The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary of Xianglinpu Commune’s Diaogaolou brigade, He Daiyu, became famous during Daoxian’s killings and even in the Task Force investigations, not because his brigade had an especially high fatality rate (only 16 were killed), but because he killed the brigade’s poor-peasant association (PPA) chairman. Quite a few poor and lower-middle peasants were killed during the killing wind, but only one PPA chairman, and for that reason this case was numbered among the notable cases of the Daoxian Cultural Revolution killings.
He Daiyu had served as CCP secretary of Diaogaolou Village since the Land Reform movement, but with little to show for it. His occasional overindulgences of his sexual and physical appetites were considered long-time vices handed down to him from the multiple evils of the Old Society, and on the critical questions of political performance, obedience to the CCP, and reliable class standpoint, Secretary He couldn’t be faulted. When the village engaged in the Socialist Education movement in 1964, the only person who raised any criticism about Secretary He was a poor peasant named He Daijing, who exposed He Daiyu’s failings,1 cuffed him in the head, and killed one of his pigs as restitution. The CCP secretary was broken-hearted: criticism by upper-level leaders was to help and educate him, but he had helped He Daijing in the past, and now his kindness was being repaid with a box in the ears and the loss of a pig.
When the killing wind blew in, CCP secretary He summed up his years of experience by saying, “It’s not enough to do away with black elements; we also have to do away with rascals who disobey the party so that Chairman Mao’s radiance can shine on our Diaogaolou brigade!” He Daiyu wasn’t an educated man, but he’d studied Chairman Mao’s works and understood that wars were fought one battle at a time. When he called a meeting of the brigade CCP branch to discuss killing black elements, he particularly arranged for his hated enemy He Daijing to take a frontline role in the extermination. When He Daijing demurred, He Daiyu accused him of an unreliable class standpoint and of collaborating with black elements and declared that if he didn’t correct his attitude, “revolutionary discipline” would be applied. He also sat down with He Daijing to study Chairman Mao’s highest directive: “Should local tyrants, evil gentry, despots, and counterrevolutionaries who have committed heinous crimes be put to death? Yes! Some democratic personages say it’s wrong to execute them, but we say it’s fine. …”2
The CCP secretary’s ideological work was effective, and the old peasant radiated revolutionary fervor as he awed the brigade by hefting his gleaming saber and killing people inside and outside the village. When most of the black elements were exterminated and the upper levels ordered an end to the random killings, He Daiyu immediately called in militia commander He Zhenshu and Cultural Revolution Committee (CRC) chairman He Daixin for an inner-circle meeting on how to resolve the problem of He Daijing’s toxicity. The three unanimously agreed that the Diaogaolou brigade would have no peace unless He Daijing was eliminated. Worried that He Daijing would put up a fight, they decided to lure him to the brigade office with an offer of peanuts and melon seeds, at which time he could be put under arrest.
He Daijing suspected nothing and appeared bright and early at the brigade office with a bamboo basket to collect his peanuts and melon seeds, only to have his arms and legs shattered by wooden poles wielded by He Daiyu and the others. The brigade leaders then convened a mass rally and declared that He Daijing had committed multiple murders, not even sparing small children. The masses boiled with righteous indignation and called for his death. CCP secretary He had He Daijing’s broken legs tied to a bull, after which he was dragged like a plow over a kilometer of rocky hills, the skin on his back disintegrating into a red pulp. Finally a dozen militiamen shot He Daijing with fowling guns. That was really excessive.
He Daiyu was subsequently expelled from the CCP, and during the Task Force’s investigation of the killings at the Diaogaolou, He Daiyu described how the brigade had arranged killings at the instigation of the Shangdu militia command post. Regarding the killing of He Daijing, He Daiyu is recorded as saying:
I actually was responsible for killing Daijing, but I don’t agree that it was a revenge killing. I’ve received so many years of education from the party, my consciousness couldn’t be low enough for me to kill someone on a grudge in the name of public interest. It was He Zhenshu who first suggested killing Daijing, and I agreed because he was playing a destructive role in the brigade, and the masses were infuriated with him. I’m not defending myself. The leaders taught me to be honest and faithful to the organization—I say it as I see it. I will accept whatever punishment the organization sees fit to give me.
After hearing of the incident that follows, I became lost in thought about the mystery of human nature. People like to say that greed and fear are the two flaws most difficult to surmount, but they are hardly our only weaknesses. In this case, a female member of the militia put duty above family and stabbed her adoptive mother with her own hand.
She was in the prime of life then, and a core member of her brigade militia. Fate had deprived her of both parents at an early age but had provided her with a good-hearted aunt to raise her. The aunt was married to the girl’s paternal uncle, and while the family belonged to the landlord class, her circumstances were far from comfortable, especially after her husband died of edema during the famine in 1961. Daoxian maintained a traditional emphasis on education, and any family that could make ends meet would find a way to send its children to school. Coming from a higher social class, the aunt saw no sense in educating her children, but her niece was classified as a poor peasant, so she scrimped and saved to send her to school. The girl flourished, able to recite large swaths of Chairman Mao’s works and quotations and to understand the major principles of class struggle. If not for the Cultural Revolution, she might have gained admittance to a university, no small accomplishment for a village girl.
