Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

16. "Soar to Heaven, and Pierce the Earth"

Under Mao a generation of teenagers grew up expecting to fight class enemies, and the vague calls in the press for a Cultural Revolution had stoked the feeling that a 'war' was imminent. Some politically well-attuned youngsters sensed that their idol, Mao, was directly involved, and their indoctrination gave them no alternative but to take his side.

By the beginning of June a few activists from a middle school attached to one of China's most renowned universities, qmghua in Peking, had got together several times to discuss their strategies for the forthcoming battle and had decided to call themselves 'the Red Guards of Chairman Mao." They adopted a quotation by Mao that had appeared in the People's Daily, "Rebellion is justified," as their motto.

These early Red Guards were 'high officials' children."

Only they could feel sufficiently secure to engage in activities of this kind. In addition, they had been brought up in a political environment, and were more interested in political intrigues than most Chinese. Mme Mao noticed them, and gave them an audience in July. On x August, Mao made the unusual gesture of writing them an open letter to offer his 'most warm and fiery support." In the letter he subtly modified his earlier saying to "Rebellion against reactionaries is justified." To the teenage zealots, this was like being addressed by God. After this, Red Guard groups sprang up all over Peking, and then throughout China.

Mao wanted the Red Guards to be his shock troops. He could see that the people were not responding to his repeated calls to attack the capitalist-roaders. The Communist Party had a sizable constituency, and, moreover, the lesson of 1957 was also still fresh in people's minds.

Then, too, Mao had called on the population to criticize Party officials, but those who had taken up his invitation had ended up being labeled as rightists and had been damned. Most people suspected the same tactic again 'enticing the snake out of its haunt in order to cut off its head."

If he was to get the population to act, Mao would have to remove authority from the Party and establish absolute loyalty and obedience to himself alone. To achieve this he needed terror an intense terror that would block all other considerations and crush all other fears. He saw boys and girls in their teens and early twenties as his ideal agents.

They had been brought up in the fanatical personality cult of Mao and the militant doctrine of' class struggle." They were endowed with the qualities of youth- they were rebellious, fearless, eager to fight for a 'just cause," thirsty for adventure and action. They were also irresponsible, ignorant, and easy to manipulate and prone to violence. Only they could give Mao the immense force that he needed to terrorize the whole society, and to create a chaos that would shake, and then shatter, the foundation of the Party. One slogan summed up the Red Guards' mission: "We vow to launch a bloody war against anyone who dares to resist the Cultural Revolution, who dares to oppose Chairman Mao!"

All policies and orders had hitherto been conveyed through a tightly controlled system which was entirely in the hands of the Party. Mao now discarded this channel and turned directly to the masses of the youth. He did this by combining two quite different methods: vague, high flown rhetoric carried openly in the press; and conspirao to rial manipulation and agitation conducted by the Cultural Revolution Authority, particularly his wife. It was they who filled out the real meaning of the rhetoric. Phrases like 'rebellion against authority," 'revolution in education," 'destroying an old world so a new one could be born," and 'creating new man' all of which attracted many in the West in the 1960s were interpreted as calls for violent action. Mao understood the latent violence of the young, and said that since they were well fed and had had their lessons stopped, they could easily be stirred up and use their boundless energy to go out and wreak havoc.

To arouse the young to controlled mob violence, victims were necessary. The most conspicuous targets in any school were the teachers, some of whom had already been victimized by work teams and school authorities in the last few months. Now the rebellious children set upon them.

Teachers were better targets than parents, who could only have been attacked in an atomized and isolated manner.

They were also more important figures of authority than parents in Chinese culture. In practically every school in China, teachers were abused and beaten, sometimes fatally. Some schoolchildren set up prisons in which teachers were tortured.

But this was not enough on its own to generate the kind of terror that Mao wanted. On 18 August, a mammoth rally was held in Tiananmen Square in the center of Peking, with over a million young participants. Lin Biao appeared in public as Mao's deputy and spokesman for the first time. He made a speech calling on the Red Guards to charge out of their schools and 'smash up the four olds' defined as 'old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits."

