A Review of Robert’s Family
We still lived a very boring life with too much time to think and worry. I thought mostly about my family — so many brothers and sisters who I hadn’t seen or heard from in years. All I could do was to wonder how they were, were they in prison too and were they alive? At the time, I did not have this information and so all I could do was imagine what might be happening. I am telling you things that I learned later in my life about what had happened to various family members.
I missed my Nanjing brother very much. He too hated the Communist party and considered it as imperious and despotic, the same as I felt. He also liked to lay bare the spirit of revolution against the Communist party. When he was in college, he found that many letters being sent to him were being opened. Early on he complained to the Communist party, angrily. He called the college authorities into account and swore that they did not have the most rudimentary legal knowledge. This situation has still not been corrected and letters are opened. Originally he had loved and esteemed the Communist Party as so many did when they first took over, but now he became in opposition to them.
We had frequently pointed out the trends of the time with government errors and offer salutary advice in our communications by letters and actually sometimes, we bitterly attacked the government. He succeeded in escaping more severe rightist punishment because he disappeared to the countryside to do manual labor. ?But his undergo is not below to me. Capital offenses may be excused, living crime let not escape.?
But, criticize and denounce and be locked up in a cowshed all he attended, only no rightist hat on his head. He remained faithful and unyielding.
I could remember that one day in the long ago past suddenly many letters, which had been gathered together and held for a long time, were given to me at once. I noticed that the date on one of them was one month before. Some letters that had been sent by my brother were in the pile. I could not refrain from scathing denounced words. The next day is when I was locked up in the basement of my company. How could I not worry about him for his safety and the danger he could be in? He was 39 years old. He too had been in love with a wonderful woman. I don’t know whether he was locked up too for this reason and it too will destroy his relationship.
I too was concerned about my sister and her husband who met at the office where they worked. Her husband had to return to his native place — Shang yu, Zhejiang Province. His work now was to carry a pole on his shoulders acting a lacquerer. My sister returned to Hangzhou to try to find some other means of livelihood. She had no registered permanent residence and therefore was given no grain coupons which made it very hard for her to live. When I could, I sent her ten yuan every month to try to save her life. Since I am now locked up for some time, I have no small wage to share with her. I wrote to her and I told her I couldn’t send her money any more. Thinking that she had no source of income reduced me to tears. Later I found out that they did not even send the letter for me as they had said they would.
My second eldest sister had studied and worked at a missionary hospital. She made a profound friendship with a New Zealand woman officer. In 1958 on these thin grounds of knowing a foreign missionary she had been sent to receive reeducation through labor. She had to leave a 5-year-old son in my third sister’s care. Her husband had also been sent away, owing to his past record. He was sent to a far away small village. They finally had no choice but to divorce. She concluded her reeducation through labor in 1962 and returned to Hangzhou. She then had no source of income with her son to also support. I had so much to think about and worry about.
My oldest brother had become a doctor and was a very honest and upright man. In the “Great Cultural Revolution” he also was locked up. He was compelled to tell about a certain person. My brother racked his brain and said all the names of people who he had known. But, he did not mention the name of the one they wanted him to say. The interrogation was going on day and night. He wanted to jump out of a high window, but was obstructed. At last he begged them to say who they wanted to know about. They finally gave him the name, but my brother still did not know who this person was. It turned out the young man whose name they wanted was my younger brother’s schoolmate and he had borrowed an umbrella from my younger brother at Wuhan. He had forgotten to return it. But later he gave this umbrella back to my eldest brother in Shanghai. That was their only contact. This schoolmate of my younger brother was later criticized and denounced at Wuhan. He confessed all the people he had known. He thought of my eldest brother’s name although he had no specific memories about him. For this, can you call it, reason, my oldest brother’s life was almost taken to prison. It is insane that one person “in trouble” to save himself can simply give another person’s name which in turn gets him in trouble.
My third sister was a mid-wife. She looked after my younger sister’s daughter who my younger sister could not take care of. This five-year-old niece sat in an office all day. The girl played and read treasured books with quotations from Chairman Mao. One day she was not careful, as a five-year-old can’t be all of the time. She spilled a little ink on the red treasured book. Then my sister was criticized and denounced and was locked up as a reactionary. What had became of my third sister now? What about my little niece?
My oldest sister was a teacher at a primary school in Shanghai. She had been there for 30 years and didn’t get married because she had to constantly support all her younger brothers and sister in Shanghai while they were studying and later to help them with the cost of living and surviving. I too had asked her for money. She always borrowed from her women colleagues. Her colleagues were willing to loan money to her because the whole school called her “eldest sister.” She was a good and honest woman and was always willing to help others. Later at the time of her retirement her headmaster asseverated in public that, “she was a good sister, a good teacher and we all should learn from her.” But, she too, during the Great Cultural Revolution was attacked with “Da Zi Bao.”
Oh, my old mother, I worried about her the most. She had had eight sons and daughters and together we could not give her enough money to dress warmly and to eat as much as she needed. In China, this was the greatest shame for children.
Our great old house in Hangzhou had been invaded and occupied by the Communist Troops. Originally there lived our one family. Now ten families lived in the same home. My three sisters were still there, but they lived in three little rooms. They all had at one time married, but now they all lived alone. When the Cultural Revolution came they all were criticized and denounced. One day many Red Guards came from a near-by school and beat my younger sister. They turned over a stool and made my sister kneel over the wooden legs. They did not even spare the five-year-old daughter of my sister. They searched our house and confiscated any property. They tore our old photo albums and our genealogy tree to pieces. They plundered our calligraphies and paintings, either destroying them or taking them. They burned our memorial tablet of our ancestry and sold two exquisite shrines. They even tipped our father’s bones and ashes into the trash. They pried open the floor boards and unearthed where there had been buried gold and jewelry, but it had already been taken and now nothing was found. Three of the tenants hoped that this would drive our sisters away. These tenants formerly were our friends because we had helped them. But, now they bothered and harassed my sisters everyday. It seems that they wanted them to move so they could alone occupy our home, but the sisters would not leave. I later found out that my sisters in Hangzhou experienced other tortures and torments too numerous and terrible for me to say. It just grieves me so much to have to think about it that it is unspeakable for me.
And me? Uncertainty is the most difficult situation to handle. Would I be executed? Probably it would be by shooting? Would I go back to work in a camp? Would I ever be able to go to work somewhere and use my education? They cannot agree what should happen to me. Maybe I could just leave? But, where could I go?? One prisoner said I should go to his near-by village to become a peasant. I thought that was a good idea— of course, much better than death.
The Communist Party asked a prisoner to straighten his clothes, sit up properly and remold his ideology. But, this was my thinking all day of my family. I remembered the past. I went over in my memory so many details of my childhood, and times with my brothers and sisters as we grew up. My heart ached over the present with my stomach being almost always empty and my body racked with pain from the cold. I feared the worst for the future, not even knowing how long the future would be. These thoughts did me little good to remold my ideology. If only there had been a book, a professional book that I might have studied and researched. It would have diverted my thoughts from depression and I would not have wasted two years in prison. Sorrowfully the two years of precious time of my valuable life slipped by with nothing good to show for it except that I was still alive.