Post by BDKIn article <63ca9d17-8480-4a8e-9839-56f55f7dca00
@i4g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, ***@aol.com says...
Post by s***@aol.comPost by BDKIn article <ab4e7b03-e3f0-4d6a-bcdc-7f9d56f2f7a1
@q16g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, ***@aol.com says...
Post by s***@aol.comPost by s***@aol.comPolice Begin "Guns Drawn" Raids on Organic Food Stores in California
http://youtu.be/b27EFldZ17k
Yup, change we can believe in. Throw these purveyors of poison into
prison where they belong!!!
Crock Obama, has to be the greatest liar and fake of all US Presidents
ever. Just think "hope and change you can believe in and the ruling
class stuck us with the same Bush policies, and Crock added
preventative detention, war in Pakistan, control of the National Guard
by the White House instead of local govenors, massive spying, Crock's
oil well volcano, more murder of innocent people by drones in one year
than all eight of Dubya years.
Whoever reads this message and ever votes again in a bourgeois
election is a chump, in my book.
Whoever uses the term "bourgeois" to describe something is a total
asshole, in my book. Someone who does that, and admires Mao and Stalin
is the pinnacle of assholedumb, in my book too.
I don't know how old you are, but haven't you lived as a clueless idiot
long enough?
--
BDK, non-jew leader of the non-existant paid jew shills!- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
BDK, you should put on your thinking cap and read a scholarly book
about Mao Tse Tung. I think you would be impressed, you silly little
man.
I've read about him already, and you forget I know people who grew up in
the "paradise" of the PRC, and who got out as soon as possible and only
go back to visit their parents and aunts and uncles who didn't get out.
Funny how their memories, along with the ones who grew up in the USSR,
differ totally from what you've read in a book.
The stories they tell line up pretty well with the ones I've read. But
I'm not reading some book written by a deluded loon like yourself who
has the hots for Mao or Uncle Joe.
Get a clue, stop being a tool.
--
BDK, non-jew leader of the non-existant paid jew shills!- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Here is the guy I've met who is from China, here's what he has to say:
Dongping Han:
The Unknown Cultural Revolution
Life and Change in a Chinese Village
Q&A: Mobilizing Against Traditional Ideas
Question: Why during that time, during those 10 years of the Cultural
Revolution, was there no effort made to purge the Communist Party of
the right-wing capitalist roaders? Why was nothing done to purge the
different apparatus of the Party of the capitalist roaders?
Dongping Han: That's a very good question. This question has been
asked many times. The Cultural Revolution was not to purge people, it
was to educate the people. Many of the capitalist roaders had fought
for the revolution and made important contributions to the Chinese
revolution. It was an accepted traditional idea that those who fight
for the revolution should enjoy the privileges when the revolution
succeeded. It was not enough to purge these people. The problem was
the old traditional ideas. So the Cultural Revolution was to do away
with the traditional ideas and educate the people through mobilizing
the farmers and the workers. I think if there was no coup in 1976, I
doubt that this government apparatus would have changed by itself. It
happened because there was a coup. But I don't think to purge people
is a solution either. I remember during the Cultural Revolution there
were some high officials in my county who encouraged their own
children to work with the farmers and to ask for the most difficult
assignments and tasks to build their character. It seemed that these
high officials did change with the change of social climate during the
Cultural Revolution years. But when the social climate changed, they
changed back.
Most people were not aware that there was a coup in 1976. Mao's wife
and three other important leaders were arrested. And there was a very
extensive purge throughout China. Hundreds of thousands of people who
supported the Cultural Revolution were arrested right away. Some
people argue that Mao should have killed Deng Xiaoping and a few
others to prevent the arrest of the Gang of Four. Maybe he should
have, but he did not.
Question: I really enjoyed hearing your speech. My question is: could
you paint a picture comparing what the average daily life was like for
you and your family during the Cultural Revolution compared to, on the
one hand communism before the Cultural Revolution, and then compared
to your family now in capitalist China?
Dongping Han: The Cultural Revolution was launched because the Great
Leap Forward1 failed. It failed partly because there was a 100-year
natural disaster on the one hand. On the other hand, it failed because
communist officials in the villages were not really socialist yet.
