In our reporting, we sometimes came across individual stories so astonishing that they took on the quality of myth. As we near the end of the narrative of the killing wind, I would like to present two such stories. This is the first.
Her name was Zhou Qun. In 1986 she was 51 years old, a teacher at Daoxian’s Gongba Central Primary School, and a member of the county political consultative conference. Tall and thin, she retained traces of youthful charm on her wan face. Only large and deep-set eyes like iced-over lakes suggested the profound grief behind them. When she spoke, her voice was somewhat hoarse, and even her weeping was voiceless. I wept three times while carrying out my reporting in Daoxian, and one of those times was when Zhou Qun told her story. How much strength must heaven have bestowed upon this woman for her to survive? This was truly the miracle of life.
With repressed grief she said, “I never imagined they would kill people. Never in a million years. …”
I came from a poor peasant family, so by rights I shouldn’t have had any problems during the Cultural Revolution. But my father had been a traffic police section chief in Nanjing under the Kuomintang, so I was labeled a counterrevolutionary offspring. After I graduated from normal school, I was assigned to teach at the Hongtangying Primary School in Daoxian’s mountain region, and I married another teacher named Jiang Hanzhen. Hanzhen had been transferred to civilian work from the military because he came from a bad class background. Soon after the Cultural Revolution began, Daoxian launched a cleansing of the class ranks, and the two of us were dismissed from our teaching positions and sent back to Hanzhen’s native village in Simaqiao District, the Tuditang production team of Dapingling [Hengling] Commune’s Xiaoluwo brigade.
The Tuditang production team was in a remote mountain area, and when the killing began outside, we knew nothing about it.
On the evening of August 26, 1967, I’d already gone to bed with our three children when I heard an urgent pounding on our door. I quickly pulled on some clothes, but before I could open the door, brigade Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary Tang Xinghao and the militia commander kicked it open. “Get up! You have to attend a meeting.” I had a sense of foreboding but never thought they’d actually kill people. I got dressed while telling my eldest son, Linhai, who was weeping with fear, “Look after your brother and sister here. I’ll be back soon.”
They tied me up and dragged me to the threshing yard next to the brigade’s storehouse. By then, dozens of militia carrying sabers, fowling guns, and torches had gathered around the threshing yard, encircling the village’s class enemies and offspring, 14 people in all. My husband was among them; he’d been captured the night before. He saw me and struggled to come over to where I was, but poor-peasant association chairman Zhang Guangsong shouted, “Jiang Hanzhen isn’t behaving! Tie him up with iron wire!” They brought out iron wire and bound him with it, the wire digging into his flesh, and Hanzhen cried out in pain. Under the light of the torches, I saw his forehead covered with sweat, and it was like a knife stabbing my heart. Zhang Guangsong shouted, “Let’s go! Off to the district!” I still thought they were actually taking us to the district, and Hanzhen and I, having some education and analytical ability, thought they’d at most put us into a concentration camp. We’d just have to do our best to look after our kids. Our generation was finished, but if our children obeyed the party, they should still have a future.
We were getting ready to leave when Tang Xinghao said, “Slow down, Jiang Hanzhen has three kids at home. Send someone to get them.” When I heard this, an explosion went off in my head. There were no children among those who were tied up; why did they have to bring our children along? Heartless Tang Xinghao, what did we ever do to deserve this from you? When we first came back to the village, Hanzhen had seen that Tang’s family was having financial difficulties and loaned him 100 yuan without being asked. Back then, 100 kuai was an impressive sum.
Tang Xinghao led a group of men to our home and coaxed or dragged our three children to the threshing yard. The children were sobbing with terror, but they stopped when they saw me. My children’s names were all taken from my favorite novel, Tracks in the Snowy Forest.1 Our eight-year-old son was named Linhai, our six-year-old daughter was named Xueyuan, and our four-year-old son was named Linsong. I decided it was better for them to be taken to the district with us, rather than being left at home alone and worrying.
