Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  The thought of wearing prison clothes filled me with horror, not only because I thought they might have bugs, but also because it seemed the final surrender of my dignity and independence.

  “No, thank you. I do not want to borrow prison clothes. I want to get permission to buy new winter clothes with my own money that is now in the hands of the government.”

  She appeared to be thinking over the problem, so I added, “My money was taken by the Red Guards when they looted my home. One of their teachers told me the government would keep the money for me if it had not come from exploitation. I have no shares in any factories or land in the countryside. When I explained this to the teacher, he told me that the money would not be confiscated.”

  “I’ll report to the authorities,” she promised.

  A few days later, I was called to the interrogation room. The older guard was nowhere to be seen. In the place of the interrogator sat the militant female guard who had always taken a lead in persecuting me. She was flanked by two other female guards, including one I considered mild. The sight of the militant female guard was both a surprise and a disappointment for me. Had the new situation in Beijing brought no change at all in the No. 1 Detention House? With this woman in charge, what hope had I that my request would fall on sympathetic ears?

  After I had bowed to Mao’s portrait and read a passage from the mutilated book of quotations, I sat down on the prisoner’s chair and waited for her to ridicule my request. I was unprepared for her normal, almost kind tone of voice when she said, “What is this request of yours about winter clothes? Haven’t you got winter clothes already?”

  “They are worn out,” I said. To prove my point, I pulled off my blue cotton jacket to reveal the padded jacket underneath, with its holes and tufts of cotton escaping through them. I raised my arms to show her the frayed cuffs.

  “All right! All right! Put on your jacket,” she said.

  “The government is holding my assets. I want to ask permission to use some of my own money to buy some much-needed clothes,” I said, laying emphasis on the words “my own money.”

  “Which government department is holding your money?” she asked. “Have you a receipt?”

  “The Red Guards took the money when they looted my house. They didn’t give me a receipt.”

  “You mustn’t use the word ‘loot’ when you refer to the revolutionary action taken by the Red Guards. They were acting on our Great Leader’s instruction to rid socialist China of the Four Olds and to deal with the exploiting class,” she said.

  “I’m not a member of the exploiting class. According to Marxism, only those who live on the interest from their stocks and shares in factories or on rent collected from the peasants are ‘members of the exploiting class.’ My money was mostly my salary, which I earned legally, and my family inheritance, which was guaranteed by the Constitution,” I said heatedly. If I had spoken like this a year ago, she would have exploded. Now she just ignored me.

  “Did the teachers of the Red Guards who came to your house to take revolutionary action against you tell you which government department would be holding your money?”

  “No, they merely said the money would be held pending a decision by Chairman Mao.”

  “Exactly. All personal assets taken by the Red Guards are frozen and cannot be touched before the Chairman makes a decision,” she said.

  “I also have a foreign exchange account with the Bank of China,” I said.

  “Foreign exchange accounts are frozen too.”

  “All right, then. Let me borrow an English typewriter. I will write a letter to my bank in Hong Kong and get them to send me some money.”

  “That won’t be allowed. You are not allowed to communicate with anybody outside China,” she said. “How do we know what you might write?”

  “Before posting the letter, you will naturally read what I have written.”

  “You might send a coded message out of the country. That wouldn’t do at all. What we’ll do is to report your request to the senior authorities and see to it that you get some warm clothes when it gets really cold. Now you must go back to your cell and study our Great Leader Chairman Mao’s books really diligently.”

  I was dismissed and led back to the cell. Throughout the interview, the militant female guard had spoken in a normal voice, almost sympathetically. The change was startling. I supposed she was a typical example of those Party members who “follow the Party line closely.” The Chinese people called them “chameleons,” as they changed attitude and behavior according to circumstances just as rapidly as the chameleon changes color. Such Party members were the survivors and achievers. They never questioned the policy of the Party but followed it promptly and carried it out. They were mindless robots, unburdened by the capacity for independent thinking or a human conscience. They made the best cadres for any Party secretary in any organization, as they were always willing and ready to serve him without question as long as he represented the power of the Party and could give them promotions. But should he fall into disgrace, they were always the first to denounce him. They were the new type of successful people produced by the Communist Revolution in China. Because they seemed to maintain their positions through every twist and turn of the Party’s policy, they became the example for the young generation of Chinese to emulate. The result was a fundamental change in the basic values of Chinese society.

  A week later, a large bundle was deposited on the floor of my cell by a male guard. After I had signed the receipt, he locked the door and departed. I took the bundle to my bed and untied it. To my great astonishment, I found in the bundle the padded jacket, the fleece-lined winter coat, the two sweaters, and the pair of woolen underpants the Red Guards had allowed my daughter to keep for her own use after they looted our home in 1966. Also included was the winter quilt for her bed. Wrapped among the clothes were several towels and a mug she used for tea. One of the towels was a rose-colored Cannon face towel I had brought back from Hong Kong, which she was using when I was taken to the No. 1 Detention House. It looked exactly the same as it had in 1966. I examined the padded jacket of navy blue woolen material lined with maroon silk. It was new in 1966, and it looked new now. I picked up the white porcelain mug with trembling hands and found it was stained faintly brown inside. It had not been washed, and the tea had dried.

