Day: November 2, 2023

 My 同士,

With the passing of our leader, Mao Zedong, I feel as if I have lost our emotional support. We have shown our contribution and loyalty to him in everything in our lives. And now that the politics of the Gang of Four is over, it feels like an era has ended. It has been many years since I started writing this blog, but as I look back into the past, the political stress on us has been immense. One of my friends told me that after the oppressive rule by the Gang of Four, her mother was sentenced innocent after the end of Gang of Four, but was never able to meet her. This is because she has gone to far places to protect herself instead of being with her mother and being suspected. I hope society will change and there will be no such sad farewells.

You are probably aware of the difference between rural and urban areas, which used to be very large, and the Cultural Revolution, which aimed to reduce this gap and produce a successor to the revolution. It was a political struggle that mobilized the masses, but it is ambiguous whether the goal of this Cultural Revolution was achieved. Because the sacrifices were too much, it was a movement that directly mobilized the Red Guards and changed established notions of what was possible. Today, I want to talk more about this movement. The cultural heritage related to religion was destroyed, and those with wealth, such as intellectuals and landowners, were expelled. In other words, the most peaceful people in this period were poor peasant families. Also, the Red Guards, who were ardent Maoists, were ordered to attend the Down to the Countryside Movement, in which they were instructed to go to the countryside and farm. This plan was an apparent failure. Some young people successfully learned the importance and difficulties of farming, but many ran away or died from the harshness of the work.

Our life at this time was fear and trembling, as we fell upon each other and were always on the lookout to avoid suspicion of treason. Even young people who were optimistic about such revolutions were sometimes considered traitors within a day. I was told that one young student, especially those whose fathers were suspected of being not loyal to Mao, were told by their classmates, “You sons of Reactionary Capitalist stinking intellectuals,” and their families were torn apart. (p. 51) In some cases, the mother was cut off to prevent harm to the whole family. At school, “Those students who had the right to wear the Pioneers’ triangular red scarf received much more praise than those who didn’t, no matter what their grades;” (p. 16). In a world where one never knows when one might be labeled an insurgent and face the worst possible consequences, there is always a sense of uncertainty. Under these circumstances, I do not fully agree that the Cultural Revolution was a success.

Thank you for reading,

My Dear Readers,

 

First and foremost, I must express my terrible grief over the passing of our great leader Chairman Mao. I hope that we can come together as a people to keep ourselves strong in this time of national sadness.

Over the past four decades, I have attempted to inform you on all of the important events we have lived through as citizens of the great nation of China. I fear that I am growing too old to retain my post for much longer, and this will likely be the last report of my career. For this last report, I have been assigned to cover the difficult topic of the Cultural Revolution. I will do this by evaluating the success of the Cultural Revolution’s goals. The objectives of the Revolution were to bring the people of the countryside and those in urban areas closer together and to create a new generation of revolutionaries to succeed the generation of liberators. In order to evaluate these goals, I will refer to the manuscript of the Cultural Revolution memoir by Liang Heng, as he was someone who lived through each important phase of the Revolution.

If one of the major goals of the Cultural Revolution was to close the gap between the rural and urban populations, it both succeeded and failed. During the revolution, tens of millions of urbanites, re-educated cadres, and educated youth were “sent down” to the countryside to learn from the peasants and contribute to the revolution from the countryside. Liang Heng’s older sisters are both sent as educated youths before eventually he and his father are sent following his father’s re-education as a rightest intellectual (Liang, 161). In a theater production Liang Heng attended, he described the educated youth being portrayed as going down to the countryside and being welcomed with open arms by the peasants, signifying the union between the two different parts of the population (Liang, 162). While Liang Heng said that he was excited to go to the countryside, he acknowledged that he knew they were going to a poor area, and that they would have to work hard to make a living (Liang, 162). In describing the feelings he had when first departing, Liang Heng captures the point of the cultural revolution, with the excitement of the urbanites to join the peasants.

