Alliance head Chen Daiqin, and others were sent to various brigades to supervise and encourage the killings. The influence of the commune’s August 23 “revolution meeting” and the subsequent prodding of commune cadres can be seen in the timeline of killings at the commune’s production brigades:3
In some production brigades, the influence of commune cadres was explicit and direct, either through telephone calls demanding that the brigades take action, or through the presence of commune cadres overseeing the killings on the spot.
For example, commune cadre Li Jiande was responsible for “igniting the revolutionary flame” at the Fulutian and Jingtang brigades, with killings taking place as soon as he arrived. Further killings occurred at Jingtang after Liu Fubao and Chen Daiqin arrived to “inspect, supervise, and encourage.” At the Majiangkou brigade, seven people were killed under the direct instructions of Zeng Qingsong, and the Jialuzhou brigade carried out 21 of its 28 killings following direct authorization from Liu Fubao. At the Shangyunba brigade, Mo Jiakun telephoned the brigade to urge it to take “revolutionary action” against two specific black elements, and Mo and Zeng Qingsong arrived the next day to supervise and encourage the killings. Zeng Qingsong telephoned the Fengcundong production brigade on August 26 and harshly criticized their lack of action, instructing the brigade accountant to prepare a list of the brigade’s black elements for discussion: “The masses know very well who’s good, bad, and worst. Let them bring it into broad daylight so none of the scoundrels get off.” That night, the brigade called an urgent meeting of CCP members and cadres and decided on nine people to kill. A second batch of six were killed on August 30. Mo Jiakun’s repeated telephone calls also resulted in the killing of six people at the Caoyutang brigade.
At the Changjiangwei brigade, when the brigade cadres didn’t immediately pass on the directive from the August 23 commune meeting, commune CCP secretary Deng Changchun, along with Zeng Qingsong and Mo Jiakun, came to the brigade to inspect operations on August 25 and called a meeting of the brigade’s cadres, where Mo Jiakun reported on killings in other brigades and urged the Changjiangwei brigade to quickly take action. Commune secretary Deng Changchun tactfully criticized the brigade’s cadres: “Are your brigade’s black elements all so well behaved that you don’t have even one troublemaker?” That night, Mo Jiakun telephoned the brigade and pushed them to report some killings. The brigade’s cadres met on the night of August 26, and CCP secretary Huang Shizhi said, “Those above have spoken, and we have to resolutely carry it out and not be softhearted as in the story of the farmer and the serpent.4 This time, all the production teams have killed several troublemakers.” The brigade subsequently killed 24 people, including three entire families.
At the Shazihe production brigade, the cadres who attended to commune meeting on August 23 communicated the message to other cadres but didn’t call a meeting to take further action. However, Liu Fubao arrived at the brigade to inspect operations on August 25, and he told public-security head Zhou Liangcai, “Other production brigades are all going at it; what’s holding you up? Are you waiting for an insurrection by the class enemy? When you suffer for it later on, don’t say we didn’t warn you.” At a brigade CCP branch meeting on August 26, CCP secretary Fan Jingyue suggested, “I think we should handle these people through education and reform. Whether the odd troublemaker should be killed or not will depend on their behavior.” Public-security head Zhou Liangcai disagreed: “We don’t have to kill offspring for the time being, but the black elements should all be killed.” Ultimately, 12 black elements were killed following a public rally, and 14 offspring were shown “leniency” and locked up in a primary school serving as a temporary prison. Six more people committed suicide out of fear of being killed.
Some brigade leaders were more successful in avoiding pressure from commune leaders. After the Xiahudong brigade’s CRC chairman, Liao Yousheng, and poor-peasant association (PPA) chairman Chu Yugui returned from the August 23 meeting and reported to CCP secretary Sun Yuquan, Sun said, “We’ll stick to the instructions and kill two troublemakers.” The three of them reached a decision and the next day called a meeting of CCP members and cadres to carry it out. The brigade acted quickly and didn’t deviate from its original plan, as a result of which no more people died there during the “killing wind” except for a landlord element who killed himself out of fear.
