Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  “Where are your books by Chairman Mao? Did they not make you bring them with you when you were brought to the detention house? How could they have overlooked that?” I exclaimed. Her face went red. I offered to lend her mine, but she pushed them away.

  “I don’t want to read his books. I hate him. He destroyed my home. I think the Kuomintang was a great deal better than the Communist Party, don’t you?”

  Instinctively my eyes went to the peephole. No one was watching us. It was such a serious offense to praise the Kuomintang that I was more than ever convinced that she had been given a mandate to do so by the militant guard, probably a Maoist activist anxious to incriminate me. I said, “You mustn’t talk wildly. I may report you, you know.”

  But she ignored my caution and continued to try to make me talk. “Were you not living in Shanghai before 1949? Wasn’t the Kuomintang much better?” she persisted.

  “I really have no idea what life was like before 1949. I was abroad,” I said.

  “How lucky for you to have lived abroad! I hate living in China under the Communist Party! We have no freedom at all. Don’t you hate the Communist Party?” She tried again.

  “I’m a Christian. A Christian is supposed only to love and never to hate anybody. We even forgive those who have wronged us,” I told her.

  I could see she was skeptical that I could forgive those who had wronged me, because she smiled in a rather supercilious manner. Then, perhaps to gain my confidence, she suddenly declared, “I’m also a Christian!”

  “That’s good! Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer together. ‘Our Father who art in heaven …’ ” She did not join in but looked completely lost.

  “You shouldn’t pretend to be a Christian when you are not,” I said. “But never mind, I’ll teach you the Lord’s Prayer.”

  She shook her head, missing the opportunity to report me for spreading religious propaganda. I realized she did not have the intelligence to know that the Maoists who sent her would have been just as pleased to catch me teaching her the Lord’s Prayer as to catch me saying derogatory things about the Communist Party. While the Communist Party claimed to allow the Chinese people religious freedom, to spread religious propaganda, that is, to talk about religion or to teach religious rites, was strictly forbidden even before the Cultural Revolution. Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the penalty for religious observance in any form was very severe. Almost the first act of the Red Guards was the destruction of all temples and churches and the punishment of nuns and monks.

  In the afternoon, the same tough female guard unlocked the door and called my cellmate’s number. “Come out for interrogation!” she yelled.

  I waited rather anxiously to see what would happen when they found that she had failed to incriminate me. After a couple of hours, she came back, wiping her eyes as if she had been crying. The sight of a tearful person always upset me; I was sorry she had to suffer because I had refused to fall into their trap. But I refrained from trying to comfort her, for I did not want to give her the opportunity of tricking me into saying something inadvertent. I expected her to try again. But I was surprised to find that she showed no more interest in talking to me.

  For the whole of the next day, she did not try to engage me in conversation but looked out of the window as if lost in thought. However, a couple of times when she thought I was absorbed in reading, I caught her looking in my direction.

  In the afternoon, she was called for interrogation again, and again she came back wiping her eyes. This went on for three successive days. On the fourth day, she did not come back. When the woman from the kitchen came to give us our evening meal, she gave me only one container of sweet potatoes. When I asked her for another for my roommate, the woman merely shook her head. However, I kept some of my sweet potatoes for her in my mug.

  The loudspeaker was switched on. One guard followed by another came to my small window to make sure I was seated and ready to listen to the broadcast. An announcement was made of the sentences passed that afternoon on a number of prisoners. One death sentence was declared “carried out immediately.” The number of the prisoner was the same as that of the girl who had shared my cell. The announcer said that she had been a spy for the imperialists and the Kuomintang, “hidden in our midst” for many years but uncovered by the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries during the Cultural Revolution. She had been given the opportunity to confess and to earn lenient treatment, but she did not confess because she had hoped “to slip through.” Now she had been punished by “the iron fist of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” which had “crushed her to powder.”

  My first reaction was one of shock; the announcement of any death sentence was rather terrifying. I raised my head and caught sight of an eye glued to the peephole observing me. Like lightning, the realization struck me that she was neither a spy for anybody nor had she ever been accused of being one. If I should show fear or nervousness at the announcement, the Maoists would interpret it as a sign of guilt. I stared straight at the door as if I were listening carefully to the broadcast while leaning against my bedroll in a relaxed posture.

  When the loudspeaker was switched off, the guard opened the small window and called me over.

  “Did you hear the announcement of the death sentence?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think of the case of your former cellmate?”

  “Since she was a spy for the imperialists and the Kuomintang, she deserved to die,” I said casually.

  “You should consider her fate in relation to your own position,” the guard pointed out.

  “I don’t see the connection. She was a real spy. I’m not. I expect the People’s Government to clarify my case and give me full rehabilitation in due course,” I answered.

  “You are not being realistic.”

  “I don’t agree. What could be more realistic than to trust the People’s Government?”

  She closed the small window but remained at the peephole to watch me. I picked up one of Mao’s books and sat down at my usual place on the bed, calmly reading.

