Author: Faith Potter (Zhu Baozhai)

Dearest readers and friends at our publishing company,

What a journey we have been through in the past decades. As I read through all of my past journal entries during the Cultural Revolution, I recall that my original goal in taking up this post here was to record this pivotal moment in China’s history. I believe that not only I, but all of us have succeeded in that, and that it has amounted to many more than just one moment. With the Gang of Four put away for good now, we can all finally take a breath of fresh air and return to honest, personal journalism. 

Not only journals, but other writings are beginning to come out recording the memories of our nation’s tumultuous journey, particularly through the Cultural Revolution. My fellow reporters and I have received early copies of Liang Heng’s memoir Son of the Revolution, which was painful yet poignant to read. Though we can all relate to it, it pained me to read about the Cultural Revolution through the perspective of a child. While many of us had seen our way through the beginnings of communism and maintained some semblance of independent thought, this whole generation of youth that they call The Lost Generation, quite aptly, has grown up indoctrinated into the Cult of Mao. 

One of the most powerful sections of Liang Heng’s Son of the Revolution was pages 206-207 in “Interrogation” in which the author had contemplated suicide after many accusations and the prospect of being struggled against. The fact that one could become so hopeless as to consider taking their own life for being labeled as politically undesirable shows the absurdity of the Cultural Revolution, and how it did almost the opposite of what Mao had promised with communism. Communism promised a building and bolstering of community and rights, yet it destroyed every unit of society, sowing discord in every aspect of life from the family to the school. As Liang Heng considered living through whatever pain he may endure, he became fully disillusioned with the party as he questioned every unnecessary moment of suffering that had happened to his family members and those around him in the name of revolution. Regarding such suicidal ideation, I think back to the story of Li Lili and her husband. An acclaimed actress of pre-revolutionary times, Jiang Qing harbored jealousy and hatred against her former co-star, blaming her for her lack of success on the screen. Jiang Qing had her and her husband tortured for personal reasons to the point that Li Lili’s husband killed himself. Yet the stories of her husband and Liang Heng are not unique. No one has escaped suffering in the Cultural Revolution. What was meant to cleanse Chinese society of abuse, inequality and hierarchy only created a new form of each sin. Yet we as a people, as a nation, can move past this.

Dearest tonghzimen,

I write today in reflection of my role as a reporter during these glorious past years. When I entered this position, though I knew that our nation was changing, nothing could have prepared me for the movements ahead. Looking back now, I am so grateful to have been able to experience the vital energy of Yenan, the success of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party against the Japanese devils and the indulgent Nationalists, and see so many amazing feats of the party take place such as land reform and the Great Leap Forward.

I also come to you today, penitent, as in reviewing my past publications, I realized in horror that I had sometimes doubted the actions of the party. As reporters, we take the great responsibility of correctly documenting events and accounts while giving our readers hope in the revolution. However, I fear that I may have sown doubt in such great movements such as land reform.

Although my family has historically been peasants, my father found some success in industry and was able to buy more land when I was young. Though I welcomed the liberation of land reform, I was concerned that men like him would be impacted. I now realize the error of my ways, As our Chairman has said, “In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class” (LRB, Ch.2). Since my terrible revelation, I have been working to radically reform my thought. I think of every fear, every predisposition of mine, denounce those that stem from my class background, and seek Mao’s guidance from the “Little Red Book” to know how I should think. 

I confess that although I criticized the actions of corrupt cadres, I never criticized Mao. The reality is that ten percent of every group consists of rightists, and I have long been wary of those who undermine party action or seek to enrich themselves through it rather than supporting  the people. I too have been harboring concerns about some within our midst, who have been all too quick to doubt Mao for any little thing that may go wrong. How could we doubt our great Chairman? Yet some have not listened to my warnings. As Mao as said, we must “learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones” and “cure the sickness to save the patient” (LRB, Ch. 27).

