Emmett's Epoch of Endeavor Chapter 7

On May 16, 1966, the tragic "May 16th", the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution movement began. May the descendants of our Chinese nation never forget this day. The future Dong Hu, the future Sima Qian, I salute you. Regarding that strange and catastrophic disaster, please write straightly, do not hide it for the venerable, do not hide it for the sage, and do not cover up the truth with twists and turns. As an isolated right-winger, what I saw and heard was pitiful, and I didn’t know the truth. I only know that there were no Red Guards or rebels in China on the day of May 16th. They only appeared on the scene three or four months later. How can we put all the blame on them? Long before they came on stage, hadn't the Cultural Revolution already been announced? Wasn't the Cultural Revolution actually underway even before it was announced? Aren’t disasters already approaching the mountains and rivers periodically? From which year should this be calculated? The Four Clean-ups Movement in 1964? Or earlier, the anti-rightist movement in 1957?

Let me go back and talk about what I was doing on May 16th.

Thirteen days ago, on the afternoon of May 3, I started to pull the big saw to cut big wood and become a carpenter. In the open space of the People's Thea Liuter on North Street in this town, Master Luo and I set up a horse pole and cut the foamed fir wood for several days in a row. The cut boards were transported back to the wooden furniture company and handed over to the carpenter to make Chairman Mao's quotation boards - various units in this town urgently need these things to decorate their facades. These quotation boards are rectangular, with red paint base and yellow paint characters. Most of them talk about the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the necessity of class struggle. They are hung on the facades of various units, shining brightly, and it seems that everyone is in revolution overnight. Cutting foamed fir wood is fast and profitable. We work hard under the scorching sun. My shoulders and back are burned by the sun, blistered, peeled, and the tender flesh is exposed. It is red and ugly. Apply some vaseline and it is shiny like pickled meat. "I only wish to cut this every day." Master Luo said, smiling, with white teeth showing on his black face. His shoulders and back are as black as smoked bacon. He is not afraid of the sun. "Once your tender flesh is tanned, you won't be afraid of it anymore," he comforted me.
 
Before the tender meat was tanned, we temporarily changed our jobs and went to work as porters. The town was building a factory and needed power electricity, so the town labor station selected cart pullers, ironworkers, brick and tile makers, kiln burners, and saw workers, and selected the strongest among them, nearly 50 people, to form a porter team to carry electric poles in Qingbaijiang District (a suburb of Chengdu). Master Luo was selected to join the porter team, and although I was not strong, I had to go with him. The porters took pity on me because I was too thin and didn't let me carry anything. They only asked me to follow along with three strong women who did odd jobs, going up and down hills, crossing bridges and wading through water, and helping the porters whose poles were unstable. I was doing a small auxiliary job, but I was paid a high price (two yuan and a dime a day). I felt guilty, so the next day I resolutely asked to be a porter. Other porters thought I was not good enough and were unwilling to join me in lifting. A young porter even bullied me. When I bent down to get on his shoulders, he suddenly stood up and let the pole push me to the ground. Yang Jihuo, a fat black man from the brick kiln, asked me to join him in lifting. Yang Jihuo was a well-known rough man in the town. He was illiterate, an old bachelor, addicted to alcohol, had an amazing appetite, was very strong, his legs were thicker than my waist, and he was brave in fighting. He once bit off someone's ear in a fight. When I saw his face, I thought of Niu Er, the hairless insect in "Water Margin", and I was secretly afraid. He scolded the young man who bullied me, and then said to me: "We are one civil and one martial, I won't let you suffer." He moved the rope loop on the center of the pole two or three inches to his side, which reduced the weight on my shoulders. Whenever we reached a dangerous place, he noticed that my pole was unstable and my legs were shaking, so he always asked me to stretch out my arms and put them on his shoulders so that I could climb up. We waded through the rice fields many times, the water was knee-deep, and when we had to cross the ridge, he would always put down a low stake, kneel on the ridge with one leg, and let me cross first. Despite Yang Jihuo's care, sixteen people carried the cement electric pole weighing more than one ton, which was too heavy for me after all, making me very embarrassed. I stepped on the wrong foot many times and fell into the pond. My legs and shins were bruised and my lower lip was broken and bleeding, causing an import crisis. My shoulders, which had peeled and exposed the red tender flesh when I sawed a few days ago, were now swollen, then blue and purple, and finally rotten and festering. "What a misfortune, a scholar is in trouble!" I heard Yang Jihuo say this to others. This was considered a reactionary speech at the time. Yang Jihuo was illiterate and didn't know the consequences, so he said this nonsense.