Following this obscure call, Red Guards all over China took to the streets, giving full vent to their vandalism, ignorance, and fanaticism. They raided people's houses, smashed their antiques, tore up paintings and works of calligraphy. Bonfires were lit to consume books. Very soon nearly all treasures in private collections were destroyed.

Many writers and artists committed suicide after being cruelly beaten and humiliated, and being forced to witness their work being burned to ashes. Museums were raided.

Palaces, temples, ancient tombs, statues, pagodas, city walls anything 'old' was pillaged. The few things that survived, such as the Forbidden City, did so only because Premier Zhou Enlai sent the army to guard them, and issued specific orders that they should be protected. The Red Guards only pressed on when they were encouraged.

Mao hailed the Red Guards' actions as "Very good indeed!" and ordered the nation to support them.

He encouraged the Red Guards to pick on a wider range of victims in order to increase the terror. Prominent writers, artists, scholars, and most other top professionals, who had been privileged under the Communist regime, were now categorically condemned as 'reactionary bourgeois authorities." With the help of some of these people's colleagues who hated them for various reasons, ranging from fanaticism to envy, the Red Guards began to abuse them. Then there were the old 'class enemies': former landlords and capitalists, people with Kuomintang connections, those condemned in previous political campaigns like the 'rightists' and their children.

Quite a number of' class enemies' had not been executed or sent to labor camps, but had been kept 'under surveillance." Before the Cultural Revolution, the police were allowed to release information about them only to authorized personnel. Now that policy changed. The police chief, one of Mao's own liege men Xie Fuzhi, ordered his men to offer the 'class enemies' to the Red Guards, and to tell the Red Guards about their crimes, such as their 'intention to overthrow the Communist government."

Up till the beginning of the Cultural Revolution torture, as distinct from torment, had been forbidden. Now Xie ordered policemen 'not to be bound by the old rules, no matter if they had been set by the police authoriues or by the state." After saying "I'm not in favor of beating people to death," he continued: "But if some [Red Guards] hate the class enemies so much that they want to kill them, you don't have to force them to stop."

A wave of beating and torture swept the country, mainly during house raids. Almost invariably, the families would be ordered to kneel on the floor and kowtow to the Red Guards; they were then beaten with the brass buckles of the Guards' leather belts. They were kicked around, and one side of their head was shaved, a humiliating style called the 'yin and yang head," because it resembled the classic Chinese symbol of a dark side (yin) and a light side (yang).

Most of their possessions were either smashed or taken away.

It was worst in Peking, where the Cultural Revolution Authority was on hand to incite the young people. In the city center some theaters and cinemas were turned into torture chambers. Victims were dragged in from all over Peking. Pedestrians avoided the spots because the streets around echoed with the screams of the victims.

The earliest Red Guard groups were made up of high officials' children. Soon, when more people from other backgrounds joined, some of the high officials' children managed to keep their own special groups, like the "Pickets." Mao and his camarilla took a number of steps calculated to increase their sense of power. At the second mass Red Guards rally, Lin Biao wore their arm band to signify that he was one of them. Mme Mao made them the guards of honor in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square on National Day, 1 October. As a result, some of them developed an outrageous 'theory of the bloodline," summed up in the words of a song: "The son of a hero father is always a great man; a reactionary father produces nothing but a bastard!" Armed with this 'theory," some high officials' children tyrannized and even tortured children from 'undesirable' backgrounds.

Mao let all this happen in order to generate the terror and chaos he wanted. He was not scrupulous about either who was hit or who were the agents of violence. These early victims were not his real targets, and Mao did not particularly like or trust his young Red Guards. He was simply using them. For their part, the vandals and torturers were not always devoted to Mao. They were just having a wild time, having been licensed to indulge their worst instincts.

