Dear Teacher,
I must tell you about the woman whom I wanted to marry. I mentioned her once in class when we talked about human rights. I said that I had wanted the right to love and marry. You didn’t seem to understand what I meant, so I will tell you more. In autumn of 1954, my sister graduated from Shanghaii and was assigned to work in Shenyang at a pharmaceutical factory. It was two hours by railway from Anshan. In 1955 on New Year’s, I went to see my sister.
There I met a school mate of my sister’s, Miss Chen. She was 6 years younger than I. Afterwards, we began falling in love. In 1956 we were engaged in Shanghai. We suffered many problems in our love affair. First, we had no money and second, there was no time to be together. In April 1957, she was moved to the Shanghai Medical Institute because she had developed some kind of disease. She could both receive treatment and work there. To travel from Anshan to Shanghai would take a month of my wages to make a round trip and then there would be no money left to live on. Until 1962 I had only twenty days leave each year, including Sundays. We only made use of seven days off. The usual Chinese holidays are New Year’s Day, May 1 (Labor Day), October 1st (National Day) and Spring Festival which is the Chinese New Year. The time together was precious to us as you can imagine.
In April of 1957, the Communist party in the whole country organized discussions, listening carefully to the views of the intellectuals. All intellectuals were asked for a —“free airing of views.” Da zi bao or big character posters were to say all we thought without reserve. The party was told to not seize on someone’s mistakes or shortcomings and do not come down with the big stick on anyone’s ideas. I had been invited to make a speech on liberty and democracy. By Sept 15th there were many critical articles (Da Zi Bao) put up around my office.
My original plan was that I would go to Shanghai to get married on National Day—Oct 1, 1957. But, like soap bubbles, my marriage plans burst and vanished. It made both my fiancee and myself heartbroken.
After criticism of me as a rightist, I was not allowed to attend my own work. I had to go to the library every day to prepare self-critical material. Every other day meetings were held to criticize me and expose my words and deeds that were in opposition to the Party. At the meetings they criticized me and I had to criticize myself. At that time, in 1957 criticism meetings were held with civility, and they did not resort to force. Possibly the reason is that they were dealing with educated intellectuals who were not as disposable as the masses.
In August of 1958, I was confirmed as a rightist of the second kind. Rightists are classified as six different kinds. The first and second kinds are considered heavy convicts and they are serious prisoners doing penal labor under surveillance with no wage. Strangely, for my punishment, I was to be given living expenses of twenty yuan/ month which was then one fifth of my regular wages, and I was allowed to continue my very important work at Anshan Iron and Steel.
The Communist party had declared that the first or second kinds of rightists also could seek livelihood by themselves. In fact, I thought that was impossible, but I wanted nothing but to go to Shanghai to see my fiancee and get married. I made this demand.
Sincerely, Robert