It starts from the Bridge Factory in Qingbaijiang District and ends at the Steel File Factory in Chengxiang Town. It is about seven kilometers in straight line. After lifting the telegraph poles along the way, the team started digging nests, erecting poles, and setting up wires. Before and after, I was busy for more than fifty days, and I was always there. One of these days is "May 16th". Checking the diary at that time, this day seemed ordinary to me. I woke up at dawn that day, hurriedly ate the breakfast my mother cooked for me, and then ran to the steel file factory that was under construction. There, other porters and I climbed onto two trucks in a chaotic manner on the wheels, and climbed into the carriages with our arms supported. After everyone arrived, the two trucks drove to the bridge factory in Qingbaijiang District. Of course, there were no seats in the freight car. The porters were all standing, leaning on each other's shoulders, tossing and bumping into each other for fun. A bearer who loved to tell jokes suddenly shouted: "Dustpan Street is here!" which made everyone laugh. Dustpan Street is a lively street in Chengdu that everyone is familiar with. A kiln worker, whose nickname is Xiong Erwa, is actually an old man. He is often the target of ridicule and is called "An Lushan". There is also a bricklayer who wears glasses and has poor eyesight. He is jokingly called "Treasure Island". His surname was Zeng. He spoke very "preciously" and often fell down while walking, hence his name. This group of happy porters all belong to the lower class and are quite hardworking and hardworking. They tell jokes without scruples, but they refuse to discuss politics. Harsh political movements, closed social life, and vulgar cultural tastes have, over time, cultivated their attitude towards life in which they fear officials and fight, are content with their content, and stop talking about state affairs. They never imagined that on this day, this ordinary day, a strange and catastrophic disaster rare in history would have begun. They never imagined that not long after, they would suddenly suffer from political malaria. They would be ordered to "care about national affairs", to "rebel", to smash this and that, to sing quotation songs, to pick on officials. Go and set up a "revolutionary organization", go and participate in the "Great Debate", go and "defend Chairman Mao", go and beat people, go and be beaten, go and be labeled as "counter-revolutionary" by the other faction, go and kneel down to "please apologize", go and cry, go and wear the red hat To "rehabilitate", to "attack the civil and military guards", to "liberate Zhongjiang", to go to the battlefield, to kill people, to be killed, to "unite" with the "royal dogs", to "clean up the class ranks", to be "Clean up", go into the "cowpen", criticize Lin Biao, criticize Kong Laoer, "counter the right-leaning trend of overturning convictions", comment on "Water Margin" and scold the so-called capitulationists, criticize Deng... .These political magic tricks were beyond their imagination on the morning of May 16th. They couldn't imagine what would happen in the future, so they were very happy now, jostling around in the car, telling jokes, regardless of S3x or S3x. They were very satisfied with the salary, which was two yuan and a dime per day, which was the highest wage standard in this town. I'm afraid I'm the only one unhappy. I feel dizzy and want to vomit. I couldn't sleep last night because something happened at home that made me sad.

Three days ago, on May 13, at my home, my eldest brother beat my 16-year-old Yao Di again and even tried to chop him with a knife. I jumped out to block my brother, but luckily there was bloodshed. Since I returned to my hometown, my eldest brother, who is a carpenter, has always believed that it was me, a "big rightist", who had affected his future and made him unable to hold his head high in society, so he hated me and ignored me. My younger brother is very kind to me. He listens to me and asks me to teach him to identify the constellations in the northern sky every night and listen to my stories about these constellations in Greek mythology. The elder brother scolded the younger brother for being "poisoned by rightists". The younger brother didn't like him, so when he started arguing with him, he got into a fight. At night, the residents' committee of the third section of this town met to mediate the dispute between my family. The oldest brother often reads newspapers to understand the recent trend. He firmly believes that drawing a clear line between himself and a "big right" and helping Yao draw a clear line is a revolutionary feat and will never be wrong. Little did he know that the cadres of the neighborhood committee did not read newspapers and were lagging behind the situation. Instead of praising him, they scolded him and asked him to write a self-criticism and promise not to do anything wrong in the future. After suffering this humiliation, Dadi returned home and angrily declared: "I will fight to the end!" Two days later he went to the Wood Furniture Club to complain to the leader of my supervision team, a carpenter nicknamed White-faced Chicken. The white-faced chicken has a high revolutionary consciousness and encourages his eldest brother to inform him more in the future. I found out about this, so I was sad and couldn't sleep.
 
