Mao's Hijacked Generation

By Michel Bonnin

Mao's Hijacked Generation. Sarasota, FL: New Knowledge Press, 2024

According to Ai Weiwei, the renowned Chinese artist and human rights activist, "[t]his rare book is a true record of the dark history...of

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Knowledge Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990507319

Book preview

I. Life and Work

Song of Zhiqing:

Death to the Composer

by Zhang Danxiang

Ren Yi, a zhiqing from Nanjing No. 5 High School, had just spent a week combating a flood that threatened a major railway north of the city. On returning to his village in nearby Jiangpu County, Jiangsu Province, a neighbor handed him a letter that stunned him.

It was sent by Zheng, one of his school friends who had stayed behind in Nanjing because he was handicapped. Zheng said that he had heard a song composed by Ren, entitled Song of Zhiqing, being repeatedly broadcast by Radio Moscow. Owing to ideological differences, the Sino-Soviet relationship had deteriorated to such an extent that just four months before, in March 1969, an armed conflict had broken out on the Sino-Soviet border at Zhenbao Island. Zheng thought the broadcast was bad news for Ren, and he warned in his letter that Ren might be in danger.

Though handicapped, Zheng was good at assembling transistor radios. He had given Ren a shortwave transistor set before his departure so that Ren could keep himself better informed by listening to foreign broadcasts. But many of the radio stations, such as Voice of America and Radio Moscow, were officially banned. Listening to hostile radio broadcasts was susceptible to a criminal charge.

Ren shut himself up in his room and tuned in to Radio Moscow. A little past four o’clock in the afternoon, he heard the song he remembered so well being broadcast on the radio. The Russians had changed the title to Song of Chinese Zhiqing. It was sung by a male chorus, accompanied by a band.

White clouds soaring in the blue sky,

The lovely ancient city of Nanjing nestles

By the side of the beautiful Yangtze,

There I was born and brought up.

Oh, the great rainbow-like bridge thrusts at the clouds

To reach the other side of the Yangtze River

Mount Zhong, magnificent and mighty,

Lies near my hometown like a crouching tiger.

I said goodbye to Mom,

Bidding farewell to my hometown.

The golden times of my school days are all gone,

Leaving only a paper album from my youth.

Ah, the road that lies ahead

Is so rugged and so long;

I leave my footprints, both deep and shallow,

On remote alien lands.

Rising with the sun and coming back with the moon,

I undertake the heavy job of repairing the globe.

Fulfilling this glorious, sacred duty,

Now turns out to be my fate.

Ren could hardly remember having listened to the broadcast to the end. He was seized with fear. His head seemed to have exploded and his clothes were soaked with sweat.

The seriousness of the matter could be easily understood in light of the famous saying by Mao Zedong: Whatever the enemy opposes, we support: whatever the enemy supports, we oppose. Now that Radio Moscow was broadcasting Ren’s song, there must be something terribly wrong with it. The Chinese authorities must now consider it to be politically harmful to China.

Mindful of the Party’s policy toward all wrongdoers--Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who resist-Ren decided to give himself up to the police. He stuffed some of his clothing and daily necessities into a bag and hurried back to Nanjing. Instead of going home, he went straight to the Nanjing House of Detention. The man who received him was a veteran policeman. After hearing his case, the policeman pondered for quite some time and then said to him: You just wrote a song, didn’t you? Don’t be afraid. Nothing will happen to you. He even accompanied Ren to the bus station and encouraged him not to worry before waving him goodbye.

Upon returning to the village, Ren found things were going on as usual. At a meeting of young activists studying Mao’s works, the Party secretary of the people’s commune asked Ren to conduct the participants in singing Song of Zhiqing as if nothing had happened. Probably the Party secretary was unaware of the Moscow broadcast.

Ren had been a music lover from childhood. While still a primary school pupil, he became a member of the city ensemble of small children and received training in singing. Later, he joined a municipal art troupe of middle school students, devoting himself to guitar and playing the erhu, the Chinese two-stringed fiddle.