The Shalejiang brigade was the only production brigade in Gongba Commune where no one was killed. After brigade CCP secretary Zhu Zhibao and militia commander Zhu Xianming attended the August 23 commune meeting, they called a cadre meeting during which someone suggested, “Let’s not be in a hurry. We can wait for the other brigades to kill people before we do anything.” Most of the cadres supported this proposal, so they decided to impose control over four black elements but never killed them. However, landlord element Zhu Xiang and rich-peasant element Huang Guixiu and her daughter killed themselves after hearing of killings at other brigades.
While they were the prime instigators of the killings, commune-level leaders were occasionally capable of demonstrating a moral bottom line. After leading cadres and mass organization heads from the Jinjidong production brigade attended the August 23 commune meeting, they arranged for 22 black elements to be killed. But as in the case of the Yanhetang brigade, the problem then arose of what to do with the “little tigers” left behind after their parents were killed. On August 29, the production brigade decided to kill 15 underage class enemy offspring, but when they requested instructions from the commune, Zeng Qingsong, Mo Jiakun, Liu Fubao, and the others felt this was too inhumane, and they refused to approve it. However, no one came up with an alternative solution, and this put Jinjidong’s poor peasants on the spot. If someone were willing to bear the expense to raise the “tiger cubs,” it wouldn’t be necessary to kill them, but no one resolved this practical issue. On August 30, the poor peasants of Jinjidong killed 14 minors, 4 of them young children.
Many atrocities were carried out with particular relish by brigade leaders, quite apart from prodding from the upper level.
The Jingtang brigade’s CRC chairman, Yang Tingxiu, was implicated in many cases of gang rape during the killing wind. Yang and others raped Tang Maonü after killing her husband, primary-school teacher Tian Zibi,5 and throwing their 18-month-old toddler into the river. A 17-year-old girl named Zou Yuhua was forced to marry a poor peasant bachelor in his 30s after the peasant supreme court, represented by Yang Tingxiu and others, killed her parents and two younger brothers and confiscated the family’s belongings. When Zou Yuhua objected to the marriage, she was tied up and savagely kicked in her private parts while her oppressors shouted, “You cunt! Are you saving yourself for Chiang Kai-shek?” The badly injured Zou Yuhua was later gang-raped by Yang Tingxiu and others.
At the Majiangkou brigade, public-security head Xie Zhencheng suggested the killing of Huang Shijin, a class enemy offspring who had done some teaching at the primary school, along with his elder son, Huang Youqing. Huang’s 15-year-old daughter, Huang Lihua, was spared because she was pretty and there were many in the brigade who wanted to marry her. Xie Zhencheng first tried to force her to marry his crippled nephew, but Huang Lihua refused. Then the head of the No. 5 production team tried to force her to marry his son, but she also refused. The brigade’s leaders warned her, “You can only marry someone in our brigade. Don’t say we didn’t give you a way out.” The spirited girl said, “After you killed my father and brother, you want me to marry one of you? I can’t do it, and if that means you’ll chop me into pieces, I’m resigned to my fate.” Two months later, with the help of relatives, Huang Lihua managed to escape to faraway Heilongjiang Province and found a job as a casual laborer. She returned to Daoxian eight years later but stayed clear of Majiangkou, eventually marrying someone from Simaqiao Commune’s Zhoujiashan brigade.
The Majiangkou brigade had a man named Huang Yiyi who had been transferred to the countryside from a geological team in 1962. The state had paid him more than 1,000 yuan to cover his transfer, and, with eyes on that money, someone took the opportunity to have him killed during 1967 massacre. His home was ransacked, and each production team received more than 100 yuan in “movable assets.”
At the Shangyunba brigade, although only 13 people were killed, CCP committee member Zhang Xiaobing dispatched eight of them with his own hand, a fact that continued to generate comment and tongue clucking when we did our reporting nearly 20 years later.
The killings of 48 people at the Taohuajing brigade were considered particularly horrific and were mainly instigated by CRC chairman Wang Changzhen and brigade head Wang Mingzhen. The circumstances behind the killings in this brigade were very complex, a particularly notorious case being the revenge killing of a demobilized soldier named Zhang Mingyu.
Zhang Mingyu was born and raised in the brigade’s Taohua Village, and his family was classified as middle peasant. After graduating from middle school, Zhang farmed with his family and then enlisted in the army, returning to the village after his demobilization in 1964. His time away had made him critical of local people and conditions, and, even worse, he was regarded as ruthlessly ambitious and as trying to take control of the production team and brigade with a group of young followers. Production team head Zhang Ming’ai was grinding his teeth in rage and frustration, and even the production brigade couldn’t figure out what to do with him. The enmity between Zhang Ming’ai and Zhang Mingyu fell just short of coming to blows, but Zhang Mingyu’s status as a demobilized soldier protected him.
