The Little Red Guard by Wenguang Huang

Author:Wenguang Huang [Huang, Wenguang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

Part Two

13.

THAW

Chairman Mao was dead, and his successor, Hua Guofeng, began to clean house in October 1976, starting with the “counterrevolutionary clique” led by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and three other radical Communist leaders. Known as the “Gang of Four,” they were charged with conspiring against the Party and put under arrest.

Mother acted as if she had known all along that Mao’s wife was a bad person. “She wore that black scarf and looked so distracted at Chairman Mao’s funeral,” she said. “I knew there was something going on.” Father told her, “Don’t get too smart with your observation; she is the enemy now, but what’s going to happen tomorrow? She might come back as empress. The only thing certain about Chinese politics is that nothing is certain. You can be an honored guest today and locked up as a criminal tomorrow.”

Father knew from experience to be cautious, but soon enough the catastrophes of the Cultural Revolution were blamed on Mao’s wife and her clique, and it was as if Chairman Mao had slept through those dreadful years, unaware of and therefore blameless for the radical policies that had ruined China’s economy and caused the deaths of millions of innocent people. The Party tried to right wrongs; with the fall of the Gang of Four, many former enemies became our comrades again, and those former counterrevolutionaries and capitalists turned out to have been good Communists all along. In my former elementary school, there was a counterrevolutionary, whose job was to do carpentry and repairs. We used to mock him all the time until, overnight, he became the school principal. We were told he had been a victim of the Gang of Four. The greatest surprise came when the verdict against Liu Shaoqi, the former president of China, was overturned. I grew up shouting “Down with Liu Shaoqi” or “Liu Shaoqi is a traitor and the biggest advocate of capitalism in China.” Liu was beaten and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. He died a prisoner in Henan Province in 1969. In an incredible backflip, the Party told us in 1980 that Liu was really a remarkable Marxist and a great proletariat revolutionary. A great funeral was arranged, attended by all the senior leaders. Chinese politics is confusing most of the time, more so for a teenager, but even I could tell that China was changing for the better.

Even more shocking to me was the time when I came home one day and noticed that a gigantic statue of Chairman Mao had disappeared from a three-meter-high pedestal near the eastern entrance of Father’s factory. Workers had taken the statue down and sent it away to be smashed. The Party had decided to end Chairman Mao’s cult of personality and urged people to liberate their thinking. Not long after, I saw dozens of trucks parked outside Father’s warehouse. The trucks were loaded with different sizes and shapes of buttons with images of Chairman Mao, which we faithfully wore on our chests every day, collecting and trading them like today’s Pokémon cards.

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