By the time Ren graduated from high school, all colleges had ceased to enroll new students. He had no alternative but to go to the countryside with his schoolmates. He felt that they were not welcome there, because the village had little cultivable land and too many people. For Ren, hardships in rural life were no great challenge. What really tormented him was the barrenness of spiritual life.

One evening in late May of 1969, Ren and some of his companions gathered in his room. They sang old songs to kill time. When their resources were exhausted, one of boys turned to Ren, saying: "Since workers and peasants all have their own songs, why not write a song for zhiqing?"

Ren composed his song that night by the light of a kerosene burner. He quickly finished both the music and the lyrics, which seemed to flow from his heart. His instructions for singers read: Somber, slow and nostalgic. He sang The Song of Zhiqing for his companions the following evening, accompanying himself on the guitar.

The song soon took wing. It was copied by hand, mimeographed, printed as sheet music and, most importantly, passed on from singer to singer. Before long it had spread to all parts of the country. Ren heard from a zhiqing who was assigned to work in the remote province of Heilongjiang in Northeast China. When he arrived there in early 1970, the zhiqing said, many people in his production team were already singing it. One of his companions there, a good harmonica player, would play the melody with tears flowing down his cheeks.

Ren continued to live in fear, though he never imagined that the disaster awaiting him would come from Shanghai. Just before the Spring Festival in 1970, many Shanghai zhiqing returned from all over the country for family reunions. Many of them assigned to the Putuo District liked to sing the song, and it soon spread to several middle schools throughout the city. Some people with an unusual political instinct reported this to the district and municipal governments, describing it as an abnormal phenomenon in the class struggle. The Shanghai municipal authorities then sent a report to Beijing, where it finally landed in the hands of the Gang of Four, all of them members of the powerful Party Center’s Leading Group of the Cultural Revolution. Jiang Qing wrote an instruction on the report saying: Grasp class struggle in the ideological field. Two other members, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, gave Shanghai specific orders on promptly setting up a judicial investigation group to deal with Ren’s case and undertake criticism and denunciation of the black song.

On February 19, 1970, Ren was arrested. He was sent to the same Nanjing House of Detention to which he had attempted to deliver himself seven months before. The next day, he was sent to a struggle session held at Nanjing No. 5 High School, his Alma Mater, to be exposed and denounced as a hostile element. The bulletin boards along some of the streets in the city were full of posts accusing Ren of various crimes. These included "challenging the Chairman’s brilliant instruction on sending zhiqing to the countryside by evoking homesickness, and embellishing the revisionist educational system by describing his old school days as golden times. One post said Ren’s reactionary black song represented an attempt by the enemy at utilizing literature and art to attack the proletariat and poison the minds of the young generation".

On May 24, 1970, Ren was given a death sentence by the Nanjing Municipal Military Control Commission. But when General Xu Shiyou, a Long Marcher and Chairman of the Jiangsu Provincial Military Commission, saw the death penalty for Ren, he decided to commute the sentence to 10-year imprisonment, saying how can we execute a young student without any criminal record just for composing a song? In those years, a ten-year imprisonment was the minimum penalty for the so-called counterrevolutionaries. In Ren’s own words, it was like the starting fare for hiring a taxi.

The downfall of the Gang of Four in October 1976 gave Ren new hope. He started writing appeals to the Jiangsu Provincial High Court and other organizations. His mother, who was teaching at a school in another county in Jiangsu province, tried to assist him by sending letters of complaint to relevant departments. She was encouraged by many zhiqing who worked around the area. Knowing that she was Ren’s mother, they would sing Song of Zhiqing when they passed her living quarters.

On January 4, 1979, a district court in Nanjing acquitted Ren of all charges and released him. By now, Ren had served almost nine years of his ten-year sentence. He was thirty years old.