When the “killing wind” arrived and the Taohuajing brigade met to draw up its killing list, Zhang Ming’ai said, “If we don’t kill anyone else, we have to start with Zhang Mingyu. He’s more destructive than any class enemy.” Other brigade leaders agreed with this view, and it was unanimously decided to punish Zhang Mingyu as a black element.
On the day Zhang Mingyu was to be killed, Zhang Ming’ai and the others nailed his hands and feet to a wall, and Zhang Ming’ai, knife in hand, vented his hatred by subjecting Zhang Mingyu to the feudalistic “death by a thousand cuts.” With each cut he asked, “Who’s tougher, you or me?” By then Zhang Mingyu had surrendered completely, and he begged for mercy: “Brother Ming’ai, I was wrong, I’ll never do it again! Please have mercy on me!” Zhang Ming’ai said, “Should I have mercy on you and wait for you to come and kill me? This is a fight to the death—it’s you or me!” He dismembered Zhang Mingyu bit by bit.
The circumstances at the Guangjialing brigade, which began this chapter, were different from the commune’s other 22 production brigades in that other brigades began killing people after the August 23 commune meeting in what the Task Force referred to as “killing under orders,” while the Guangjialing brigade began its killings on August 20. As a result, some termed the killings there as “spontaneous,” but the cadres and masses of Guangjialing strongly disagreed with this assessment. The main person responsible for the killings, militia commander Yang Buzhao, said, “I had no personal grudge against them [the victims], so why should I kill them? It was the upper levels shouting at us to do it.” Yang insisted that even after Zeng Qingsong and Mo Jiakun called him into their office on market day and urged the brigade to start killing people, the brigade initially didn’t plan to kill anyone. “But then Yang Meiji ran off, and it was said he’d gone to join the bandits in the hills, so we felt we had no choice but to start killing. Before we killed anyone, I requested instructions from Chairman Mo at the commune, and he approved it. We shouldn’t be blamed for this, because we were ‘killing under orders,’ too. The later killings were our responsibility. By then the production brigades and production teams were competing with each other, and we felt we had to kill people.”
These subsequent victims included an 18-year-old girl, Xiang Xinzhen, and her parents and younger brother, who were among a second batch of people killed in the Guangjialing brigade on August 26. When the brigade was discussing the second batch of killings, someone suggested, “Chairman Mao taught us that ‘Winning state power requires both the gun and the pen, and defending it likewise requires both.’ If we’re going to kill landlords and rich peasants, we can’t just kill the troublemakers, but also those who wield pens, because they’re the most-dangerous enemies.” It was therefore decided that the primary-school teacher Xiang Longru, a member of the landlord class, should be killed.
Xiang Longru taught at the Gongba Primary School while his wife took care of the children and farmed on the production team, but when the schools were shut down to make revolution, Xiang had returned home. Like most people with bad political backgrounds and a measure of education, Xiang Longru knew something of the brutality of political struggle, but he was not mentally prepared for indiscriminate killing, and when the brigade’s peasant supreme court pronounced a death sentence on him out of the blue, he was completely flabbergasted.
The original plan was to spare Xiang Xinzhen because one of the leaders of the peasant supreme court, a poor and shabby bachelor in his 30s surnamed He, wanted to marry her. After her parents and brother were led away, Xiang Xinzhen was panic-stricken and inconsolable, huddling in her home and weeping. A neighbor heard her and quickly reported to CCP secretary Jiang Youyuan. Jiang sighed, “We intended to spare her, but if she insists on being the dutiful offspring of the landlord class, we can’t save her.” After killing the parents and brother, the killers returned to the Xiang home, grabbed Xiang Xinzhen by the hair, and said, “Your father and mother are dead, and if you want to live, you have to marry one of us poor peasants.”
