Rightist Memoir XXXV: Second Implementation of the Rehabilitation Policy

Find other chapters listed at Kong Lingping’s Rightist Memoir I: “Blood Chronicle” By Long-time Prisoner of Mao Zedong

The full Chinese text can be downloaded from bannedbook.org 

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Chapter Four The Second Implementation of the Rehabilitation Policy

To someone like me, without influential relatives and friends, a bookworm with no gifts to give, I could only search for employment by talking straightforwardly about my studies and expertise, but was rebuffed time and time again. If I were to rely on my own horsemanship skills alone, I would never find a horse to ride. Fortunately I realized that I would need the intervention of a senior person to help me. 

In 1949, after my father moved our entire family to the Beibei district of Chongqing, our entire family began our long descent into the hell of the “dictatorship of the proletariat“. In 1962, my maternal grandmother died tormented by the pangs of hunger. My mother, who had already been put in the persecuted category of “rightist”, was forced by the authorities to take my younger brother, then 18 years old, with her as she was sent, anxious and worried, “down to the countryside” to remote Caijiachang. 

Not until 35 years later, in 1984 were we able to reconstitute our family. With a considerable amount of help, we were able to leave Caijiachang and return to Beibei. 

I. Our return to Beibei

In July 1984, while supervising a high school graduation examination, I read in the newspaper that the Chongqing Personnel Bureau had taken the initiative to organize a first, unprecedented “Job Fair”. I decided to give it a try. 

Since it was summer vacation, I made a special trip to Chongqing University where I found that that two people who had charged me with being a rightist, Zhu Piren and Xong Dianbin had both benefited from the “implementation of the political rehabilitation policy” and been restored to their original posts. Secretary Song was removed from his position as Chongqing University Party Secretary during the Cultural Revolution because his wife had been singled out as a landlord social element and sent to the countryside to labor under the supervision of the peasants. 

The Chongqing City Communist Party Committee had ordered him to choose between his wife and his Party membership. Song Dianbin could not bear to cast aside the wife he loved and their two small children so he rejected the Party’s “sincere admonishment” that he divorce his wife. Thus he became Chongqing University’s second capitalist-roader, lost all his positions at Chongqing University, and was sent to a nursing school to be placed under the supervision of the revolutionary masses. 

His assigned job was to sweep the toilets. For thirteen years he raised his children next to the toilets. He personally experienced what it was like to be purged in a Communist Party political movement so he should have compassion for someone who had been sent, with his personal approval, for no reason at all to the Eighteenth level of Hell. 

In 1978, my mother went to the Chongqing Nurses’ School and asked him to provide evidence about my wrongful conviction. The material that he provided caused Chongqing University to act on my political rehabilitation, making things much easier than they could have been. 

In Spring 1983, after mother had worked for a year-and-a-half at the Chongqing School of Finance and Economics, Liu Kunshui, because the School of Finance and Economics was in economic difficulty, decided to cut some of the course tracks that the school had created when it was founded. 

The head of the Association of Industry and Commerce, too, objected to mother’s long-term stay in the association’s guesthouse, saying that mother was occupying a guest room  that the Association would otherwise have rented to visiting businesspeople and that employees of the Association had never lived there. Liu Kunshui and mother discussed the matter and so mother decided to resign from the School of Finance and Economics and that May return to Caijiachang.

Liu Kunshui was apologetic and arranged for a Volga limousine to take mother back to Beibei and went personally to the Beibei United Front Work Department office and asked them to consider arranging for another job and housing for mother. 

– 644 –

Caijiachang was originally just a remote small town in the countryside. The only vehicles on the street were tractor-pulled wagons operated by local peasants that people would flag down for a ride — that was public transportation in Caijiachang. The loud noise and dark smoke coming from these vehicles bothered everyone. People on the street were enveloped in swirling clouds of dark smoke. The locals were used to it however. These wagons were the only transportation available in Caijiachang. 

The only bus running between Caijiachang and Beibei was in very bad condition.  A ticket from Caijiachang to Beibei only cost .12 RMB but the miserably poor people of Caijiachang had to count every penny. Even if those tractor-pulled wagons had been even more dangerous, people would have ridden in them so it can be said that they valued life itself very cheaply.  