They ordered farmers to do too much and they themselves didn't want to
work hard. There was not enough to eat during the Great Leap Forward
because of the natural disasters on the one hand and mismanagement on
the other. So the reason I think the Cultural Revolution was launched
by Mao was that he realized at the time that the Chinese officials
needed to be educated and that the Chinese people needed to be
educated through a socialist movement. That's why he mobilized the
Chinese farmers to criticize the officials in the village. And of
course, I was too young, I don't remember too much about the Great
Leap Forward. But during the Cultural Revolution, I remember very
well. I was working in the fields with the farmers and at that time in
the rural areas, each village had a production brigade, and each
brigade was divided into several production teams. In my village there
were eight production teams. Each production team had about 40
families. We elected five production team leaders each year. We had a
production team head, a woman leader, an accountant, a cashier, and a
store keeper. Before the Cultural Revolution these people were
appointed by the village leaders and the village leaders were
appointed by the commune leaders. It was not democratically elected.
During the Cultural Revolution years, these production team leaders
were elected by the farmers.
We worked in the fields together. Everybody came out and worked
together. And at the end of the day the cashier would record how many
people worked that day. And at the end of the year, when the harvest
came in, the village accountant, together with the production team
accountant, would develop a distribution plan. Seventy percent of the
grain was distributed according to how many people you had in your
family. Thirty percent was distributed according to how much you
worked in the collective. So if you did not work in the fields, you
were still entitled to 70 percent of the grain from the collective.
That was the distribution on the production team level. There was also
distribution at the production brigade level. The village owned many
enterprises. After putting away money for a welfare fund, money to
purchase new equipment and so on, the village would distribute its
income according to how much you had worked in the collective. The
collective also produced vegetables, fruits, peanuts and we also
raised pigs. These would be distributed to villagers regularly
according to the same distribution schedule as grain was distributed.
We also purchased fish, wine, cigarettes collectively with the money
earned by the village enterprises, and this was distributed to each
family on important occasions like Chinese New Year and other
holidays. We got almost all our supplies from the collective.
After the Cultural Revolution years, I went to college and my two
sisters who used to work for the village, found jobs in a state-owned
factory in the early '80s. Now the factory has been sold and my two
sisters have been unemployed since 1996. My younger sister is still
working in the village, as the village cashier now. My village is
doing well compared with other villages. Life has changed dramatically
in the countryside. I think for most working class people, life has
changed for the worse. Even though they may get more money, they have
lost benefits like free medical care and free education of the
socialist past. They now have to pay for their education. They have to
pay for their medical care. Most farmers cannot afford the medical
care. If they are sick for a small problem, they just endure the
problem. If they are sick for a big problem, they just wait to die.
Many of them say they do not want to leave a big debt for their
children by going to the hospital. The medical care is very expensive
now and it is beyond the reach of most farmers and working class
people in urban areas.
Question: Could you talk a little about what the cultural life was
like in your village and how that changed?
Dongping Han: The Cultural Revolution was truly a cultural revolution.
The changes that took place in the field of culture were
revolutionary. Before the Cultural Revolution, Chinese performing arts
were mostly about talented young men and beautiful ladies, kings,
generals and so on. That's what the Chinese traditional plays were
about. During the Cultural Revolution, there was a surge of a new kind
of art. Every village at the time had a group of farmer artists and
they played instruments, sang revolutionary songs, danced
revolutionary dances, and staged revolutionary plays. There was some
kind of performance in the village almost every night. These
performances became educational tools. Revolutionary ideas spread
because of these revolutionary performances. And it was very powerful.
But of course today you don't see that anymore in the countryside. But
if you go to China today, you can still see older people singing the
revolutionary songs in parks and public spaces to entertain
themselves.
Question: In the movies that we see about China and the Cultural
Revolution, there is a representation of people being picked up and
tried by popular tribunals and paraded around town, punished. My
question is: where does this image come from, did you hear about
things like this in China, how widespread was this?
Dongping Han: That image was from the Cultural Revolution years. For a
few weeks in the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, many Chinese
officials were being criticized on the stage. That was very common. I
saw it many times. I would say most government officials went through
some of that at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. At the same
time, I would argue, many of these people deserved some kind of
punishment. They had made mistakes in their work. And because of their
mistakes, people suffered. People were looking for ways to air their
anger. In the villages, the struggle against village leaders was more
gentle and peaceful.