  My heart thumped faster and faster as I examined each article and realized its appearance was an ominous message of disaster. Hateful though the idea was, I could not help thinking that something terrible had happened to my daughter not long after I was arrested. She had probably died. That was why the clothes had hardly been worn and the face towel remained unused and new-looking. Perhaps her death had happened rather suddenly and unexpectedly, so that she did not have time to wash the mug she had used for tea. My legs were shaking so violently that I had to sit down quickly.

  The No. 1 Detention House allowed families of inmates to send them articles of clothing and daily necessities such as soap and towels on the fifth day of each month. It was always the loneliest day of my imprisonment as I listened to the guards carrying parcels to other prisoners but never to me. At first I wondered why my daughter never sent me anything. Later I believed that because she was a member of the Communist Youth League, she had been compelled to renounce me. While I missed not having this tenuous link to my child through monthly parcels, I was glad she was spared the unpleasant task of coming to the prison gate and lining up for hours to hand over a parcel. Now, deep in my heart, I knew the reason I had never received any parcels was that she had died.

  “Report!” I rushed to the door, hoping to find out the truth from the guard.

  “What do you want?” The guard opened the shutter and looked at me through the opening.

  “These things you have just given to me—they are my daughter’s clothes and quilt,” I said.

  “Yes,” answered the guard.

  “What’s happened to my daughter?”

  “Nothing has happen
ed to her,” she replied.

  I bent down to look at her face through the small window. She appeared quite normal and calm.

  “The clothes look as new as they did in 1966. Has she not used them during the past few years?”

  “How do I know? She probably bought new clothes. She works, doesn’t she? She has her own salary. She can buy new clothes, can’t she?”

  “Do you mean to tell me that you know for a fact my daughter is alive and well at this moment?” I hoped so much for reassurance.

  “I haven’t seen her, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But you do know, don’t you?”

  “Why should she be otherwise?” The guard closed the shutter and walked away.

  Was I being hysterical? Had prison life made me oversuspicious and sensitive? I examined everything again carefully. As I touched each item of her clothing, I became more and more convinced that she had indeed died. The message came to me clear and strong that she was no longer in this world. Yet I needed concrete proof because I was accustomed to dealing with facts and was suspicious of feelings I could not understand or explain. There was also a block in my mind that prevented me from accepting such a terrible possibility as her death, which would have rendered my years of struggling to keep alive meaningless. Death came to old people, not to someone as young and healthy as she was. I kept on trying to convince myself she was all right in spite of what I saw.

  But I could not explain the unusual look of her things spread out in front of my eyes. They seemed to say time had suddenly stood still not long after my imprisonment. The navy blue jacket looked new. But when I examined the silk lining I saw that it had creases at the armpits and that there was a handkerchief in one of the pockets. It seemed to me she had worn that jacket, but certainly not for more than one winter at the most. My mind was racing with speculations as I tried to imagine what could possibly have happened. What the guard said seemed to indicate she was alive and well. Yet she did not specifically say so. An idea came into my head. I went to the window again.

  “Report!” I called.

  No one came. I called again and again. Still no one came. Yet I heard the guards talking in their room at the other end of the corridor. When the guard on night duty came to tell me to go to bed, I tried to talk to her. But she did not come near my cell, only called out from a distance her order to go to bed.

  I was not able to sleep. I became more and more anxious. The first thing next morning, I called the guard again.

  “Report!”

  No answer. I decided to wait for the daytime guard to come on duty. When she came, I called again, “Report!”

  She came quite promptly. “What do you want?”

  “These things of my daughter’s the guard brought me yesterday make me very uneasy. I can’t understand why my daughter doesn’t seem to have used them. The Red Guards left each of us only one padded jacket. Why hasn’t she worn hers during the past few winters? To prove my daughter is alive and well, I request you to ask her to write me a few words in her own handwriting.”

  “Prisoners in a detention house are not allowed to communicate with their families,” she said.

  “Perhaps she could just write ‘Long Live Chairman Mao’ or one of Chairman Mao’s quotations or even just her name,” I pleaded.

  “No, that’s not allowed. I have told you already, prisoners in a detention house are not allowed to communicate with their families,” she said firmly.

  “But I have been here such a long time already,” I said.

  “That makes no difference.”

  I repeated my request to every guard who came on duty during the next few days. I was more and more convinced that my daughter was really dead, because they were either evasive or simply kept silent. One or two of them looked definitely embarrassed when they refused my request to see my daughter’s handwriting. They did not look at me but averted their eyes or simply looked at the floor.

  My mind was in turmoil and my heart in anguish. I longed to know the truth while I was afraid of it. One moment I was convinced that she had died. The next moment I believed I had become oversensitive and too pessimistic because of prolonged imprisonment.

  After a few weeks of anxiety, with little food and hardly any sleep, I became sick once more, with a high fever and delirium. I was again taken to the prison hospital. My body was so resilient that in spite of the fact that I no longer had the will to live, I survived. I was brought back to the No. 1 Detention House just before Christmas.