While the purpose was to bring the people together, it was difficult in practice as the urbanites that were relocated to the countryside had no experience, and were not easily able to contribute to the rural way of life. Liang Heng recalled that the peasants viewed them as more mouths to feed which would not help to lighten the workload (Liang, 170). This shows the great flaw in this goal of the Cultural Revolution. While it technically brought the people closer together by forcing members of the urban population to relocate to the countryside, it actually made things more difficult as they were not suited to help with rural work.

The other goal of the Revolution to create a new generation of revolutionary successors was more successful as the new generation was sent through a process of hardship similar to the generation of liberators before the civil war and the ensuing Communist Party victory. The Red Guards that carried out the revolution were devoted to Chairman Mao and wanted to improve the future of China under his guidance. Mao himself encouraged the Red Guards, telling them that a “Revolution is justified” (Dietrich, 184). The following violence was seen as justified by the Red Guards as they attacked the old ways, spurred on by the Chairman’s encouragement (Dietrich, 187). Through violence and persecution of targeted groups, the revolutionary forces staged their claim as the successors of the revolutionaries of the past. The violence of the Cultural Revolution created a conflict like the civil war had, creating more hardships for the new generation to weather and further mold them into the future of the Communist Party.

My friends, the Cultural Revolution was a time of great trouble for our nation. With people from the cities and countryside mixing and slowing down production, food scarcity made things even more difficult. The violence of the revolution only made people fear the government, and created more division, while also giving young revolutionaries a chance to make an impact on the future. After all that has transpired in the last decade and beyond, I hope for a quiet period for at least the near future, so I may enjoy my retirement without worry. Thank you for sticking with me for this long. I hope I have given you insight into all that our great nation has gone through.

 

As always, stay safe,

孙诚

In 1977, as the Cultural Revolution came to an end, we, the Comrade reporters who have witnessed decades of tumultuous change in the People’s Republic of China, reflect on the impact of this monumental period on our nation. While we continue to mourn the loss of our beloved Chairman Mao, we also share the collective relief that the oppressive reign of the Gang of Four has come to an end.

One of the key goals of the Cultural Revolution was to bridge the gap between the urban and rural areas of China. The idea was to diminish the disparities in living standards, education, and access to resources between these two distinct segments of the population. To achieve this goal, various policies and movements were initiated during the Cultural Revolution.

Land Reform, which had begun before the Cultural Revolution, aimed to redistribute land from landowners to the peasants, thereby reducing inequality in rural areas. The Cultural Revolution reinvigorated this process and sought to empower peasants by encouraging them to speak out against oppressive landlords. In some cases, it was successful in reducing the concentration of landownership and wealth, though the results were mixed and often depended on local conditions.

The “Down to the Countryside Movement” was another significant policy during the Cultural Revolution. It involved sending educated urban youth to rural areas to learn from peasants and contribute to agricultural production. This was intended to not only narrow the urban-rural gap but also to cultivate revolutionary successors among the youth. Many urban youth were indeed sent to the countryside, and they experienced life and work on farms firsthand. Some of them gained a greater understanding of the challenges faced by rural populations and the importance of agricultural labor.

However, the success of this effort also varied. While some urban youth were positively impacted and learned valuable life lessons, many faced hardships and struggled to adapt to the grueling rural lifestyle. In some cases, the program disrupted their education and personal development. The extent to which it closed the urban-rural gap and created revolutionary successors is a matter of debate.

In conclusion, the Cultural Revolution did make efforts to address the disparities between urban and rural areas and sought to create revolutionary successors from the urban youth. However, its success in achieving these goals was mixed, with both positive and negative outcomes. As China moves into a new phase of its history, we, as veteran reporters, leave the task of further analysis and reflection to the younger generations. The legacy of the Cultural Revolution remains complex and multifaceted, and only time will reveal its lasting impact on our great nation.

Dear Comrades,

I know you all haven’t heard from me for a while, but I need to update you of the impact of the Cultural Revolution. It is 1977, and the revolution has come to an end, and I am in tears that our beloved Chairman Mao has passed away. In his book, Son of the Revolution, Liang Heng discusses the changes caused from the Cultural Revolution. Although I strongly suggest everyone read this book, to quickly grasp the meaning of this revolution, I will provide you all with this single quote.

