Living in Mao’S Era: A Memoir

By Jenton Johnson

The book is a memoir about the generation called Lao Wu Jie (old college graduates of five years), mainly describing the life in Mao’s era, from elementary school to college and to working in factories as an engineer, including the account of most political campaigns in Mao’s era, especially the Cultural Revolution.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546260516

Jenton Johnson

Jenton Johnson has a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering and is retired in 2014. He likes reading, writing, swimming, and playing violin.

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© 2018 Jenton Johnson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/24/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-6052-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-6051-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018911076

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

L-city (1943-1950)

N-city (1950-1953)

B-city (1953-1958)

H-city (1958-1960)

N-city (1960-1962)

G-city (1962-1968)

Army Farm (1968-1970)

F-city (1970-1972)

X-city (1972-1976)

Epilog

To my parents

Who set excellent examples to me.

Preface

N early all published memoirs are about eminent people, because their lives are extraordinary. This memoir is also about an extraordinary life: the life in Mao’s era of 27 years. After the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the iron curtain was descended, as Winston Churchill put it. The life in Mao’s era is pretty much opaque to the West.

It is true that some people have published books about their lives under Mao, such as Life and Death in Shanghai by Nian Chen, Single Tear by Wu Ningkun, Wild Goose by Jung Chang, Son of Revolution by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro, Sider Eater by Rae Yang, and Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang. However, the authors of the first two books had finished their college education before the PRC was founded. The authors of the other books had not entered college when the Cultural Revolution started.

I am the generation who just entered elementary school when the PRC was founded. By the time the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, I was in my senior year in college. Those who entered college from 1961 – 1965 obtained a collective name: Lao Wu Jie (Old College Graduates of Five Years). Starting in 1966, no single college enrolled any student for five years or more, due to the Cultural Revolution. So, old was added in the collective name to indicate that these college graduates entered college before the Cultural Revolution.

Up to now, I have not seen the English memoir published by an author from the Old College Graduates of Five Years. So, there is a gap between the memoirs of the elder and younger generations. One possible reason to cause this gap is that the elder generation studied English in their foreign language class before the PRC was founded, and younger generations also studied English after China and the Soviet Union publicly broke up in the 1960s. When the PRC was founded, the Soviet Union was among the first foreign countries establishing diplomatic relationship with the PRC. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union was called the Big Brother. So, learning Russian could help us to follow the steps of the Soviet Union towards the communist society. The Ministry of Education of China decided that we should learn Russian in the foreign language class, rather than English. As a result, only a few of our generation who studied English later by themselves. The limited English abilities might have hindered our generation from writing their English memoirs.

It is also true that many history books have been written to account for Mao’s era and the Cultural Revolution, but these books are more or less like the bird’s eye view, and are focused more on big events, rather than the daily life of the ordinary people. Also, the vast majority of those books are based on secondary materials. In this book, I try to faithfully record the typical and real life of ordinary city dwellers during the Mao’s era.

After the reform and open-up policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping, more and more westerners have gone to China for business, tours, and education. China has since achieved a great deal and becomes the second largest economy in the world. But the lives during the Mao’s era are no longer there for visitors to see.

For all these reasons, I believe it is my obligation to tell the story of my generation in Mao’s era. I started learning English after President Nixon visited China. This study eventually allowed me to pass the TOEFL and GRE to pursue my PhD degree in the United States. After retiring, I finally have more time and decided to write this memoir.

So many years have passed since Mao’s death in 1976. Many institutions and universities have changed names or combined with some other institutions and universities. In this memoir, the old names of institutions and universities during Mao’s era are used.

