Chapter 2: Metamorphosis Through the Catastrophe
A Silhouette of the Red August Massacre
Summer Palace was one of my favorites since I was a child. It was more 
convenient to go there after I had settled in the campus of USTC. Enter the park, Long Corridor is a place to pass by frequently. It stretches from the east to the west and shaped like a spread-winged bat, which is backed by Longevity Mountain and faced Kunming Lake. The entire corridor contains artistic decorations, including over ten thousand paintings of famous places in China, and scenes from Chinese mythology, folktales, and classical novels. In the late spring of 1966, my wife Yunqing hugged our daughter who was only two months old and sat in it to rest. It excited me while imaging how to tell our daughter fairy tales when facing each painting. This dream soon shattered.
On May 16, 1966, the Central Committee of the CCP issued a notice on the Cultural Revolution. Mao issued a new political concept of cultural dictatorship in the notice. It proposed “the dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie in the superstructure includes various cultural fields.” On June 1, 1966, the People Daily published an editorial of “Sweep away all Cow Demons and Snake Spirits”, which clearly stated for the first time to eliminate Four Olds i.e., the old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits that had ‘poisoned’ the people for thousands of years. The Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the CCP held in early August 1966 passed the “Decision on the Cultural Revolution.” On August 18, 1966, the CCP held a gathering to celebrate the Cultural Revolution on Tiananmen Square and had a large-scale parade. On this day, Mao received the Red Guards for the first time, and put on the Red Guards armband. From that day on, hundreds of thousands of Red Guards marched to the streets and started the Campaign of Eliminating Four Olds. This kicked off Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
We soon heard of that the Red Guards of 101 Middle School put forward a revolutionary slogan of “Dig out Longevity Mountain and fill up Kunming Lake”. We already heard the roaring of Red Guards from the tweeters far away before we reached there. Walked in Long Corridor, we dumbfounded. White lime and even sludge smeared those precious paintings. On the mountain, we found that the three Buddha statues in the Tower of Buddhist Incense were all demolished by the Red Guards. The thousand glazed embossed Buddha statues on the Wisdom Sea on the top of Wanshou Mountain were all smashed off. The Red Guards filled the Summer Palace with portraits of Mao Zedong, political slogans and big-character posters. We shocked when witnessing such destruction of civilization but could have never imagined much more terrifying disaster was coming.
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Two days later, when I passed by Xuanwumen on my bike, I was stuck in the middle of the streets. A group of middle school red guards in military uniforms held up an enormous banner and occupied the entire street. The big red banner read: Resolutely expel the five black categories from Beijing. The leading Red Guard yelled with a loudspeaker that they respond to the party’s call to build Beijing into a great capital of the proletariat, and pure as a crystal. He said that we must expel the black five categories from Beijing, and then he took the lead in shouting slogans. The other Red Guards waved wooden sticks and belts in their hands, shouting slogans. Some people who were stuck in the middle like me, either followed slogans shouting, some just opened their mouths and raised their hands. All the people who were criticized were kneeling on the ground with heavy wooden signs hanging around their necks. Among them there were several wooden signs read: anti-Party rightist. An elderly had a large wooden sign on his neck marked reactionary landlord. He overwhelmed and almost lied down to the ground. A red guard ran over and picked up the belt and hit him hard. The copper buckle of the belt knocked on the old man’s head, the red blood and the white brain plasma sprayed out together. That old man died immediately. The red guards ordered the residents to pull the body away and continued their struggle. That dead elderly was among the ones ranked at the first of the Five Black Categories, and I belonged to the last group in order. I kept arguing in the meetings 10 years ago in the criticism meeting against me in the early summer of 1957. And the elderly said nothing. The shouting slogans were similar, but the people’s endings were so different. When I left the scene, cold sweat had already infiltrated all my clothes. From then on, whenever my gratitude to God arose, a firm sense of mission always accompanied it in my heart. This book is part of it.
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A Puppet with Memory
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I became one puppet among many puppets and zombies in the larger half. But this puppet was lucky enough to preserve human memory.
For ten years, these puppets and zombies had always maintained a fixed life that was both turbulent and uniform. Every morning, loud tweeters sounded in every corner of the campus. After The East Is Red music, the radio station would announce Mao’s highest instructions. Then each unit started the morning request ceremony.