When Xiang Xinzhen heard that her parents were dead, she began weeping and shouting hysterically. “I want my mother and father! I don’t want to get married!” Seeing her ingratitude, the militiamen bound her up and took her weeping to an abandoned mine at Tuzhailing. As the killers pushed her to the edge of the pit, bachelor He, still hopeful, said, “If you’re willing to reform your thinking and make a fresh start, all you need to do is agree to marry me, and you’ll be released immediately.”
Xiang Xinzhen stopped crying and opened her eyes wide. Perhaps in that instant she became aware of the fearfulness of death and the preciousness of life. She wouldn’t have been the first in Daoxian to marry to save herself… . But by then, for Xiang Xinzhen, time was a luxury that could no longer be measured in days, hours, or even minutes. It was being measured in seconds. Uninterested in what answer she might give, someone in the group, long out of patience with this black-element whelp who didn’t appreciate the favor shown to her and seeing no point in sparing her, raised his hoe and heaved it savagely onto the head of that 18-year-old girl. Afterwards, He berated the killer for depriving him of his lucky break.
The first victim from Gongba Commune to be cast into that abandoned mine, Yang Jingcheng, was also the one we heard the most about, partly because of Yang’s distinctive personal history, and partly because his son subsequently filed countess petitions demanding justice for his father, making at least 200 trips to the county seat, Daojiang; the prefectural capital, Yongzhou; the provincial capital, Changsha; and the national capital, Beijing.
Yang Jingcheng, born Yang Houji in 1920, was from a rich peasant family, and his well-read father taught at a private school. When the War of Resistance against Japan broke out, Yang Jingcheng enlisted in the army, joining the Kuomintang’s Student Volunteer Corps and rushing to the battle front, adopting the name Jingcheng (“there is a way”) in honor of his personal motto, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” He subsequently fled to Taiwan but then switched sides in 1948 and returned to Daoxian with a reward of two silver dollars in his pocket. When Daoxian was “peacefully liberated” in 1950, Yang Jingcheng followed in his father’s footsteps and became a “people’s teacher” at a primary school.
By the time the Land Reform movement arrived at Guangjialing Village, the Yang family owned 2.6 mu of paddy fields and six mu of nonirrigated farmland, which under the county’s land reform standards barely qualified them as middle peasants. For some reason, however, Yang decided to set an example by classifying his family as rich peasants. Although they came to profoundly regret this decision, there didn’t seem much to lose at the time, given their small fields and limited movable assets, and they didn’t have any of their land redistributed, since each of Guangjialing’s poor peasants was allotted two mu of land, and the Yang family owned less than two mu per person.
During the 1957 Anti-Rightist campaign, Yang Jingcheng didn’t engage in any “erroneous speech” but was exposed as a “suspected latent secret agent returned from Taiwan.” In June 1958, Yang was dismissed from his teaching position and was sentenced for three years of discipline for “counterrevolutionary crimes,” and then he was sent back to his home village to labor under the supervision of the poor and lower-middle peasants. In 1962, Yang’s wife divorced him and ran off, abandoning their four children. Yang Jingcheng was a truly capable person, a middle-aged man raising four children on his own, forced to take on farming work in the middle of his life yet managing to keep his home ship-shape and cozy. He had no aptitude for farming but somehow learned to raise geese and ducks, and the value of Daozhou gray geese as a key export item helped Yang Jingsheng and his family survive even the Great Famine. By August 1967, Yang’s eldest son, Yang Qingxiong, was an able-bodied youth nearly 20 years old, and Yang began to feel that his worries were over.
One day, when Yang Qingxiong went out to work, a cousin who was a core militiaman for the production brigade told him, “Qingxiong, the upper level has had a meeting to discuss killing rich peasants. Your dad is in danger—tell him to find a way to escape quickly.” Returning home after work, Yang Qingxiong passed this information to his father. By then, Yang Jingcheng had heard of rich peasants being killed in Daoxian, but he’d seen the world and had worked in a land reform team, and after thinking it over carefully, he said, “I can’t run. If I do, how will you manage? If I run off, you’ll have to pay the price.”
Yang Qingxiong said, “Then let’s both run off.”
“Then what about your siblings? They’re too young to get away.”
“So what should we do?”
“Let’s do this. I’ll pretend to be going on a trip and run off into the hills. If things start to look bad at home, find a way to meet me at your grandfather’s tomb. I know how the Communist Party works. First they mobilize the masses and create a terrifying spectacle, but after a little while, things will get back to normal and the situation will improve. Then they’ll implement policy and treat people differentially. Everyone in the production team has seen how I’ve obediently accepted reform all these years, so if I can just avoid this first hurdle, there shouldn’t be any major problems.”
