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One morning, my sister came back from shopping for groceries and said to me uneasily: “Today I am going toshotA group of criminals, notices have been posted, there are people like youright wingMember! “(Internet picture)
Around New Year’s Day in 1970, my fatherMay 7th Cadre Schoolreturn toNanjinglearned that I had taken off my hat and returned to my hometown, and asked me to stay with him for a while and recuperate, so I went to Nanjing.
One morning, my sister came back from shopping for groceries and whispered to me uneasily: “A group of criminals are going to be shot today. A notice has been posted. There are people like you.”right wingMember! “I was shocked and rushed to the street to read the notice. I never expected that on the list of criminals who were shot, I saw the very familiar names Yao Zuyi, Wang Tongzhu, Lu Lushan, and Sun Benqiao. Their crime was trying to steal. Crossing the border, inciting educated youth to return to the city.
They were all rightists who were sent to labor camps with me.
In May 1962, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau gathered hundreds of right-wing labor camp inmates who had survived two years of famine from various labor reform units to Tuanhe Farm in the southern suburbs of Beijing. I was assigned to the sick group due to hemoptysis and did not participate in labor. Another person in the patient team is responsible for cleaning the toilets in the hospital without having to go to the fields to work. This person is Yao Zuyi, the English translator from the Ministry of Foreign Trade.
Among the right-wingers at that time, Yao Zuyi was considered the neatest-dressed person. He wears work clothes and wellies and carries manure to the vegetable fields every day. He is taciturn and doesn’t talk to anyone in his group. After cleaning the toilet, he leans on the floor alone and reads a book. There was a small jar of lard sent from Hong Kong hidden under his pillow. Every time he ate, he would secretly smear the lard on his buns, which made us envious. Because of the lard, his legs were not swollen and he could still lift the dung bucket.
One morning, the wind was warm and sunny, people went to work, and the yard was very quiet. I went to the yard to bask in the sun and saw him rinsing out the excrement bucket, resting against the wall, and taking out a small book from his coat pocket. I walked over and asked him what book he was reading, and he handed me the book, which was a pocket-sized English version of “Pride and Prejudice.” We happily talked about this novel, and then I learned that he was admitted to the English Department of Yenching University in 1948, and was assigned to work as a translator in the Ministry of Foreign Trade after graduating in 1952. His sisters are all in Hong Kong. We have been in the same group for about half a year, and we only talked this time. Because he abided by discipline and performed well in reform, he was soon released from the labor camp, left the rightist team, and was transferred to the workers’ team. I never saw him again.
Wang Tongzhu is a good friend of mine in the labor camp. He is very young and very talented. He is the Russian translator of the Marxist and Lens Works Compilation Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. He was very handsome and married a Tibetan girl, but after he was labeled as a rightist, his family broke up. His father joined the party very early, but was later labeled a “Trotskyist” and expelled from the party, which may have had an impact on his political situation. We trust each other very much, often talk about our views on the situation, and firmly believe that no one will betray the other. We also talk about literature. When we were hoeing in the wheat field, the two of us walked side by side, and he recited Pushkin’s “To Kane” in Russian with a measured rhythm: “I recall that wonderful moment when you appeared in front of me.” If we Not a prisoner, if it wasn’t a labor camp, the scene could be said to be quite romantic.
The rightists stay employed. (Picture source: Internet picture)
Wang Tongzhu was released from the labor camp in 1963 and remained employed. The day he left the team, he made an agreement with me that at 9pm the next Sunday, he would sneak a bag of food under the barbed wire next to the toilet and hide it in the grass. That night, I pretended to go to the toilet, and sure enough I found a pack of pancakes in the grass. I hid under the quilt and ate it secretly. This was quite a risky move at the time. Only Wang Tongzhu was so kind to me, and I am grateful to him from the bottom of my heart.
Lu Lushan and Sun Benqiao have no personal relationship with me. They are both college students in their early twenties, one from Beijing Agricultural Machinery College and the other from Beijing University of Technology. They were both “upgraded” and sent to labor camps after 1960. They are all very cute young people. Even in those years of unbearable hunger, they still worked hard and worked hard. Even in the cold winter, they would strip off their arms and work hard, showing the tenacity of youthful life.
In the winter of 1961, we worked in a branch called “584” in Qinghe Farm. Every time when relatives visited, we could always see a girl wearing a red scarf walking from a distance. It snowed heavily that winter, and the girl’s red scarf looked particularly dazzling in the snow. This is Lu Lushan’s lover, a female worker in a factory in Beijing. Lu Lushan put on his rightist hat and went to work in the factory. The girl fell in love with him. After Lu Lushan was sent to reeducation through labor, he proposed to cut off contact with her many times. The girl firmly disagreed and pledged her life to wait for his early release. Every visit day, she would drive from Beijing to Chadian Farm early in the morning, take the food she had saved, and walk dozens of miles to see him. Because no one came to see me, I could only stand at the door of the prison cell, looking at the figures of the family members from Beijing from a distance, feeling uncomfortable in my heart. The girl’s story was recited among the rightists, allowing us to share a ray of warmth in the severe cold.
Sun Benqiao is a young man with strong self-esteem who observes discipline and works actively. He would rather endure hunger than eat from the fields. He never slacked off when working, never said a word of complaint, and always maintained the dignity of an intellectual in front of the captain. He is very smart and the college students who work together admire him. College students often discuss some mathematical problems when they are working, and he can always calculate the answers quickly. He is a very outstanding young man.
On this day, I stood on the streets of Nanjing, crowded in the crowd of spectators, and watched the truck going to the execution ground pass by me. The prisoners who were about to be executed were all tied up, with a sign stuck behind them and their heads lowered. In just a few seconds, I recognized Yao Zuyi standing in front of the car. I wanted to look for Wang Tongzhu and take another look at him, but before I could see him clearly, the car drove by.
I stood on the street, trembling all over, not daring to imagine the horrific scene where they were shot. In the following days, the government organized several educated youths to tour residents in various districts to accuse them of poisoning young people. I didn’t have the courage to listen. I didn’t want to know what crimes they had committed, but I guessed that they must have been desperate for this land.
More than 50 years have passed, and these four poor little people have probably been forgotten by people. During the “Cultural Revolution”, more than tens of millions of ordinary people died unjustly. Not every unjust case could be “redressed” later, and I have no way of finding out whether there is any new version of this case. However, the horrific moment when they were kidnapped to the execution ground will always be etched in my memory.
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