When mother rode the limousine as it slowed down on the stretch of road from Changkou to the Caijia Hospital, everyone on the street stared at it curiously. They said to themselves ‘Could this be some high official who has come here to do an inspection?’  They never could have imagined that the person riding in the limousine was someone who the hospital had persecuted unmercifully, the devil who didn’t look like a devil, old lady Fang. 

The black limousine stopped in front of the main entrance to the hospital. Mother got out of the limousine just as Wang Ming was standing at the door. His eyes had been glued to the limousine as it slowly drove towards the hospital. He wondered who it could be, He never imagined that it could have been the car specially assigned to bring mother there. 

When the car stopped and my mother stepped out, Secretary Wang welcomed my mother with a smiling face. He called out to two young people, Cao in reception and Li in the pharmacy, to hurry out and take the two suitcases that had been taken out of the limousine. Hospital nurses came out to give her a warm reception. 

When I heard that mother was going back to the Caijia Hospital, I hurried back from Middle School No. 24 to the hospital. When I got there, Chen, Zhou and Secretary Zhou had gathered in Mother’s small room. Secretary Wang was flattering Mother about how after her political rehabilitation, she had been shone brightly with the “youth and vigor of the revolution”. 

They said to Mother’s face that “Only after you left did we realize how important you had been to the hospital. You did three jobs — reception, accounting and food procurement. Now we have three young people doing those jobs.  They can’t manage to handle any other task at the same time and what they do they don’t do very well. Last year our hospital accounts were off by 300 RMB. We realize from all that just how much you were the old reliable of that hospital.”

The two young people looked at him unhappily.  It was clear that they despised him.  Did he see Mother differently now because of her connection with Liu Kunshui or because he had really rid himself of his prejudices against her? But when I thought back to the expression on his face when he had allocated housing to mother two years ago and compared it with his expression today, it was all I could do to stop myself from throwing up.

– 645 –

Just then the Beibei District government was preparing to write a local gazette describing Beibei and so had set up a group to write the history of the locality. Some group members were from the library and the cultural center. Mother was chosen as a member of this group and so a room was found where mother could live temporarily while the gazette was being edited. Later, with the help of friends in the health field, she was able to get a permanent residence in Beibei and so finally put a definitive end to more than twenty years of living hell at the Caijiayuan Hospital.

“Look for a new job while still holding onto your current job” was what Professor Fang advised me to do. However, if I was ever to get out of Caijia, I would have to look for a job myself.  I went to the United Front office in Beibei several times and said that since my mother had already got a job in Beibei, my reason for getting a job in Caijia was no longer valid.  Mr. Wu, the United Work office, told me, “Look, if there is any work unit with a vacancy in the area under our authority, we’ll place you there. The best thing to do is to look around yourself and find a work unit!”

I hadn’t heard, since I was teaching at Middle School No. 24, that when Song Dianbi returned to Chongqing University as part of “officials being restored to their original posts’ ‘ his wife was reassigned to Chongqing University as well. Not until I went to Chongqing University and made some requests to the Chongqing University Municipal Personnel Placement office to ask that the university party committee further implement the political rehabilitation policy in my case that I found Song Dianbi. He immediately told me to contact Chongqing University President Zhang Wencheng.

Zhang Wencheng, who was labeled a “rightist ” at the same time as we were.  After being released in 1978, he became party secretary of the Communist Youth League Committee at the Southwest Institute of Political Science and Law and later, in 1981, he was assigned as Secretary of the Chongqing University Communist Party Committee. As Song Dianbin had told me, I went to see Zhang Wencheng.  When I saw him, he had just been transferred to be chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chongqing City People’s Congress and was in the middle of going through the formalities for the transfer. 

Zhang Wencheng gave me a warm welcome. He told me to see a Mr. Gao, the first deputy secretary of Chongqing University to further my political rehabilitation, made a phone call to the Chongqing City Propaganda Department. He asked them to arrange work for me. However, the Propaganda Department replied that they were unable to compel a factory to accept me. They suggested that I look around the Beibei district and find the work unit that best suited me and was willing to accept me and then contact them to arrange the transfer. 

At university I had studied mechanical engineering so unfortunately the most appropriate factory for me would have been the Chongqing Agricultural Vehicles Factory in the middle of the Beibei District. By chance, the secretary of the factory party committee, Peng Jihui was the spouse of Zhong Shengbi, the very same person who had been the Youth League branch party secretary who was responsible for branding my mother a rightist when she worked at the Bebei Nursery School.    

