how could Ulaan Hüü’s daughter know Qi Qiaoqiao was in such an appalling condition? We shouldn’t forget the fact that moving around in China during the Cultural Revolution was extremely difficult most of the time and endless permissions and mountains of paperwork had to be done just to apply. Without a high-profile person’s help, it was impossible for anyone to move his residence.
Under that circumstance, Qi Qiaoqiao’s condition could hardly be noticed by anyone from the outside world. Therefore it could be easily assumed that someone send for help. It could be herself or her mother. At that time, the only means of communication were letters. Xi’s far-flung family members, like millions of others, were only connected by letters, and these were infrequent, unreliable, and of course subject to censorship.
Somehow Ulaan Hüü’s help was summoned and actually materialized. Qi Qiaoqiao was transferred to Tongliao, in the other end of Inner Mongolia, 1,500 kilometers away, where the living conditions were much better. She was saved and stayed there as a farm laborer for another four years until the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Qi Qiaoqiao’s story was in some ways similar and in other ways quite different than her brother’s. She went to the countryside with the idea that she needed to change herself to convert herself into a real revolutionary. Her brother Xi Jinping was a little too young to understand what was going on. He was still refusing to accept this upside-down world. But the Cultural Revolution which was poised to last ten years would also eventually change him. The best ten years of life for millions of young Chinese were about to be wasted in meaningless labor and re-education in remote rural areas.
Xi Jinping had spent just a few months in his new home in the small Shaanxi village when he had to move out because the family needed the room for one of their children to marry. It was, and often still is in rural China the custom for a newly married son to bring home the girl to live with his family. Faced with this predicament, and having stayed in Liangjia River only half a year, Xi Jinping thought this must be the time to leave. He somehow sneaked back to Beijing. It was brave, but totally illegal. Having been sent to the countryside, he now had no right to stay in the capital Beijing any more, as in those days internal travel and residency was strictly controlled. He wasn’t the only youth to secretly and illegally return to his city. But as the numbers grew, the officials took notice, and this would cause trouble for himself sooner or later.
By the time he returned to Beijing, things had changed even more for his family. Xi Jinping’s mother, Qi Xin, had already left Beijing with his younger brother and was now living in Henan province to the south. Now the young Xi Jinping, having braved his internal illegal immigrant journey, arrived only to find he had no home in Beijing. What could he do? As with all Chinese, he turned to his extended family. His aunt, his mother’s sister, still lived there. She and her husband both were PLA veterans. This veteran couple had played a vital part in Xi’s family life during those turbulent years. Without their presence in Beijing, everyone’s life would be much more difficult. Yet there is not much information about them, not even their names are known.
Their young nephew, with nowhere else to go, turned to them for help. But in such a situation they couldn’t do much for him. Running away from Mao’s campaign was already a crime. To live in Beijing, Xi Jinping needed not just a residency permit; he also needed a food rations card. After he had left Beijing, he had lost his rights to both. He was an official peasant now and had to earn his food with his hands and the sweat of his brow, not a ration from the government. If he stayed illegally in Beijing any longer he could be a real burden and risk for his relatives, both financially and politically.
During the time Xi Jinping was in Beijing, it happened to coincide with the 1st of October, China’s National Day when security in the capital was extensive and movement became even more restricted than usual. Decades later Xi Jinping mentioned this episode, how he was arrested in Beijing during that visit and locked up for half a year. He mentioned his aunt and her husband, both veterans of the revolution. They were the ones who brought Xi Jinping’s mother to the revolution. As he said, they persuaded him to go back to the countryside. It was a very unique persuasion of his veteran relatives. They said, when they were joining the revolution they would go to the country, to the people, to the poor; why then were today’s young people afraid of going there?
He should learn to trust the peasants and believe in them. His aunt allegedly told him the Chinese revolution had relied upon these peasants and that without them there would be no modern revolutionary China. Why should he have problems with them? These words must have sounded very strange. How could his relatives talk sound so much like Mao’s instruction, after all his family had been through? We have to keep reserved about what Xi Jinping has said about that time.
Xi Jinping said he followed their advice and went voluntarily to his previous placement with the peasants at Liangjia River. Who knows the real reason Xi left Beijing again at such a time of personal and political tumult? It might be that he felt he was not welcome in Beijing; after all he was just a very young and vulnerable teenager who was nobody; he had no family, no home, no food rations, no legal status, and no money. Just to survive he had to go back. There was no other choice, really. He had to think of his own survival first.
The late 1960s was not a time to think of the future in China for anyone. First of all people had to survive. Xi Jinping learnt this lesson of harsh reality at a tender age. He might survive if he went back to the village. If he didn’t he would surely ruin himself. He went back.
It’s interesting to know that on the Party’s official website on Xi Jinping, 1969 is marked as the year he started to work, which means at least for common Chinese citizens, their pension will be calculated from that year. In an odd way the sad memory of the time when they were sent to the countryside will stay with them for their entire life as their time spent in rural re-education labor is credited towards the calculation of their pensions.
Family Reunion
Millions of urban Chinese young people sent to the far-flung countryside were similarly wondering when they could go back to their parents. As months turned into years, the situation looked more and more hopeless. So their parents, the generals and high-ranking officials, started to act. They didn’t say Mao’s campaign was wrong or challenge it in any way publicly; instead they just quietly started bringing their children out of the countryside. As with any top-down nationwide bureaucratic policy, there were bound to be loopholes to be exploited. The best way to bring their sons and daughters out of their desperate placements with the peasants was to let them join the military. After all, to be a soldier was as patriotic as being a peasant in the ideology of the times.
Military positions were much coveted as a way to better the lives of many in China, and it was not as easy as walking into a recruitment office and signing up. But for this group of top echelon and well-connected parents, it was a much easier job. The generals used their power to recruit their own children and the children of their friends wherever and whenever they could. Mao’s generals knew how to look after each other’s children without bringing any negative attention to them.
To join the military ranks in China meant one didn’t need any food ration card or even any personal files; the military would look after everything, from clothing to pocket money while the local authorities had nothing to say. A whole new identity, in a way, could be constructed by joining the military, not entirely unlike the French Foreign Legion. And nearly all young people who had been sent off to the countryside were old enough to enlist. It was a perfect solution to this dilemma. The old yellow uniform became out of fashion and the new green military uniform replacing it quickly became the favorite outfit of young people lucky enough to wear one.
Seeing that other young people were now discretely joining the military with the help of their family connections, Xi Zhongxun’s wife didn’t stay idle. Her influence was not enough to bring Xi Jinping or his elder sister back from the Shaanxi or Inner Mongolia countryside via the military route, and her youngest son still with her in Henan was too young to enlist. But she was able to use her connections to get her younger son allocated to factory work in Beijing at the age of sixteen. After all, peasants, soldiers and workers were the three prongs of the revolution, and better to be a sweatshop laborer to avoid going to the countryside like his