“Then I’ll go with you.”
Father and son packed up some quilts and ran off that day. After two days hiding near the grandfather’s tomb, they didn’t notice any untoward activity, and, worried about the other three children, they crept home under cover of night. That night, a core militiaman going home from a meeting discovered Yang Jingcheng and his son hoeing the chilies in their family garden plot. He quietly followed them home and then latched the door from outside and ran off to report them to the CCP secretary, and the brigade quickly sent militia to stand guard over Yang’s home.
Young and vigorous, Yang Qingxiong grabbed a cleaver, preparing to rush out and attack the sentries. Yang Jingcheng held onto him for dear life and took away the cleaver: “Do you want to die and take the whole family with you?”
“So what should we do, sit here and wait to die?”
Yang Jingcheng was also anxious and afraid, but he was still thinking clearly: “Of course we’re not going to wait to die, but we can’t act rashly. We have to calm down and see what happens before we decide what to do.”
This was around the time of the Ghost Festival on the 15th day of the 7th lunar month, and the production team had slaughtered a pig, distributing a piece to each family, including the Yangs. Whenever the production team killed a pig, any meat left over could be purchased by families who were better off. Yang Jingcheng sent Yang Qingxiong to fetch their portion and told him to buy an extra half kilo as well, but the butcher responsible for meat distribution, Yang Fengji, refused point-blank: “No matter how much I have, I wouldn’t sell it to you.”
Security head Yang Caiji, standing off to the side, said, “Fengji, just sell another half kilo to him.” Yang Caiji was actually a kindhearted person, and he felt there was nothing wrong with Yang Jingcheng eating a little extra; even the emperor allowed a last meal to a condemned man. Yang Jingcheng drew the opposite conclusion, however; seeing his son come home with the extra meat, he was overjoyed and said, “It doesn’t look like they plan to kill us.” They cooked the meat that night, and the family celebrated with an excellent meal.
The next day was the Ghost Festival, and the production team called in core militiamen from the villages of Changxingdong and Hongjialei to help them arrest Yang Jingcheng. Because Yang had been a soldier and had a tough and unyielding character, they feared he would fight for his life, so they decided to claim they were taking him for reform through labor and then kill him at the abandoned mine at Tuzhailing on the way.
When Yang and his son saw the militia coming, Yang Jingcheng climbed on the roof to hide while Yang Qingxiong squeezed between the rails of the pigsty next door and hid in a haystack. The pigsty contained a massive hog weighing more than 50 kilos, and, startled by the human intrusion, it began ramming against the rails. When the militiamen saw this, they jabbed the haystack with their spears, shouting, “Surrender! We see you!” One of the spears struck Ying Qingxiong in the forehead, and with blood pouring out of his head, Yang Qingxiong stood up with his arms raised in surrender. The militia wanted to take him away with his father, but an older relative who was a leader of the brigade’s PPA said, “Don’t be hasty. Lock him up first and then kill him if he makes trouble.”
By then, the pig butcher Yang Fengji had moved a ladder to the side of the house and climbed onto the roof, and seeing Yang Jingcheng hiding in the rain gutter, he said, “Yang Jingcheng, you can’t get away, just come down. The district has ordered you to be sent for reform through labor.” Yang Jingcheng believed him and obediently followed Yang Fengji down from the roof. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he was tied up like a rice dumpling for the Dragon Boat Festival and was led away.
At a crossroads about a quarter of a kilometer outside the village, the militiamen pulled Yang Jingcheng over toward the old mine at Tuzhailing. When Yang saw they weren’t heading toward the district headquarters, he tried to resist, but there wasn’t much he could do. The militiamen dragged him to the side of an abandoned prospecting pit, where Yang Buzhao represented the brigade’s peasant supreme court in pronouncing the death sentence on Yang Jingcheng for being a “reactionary rich peasant and secret agent.”
Standing at the mouth of the pit, Yang Jingcheng tried to reason with them: “I’m not a secret agent, and I’ve made a clean breast of all my past wrongs to the party. The party has never treated me as a secret agent.”