The reading describes the event when Heng’s father frantically defended himself in an argument with his son, saying: “It’s because I’m none of those things that I believe the Party and Chairman Mao. I’ve done nothing to wrong you. You can continue to participate in the Revolution. If you want to, you can break off with me. Go live at school if you like. But I’ll tell you one thing. No matter how you hate me, I’ve always been loyal to Chairman Mao. And I’ve always supported the Party and Socialism.”

It is this quote that sums up the Cultural Revolution. From an emotional standpoint, this quote outlines the feelings the revolution incited, including fear, guilt, and betrayal etc. Fear of being labeled a rightist, or a defector of the party. Guilt, as in this case the father was guilty about his past statements about the party. The son demanding answers is also guilty about a member of his family having a troubled past, and if he is a reflection of his fathers outrageous bourgeoisie actions. This also reaffirms the increase for the emotion of betrayal, in the sense of betraying the traditional family unit, and relationships. The father here, understands that his son is considering moving out, and cutting off all contact with his father. This was a period of great uncertainty, where even one’s closest people around them were not to be trusted, which led to feelings of betrayal becoming contagious.

This quote also emphasized the meaning of a revolution. Revolution stems from revolutionary, a descriptive word for producing of immense change. The immense change, was the separation from the Confucius ideas of respecting your elders, maintaining a close family unit, instead it introduced the concept that the party is always the priority, being you are a shell of the party. Individualism no longer existed, and everyone was expected and needed to be loyal to the party, and that meant commonly betraying others, living in fear, being guilty for past actions or actions of others close to you etc. Indeed, This was a true revolution.

Tongzhimen,

I feel incredibly lucky to still have a platform like this to speak to you all about what is happening in China. To be involved in the cataloging of the many accomplishments of our late Chairman Mao was such an honor and has made it so important that I stay up-to-date on what is happening in our country and its Communist Party. My status as a long-time reporter has given me early access to an upcoming memoir by a man named Liang Heng about his and his family’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution. 

I feel that it would be a disservice to the country to not explicitly call out the Cultural Revolution as the period of terror that it was and for this reason I implore all of you to get your hands on Son of the Revolution when it comes out to understand, if one does not already, the violence and struggle our people had to endure because of this campaign. The Liang family began as faithful to and productive within the Communist Cause but slowly fell apart physically and emotionally because of this campaign. Liang Heng’s father was particularly loyal to his country and its government and remained so until his death, despite having been struggled against and demoted himself. The example of Liang Heng’s father encapsulates how the Cultural Revolution has decimated an entire generation of those loyal to the Cause; people who tried to do everything right and live according to the teachings of Chairman Mao were left behind, if not directly attacked, by the very country they were devoting their lives to serving. 

A particular moment that struck me while I was reading the memoir was from the time that Liang Heng and his father spent in the countryside after his father was sent there to work as a cadre for re-education purposes. He threw himself into the responsibilities associated with this job and tried his very best to serve the people whose lives he was overseeing. Determined to guide the masses into a communist lifestyle, “Father” probably thought himself ready for anything… leading to his devastation when orders were coming through that he knew would directly harm the peasants he was living with. Can raising and selling livestock for a few eggs really be an example of treacherous capitalist tendencies? Should these peasants, with their limited furniture and back-breaking labor, really be punished for trying to survive? Surely they could not be equated to the landlords we suffered under so many years ago, nor could they be included in Mao’s “Four Olds.” To his credit, Liang Heng’s father tried pleading with his higher-ups and stayed sure that Chairman Mao never meant “‘for his policies to harm the peasants,’” but his opinion was ignored and these peasants suffered as a result.

This moment struck me because it demonstrates how the Cultural Revolution punished even the most loyal of communists, people who just wanted to realize Mao’s vision of helping the peasant masses. Essentially, nobody was safe from being struggled, regardless of how deserving one actually was. All Liang Heng’s father wanted to do was help his people and he was ignored in the name of pursuing misguided plans pertaining to eliminating capitalism; surely there were more threatening and pressing issues than poor peasants trying to survive and pay off their debts. The flawed extremism and promotion of violence that marks the Cultural Revolution turned us against one another and distracted us from what really needed to be done. I hope that we as a country can learn from this chaotic period in our history to make sure we channel our energy toward helping those in need and only targeting those who actually seek to undermine our communist vision.

