the noise from the street. The sound was muted and seemed further away, but with the cool evening breeze kept out, the house was very hot. Parade after parade passed outside. The resolute footsteps of young men and women fired with revolutionary fervour and their emotional shouting voices continued to penetrate the walls.
I went into my study, took a book from the shelf and tried to read. But I was restless and could not concentrate. Wandering aimlessly from room to room, I rearranged the flowers, throwing away the dead ones and putting water into the vases. I straightened the paintings on the walls and picked up ivory figures to examine the delicate carvings. All the time the parades went on outside. Even when a parade did not pass down the street by my house, I could hear the sound of the drums and gongs. After wandering around in the house, I went finally to Meiping’s room to see how she was. There was no answer to my light tap on the door. I opened it gently and found my daughter already asleep. Her black hair was spread on the white pillow and her sweet young face was peaceful in repose. The light from the gap in the door fell on a snapshot of my husband in a small silver frame on her bedside table. I closed the door softly.
These were the two people in the world closest to my heart. One had died. The other was alive and her life was just unfolding.
‘Take good care of yourself and look after Meiping. I am sad to have to leave you both so soon.’
I could hear again the weakened voice of my husband speaking these words before he lapsed into a deep coma from which he never awakened. That was nearly nine years ago. He had charged me to look after our daughter. I had done just that and watched her grow with joy in my heart. She was intelligent, beautiful and warm-hearted. I never had to worry about her. But now, with the start of the Cultural Revolution, a dark cloud had come over our lives. As I tried to look into the future, a deep feeling of uncertainty overwhelmed me. For the first time in my life, I felt unable to control the direction of my own life and guide my daughter. That frightened me.
To cope with problems and changes with determination and optimism was the way I had lived. When my husband died in 1957, I was shattered by my loss and, for a time, felt half dead with grief myself. But I found that taking positive action to cope with problems one by one was therapeutic and good for the renewal of courage.
In old China, women who lost their husbands lost their own identity. They became virtually non-persons, subjected to ridicule and gossip by the neighbours. Although the new Marriage Law passed by the People’s Government in 1952 protected women in general and forbade discrimination, the old prejudice against widows and unmarried older women persisted. Chinese society seemed to be offended and embarrassed by the sight of a woman trying to stand on her own.
When I started working at the Shell office, members of the senior Chinese staff were dismayed that a woman with no administrative experience was put in charge of them. I had to prove myself over and over again to earn their respect and confidence. There was nothing I enjoyed more than meeting the challenge of life and overcoming difficulties. And I was pleased and proud that I was able to maintain our old life-style in spite of losing my husband. Never in my life had I found myself in a situation so puzzling as the Cultural Revolution. I knew for a fact that whenever a Chinese national was appointed to a senior position in a foreign firm, the Department of Industry and Commerce of the Shanghai Municipal Government must give permission. Since the police kept a dossier of everybody, the government should know everything about me. There seemed no valid reason for the sudden accusation against me. While Winnie, Li Chen and Mr Hu all seemed to think my being the target of persecution not unexpected, I did not know how best to conduct myself in the days ahead except to resist firmly all efforts to make me write a false confession. That would inevitably bring me into confrontation with officials of the Party. What would be the outcome of such confrontation? How would it affect my daughter’s life? Standing outside my daughter’s bedroom, I was so deeply troubled and felt so helpless that I invoked the guidance of God in a special prayer.
In the days after Mao Tze-tung reviewed the first group of Red Guards in Peking and gave them his blessing, the Red Guards in Shanghai took over the streets. The newspaper announced that the mission of the Red Guards was to rid the country of the ‘Four Olds’ – old culture, old customs, old habits and old ways of thinking. There was no clear definition of ‘old’; it was left to the Red Guards to decide. First of all, they changed street names. The main thoroughfare of Shanghai along the waterfront, the Bund, was renamed Revolutionary Boulevard. Another major street was renamed August the First to commemorate Army Day. The road on which the Soviet Union had its Consulate was renamed Anti-Revisionist Street, while the road in front of the former British Consulate was renamed Anti-Imperialist Street. I found my own home now stood on Oo Yang Hai Road, named to commemorate a soldier who had given his life trying to save a mule from an oncoming train. The Red Guards debated whether to reverse the system of traffic lights, as they thought Red should mean Go and not Stop. In the meantime, traffic lights stopped operating.
They smashed flower and curio shops because they said only the rich had the money to spend on such frivolities. The other shops were examined and goods they considered offensive or unsuitable for a socialist society they destroyed or confiscated. Their standard was very strict. Because they did not think a socialist man should sit on a sofa, all sofas became taboo. Other things such as inner-spring mattresses, silk, velvet, cosmetics and clothes that reflected fashion trends of the West were all tossed onto the streets waiting to be carted away or burnt. Traditionally, shops in China had borne names that were considered propitious, such as ‘Rich and Beautiful’ for a fabric shop, ‘Delicious Aroma’ for a restaurant, ‘Good Fortune and Longevity’ for a shop that sold hats for older men, ‘Comfort’ for a shoe shop, ‘Happy homes’ for a furniture shop etc. When the government took over the shops in 1956, the names had not been changed. Now, condemned by the Red Guards, they had to be changed to something more revolutionary. Uncertain what alternative would be acceptable, managers of a large number of shops chose the name ‘East is Red’, the title of a song eulogizing Mao Tze-tung which during the Cultural Revolution took the place of the National Anthem. Since the Red Guards had removed the goods displayed in the windows of the shops, Mao’s official portraits were put there. A person walking down the streets in the shopping district would not only be confused by rows of shops bearing the same name, but also had the uncanny feeling of being watched by a hundred faces of Mao.
Daily, my servants reported to me all these incredible actions of the Red Guards. I became so curious that I decided to venture out to see for myself.
I had in a bank in the shopping district two fixed deposits that had matured. I decided to cash one of them so that I would have some extra money in the house, since experience told me that shortages of food and everything else always followed political upheavals. To keep alive, one had to resort to the black market where prices were astronomical. I remembered my cook paying 50 yuan for a piece of pork that was 2 or 3 yuan in normal times, after the failure of Mao’s Great Leap Forward Campaign.
Both Lao Chao and Chen Mah suggested that I should be suitably dressed for going out, as the lady next door had had an unpleasant encounter with the Red Guards who had confiscated her shoes and cut open the legs of her slacks, when she went out to visit a friend. So before setting out from the house to go to the bank, I put on an old shirt, a pair of loose-fitting trousers borrowed from Chen Mah and my exercise shoes. As the August sun was strong, Chen Mah handed me the wide-brimmed straw hat my daughter had brought back from the country after working in a rural commune in a programme for students to help the peasants.
The streets were in a ferment of activity. Red Guards were everywhere. There were also many idle spectators. At this juncture of the Cultural Revolution, the ‘enemy’ was the capitalist class so the majority of the population felt quite safe. To them the activities of the Red Guards were spectacular and entertaining. Many of them were strolling through the streets to watch the fun.
Groups of Red Guards were explaining to clusters of onlookers the meaning and purpose of the Cultural Revolution. I listened to one group for a little while and was puzzled and surprised to hear the Red Guard speaker telling the people that they would be ‘liberated’ by the Cultural Revolution. Hadn’t the people been liberated already in 1949 when the Communist Party took over China? Was that liberation not good enough so that the people had to be liberated again?