One day, the girl made a painful and terrible discovery: her apparently kind-hearted aunt was actually an unpardonably vicious landlord woman! This girl, a bona fide poor peasant, had been reared at the teat of a wolf! This became a source of great anxiety to her.
When the brigade held its meeting to draw up its killing list, someone said of the aunt, “That woman is good-hearted and helped us raise a poor peasant girl, so let’s not kill her.”
But when it came time to act, the girl tied up her aunt with her own hands. Watching from a distance, the brigade militia commander called out, “You’ve made a mistake—didn’t we say we wouldn’t kill your aunt?”
The girl replied, “This is no mistake! She’s not my aunt but a class enemy! Social class takes precedence over blood. The farmer who pitied the poisonous snake was bitten and died.” She pushed her aunt in among those who were to be killed, and they were escorted to the edge of a pit.
Still nursing a faint hope, the aunt turned and looked at her stern-faced, saber-holding niece and asked with tears gleaming in her eyes, “My dear, where did I fail you in all these years? I just want to hear you tell the truth.”
The girl glared at her aunt and barked, “Who cares about failing or not failing? Today I’m a revolutionary!” She brought down her saber, and the aunt’s head dropped to the ground like a melon. After killing her aunt, the girl took part in subsequent killings and was personally responsible for six deaths.
Eventually the girl paid a price for her “revolutionary action.” In those days, Daoxian girls married young, usually between the ages of 18 and 20, and this girl, 18 years old in 1967, was already engaged. Prior to Liberation, here, as elsewhere in China, marriages were arranged by parents and matchmakers, and while love matches were encouraged after Liberation, the traditional arrangements continued in disguised form in the countryside. They involved a lengthy process of escorted meetings and visits, mutual approval by the couple and their families, and then the delivery of a series of monetary and material gifts from the groom’s family, which would not be returned if the groom backed out. In this case, the girl had reached the stage of formal betrothal, which meant the groom’s family had already spent quite a lot of money, but the groom’s parents decided to withdraw from the match. They worried that if a conflict should arise between the couple, the girl might get “revolutionary” in the middle of the night and that would be a disaster!
Once this happened, there wasn’t a young man anywhere around who would marry this young woman, and she reached her 30s as an old maid. She finally married a primary-school teacher in another county who was in his late 30s but still unmarried because of an undesirable family background. The villagers pitied her and kept her history as a killer a close secret, and her husband knew nothing about it; if he’d known that the woman sleeping next to him had stabbed seven people to death, he probably couldn’t have slept a wink. I’ve also declined to reveal her name out of pity for her and her husband. She was not the first person to have done such a thing, nor the last. Since ancient times, China has had people who put duty before family, and many young people from illustrious households threw themselves into revolution and cut all ties with their wealthy families. It was not unheard of for such young people to prove how thoroughly they’d been revolutionized by escorting their own parents to the execution ground. That’s why we shouldn’t cast too much blame on this country girl, who is as pitiful as she is disgusting.
Reportedly, when the Task Force comrades called her in and asked why she’d insisted on killing her aunt, she couldn’t give a clear answer, but just kept saying, “I was insane, completely insane!”
A story circulated in Xianglinpu District of the leader of an “iron maiden shock brigade” who killed 18 people.
The iron maiden shock brigade was a product of the 1963 “Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture” campaign, which was carried out at the same time as campaigns to “Learn from Daqing in Industry” and for the whole country to “Learn from the People’s Liberation Army.” The Dazhai production brigade in Shanxi’s Xiyang County had an iron maiden shock brigade led by the celebrated Guo Fenglian, who led heroic rescue efforts during a flood. The leader of Daoxian’s iron maiden shock brigade (whom I’ll refer to now as the Iron Maiden) didn’t achieve the same level of fame as Guo Fenglian, but her name was still known throughout Xianglinpu District.
The Iron Maiden was as tall and husky as a man. Young scamps in her village referred to her behind her back as Prize Sow or Door Plank, but none dared say it to her face, because she was amazingly strong and would undoubtedly teach them a painful lesson.
The first time the Iron Maiden rose to fame was when production teams began assigning work points on the basis of evaluation of labor in 1964. At that time, her production team called a meeting to assign a work point base for each person. Men typically received ten points, and women eight points or less. The Iron Maiden received eight points, the highest level for women, but she disputed it on the spot: “Why do you men get ten points and I get only eight? What can you do that I can’t do?” The production team didn’t know how to respond. Everyone knew she worked as well as or better than any man; she didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word “slacking,” harvesting half a mu of rice without stopping for a breath, and being able to work at the limekilns two days and nights without sleeping and with more energy than male workers. The production team was in a predicament; it was traditional for men to earn more work points than women, and if they gave in to her, what could they say to other women?