Only a small proportion of the Red Guards was actually involved in cruelty or violence. Many were able to avoid taking part because the Red Guard was a loose organization which, by and large, did not physically force its members to do evil. As a matter of fact, Mao himself never ordered the Red Guards to kill, and his instructions regarding violence were contradictory. One could feel devoted to Mao without perpetrating violence or evil.

Those who chose to do so could not simply blame Mao.

But Mao's insidious encouragement of atrocities was undeniable. On 18 August, at the first of the eight gigantic rallies which altogether were attended by thirteen million people, he asked a female Red Guard what her name was.

When she answered "Bin-bin," which means 'gentle," he said disapprovingly, "Be violent' (yao-wu-ma). Mao rarely spoke in public, and this remark, well publicized, was naturally followed like the gospel. At the third mammoth rally, on 15 September, when the Red Guards' atrocities were reaching their zenith, Mao's recognized spokesman, Lin Biao, announced, with Mao standing next to him: "Red Guard fighters: The direction of your battles has always been correct. You have soundly, heartily battered the capitalist-roaders, the reactionary bourgeois authorities, the bloodsuckers and parasites. You have done the right thing!

And you have done marvelously!" At that, hysterical cheers, deafening screams of "Long live Chairman Mao," uncontrollable tears, and howled pledges of loyalty took possession of the crowds filling the enormous Tiananmen Square. Mao waved paternally, generating more frenzy.

Through his Cultural Revolution Authority, Mao kept control over the Peking Red Guards. He then sent them to the provinces to tell the local young people what to do. In Jinzhou, in Manchuria, my grandmother's brother Yu-lin and his wife were beaten up, and they and their two children were exiled to a barren part of the country. Yu-lin had come under suspicion when the Communists first arrived, because of his possession of a Kuomintang intelligence card, but nothing had happened to him or his family until now. My family did not know about this at the time.

People avoided exchanging news. With accusations so willfully concocted, and the consequences so horrific, you never knew what catastrophe you might bring to your correspondents, or they to you.

People in Sichuan had little idea of the extent of the terror in Peking. There were fewer atrocities in Sichuan, partly because the Red Guards there were not directly incited by the Cultural Revolution Authority. In addition, the police in Sichuan turned a deaf ear to their minister in Peking, Mr. Xie, and refused to offer up the 'class enemies' under their control to the Red Guards. However, the Red Guards in Sichuan, as in other provinces, copied the actions of those in Peking. There was the same kind of chaos as everywhere in China controlled chaos. The Red Guards may have looted the houses which they were authorized to raid, but they rarely stole from shops. Most sectors, including commerce, the postal services and transport, worked normally.

In my school, a Red Guard organization was formed on 26 August, with the help of some Red Guards from Peking.

I had been staying at home feigning illness to escape the political meetings and frightening slogans, and was unaware that the organization had been set up until a couple of days later, when a phone call summoned me back 'to participate in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." When I got to the school, I noticed that many pupils were proudly wearing red armbands with gold characters saying "Red Guards."

In these early days, the newborn Red Guards had the immense prestige of being Mao's babies. It went without saying that I should join, and I immediately submitted my application to the Red Guard leader in my form a fifteen-year-old boy named Geng who had been constantly seeking my company, but became shy and gauche the moment he was with me.

I could not help wondering how Geng had become a Red Guard, and he was mysterious about his activities. But it was very clear to me that the Red Guards were mostly high officials' children. The head of the school Red Guards was one of the sons of Commissar Li, the Party first secretary for Sichuan. I ought to have been a natural; few pupils had fathers in higher positions than mine. But Geng privately told me that I was considered soft and 'too inactive," and must be toughened up before they could consider accepting me.

Since June, there had been an unwritten rule that everyone should remain in school around-the-clock to devote themselves entirely to the Cultural Revolution. I was one of the few who did not. But now the thought of playing truant somehow gave me a sense of danger, and I felt compelled to stay. The boys slept in the classrooms so we girls could occupy the dormitories. Non-Red Guards were attached to Red Guard groups and taken with them on their various activities.