Dear Readers,

As I approach my retirement, I find it crucial to explore one last story, the story of the Cultural Revolution. China has been faced with an enormous set of challenges over the past few decades, from successfully reworking class within the countryside, to rooting out intellectual Rightists, China has overcome many hardships. During the final years of Chairman Mao’s rule, he unleashed his last and most important campaign: the Cultural Revolution.

The Chairman has passed away, and with party support to discuss the Cultural Revolution’s effects freely, I feel for the first time I can share my thoughts on the Cultural Revolution’s shortcomings. The gap between the countryside and urban centers persists, the youth have been disenfranchised by Party antics, and now we must evaluate the success of the Chairman’s goal to create a communist nation and inspire the youth to carry on China’s revolutionary processes.

The importance of peasants and rural life as the beating heart of China’s revolution dates to Mao’s experience during the Shanghai massacre in 1927. Once taking power, the Chairman has consistently advocated for the peasants, from Land Reform, to sending intellectuals down to the countryside during anti-Rightist campaign, through his latest attempt at empowering China’s youth in the Cultural Revolution. I have had the privilege of receiving an advanced copy of Liang Heng’s manuscript Son of the Revolution, which has provided an invaluable insight into the life of someone growing up during this turbulent period. Liang was the son of intellectuals, his father was a reporter for the Hunan Daily, and his mother was a local bureaucrat. During the Cultural Revolution, his family was swept up in the high tide of violent revolutionary activity from the Red Guards, eventually being sent to the countryside in Mao’s attempt to curb the violence. Liang felt the Cultural Revolution was turned inside out disenfranchising many young intellectuals, they signed up for work in the countryside because “they were exhausted, they had unhappy lives at home, and they had nothing to do at school.” It is evident through Liang’s account, the motivation to engage in rural work was not because of feeling inspired by Chairman Mao, but because they had no other choice, as they looked for a more stable life within the countryside. This mindset turned out to be misguided, Liang was struck by the poverty so many peasants faced, the lack of abundant food reserves and the means to purchase fertilizers for everyday life. Upon arrival the peasants remarked that “We’ve got to give you food, find you a place to work. What kind of help is that?” Peasants felt burdened by the untrained workers that were sent down to the countryside, they were already struggling to get by, and the requisitioning campaigns added to the burdens so many peasants faced. Consequently, this reveals the gap between urban centers and the rural countryside remained prevalent socially and economically. Peasants had no extra food to give, nor did they have the time to adequately train the unskilled intellectuals.

Youth became disenfranchised by the Cultural Revolution as they were given a central role by our great Chairman, but he pulled the rug out from underneath their feet once the revolution started to become excessively violent. At first, youth enthusiastically responded to the Chairman’s policies of rooting out intellectuals as they were following what Mao’s directives over radio broadcasts. China’s youth during this period were the first generation to grow up after the revolution, by giving them the opportunity to participate in revolution, Mao unleashed a charged and extremely enthusiastic group of people that ended with disastrous consequences. Factional violence and civil war among different youth groups with different interpretations of the Chairman’s policies brutally ripped China apart. Schools closed, people were struggled against, and many died. One Red Guard even enjoyed beating people of interest, revealing the gap between the empowered youth and their target groups. Liang Heng remembers feeling immense “disappointment,” when Chairman Mao called for a stop to the fighting and for the Red Guards “to go up to the mountains and down to the countryside.” His sisters and family felt incredible despair and anguish at the thought of spending the remainder of their lives in the countryside. Many peasants disliked the Party’s program to send the Red Guards to the countryside, because they had to Liang’s father, a stout supporter of the Party, had trouble defending Communist Party directives to confiscate livestock and grain upon understanding the scale of poverty within the countryside when compared to the relative prosperity found within urban centers. With Chairman Mao’s passing, the question becomes how the new regime will bridge the gap between urban centers and the countryside and empower the youth to become enthusiastic and productive members of society.