The Chinese Pinyin uses 26 Latin letters, but the pronunciations of these letters are different from the ones in English. To make it easier for English readers to read the names of the cities, provinces, mountains, rivers, etc., which are not well-known, I use the first letter, in capital, of the Pinyin, plus a hyphen, and plus word city or river etc. for their names, such as L-city, G-river, etc. In case where the city names have the same first Pinyin letter, a second letter would be added, to distinguish them, such as Y-city and YK-city. Since the Pinyin is the guide to pronunciation, the capital letter and lower-case letter are equivalent. Sometimes I use the capital letter in Pinyin just for clarity. Many well-known Chinese figures, such as Deng Xiaoping, have been collected into the English dictionaries. However, some of them, such as Zhu De, are not familiar to some of the Chinese youngsters, let alone foreigners. Also, some places, such as Hankou that I think may not be widely known. In cases like these, I use Italian fonts, such as Zhu De and Hankou, in order to remind the reader that these are Chinese people or places.

To protect people’s privacy, all the people’s names in this memoir are false, except a few well-known public figures, such as Deng Xiaoping. Fortunately, the names of the people, places, and the schools are not essential to understand the story.

More details about the public events described in this memoir can be found from the Internet. The readers, who are interested in more details about the related event, photos, short videos, and movies of this era, can search the Internet. Many good history books that describe the big public events in Mao’s era are also available.

Unlike many memoirs, which provide some related pictures. There is none in this memoir. As described in the chapter in the Army Farm, my home was burnt down due to a fire accident. My only album and other my belongings, which I did not bring with me, were also burnt. Cameras were luxury goods during Mao’s era. The cheapest one, Sea Gull brand, cost three months of the starting salary of a college graduate. So, I did not own a camera and could not provide any relevant picture. Fortunately, there are a lot of pictures, movies, and videos from Mao’s era on the Internet, which can supplement this memoir.

All quoted Mao’s words, the related excerpts from the newspapers and documents, etc. were my English translation, not quoted from the officially published English versions, if any. Also, all the poems and the lyrics in this book are my own English translations. I have tried my best to truthfully translate them and believe that the key ideas of the original texts are conveyed in these translations.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank Dr. Stephen L. Rice, my PhD advisor, for reviewing the part of this memoir related to the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and providing extensive, detailed, and valuable feedback.

I would also like to thank the staff in AuthorHouse for their help, advice, and suggestions, especially Mary Abarquez, who spent a lot of time communicating with me during the publication process.

L-city (1943-1950)

M y birth place L-city is on the bank of the upper stream of the Yellow River, and was a pivotal town along the ancient Silk Road. The Yellow River is actually clean in this section. The water becomes yellow after passing the yellow Loess Plateau, the flow flushes the soil into the river, and causes it to change color.

When I was born in 1943, we live in a house located in Z-road, and Daddy was the director of L-city office of the Alxa Trade Company, which was owned by the Mongolia prince Dalizhaya. Soon we moved to a new house near the W-mountain where my younger brother was born in 1946. About one year later, we moved again to a new house located in Y-road, where my younger sister was born in 1949. Since I was born, Mama stopped working and stayed home to take care of us kids.

This new house had two big yards, we lived in the front yard, and Mr. Zhu, Daddy’s colleague and friend, and his family lived in the back yard. One day, I saw a middle-aged man, wearing sunglasses with a couple of servants, entered the yard and started calling Daddy. My brother and I looked at this stranger, wondering who he was. Daddy came out upon hearing the call and greeted him. Then he called us to greet the Mongolia prince Dalizhaya. From his clothes, I felt this Mongolia prince was just like a Han, who typically wore a jacket or shirt with a pant. The prince entered our house and had a lunch with us. He speaks fluent Mandarin, and was quite amiable.

L-city was not a big, densely populated metropolitan city at the time when I was born. There were only a couple of roads in the downtown area. The Yellow River Bridge, the landmark of L-city, was the first steel bridge across the Yellow River. I played there many times. A special river transportation tool used by the local people was the sheepskin raft. The raft consists of a dozen or more airtight whole sheep skins with the air blowing into each one. Then the balloon-like sheepskins are connected by a wood truss. When passengers were on the truss, most part of the sheepskins would sink down. This made the passengers looked like floating on the surface of the water. In the south part of the city was the W-mountain, with many Buddhist temples on the hillside. In the downtown of L-city, there was a small zoo with some tigers, bears, monkeys, etc. At the largest intersection in downtown, there was a church. Mama, a devout Christian, always brought us there on Sundays. We particularly liked going to the church on Christmas day because the Santa Clause in the church would give each child a bag of candy and toys as the Christmas gift.