The day after I returned to school, I was taken out with several dozen other children to change street names to make them more 'revolutionary." The street where I lived was called Commerce Street,. and we debated what it should be renamed. Some proposed "Beacon Road," to signify the role of our provincial Party leaders. Others said "Public Servants' Street," as that was what officials should be, according to a quote of Mao's. Eventually we left without settling on anything because a preliminary problem could not be solved: the name plate was too high up on the wall to reach. As far as I knew, no one ever went back.

In Peking the Red Guards were much more zealous. We heard about their successes: the British mission was now on " Anti-Imperialism Road," the Russian embassy on " Anti-Revisionism Road."

In Chengdu, streets were shedding their old names like "Five Generations under One Roof' (a Confucian virtue), "The Poplar and Willow Are Green" (green was not a revolutionary color), and "Jade Dragon" (a symbol of feudal power). They became "Destroy the Old," "The East Is Red," and "Revolution" streets. A famous restaurant called "The Fragrance of Sweet Wind" had its plaque broken to bits. It was renamed "The Whiff of Gunpowder."

Traffic was in confusion for several days. For red to mean "stop' was considered impossibly counterrevolutionary. It should of course mean "go." And traffic should not keep to the right, as was the practice, it should be on the left. For a few days we ordered the traffic policemen aside and controlled the traffic ourselves. I was stationed at a street corner telling cyclists to ride on the left. In Chengdu there were not many cars or traffic lights, but at the few big crossroads there was chaos. In the end, the old rules reasserted themselves, owing to Zhou Enlai, who managed to convince the Peking Red Guard leaders. But the youngsters found justifications for this: I was told by a Red Guard in my school that in Britain traffic kept to the left, so ours had to keep to the right to show our anti-imperialist spirit. She did not mention America.

As a child I had always shied away from collective activity. Now, at fourteen, I felt even more averse to it. I suppressed this dread because of the constant sense of guilt I had come to feel, through my education, when I was out of step with Mao. I kept telling myself that I must train my thoughts according to the new revolutionary theories and practices. If there was anything I did not understand, I must reform myself and adapt. However, I found myself trying very hard to avoid militant acts such as stopping passersby and cutting their long hair, or narrow trouser legs, or skirts, or breaking their semi-high-heeled shoes. These things had now become signs of bourgeois decadence, according to the Peking Red Guards.

My own hair came to the critical attention of my schoolmates. I had to have it cut to the level of my earlobes. Secretly, though much ashamed of myself for being so "petty bourgeois," I shed tears over losing my long plaits. As a young child, my nurse had a way of doing my hair which made it stand up on top of my head like a willow branch. She called it "fireworks shooting up to the sky." Until the early 1960s I wore my hair in two coils, with rings of little silk flowers wound around them. In the mornings, while I hurried through my breakfast, my grandmother or our maid would be doing my hair with loving hands. Of all the colors for the silk flowers, my favorite was pink.

After 1964, following Mao's calls for an austere lifestyle, more suited to the atmosphere of class struggle, I put patches on my trousers to try to look 'proletarian' and wore my hair in the uniform style of two plaits with no colors, but long hair had not been condemned as yet. My grandmother cut it for me, muttering all the while. Her hair survived, because she never went out at that time.

The famous teahouses in Chengdu also came under attack as "decadent." I did not understand why, but did not ask. In the summer of 1966 I learned to suppress my sense of reason. Most Chinese had been doing that for a long time.

A Sichuan teahouse is a unique place. It usually sits in the embrace of a bamboo grove or under the canopy of a large tree. Around the low, square wooden tables are bamboo armchairs which give out a faint aroma even after years of use. To prepare the tea a pinch of tea leaves is dropped into a cup and boiling water is poured on top. Then a lid is sunk loosely onto the cup, allowing the steam to seep through the gap, bringing out the fragrance of the jasmine or other blossoms. Sichuan has many kinds of tea. Jasmine alone has five grades.