These public struggle sessions to deal with officials who committed
crimes and made mistakes were different ways of dealing with these
people. After they were struggled with for a day or two, they were
allowed to go free. They were taught a lesson by the people. In the
U.S. people are sent to prison. I still think this public education
during the Cultural Revolution was very effective, not only to educate
the village officials, but also everybody else. After the session,
they were free. So I don't think that was a bad practice. I think it
was a very good practice.
Question: Your presentation was mainly about the Cultural Revolution,
but I wonder if you could spend a few moments talking about the
situation in China now, particularly the economic crisis and how you
think that's working itself out, especially in the rural areas, but
more generally?
Dongping Han: The Chinese government is faced with a huge challenge
today and the Chinese government officials themselves have admitted
that on many occasions. Some people estimate that there are 100
incidents involving more than 100 people challenging the government
and 300 incidents involving less than 100 challenging the government
each day. I read in a document about an incident in Guangdong province
where three police officers stopped a car without a license plate and
upon further check they found the driver without a driver's license.
But the three people came out the car and yelled that the police are
harassing people and about 2,000 people came out. They turned the
police car upside down and set it on fire. The government is warning
the police to be careful because the tension between the people and
the government is very high. And there are a lot of people in the
countryside who are very angry with the township government. I was
told by a farmer about an incident in a rural township. The party
secretary was taking a nap one day. But about 100 farmers ,who were
angry with the township government's decision to move the market to a
different place, went to his bedroom. They actually dragged him by his
four limbs into the marketplace and threw him up into the air for a
half hour. They didn't hit him. They just toyed with him for a half
hour. In the end the government had to remove him from office because
he had become an embarrassment for the government. This happened last
year. There was another government official who was beaten by the
farmers. The villagers wanted him to take a patient to the hospital.
He refused. He said that not everyone could ride in his car. The
farmers almost killed him, but the government didn't punish the people
who did it. So I think the government realizes how tense its
relationship is with the masses.
In the old days, the Chinese government officials came to the village
and worked with the farmers. And today they don't do that. They come
to the village in big cars, only to get money from farmers and to
enforce the one child policy... I think the government has a
legitimacy crisis. The Chinese government was able to survive the
challenges of the Great Leap Forward posed by unprecedented natural
disasters and mismanagement by its officials because of the socialist
legitimacy. I don't think it will be able to survive any challenges
close that of the Great Leap Forward.
Question: Thanks for coming. I'm really looking forward to getting
into your book. I have two questions. First, you mention the coup in
1976. Could you talk about what happened and also how that whole
period was being understood where you were? How did people understand
the struggle that was going on that led up to right before Mao's death
and up to the coup? My second question is: in describing all the
upheaval right now in China, what kind of revolutionary thinking is
there, are there any trends that are looking towards Mao or towards
Maoism, how is that developing, what are the ideas that are capturing
people in this period?
Dongping Han: I still remember where I was on September 9, 1976. At 4
o'clock that day, I was walking with my friend outside the village
when the loudspeaker said there was a very important announcement. And
we immediately realized something was wrong. And they said Chairman
Mao had passed away. I don't know how I walked home that day. I
remember that everybody around me was crying. Finally I reached home.
My father cried all the way home from his factory. When my grandpa
died he didn't cry. He gathered the family together and he said, today
our poor people's sky has fallen and we do not know what life will be
like tomorrow. At the time, I thought, in my heart, how could that be
possible? We have built the socialist state. How could the poor
people's sky fall just because Chairman Mao died?
It turned out that my father was right. When the Gang of Four was
arrested, the Chinese government said the people were really happy.