Yang Buzhao said, “Enough talk. If you’re not a secret agent, who is? Kneel down!”
Yang Jingcheng was unwilling to kneel: “I’ve broken no laws, why should I kneel?”
Yang Buzhao swung a cotton presser axle at Yang Jingcheng’s head. Blood gushed out and drenched Yang Buzhao as Yang Jingcheng collapsed to the ground. Yang Buzhao ordered two militiamen to drag Yang Jingcheng into a kneeling position, after which he was killed with a saber and dumped into the pit. After that, they went back and seized all of the Yang family’s livestock and other “movable assets.”
After killing Yang Jingcheng, the Guangjialing brigade killed the other two “class enemies” and dumped them into the pit. A number of nearby production brigades chose this place as their execution ground, and the bones of 77 bodies remain inside it to this day.
Yang Qingxiong was among a third batch of 81 victims that was going to be slaughtered on August 30. But heavy rains on August 29 and 30 prevented the killings from going forward, and on the 31st the directive arrived from the commune prohibiting further random killings. The Guangjialing brigade’s killings ended at 22, and Yang Qingxiong had his “dog’s life” spared.
“We spared him and he went around filing complaints,” a cadre from the production brigade fumed. “As a matter of fact, only his old man was killed. Other families with more people killed didn’t say anything about it. It was only him who filed complaints for compensation and became a professional petitioner.”
Yang Qingxiong’s petitions give the impression of a desperate person leaving no stone unturned. I have a copy of one of Yang’s “written complaints,” which a friend at the provincial archives gave me while I was doing my reporting. My friend said, “This fellow has sent his petitions everywhere—not just to government offices, but even to universities and colleges, libraries, and archives.” In his complaint, Yang Qingxiong detailed the killing of his father and the others and named the main perpetrators, adding that one of them, Yang Qingyu, head of the brigade’s rebel faction, had also raped his wife:
. . . I began petitioning for justice on my father’s behalf on April 15, 1979. In the seven years since, I have submitted 244 petitions, the bus fares alone costing me more than 600 yuan. I am left destitute and in debt and cannot sustain even the most basic livelihood in the village. The issue has not been resolved, and some people have even enriched themselves through the relief money the state has sent down for the families of victims. Some of the chief instigators and killers of Daoxian’s Cultural Revolution indiscriminate killing wind have been promoted as officials or cadres, and some have joined the party. They occupy every leadership position in Daoxian from the county to the production brigade level, wielding power and hoodwinking the public while the families of victims are forced to swallow their anger in the face of an insurmountable barrier to justice.
Following the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, order has been brought out of chaos, wrongful cases have been overturned, and the party’s radiance has illuminated our land. On October 30, 1984, the Daoxian People’s Court found on reexamination that … the judgment against my father for counterrevolutionary crimes in 1958 was in error. On this basis, the court rescinded Criminal Judgment 58-211 and granted redress (court judgment attached).
Our entire family is deeply grateful for this, but up to now, the various policies that should have been implemented toward us have not been carried out. … The killers have not only gotten off scot-free but flaunt their strength… . Having no alternative, I can only once again bypass the immediate upper levels and prostrate myself in begging for an investigation, and I urgently request the following:
(1)Restore my father’s position and reputation and arrange for his proper burial and appropriate restitution.
(2)Return or compensate all the private property confiscated from my family.
(3)Restore the urban household registrations of myself and my siblings.
(4)Severely punish the chief instigators and killers in accordance with law.
Respectfully yours,
Yang Qingxiong, Guangjialing Village, Gongba Township, Dao County, Hunan Province
February 17, 1985
After the Beijing Olympics ended in 2008, I received a telephone call from a friend in Daoxian: “Mr. Tan, do you remember that victim family member named Yang Qingxiong?”
“Of course I remember him.”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead? How did he die?” I was shocked. Yang was around the same age as I, and I had seen him just two years before. He’d been very healthy and seemed to have only some minor problems with his state of mind.
“This year he went off to Beijing to petition, and no one could talk him out of it, and as a result he was arrested for sabotaging the Olympics. After he was sent back to Daoxian, the township government detained him, and when he returned home, he hanged himself.”