Teahouses are as important to the Sichuanese as pubs are to the British. Older men, in particular, spend a lot of time there, puffing their long-stemmed pipes over a cup of tea and a plateful of nuts and melon seeds. The waiter shuttles between the seats with a kettle of hot water which he pours from a couple of feet away with pinpoint accuracy.

A skillful waiter makes the water level higher than the edge of the cup without it spilling over. As a child I was always mesmerized watching the water fall from the spout. I was rarely taken to a teahouse, though. It had an air of indulgence of which my parents disapproved.

Like European cafes, a Sichuan teahouse provides newspapers on bamboo frames. Some customers go there to read, but it is primarily a place to meet and chat, exchanging news and gossip. There is often entertainment storytelling punctuated with wooden clappers.

Perhaps because they had an aura of leisure, and if people were sitting in one they were not out making revolution, teahouses had to be closed. I went with a couple of dozen pupils between thirteen and sixteen years old, most of whom were Red Guards, to a small one on the bank of the Silk River. Chairs and tables were spread outside under a Chinese scholar tree. The summer evening breeze from the river fanned out a heavy scent from the clusters of white blossoms. The customers, mostly men, raised their heads from their chessboards as we approached along the uneven cobblestones that paved the bank. We stopped under the tree. A few voices from our group started to shout: "Pack up! Pack up! Don't linger in this bourgeois place!" A boy from my form snatched a corner of the paper chessboard on the nearest table and jerked it away. The wooden pieces scattered on the ground.

The men who had been playing were quite young. One of them lunged forward, his fists clenched, but his friend quickly pulled the corner of his jacket. Silently they began to pick up the chess pieces. The boy who had jerked away their board shouted: "No more chess playing! Don't you know it is a bourgeois habit?" He stooped to sweep up a handful of pieces and threw them toward the river.

I had been brought up to be courteous and respectful to anyone older than me, but now to be revolutionary meant being aggressive and militant. Gentleness was considered 'bourgeois." I was repeatedly criticized for it, and it was one reason given for not allowing me into the Red Guards.

Over the years of the Cultural Revolution, I was to witness people being attacked for saying 'thank you' too often, which was branded as 'bourgeois hypocrisy'; courtesy was on the brink of extinction.

But now, outside the teahouse, I could see that most of us, including the Red Guards, were uneasy about the new style of speaking and lording it over others. Not many of us opened our mouths. Quietly, a few started to paste rectangular slogans onto the walls of the teahouse and the tnmk of the scholar tree.

The customers silently began to walk away along the bank. Watching their disappearing figures, a feeling of loss overwhelmed me. A couple of months before, these adults probably would have told us to get lost. But now they knew that Mao's backing had given the Red Guards power.

Thinking back, I can see the thrill some children must have felt at demonstrating their power over adults. A popular Red Guard slogan went: "We can soar to heaven, and pierce the earth, because our Great Leader Chairman Mao is our supreme commander!" As this declaration reveals, the Red Guards were not enjoying genuine freedom of self-expression. From the start they were nothing but the tool of a tyrant.

Standing on the riverbank in August 1966, though, I was just confused. I went into the teahouse with my fellow pupils. Some asked the manager to close down. Others started pasting slogans on the walls. Many customers were getting up to go, but in a far corner one old man was still sitting at his table, calmly sipping his tea. I stood beside him, feeling embarrassed that I was supposed to assume the voice of authority. He looked at me, and resumed his noisy sipping. He had a deeply lined face that was almost stereotypical 'working class' as shown in propaganda pictures. His hands reminded me of one of my textbook stories which described the hands of an old peasant: they could bundle thorny firewood without feeling any pain.

Perhaps this old man was very sure of his unquestionable background, or his advanced age, which had hitherto been the object of respect, or perhaps he simply did not think I was very impressive. Anyway, he remained in his seat taking no notice of me. I summoned up my courage and pleaded in a low voice, "Please, could you leave?" Without looking at me, he said, "Where to?"