There are many regional foods and snacks. Vendors frequently used carrying-poles or carts to travel around the streets and lanes to sell their goods. Those traveling vendors would make short melodious hawker’s cries. The cries were different from each other. But the vendors who sold the same goods would make the same melodious cry.¹ So, by hearing these hawker’s cries, people would know what vendors were nearby.

The most popular snack at that time was perhaps the roasted broad bean. The broad bean in L-city was about 50 percent larger than the ones in other areas. Roasted in the sands, the aroma of the broad bean always attracted me to the stall, and the broad bean becomes one of my lifelong favorite snacks. In winter, the temperature of this north-west city would be around 10°F, and the local people demonstrated their ingenuity by creating "hot D-pears," which is made by boiling D-pears, one of the juicy local pears, and adding buckwheat honey. When I heard the vendor’s cry, I would run out to buy it.

There was also a juicy and sweet melon known as Wallace melon. In 1944 American Vice President Henry A. Wallace visited China, and brought some honeydew melon seeds as the gift to Chinese people. He wanted to help the people in north-west China to solve their problems caused by the very dry climate. The melon was successfully grown in L-city area and was named Wallace Mellon, because it was he who brought the seeds to China. After the Liberation², the name of Wallace melon was changed to "Bai Lan Gua," which means white Lan melon, for its skin color is pale and grows in L-city area.³

In the summer of 1949, we had to flee L-city because the People’s Liberation Army, or the PLA, marched toward the city and there would be a big battle. We managed to get on a truck and moved westward. Near sunset time, we arrived at a small town in the mountain area. The hotel was a row of caves, dug on a small hillside. A few days later, my sister and brother suffered from measles, one after the other. I had already had measles, so I was immune. Daddy was quite resourceful and had good knowledge and experience about Chinese herbal medicine. He managed to buy some herbs in the local herb store and cured both of them in a couple of days.

In one sunny morning, Mama brought us to the roadside to see Daddy off, because a messenger came and brought a letter from prince Dalizhaya, calling him and some other employees to go to the headquarter in B-town. We saw Daddy and about a dozen his colleagues in the trade company were on the horse backs. After saying goodbye, those men ran away to the northeast direction.⁴ In the meantime, women and children with some service men continued their trip to the west. In the evening, we arrived at a village. We were arranged to live in a big courtyard compound. Inside the compound, there were a big yard and bungalows, which were built on the four sides. We saw only old men and women in the compound, and I was not able to find a kid to play with. A few days later, we heard some distant gun fires and explosions. But soon those sounds stopped. One afternoon, I saw a PLA soldier, with a rifle on his shoulder, walked in from the front door. He just inspected around the yard and walked away, without saying anything or disturbing anyone. A few days later, we heard that the battle was over and we could go home.

When back in L-city, we found our house and yard were intact. There was no sign of the battles in this neighborhood. We were told by neighbors that L-city had been liberated.

In the fall of 1949, Mama enrolled me in the elementary school near our home. This school used to be a Buddhist temple. After the Liberation, the religion was regarded as superstition and spirit opium, which would be narcotic to people’s thought. Priests and ministers of Churches were charged as the spies or the running dogs⁵ of imperialists. As a result, most of the temples and churches were used either as government office buildings, schools, or dormitories of some government units. So, after the Liberation, Mama stopped going to the Church. Naturally, there had been no Christmas celebration since then.

We had two courses: Chinese and Arithmetic. Since Mama had taught me some Chinese characters and basic addition and subtraction, the classes were quite easy to me. One thing I can still remember is the physical punishment for students, who violated school rules. Once, all students were gathered to see the principal disciplining some students. When he was beating a student’s palm with a ferule, I was scared. The physical punishment in schools was soon forbidden in China.