Hello tongzhimen, 

I write to you again at a difficult time. After returning to headquarters in Beijing and following the mass collectivization in the countryside, those of us in the city began to notice shortages of rice and the like. It had not affected us so greatly that we could not go on, as I recall my father telling me of famines past in our hometown, but I was curious to investigate as the targets for grain this year had been high. Not hearing much awry in the papers, I took it upon myself to venture into the countryside and hear from those producing the crops.

It was a staggering scene in the Gaoguanzhai township. While locals said that the harvest had been prosperous in the warmer seasons, they did not have enough food to eat as the year went on. Even emergency rations were not enough, and the scene became desperate, with those sowing corn eating the kernels as they did so. Every family I spoke to had at least two members who had passed, almost always from starvation. Even those alive were unseemly, emaciated or with swollen legs. Women suffered greatly, as the nutrients that they needed to menstruate, carry children, and breastfeed were not available. This affected their children in turn, and many babies had bowed legs. Families suffered, and divorces grew out of necessity. 

While natural disasters and bad crops have commonly led to famines in our history, I believe there are more reasons for what we see now. The Soviets did not want the Chinese people to surpass them in strength and prosperity, so they gave misguided instructions on engineering and agriculture and asked for too much in return for grain and loans. If the Soviets truly supported China, they would have backed our struggle against the Nationalists, but they did not. Our farming techniques are superior to the Russian’s, and Lysenko’s lies led us to ruin, hindering seed growth. Lysenko’s false promises gave collectives great ambition, leading them to compete with higher and higher projections of grain output that never came.

Although Mao’s guidance is infallible, there are many in our nation who infect and undermine the Great Leap Forward: rightists. We know this as Mao said himself that ten percent of our citizens are rightists, and from what I have heard it seems that they are, in part, responsible for these famines. One man told me that a party official representing his village reported the grain output as higher than it really was in order to bolster his image in the party. This had devastating consequences for the rest in the village, however, as so much was taken from them that they had no food left for themselves. Hoarding by these rightist party members is also an issue, and a woman from another village that I visited confided in me that her local official had taken surplus grain for himself then acted as if others had done so. Families accused of hoarding were subsequently threatened and even beaten for grain that they did not have. This corruption must be rooted out.

Chairman Mao has shown great understanding as always and is dialing back the speed of The Great Leap Forward. He, the General Line, and the Rural People’s Communes have done no wrong, but are flexible as always to the changing conditions of the times and the needs of the people. China will surely achieve the grand targets in the future set out by the party.

Good day, tongzhimen,

I now write to you on the move between towns in rural China, where land reform is well underway. While many at Yenan chose to organize in work groups to carry out this grand revolutionary process, I have been documenting this pivotal moment in our nation’s history. 

Although the party members sent to villages seem to have enough zeal to attempt this on their own, they have been instructed by the Communist Party to mobilize the masses to bring about land reform. If it was simply an outwardly-enforced activity, it would not be revolutionary; as Mao always insists, the peasants must be empowered and take down their oppressors by force if fanshen is to truly be achieved. To do this, the peasants must first be assisted by the work teams in understanding their situation and how they must change it. Although peasants have been taken advantage of by landlords and others throughout all of our history, in fact, because of this, they have not had the opportunity of education to learn of the true class dichotomy that they have been living under. Demoralized and brainwashed by the Confucian system to accept this fate, rural peasants are in need of instruction and encouragement from the party; this is the importance of the mass line. Such a radical reordering of society and destruction of the dated hierarchy is also essential in transforming the role of women, as land reform can take down her oppressors while giving her land and thus, agency.

