Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  At this a number of delegates swore out loud.

  “What in your mother’s————do you talk like that for. This is your self-criticism. Don’t drag others into it.”

  Much taken aback, Man-hsi started on something else. “I took some corn from Tung-le’s field … I can’t remember any more …”

  By this time the whole audience was angry.

  “You’re just wasting our time.”

  “Go on.”

  “Own up.”

  “And I took Liu’s corn. More than two basketsful. The corn was not fit to eat.” He said this as if the rottenness of the corn made the theft reasonable.

  This loosed a storm of comment.

  “Maybe the corn was bad,” remonstrated Hu Hsueh-chen. “But the owner paid taxes on it. That’s no excuse for you to take it.”

  “Now I’ll talk about other things,” said Man-hsi mechanically. Having started down his list of crimes he would follow it to the end, throwing in big things and small without any sense of proportion. It was this aspect of his self-examination that alienated the delegates more than anything else. Man-hsi had some concept of what was wrong, but he made no distinction between big wrongs and little wrongs.

  “After the Liberation I beat many people.”

  When they heard this, his audience quieted down and began to pay more attention. It was the beatings for which Man-hsi was notorious, and it was the beatings for which he was hated by so many.

  “The first time I beat someone, it was my uncle. He tried to protect Ching-ho, the landlord, so I beat him up. Others began to beat him so I joined in. My uncle was a poor hired laborer. Another poor peasant, Chang, also tried to help Ching-ho, so I joined in beating him too. I myself felt sorry for the landlords, but I forgot my poor brothers of my own class.”

  “This is nonsense,” said a voice from the back benches.

  “In the third case I beat Lien-yu,” continued Man-hsi, ignoring the voice. “I beat him twice because they said he was a rascal. He and his wife were both fined. Yu-lai and Wen-te hated Hsi-le [the father of Wen-te’s bride, Hsien-e] and wanted to call him an agent. They consulted with T’ien-ming and decided to arrest him. I was ordered to bring him in, and it was I that beat him. I intended to win support from Yu-lai.”

  “This is also nonsense,” said Old Tui-chin. “What has Yu-lai got to do with your confession?”

  Man-hsi ignored Tui-chin just as he had the others. He was afraid that he would forget what came next. “At that time it was very hard to get people to come to meetings. I was worried. I decided to pick out some leaders among the rank and file and teach them a lesson with a stick if need be. After that they came promptly to meetings. Chao-chun was a landlord. He gave a new quilt to his hired laborer, An-ho, because he feared the man would accuse him. When I heard about it, I whipped An-ho for taking the quilt.

  “Hu-sheng, Chin-ming, and Hsien-pao were all called agents. They themselves confessed. But I don’t know whether it was out of fear or not. I helped beat them seriously several times.”

  “Have you proof that they were agents?” asked Chin-ming’s wife, for whom this was the most crucial question of all.

  “It was Fan Ming-hsi, the leader of the agents, who spoke out their names. T’ien-ming was responsible for such cases because he was in charge of security during the Anti-Traitor Movement. I did what he asked.

  “Ch’ih-hsuan’s wife hid some valuable things for a landlord and I tied her up. I struck Hsiao-tseng because he carried on with Pao-yu’s wife and I thrashed Yuan-lung because Yu-lai told me to. I went to call Chin-ming’s wife to a meeting. She said ‘I just got back from the mill.’ I asked, ‘Where is your husband?’ and I threatened her with my gun.”

  “You should speak out all your bad behavior, not just the beatings. Let’s hear about beatings, corruption, and seized fruits,” scolded Delegate Spokesman Yang, expressing the sentiments of the whole audience.

  Man-hsi quickly changed the subject.

  “I grafted a foreign lock and a rope. Once when the militia divided some things I got a belt. And I asked Fu-yuan to choose a pair of red trousers and a green coat for my bride. And I have been a tyrant and a rascal. When a woman doesn’t obey me, I beat her and force her. One night I went with other militiamen on a search, and we threw stones to frighten people. It was all in fun. When I went to Li Village Gulch to attend meetings, I spent a lot of money that belonged to the village office. Once I went to Tunliu to catch a landlord who had run away. I spent more than BRC 10,000.

  “When I went to Lucheng I took BRC 200. I will give it all back now. Once I knocked a person down and took away his shirt.”

  “You’re only telling trifles now,” complained Hu Hsueh-chen.

  “Let him finish. Then we can begin our criticism,” said Team Leader Hou, anticipating trouble ahead.

  But Man-hsi’s self-criticism was not soon finished. The delegates were just as hostile after an hour as they had been at the beginning and the Party comrades, who had been tolerant at first, were now thoroughly disgusted with him. Man-hsi was afraid he would forget something and so continued down his list, a list that he had committed to memory since he could neither read nor write. The trouble was that like any memorized list it had been badly mauled by interruptions. Man-hsi was not quite sure where he was.

  “People call me Shan Ch’iao Kuan [the King of the Hill, a figure from Hell]. It is a good name. For really I have been a tyrant up to now. As for my working style I have been a tyrant and a rascal.