He soon found a job at a textile company, and later married a woman worker whose brother had been his high school classmate and fellow zhiqing. At the time of his release, news about his case of injustice and rehabilitation was widely covered in the press. But with the passage of time, few people of the new generation knew anything about it. He felt that his painful life experience was not only his own cup of tears but represented the sorrows of the country and the nation. He decided to tell his story by writing a book entitled Pathetic Song Triggers Life-and-Death Crisis, which was published by China Social Sciences Press in Beijing in 1998.

A Criticism Session Aimed At Me

by Zhang Kangkang

In our work team at the vegetable garden, there was an erlaogai (literally meaning persons undergoing a second round of labor reform) named Su Gong, a former Kuomintang official. Aged about fifty, he was small in stature and had kind eyes. Unlike most others, he was always neatly dressed and had the air of an elegant, self-possessed scholar.

In our brief, work-related conversations with him, I identified him from his strong accent as a Cantonese, which made me feel close to him since my family had come from the same province. Sometimes I even felt that he bore some resemblance to my father. I once passed by him when he was working alone in the cucumber field. Out of curiosity, I asked him which part of the province he came from. He raised his head to glance at me but did not answer. Feeling embarrassed, I said that my hometown was Xinhui. Only then did he tell me the name of his hometown, his eyes narrowing to reveal a faint smile. After a while, he asked me whether I could speak Cantonese. I said no, because I had been born in Hangzhou. Somewhat disappointed, he looked up at a group of zhiqing working nearby and again fell into silence. I smiled at him and walked off.

After that, I found myself nodding to him whenever we met in the farm field or along the path, but he would look away from me, his face expressionless. Whenever I went to the well to fetch water by myself, however, or carried a heavy load of vegetables, he would come over and give me a hand.

Once when my female companions and I were pulling radishes out of a vegetable plot, we broke nearly all of them because the earth was too dry and hard. Seeing our heads covered with sweat, Su Gong came over with two pails of water, which he poured into the plot. The earth soon became soft, enabling the radishes to come out easily and intact. None of us thanked him.

That autumn, I found myself in desperate need of money, a minimum of ten yuan besides my own daily savings. I approached a few of my zhiqing companions, but to no avail. With a monthly salary of 32 yuan, every one of us had a tight budget. Discouraged, I stopped seeking help.

One day after work, a girl companion and I sat on the edge of the well platform in our vegetable garden, whispering about my financial trouble. When we couldn’t find a solution, I started sobbing.

I forgot that behind the well platform some erlaogai were still at work. They were mending baskets which we had used to carry earth. Later, we were startled by someone coughing behind us. It was Su Gong, a pail in hand, his head lowered. Keeping his eyes away from me, he said, Don’t cry. If you don’t mind, I can lend you ten yuan. His Cantonese accent was understandable only to me. In response to this unexpected offer, I stared at him blankly without giving an answer. When I understood what he meant, which took me a while, I nodded my agreement. I was so desperate for money that I forgot all about the position of erlaogai and the need for class struggle awareness.

After work the following day, I slowed my pace on our return trip in order to stay behind. When I was left alone, I went to the well platform. Some moments later, Su Gong came over and handed me a tiny roll of paper. I found two 5-yuan banknotes in it.

I will return the money to you, I said, my head lowered,

Never mind. Return it whenever you can, he replied.

That ten yuan was indeed a great help to me.

Whenever I met Su Gong in the field or along the road after that, I looked away from him in shame. I didn’t know why he had helped me or how I was going to reward him for his favor.

In the months after my trouble was over, I began to worry about Su Gong’s political status. I wondered if he had lent me the money with the aim of corrupting a zhiqing. Perhaps he hoped that I might become an accomplice in some evil plan he was hatching. Such thoughts filled me with fear and confusion.

Meanwhile, Su Gong went quietly about his business, never mentioning the money I owed him, as if nothing had happened.

