那时已经深夜(按我的标准),我早已睡下多时.女儿喊起我(我告诉过她,不管多早多晚, 只要她需要我帮忙,随时喊我起来没问题的),说需要对我作一个访谈.我说可以但 我不想睁开眼睛因为灯光让它们不舒服.于是这个访谈就是我躺在床上闭着眼完成 的.

周一女儿回来告诉我,说她的老师非常喜欢看她写的这篇访谈,一再让她转告我说 谢谢我参加.另外她老师的母亲正在读一本与中国有关的书,她老师专门在电话里 把这篇访谈念给了她母亲听.

Interview

I chose to interview my dad about the Cultural Revolution in China, led by Communist leader Mao Zi Dong. He was young when it happened, but still remembers much from an early time. His life, his parents’ life, and the lives of the people around him were all greatly affected by the Cultural Revolution. His story is originally told in Chinese, but I tried to translate it into English. References to his father and mother are also my grandparents. This is his story.

1. How old were you when it started? What was it like?

Three years old. When it started, it was really scary. There was all sorts of news; my dad was picked out because when he was younger, he joined a group called San Qing Tuan, which was like Boys Scout for teenagers, but was supposedly a “bad” group that the communists didn’t like. Communists picked him out because they had kept a book about everyone in it, and all of your history. You were supposed to tell communist party everything about your past, but he did and got in trouble for it.

2. Was he arrested?

Not really. He was kind of arrested. They wouldn’t let him go home from work while they watched him and some of the communists committed pi dou on him, when they yelled and cursed and physically abused him.

3. Were you scared when he didn’t come home?

I didn’t really understand it. At first, my mom could take care of us. Then she got picked out too.

4. Why was she (your mother) arrested?

She had once told her colleagues that she felt like she was an orphan because she WAS an orphan. Her parents were both dead. When her colleague reported this, the Communist party picked her out as well because they felt as if she was complaining about them, and that she didn’t like the new society.

5. What happened then?

They couldn’t take care of us, so they (my parents) sent me and my older sister to a babysitter’s house.

6. What was she (the babysitter) like? Did she treat you well?

She was short and kind of plump. She treated her own kids better than us.

7. Did you miss your parents? How were you two taken care of?

Definitely. I was four or something. My older sister mainly took care of me, and I went to a day care, kind of like a kindergarten. The kids there didn’t tease yet because none of us really understood it. That comes later.

8. How many years did this go on for?

About one year. During this period, many people who were picked out committed suicide and died. My parents told me because there was so much pressure on them from pi dou. My father said he even saw children who had to go through pi dou, frightened to the point where they peed in front of others because they were so scared of everyone.

9. How many people do you think committed suicide?

My father worked in a school that was kind of like an institution. There, they had about ten deaths. My mother told me that she and my dad had very seriously considered dying because it was hopeless. They thought that they had no future, and wanted to end the criticism and abuse.

10. Did they not commit for you two?

Yeah. They told themselves that they couldn’t leave us behind.

11. When did the pi dou end?

It never really ended. It lessened and calmed down a bit. My mother had to go through xia fang, where they forced her to move to the countryside after the school she worked at told her to leave.

12. It was just her?She had to leave you all behind?

No, my mother took me to the countryside and my dad took care of my older sister.

13. Wouldn’t it have been better to keep you two together?

At that point, one parent couldn’t take care of two kids. So they split us up.

14. What was it like in the countryside?

It was nice because out there, the parents and kids weren’t so serious about pi dou and such, so they treated my mother better. No one cared about your history. However, everyone was so poor and nobody was full. We ate yams all the time (they were cheap) because we didn’t have any rice, and nobody really wanted anymore yams. Everyone was hungry all the time. I remember that the farmers would cook what little rice with lots of water and feed it to the small pigs instead of eating it themselves. One village killed one pig per year and everyone would eat it to celebrate the New Year. But at this time, that was the only meat we ate the whole year. Any other time, we ate yams and some small vegetables.

15. When did you reunite with your family?

At some point, we were switched. My dad took care of me and my mother my sister. Afterwards, in 1973, my father left the institution and went to work in a factory, and I thought it was good because they, too, didn’t really care about your history, and treated him well. Not well, but better than before. We lived next to a pig pen, but spiritually we really felt like a mountain being removed. There was so much less pressure.

16. When were the four of you reunited?

Slowly, the pressure lessened and lessened, and eventually we moved together because they started caring less. I was eight or nine at the time.

17. You used to tell me about da zi bao. What was that again?

Da zi bao were huge posters with big words, back in 1966, that would say things like “You capitalist dog. You should say sorry to the people. You should admit all the bad things you did and respect the party.” Things like that. They would be posted outside our doors or windows and sometimes a center location where everyone could see it.

18. Did you witness any book burnings?

They went through puo si jiu, which made families get rid of their older books and such. My father had to sell his books, and they also burned many books. They also came to our house to chao jia, which literally means stir up house. It was an invasion at night of many people who rifled through our house, pulling out our stuff to try and find proof that you did evil things in the past. Sometimes they took valuables like jewelry, money, diaries, letters, and other important possessions.

19. Were you picked on?

Mostly adults never picked on children. But children picked on children. There was a fire hydrant that I wanted to stand on, but another kid was already on it. I asked him if I could get on, and that a ladder would descend from the heavens and I would climb up. I was a kid back then, and just imagining things. To him, this meant I wanted to step on the sun. They told me “Oh, you said you were going to step on the sun (symbolism as the sun for Mao Zi Dong).” He said this and it meant I wanted to step on Mao’s body, but I never said anything like that. He told other people, and loads of kids came to our house to pi dou us. They made us bow our heads, but my sister refused and argued with them. Even though I didn’t say anything of the sort, I hung my head because I had always been obedient to other people.

20. Did your older sister get in trouble?

No. She just argued with them. They told us we were from a bad family and had bad blood, and that we were “gou zai zi,” which meant a dog’s son, insulting our parents because they had been picked out. They were “niu gui she shen” which was a combination of all sorts of bad names; niu for cow, gui for devil, she for snake, and shen for monster.

21. How did you feel when it was over?

To me, a very important characteristic from a kids point of view was that intellectuals treated others harshly, and the less educated people were, they treated others better. Like the farmers and factory workers, they were good to us. They didn’t care about your history or who your family was. But I wouldn’t want to go back to that time. It was a horrible life, and I would never want to go through that again. Even though I was a kid, adults had so much pressure and everyone was scared. As kids, we didn’t really understand it most of the time. But even then, I didn’t like it. Wen Ge (Cultural Revolution) lasted a total of ten years. It was really fierce at the beginning, but gradually calmed down towards the end.