During the more than twenty years that followed, not only were my mother and were branded as people over whom “dictatorship” should be exercised and sent to forced labor, the remaining family members, my maternal grandmother who was then over seventy and my fourteen year old little brother suffered terribly both physically and mentally because of their designation for being lumped in with the “Black Five” bad social elements.

Twenty-five years have passed and the netherworld has taken both my poor grandmother and my naive little brother. Now mother visited Zhong Shengbi and asked her to recommend to her husband that I be given a position in the factory. Moved, she accepted mother’s request. 

– 646 –

Thus with the help of Zheng Wencheng and Song Dianbin, Chongqing University amended its arrangements for my political rehabilitation. It canceled the certification of studies short of graduation it had issued me in 1979 and in its place, issued me a formal Chongqing University graduation diploma, and the date for calculating my work seniority back to 1958 and in addition raised my salary by one grade. 

With a letter from Zhang Wencheng to the head of the Chongqing Education Bureau in hand, after getting the City Education Bureau’s approval, Middle School 24 was instructed to release me, and then, with the response I had received from the Chongqing City Human Resources Placement office, I went to the Chongqing Agricultural Vehicle Factory and exchanged it for a transfer order signed personally by the head of the factory. In that way, my transfer took less than a month to complete~

2.  Moving Away From Caijiachang

I realized that this implementation of the political rehabilitation policy in my case was because of the factionalization that had arisen in the Communist Party during the corrupt reign of Mao Zedong. If Zong Dianbin had not been punished for thirteen years, if Zhang Wencheng had not been restored to his post, it it had not been for the mutual assistance of the two democratic party elements Sun Qimeng and Liu Kunshui who had themselves emerged from living hell, if Zhou Shengbi had not discovered her compassion, however could an unknown small person like me have pulled off something like that?  I would have to be considered an exception compared with the other “rightists” who had resisted their fate. 

Although the factory personnel department handled many transfers in and out of the factory, the factory managers did not welcome people transferring in. Ever since the government had set up the personnel exchange office, companies that were over-complement had their own rule: anyone transferring in had first to get the approval of the factory head. This was done not for administrative convenience but because the factory head had ordered that things be handled that way. With large numbers of relatives and friends coming in the back door this way, managers could exchange their power to make these decisions to get personal benefits. 

If the person requesting the transfer did not have strong backing, they were required to present a suitable gift to the factory personnel department. Only when they were satisfied could the transfer go through. As for the question of whether the people transfering had the skills the factory needed to grow, well, only a fool would put that consideration in first place. 

Therefore, if someone without personal connections wanted to transfer, they went to the personnel office to present their transfer order to the factory personnel department, the office director sitting in the chairman’s position would receive the transfer order. Without even giving it a glance, the office director would put the letter in a drawer and replied disdainfully, “We’ll let you know after the leaders have discussed the matter.”  If you ask, “How long will that take?” The office director would answer coldly, “There are procedures that must be followed. This factory was not put there for your convenience.”

When I presented the case file to the Chongqing Agricultural Vehicle Factory director’s office, director Zhou of the factory’s party committee office received me. After he got the letter of introduction, he put on a nice smile and welcomed me. He said, “The new factory director Li Youzheng needs a good assistant. The factory is still in considerable difficulty so I won’t be able to arrange a place for you to live. I’ll keep working on that. Once the factory’s situation improves, all our problems will get easier to solve.”

Director Zhou was the husband of the new factory head Li You’s elder sister. Factory Director Li’s elder sister was the head of the organization department of the Beibei District Communist Party Committee. At my very arrival I had come across nepotism that promoted the relatives of local powerful people. I knew that this is the result of the networks of personal contacts built up over many years in Chinese Communist Party grassroots organizations.  I didn’t have any common language with these people who ate the Communist Party’s rice. A forthright person like myself has a hard time getting used to an environment like that. So the smartest thing for me to do was to avoid them!

Therefore, from the first day I, like the Monkey King Sun Wukong who broke into the Jade Emperor’s festival in honor of the Grand Old Lady of Western Heaven.  Confronted with a confusing new situation, my reaction to it is to just do things my way.

Since the Agricultural Vehicle Factory did not have any housing to allocate to me, I discussed my housing problem with Liu Qijian and ended up staying temporarily in my mother’s old room at Tianshengqiao. 