  Just before bedtime, the militant female guard opened the door of the cell. The Labor Reform girls came in and removed my former cellmate’s things. They stacked the beds up again and left. This indicated that the girl was indeed alive. It was a bitterly cold night. The girl needed her quilt if she was not to freeze. They had to come to get it for her.

  Since the guards had trusted her enough to let her undertake the task of trying to incriminate me, she must have been a prisoner they felt they could control and manipulate at will. She was probably promised some favor if she was successful in getting me to say something wrong. When she failed, they changed their tactics and pretended to sentence her to death in order to frighten me.

  After the Labor Reform girls had left the cell, the militant female guard came in.

  “Stand up!” she shouted threateningly, standing only a foot or so away from me.

  When I stood up, she slapped my cheek with the back of her hand. The sting brought tears to my eyes, but I blinked them back. I just stood there looking straight ahead as if nothing had happened and she weren’t there. This seemed to infuriate her further. She slapped me again and kicked my leg with her heavy boot.

  “Remain standing! You are being punished. You are smart, aren’t you? The imperialists trained you well, didn’t they? Well, you won’t get away with it. The proletariat is going to destroy you. Remain standing!”

  She banged the heavy door shut, locked it, and stumped down the corridor to the exit of the women’s prison.

  After the night guard came, she made her routine check of each cell. When she came to me, she asked, “Why are you standing here?”

  “I’m being punished by the other guard.”

  “Which guard? The one on day duty?”

  “No, another one.”

  “You are imagining things. Go to bed!”

  She did not seem to be in the picture at all. Perhaps the
scheme to trap me was the work of only a few Maoists in the detention house. “I’ll never know the truth,” I said to myself. But I was glad I did not have to stand there all night.

  One of the kicks had landed on my ankle, which was unprotected by my padded trousers. The bruise was throbbing, and the skin was broken. The woolen socks I was wearing were not very clean; my only other pair hadn’t dried in the damp cell. I was afraid the bruise might get infected. “What to do?” I asked myself while my eyes searched the bare cell and my meager belongings. When I saw the tube of toothpaste, I decided it might contain some ingredients that were antiseptic. So I smeared a thin layer of toothpaste over the wound and laid on it a piece of cloth torn from an old shirt. Then I tied my ankle up with the only handkerchief I had left.

  My ankle was so painful that I had a restless night, waking frequently from fragments of dreams in which I was either crippled and unable to move or was being kicked again and again by the same female guard.

  The misery of hunger and cold, the interminable days of waiting, the persistent yearning for freedom, the nagging worry for my daughter, and this latest abuse by the female guard produced the cumulative effect of making me very angry. When I got out of bed next morning, I was no longer depressed; I felt as if something inside me were about to explode. I told myself that in my present circumstances such civilized virtues as tolerance, forgiveness, and even a sense of humor were luxuries I could ill afford. The Maoists were deadly serious in their design to destroy me. I must be equally serious in my efforts to frustrate them.

  Although I was tired because of lack of sleep, I was wide awake. My ankle was swollen and painful, but I paced the cell restlessly in urgent strides, impatient to seek an encounter with the Maoists. The more I thought of what Mao Zedong was doing to me, my friends, and a multitude of unknown fellow sufferers, the angrier I got. I swore I would hit back at the Maoists somehow.

  Suddenly the cell door opened. It was almost as if God had speedily granted me my wish for an encounter with the Maoists. “Come out for interrogation!” a male guard shouted.

  I picked up Mao’s Little Red Book of quotations with alacrity and followed him down the corridor, limping hurriedly to keep up with him.

  The loudspeaker was broadcasting a lead article from the People’s Daily explaining Mao’s latest directive: “Dig deep tunnels, store grain everywhere, and never seek hegemony.” The announcer’s reverent tone of voice followed me from loudspeaker to loudspeaker as I followed the guard through the prison compound. While I listened to the words of homage to Mao, I remembered Mao’s awesome power, like a blanket over China threatening to smother whomsoever he chose. I reminded myself to be careful not to say anything that could be interpreted as opposition to Mao, the Communist Party, or the People’s Government. If I did, I would become a “counterrevolutionary” and the Maoists would have won a victory over me. My tactics must be to insist that the officials in charge of my case were mistaken in their understanding of Mao’s policy though the policy itself was correct. If necessary, I would lie and declare that I supported Mao, even revered him, as so many other Chinese were doing daily in order to survive. To fight was not enough; I must fight well and intelligently, I warned myself.

  A heavy quilted curtain of blue cotton covered the entrance to the interrogation building. The guards were no longer lolling on chairs in the small room at the entrance. They stood to attention, while armed soldiers patrolled the corridor. Several blue-uniformed men went in and out of the interrogation rooms, which had their doors open. It seemed the day’s work had just begun and I was among the first to be called. Remembering what had happened the night before, I knew I was going to have an unpleasant encounter. The Maoists had hoped to trick me into saying something wrong and to frighten me. They had failed. While I cautioned myself to be alert and to be brave, I was eager to hear what they had to say. Whatever it was, they would reveal themselves to me. The more they revealed themselves to me, the more chance I would have of finding out what they really wanted of me and why. There was still much in the situation that was puzzling to me.