At that point, a robust young man said, “Let’s see who’s the real man here. Empty talk is useless; let’s see actual results.”
“Fine,” said the Iron Maiden, “You choose the work, and if I can’t beat you, I’ll cook three of my fingertips for you to eat!” That made it official.
The next day, the production team leader and several cadres called her and the young man over, and pointing to a pile of ox dung, they said, “Get a move on—carry it over to that field.” The two set to work without another word. After working all morning, neither conceded defeat.
The young man said, “There’s no skill involved in this. Let’s compete on plowing in the afternoon.” That afternoon, each of them chose an ox and they worked until night fell and their water buffalo were foaming at the mouth with exhaustion, but still they were evenly matched.
The Iron Maiden spoke up: “Light the lanterns and let’s keep going.”
The young man said, “Forget it, I’m done! I’m not afraid you can outwork me, but I don’t have your layer of fat to keep me going.”
That should have made her 10 work points a foregone conclusion, but when another meeting was held, a new problem emerged: other women were also demanding to compete with men for work points. The matter was debated all the way to the commune level, and the commune leaders said equal work points for equal work was Chairman Mao’s policy. As a result, not only did the Iron Maiden receive 10 work points, but the base work points for all other women were raised by half a point. All the women were grateful to the Iron Maiden for sticking to her guns. Later, when the production brigade decided to Learn from Dazhai by establishing an iron maiden shock brigade, the Iron Maiden inevitably became the leader.
In 1965, the Xiyuan Reservoir3 began leaking because it hadn’t been properly stripped when it was built. The iron maiden shock brigade was sent to the worksite to help out with emergency repairs. Around a thousand people were living at the worksite, and there was a bustling competition to see who could get the most work done. The young women in the iron maiden shock brigade challenged the young men to a “socialist work competition.” At that time, the worksite issued an extra ration of rice to workers who carried two shoulder poles. The Iron Maiden told headquarters she wanted to be paid this way, and she took up two shoulder poles and walked as if on wings, breaking several poles from the weight of her loads and creating a new record for the worksite. She became an instant heroine cited as an example throughout the commune and the district.
The Iron Maiden’s parents were middle peasants, so when the killings began, she didn’t qualify for a prominent role. Nevertheless, the commune had established her as a model, and she was also the leader of the core militia, so when the production brigade held a meeting to discuss killing people, she had to be notified as well. At the meeting, the brigade leader said, “Chairman Mao has taught us that ‘The times are different; men and women are equal, and female comrades can do whatever male comrades can do.’ Our brigade’s iron maiden shock brigade is a Red Flag for our commune, and today we’ll hand this mission over to them!”
As soon as he finished speaking, the Iron Maiden stood up and said, “I pledge to complete this mission.”
But when it came to the actual killing, the other members of the iron maiden brigade shrank back, and the Iron Maiden had no choice but to deal with it herself. The condemned class enemies were tied and lined up at the execution ground, and after the brigade’s PPA chairman pronounced the death sentences in the name of the peasant supreme court, the Iron Maiden stepped forward. She had worked hard all her life and knew the importance of a sharp knife and good aim in cutting firewood, so she had honed her machete to razor sharpness. People might wonder how she could be so professional and calm when she had never killed before, but perhaps it was because she had cut so much wood, and this was much the same process only with different and indeed softer material. Gripping her machete in both hands, she walked to the victim at the end of the line and told the militia escorts to step aside. Then she raised her gleaming machete and brought it down with a forceful swing. There was a snapping sound, a head hit the ground, and the body crumpled spurting blood, but none of it splashing on the Iron Maiden. A clean job indeed! Within a short time, a dozen heads had found new homes. At that point, however, a problem arose: the blade was losing its edge with each cut, requiring more strength for each blow; this increased tension, which in turn made each execution proceed less smoothly.
If the Iron Maiden had been more experienced, she might have anticipated this problem and brought an extra knife. Refusing to be put off, she just exerted the superhuman strength she was known for. When she came to the 16th victim, the machete became jammed in the bone, and the Iron Maiden braced her foot on the back of the “class enemy” as she dislodged the blade with a forceful pull. Blood sprayed out and drenched her from head to toe. The last two class enemies had long fallen paralyzed to the ground, so she grabbed them by the hair and chopped at their necks like firewood. After she had killed all 18, the machete slid from her hand and she slumped to the ground. By then she was so covered with blood that even her eyes and nose were indistinguishable from the rest of her face. Several cadres ran over and carried her to one side.
Eventually the Iron Maiden’s boyfriend was promoted in the army, and after they married, the Iron Maiden left Daoxian for Guangxi as an army wife. When the Task Force began its work, it called her back from Guangxi to attend the exposure study sessions. When asked what motivated her to kill, the Iron Maiden replied, “I felt it was like any other work in the production team—if I did it, I had to do it well.”