We moved away from Caijiachang at the end of August 1984. After 25 whole years and the shattering of our family, with only my mother and myself remaining, after a great deal of effort and many twists and turns, we were finally back on the streets of Beibei.

Soon after our family moved to Beibei I got a letter from Mr. Liu Kunshui. He had sent the letter to me at Middle School #24 which they then forwarded on to me. He again brought up his advice that I should hold on to my old job while looking for a new one. 

– 647 –

Mother’s work on the Beibei local gazette editorial committee ended just when the Beibei Steel Plant was in difficulty that year because of an investigation of its use of workers doing penal labor under surveillance. An old rightist office director, Li Xiuzhen in the Health Department proposed to set up a clinic where sick people could be seen which became known as the Jinyun counseling and outpatient services clinic. 

Li Xiuzhen invited mother to help organize the clinic and, once the clinic formally opened, to take charge of its registration and financial affairs. Many famous old physicians of the Beibei area were assembled to work at this clinic. Not only were they skilled physicians, they also had especially high standards of medical ethics so the clinic did a booming business.

Chapter 5  Luo Wennan

One afternoon at year’s end while mother was coming home from work she happened to run into a middle-aged man in ragged clothing dragging a cart behind him. The man stopped suddenly when he got next to mother. Only when he said, “Mother.” did she recognize him? 

Twenty years before Luo Wennan had been my younger brother’s classmate at the Electric Power Engineering School. His mother had been a library worker at Southwest Normal College who had been branded a rightist in 1957 and had been sent to the Beibei Steel Plant to penal labor under supervision. When mother was transferred from the steel plant to the Caijiayuan Hospital in 1962, she remained at the steel plant. 

After Luo Wennan and my younger brother graduated from the Electric Power Institute, they were sent down to the countryside around Caijia at the same time to the same production brigade. They were friends sharing difficult times but Luo Wennan was not as bold as my brother. When in 1967 my brother boldly left Caijiachang, Luo Wennan didn’t dare go with him and so avoided joining him on his fatal journey. My younger brother was never heard from again. Later Luo Wennan also left Caijiachang and so both children lost contact with my mother. 

Suddenly there was Mother right in front of him. He stood there in a straw hat covering his tightly-drawn ashen pale face, his thin frame shivering in the cold wind. Mother nearly screamed when she finally recognized him. She hadn’t seen this child in twenty-five years. Seeing him now so forlorn, she not only felt sorry for him, but also brought back memories of the son she had lost so many years before. 

The day that my younger brother left, mother had gone to the little grass shack they lived in to look for him. She asked where he had gone. Luo Wennan didn’t know. Now standing before her as a person abandoned and reduced to begging, she didn’t feel at all angry with him. She told him to stop his cart by the side of the road and asked him, holding his hand, where was his mother?

Luo Wennan could only nod as if he had so much bitterness locked within him that could find no way out. The hand that mother held was shaking. It was nearly 6 PM and it was getting dark. She ordered two bowls of noodles for him at a nearby noodle shop and kept asking him where he lived, how his mother was and how he made a living.

Luo Wennan sat quietly on the noodle shop’s long bench, his eyes gazing blankly out at the street. His attitude made mother think of Young Runshi in Lu Xun’s stories. He didn’t make a sound in response to mother’s questions. When the two bowls of noodles were set down in front of him, he didn’t politely decline them but instead wolfed them both down. 

Seeing how very hungry he was, mother thought of her own child who even today may be just like him, wandering down the street in who knows where.

Once he had gulped down the first bowl, Luo Wennan’s pale face blushed slightly as if he was already in somewhat better spirits.  He began to speak. His mother had died two years before of lung cancer. When Mother departed, leaving her child behind, the only thing he had left was the small and humid broken-down tile-roof shack on a hillside in Wenxingwan. 

That shack hadn’t changed in decades. It was in the slum area of Beibei. That two room shack left to Luo Wennan was the one inherited from his father who had bought it before Liberation when he was a civil servant employed by the Nationalist government. 

After “Liberation”, the Communist Party arrested his father for his historical crimes when Wennan was only eight years old.  Only with great difficulty was his mother able to find a job through the Ministry of Civil Affairs as a manager at the Southwest Normal University Library and so was able to earn enough for the two of them to basically get by.