We set off, escorted by the militia. It was a difficult road, and the night was dark, and only the two militiamen at the front were holding flashlights. We couldn’t see a thing and could only follow the people in front of us. Because my hands were bound, my daughter, Xueyuan, had to hang on to my shirt, and Linhai staggered along behind us with Linsong on his back. I can’t imagine where he got the strength, such a small boy carrying another and still able to keep up. As we walked, the children started crying again, and my ropes were so tight that my hands went numb. I was greatly distressed and sweat poured down my face, but I did my best to act like everything was fine and coaxed the children, “Don’t cry, just stay with Mama and we’ll be there soon.”
I don’t know how we managed on that hard road. My head turned to wood, and all I knew was to keep on walking. When we’d gone a kilometer or so, the militia stopped for a while. I later learned they were discussing where to take us. Soon after that, we set off again.
When we reached Fengmu Mountain, they ordered us to stop, and then Tang Xinghao jumped up on a rock and announced, “I now represent the Supreme People’s Court of the Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants in sentencing you to death!” We were paralyzed. At that moment, the moon came out, deathly pale. The militiamen surrounded us and pointed their fowling guns and spears at us. That was when I finally realized they were going to kill us. My heart sank. Killing us didn’t matter so much, but who would take of our three children when we were gone?
They’d decided to push us into a limestone cave. These were very common in our area, and so deep that you couldn’t see to the bottom of them. Tang Xinghao called out names, and as each name was called, the militiamen would lead that person to the cave and push him or her in. The third to be called was my husband, and two militiamen grabbed my husband like a chicken and dragged him toward the cave. The children cried out, “Papa! Papa!” and ran after him, but the militiamen pushed them fiercely away. Hanzhen was already as numb as a block of wood and didn’t react in any way. I was afraid the children would be killed, so I quickly called them back to me, thinking only of saving them.
The fourth to be called was a prominent doctor of traditional medicine named Jiang Wenfan, 60 years old. He was from a landlord family, but he was famous for his treatment of illnesses. Facing his death calmly, he asked a militiaman for a drink of water. The militiaman said, “You’re about to die and you want a drink of water?” He said, “It’s not too much to ask, is it? In the old days, they would give a man three warm buns before they beheaded him… .” Before he could finish speaking, one of the militiamen, a gluttonous and lazy old bachelor, struck him down with an iron club and then dragged him to the cave and threw him in.
I was the eighth one called, and when the militia commander came to get me, the three kids began pitifully crying, “Mama! Mama!” Seeing their distress, I steeled myself and told them, “Be good now and stay here and wait. Mama will be back in a little while and take you to Grandma’s house.” The children weren’t fooled and cried even harder. I was still harboring the illusion that they would kill only the adults and not the children. Worried that if I didn’t cooperate, the children might also be killed, I went submissively. I felt a coolness wafting from the mouth of the cave, which was so dark that I couldn’t see a thing.
“Kneel down!” someone ordered. Two people pushed me until my legs buckled and I knelt. I heard air move behind my head, and something hard struck me from behind. I felt the world spinning around me and knew nothing more. …
I don’t know how long it was before I woke up in terrible pain. There was a groan, and I heard someone beside me call, “Mama,” and I thought I’d woken up in hell. The person calling me was my daughter, Xueyuan. My three children and another four-year-old girl had also been thrown into the cave, but with so many bodies piled up there, we’d been cushioned by corpses and hadn’t died. I later heard from someone at the scene that when they pushed the children in, it was absolutely heart-rending. After Xueyuan saw her elder brother pushed in, she grabbed someone near her and wouldn’t let go, crying, “Uncle, uncle! Don’t throw me in! I’m afraid!” After that man pushed her away, she crawled to another and hugged him, crying, “Uncle, don’t throw me in, please! I’ll be good!” But finally she was thrown into the cave.