  “Once the village office asked me to transport grain. I didn’t want to go. I said my ox was sick. They had to find somebody to go in my place. They asked Lao-ts’un and I went and swore at him because he didn’t want to go either.”

  With this Man-hsi’s memory seemed to have exhausted itself. He turned to what he would do to make amends.

  “I offer to give up an acre and a half and three sections of house. I got 21 hundredweight in the distribution, and I will give up one hundredweight immediately after the harvest. As for the three acres of wheat that the militia divided, I got two pecks. I will give it up. There are two things from the public stores that are still in my house, a fodder-chopping knife and an embroidered singlet for an official gown. There is also a big sack of grain.”

  “Are you finished? Have you said everything?”

  The delegates were anxious to start in with their own questions.

  “Year before last during the Hide the Grain Movement I intended to leave for the old Liberated Area because I was afraid to stay home when the enemy came. I can’t remember …”

  “Have you finished or not?”

  But Man-hsi dared not say that he had finished. He knew that the treatment meted out to him would depend on the quality of this review of his past, whether or not it was thoroughgoing, and though he could not think of anything more to say, he still did not dare to stop for fear that he had forgotten something. With the delegates so hostile and so eager to begin, it was obvious that they had remembered many things even though his own mind was empty. Large beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “I dare not say I have finished,” he said.

  “We want you to take time to say everything. We aren’t going to hurt you, even though you hurt us. You must know you cannot conceal anything from the people,” said Delegate Spokesman Yang, reassuringly.

  “Another thing,” said Man-hsi. “Ch’eng-wei had a landlord’s wife working at his house because his own wife was pregnant. Another militia man and I took the woman to a nearby courtyard and had her there. One night the militia were hungry. We broke into the Western Inn and took some wheat. Another time I took some mutton from the inn without paying for it. This was the poor peasants’ inn but I took things just the same. Once I took a rabbit from Ch’un-hsi’s court and killed and cooked it …”

  “You’re talking trifles again!”

  “Please criticize me one by one. Otherwise I can’t remember … Once I passed through Hsi-t’ai’s ga
te. His daughter-in-law was there, the mad one. She sat naked in the yard, and I shot at her with blank cartridges. She screamed and ran.”

  “You prolong your story just to waste our time,” said Old Lady Wang, shaking her fist at him.

  “What about the salt in the storehouse?” asked Lao-szu, returning to a point that was most important to the delegates because of the value of the salt and the fact that he denied all knowledge of it.

  “I didn’t take any.”

  “Do you know who took it?”

  “I heard Fu-yuan say that Hung-er and his father went to Yellow Mill to sell sulfur and they also took salt. When I broke in I intended to take something, but someone came and really I got nothing.

  “How many times did you enter the storehouse?”

  “Only once.”

  “That’s only because you were seen once. If you wish to pass the gate, you had better say everything frankly. Otherwise do as you like.”

  The delegates had the impression that on this matter Man-hsi was lying, but try as they would, they could not get him to change his story.

  It was already late. People were hungry. The meeting was adjourned until afternoon.

  During the lunch period Team Leader Hou talked to several of the delegates and advised them to investigate the case of Fu-hsu’s wife. This woman, who lived in the southwest corner, claimed that Man-hsi had raped her, but he had never admitted it in the Party meetings and had not mentioned it in his public self-criticism.

  Since the delegates had made clear that they were not going to beat him, Man-hsi was not as frightened in the afternoon as he had been in the morning, but he was still very much in the position of an animal at bay who dares not advance and can find no path down which to retreat. He began with an apology that sounded as if it had been borrowed from Ch’un-hsi’s final speech.

  “My behavior is just like that of a landlord. I fanshened myself and forgot my poor brothers. In the future I will do my best to correct it.”

  “How will you correct it?”

  “In the future I will throw out all the bad thoughts from my brain. If I still do anything wrong you can all beat me to death.”

  “We aren’t going to kill anyone, you know that!”

  “Well, you can send me to the People’s Court,” suggested Man-hsi, countering with next most fearful thing in his ken.

  “What about the rape cases?” asked Yuan-lung, acting on Team Leader Hou’s advice.

  “Of course I forced myself on them. If anyone raped my wife I couldn’t stand it,” said Man-hsi.

  But when they asked him about Fu-hsu’s wife, he denied over and over again that he had had any intimate relations with her.

  “I threatened her. ‘If you don’t submit I’ll arrest you!’ I said. But she refused and started to go to headquarters so I was afraid.”

  “Why did you come back later? What did you say to her the second time? None of this ma ma hu hu (horse horse tiger tiger, i.e., confusion of one who can’t tell a horse from a tiger).”

  “I did not return,” stated Man-hsi flatly.

  The delegates did not believe him.

  “Every night you went to a different house so you can’t keep them all straight?”

  “Can you so easily forget your masterpiece? If a woman promised to sleep with you, she was all right. Otherwise she was an agent. We know everything, so let’s hear it.”

  “I did not return,” said Man-hsi again.

  No amount of abuse, heckling, questioning, or prodding could budge him from that position. This angered the whole audience. Even the onlookers outside the window were shouting at him. But Man-hsi stood his ground, defiant.