However, such an ambitious endeavor as land reform comes with its mistakes. Mao has, many times, brought up his concerns regarding the lapse of understanding between excited young communists and rural peasants, and I have seen issues arise from this in multiple towns. Many on the work teams hail from cities and are commonly educated, in the arts, wealthy, or all three. Their knowledge of the rural peasants’ plight is not based on real experience, but idealized novels from likewise ignorant urban elites such as Zhou Libo. Though their lack of knowledge is through no fault of their own, many enthusiastic party members go into towns with preconceived notions and no nuance. Some towns have a hard time trusting the work teams simply for this lack of understanding and mistrust of outsiders. One woman recounted to me a situation in which 

There too are the issues of greed and women’s rights. One peasant woman recounted her tale to me, explaining that all in her village were quite poor already and that the landlord did not bother her or her family. However, when other peasants learned that ‘fruits of struggle’ would be provided to them, they fabricated bitterness against the landlord, who was beaten to death on encouragement of the work team. They tormented his wife as well, which they deemed appropriate as she had remarried after being widowed. The woman speaking of experience said that she and other women in the village who tried speaking bitterness about their abusive husbands were silenced, and received no fruits of struggle as they had not participated in the beatings. In another village, I found that men in the work team had not only pocketed the landlord’s money and jewelry for themselves, but had also been sexually abusing young peasant women. In these towns, nothing was truly achieved for women, and the processes were not truly revolutionary.

Furthermore, I have some concerns about class distinctions. Although the oppression of the peasantry has been endemic in China, prosperity does not always result from exploitation. My father’s ancestors were poor peasants until he began selling farming equipment, not only helping others who didn’t have it but making profit without exploitation. I am worried that, as he was recently able to purchase more land, he will be lumped in with the rich peasants and attacked. Though I have seen more moderate land reform in the North, our village is in the South.

It seems that many here in Yenan share my sentiment of disillusionment with the Nationalist Party’s response to the brutal Japanese invasions. I was concerned before that the Communists were not stable enough to counter the Japanese, but now I see that they are the party that truly wants to defend China. Papers I read on the way here detailed Chiang Kai-shek’s rationale for destroying the dikes along the Yellow River, saying it was to stop Japanese forces, but it only goes to show how little he cares for the Chinese people, or rather the peasants that died in the process. He is too much a coward to endure what he puts his people through.

The same cannot be said for Mao. It is odd to hear so much about a man in the news, then see him sitting in plainclothes with people from all walks of life here at Yenan. It is said that he spends much of his time in his cave reading, but he is measured yet jovial when interacting with those around the camp.

Although I enjoyed my time at university, there was something stifling about academia that I cannot say I feel here. Everyone is filled with such exuberance for learning, building, fighting, and you do not feel the weight of hierarchy or academic competition pressing down upon you. However, the response to my education was rather jarring; I was hounded by young men and women around my age when they saw me writing in the dirt. I heard about the difficult lives that they had led, much like my neighbors back home in the countryside surrounding Chengdu. I learned quickly that they equate things that require learning, money and status to be bourgeois and thus, evil. Although I don’t think such essentializing is fair, it is understandable coming from their situation, and I choose not to share about my experience in university for fear of being ostracized.

I have, however, been instructed to teach basic reading skills to people here. The students are both young and old, and although it is bizarre to be teaching in such an informal fashion, I believe that I understand now why people come here. It is a new society, mostly free from the constraints of the old. Even former Kuomintang fighters are here; one young man told me of how he has more to eat here and is treated with more respect and freedom than he did under the Nationalists. It is clear that the appeal of the CCP in Yan’an is not only political, but interpersonal and even individual; one can foster relationships and have such opportunities here. There is still headway to be made for the rights of women, as the local women in this region of Shensi seem to be living decades behind. I hear from some women, who were previously in the Jiangxi Soviet before the Long March, that many communist men seem to be dialing back their efforts for gender equity. Yet, there is still hope.

The urban proletariat in Chengdu shares similar feelings to the peasant farmers back home, though their complaints are unique to their situations. Industrial workers here face problems I have never seen before; those of dangerous work environments with huge, hot machinery. While the peasant farmers are oppressed by their own people, the factory workers are making products for the consumption of foreigners, commonly imperialist powers such as Great Britain and Japan. A capitalist might argue that these factories bolster the Chinese economy, yet the workers reap little profits from them while their bosses live comfortably, contributing little to production. 