When I heard her call me, my head cleared and I quickly called out, “Xueyuan! Xueyuan, come untie Mama!” The cave was pitch dark and we couldn’t see a thing. Xueyuan groped her way over to me and was able to untie me. By then, a member of my husband’s family, Jiang Hanyuan, had also regained consciousness, and he said, “Sister-in-law, come help me!” My wrists were broken from being bound, so I used my teeth to loosen his ropes. After untying him, I told him to crawl out and find some way to save us. Jiang Hanyuan was a nimble teenager, and through a tremendous effort he managed to climb out of the cave. I breathed a sigh of relief, believing there was hope we could be saved. As it turned out, however, he encountered a search party and had to go into hiding instead of rescuing us.
We couldn’t tell if it was night or day, but I guess it was the second day that people started throwing rocks into the cave. The cave had many layers, and we’d fallen onto the upper layer, which is why Jiang Hanyuan had been able to climb out. But the rocks that were thrown in destabilized that layer, and it collapsed, sending us down to the second layer. There I found Hanzhen and our two sons, all still alive. Our family was reunited. That layer of the cave was full of corpses—apart from the people from our brigade, quite a few from the Fengmushan brigade had been pushed in several days earlier. The cave was dark and cold, and my family sat and slept on corpses. I can’t imagine hell being worse than this! With my injured hands, I couldn’t undo the wire around Hanzhen’s wrists, and that’s what killed him in the end.
I don’t know how much time passed before the children began crying for water. I told the children, “Just sleep; sleep and you’ll feel better.” The two older ones understood and lay down beside me. I held the youngest, Linsong, close to me, but he kept crying, “Mama, Mama! I’m thirsty! I’m hungry!” His cries tore at my heart.
Sometimes drops of water oozed out of the cave walls and dripped down on our faces. The children jumped up and cried, “Mama, there’s water!” They opened their mouths and stuck out their tongues, but after waiting a long time with no water dripping, they became tired and closed their mouths in disappointment.
Linsong cried nonstop for water, and there was nothing I could do but urinate into my hands and give it to him. He drank it thirstily. By then, my husband had become deranged. He stood unevenly on the corpses and paced back and forth, saying, “I’ll water the sorghum.” At one point he stepped on our youngest, who began crying. I said, “Hanzhen, what are you doing?” He said, “If I don’t grow the sorghum, the kids will have nothing to eat and the poor things will starve! Look, you see? The sorghum is growing… . Now we’re all set!” I said, “Hanzhen, come to your senses! There’s no sorghum here, we’re in a pit!” When he heard this, he fell silent and dropped to the ground, and he didn’t get up again.
I don’t know how many days passed, but the children gradually grew silent, and it was only when cold water dripped down and startled them that I knew they weren’t dead. Linhai lay down next to me and said haltingly, “Mama, why am I not dead? I wish I were dead!” What mother can hear an eight-year-old child say this and not be heartbroken? All I could do was comfort him by saying, “Go to sleep, son, go to sleep.” I stroked the faces my children, reduced to skin and bones. I wished I could tear my heart from my body to feed them. But all I could do was silently watch as they died one by one at my side. And yet I didn’t die. Why not? Why not? What was God sparing me for?
Linhai went first and then Linsong. I laid their bodies together so they could accompany each other to the netherworld. Xueyuan was on the verge of death. I clutched her to me and sat next to Linhai and Linsong. By then I was calm. My children had been released and could suffer no more, and we had managed to die together, which made us more fortunate than many others.
On August 30 (I was later told), there was a rainstorm. Inside the cave, I heard water running down and quickly placed Xueyuan to one side, groping blindly around the cave until I felt a puddle. I carefully drank a couple of mouthfuls and then filled my mouth with water to give to Xueyuan. At first she was able to swallow, but then all she did was choke; it was too late. Just then, I heard someone moaning off to the side, and found that it was Hanzhen. He was still alive! Perhaps he was still clinging to me and the children and was unwilling to leave without us. I quickly gave him some water. There wasn’t enough in the puddle to scoop up, so I took off some of my clothing and soaked it in the water and wrung it into his mouth. His throat moved a few times, but then he couldn’t swallow any more, and his head tilted to the side and he died. This time he was really dead; I felt under his nose, and there was no more breath.
