Out of the Gobi by Weijian Shan

Author:Weijian Shan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119529552
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2018-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Petition to Mao

Li Qinglin was an elementary school teacher in suburban Putian, in Fujian Province. On May 6, 1973, the postman delivered a letter to him, in a large envelope on which was printed in red the name of the sender: “The Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.”

Li’s heart missed a beat. He knew immediately that this was a response to a letter he had written to Chairman Mao the previous December. When he opened it, he could not believe his eyes. Mao himself had written the letter.

Mao’s letter read: “Comrade Li Qinglin, 300 yuan is sent to help you put food on the table. Similar things are too many in the country. Please allow [us] to solve them in a coordinated way.”

The letter was dated April 25, 1973. On May 10, Li received 300 yuan from Mao.

It was of course extraordinary for an elementary school teacher in a small town to receive a personal letter from Mao. Li had written to complain about the plight he and his family were in. His son had been forced to volunteer to become a farmer in a poor province. The place was so destitute that his son could hardly make a living and had to ask his father for help. Li and his wife were already living hand-to-mouth, and had nothing to spare. In addition, his younger son was about to finish junior high and was faced with the same prospect as his brother. In desperation, Li decided to write a letter to Mao. He had never expected Mao to personally write him back.

Mao’s letter was soon published in newspapers and touched off a wave of official examination of the problems associated with the “going up to the mountain and down to the countryside” movement. These problems included everything from unnecessary hardships to negligence to the abuse of the young students at the hands of government officials. Looking back, many among the educated youth are still grateful that Li Qinglin had sent his letter; their lives were somewhat improved after the publication of Mao’s response.

Li himself became an instant star. He was made a member of the People’s Congress. But since he was inexperienced in politics, he became something of a pawn of the radicals in the top leadership; they spurred him to heap accusations against their political opponents for the problems his letter had exposed.

Li’s luck did not last. Soon after Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four, the most powerful faction of the Communist Party during the latter part of the Cultural Revolution, Li himself was jailed. In 1978, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for “counterrevolutionary crimes” and was sent to a labor camp to serve his sentence. He was paroled in 1994, after 17 years. He lived off government welfare and the money occasionally sent to him by anonymous former educated youth, who remembered the impact of his letter. He died destitute in 2004 at age 73. His children erected a tombstone on which is inscribed the full text of Mao’s letter to him.

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