Greetings Tongzhimen,

As this tumultuous period finally comes to a close I now have the opportunity to reflect on the Cultural Revolution and the extent to which it achieved its two ambitious, main goals of closing the gap between the cities and the countryside and creating revolutionary successors from the urban, educated youth. Looking back, the two goals of the Cultural Revolution were only partially achieved and resulted in many negative consequences. 

Mao attempted to bridge the long-standing socioeconomic gap between the rural and the urban communities through the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement”. Educated urban youth like students, teachers, and professionals were sent to the countryside to help solve the labor shortage rural communities were facing, while at the same time establishing an appreciation of rural life among the educated urban youth. Connecting urban and rural communities is a noble goal however the movement had a lot of unintended consequences. The educated urban youth were ill-prepared for the harsh conditions of the countryside. The propaganda the party published gave the educated urban youth a false image of prosperous and advanced rural communities, the reality of poor village life hit them very hard as they had to live with no electricity or running water. The first round of the campaign was voluntary and when reports on the reality of the villages returned nobody wanted to go, but by then the campaign was no longer voluntary. The educated urban youth also were not physically strong and did not know the required farming techniques and skills but still required sustenance from the rural families, proving to be counterproductive. The mass migration to the countryside disrupted the education of an entire generation of urban youth, and the consequences of this will not be fully realized until years later when the generation ages. The generation was also isolated from their families and old urban social networks, leading to isolation and for some individuals serious psychological issues like depression and disillusionment. 

One successful initiative under this broader movement was Barefoot Doctors, the mobilization of doctors and medical professionals into rural communities. Historically, rural populations had poor or non-existent healthcare, and by providing medical care and teaching medical knowledge to locals in these rural communities the quality of healthcare improved.    

The physical embodiment of urban, educated revolutionary successors was the Red Guards. These groups were mostly comprised of high school and university students who all unwaveringly followed Mao Zedong thought. They were the army that helped advance the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards would engage in mass mobilization, confront perceived class enemies, and propagate Maoist thought. The intense ideological indoctrination and cult of personality surrounding Mao created a generation of individuals deeply loyal to Mao. They saw him as the supreme leader whose guidance was unquestionable. However, power struggles and extreme violence among revolutionary groups emerged, with each group claiming they loved Chairman Mao more. Innocent civilians were afraid to go out during the day for fear of being caught in the crossfire. Under the slogan “Attack with Words, Defend with Guns” the groups justified the fighting as members would acquire a range of weapons including grenades, bayonets, machine guns, cannons, tanks, and anti-aircraft missiles. Violence intensified until these groups were abolished by Mao. The cost of ideological conformity in the short term is the underdevelopment of the youth in the long term as political activism was prioritized over education. Mao radicalized the urban youth and destroyed independent thought, making it arduous to take a pragmatic approach after the Cultural Revolution.    

The Cultural Revolution pursued the admirable goals of closing the gap between urban and rural China and creating a new generation of revolutionary successors. Despite the consequences, it made minimal progress toward narrowing the divide between the rural and urban was effective in producing educated, urban youths who would become revolutionaries.

Dear Tongzhimen, 

It has been many years since I started reporting to you as a young student, and I have come to give my final report on our Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four, and the effect of their horrid crimes in the past few years. Although our great Chairman Mao intended for the urban youth, who were in desperate need of revolutionary education, to become one with the peasantry and end our cultural divide, it did not come to fruition. This is by no fault of his own, of course. Instead, deep-seated cultural divides and fervent chaos launched by Jiang Qing and others are to blame. 

Years ago, during one of my family’s daily Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong readings, I recall being struck by this quote: “How should we judge whether a youth is a revolutionary? How can we tell? There can only be one criterion, namely, whether or not he is willing to integrate himself with the broad masses of workers and peasants and does so in practice. If he is willing to do so and actually does so, he is a revolutionary; otherwise he is a non-revolutionary or a counter-revolutionary.” Back then, I was eager to support Mao’s decision in 1968 to send our youth to the countryside to do what I did all those years ago and integrate themselves into our revolutionary mindset. Since then, I have had the fortune to speak to those who experienced this journey, such as fellow journalist Liang Heng, who has illustrated the reality of the Cultural Revolution that I did not experience in his memoir, soon to be released. 