After hanging up the phone, I was plunged into grief. This insignificant little person’s death reflected the anguish of our entire people. As I mourned, I wrote a poem titled “Back to Dust”:
Thinking there was brightness
Thinking there was warmth
I therefore
Disregarded all else to fling myself there
Whereupon
I turned into gray dust
Everything I’ve done
Is what all living things do
Only
I am even stupider
And more instinctive
Than others
I need even more warmth
Long for even more brightness
That is why
I’ve turned into gray dust.
The situation described earlier in this chapter makes it quite clear that Gongba Commune militia commander Zeng Qingsong played a key role in making Gongba Commune Daoxian’s bloodiest commune. We had an unexpected opportunity to interview Zeng in the interrogation room of the Daoxian Detention Center.
Several of the commune’s cadres had been imprisoned for what was one of the most serious mass killings in the county, but getting an interview with one of them was no easy matter. No one in Daoxian offered to help us, and, fearing that making such a request would create trouble for ourselves and others, we left it to chance.
It seems we were fated to meet Zeng Qingsong, having gone to the detention center to interview a completely different person. While we were carrying out our reporting work in Gongba, a young woman had run up to us and said, “Comrade journalists, I need to tell you about an injustice connected with the killings here.” Our hearts leapt at what appeared to be the first instance of a surviving family member approaching us. Taking her measure, we saw a tidy person with pale skin and a steady gaze, not in the least resembling the typical jittery countenance of surviving family members. We promptly invited her to sit down and tell us her story, and that is when we realized she was actually the family member of a killer—the first and only person in Daoxian who spoke to us in that capacity. Specifically, she wanted to talk to us about the sentencing of her younger brother: “Comrade journalists, the barbaric killing of class enemies here during the Cultural Revolution was instigated by production brigade cadres. My brother was a member of the core militia under their orders, and if he was told to kill Zhang Three, he did it, or Li Four, he did it… . Now they’re shifting all the blame on my brother. The Task Force has been boarding at the homes of these cadres, eating and sleeping with them, so they’re protecting them. One of the brigades went after my brother, and he was unjustly sentenced to three years in prison. But in fact the cadres were much worse than he was, and they haven’t been punished at all. Please, comrade journalists, tell our side of the story to those above.”
During our reporting, we’d come across other such claims, but one of our guiding principles was not to get involved in any case even on behalf of victims, much less killers. We could only explain this to her and recommend that she appeal to the authorities. But the woman replied, “I’ve told them about it many times, but it’s useless, and that’s why I’m asking you to help me. No one pays attention to what we stupid peasants say, but the words of journalists soar upwards. There are many things we’re unable to report to the district, county, or prefecture, but as soon as you journalists turn up, the report is accepted. I beg you to help us.”
We could only respond more bluntly: “From what we’ve been able to understand, the Task Force hasn’t been harsh with the killers, so it’s highly unlikely that your brother has been treated unjustly. Even if others who behaved worse than him haven’t been punished, that doesn’t mean that your brother has been unjustly convicted. I would guess he must have at least five or six lives on his account.”
At this, the woman became even more anxious, her eyes widening as she said, “That’s absolutely impossible. You can ask anyone in the brigade. My brother was known for his integrity. At home he could hardly bear to kill a chicken, so how could he kill a person? It’s because they saw he was easily browbeaten that they pushed the blame on him!”
She spoke with such certainty that we considered this might be a genuine case of injustice that would make a good story, so we agreed to look into the matter. That’s how we came to make the trip to see that woman’s brother at the county detention center, also hoping to flush out some more good cases.
As it happened, a friend of Minghong’s held a minor position at the detention center, and that made things easier. After an exchange of conventional greetings, we got to the point of our visit. Hearing our tale, the man gave a great laugh and said, “You must be joking! Any of the killers locked in here have been treated too leniently if anything! We don’t have anyone who’s been unjustly convicted. Come here, I’ll look it up for you… . See? This person took 11 lives by his own hand, not including other killings where he was a participant. This is an ironclad case. He not only confessed to everything, but there was thorough collateral evidence.”
Sighing with disappointment, we continued chatting with him about the killings, especially those at Gongba Commune, and when he said that Zeng Qingsong was also jailed there, we asked if it might be possible to interview him. The official answered without hesitation, “Why not? I’ll just go call him out.”
Soon after that, we were sitting in the interrogation room with Zeng Qingsong.