"Home, of course," I replied. He turned to face me. There was emotion in his voice, though he spoke quietly.

"Home? What home? I share a tiny room with my two grandsons. I have a corner surrounded by a bamboo curtain. Just for the bed. That's all. When the kids are home I come here for some peace and quiet. Why do you have to take this away from me?"

His words filled me with shock and shame. This was the first time I had heard a firsthand account of such miserable living conditions. I turned and walked away.

This teahouse, like all the others in Sichuan, was shut for fifteen years until 1981, when Deng Xiaoping's reforms decreed it could be reopened. In 1985 I went back there with a British friend. We sat under the scholar tree.

An old waitress came to fill our cups with a kettle from two feet away. Around us, people were playing chess. It was one of the happiest moments of that trip back.

When Lin Biao called for everything that represented the old culture to be destroyed, some pupils in my school started to smash things up. Being more than 2,000 years old, the school had a lot of antiques and was therefore a prime site for action. The school gateway had an old tiled roof with carved eaves. These were hammered to pieces.

The same happened to the sweeping blue-glazed roof of the big temple which had been used as a ping-pong hall.

The pair of giant bronze incense burners in front of the temple were toppled, and some boys urinated into them.

In the back garden, pupils with big hammers and iron rods went along the sandstone bridges casually breaking the little statues. On one side of the sports field was a pair of towering rectangular tablets made of red sandstone, each twenty feet high. Some lines about Confucius were carved on them in beautiful calligraphy. A huge rope was tied around them, and two gangs pulled. It took them a couple of days, as the foundations were deep. They had to get some workers from outside to dig a hole around the tablets.

When the monuments finally crashed down amidst cheers, they lifted part of the path that ran behind them.

All the things I loved were disappearing. The saddest thing of all for me was the ransacking of the library: the golden filed roof, the delicately sculpted windows, the blue painted chairs… Bookshelves were turned upside down, and some pupils tore books to pieces just for the hell of it.

Afterward, X-shaped white paper strips with black characters were stuck on what was left of the doors and windows to signal that the building was sealed.

Books were major targets of Mao's order to destroy.

Because they had not been written within the last few months, and therefore did not quote Mao on every page, some Red Guards declared that they were all 'poisonous weeds." With the exception of Marxist classics and the works of Stalin, Mao, and the late Lu Xun, whose name Mme Mao was using for her personal vendettas, books were burning all across China. The country lost most of its written heritage. Many of the books which survived later went into people's stoves as fuel.

But there was no bonfire at my school. The head of the school Red Guards had been a very conscientious student.

A rather feminine-looking seventeen-year-old, he had been made the Red Guard leader because his father was the Party chief for the province, rather than because of his own ambition. While he could not prevent the general vandalism, he did manage to stop the books from being burned.

Like everyone else, I was supposed to join in the 'revolutionary actions." But I, like most pupils, was able to avoid them, because the destruction was not organized, and no one made sure we took part. I could see that many pupils hated the whole thing, but nobody tried to stop it. Like myself, many boys and girls may well have been telling themselves that they were wrong to feel sorry about the destruction and needed to reform. But subconsciously we all knew we would have been crushed instantly had we raised any objection.

By then 'denunciation meetings' were becoming a major feature of the Cultural Revolution. They involved a hysterical crowd and were seldom without physical brutality.

Peking University had taken the lead, under the personal supervision of Mao. At its first denunciation meeting, on 18 June, over sixty professors and heads of departments, including the chancellor, were beaten, kicked, and forced to kneel for hours. Dunce caps with humiliating slogans were forced onto their heads. Ink was poured over their faces to make them black, the color of evil, and slogans were pasted all over their bodies. Two students gripped the arms of each victim, twisting them around behind his back and pushing them up with such ferocity as almost to dislocate them. This posture was called the 'jet plane," and soon became a feature of most denunciation meetings all over the country.

