Emmett's Epoch of Endeavor Chapter 22

We have to go back to 1968. In the spring of that year, after the establishment of the town's revolutionary committee, the struggle against people reached its climax. One evening, the young carpenter Tang Wa came to my house to take me to the struggle. He Jie pleaded with him, asking him not to hit me. Tang Wa was a good person and never bullied anyone. He comforted He Jie and said he would not hit me. I followed him and waited outside the Red Workers 06th Column, next to the town's revolutionary committee gate. The venue was noisy, and the employees of the so-called town-run welfare agencies were crowded inside. Of course, I was the first to be struggled against. Carpenter Li raised his arms and shouted: "Now! Pull out the big rightist Liu Shahe!" Two people outside the door grabbed one of my arms each, dragged me into the venue, and pushed me towards the bottom of Chairman Mao's statue. I staggered and fell to the ground. Then they hung a black card on my chest and started to struggle against me. 

The so-called struggle was nothing more than asking me to stand on a bench and repeat the old things I had confessed many times, such as the anti-Party story of "Plants and Trees" in 1957. After one night, I sat under Chairman Mao's statue from the next night, watching others being hung with black cards and being struggled against. After the struggle, they came to sit next to me. The number of people sitting next to me increased night by night. Including me, those who were hung with black cards had the attitude of "too many lice don't itch, too many debts don't worry", and gradually felt at ease. On the contrary, the revolutionary workers sitting below were terrified, staring at Carpenter Li (he kept glancing at the list in his hand), fearing that he would raise his arm and call them out. 

The most interesting thing was my eldest brother. He had been secretly informing on me for two years, and in the end, Carpenter Li raised his arm and called him out: "Drag out the filial son and grandson of the landlord family! Yu Xunjian!!" Every night after the meeting, these struggle-against people took the black cards from their necks, tucked them under their arms, and fled back. Next time I have a meeting, I have to pick it up and hang it around my neck. The words on the black card are the words that Little Carpenter Li raised his arm to shout. The black cards are big and small, depending on the person. Mine is the biggest, with the words in lines like a poem: "Extra Large / Rightist / Liusha River / Rowan Yu." The three words Liusha River are as big as a human head. Twenty or thirty people in the welfare system were criticized and hung with black cards, and were included in the study class for criticized personnel, gathering every night at the meeting place in the wood furniture company to study.
 
The people who were criticized were taken to the streets twice, wearing black placards and standing on high stools to confess their so-called crimes to passers-by. I stood at the corner of Xiaodong Street and Xiaodong Street to be displayed to the public. Several workers from Qingbaijiang District asked me to explain the "Plants and Trees". I recited two of the five poems. They took out their notebooks and asked me to explain every word clearly. They recorded the original text, including punctuation. The next day, a group of young workers from the Sichuan Chemical Plant came on bicycles, each carrying a notebook, to record the "Plants and Trees". Later, the higher-ups did not want me to be displayed to the public to explain.

Soon after, our town was involved in a civil war with the "Ji bandits" in Zhongjiang County, namely the conservative Jiguang Corps. A young man in the same lane said to me: "This is a war against the remnants of the Kuomintang. There are Kuomintang colonels commanding the battle." This young man was very naive. Like many rebel fighters, he believed such shameless rumors. In this battle, our town's armed forces returned with two bodies.

In late spring of 1969, during the campaign to clean up the class ranks, I was locked up in the police station. Chen Daoqing, the rebel leader who was an official in the town revolutionary committee, was in charge of interrogating me. He sneered and quoted a line from the "Enlarged Rhyme": "People's hearts are like iron, and official laws are like furnaces. They are not good enough, but they are bad enough." He asked me to accept goodness and not to be stubborn; the result of being stubborn would be to be burned to ashes. But I didn't know what he wanted me to confess. He didn't let me sleep for four days and three nights in a row, and asked me to write a confession. On the fourth night, he eased up and asked me to sleep in a room on the left side of the police station courtyard.