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Month after month, these ceremonies repeated every day on the campus, and in every corner of China. During the ten years of catastrophe, every day was the same; but unexpected events might happen any time.
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Shock Caused by the Project 571
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On the National Day of 1971, the CCP canceled the rally and parade in front of Tiananmen Square and the fireworks show. “People’s Daily” also did not publish photos of leaders as usual. Various rumors had creeped in China. At the beginning of 1972, the Central Committee of the CCP suddenly issued a notice and appendix on organizing, disseminating, and discussing the “Struggle to Shatter the Lin-Chen Anti-Party Group Counter-revolutionary Coup”. It confirmed the incident regarding Lin Biao’s escape and their plane crash in Mongolia. The “Notice” attached the full text of the armed uprising plan drafted by Lin Biao’s son Lin Liguo and others, the “Project 571”.
The Lin Biao incident caused a tremendous shock throughout China. This man, who touted Mao as a god, had radically changed his role. This change gives those who still have a sense of reason and courage to think independently, an opportunity for reflection. What really shocked me was the Project 571. This was a rare enlightenment document about a dictatorship operating within a political black box. The shady scenes it revealed already had a somewhat hazy feeling in my heart. But reading the straightforward, sharp, and clear explanations in the document was still shocking. I believed at the time that this document must be true. If it were not someone who had been in the box for a long time and felt deeply, it would had been impossible to write.
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The document’s judgment on the national situation was quite the opposite of the official propaganda. It clearly pointed out: “The political situation is unstable and the contradictions within the ruling group are sharp. In the past ten years, the national economy has stagnated, the actual living standards have declined. And dissatisfaction has grown. “ These were truth. Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the objects of class struggle had been continuously expanded. Besides the original five black categories, the new class enemies stipulated by the CCP include traitors, spies, and capitalist roaders. When the movement of Cleansing the Class Ranks began, the bourgeois intellectuals had clearly become class enemies. The original five black categories had now become class enemies of nine black categories.
The 571 Project Minutes described people’s dissatisfaction as: “Dare to be angry but dare not speak, or even dare not to be angry or speak.” This truthful description of the political situation by senior CCP officials reduces the fear of ordinary people. People finally speak out, especially on college campuses. At the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the USTC campuses, we all called ourselves stinky number nines. This was originally just a self-ridicule in private, but it became public after the Lin Biao incident.
The document describes the situation of all classes of society accurately: “Down to the Countryside Movement of Young is equivalent to Laogai. The Red Guards were deceived and used as cannon fodder in the early stage and later suppressed and turned into scapegoats.” The sufferings of tens of millions of intellectual youths had since exposed, which was affecting the hearts of almost every Chinese. Many shocking incidents had uncovered, including the crimes of many cadres who raped and gang-raped young girls for a long time…
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Auras in the Dark
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Over the ten years, this ancient country in the East had suffered tremendous disasters. A political pariah was still under persecution during this catastrophe. However, with the pulsation of increased entropy, this political pariah got a new life. Some other revelations also appeared, showing how human kindness defeats the evil made by Mao’s catastrophe.
One of the unforgettable stories happened in Famen Temple, about 10 kilometers north of Fufeng County, Baoji City. Famen Temple includes a Buddhist stupa, which was built about 1,700 years ago. An underground palace of this pagoda enshrined the highest sacred item in Buddhism-the finger bone relics of Buddha Sakyamuni according to a legend. On a gloomy day in the midsummer of 1966, several large trucks filled with Red Guards arrived at Famen Temple. They smashed Buddha statues, burned Buddhist scriptures, and turned the temple into a mess. The Red Guards then claimed to dig the legendary underground palace under the pagoda of Famen Temple. Master Liangqin, the abbot of Famen Temple, blocked them. He moved the beads in his hands and recited the Buddhist scriptures while closed his eyes. The Red Guards waved their shovels and chanted various revolutionary slogans. Mage Liangqin slowly stood up from the futon, put on his red robes with gold, and stared at the towering pagoda that pierced the sky. Then, he piled up all the bedding, straw mats, and firewood beside him, and poured kerosene. The mage sat there calmly, light a match, and lit himself. The red robes were burning, and the tongue of fire licked the mage’s aging body mercilessly. In the raging fire, master Liangqin clasped his hands together, sitting majestically until all turned to ashes. All the Red Guards were escaping and never went back to the temple again.
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