which I had put a bottle of water and a glass, as well as two bars of chocolate. Secure in the knowledge that I had come well prepared, I settled down to wait, wondering what the speaker was leading up to.
The hall gradually filled. At two o’clock, the same number of men mounted the platform and took up their positions. The speaker beckoned to someone at the back. I was astonished to see Tao Fung being led into the room wearing a tall dunce’s hat made of white paper with ‘cow’s demon and snake spirit’ written on it. If it were not for the extremely troubled expression on his face, he would have looked comical.
‘Cow’s demon and snake spirit’ are evil spirits in Chinese mythology who can assume human forms to do mischief, but when recognized by real humans as devils they revert to their original shapes. Mao Tze-tung first used this expression to describe the intellectuals during the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957. He had said that the intellectuals were like evil spirits in human form when they pretended to support the Communist Party. When they criticized the Party’s policy, they reverted to their original shapes and were exposed as evil spirits. Since that time, quick to adopt the language of Mao, Party officials used the phrase for anyone considered politically deceitful. During the Cultural Revolution it was applied to all the so-called nine categories of enemies: the former landlords denounced in the Land Reform Movement of 1950-2; rich peasants denounced in the Formation of Rural Cooperatives Movement of 1955; counter-revolutionaries denounced in the Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries Campaign of 1950 and Elimination of Counter-revolutionaries Campaign of 1955; ‘bad elements’ arrested from time to time since the Communist Party came to power; rightists denounced in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957; traitors (Party officials suspected of having betrayed Party secrets to the Kuomintang during imprisonment by the Kuomintang); spies (men and women with foreign connections); ‘capitalist-roaders’ (Party officials not following the strict leftist policy of Mao, and taking the ‘capitalist road’) and intellectuals with bourgeois family origins.
Often the phrase was shortened to just ‘cows’ and the places in which these political outcasts were confined during the Cultural Revolution were generally referred to as the ‘cowsheds’. As the scale of persecution expanded, every organization in China had rooms set aside for ‘cowsheds’ and the Revolutionaries of each organization had full power to deal with the ‘cows’ confined therein. Inhuman treatment and cruel methods were employed to force the ‘cows’ to confess. In many instances, they fared worse than those incarcerated in regular prisons.
How changed Tao Fung looked! When we were working in the same office, he was always full of self-assurance. Now he looked nervous and thoroughly beaten. He had lost a great deal of weight and seemed years older than only a few months ago. The young people behind me sniggered. When Tao was brought to the platform, the crowd at the back stood up to have a better view and knocked over some benches. So a man pushed a chair forward on the platform and told Tao Fung to stand on it. When Tao climbed onto the chair and stood there in a posture of subservience in his tall paper hat, the sniggers became uncontrolled laughter.
Someone in a corner of the room, obviously planted there for the purpose, stood up. Holding the Little Red Book of Mao Tze-tung’s quotations (so-called because of its red plastic cover), which everybody had to have by his side, and raising it high in the air, he led the assembly to shout slogans.
‘Down with Tao Fung!’
‘Down with the running dog of the imperialists, Tao Fung!’
‘Down with the imperialists!’
‘Down with the capitalist class!’
‘Long live the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!’
‘Long live our Great Leader Chairman Mao!’
The sound of laughter was now drowned in the thunder of voices. Everybody got to his feet shouting and waving the Little Red Book of Mao’s quotations. I had not brought along my copy. Embarrassed by my oversight, I was slow to get to my feet. Besides, I was shocked and surprised to see Tao Fung raising his fist and shouting with gusto the same slogans, including those against himself. By the time I had collected my fan, my bag, my bottle of water and the glass from my lap, placed them on the bench and stood up, the others had already finished and had sat down. So I had to pick up my things again and resume my seat. The man sitting next to me was glaring at me with disapproval. He shifted sideways away from me as if he feared contamination by my bad behaviour.
When the crowd had demonstrated its anger at and disapproval of the culprit, he was allowed to come down from the chair. As he bent his head to step down, the paper hat fell off. There was renewed laughter from the young students. Tao stared at the man in charge of the meeting with fear in his eyes, obviously afraid of being accused of deliberately dropping the hat. He heaved a sigh of relief when another man picked it up and placed it on the table.
The man in charge of the meeting called upon other members of the company’s staff, including the two men who had come to my house in the morning and junior clerks in Tao Fung’s accounts department, to come forward to speak. One by one they marched to the platform and expressed anger and indignation, repeating the same accusations against Tao Fung made by the man in charge of the meeting in the morning session. The scope and degree of criticism was, I knew, always set by the Party official. It was just as ill-advised to try to be original and say something different as not to criticize enough. The Chinese people had learned by experience that the Party trusted them more and liked them better if they didn’t think for themselves but just repeated what the Party told them. The criticism of Tao Fung by other members of our former staff went on for a long time. All those who were allowed to speak were workers or junior clerks. None of the senior members of our former staff participated. They sat silently with heads bowed.
Finally the man in charge of the meeting took over again. He told the audience that after several weeks of re-education and ‘help’ by activists, Tao had finally recognized the fact that he was a victim of capitalism and imperialism. Turning to Tao, the man asked in a voice a stern schoolteacher might have used to address a pupil caught in an act of mischief, ‘Isn’t it so? It was the high salary paid you by the foreign imperialists that turned you into their slave! You sold yourself to them and were ready to do any dirty work for them because of the high salary you received and the money they promised you. Isn’t this the case?’
There was a hush in the room as everyone waited for Tao’s reaction. But there was no dramatic, tearful declaration of repentance. He merely nodded his head, looking more dejected than ever.
I thought Tao Fung very stupid to agree that he had sold himself for money because this admission could open the way to all sorts of more serious accusations from which he might find it difficult to disentangle himself. It seemed to me it would have been much better and certainly more truthful to explain that Shell paid its Shanghai staff the same salary after the Communist Party took over the city as it had done before. Since the government did not intervene, naturally the question of reducing the pay of the staff did not arise. What he could also have said tactfully (which the Party officials would find difficult to refute) was that working for a foreign firm did not carry with it the personal prestige of serving the people that workers in government organizations enjoyed.
‘Tao Fung will now make his self-criticism,’ the man announced.
Still in a posture of obsequiousness and without once lifting his eyes to look at the audience, Tao took a few sheets of paper from his pocket and started to read a prepared statement in a low voice devoid of any emotion. He admitted humbly all the ‘crimes’ listed by the speakers and accepted the verdict that his downfall was due to the fact that he did not have sufficient socialist awareness. He expressed regret for having worked for a foreign firm for more than thirty-five years and said that he had wasted his life. He declared that he was ashamed that he had been blinded by capitalist propaganda and enslaved by the good treatment Shell had given him. He begged the proletariat to forgive him and give him a chance to repent. He mentioned the fact that his son was a Party member and had been educated abroad at government expense. His own life of depravity, he said, was an act of gross ingratitude to the People’s Government. He assured the assembly that he now recognized the dastardly schemes of the foreign capitalists and imperialists against