Now there was only me left out of our family of five. Over the last few days, I hadn’t been able to think about what had happened, preoccupied with looking after the children. Before the children died, I’d still wanted to live, but now, looking at the bodies of my family around me, I felt it was meaningless to go on living alone. What’s strange is that I didn’t cry or feel any pain or fear. My head was very clear, and I just sat there calmly waiting to die. I didn’t think any more about my husband or my children, but rather about the past, back when I was still a girl in my parents’ home, and when I was in college. …
Then I suddenly discovered that someone else was still alive in a branch cave in the level above me. Her name was Jiang Fugui, and she was a rich-peasant offspring, 17 or 18 years old. For some reason, the women endured longer than the men. I had been so busy looking after my children that I hadn’t noticed her. She seemed to be deranged, because she kept calling out, “Mama! Quickly light the lamp! I’m thirsty!” I called to her, “There’s no use shouting, we’re in a cave. It rained just now—see if there are any water puddles near you.” She kept crying out for a while and then I heard nothing more. I called to her several times, but when she didn’t answer, I stopped. In any case, we were going to die sooner or later.
When I felt I was near the end, I suddenly heard someone call my name at the mouth of the cave. At first I thought I was dreaming, but when I listened carefully, I recognized the voices of my former student, Lü Biaofeng, and a clansman of my husband’s, Jiang Hanyang. Apparently someone had heard me talking to Jiang Fugui and realized that people were still alive in the cave. Jiang Hanyang called down, “Sister-in-law, it’s me, Hanyang! We’ve come to rescue you. No one’s allowed to kill people anymore.” They tied four lengths of rope together and dropped it down, but by then I had given up on life. My entire family was dead in this cave, so what point was there in coming out? They stayed by the cave all morning persuading me, and they even lowered a bamboo tube full of water for me to drink. Then my former student, Lü Biaofeng, said, “Teacher Zhou, Teacher Zhou! You can’t die in there for no reason. This is an enormous crime, and the government has to pass judgment.” I decided he was right; I had to go on living. I agreed to let them lift me out, but the cave was too dark, and I couldn’t see the rope. Finally they found a water pot and placed some rocks in it, and when they lowered the rope they rattled it. I followed the sound to the rope and wound it around my waist. Pulling with all their strength, they managed to lift me out of the cave. When I saw daylight, I fainted under the dazzling brightness. By then I’d been in the cave for seven days and seven nights. God kept me here so I could tell the world about this horrific tragedy.
After Lü Biaofeng and Jiang Hanyang saved me, they were afraid that moving me might kill me, so they laid me down in a shady spot near the cave and hurried off for a doctor. They also cooked some congee and fed it to me a spoonful at a time. I later learned that they went on working all night to save Jiang Fugui, but the girl was so out of her senses that she couldn’t grab the rope, and they were unable to get her out.
As day broke and Lü Biaofeng and Jiang Hanyang and others were discussing how to save Jiang Fugui, our brigade’s poor-peasant association chairman, Zhang Guangsong, heard what was going on and rushed over with his fowling gun. He scolded the villagers, saying, “Who told you to pull her out?” and he pointed his gun at me. The villagers who had rescued me were from the Fengmu brigade, and they snatched the gun from Zhang Guangson, saying, “If you want to lord it over people, go back to your own brigade!” When Zhang Guangsong ran back for reinforcements, the villagers scattered, and one of them, Zhang Hanfan, carried me to nearby Lutang Village and hid me in a gulley.
Zhang Guangsong telephoned the commune and requested armed militiamen to fetch me from the Fengmu brigade. Everyone in the village said they didn’t know where I was, but the militia looked everywhere and finally found me.2 They tried to force the people who’d rescued me to throw me into the cave again, but the masses objected, saying, “The order has already come down prohibiting any more killing.” At that point, an old poor peasant known as “the Mute” came forward and said, “You can see the shape she’s in—if you don’t kill her she’ll die anyway, so why waste the energy? Let’s just lock her up for now, and then we won’t have to worry if one of the higher-ups asks about her.” That made sense, so they had someone carry me back to Tuditang Village, and I was locked up in the production team’s storehouse with Jiang Hanfan and Jiang Hanyuan.