  “Let’s drop Man-hsi for the time being,” said Team Leader Hou. “Let him think it over. We’ll go on to another case.”

  The delegates agreed.

  Man-hsi sat down, his head unbowed.

  He was still outside the gate.

  38

  Days and Nights

  If they [comrades who adopt an absolute attitude towards the mistakes of others] … understand that even mankind, with all its weaknesses, can in the long course of struggle, be steeled, educated, and converted into highly civilized Communists, why can they not educate and reform the Party members who have joined the Party but who still retain to some degree or other the remnants of the ideology of the old society?

  Liu Shao-ch’i

  MORE DRAMATIC than any stage play, the Party consolidation meetings inevitably became the center of all village activity. All day long the 33 delegates stood guard at the gate. In the evening they met with their respective sectional groups and reported what had happened. The hundreds of rank-and-file peasants who came to these meetings evaluated each day’s events and recommended appropriate action in regard to those Communists who had been heard. Then they went on to make accusations and register complaints against those who would be heard on the morrow.

  All the grievances of three tumultuous years came to light. So eager were the peasants to make known their opinions and to hear what happened that dozens continued to gather outside the windows of the meeting hall each day while that vast majority who, because of the pressure of work, could not be there in person hour after hour, impatiently awaited the delegates’ reports each evening. Whereas a few days earlier the work team cadres had to wait for a quorum to show up in the Poor Peasants’ League groups, and even had to send runners to round up the laggards, now the people were already waiting for them when they arrived to open the meetings. The composition of the groups themselves had also changed. The designation “Poor Peasants’ League” was no longer correct because the middle peasants who had been invited to participate in all proceedings were turning up in increasing numbers. From a campaign which began by involving only a few activists among the people this Party purification took on the proportions of a truly mass movement, an evolution which bore out the realism of the Central Committee’s prediction: “At times it is even necessary to begin the reorganization of the Party before the initiative of the masses can be aroused.”

  The Party members also met every evening after a full day at the gate. They took up the manner in which each comrade had reviewed his or her past and the reaction of the delegates. In an effort to encourage sincere self-criticism, they went over each person’s record point by point and demonstrated that the truth, no matter how terrible or embarrassing, met with better response than evasion. Those who were to appear the next day received special attention, as did those who, like Man-hsi, had failed to pass.

  A campaign as intense, as all-pervading as this could hardly have taken place in any but an agrarian community, restricted to grain culture and therefore burdened with a long slack season. In no other private-enterprise society could a whole village have taken the time out to carry through such prolonged meetings. The results promised to repay the effort many-fold.

  The village would never be the same again!

  ***********

  If all confrontations at the gate were not as tense as that between the delegates and Man-hsi, still each added its own peculiar element of conflict to the developing movement. The change in pace and tone thus generated kept all participants alert and sometimes brought them to their feet.

  After the notorious militiaman had been rejected and dismissed, the teen-aged Little Mer was asked to take the stand. As the lamb follows the lion, she stood up and trembled from head to foot. Her shaking hands were clearly visible even to those sitting at the back of the hall. When she finally opened her mouth to speak, her voice quavered.

  “I can’t remember my grandfather,” she began, evidently quite worried because she could not match Man-hsi in this respect. “My father was a hired laborer. I was married at 13. I became a leader of the women’s small group in the southwest corner, but my attitude was not good. When I remade clothes for the school children, I grafted a collar lining. I must give it up. Hsiao Lao-chang’s wife was a foolish woman who sold corn. She stole the corn from her husband. I swor
e at her and slapped her.”

  That was all. There was a silence in the room.

  “Please, you criticize her first,” pleaded An-k’u, her husband, beside himself with embarrassment. His face flushed red from the collar of his tunic to the roots of his hair.

  Old Tui-chin struck flint to steel in an effort to light his pipe. “We haven’t any criticism for her,” he said.

  Other members of the northwest contingent nodded in agreement.

  “How can we make false criticisms?” asked Old Lady Wang with surprising affability. “Whenever we say anything to her, she always smiles and says, ‘I am wrong.’ So really we can’t find fault with her.”

  This in itself seemed like a rather grave fault for a Communist, as Ch’i-Yun remarked for my benefit, but the delegates did not seem to find it so and fell silent once again.

  “During the Hide the Grain Movement my thoughts were like this,” volunteered Little Mer, remembering the discussion in the branch meeting. “I will follow the Eighth Route Army wherever it goes. I dared not beat the landlords in the struggle because I was afraid that when their forces returned I would be beaten.”

  “You are a good but useless cadre,” said Hu Hsueh-chen, under whose guidance Little Mer had worked in the Women’s Association.

  “Ask her what punishment she should receive,” suggested a peasant delegate.

  “Advice,” said Little Mer.

  “From now on you must do your best to serve the masses,” said Tui-chin blowing on the glowing tinder that he had at last managed to set on fire. Before he could light his pipe with it, Little Mer’s ordeal was over.

  “It’s all done,” “You pass the gate.” “We approve you.” Many delegates spoke at once, each trying to demonstrate good will.

  Everybody in the room heard An-k’u’s sigh of relief as his gentle, teenaged wife stepped down.