– 648 –

I hadn’t realized that after Mother was branded a rightist in 1957 that an even greater disaster would befall the two women. 

After he finished the two bowls, Lou Wennan continued talking about what had happened to him. After mother was politically rehabilitated, she didn’t get her old job back at the Southwest Normal University library. They said that she was already of retirement age and so gave her an application for retirement. They gave her a 20 RMB per month pension. Life got more and more difficult. She long suffered from malnutrition and finally got sick. She couldn’t afford to go to a hospital so only took some herbs that an itinerant physician gave her to treat it.

When finally she coughed up a lot of blood and had a hard time getting out of bed, a physician diagnosed her with lung cancer. His mother saw that she did not have long to live so in order to find a way for her child to earn a living, she forced herself to get out of bed and, supported by her son, she went to the street committee. She asked them to take pity on herself and her son who were in such a terrible situation. She was determined to help her son find a job so that he could make a living before she died. It didn’t matter whether it was sweeping the street or becoming a coolie pulling a cart.  She just wanted him to be able to earn enough to eat. 

In those years, organizations like the street committee were lower level Communist Party organizations. If someone didn’t have personal connections or a backer of some kind and just came to them penniless, why ever would they be sympathetic and lend a hand?  Luo Wennan, simple and honest as he was, would just sit by the doorway of his home and stare blankly at passers-by. 

Critically ill, Mother finally went to the district United Front office to ask them to arrange a job for her son. The official at the United Front office answered, “Your request goes beyond the guidelines of the political rehabilitation policy set by the central authorities so we can’t help you on that score. However, seeing that you are seriously ill and your son is in difficult circumstances, we’ll see what we can do to help. Please go home and wait. Take care of yourself and wait for our response.  Afterwards, it will be the responsibility of the street committee to solve your problem.” 

So they kicked the “ball” back to the street committee. That didn’t help solve Luo Wennan’s problems; moreover it offended the head of the street committee.

When Luo Wennan went to the street committee, the head of the street committee looked down n disgust and with a cold laugh said, “You dared to think that you were so important that you could go to my superiors to lodge a complaint? Let me tell you something. Great oaks from little acorns grow so to take care of your problems you need to rely on the grassroots.”

According to the regulations at the time relating to educated youth sent down to the countryside who returned to the city, he was supposed to go to a street committee or the Ministry of Civil Affairs office to arrange for work in the city. However, for some reason, he was never included among the educated youth returning to the city so when he returned to Caijia he was just treated as a jobless vagrant. He lived in the slums until he was fourteen years old. He often went hungry.

– 649 –

Luo Wennan, utterly penniless, saw that his mother was near death but had no money to take her to the hospital.  A few days later, he saw her close her eyes at the Southwest Normal University clinic. His aunt from Hechuan County helped him make funeral arrangements. 

After the simple funeral for his mother, he used the ten months of pension payments for the funeral paid in accordance with a China-wide state regulation, to quietly have her cremated and the ashes interred under a big tree on a pine forest hillside. He foolishly spent three days and three nights under the tree, hoping that he would die with his mother since the two of them had always depended upon one another. 

After his mother died, Luo Wennan became destitute. His aunt helped him get all the support for the bereaved and suggested that he sell some things at the riverside docks. He started going there early and spent a long day there, buying some carrots to make some food to sell some picked vegetables. However, because he was very passive and didn’t seek out the best sales opportunities, his food rotted and he wasn’t able to sell anything. He lost his capital and had to look for some other way to make money.

An old man who felt bad for him since he looked like a beggar found an old cart and gave it to him. He earned some money every day transporting the wares of local merchants. Sometimes he got enough to eat; other days he got hungry. Whenever he felt that he wouldn’t be able to go on, whenever he had to skip a few meals, he would always cry beneath that big tree where his mother was buried. 

When he got this far, he started to cry. It was already dark and the streetlights had come on. He was more active now, it must have been the two bowls of noodles. Mother offered him another bowl but he declined it with a wave of his hand!  He still sat there silently, looking out at the fall of night without any expression on his face.

The two mothers were companions in suffering and so that had created a bond between them. After being quiet for a while, mother asked him what he planned to do?  Somehow that question hid a sensitive nerve. He abruptly got up from the bench as if he were trying to rid himself of some invisible iron fetters around his neck.  With an angry look in his eyes, he let out a muffled yell, “When the day comes that I won’t be able to live any longer, I’ll just give up my life in exchange for two of theirs to even the score. It would be worth it!”