I was once called by the Red Guards in my form to attend such a meeting. Horror made me feel very chilly in the hot summer afternoon when I saw a dozen or so teachers standing on the platform on the sports ground, with their heads bent and their arms twisted into the 'jet plane' position. Then, some were kicked on the back of their knees and forced to kneel, while others, including my English-language teacher, an elderly man with the fine manner of a classical gentleman, were forced to stand on long, narrow benches. He found it hard to keep his balance, and swayed and fell, cutting his forehead on the sharp corner of a bench. A Red Guard standing next to him instinctively stooped and extended his hands to help, but immediately straightened up and assumed an exaggeratedly harsh posture, with his fists clenched, yelling: "Get back onto the bench!" He did not want to be seen as soft on a 'class enemy." Blood trickled down the teacher's forehead and coagulated on the side of his face.

He, like the other teachers, was accused of all sorts of outlandish crimes; but they were really there because they were graded, and therefore the best, or because some pupils had grudges against them.

I learned in later years that the pupils in my school behaved relatively mildly because, being in the most prestigious school, they were successful and academically inclined. In the schools which took in wilder boys, there were teachers who were beaten to death. I witnessed only one beating in my school. My philosophy teacher had been somewhat dismissive to those who had not done well in her classes, and some of them hated her and now started to accuse her of being 'decadent." The 'evidence," which reflected the extreme conservatism of the Cultural Revolution, was that she had met her husband on a bus. They got to chatting, and fell in love. Love arising out of a chance meeting was regarded as a sign of immorality. The boys took her to an office and 'took revolutionary actions over her' the euphemism for beating somebody up. Before they started, they called for me especially and made me attend.

"What will she think when she sees you, her pet pupil, there!"

I was considered her favorite because she had praised my work often. But I was also told that I should be there because I had been too soft, and needed 'a lesson in revolution."

When the beating started, I shrank at the back of the ring of pupils who crowded into the small office. A couple of classmates nudged me to go to the front and join in the hitting. I ignored them. In the center my teacher was being kicked around, rolling in agony on the floor, her hair askew.

As she cried out, begging them to stop, the boys who had set upon her said in cold voices, "Now you beg! Haven't you been ferocious? Now beg properly!" They kicked her again, and ordered her to kowtow to them and say "Please spare my life, masters!" To make someone kowtow and beg was an extreme humiliation. She sat up and stared blankly ahead: I met her eyes through her knotted hair. In them I saw agony, desperation, and emptiness. She was gasping for breath, and her face was ashen gray. I sneaked out of the room. Several pupils followed me. Behind us I could hear people shouting slogans, but their voices were tentative and uncertain. Many pupils must have been scared. I walked away swiftly, my heart pounding. I was afraid I might be caught and beaten myself. But no one came after me, and I was not condemned afterward.

I did not get into trouble in those days, in spite of my obvious lack of enthusiasm. Apart from the fact that the Red Guards were loosely organized, I was, according to the 'theory of bloodlines," born bright red, because my father was a high official. Although I was disapproved of, nobody did anything drastic, except criticize me.

At the time, the Red Guards divided pupils into three categories: 'reds," 'blacks," and 'grays." The 'reds' were from the families of 'workers, peasants, revolutionary officials, revolutionary officers, and revolutionary martyrs."

The 'blacks' were those with parents classified as 'land-lords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionary bad elements, and rightists." The 'grays' came from ambiguous families such as shop assistants and clerks. In my year, all pupils ought to have been 'reds' because of the screening in the enrollment. But the pressure of the Cultural Revolution meant that some villains had to be found. As a result, more than a dozen became 'grays' or 'blacks."

There was a girl named Ai-ling in my year. We were old friends, and I had often been to her house and knew her family well. Her grandfather had been a prominent economist, and her family had been enjoying a very privileged life under the Communists. Their house was large, elegant, and luxurious, with an exquisite garden much better than my family's apartment. I was especially attracted by their collection of antiques, in particular the snuff bottles which Ai-ling's grandfather had brought back from England where he had studied at Oxford in the 1920s.