That was not true. In my hometown many young people really respected
Jiang Qing because of an incident that happened in a neighboring
commune. On Chinese New Year in 1975, the village leader played over
the loudspeaker a traditional drama which was criticized during the
Cultural Revolution. A young man in the village criticized the village
leader for playing that over the loudspeaker. But the village leaders
accused him of causing trouble in the village. He called the police
and the police took him away. While he was in prison, he wrote a
letter to Jiang Qing, and in less than five days, Jiang Qing responded
to his letter. Jiang Qing ordered that the person be released. And the
village leader was dismissed from office. Young people in my area
loved Jiang Qing. When the Gang of Four was arrested a few weeks after
Mao died, we knew things were going to be different. We still don't
know the details why Hua Guofeng, who was appointed by Mao, decided to
arrest the Gang of Four. We didn't know then. Today, looking back, I
think Hua Guofeng was the person who was responsible for this. There
were some people who have talked about how at the time, before Mao
died, Mao had the intention to appoint Jiang Qing to be his successor,
and that Hua Guofeng apparently was not supposed to succeed Mao. And I
think probably he arrested the Gang of Four not because he had a
different agenda, but he had his own personal ambition for power. But
I don't think he intended to change Mao's line. But by arresting the
Gang of Four, Mao's wife, he had to justify why he arrested these four
important leaders. By doing that he had to condemn the Cultural
Revolution—because the Gang of Four were the crucial leaders of the
Cultural Revolution. And by condemning the Cultural Revolution he
paved the way for Deng Xiaoping to come back. Of course, that's what
happened. I think that the workers and farmers were not actually, like
the government said, happy when the Gang of Four was arrested. Hua
Guofeng did two other things after he arrested the Gang of Four. He
decided to preserve Mao's body, against Mao's will. That was a popular
thing to do at the time. Because the Chinese people, working class
particularly, considered Mao their greatest leader. So by doing that
they thought Hua Guofeng was still continuing Mao's legacy. And he
also announced he was going to publish the fifth volume of Mao's
works. That was also very popular as well. He did some very smart
things. But he did the most damage by arresting the Gang of Four as
well.
In terms of the situation now, it's very hard for me to give you a
full picture. Two years ago, Deng Xiaoping's elder son said in
response to a question by an Associated Press reporter that the
Cultural Revolution was not only tragic for himself and his family,
but also for the whole Chinese nation. He said that on December 10,
but within 20 days, there were more than 35,000 people who responded
to his comment on line. About 90 percent of these responders condemned
him for slandering the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese government was
able to get away with condemning the Cultural Revolution before. Now
it is hard for them to get away with that anymore. It seems that the
Chinese people are really waking up about the Cultural Revolution.
Now, people say, they lied to us for 30 years. History proves that
Chairman Mao was right, from the very beginning. The Chinese officials
are very corrupt now. People understand that Mao launched the Cultural
Revolution to prevent that from happening. Mao realized before he died
that without an empowered working class to serve as watchdogs, the
officials were bound to be corrupt.
The crisis in China is very serious. During the Cultural Revolution
years, we did not have much corruption. From little corruption to a
lot of corruption, people tend to perceive the problem as more
serious. To be fair, I think the Chinese officials are not more
corrupt than American officials. For example, if The Big Dig in Boston
was taking place in China, there would be a huge public outcry, but
here there was no public outcry about it at all. People are used to it
in the U.S.
Question: When you were talking earlier, you were saying that the 10
years of the Cultural Revolution were the most exciting of your life.
Could you give some examples of that spirit that you felt?
Dongping Han: The way that I felt at that time was that I had a strong
sense of security. I was not alone in this world. My neighbors, my
production team leaders, the village leaders would take care of
anybody if they needed help.
In 1998, one of my friends who worked with me committed suicide. When
I received the news from my village I cried. The reason I cried was
because I felt that if the collective had not been disbanded he would
not have died; he would not have committed suicide. And this person
was about my age. When he was young, he couldn't get up early in the
morning. So every morning my production team leader told me to go to
wake him up. When I went to wake him up the first time, he answered
me, and got up. The second day, he said, I'll get up but he never got
up. So I had to drag him up from his bed. The third day his
grandmother was very upset that I woke him up every day. She told me
that her grandson needed more sleep. But the production team leader
said to me: "Do not mind his grandmother. Wake him up. He needs help."
So he came to work with us with my help. He worked every day. He was a
very good worker. He was very talented as well. He played the Chinese
instrument, the erhu very well and he also painted well. But after the
collective was disbanded, nobody went to wake him up anymore. He was
able to sleep as much as he wanted. So eventually his wife left him.
And by 1996, 1997 he became mentally disturbed. And the last time I
saw him was in 1997 when I went back home. I saw him walking naked on
the street. He saw me and ran back home. I followed him to his house.