I could hear in his voice his determination, born of long-smoldering resentment, to take a life for a life was his way of striking a blow against this dog-eat-dog world as the last thing that he would ever do.  But who would he take with him? Would it be that street committee “boss” who had treated him so contemptuously? Or would it be some demon who was ever-present in his mind?  He clenched his teeth and said nothing more. 

My mother realized that the longer he stayed silent, the longer that child would steep in “the blowing of the wind that chills the waters”. This era which chews people up so completely that it doesn’t even spit out their bones has bullied countless defenseless people who accumulated a deep rage that could explode at any moment!  How much plundering and murder has arisen from such sorrows?  Society pays no attention to this! Does it do so out of ignorance or does society deliberately avoid this topic?

Now mother understands very well that this child, introverted since childhood and of very few words, is not an unfeeling idiot. That type of psychology of pent-up anger could take him to his own self-destruction in an act of revenge at any moment. He will destroy both himself and others.  

– 650 –

She wanted to somehow extinguish that revenge-seeking mindset in order to save that child. When she reflected upon the terrible danger that child was in, she repeatedly urged him, for the sake of the soul of his mother in Heaven, that he must not be too hasty, that he should handle things calmly. Where there is life there is hope. The day will come when blessings from his mother will come. 

Just before we parted, mother opened her pocketbook and stuff RMB 50 in his pocket and wrote down our address for him. She told him we care about him and that he should contact us if he has some difficulty that he can’t handle on his own he should come us in in Tianshenqiao. She urged him to go on living to wait and see if the world changes for the better. 

When I heard mother talking that way, I felt that in a society like this one in which the mighty bully the weak, just sympathizing with someone like Luo Wennan doesn’t do any good. Today the newspapers aren’t even free to decry the inequality all around us. How can these injustices be eliminated?

Whoever could make scoundrels like the boss of the street committee budge even one inch? As long as people like that can go on selling drugs, bringing people together to gamble, protecting criminals and forcing women into prostitution, how then could anything be done to address the tragedy of someone like Luo Wennan, victim of the inadequate implementation of the political rehabilitation policy. That is a problem that is even harder to solve. 

Naturally I thought back to Mr. Liu Kunshui. The same sort of thing had happened to him too. He would certainly be able to help Luo Wenan in his predicament. Secondly, he has an important post in the Chongqing City government. I decided that is would not be difficulty to ask him, as an official concerned with the well-being of the people, to intervene in the case of this orphan, a victim of the Anti-Rightist Movement and to forward his recommendation to the Ministry of Civil Affairs to spur the Beibei local officials to assign Luo Wennan a job that will enable him to earn a living. 

Even though over the past several years, when I asked him for help in finding a job that matched my skills, he had put me off with the advice “best to look for a job while keeping your current job”, but when faced with a case that was a matter of life-and-death like that of Luo Wennan, he certainly would take it on.

Thus, I wrote a letter to Mr. Liu Kunshui asking him for help. Two weeks later, I got his reply. He said that his work was very busy now that the People’s Consultative Congress was in session so he only had time to write his reply during intermissions between sessions.

I think that giving a careful read to my letter and answering right away was something that can’t be done in the various levels of Communist Party organizations. I read the letter carefully out of respect. The first half of the letter explained the Communist Party’s personnel procedures and that it was handled separately at each level. Therefore he as an individual had no authority to make a personnel decision relating to a different level. He added that he had never even made personnel arrangements for his own children.  

After explaining the limits of his personal authority, he added that a case like Luo Wennan’s can only be handled by the Beibei office of the Department of Civil Affairs according to the specific regulations of that street committee. 

When I read this I felt perplexed. I didn’t doubt that Liu Kunshui was acting according to his principles as an honest official. The problem was that I had suggested something that would require him to violate Chinese Communist Party policy. Even though “violating” the “principles of organization” of the Chinese Communist Party would be a deed so good that it would be remembered forever, I couldn’t blame him for it.

In fact, we see that all levels of Chinese Communist Party officials use their personal connections to do all kinds of things?  Certainly he must be well aware of the rampant corruption in the world of officials.  Maybe he doesn’t make arrangements for his own children but fawns on subordinates so that they will make suitable arrangements on his behalf. But what about someone in mortal danger like Luo Wennan? How could he refuse to assume his responsibility for standing up for the weak! For the sake of remaining an “upright official” and one dedicated to the public good and obeying the law, how could he totally ignore virtue, justice and good conscience?