Now, suddenly, Ai-ling became a 'black." I heard that pupils from her form had raided her house, smashed all the antiques, including the snuff bottles, and beaten her parents and grandfather with the brass buckles of their belts. The next day when I saw her she was wearing a scarf. Her classmates had given her a 'yin and yang head."

She had had to have it completely shaved. She wept with me. I felt terribly inadequate because I could not find any words to comfort her.

In my own form a meeting was organized by the Red Guards at which we all had to give our family backgrounds so we could be categorized. I announced 'revolutionary official' with great relief. Three or four pupils said 'office staff." In the jargon of the day, this was different from 'officials," who held more senior positions. The division was unclear, as there was no definition of what 'senior' meant. Nevertheless, these vague labels had to be used on various forms, all of which had a space for 'family background." Together with a girl whose father was a shop assistant, the children of 'office staff' were branded as 'grays." It was announced that they were to be kept under surveillance, sweep the school grounds and clean toilets, bow their heads at all times, and be prepared to be lectured by any Red Guard who cared to address them. They also had to report their thoughts and behavior every day.

These pupils suddenly looked subdued and shrunken.

Their vigor and enthusiasm, which they had had in abundance up to now, had deserted them. One gift bent her head and tears streamed down her cheeks. We had been friends.

After the meeting I went over to her to say something comforting, but when she raised her head I saw resentment, almost hatred, in her eyes. I walked away without a word, and wandered listlessly through the grounds. It was the end of August. The Cape jasmine bushes spread their rich fragrance. It seemed strange there should be any scent at all.

As dusk was descending I was walking back to the dormitory when I saw something flash by a second-floor window of a classroom block about forty yards away. There was a muffled bang at the foot of the building. The hazy branches of some orange trees prevented me from seeing what was happening, but people started to run in the direction of the noise. Out of the confused, suppressed exclamations I made out the message: "Someone has jumped out of the window!"

I instinctively raised my hands to cover my eyes, and ran to my room. I was terribly scared. My mind's eye fixated on the blurry crooked figure in midair. Hurriedly I shut the windows, but the noise of people talking nervously about what had happened filtered through the thin glass.

A seventeen-year-old girl had attempted suicide. Before the Cultural Revolution, she had been one of the leaders of the Communist Youth League, and had been a model in studying Chairman Mao's works and learning from Lei Feng. She had done many good deeds like washing her comrades' clothes and cleaning out toilets, and frequently gave talks to the school about how loyally she followed Mao's teachings. She was often to be seen strolling deep in conversation with a fellow pupil, with a conscientious and purposeful look on her face, carrying out 'heart-to heart duties with someone who wanted to join the Youth League. But now, suddenly, she had been categorized as a 'black." Her father was 'office staff." He worked for the municipal government, and was a Party member. But some of her classmates who found her a 'pain," and whose fathers were in higher posts, decided she should be a 'black." In the last couple of days, she had been put under guard with other 'blacks' and 'grays' and forced to pull grass out of the sports ground. To humiliate her, her classmates had shaved her beautiful black hair, leaving her head grotesquely bald. On that evening, the 'reds' in her form had been giving her and the other victims an insulting lecture.

She retorted that she was more loyal to Chairman Mao than they were. The 'reds' slapped her and told her she was not fit to talk about her loyalty to Mao because she was a class enemy. She ran to the window and threw herself out.

Stunned and scared, the Red Guards rushed her to a hospital. She did not die, but she was crippled for life.

When I saw her many months later on the street, she was bent over on crutches, her eyes blank.

On the night of her attempted suicide, I could not sleep.

The moment I closed my eyes, an indistinct figure loomed over me, smeared with blood. I was terrified and shaking.

The next day I asked for sick leave, which was granted.

Home seemed to be the only escape from the horror at school. I desperately wished I would never have to go out again.