Finally Officially Sentenced
On May 11,1972, I was suddenly called out of my prison room and I entered a little room in a distant part of the building. An interrogator and another man were inside. After we all stood up at attention, they pronounced a sentence for me as an active counterrevolutionary to do penal labor under surveillance by the masses. The official accusations were stated as being: 1. I cried out grievances about Liu Shao Qi who was a chairman of our country. 2. I spread the power of the atom bomb. 3. I reversed the verdict for an evildoer.
The interrogator told me in a passing remark that my case had been tried over nine months ago, before December 1970. He said that we gave notice to your work unit to send for you and take you back, but your work unit took no notice of our decision. Recently we said that if you do not go back to your work unit, we would release you. Then they sent us the cotton-padded cloth that you had asked for. We informed them again of our decision, but they still did not send for you.
I was surprised and puzzled by my sentence. There were so many of my anti-party, anti-socialism opinions on public record that I had expressed, and they had only charged me with those three uncomplicated facts. Those three facts were considered crimes to be the basis of the sentence for me to be in prison indefinitely and do penal labor. I was perplexed. I firmly believed that the interrogator had spared and protected me because if he had wanted to, he easily could have had me put to death. There was no lack of words to keep me from being executed. I know that the three above-mentioned crimes made the doer into a monster and demon, but one that could still go on breathing. After working hours I talked to another rightist in a state of disbelief and he too was amazed.
So here I want to explain to the readers what these charges really mean. You must accept that we all have the same kind of heart and mind. In order to continue to live, at the moment, when our fate hangs in the balance, we all might betray another and not hesitate to forsake our conscience and what we know is right. You too could become so weak and terrible, out of the human instinct to preserve your life.
The rightist label, generally speaking, proceeds from justice. Many rightists actually had ulterior motives and spoke with malice and contempt, as I did. But, another group truly did not speak any thing and were accused for other reasons. It could have been due to their high income, for instance, my brother’s father-in-law, formerly was a capitalist having a pharmaceutical factory in Shanghai. After “joint-state-private ownership” which was the principle form of state capitalism adopted during the socialist transformation of capitalist enterprises in China, his wage was over three hundred yuan a month. The wage was too high, but not as much as the CEO’s in America. Give him a rightist label and then his wage will be cut down. After being labeled his wage was lowered to 72 yuan a month. The last kind of rightist label served as a stopgap for Communist quotas. The rightist quota was targeted at 10/100 in the intellectual population. Each area or work unit must attain the targets set in the state plan. So, a few of the rightists were labeled just to meet the quota of having enough rightists. Those unfortunate individuals may not have done anything, but cause a minor irritation to someone in power. Someone wrote a drama mirroring this true state of affairs, but of course, the performance was forbidden in 1980, although word of it traveled throughout the intellectual communities.
Yes, we monsters and demons worked together when we, early on, realized that the Chinese Communist Party was not what it first appeared to be, while the rest of the country went on talking and laughing as if nothing bad was happening. If, at that time, when I didn’t learn the lesson of blind obedience, I was then called a die-hard element. First, they tried to make an example of me. I, never the less, would spread my view to put great men to shame. Chairman Mao’s Three Great Red Banners brought a return of three years of catastrophe. Several thousands and thousands of people died of hunger due to his ignorance and power. He later gave an excuse that he had stayed in bed while others made these decisions and Mao refused to shoulder responsibilities any longer.
Chairman Liu Shao Qi got up and instituted “more enterprises with sole responsibility for their own profit or less and fixing output quotas on a household basis.” This was to remedy our country.
I had made the crudest comments that Mao had diarrhea everywhere. You may not know, as most Chinese do, that Mao was publicly known to have constant constipation, sometimes only having one bowel movement in a week. When a man tries so hard to live as a god, it is easy for those around him to dwell on the less flattering aspects of being human. I also said that Liu shaved his buttocks for him and finally took the blame, another victim of Mao. It is said that Liu did very many bad things besides taking the blame for mistakes Mao had made. I cannot bring myself to complain about injustice for Liu Shao Qi.
My explanation of the next charge goes back to 1969 when relations between the China and USSR were strained. The country feared an attack with nuclear weapons. In China the people dug air-raid shelters everywhere. In our society, at schools, post offices, hospitals and bulletin boards everywhere possible, it was publicized how to build and survive the atomic bomb in a shelter. Our Company was at a distance of 10km from the city-center. All of our talk was about the significance of this matter. All the people wondered that if the belfry would be dropped at the center of the city, how would things be here? I had strongly stated that we could not evade disaster. Probably nowhere could a person be sparred. Most people could not comprehend the power of a nuclear bomb. This likely was the reason for the accusation of spreading atomic terror.
As to reverse verdict, this obviously pointed towards my friend, the bricklayer to whom I had complained of unfairness. What guilt of crimes should he have?
Mao’s socialism, China era, party politics and law — three-in-one public security. Procuratorial work and law — three-in-one absolute terrible. If you have estrangement with your leader then you will be given a hard time all your life. Administrative officer is he, judge is he, public prosecutor is he and also police officer is he. Your administrative leader must only catch hold of your words one time and confront you with the danger of death.
Secretary of the construction section Guo in this respect left himself no avenue of retreat. Obviously to pronounce me guilty was not Guo’s expectations. That day I was moved to another room, which held only two other men who were intellectuals also. They had been sent to prison owing to “veiled criticism” against our Vice commander, Mao’s successor Lin Biao. But after Lin Biao was cast out of government after 8 months, they should have been set free.
On May 12, 1972 in the afternoon a truck of metallurgical machine workers came to the prison. That same truck would be used to take me away. When it was time for the truck to leave, I saw that my simple baggage was put on the back and then I had to see an office secretary named Comrade Wang Shu Ji, my savior. It was he who was getting me out of the prison. He was a new arrival on the staff. He was a Communist too, but he strove to do things properly and humanely for me and other lucky ones.
As I climbed up into the truck, I looked around. From this time on I would leave this most barbarous place forever and ever. It was a place of human famine and unbelievable human crowding causing much illness and death. It was a place of not enough water and either no salt needed by the body or excessive salt. It was a place of no medicine, no padded clothing in the cold and one towel with cotton wadding and one small cup for water when it was hot. In the past two years I had had no bath and I had not brushed my teeth. This was a place of remolding one’s ideology in name, but cruel tyranny in reality. Its sins were too great in number for me to mention further.