‘Good,’ you say, ignoring my sarcasm. ‘Keep your political consciousness strong.’
‘How about you, Comrade Zhang?’ I ask. ‘Is the revolution progressing as you hoped?’
‘Progress has been satisfactory,’ you say, your eyes shining, ‘but there is more work to be done. For now we must spread the revolution beyond our schools, to the streets of Beijing. But we Red Guards will rise to the challenge. We Red Guards will fight to protect our Great Leader Chairman Mao from the capitalist roaders who attack him.’
‘I’d rather have adventures than learn from books,’ you told me in the ruins of the Old Summer Palace. Back then, your ambition had impressed me. Back then, I hadn’t known ‘have adventures’ meant persecuting and terrorizing innocent people.
‘Liya. .’ I say, ‘do you really think that Teacher Zhao was spying for the Nationalists and plotting to overthrow the Communist Party?’
‘The Cultural Revolution Committee of the Anti-capitalist School for Revolutionary Girls has these allegations under investigation,’ you respond.
‘But what evidence is there?’
‘The allegations are under investigation.’
Frustrated by your stilted, official speech, I cry out, ‘Every time I close my eyes, I see Teacher Lin licking Resist America’s boots, or Headteacher Yang being slapped in the face. Can’t you see how awful it is? We have stopped being humans. We are worse than beasts!’
Under your red-star cap, your eyes are stern. ‘You sympathize with the rightists because your father is a rightist,’ you say. ‘Restore your red status, and you would throw yourself into the Cultural Revolution tomorrow.’
‘My father is not a rightist!’ I correct. ‘My father’s department had to expel a quota of rightists. That’s why he was arrested and sent away. He did nothing wrong.’
You shake your head, as though at my naivety, and say, ‘Do you really think they’d send your father to a labour camp if he hadn’t committed a crime?’
A servant enters the courtyard with a teakwood tray of rice porridge, steamed buns and soy milk. The servant girl, who is our age, lowers the tray beside you on the bench then retreats, walking backwards like a eunuch before the Emperor. You don’t thank her, or even nod to acknowledge her, your chin propped up high by your sense of entitlement. How can you pretend to be one of the masses? I think scornfully. How can you pretend to be one of the proletariat, when you live like this?
I turn to leave. I don’t bother to say goodbye. ‘Wait!’ you cry. You come after me, catching me by my shoulder at the gate. I turn around, expecting an apology for what you said about my father. Tenderness returns to your eyes as you stroke my head. ‘Sorry they cut your hair,’ you say. ‘You used to have such beautiful hair. But that bitch Miao butchered it.’
Who gives a damn about my hair? I want to scream. I step back, disgusted, and your eyes turn sad.
‘Yi Moon, I want you to know,’ you say, ‘I am protecting you and your mother. I am keeping you safe.’
‘My mother and I don’t need you to protect us,’ I mutter as I turn and walk out the gate.
Your laughter pursues me down Ironmongers Lane: ‘If only you knew. .’
The Smash the Four Olds movement begins, and the Red Guards take over the streets of Beijing, intent on destroying the Old Culture, Old Society, Old Education and Old Ways of Thinking. Red Guards stand at intersections, shouting the quotations of Chairman Mao through loudspeakers. Red Guards hijack buses and lecture the passengers about the Ox Freaks and Snake Monsters in their midst. Red Guards armed with knives chase after people in western clothes, slashing their American-style shirts and dresses to shreds.
Destroy the Capitalists Street. All Hail the Red Guards Lane. The East is Red Boulevard. All over Beijing, street names are changed to revolutionary slogans. Shops selling paintings, ornaments and other ‘poisonous weeds of the capitalist classes’ are smashed up and portraits of Chairman Mao displayed in the windows. Signs saying Masses Beware! For Tens of Years This Shop Has Exploited the Sweat and Blood of the Workers! appear over shop doorways. The Red Guards ‘liberate’ the shop assistants from their managers, who are beaten to the floor. The Red Guards change the traffic-light system so revolutionary red means ‘go’ and green means ‘stop’. The Red Guards then persecute the victims of the resulting traffic accidents, for ‘clinging to the Old Culture and Old Ways of Thinking’.
Red Guards from Beijing University stand in our alley, halting passers-by and ordering them to quote Chairman Mao. They stop my mother, who nervously stammers, ‘Serve the People!’ (choosing the simplest quote, because those who misquote the Great Helmsman are beaten). The Red Guards stop Idiot Zhu from the junk yard, who, when asked for a quote, laughs and says, ‘Chairman Mao stinks of dog farts!’ The students take off their leather belts and beat the giggling Idiot Zhu, yelling, ‘Enemy of Chairman Mao! You deserve to die!’ They eventually drag Idiot Zhu off to jail, and we don’t see or hear of him again.
The home raids begin. Teenage fists bang bang bang on our courtyard gate, and my mother and I rush panicking around our room, hiding bamboo mah-jong tiles, father’s calligraphy and anything that could be labelled ‘poisonous weeds’. The Red Guards break the gate down and we are certain we are done for. But as we cower behind our locked door, we overhear them say, ‘What about the rightist Yi family?’
‘Zhang Liya struck them off the list. Besides, the Yi family don’t have a pot to piss in.’
And the twenty or so Red Guards storm into Granny Xi’s room instead.
Landscape paintings, Qing Dynasty vases, classic novels and land deeds to old properties in the city — the Red Guards drag a haul of riches out of Granny Xi’s room. Though Granny Xi petitioned to have my mother and me evicted, I can’t help but pity the old woman as she is dragged out and forced to kneel in the yard. Mother and I peek out the window as a pimply teenage boy slaps Granny Xi in the face with her Nationalist-era land deeds.
‘You kept these land deeds hoping that the Nationalists would return, didn’t you?’ he accuses. ‘You are hoping the Nationalists will come back and restore your status as a landlord, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ says Granny Xi, ‘I hate the Nationalists. I just forgot to throw them away.’
The Red Guard unbuckles his belt and tugs it out of the trouser loops. He lashes the strip of leather down on Granny Xi’s back and my mother gasps, ‘She’s eighty-four!’
They make a fire of Granny Xi’s poisonous weeds and force her to kneel close to her burning furniture and books so that the smoke makes her cough and the heat blisters her skin. When the Red Guards leave, carting Granny Xi’s valuables, or ‘Ill-gotten Gains of the Exploiting Classes’, off in a wheelbarrow, we go outside to help Granny Xi to her feet. Though she has long detested us, Granny Xi does not resist as my mother and I bring her into our room. The old woman collapses on a chair, her cheeks smudged with smoke, and her white hair and eyebrows singed. Mother kneels by Granny Xi and squeezes her wrinkled hand.
‘Do you love Chairman Mao with all your heart?’ she asks gently. ‘If you let that love shine out of your heart, Red Guards will leave you alone.’
And Granny Xi looks at my mother with such watery, defeated eyes I am nostalgic for the days they seethed at us with hate.
Every day the black-category students go to school. Every day we study Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, write our Thought Reports and clean the school building. I am put on toilet-cleaning duty. Though I scrub the toilet bowls with my toothbrush every day for weeks, the pubic hairs, bloody sanitary napkins and faecal smears never cease to make me gag. But I can’t slack off, because Martial Spirit comes to inspect my work.