  The guard opened the door of one of the rooms and shouted, “Go in!”

  The walls of the interrogation room had been whitewashed; it was a bit brighter and much cleaner. On either side of the window were two long banners made of red cloth. Written on them in white paint were two slogans: “Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and “Long Live Our Great Leader Chairman Mao.” A large reproduction of the official portrait of Mao was on the wall.

  Five men, one of them in army uniform, were seated facing the door. I tried to assess their background and status. Since the abolition of military insignia by Defense Minister Lin Biao in 1963, all military personnel wore similar baggy, loose-fitting uniforms in a revival of the old guerrilla tradition. It was difficult to identify the rank of the round-faced young man sitting astride a chair in the gloomy interrogation room, but I saw his uniform had four pockets. This indicated that he was an officer, as soldiers were allowed only two pockets on their jackets. The other four wore the usual faded blue Mao suits. One was much older than the others. His face was deeply lined, and the hands resting on top of the table were the calloused hands of an industrial worker. I assumed that the young man in uniform represented the Military Control Commission, the older worker and perhaps one or two of the others represented the Workers’ and Peasants’ Propaganda Team for Mao Zedong Thought, and one might be the representative of the Revolutionaries who had taken over the Public Security Bureau of Shanghai.

  As I looked at the five men in the room, I knew that they were all beneficiaries of the Communist Revolution of 1949. Their attitude towards Mao Zedong and the Communist Party could not be expected to be the same as mine. I knew also that the old worker probably had only bad memories of the days before the Communist Party came to power, and the others were hardly old enough to have any clear memories at all. Therefore, I could expect them to see me, the widow of an official of the former regime and the daughter of an affluent family, as an enemy. Furthermore, because China had closed her doors since 1949 and isolated herself from the Western world, I knew that whatever these men knew of the West was simply the repeated criticism of capitalism and imperialism fed them through official propaganda, including virulent attacks against the Western nations in general and the United States in particular during the Korean War and the recent fighting in Vietnam. My heart sank at the formidable task of having to break down this iron wall of prejudice and ignorance. If I wanted to walk out of the No. 1 Detention House free and cleared of the accusation against me, I had to try.

  After entering the room, I stood beside the prisoner’s chair, holding the Little Red Book in my hand, waiting for them to tell me which quotation to read. The interrogator indicated Mao’s portrait on the wall with a wave of his arm. “Bow to our Great Leader Chairman Mao and apologize to him for your crime!” he said.

  Apologize to Mao for my crime? I decided to use this opportunity to show resistance and disrupt their procedure. “I have not committed any crime. I can’t apologize for something I haven’t done,” I replied, remaining upright.

  “What! You have the audacity to refuse to bow to our Great Leader! How dare you! Everybody in China bows to the portrait of our Great Leader morning and night. You dare to refuse?” the interrogator shouted sternly, half rising from his chair. The others glared at me with astonishment and disapproval. For the first time that morning I felt really good.

  “You misunderstood me. I merely said that I haven’t committed any crime. I can’t apologize for something I haven’t done. I did not say I would not bow to Chairman Mao’s portrait. I can bow to his portrait to show my respect for him, of course.” I spoke in a calm voice as I became more relaxed.

  “Do it, then! What are you waiting for?” the interrogator shouted and sat down again.

  I bowed to the portrait. My resistance was not in vain; at subsequent sessions no one mentioned apologizing for my crime anymore. Wh
enever I entered the interrogation room, the interrogator merely waved his arm in the direction of the portrait without speaking.

  The quotation the interrogator chose was the same one I had read before. It was a much-used favorite of the Cultural Revolution. “ ‘When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns still remain. We must not belittle these enemies,’ ” I read. Then he asked me to read one about the army. It said, “Without the People’s Army, the people would have nothing.” The frequent use of this quotation at this period of the Cultural Revolution reflected the ascendancy of the military and of Defense Minister Lin Biao in the power structure of the Party.

  I sat down in the prisoner’s chair. In front of me, a few feet away, was the outside panel of the counter behind which the interrogator sat. It was now painted white. Freshly written on it in large characters was “Lenient treatment for those who confess; severe punishment for those who remain stubborn.” On either side of the official portrait on the wall were other messages urging the prisoners to confess.

  I heard the small window behind me slide open softly and saw the interrogator look over my shoulder and give a barely perceptible nod before speaking.

  “You wrote a letter requesting an interview with the Workers’ Propaganda Team. Are you now ready to give a full confession?”

  “I requested the Workers’ Propaganda Team to investigate my case and clear me of the false accusation against me. I understand that the Workers’ Propaganda Teams represent Chairman Mao. I expect you to implement the correct policy of Chairman Mao of distinguishing the innocent from the guilty. I have been held here for over two years already. Isn’t that long enough for an innocent person to be incarcerated in a detention house?”