A strong woman in the same car gave me a few Rendan pills. I put them in my mouth and my dizziness was relieved a little. We got off the car at the bridge factory. Fortunately, the work was not hard that day, so I could still bear it, although I felt dizzy, my back was cold, and I sneezed frequently. In the morning, we carried short electric poles, which were lighter. In the afternoon, two groups took turns to carry a long electric pole, which was also okay. At noon, as usual, we borrowed the farmer's stove and paid for the firewood. Three strong women cooked two large pots of potato noodle porridge, which everyone could scoop up. The porters were very hungry, and they didn't choose their seats. They squatted in groups of three or five in the farmer's yard, which was covered with chicken and goose manure, eating loudly and laughing. Some brought spicy bean paste, pickled cabbage, and bacon, and everyone swarmed over to eat. I was depressed and only ate half a bowl, then sat down by the bamboo fence in the corner of the yard, watching Yang Jihuo chewing bowl after bowl, eating so deliciously. His front teeth were knocked out in a fight, which opened his mouth wide, making it easier to drink porridge. There was a half-full bottle of wine beside him, and he would take a sip from time to time, sigh with satisfaction, and then drink porridge again. His fat face and chest were soaked with sweat and turned a shiny olive color. He ate for a while and loosened his belt, as if no one was around.

"How many bowls have you eaten?" I asked.

He didn't respond, but spread out his thumb and index finger and made the sign of eight. He must have been half drunk, as he talked about old times while drinking. I only then learned that when he was young, he had worked as a cook for American soldiers at Guanghan Airport, and he had seen a lot of things. What surprised me was that he said that he had worked as a cook in the canteen of the Sichuan West Daily in the early 1950s. No wonder he looked familiar, I had seen him before! "Our Jiamen editor-in-chief was very kind to me!" he said. I knew he was referring to editor-in-chief Yang Xiaonong, a very knowledgeable old cadre. I used to be the subordinate of editor-in-chief Yang's subordinate in the early 1950s. Now, when I faced Yang Jihuo, I suddenly remembered the past, just like Du Fu meeting Li Guinian in the south of the Yangtze River, and I felt sad inwardly. When I asked Yang Jihuo why he left the newspaper canteen later, he refused to answer me, hesitating and looking ashamed. Three years later, he was caught in the "cleansing of the class ranks", and I only then learned that he had a minor record of corruption. He confessed his crime at the meeting, and the moment he opened his mouth, he was laughed at: "Even if I don't say it, everyone knows that I have been a proletarian since I was a child..." Several years after the Cultural Revolution, Yang Jihuo, a rough man in the brick factory, died of liver damage caused by alcoholism. I hope he often has money for the dead to buy wine at night, alas!

After the porters finished their lunch, they went to take a nap in the bamboo forest. I was sitting alone under the bamboo fence in the corner of the yard, staring at the green fields in a daze. I saw farmers walking in twos and threes on several field ridges, carrying wooden stools and bamboo chairs, each going home. An old farmer walked towards the yard where we were, thinking he was the owner here. A peasant woman stood in front of the door and asked him: "What meeting will the team have today?"

"Liao Momo was weighed heavily." The old farmer replied with a joke.

I understand. He was talking about "Liao Mosha, Wu Han, and Deng Tuo." Even in the countryside here, people were criticizing "Three Family Village" on May 16. Two days later, Deng Tuo committed suicide and became the first innocent victim of the Cultural Revolution.