While the proletariat in Chengdu suffers the weight of imperialist-imposed capitalism, the peasants of my hometown suffer the remains of a feudal system. Though Confucianism is said to hold those who till the land in high regard, its system has failed them. The classics dictate that subordinates must be treated with respect, but so often in my youth did I witness the sad plight of a neighbor short on rice. Some starved so that they could pay the landlord, some were taxed double next season, some sold their daughters or wives that they may pay, and one old man had nothing left to give and was thus beaten to death. The Peasant Association formed to stand against such abuses just as the labor unions have in Chengdu.

Despite the necessity of revolution for radical societal change in China, I am concerned about the consequences that such instability would cause. Japan has just invaded Manchuria, and although this was a surprise to my classmates and I, our elder professors expressed that they had long feared this situation since the outcome of the Russo-Japanese War before our time. As appealing as communist ideals are, I cannot help but wonder if Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang Nationalist Party would provide the stability that China needs in the face of foreign encroachment. Not only are they more respected by foreign powers that could potentially aid us in fending off Japan, but the chaotic land redistribution that the Chinese Communist Party promotes could leave China in a more vulnerable position to being invaded.

Every day I am surprised by the variety and absurdity of political opinions in the city and my university. Just yesterday I overheard two of my seniors, who had studied abroad in Japan and France, speaking excitedly about anarchism. Some of its tenets sounded akin to communism, such as reaching more equitable relations between men and women, adults and children through destroying the old Confucian family system, but when I inquired further I learned that an anarchist state should have no government at all. They explained that with such reform, enforcement of values would no longer be necessary, but their ignorance shocked me.

It seems that many of these urban intellectuals are more ideological than practical, all talk and no action. They theorize on lofty concepts while the industrial workers are actually organizing and the peasants are struggling far from the eyes of academics. I find myself ashamed to be in this curious position; although my family has been part of the rural peasantry historically, my father’s new financial situation has allowed my brothers and I to enter into this world of the educated. I wonder if my classmates would be so keen on anarchism if the Japanese were at their front door, or if the land redistribution impacted their status and wealth. 

Revolution is also concerning in how it may impact women. While the Chinese Communist Party has promised equality between men and women in terms of marriage, economy and more, I worry about the safety of women during and after a revolution. Though I would not like to be forced into marriage as some of the poorer girls back home were, I would prefer it to the humiliation and danger of being a single woman unprotected by a man. Revolution also necessitates violence, and while it may be necessary to fully overthrow landlords and the like, violence always comes back to women, innocent or not. Furthermore, I wonder if patriarchal attitudes would persist even when all women enter the workforce and take on equal responsibility in labor. Would men help with housework and child rearing as well, or would women be expected to continue such tasks? In such a case, a woman would have more work to do under communism than she did in the old system.

Sept 14, 1931 – My name is Zhu Baozhai and I am a 19 year old girl born in 1913. Growing up in the rural plains surrounding Chengdu, my father sold farming equipment. Though in past generations my family had also farmed, this new family business has brought us wealth in a time of such industry. I am the only daughter of my parents’ seven children, and so far we have four generations living with us in the home with my grandmother and eldest brother’s wife and daughter, which is quite honorable.

 My parents found it best that I attend university in the city to meet a well-educated future husband, particularly with connections to the international market, as my father sees it necessary for prosperity in our changing times. I am attending Huaxi University as it has good international opportunities, and I seek to study language, history and journalism. Though fine arts is a passion of mine and said to be more befitting of women than writing, my father does not see it as practical. I am unsure about the Christian faculty at Huaxi University, but they do not seem to make so much distinction between male and female students, which is a surprise after my schooling back home.

I have taken this job as a reporter to record what is happening in China during this tumultuous period. With our history of longstanding dynasties, each political shift is incredibly important. So recently have we seen encroachment from foreigners, and there are concerns about what Japan has planned.