I asked him why he walked naked in the streets. He said that life was
bad for him. He did not want to live any more. I told him that he had
to change his mindset, that he needed to face the challenges. I asked
him why he didn't go back to painting if he could not do anything
else. I told him that I would be in the village for another 10 days,
and I would like to buy a painting from him. He promised that he would
do it. But the next day, he came to see me. He said that he could not
do it now. He told me that he would do it for me the next year. I told
him that it was him that I was interested in not the painting. I
wanted to see him stand up and take control of his life. But three
months after I left the village, he committed suicide. He hung
himself. When I learned of this news from my younger sister, I cried
very hard. I felt that if the collective were not disbanded, he did
not need to commit suicide. The community was no longer there. Your
friends and your neighbors became competitors and strangers to you.
The security network had been taken away. For Americans you're used to
this kind of competition. But for Chinese farmers who lived under the
socialist system before, the change was too dramatic for many people.
Question: Like everybody here, I really want to thank you for sharing,
especially the last story you told. I have two questions. My first
question is: the Cultural Revolution sent shock waves around the
world. Do you have a sense in your village, how much were you aware of
the international situation, the influence this was having
internationally?
Dongping Han: That is a very good question. At that time when I was in
the village, I really felt we were part of the international
revolution. We were young and we were part of a big picture. I
remember in 1971 there was a huge drought in our area. The county
government held a huge rally in the marketplace. At the rally,
government leaders and representatives of farmers and workers said
that we were fighting this drought not just for ourselves. We were
fighting this in support of the Vietnamese people's fight against U.S.
imperialism. We were fighting this drought to support oppressed people
in Africa and so on. After the rally, everybody in our school wrote a
pledge to join the fight against the drought. The school was closed
for two weeks. We went back to the village to fight the drought with
the villagers for two weeks. Everybody worked very hard. I felt that I
was doing something significant to help the revolution. At that time I
didn't really understand what it meant. It was standard language. I
believed what we were told by the government that we had friends all
over the world. After the Cultural Revolution was over, the Chinese
elite told us that it was government propaganda. But it was not simply
propaganda. I found this out when I studied in Singapore. When Mao
died in 1976, China did not have diplomatic relations with Singapore.
So the branch bank of Bank of China decided to hold a memorial service
for Mao for three days. Ordinary Singaporeans and seaman from all over
the world came to show their respect for Mao day and night. The line
was so long, the staff at the Bank of China had to extend the memorial
service from three days to ten. I realized then that our fight in
China was connected with the struggle of oppressed people all over the
world.
Question: This is a kind of a follow up question to what was asked
earlier. I know that the Cultural Revolution went through different
phases. And in the year or so that led up to Mao's death and then the
coup, it was in a different kind of phase, it wasn't a high tide of
big character posters and demonstrations all the time. But there were
those of us who were out in the world and the world revolution looking
to China and reading things. And I read a magazine a lot that was
called Peking Review at the time. And you talked about the effect of
Mao's essay, "To Serve the People" in the villages. But there were
things in Peking Review that were kind of telling people in the world
that Mao wasn't going to cut off the head of Deng Xiaoping. But he was
saying very sharply that there were two lines at the top of the
Chinese Communist Party. I remember there was a thing on the cover
that said, "You are making the socialist revolution and you don't know
where the bourgeoisie is. It's right at the top inside the Communist
Party, the capitalist roaders taking the capitalist road." It talked a
lot about the difference between the capitalist road and the socialist
road. Was there any sense of that? How did people receive that in the
village? Or had the Cultural Revolution gone to a point where those
things weren't really being heard?
Dongping Han: I talk about it in my book, what does it mean, the
capitalist roader? Some have a hard time understanding this. But for
the Chinese farmers, the workers, it is easy to understand. The words
"capitalist roaders" were used all the time during the Cultural
Revolution and two line struggle was always talked about during the
Cultural Revolution years. The capitalist roaders were the people who
did not want to continue the socialist revolution, who aspired to the
capitalist lifestyle and who didn't want to work. They became
parasites. There were very clear examples in the village before the
Cultural Revolution years. They didn't work. And they got more. Their
families got more back but they didn't work for others. The farmers
knew exactly what they wanted. They wanted the leaders to work with
them. They did not want to go back to the old society. Farmers and
workers did not want to go back to the old capitalist society of the
past. They did not want to do private farming.