As an old woman in the city of Beijing, I was lucky to be relatively unaffected by the campaign. Sure, my neighbors, sister-in-law, and nephew were accused of being counter-revolutionary and sent to the countryside, but I was left unscathed. Meeting with Liang Heng was a huge wake-up call into the shortcomings of the campaign. He was initially untrusting of me due to my lack of struggle during the last decade, but he soon told me about his experiences and let me read his memoir pre-release anyway. During the revolution, Liang Heng and his father were split up from their family, struggled against, and were sent to live and learn from the peasants due to their counter-revolutionary ideals. Right off the bat, Liang described to me the obvious divide between the peasantry and the unwelcomed outsiders. As a child, he was spit on, called a “stinking intellectual’s son,” and his new peers were told “to avoid becoming friends with us at all costs, lest we contaminate them with our “bad thought.” Growing up, this same divide was constantly present in Liang’s life. He couldn’t play basketball for the country, court the girl he liked, or support his family because of their counter-revolutionary intellectual background and their time spent in the countryside. 

It is sad to see this anti-intellectualism is still around decades after I experienced it in Yenan. I believe this deep-rooted anti-intellectual mindset that has been cultivated in China is one of the main catalysts to the failure of the Cultural Revolution, specifically its goal to bridge the gap between peasant and urban populations. It seems as if Liang Heng is one of millions of comrades who have been negatively affected by the destructive overly-political culture of the sixties. Luckily, times are changing, and hopefully for the better this time. Farewell to my loyal readers. 

Your Devoted Comrade,

Cui Shuli

Tongzhimen, 

 

I guess you could say the dust has settled. It has been a few months since the great Chairman Mao passed away. Every morning and every evening I grieve the loss of the Chairman. There will never be anyone quite like him. I know that for the greater good of our country, we must move on to continue to achieve the things that the Chairman would have wanted for us. 

 

I recently met with my long-time friend Liang Heng, whom I have known for decades. He shared with me that he was in the final stages of publishing a memoir of his and his family’s experiences during the Cultural Revolution. Liang Heng was kind enough to allow me to read a copy before he published it. I brought the manuscript back home and spent the following week reading it. I decided to schedule another meeting with Liang Heng as he said some things that fascinatingly criticized the Cultural Revolution. 

 

There was one quote Liang Heng wrote that struck me in a way few remarks on the Cultural Revolution had. On page 207 of his manuscript, he writes “Why should two good people like my parents be forced to divorce each other? Why should Liang Fang raise a machine gun against her fellow teenagers? Why did the peasants fear the cadres so terribly if they were representatives of our great Communist Party? Why were people so determined to make me and Peng Ming look like counterrevolutionaries when we wanted only to contribute to our country? Why had the Revolution given us all so little when we had sacrificed everything for it?” [Heng 207] What I loved about this quote was that it posed so many questions about the Cultural Revolution, including implying that perhaps there were corrupt Cadres within the party. Never implying that the great late Chairman Mao was responsible for such problems was right. 

 

One of Liang Heng’s greatest frustrations of the Cultural Revolution was the arbitrary arrests and smear campaigns against Liang Heng, his family, and millions of other individuals. [Heng 83] The Cultural Revolution created a sort of cutthroat environment that promoted and praised those who reported anyone whom they suspected of being counterrevolutionary. It was also clear that so much of Liang Heng’s frustration came from this feeling that though they gave so much to the party, they were never rewarded. 

 

Liang Heng’s quote, “Why should two good people like my parents be forced to divorce each other?” was very telling of what happened to families like his during the Cultural Revolution. Liang Heng explained to me what his sister Liang Feng had told him. “Then Liang Fang explained all in a breath that she and Liang Wei-ping were going to the countryside, and Father suddenly seemed wearier than I had ever seen him. “This family will be scattered all over the place,” he sighed. “But ‘The home of a Revolutionary is the four seas.” [Heng 145]  Liang Heng himself was one of the millions of young people sent down to the countryside to learn from the peasants. “Reform” meant learning from Dazhai, the model agricultural commune in the North, where work points depended on good political performances, and “class struggle” was life’s main theme.” [Heng 182]  It was this very initiative in the Cultural Revolution that many felt was detrimental to not just family life, but also a significant burden on the peasants. The vast majority of young people like Liang Heng were simply not experienced at all in terms of farmwork and this made life even more difficult for many peasants now expected to provide food and shelter for people who could not contribute.