I was extremely frail by then, covered with wounds and lice. Those two young men washed my hair and cleaned the blood from my body. Some former students secretly brought me a change of clothes. We were locked up there for two days. On the third day, Hanyuan was released because he had an elder brother working elsewhere as a regiment-level cadre. That left just me and Hanfan in the storehouse, and this seemed worrying. I asked Hanfan, “Why did they release Hanyuan but not you and me? There’s something wrong. I have a feeling we’re not going to get away.” Hanfan was also anxious, and he asked me what we should do. I said, “Run away as fast as you can. You might still have a chance. Don’t sit here waiting to die.” Hanfan said, “Then let’s go together. I’ll carry you on my back.” But I was afraid of dragging him down with me once again, so I said, “How can I escape in this condition? You’re still young and have a long life ahead of you. After you escape, they’ll see what bad shape I’m in and maybe they won’t kill me.” That night, Jiang Hanfan broke the bars on the storehouse window and escaped. The next day, when Tang Xinghao came to the storehouse with others to get us, they found that Jiang Hanfan was gone. Tang Xinghao said the lucky devil had gotten off easily and declared, “Zhou Qun is a landlord’s wife, and anyone who gives her food from now on is a counterrevolutionary and will end up just like her!”
From then on, none of my friends or relatives dared to come see me openly. Some kind people sent their children to drop sweet potatoes through the window, or they wrapped rice balls in pumpkin leaves and slipped them through the cracks in the door at night. In that way, sometimes famished and sometimes fed, I stayed alive for half a month. During this time, Tang Xinghao came twice to see me, sneering, “Zhou Qun, you’re quite something to still be alive!” I don’t know why he hated me so much.
The day of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival arrived, and the moon was shining its brightest. I looked at the moon through the storehouse window and thought of other families celebrating while everyone in my family was dead, and I felt so sad. My physical injuries had me hovering at the brink of death, and I didn’t have the courage to go on living. I straightened my hair with my fingers and then sat down, ripped up my quilt, and braided the pieces into a rope to hang myself, all the while crying, “Oh God, why are you so unjust?”
My actions were noticed by the mother-in-law of the production team’s accountant, Jiang Yuanluan. She was from Simaqiao Market and was spending the Mid-Autumn Festival with her daughter’s family. When she heard about me, she wondered how a woman could spend seven days and nights in a cave without dying, so she came to see me. While standing outside the window of the storehouse, she saw me braiding the rope and said, “I thought you must be an old lady, but I see you’re just a young woman. You’re young enough to have another family; don’t end things this way! I’ll talk to my son-in-law, and tomorrow we’ll think of a way to rescue you.”
Hearing what the old woman said revived my despairing heart. I still don’t know why I wanted to keep living, when death would have ended all my suffering, trouble, and fear.
The next day, Jiang Yuanluan heeded his mother-in-law and took advantage of market day at Simaqiao to send word to my family. My family members were all genuine poor peasants, and my friends and relatives had influence. My younger brother went to the commune, and after repeated negotiations they were finally able to bring me home. After returning to my home village, my body began to break down. There’s a saying that if you’re not going to die, you need to shed your skin, and I actually shed a layer of skin off my entire body. My younger brother went deeply into debt to get me cured; he even sold off his clothing and quilts.
Now I’ve remarried and I have a child. After rehabilitation I was allowed to teach again. I’ve been named a “model teacher” three times now, I’ve attended a county conference for advanced worker representatives, and last year I was elected to the county political consultative conference… . My view of the Daoxian killings is that although we don’t need to demand a life for a life, those who took the lead must be dealt with severely; otherwise, someday they might kill again.
Brigade CCP secretary Tang Xinghao was expelled from the party in 1985. After initially refusing to acknowledge owing Jiang Hanzhen 100 yuan, under questioning by the Task Force he finally had someone repay the money to Zhou Qun.