Question: Do you have a sense of any organized movement today among
the workers and peasants?
Dongping Han: I don't know much about this. But there are some various
small groups working to get people organized. In one province in early
2000 there was a group of young people, farmers, who organized a group
around Marxism and Maoism. And the government arrested about 200
leaders. I heard that the group grew very fast, to more than 2,000
people in a matter of few months. The Chinese government keeps a very
close eye on these people. There have been some people who have tried
to organize demonstrations and protests. There are some things like
that. But I don't see nationwide strong organization at this point.
Question: Are there rumors or reports of large rebellions in China
fighting against the police? Can you tell us the extent of this and
what the reason is?
Dongping Han: The New York Times reported a couple of years ago about
two large protests in Sichuan province against the government. A
migrant worker who worked in the city as a porter was carrying stuff
in an urban street. He was carrying a pole and going through the
streets. His pole touched a woman. And the woman was angry with him
and slapped his face and then called her husband. Her husband was a
low-level government worker and came to the scene in a government car.
He beat the man again. He said that he could kill the man and it would
only cost him $20,000. And all the onlookers heard him and became very
angry. About 100,000 gathered up and set his car on fire. They marched
to the local government and surrounded it for three days. The
government had to send about 100,000 police to pacify the crowd. And a
couple of months later, also in Sichuan province, there was a fight
for land and the report said that the farmers actually held the
provincial governor for a couple of days. And the government had to
send a large number of police to pacify the farmers. I think this kind
of thing is going on a lot in China, mostly not reported to the
outside world. As I said before, the tension with the government and
the government's ability to deal with these kinds of things is more
and more limited. In the eyes of the people, the government is on the
other side, the rich people's side, and is trying to suppress them. So
I think this kind of rebellion is going on quite widely in China
today.
Question: I heard of one instance of an expropriation of an economic
development, that they moved people off the land so they could build a
factory.
Dongping Han: That kind of thing goes on almost everywhere in China.
The Chinese local officials want to make more money. They always want
to open new development zones. So whenever new development zones are
being developed, the residents have to be moved and they sell the land
to the developers. So in many cases the people don't want to move and
the local officials hire thugs to force them to move. And in many
cases the farmers fight back. So the contradiction between the farmers
and the local officials is very serious in China today.
Question: I want to step back to your experience in the Cultural
Revolution, in 1966 you were 11 years old, you traversed from 11, you
grew up, came of age. You describe how the People's Liberation Army
came and read these three articles; the people saw their interests
represented and everything changed and the entrenched officials were
challenged and you as a young person were writing the big character
posters and all that. You were able to go to school, you grew up and
became an educated youth in the countryside, and yet there was this
political campaign that was going on for 10 years. How did this
intersect with you, how much were you continuing to follow it?
Dongping Han: My whole value system was changed very dramatically.
Before the Cultural Revolution, my father never allowed me to talk
back to him; that's how the Chinese family was. He never allowed me to
talk back to him. Whenever there were guests in the house I was never
allowed to say a word. But during the Cultural Revolution years that
changed. I said, "Chairman Mao said I can talk back to you!" But many
people in this country think that the revolutionary campaign is an
interruption of life. No. The revolution did not disrupt most people's
lives, particularly in the village. During the day most work
continues, and at night people went out to the streets and there was a
lot of debate; different groups debate in the streets. My cousin and I
went to shops at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to propagate
Mao's ideas. The government-owned shops extended their hours until 10
at night at the time. So we went to the shops to read Mao's teachings
and perform the plays, and so on. We loved that.