Several months had passed and it was already winter when I returned the money to him. On that day, most of the female zhiqing in our group were storing vegetables in the cellars. I waited and waited, hoping to return the money to Su Gong when no one was around. Perhaps my anxiety and the secrecy of my behavior in recent days had aroused the suspicion of certain politically sensitive people. Someone might have been watching me when I hand-delivered the money to Su Gong. He didn’t say anything as I mumbled my thanks.

What happened later remained a puzzle to me. Even today, I cannot understand how our squad leader, who was the vegetable garden supervisor, could have known that Su Gong had lent me money. The female companion whom I consulted at the well platform could never have betrayed me. Neither could Su Gong have done so because he himself was involved. Who else could it have been?

Was it true that watchtowers were installed everywhere to keep us always under surveillance, and that every move I made would not escape the brilliant eyes of the masses?

The following day, upon my return from work, I was informed that a criticism session would be held in the evening, and that I should prepare a speech -- a profound self-criticism on my dubious stand in class line-ups, and my failure to make a distinction between ourselves and the enemy.

I was stunned, thinking that I must have committed a heinous crime. Anxiety and fear tormented me. I didn’t know what I should say to get out of trouble.

It was already quite dark that evening when members of our women’s squad working in the vegetable garden gathered in our dormitory. Due to an electricity shortage, we all sat on the kang bed under candlelight. Our squad leader, a girl from Hegang, Liaoning Province, opened the meeting with a short speech. A hard worker unskilled at public speaking, she criticized me for borrowing money from a re-employed person. My action represented a serious loss of revolutionary purity and denigrated the image of all zhiqing. When she was through with her few remarks, a second girl promptly jumped from the kang bed and fired a barrage of indignant questions at me:

"Have you let all your revolutionary comrades go to hell? You didn’t seek help from us, but stretched out your hands to the enemy. Where were your class feelings and class consciousness? I was very upset by your action. Why would an erlaogai lend you money? Have you ever thought about that?"

She didn’t wait for my response but continued her barrage.

Our enemies are still present and have never resigned themselves to defeat. They place their hope on China’s third and fourth generations. You are an example of their success in carrying out the strategy of peaceful evolution . . .

The fierce fire of her barrage hardly allowed me to raise my head. After a while, I realized that the vehement speaker in the faint candlelight was Little A, a female zhiqing who had been appointed deputy head of another team in our squad only a few days before.

A zhiqing friend whispered in my ear, Don’t listen to her blathering. Her mother has just divorced to marry one of the leaders at the regimental headquarters of our farm. See how contented she is!

Under the low ceiling, Little A’s high-pitched voice sounded like the clash of sharp swords with sparks flying.

If I were you, she continued, "I would rather starve to death than borrow money from an erlaogai. What are you really after? Do you want to join hands with the enemy? Your example shows a new trend in class struggle. Don’t think that you can hoodwink us revolutionary zhiqing with a few words of fake self-criticism. You must make a revolution in the depths of your soul and expose the ulterior motive of the erlaogai..."

To me, her words sounded like nuclear blasts in verbal warfare. They made me shake in my shoes. I felt I was being dismembered and trampled upon. Under the pressure of all these false charges, with so many political derogatory labels stuck on me, my fear gradually turned into bitterness. My original plan was to make some kind of self-criticism. But at this moment, my head seemed to explode, and I couldn’t recall the words I had prepared. Looking at Little A’s shadows shaking violently on the wall, my bitterness turned into rage. I became so furious that I lost all reason. I interrupted her by shouting agitatedly at her:

"How dare you stand there lecturing me without the slightest self-doubt? Why didn’t you stretch out your hand to me? Where were you when I needed help? And besides, what’s wrong with the ‘re-employees’? Aren’t they human beings? Are they wrong to help a zhiqing? I want to tell you, erlaogai are not convicts; they are farm employees. Do you understand