Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  “Oh, slogans and denunciations against those who had been labeled ‘cow’s demon and snake spirit,’ and all China’s enemies such as Taiwan, Japan, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union.”

  “How do you know what to write? Do you make things up?”

  “Some people do. But I think that’s too dangerous. Most of us get materials from our section leader. I concentrate on enemy countries. The section leader allows me to because she thinks I know more about other countries since I was born abroad. I don’t want to write about individuals. I don’t know much about the life of any of the denounced people, and I don’t want to lie and insinuate. The older actresses, actors, directors, and scriptwriters have to write their own self-criticism. A lot of them are being denounced. From time to time, they are led out by the activists to be struggled against at struggle meetings or just to stand or kneel in the sun with their heads bowed.”

  “How terrible!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes, it’s terrible. I’m sorry for them. I heard that most of them are Jiang Qing’s enemies from the old days. I heard that Chairman Mao has given his wife Jiang Qing full power to deal with everybody in the field of art,” my daughter said.

  “Hasn’t she been putting on modern Beijing operas?”

  “Yes, it seems she has been in disagreement with the leaders in the Cultural Department for some time. In any case, I heard that the actresses who got better parts than she did in the old days when she was an actress in Shanghai have all packed their bags in preparation for going to labor camps. It’s said she is very cruel and jealous. But it’s best not to talk about her at all.”

  “Surely that’s farfetched. She is the number one lady of China now. Why should she care about a few old actresses?”

  “Perhaps they know too much about her past life. They say that before she went to Yanan and married Chairman Mao, she had a lot of lovers and even several husbands.”

  “Chairman Mao had several wives too. Why shouldn’t she have had several husbands? She sounds like a proper Hollywood film star,” I laughed. “You have been brought up in China, so you have a puritanical outlook on such matters. Tell me, how about yourself? Are you likely to get criticized?”

  “Mommy, don’t be silly. I’m not important enough. I’m just one of the masses. Of course, my family background and my birth abroad might get criticized. Wasn’t it lucky I was born in Australia rather than in the United States or Britain?”

  “Certainly no one can say Australia is an imperialist country.”

  “No, most people at the film studio think it’s still a British colony where the people are oppressed. They don’t know the Australians are really British and only the kangaroos are the natives.” My daughter laughed heartily.

  She finished her sandwiches and got up to go to her own room. Casually she asked, “What did you do all day, Mommy?”

  “I was called to attend a struggle meeting against the former chief accountant of our office. It seems I also must take part in the Cultural Revolution. I might even become a target of attack,” I told her.

  “Oh, my goodness! This is extremely serious. Why didn’t you tell me before?” Meiping was shocked by my news. She sat down again and urged me to tell her everything. After I had described my experiences of the day, she became very worried. She asked, “Was your office all right? Has it ever done anything wrong?”

  “No, of course not,” I told her.

  “Why did they single out the chief accountant? Perhaps he infringed the foreign exchange regulations on behalf of the firm? Or perhaps you didn’t pay your taxes?”

  “We paid our taxes, all right. Certainly we were most meticulous in observing the foreign exchange regulations.”

  We were both puzzled but agreed it was useless to speculate. I urged her to go to bed. After remaining silent for a while longer, she said good night and left the room. She seemed a changed girl, much older than when she came in.

  I switched off the light but remained wide awake. I was thinking that the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was also my daughter’s first experience of a political movement. I wondered how it was going to affect her future. After some time, my bedroom door was gently pushed open. I switched on the light.

  “Mommy, I can’t go to sleep. Do you mind if I go down and play the piano for a while?” Meiping asked, standing in her pajamas in the open doorway.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said, getting out of bed and following her downstairs.

  Fluffy, Meiping’s large Persian cat, was on the terrace outside. When he saw us, he mewed to get in. I opened the screen door. Meiping stepped out and picked him up to carry him into her study. She put Fluffy down, opened the lid of the piano, and proceeded to strike a few chords. Turning to me, she asked, “What shall I play?”

  “Anything at all, but not revolutionary songs.”

  She started to play one of Chopin’s nocturnes and murmured to me, “All right?”

  I made an affirmative sound. Fluffy was stretched out at Meiping’s feet under the piano. It was a scene of domestic peace and tranquility but for an invisible threat hanging in the air.

  2

  Interval before the Storm

  IN THE WEEKS FOLLOWING that first meeting, I was called by the same men for several interviews. Our conversations varied very little from the first occasion. Once they asked me to provide them with a list of all the Americans and Europeans I had known, together with their occupations and the place and circumstance in which I had met each one. Another time they asked me to write about the activities of our office. But when I handed them the pages I had written, they barely glanced at them. While exhorting me to denounce my former employer, they did not ask me any concrete questions about the company. They never went beyond insinuating that Shell had done something wrong and that I was a part of whatever the crime was.

  Indeed, I had the impression that the men were marking time, waiting for instructions from above before going any further. Actually, unbeknownst to me and to the Chinese people, the delay in activating the movement was due to a fierce struggle among the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. The point of contention was who should conduct the Cultural Revolution: the established Party apparatus or a special committee of Maoists appointed by Mao Zedong as chairman of the Central Committee.