Through all of his frustrations, it became clear to me that Liang Heng felt that the cultural revolution did little to close the gap between peasants and the urban, educated youth. The cultural revolution and its initiatives simply highlighted the vast differences between the two groups and in many cases, may have increased tensions as sides grew increasingly frustrated with each other over the years. Additionally, the Cultural Revolution did not inspire quite the type of revolutionary spirit that many had hoped. Instead, the Revolution, after the passing of the great Chairman Mao, left many feeling exhausted and defeated. 

 

Tongzhimen, it has been the honor of my life to serve you, the people, over the last few decades. My reporting was not always perfect, I made my mistakes. But it was you, the readers who stood with me at every step. Thank you. 

 

One final time,

Gao An Zhi

Dear Tongzhimen,

It is now past my time and I am saddened to say that my time as a journalist is coming to a close and it is time for the younger generations to take over. In my old age, I’ve lived through many campaigns promoting Mao into Chinese society. China is in a completely different position today than it was during my childhood because of the work of Mao and the Communist Party. My last duty as a reporter is to bring to you the information of how the latest campaign, the Cultural Revolution, has affected China. Comrade Liang Heng has been kind enough to give me an advanced copy of his memoir. This manuscript gives a closer look into how his family was affected throughout the Mao years and serves as a general example of typical experience. 

The Cultural Revolution aimed to reduce the gap between life in the countryside and in urban areas as well as creating revolutionary successors from the urban youth. However, it was ambiguous whether the goal of this Cultural Revolution was achieved. There are a few points to keep in mind from Liang Hengs experience to completely understand the process of the Cultural Revolution. A situation that he faced was getting accused of being a May Sixteenth conspirator. To preface, the school had stopped classes for a special announcement about this counterrevolutionary movement. The school even put lock boxes around so that students could report people who they thought were conspirators. Liang Heng was reported as a counterrevolutionary and so they locked him in a room until he would confess. This lasted for days as he would be hit and discriminated against by the whole school for his ‘bad thought.’ The following quote is what Liangs’ thoughts were after he was told that he had one more time to confess before he would be sent to jail; “I realized that I could die. I could unscrew that lightbulb and put my hand there where the current flowed and I would be dead. I should never again be tormented by memories of Mother’s humiliated and accepting face as Father cursed her for betraying the Party’s faith in her.” (Liang, 206)  The thing that hurt him the most was that even his friends betrayed him because of the way the society thought about the Cultural Revolution. This situation created a distant relationship between people who were once close together. 

Liang had already lost his sisters to the countryside and both of his parents due to the political tension. The party terminated the family structure and the old Chinese traditions were slowly but surely becoming a thing of the past. The family and individual was virtually broken down completely and people turned to work as their identity. With this being said, it brought young workers together but in other circumstances it forced out the older population. Liang Hengs father was an example of this as he says “if I can’t work, I’m a useless man.” (Liang, 229) His father, who was rejected by the party earlier in his life, was forced to live in his past as he saw that he couldn’t make any contributions. As a result of his sickness, he had to retire from his work and the party forced him to move into a tiny room distant from the revolution. He would have to live the rest of his life full of emptiness and could not contribute to the revolution even though he wanted to.

The Cultural Revolution could be embodied in two slogans that Liang had stated in his memoir.  “The Farther from Home, the Nearer to Chairman Mao” and “The Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants Are Closer Relatives than Mother and Father” (Liang, 146). The mobilization of the educated urban people to the countryside was a huge part in contributing to the revolution as well as picking out the ‘counterrevolutionary’ ideas that people were demonstrating in everyday life. Pointing out other people’s mistakes was a big part in getting rid of the four olds and attempting to bring in the new traditions and culture to China.