my house shouted into the microphone a description of the ‘luxury’ of my home. Another Red Guard told how I had tried to ‘undermine’ their ‘revolutionary activities’ by fighting with them to preserve ‘old culture’. A Revolutionary spoke of my stubborn arrogance and accused me of deliberately keeping a ‘wild animal’ in the house to wound the Revolutionaries.
Members of the ex-staff of Shell were then called upon to provide further evidence against me. I could easily see how frightened they all were and I wondered what they must have gone through. The men who got up to speak were white and their hands holding the prepared statements shook. None of them looked in my direction. There was very little substance in what they said, but every sentence they uttered contributed to the picture that I enjoyed a warm and friendly relationship with the British residents in Shanghai. A web of suspicion was carefully woven. One of the office lift operators declared that the British manager always stepped aside to let me get into the lift before him. A driver testified that whenever the manager and I shared a car, the manager always allowed me to get in first. This was supposed to demonstrate my value and importance to the ‘British imperialists’ because in Communist China a senior man would not dream of letting his female assistant get into a car or a lift before him.
Other members of the staff spoke of files kept in a room next to the manager’s office, not accessible to anyone but the manager and myself. A senior member of the staff who had been with Shell for many years said that maps of geological formation of areas of China with possible oil deposits were routinely kept at the office because they were of value to the imperialists. Another speaker read out excerpts allegedly taken from reports written by Shell branch managers in other parts of China during the time of the Civil War (1946-9) when the armies of the Kuomintang and the Communists were locked in a bitter struggle. Troop deployments of both sides were mentioned in these reports. This was supposed to repudiate my claim that Shell was interested only in commerce.
My late husband came in for severe criticism too. It was alleged that whenever the interest of Shell clashed with the interest of the State, both my husband and I stood on the side of Shell. All the statements were a mixture of fact and fiction, misrepresentation and exaggeration, calculated to mislead the ignorant minds of the gullible and the uninformed.
The meeting dragged on. Night had long ago descended on the city. But the drama of my misfortune was so absorbing that none of the Red Guards or the Revolutionaries left the room. The majority of them, I thought, were stunned by what they believed to be an exposure of a real international spy. Others simply had to pretend to believe in the allegations. I could see that the men who were running the show were gloating with success.
Years later, I was to learn that the date of this struggle meeting had been postponed several times because the organizers had hoped to get my daughter to take part in my denunciation. Despite enormous pressure, she refused repeatedly. But National Day, October the First, was approaching. The Maoists leaders ordered the Revolutionaries in Shanghai to produce concrete results to celebrate the day in a mood of victory. It was in response to this order that the men in charge of my case decided to hold the meeting without my daughter.
When the man with the tinted glasses judged that sufficient emotion had been generated among those present, he complimented the men and women who took part in my denunciation for their high level of socialist awareness. He also had a good word to say for our former staff members declaring that most of them had emerged from their re-education with clearer heads. But he issued a warning to those whose heads were still foggy, calling upon them to redouble their efforts at self-criticism to shake off the shackles of capitalism.
Turning to me, he said, ‘You have listened to the mountain of evidence against you. Your crime against the Chinese people is extremely serious. You can only be reformed by giving a full confession telling us how you conspired with the British imperialists in their scheme to undermine the People’s Government. Are you going to confess?’
‘I have never done anything against the Chinese people and Government. The Shell office was here because the Chinese Government wanted it to be here. The order to allow Shell to maintain its Shanghai office was issued by the State Council and signed by no less a person than Premier Chou En-lai. Shell is full of goodwill for China and the Chinese people and always observed its laws and regulations scrupulously. It is not Shell’s policy to meddle in politics…’ I said.
Even though I spoke in a loud and clear voice, no one in the room could hear a complete sentence for everything I said was drowned by angry shouts and screams of ‘Confess! Confess!’ and ‘We will not allow a class enemy to argue!’ At the same time, the hysterical Red Guards and Revolutionaries crowded round me threateningly, shook their fists in my face, pulled at my clothes and spat on my jacket, while yelling ‘dirty spy’, ‘dirty running dog’, ‘we will kill you’ and so on. Several times I had to brace myself to stand firmly when they pushed me very hard.
While the pandemonium was going on, the men on the platform were smiling; the man in the tinted glasses seemed particularly pleased to see me suffer at the hands of the mob. What was I to do? It was useless to try to explain and worse than useless to try to resist. If I had made any move at all, the mob would have jumped on me. I could only stand there looking straight ahead, with my eyes fixed on the distant wall, hoping their anger would soon spend itself.
Eventually the noise died down a little. The man said, ‘Our patience is exhausted. You are guilty. We could give you the death penalty. But we want to give you a chance to reform yourself. Are you going to confess?’
Everybody stared at me expectantly. I had stood there enduring their abuse for so long, I suppose I should have been filled with hatred for every one of them. Looking back, I remember distinctly that my predominant emotion was one of great sadness. At the same time, I longed to see my daughter. I was sad because I knew I could not reach out to these people around me to make them understand that I was innocent and that they were mistaken. The propaganda on class struggle they had absorbed, not only since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution but also since 1949 when the Communist Army took over Shanghai, had already built an impregnable wall between us. It was not something I could break down in a moment.
After staring at me for a few seconds and finding me silent, the man beckoned to a young man at the back of the mob. The crowd parted to let him through. He carried in his hand a pair of shiny metal handcuffs which he lifted to make sure I saw them. When the young man came to where I stood, the man in charge of the meeting asked again, ‘Are you going to confess?’
I answered in a calm voice, ‘I’ve never done anything against the People’s Government. I have no connection with any foreign government.’
‘Come along!’ the young man with the handcuffs said.
I followed him out of the building into the street. The others came behind us. The cool night air was refreshing and I felt my head clearing magically.
Parked in front of the entrance of the school was a black jeep, a vehicle of the Shanghai Police Department. It was a familiar sight to the people of Shanghai. During the height of every political movement, they saw it dashing through the streets with siren screaming taking victims to prison. We stood beside the jeep with the Red Guards, the Revolutionaries, the ex-staff of Shell and a number of pedestrians who stopped to watch.
‘Are you going to confess?’ the man in the tinted glasses asked again.
I was silently reciting to myself the Twenty-third Psalm, ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want…’
‘Have you gone dumb?’
‘Have you lost your voice?’
‘Speak!’
‘Confess!’ They were shouting.
The man with the tinted spectacles and the man from the Police Department were looking at me thoughtfully. They mistook my silence as a sign of weakening. I knew I had to show courage. In fact, I felt much better for having recited the words of the Psalm. I had not been so free of fear that whole evening as I was in that moment standing beside the black jeep, a symbol of repression.
I lifted my head and said in a loud and firm voice,