  It was later revealed that early in August, at a Central Committee meeting, Mao had written a Big Character Poster entitled “Fire Cannonballs at the Headquarters.” In it he made the extraordinary accusation that the government administration (headed by Liu Shaoqi as chairman of the People’s Republic) and the Party Secretariat (headed by Deng Xiaoping as chief party secretary) were the headquarters of China’s capitalist class because, he said, their policies protected and served the interests of the capitalist class. This was a very serious and shocking charge against the entire Party apparatus and the administrative organization of Communist China. Mao was able to make the accusation against Liu and Deng because he controlled the armed forces through his protégé Lin Biao, who was the defense minister. Attempting to salvage his own position under the circumstances, Liu Shaoqi made a pro forma statement of self-criticism, saying that his economic policy of allowing private plots for the peasants and free markets to meet the needs of the people in the cities had encouraged the revival of capitalism in China and represented a retreat from the road of socialism. Perhaps Liu Shaoqi believed he could save Mao’s face by such an admission. The fact remained that Liu Shaoqi’s economic policy rescued China from economic collapse after the disastrous failure of Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward Campaign in 1958–60. However, Liu’s admission of guilt was to prove a tactical mistake. It placed him at a great disadvantage and opened the way for the Maoists to escalate their attack against him and his followers in the government.

  Mao’s victory at the Central Committee meeting led to the appointment of a special committee of left-wing Maoists to conduct the Cultural Revolution. As time went on and the Party and government apparatus became par
alyzed under the attack of the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries, this committee became the highest organ of government. Its members, including Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, enjoyed extraordinary power and were all elected to the Party Politburo. Throughout the years of the Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing made use of her position as Mao’s wife to become his spokeswoman and representative, supposedly transmitting Mao’s orders and wishes but in fact interpreting them to suit herself. A ruthlessly ambitious woman who had been kept out of Chinese political life for decades, she would now tolerate no opposition, imaginary or otherwise. Tens of thousands of Party officials, artists, writers, scientists, and common people who fell under the shadow of her suspicion were cruelly persecuted. Scores of them died at the hands of her trusted “Revolutionaries.”

  At this August Central Committee meeting, Defense Minister Lin Biao emerged as Mao’s most ardent supporter. His eulogy of Mao was contained in the meeting’s final communiqué, published in the newspapers. Lin claimed that Mao was “the greatest living Marxist of our age,” with one stroke placing Mao ahead of the Soviet leaders, including Stalin, as the true successor of Lenin. During the entire ten years of the Cultural Revolution, even after Lin Biao was disgraced, this claim was maintained by the Maoists.

  One day, soon after the publication of the communiqué of the Central Committee meeting, Mr. Hu, a friend of my late husband’s, called on me. Because in China male friendship usually excluded wives, after my husband’s death his friends ceased coming to our house. Only Mr. Hu continued to appear on Chinese New Year’s Day to pay me the traditional courtesy call. He generally stayed only a short time, inquiring after my daughter and me and wishing us good health and happiness in the new year. He always mentioned my husband and told me how much he had esteemed him as a man and how much he had valued his friendship. Then he would take his leave, placing on the table a red envelope containing a tip for my servants, an old custom observed by only a few conservative people in China after the Communist Party took over. I was amused by his visits and thought Mr. Hu rather quaint but charmingly sentimental.

  When Lao-zhao announced him, I was surprised. But I told Lao-zhao to usher him to the drawing room and serve tea.

  Mr. Hu had been the owner of a paint factory. His product was well known in China and was exported to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. After the Communist army took over Shanghai, he continued to operate under the Communist government’s supervision. In 1956, during the Socialization of Capitalist Enterprises Campaign, his factory was taken over by the government, which promised all the capitalists an annual interest of 7 percent of the assessed value of their enterprises for ten years. Though the assessed value of the enterprises was only a fraction of their true worth, the capitalists had no alternative but to accept. Because of his technical skill, the government invited Mr. Hu to remain with his factory as chief engineer and assistant manager when Party officials took over.

  A well-educated Chinese, Mr. Hu was quite untouched by Western civilization. He wrote excellent calligraphy; his conversation was sprinkled with traditional literary allusions. He was not bothered by the antiforeign attitude of the Communist regime because his own knowledge and interest did not go beyond the borders of China. On the whole he fared better during political campaigns because Party officials were less suspicious of people like Mr. Hu who had no foreign contacts than they were of those who had been educated abroad. His philosophical attitude towards the loss of his own factory and his ready acceptance of a subordinate position never ceased to amaze me. My husband once told me that while most capitalists found the Party officials assigned to their factories extremely difficult to deal with, Mr. Hu managed to establish a friendly relationship with the Party secretary who had superseded him as head of his factory.

  “I hear you are involved in this latest political movement, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. I wonder how you are getting on,” Mr. Hu said, explaining the reason for his visit.