  Throughout the years of my imprisonment, I had turned to God often and felt His presence. In the drab surroundings of the gray cell, I had known magic moments of transcendence that I had not experienced in the ease and comfort of my normal life. My belief in the ultimate triumph of truth and goodness had been restored, and I had renewed courage to fight on. My faith had sustained me in these the darkest hours of my life and brought me safely through privation, sickness, and torture. At the same time, my suffering had strengthened my faith and made me realize that God was always there. It was up to me to come to Him.

  Under the watchful eyes of the guards, I could not pray openly in the daytime. The only way I could be certain of being left alone with my prayers was to bend my head over a volume of Mao Zedong’s books while I prayed to God from my tormented heart. As I spoke of my daughter, I relived the precious years from the time of her birth in Canberra, Australia, in 1942 until our forcible separation on the night of September 27, 1966, when I was taken to the struggle meeting and arrested. I felt again and again the joy she had given me at each stage of her growth and knew I was fortunate to have received from God this very special blessing of a daughter. Day after day I prayed. More and more I remembered the days of her living, and less and less I dwelled on the tragedy of her dying. Gradually peace came to me, and with it a measure of acceptance. But there was something more. While I could no longer cling tenaciously to the hope that I would see her alive and well on the day I walked out of the No. 1 Detention House, I knew there was much I still had to do both before and after my release. My battle was by no means over. It was up to me to find out what had happened to my daughter and, if I could, to right the wrong that had been done to her. My life would be bleak without Meiping. But I had to fight on.

  In February 1972 President Nixon came to Beijing. The newspaper devoted whole pages to reports of the visit and published large photographs of his arrival, the banquet of welcome, and his visit to Mao Zedong at the latter’s home. As I looked at the smiling face of Mao while he was shaking the hand of the American president, I thought the moment was indeed Mao Zedong’s finest hour. In that moment his years of humiliation, of being denied recognition, were wiped away. And I was certain that he relished the meeting with the American president not only for its significance to himself and the Chinese Communist Party but also for what it meant to his lifelong foe, the Kuomintang in Taiwan.

  In all the photographs and reports, Zhou Enlai figured prominently. The newspaper reported that Prime Minister Zhou Enlai accompanied President Nixon to Shanghai, whence the American president was to return to the United States. It said the departure of the president was slightly delayed, hinting that there was some last-minute difficulty about drafting the text of the final communiqué. However, eventually it was signed. The published version included an acknowledgment by the United States that Taiwan was an integral part of China. This commitment would render it impossible for the United States to recognize an independent Taiwan state, the event the Chinese Communist government feared most. Furthermore, in the communiqué the People’s Government did not renounce the use of force for future reunification of the two Chinas. This was decidedly a victory for Communist China. It seemed Communist China had gained a great deal from the president’s visit, while the price she paid was no more than a display of elaborate hospitality. The policy of rapprochement with the United States seemed more than justified. I felt that the personal position of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai had been greatly enhanced by his
successful and skillful diplomacy.

  Now there was a respite from class struggle; a more peaceful atmosphere prevailed. The tone of the newspaper was no longer belligerent. Even the guards seemed to behave more like normal human beings. In March I was called for interrogation. The interrogator I had when I first came to the detention house was back at his job. He started from the beginning, as if the intervening years had not existed, and asked me to write another autobiography. Then he questioned me about my family, my relatives, and my friends, as well as my personal life and activities, going once more through everything I had already covered with the interrogator from the Workers’ Propaganda Team in 1969. When I became impatient and pointed out to him that I had already answered all these questions, he merely said, “You have to answer them again.” I did not think he was trying to trap me into saying something different so that he could charge me with lying. It was more likely that the official interrogator of the No. 1 Detention House and the interrogator of the Workers’ Propaganda Team served different masters.

  This series of interrogations lasted several months. I did not remember how many times I was called to the interrogation room or how many quotations I read from Mao’s book. There was no more shouting or argument. But I was sick and tired and found the sessions extremely tedious.

  One day in the autumn of 1972, the interrogator produced a letter, obviously taken from our office file, and asked me whether I had written it. I saw it bore my name, so I said yes.

  “This is proof of your illegal activity. But at the same time, it may only be a political mistake,” he said.

  I was astonished. “May I see the letter again?” I asked him.

  He handed the letter to me. I saw that it had been written soon after my husband died in October 1957. I had gone to the Shell office to take charge because the Bank of China had refused to cash the company’s checks unless someone was made responsible for the office and had his or her personal seal registered with the bank. I remembered the circumstances very well. That morning I had received a telephone call from the general manager of Shell’s Hong Kong office. He told me that a general manager had been appointed to succeed my late husband but he could not get to Shanghai until March of the following year. He said, “London wants to know if it is all right with you.” I told him it was all right and I would inform the Industry and Commerce Department of the Shanghai municipal government. Then he asked me to draw up a list of things the new general manager and his wife should bring with them. In particular they wanted to know whether they should bring a supply of wheat flour, as they knew the Chinese people ate rice.