I do not know how to describe the change in the rural areas. Maybe I
can give you an example to illustrate the change. Before the Cultural
Revolution years, people in my area never gave blood to anybody. If
you needed a blood transfusion, you went to your family: your wife,
your father or your brothers. People thought that if you gave blood to
another person, you would lose your own vitality in life. But one day,
one of my colleagues was sick and needed a blood transfusion. Most of
the factory workers were working in fields harvesting. It was a busy
time in the village. Twenty young people who were working in the
village went to the hospital. The nurses checked our blood types. I
was the only person who qualified to give the blood. I knew at the
time any one of the 20 people would give their blood to save my
colleague. The village party secretary asked me what to do. I said
that we needed to save the patient. They took more than 700 cc from me
and after that I couldn't walk and they had to take me home in a
wheelbarrow. And the next morning I woke up and my mom and my two
aunts were all crying. They actually cried the whole night. They
thought I wouldn't be able to get married, nobody would marry me. But
life changed, and it wasn't just me. All the people who went to the
hospital that day would have happily given blood to that person that
day.
Whenever there was a storm, even at midnight people would get up to
cover the collective crops. If it snowed we would get up to clean the
streets. We did not have bulldozers. Everybody would get out to clean
the streets. Another important change in the rural life was that there
were almost no crimes during the Cultural Revolution years. For 10
years, we did not have any crime in the village. In my commune of
50,000 people, I did not hear of any serious crime for 10 years. But
now, crime has become so common in China.
Question: Could you compare your daily life during the Cultural
Revolution to what the daily life would have been like for your
grandparents before 1949?
Dongping Han: My grandparents on my mother's side came from very a
poor family. But my grandparents on my father's side owned a lot of
businesses at the time. But my grandfather's mom died. He had a rough
relationship with his stepmother. So he ran away with two horses from
his father. He set up a small factory and did pretty well in
Manchuria. He came back to his hometown and got married. Later on he
took my father, my aunt and my grandmother to live with him in
Manchuria. He was a businessman, and like most other businessmen, he
smoked opium and visited prostitution houses. My grandmother was very
sick of his lifestyle. So she decided to go back to the village. And
she came back to the village without telling my grandfather. And her
family in the village thought she came back to the village with my
grandfather's knowledge, and expected her to bring back some money to
the family. But she did not have money to give her family because she
ran away. So my grandmother's family was angry with her so when the
family divided up the assets, they didn't give my grandmother
anything. That's why my father had to work for the capitalists as a
child worker from 1942 until the communists came to power in 1949. The
reason why my father was so supportive of the Communist Party was that
he had to work 18 hours a day. He had to pick up the capitalists night
soil and did household chores beside long hours of work in the
workshop. When the communists came to power, the workday became eight
hours, so my father's life changed for the better under socialism. My
father used to believe in Buddhism. After the communists came to
power, he no longer believed it any more. On the Chinese New Year, my
mom always asked to kowtow to the gods of the family. My father would
always tell me not to do it. He was told that he was suffering because
he did something wrong in the previous life. He changed his previous
life, but his life suddenly changed for the better with the Communist
Party in power.
Both my father and my mom begged before 1949, and were hungry all the
time. Both my grandmothers died in their 30s in 1944, without any
medical care. But ever since I could remember, I never felt hungry. I
always had enough to eat. My father never bought any toys for me when
I was young. I often compare my childhood with my son's in the U.S. At
the time, we had a lot of kids in the neighborhood to play with and we
made toys for ourselves. We played a lot of games ourselves. We worked
on the collective farm during the summer, spring and fall. In winter
we played popular games in the streets when there was nothing to do in
the fields. And I always ask my son which childhood is better. Of
course it's very hard for him to imagine. But I strongly believe that
my childhood was much more healthy, much more creative than that of my
son who has nothing else but toys and video games. We had community,
and we learned how to interact with one another; we learned how to
build up leadership skills and things like that. And my son didn't
have those skills. When I first came to the U.S, I had a class on the
Cultural Revolution. And the professor said that Cultural Revolution
education was a disaster, and most students in the class agreed with
him. In the end, I told the class that I was a product of the Cultural
Revolution education. I challenged the whole class to a competition
with me to see who is better educated. Nobody was willing to take on
the challenge.
1. The Great Leap Forward, launched in 1958, was a movement to
revolutionize economic and social relations in China’s countryside.
Over the course of three years, peasants organized into communes,
which created more advanced collective forms of work, education,
health and child care. The Great Leap Forward saw the expansion of
industry in the countryside and large scale irrigation and other
infrastructure. And it involved the struggle for socialist
consciousness, working for the common good and combating feudal,
bourgeois and patriarchal ideology. [back]
http://revcom.us/quick/178en.php#a10