  “Not very well, I’m afraid. The Shanghai office of Shell is being investigated. I have been questioned, and I had to attend a struggle meeting against our former chief accountant. The men who talked to me seemed to imply there were some irregularities in the firm’s activities. But they won’t say what they mean. I’m really rather puzzled. I have never been involved in a political movement before.”

  Lao-zhao brought in the silver tea set, my best china, and a large plate of small iced cakes, as well as thinly cut sandwiches in the best British tradition, something I reserved for my British and Australian friends who understood the finer points of afternoon tea. This was Lao-zhao’s idea of treating Mr. Hu as an honored guest. As he placed the tray on the coffee table in front of the sofa, the telephone in the hall rang and he went out to answer it. He came back almost immediately and said, “It’s those people again. They want you to go over there right now for another interview.”

  “Tell them I’m busy. I will go tomorrow,” I said.

  Lao-zhao went out. I could hear him engaged in a heated argument on the telephone. Then he came back and said, “They insist you must go at once. They say it’s very important.”

  “May I ask who is calling? If it is important, don’t delay going because I’m here,” Mr. Hu said to me.

  “It’s those officials who have been questioning me,” I told him.

  “Oh, you must go at once. How can you refuse to go when those people call you! Please make haste. I’ll stay here and wait for you. I want to know more about your position. I owe it to your husband, my dear old friend, to give you some advice. It’s my duty. You are inexperienced in dealing with those men. They are mean and spiteful. You must not offend them,” Mr. Hu said. He appeared really worried.

  I was glad that he was going to wait for me, because I very much wanted to hear what he had to say about the Cultural Revolution and the recent Central Committee meeting. I left the house just after four. When I returned at eight, Mr. Hu was still there. As I walked into the house, he came out of the drawing room to welcome me back and beamed with pleasure and relief.

  “I’m sorry I have been so long.”

  “Do sit down and rest. Tell me, how did it go?”

  Lao-zhao brought me a cup of hot tea. While sipping it, I described to Mr. Hu my interview with the Party officials.

  In addition to the usual two men, there had been a third person present who might have been their superior. Perhaps to impress this new man, they were even more unpleasant than usual. When I entered the room, one of them said sternly, “Why didn’t you want to come?”

  “I was busy. You should have telephoned this morning.”

  In the past, one of them had always motioned me to sit down. But today they just let me stand.

  “We are not conducting a dinner party. We are conducting an investigation. Whenever we need to talk to you, you just have to come immediately,” he said with a sneer.

  I decided to sit down anyway.

  “Look at this long list of your foreign friends! How come you have so many foreign friends? You must like them and admire their culture.” He looked at me accusingly. Then he went on, “You said they were all friendly towards China and the Chinese people and that some of them were born here and spent their childhood years here. You claim some of them admire Chinese culture and speak our language. Yet included here are men whose ancestors made fortunes in the opium trade. They used to own factories, warehouses, ships, everything under the sun, in China. Now they have lost them all. So how could they have friendly feelings towards the People’s Government? Yes, they might have liked China when the Kuomintang was here, when they exploited the Chinese people as much as they wanted and were able to amass huge fortunes. But they definitely cannot like China now. And you talked about the diplomats having friendly feelings for China. That’s even more ridiculous! Diplomats are spies sent here by their governments to gather information to be used against us. How could they feel friendly towards us? It’s no use your pasting gold on their faces to make them look like benevo
lent Buddhas. They are our enemies. But they are your friends. Now it is quite clear where you stand, isn’t it?”

  “I got to know these people not because I went out of my way to seek their acquaintance or friendship. Most of them I met when my late husband was a diplomat or when he was in charge of the Shanghai office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the old days.”

  “The Shanghai office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the reactionary Kuomintang government! Your husband was a senior official of the reactionary Kuomintang government, and later he became the general manager of a foreign capitalist firm,” he said sarcastically. “Your husband’s career was nothing to be proud of.”

  “He became the general manager of the Shanghai office of Shell with the approval of the Shanghai Industry and Commerce Department of the People’s Government. The department had to accept his power of attorney for the appointment. As for being an official of the Kuomintang government, he stayed in Shanghai in 1949 instead of going with the Kuomintang government to Taiwan. Doesn’t that show he supported the Communist Revolution and was ready to welcome the establishment of the People’s Government?”

  “There might have been other reasons why he stayed. We will deal with his case later. Now we want you to denounce British imperialism and confess everything you did for Shell as their faithful agent.”

  “Everything I did for Shell was in accordance with the laws and regulations of the People’s Government,” I declared emphatically.

  The new man had not spoken but smoked incessantly, filling the room with the smell of bad tobacco. Now he tossed the butt of his cigarette on the floor and crushed it with his foot. He looked at me steadily for a few seconds to intimidate me before saying, “Have you lived a completely blameless life? All your life you have been associated with foreigners, especially the British. Do you mean to say that you have never done anything or said anything that was not altogether correct?”

  “Whether I did or said anything incorrect or not, I know for a certainty that I never did anything against the People’s Government,” I said firmly.