In the summer of 1950, our whole family left L-city to return to my parents’ home province, J-province, where my grandparents, uncles and other relatives were living. We headed to Xian by a truck, because there was no railroad between L-city and Xian at that time. It took two days for us to travel the mountain road, and to arrive in Xian. We stayed in Xijing (Western Capital) Guest House for a few days. As an ancient capital, Xian is full of attractions. One of them is Li Shan (Li Mountain), where the famous hot spring Huaqing Spring was located. This hot spring had been for the royal families since the Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). Daddy brought us there, and we all enjoyed the natural warm water enormously.⁶

After the short stay, we continued our trip by train, and this was the first time I traveled by train. Unlike the automobile, the train moved so smoothly that I felt the train station moved backwards. On the train, there was a dining car, we went there for meals. I saw passengers drinking a dark Chocolate-colored liquid that I had never seen before. I asked Daddy what it was, he answered that it was "ke kou ke le (Coca Cola’s Chinese translation), which means delicious and delightful" in Chinese. Upon hearing this attractive name, I was itching to try it, and was thrilled by its taste. Not until more than three decades later, did I drink it again in 1983. Because there was no diplomatic relationship between the People’s Republic of China and the Unites States after the Liberation, Coca Cola disappeared from the mainland market shortly after this trip. In 1979 after China and the U.S. established diplomatic relationship, Coca Cola returned to the Chinese market again.

After two days, the train arrived at Hankou, which is located on the north bank of the Yangtze River, and is one of the three cities of Wuhan. We stayed there shortly to purchase ship tickets from Hankou to J-city, which is the city on the south bank of the Yangtze River, and located in north of J-province. In Hankou, Daddy managed to buy tickets to watch Beijing opera The Sorcerer and the White Snake played by Mr. Mei Lanfang,⁷ who was famous for playing female characters, and was one the four best actors of Beijing Opera at that time. In this opera, Mei Lanfang played the heroine, and Mei Baijiu, his son, played her maid. I was amazed to know that the two major female characters in the opera were played not by two actresses but by two actors. Daddy was a big fan of Mei Lanfang. He was so enthusiastic that he went to the back stage to show his admiration, and to shake hands with Mr. Mei and his son, after the show.

We took ship for our next leg. It was also the first time we travel by ship. The ship was stable and quiet in comparison to the train, which would generate click-clunk sound while moving. At first I thought the ship was not moving at all. Only after a while did I notice that the scene outside the window became different. We spent a night and a day on the ship and arrived at J-city in the evening of the following day. After staying in a hotel for the night, we continued our trip by train on the next day. By noon, we arrived at our destination: N-city.

N-city (1950-1953)

W e temporarily lived in a hotel. The first night when we were about to sleep, a loud siren sounded outside. When lived in L-city, I never heard such a siren sound. As it turned out, it was from the fire engines. We were told that there was a fire along the bank of the G-river. We could see the sky was lightened in dark red color by the flame. It took a couple of hours for the firefighters to put out the fire, and hundreds of homes were destroyed. This was the first time in my life to see such a disaster caused by fire.

N-city was a much more densely populated city than L-city, and the streets near our hotel were crowded. In addition, the public transportation system and other public facilities, such as parks, theaters, and hospitals were much more developed than that of L-city. I noticed that the bus in N-city had a big cylinder-shaped device on its back. I did not know what the device was used for. Daddy told me that these buses were burning water gas, because in that area gasoline was not as plentiful as in L-city. The big cylinder-shaped device at the rear side of the bus was a water gas generator. Charcoal and water were used to generate the water gas as the fuel.

After a quick visit to our grandparents in H-town, which is about 140 miles east of N-city, Daddy left N-city to continue working for the newly established the People’s Government of B-town, headed by Mongolian prince Dalizhaya.

After Daddy left, Mama, my brother, sister, and I moved to a house located at 16 East Dragon Lane, and was owned by Mr. Yang, one of our relatives. His wife’s younger sister was the wife of my younger uncle (my mother’s younger brother), and his wife’s younger brother married my third aunt, one of my mother’s younger sisters.

The house was a two-story building with a small yard. On the first floor, there was a big dining room, two big bedrooms, and one smaller bedroom. My maternal grandmother lived in the smaller bedroom. My elder uncle’s (my mother’s elder brother) family, and