It is essential to understand that the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party alone are responsible for Luo Wennan’s plight. He is like a beggar standing outside the office of a corrupt official who is blocked at the gate. This happens even if the official is a clean and upright official who once served in the same organization as the beggar.  The moral character of Chinese people resemble what Hong Chengchou said in a crowded prison when he was imprisoned by the sixteenth century Jurchen chieftain Nurhaci: “The Chinese people are like a dragon when they are in danger but once the common danger has passed, they are like a pile of sand.”

When I thought of that, a tide of emotion flooded through me. I picked up my pen to write a reply. This letter was not just a repeated call for help on behalf of the innocent victim Luo Wennan but also an attempt to arouse his sense of justice and conscience and to criticize the numbness and brutality of the local officials in Beibei.  The clever Mr Liu naturally read this pungent criticism as including himself as well. 

– 651 –

I ended the letter with a line from the then popular film “A Very Low-Ranking Official” a song that people would sing in the streets “Much for an official than working for the people is buying a sweet potato and going home.”

As a younger person, I have no intention of pointing out the faults of the older generation, much less someone the Chinese Communist Party once considered an enemy. I need to be more careful about what I say.

Anyways, for those of us who had no-one to turn to in Chongqing, I wouldn’t want to wound a low-level Chongqing government official who helped us a lot when we were in a terrible situation. 

In any case, that is the kind of letter I put into the envelope and put in the mailbox. That must have been my twenty years in Hell talking. That contempt for authority that is so deep-rooted in me made me lose my self-control. I let it all out and felt relieved without a thought to the consequences. 

When Mother heard about it, she blamed me. First of all because Luo Wenan’s problems have nothing to do with Liu Kunshui. We can talk that way about some criminal ringleader but not about someone who sympathized with us. That is getting things all backwards. 

She said that Mr Liu, at the request of Sun Qimeng based on their teacher-student friendship, had done everything he could for mother. Considering the steadily-deteriorating social climate of those days, he certainly did all he could. To harshly criticize him now because of Luo Wennan to say that he was the kind of person who cared nothing about ordinary people and only about his own family would be very rude. 

Anyways knowing that he was an official and so had some power. However the Luo Wennan case touched on matters sensitive for the Chinese Communist Party and he was intent on watching the expression on that Communist Party face that sat at the chairman’s place at the table.  That response reflected his timidity so I should not perversely heap blame on that kindly old man. 

Mr. Liu never wrote a reply. Thus ended our three years of communication and friendship. Maybe he really was angry or perhaps he understood my feelings but didn’t want to lower himself to my level and argue so he stopped the argument right there. 

When I look back on that now, when I wrote those harsh words to him, I was just looking at him as a member of the older generation who had let down the demands of comradeship to do the bidding of the ruling party. 

Several days later Mother got a reply from him that mentioned how in my letters I had criticized him for being an official who does not care about the people. He warned me that I should learn my lesson and not recklessly slash away at people in my rage.  I have really nothing more to say about this. I think that as a member of the older generation he should have been so narrow-minded. Living life too cautiously is really exhausting. 

Although I am poor and my living quarters are miserable, I work hard every day. I don’t bow down to power for a pittance. When I encounter people of a lower social station than myself, I always keep the free spirit of wanting to do good in my heart. People who enjoy official positions, who have their assistants and enjoy fine homes do not necessarily have minds that are at peace. 

Later, during the popular movement at Tiananmen in 1989, we saw how those “fellows” lacked self-confidence and self-respect. Naturally, in the context of these times, Mr. Liu certainly is a good man and a stalwart supporter of democracy. 

As for Luo Wennan, later I heard from physicians I met at the Jinyun Clinic that after mother explained to Liu Xiuying and others about the plight of Luo Wennan, the clinic set aside some money from the clinic’s income to set up Luo Wennan in his own one-man merchandise business so that he could find a place for himself among the many others selling things at their personal stalls and so although he stayed poor he was able to make an honest living. 

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Next: Rightist Memoir XXXVI: My Tractor Factory – Microcosm of 1980s SOE Corruption and Mismanagement