He was a swarthy man of about 50 and big for someone of his generation, but while heavy-set, he didn’t look obese under the dark singlet stretched taut over his frame. He had very large eyes, and his prison crewcut gave him a flatteringly guileless and vigorous appearance. He had been serving his sentence in the Daoxian Detention Center ever since being prosecuted for his crimes, and apart from being kept within its walls, he was given a free run of the detention center, helping in the kitchen and assisting the guards in managing the other prisoners. Even so, he resented his imprisonment.
When Zeng was brought to the interview room, Minghong immediately felt he’d seen the man before, but he couldn’t remember when. We showed him our credentials and reassured him that all we wanted was to understand what had happened back then, and that he could refuse to answer any of our questions. He said he’d be more than happy to answer our questions, and he looked at us with the steady gaze of one with a clear conscience.
“Zeng Qingsong, do you know why you were arrested?”
“Yes, because of the random killings during the Cultural Revolution.”
“What position did you hold at Gongba Commune at the time?”
“I was head of the commune PAFD.”
“What were you doing prior to your arrest?”
He gave a bitter smile and said, “I was head of Xianglinpu District.”
Zhang Minghong then recalled that the previous spring, flash floods had struck Xianglinpu from the upper reaches of the Yongming River, breaking a bridge and destroying homes. Minghong had accompanied a comrade from the prefectural CCP committee to the frontline of the disaster area and had seen Zeng Qingsong directing rescue efforts, performing impressively with his body soaked and covered with mud.
We asked some specific questions, but Zeng had little fresh information to offer because his memory had become a bit “hazy” regarding the killings. However, he repeatedly maintained that his superiors had approved everything he’d done.
“When did you request instructions, and from whom?”
“On August 8, 1967, I requested instructions from political commissar Liu [Shibin] at the county PAFD. That afternoon, I went to town with the commune cook, Zhang Jisheng, to see commissar Liu in his home. I reported three problems to him: the first was that weapons were very hard to protect, the second was what should we do if someone tried to snatch them, and the third was that killings had started in the villages, and what should we do about it? Liu Shibin said ‘The county PAFD’s weapons have already been stolen, so Daoxian is depending on the militia’s firearms to protect the poor peasants. You have to hold your positions and take care of your weapons. Whether what’s happening in the villages is killing or revolutionary action is not your concern. You need to focus on maintaining public order and protecting your weapons.’ Early the next morning, under the grape arbor at militia headquarters, I encountered [military subregion deputy commander] Zhao, and I reported to him the matters I’d reported to commissar Liu. Deputy Commander Zhou said ‘You need to purge your ranks; the people’s militia can’t risk having turncoats… . Don’t concern yourself with the killing of black elements; you have to support the revolutionary movement of the poor and lower-middle peasants.’ ”
When I asked Zeng’s feelings about how he’d been treated, he said, “I have two opinions. First, I didn’t specifically direct or arrange for my subordinates to kill anyone; second, some people were yelling more ferociously than me, so why haven’t they been called to account?” He then said in a wounded tone of voice, “It’s always us district cadres who bear the brunt. We’re the ones who have to do the work, and when problems arise, we’re held responsible. They got us during the Five Winds and they got us this time, too.”
“You say you didn’t arrange for any killings, so why were so many people killed in Gongba Commune, where you were in charge? Why were the killings so focused and the methods so brutal?”
After a long silence, he stammered, “I’ve thought about this question for a long time, and I still don’t have the answer.”
It was no easy matter for the Task Force to send a cadre to prison. Without a dozen solid killings in hand, they couldn’t put anyone away even if they wanted to. When I carried out interviews in Qingxi District’s Qingkou Commune, I heard of a comment that a perpetrator made to a family member of a victim: “Others have only one head, but I have three—my party member head, my cadre head, and the head my parents gave me to eat with. Killing a couple of black elements means losing one head, but I’ll still have two left to save myself and raise my kids, so you can bite my balls!” It was said that there was an unwritten rule for dealing with the perpetrators of the Daoxian killings: it took three killings to be dismissed from the CCP or from an official position. That suggests what it took to send Zeng Qingsong to prison. As for his “hazy” memory and his lack of an answer, that’s irrelevant. In the course of my reporting, I encountered quite a few perpetrators, and almost none of them remembered “clearly” or seemed to understand what they had done.