Three Cadres from Shanghai

...just this smiling mouth churning out dogma...

...The speeches by various officials and professors had been strong enough, I thought, compared with the stuff I was used to at home...

...but they refused to join the Rebels, roundly declaring that they were an arrogant lot and had made many mistakes in the movement, for which they should criticize themselves...

...Panic-Stricken THEN CAME the big swing, when the rebels made it clear that they had found the documents they were looking for, and when Chairman Mao more than hinted that he favored the rebels...

...He had survived a variety of regimes, any one of which could have crushed him...

...Chou stampeded with the rest, panicstricken at the enormity of his error...

...He had a husky voice, and used it like artillery...

...Most youths of 20 are highly susceptible to the scorn of their friends, and to be hated outright by almost the whole student body must have been unbearable...

...Unfortunately, he came from a bourgeois background...

...Everyone sat around drinking tea, while "Cheke-cheke" Chou, now firmly in control, got up and made a speech about how I had come "10,000 li" (miles) to help them build socialism...

...Incredibly, he found himself forced to make a decision, to choose between two sides...

...It was he who introduced me to China...

...As time went by I had to admit that Chou Chen-ti, though thoroughly likable, was a classical "yes-man...

...It could be summed up as "Two is more than four": that is, a student who studies hard for two years turns out better than one who plods along for four...

...When the Red Guards started ransacking the houses of "bourgeois" elements, Chang knew his family would be on the list...

...That is true Revolutionary Rebellion...

...THESE THREE PEOPLE all went through a period of confusion, followed by one of acute personal suffering, followed by a kind of enlightenment —an enlightenment which carries with it a certain degree of cynicism, of which the young at least were blissfully free a year ago...

...When I left China the Institute organized a party...

...Despite all this experience, the Cultural Revolution very nearly finished him...

...He gave me the impression of a hard, honest man, the best type of administrator...

...His revolutionary usefulness at an end, he would be turned out to graze somewhere and be forgotten...

...I remember him sidling up next to me, clicking his ill-fitting false teeth...

...As far back as 1957 he had suggested a teaching reform to the Shanghai Minister of Education...

...They all pledged to continue the fight against imperialism and revisionism by becoming even more red and even more expert, by mastering Chairman Mao's thought and applying it creatively in their work, etc...

...It appeared that Chou had been Party Secretary once, and had been kicked upstairs by this bourgeois reactionary interloper...

...I imagined the poor teacher who had to face him, and asked what language he was studying...

...Then there is the army of ordinary administrators, badly shaken by the Cultural Revolution, but basically unchanged...

...After all, he must have been nearly 70...

...We Chinese people, under the leadership of Chairman Mao and the Party, are transforming it into a Paradise for the Workers...

...And, having seen how suddenly the Chairman's closest friends can fall from grace, the students must also harbor secret uncertainties even about men like Lin Piao...

...My interpreter smiled when I sug gested it was ironic...

...Every sentence he ground out in his slow, picturesque English was to affirm that everything was great in a great world...

...Time to step down...

...Anyway, he cried, and he got it off his chest...

...it was his spectacularly dynamic ap proach that galvanized me, and kept the hall applauding for a long time...

...And he has not really changed...

...Or a fraction of it...

...The fact that it did little more than frighten him, that it failed to "touch his soul," is a measure of the failure of the movement itself...

...The view of the city by night for the first time was breath-taking...

...But he went on talking, his voice taking on something of the old passion, as he gestured furiously toward the culprit, the sentences ending in sobs, his face shining with tears...

...The pity of this is that the one thing they have learned from the movement is not to take risks...

...Nothing, by definition, could possibly go wrong for long...

...I attended the inaugural meeting, which strained my sense of reality to the limit...

...The policy of this group, which was for a long time in the majority, was to oppose violence in any shape or form, and to see that the criticized Party men got a fair deal, and were not just railroaded out of office by the Rebels...

...By March, the only step left for him was to make a formal self-criticism...

...And in early April, when a Revolutionary Committee was named to celebrate the newlywon unity of students, teachers, and cadres, who should appear (as Chairman, no less, of the Committee) but "Cheke-cheke" Chou himself...

...Vision of Paradise IT WAS this vision of a land of milk and honey —a paradise of the future but also in a way present—that dominated everything he said...

...Unless the movement re-gathers momentum, and sweeps through to put new life into the tired Party, it must be considered at least a partial failure...

...Mao knows this...

...Let me illustrate this by describing what happened to three individuals I worked with in China...

...thought...

...I made my speech of thanks, and all the time I was looking at "Cheke-cheke" Chou, and he was looking at me, and the exchange was almost a kind of smiling understanding...

...I liked him from the beginning, especially when he called me to his room to explain the new education system...

...That was the time of the Great Leap, and Chou's theory was right along the Mao line...

...In the long run, however (and the signs are already there), a new class of leading cadres will put on the mantle of Mao, and command obedience in his name...

...The interpreter nodded proudly and began to praise him...

...English," was the reply...

...imperialists and their running dogs by coming to China...

...It is also well-nigh impossible to eradicate...

...He was lucky to have fallen from favor in the early part of the movement, for in this way he avoided being identified with the Party Secretary...

...When the Cultural Revolution began, he was among the first to be hit...

...As the rebels never tired of pointing out, by choosing to stick by the Party Committee in the Institute, he became a tool for the Secretary, who used him to divert the forces that were threatening to unseat him...

...A more subdued Chang Fu-lan I could not have imagined...

...chekecheke...

...He had been victimized by the Party Secretary, falsely accused of vile crimes, used as a scapegoat, etc...

...In fact, in Peking he was as much of a tourist as I. In Shanghai he took me straight to my hotel room on the twelfth floor of the Shanghai Mansions...

...His grandfather had owned a business, and the family still lived in a tree-lined street in the best part of the old French Concession...

...He was the second person I met in China, and since both were surnamed Chou, I baptized the second one "Chekecheke Chou," from his habit of inserting "chekecheke" (Chinese for "urn" or "er") between every phrase...

...He even cracked a joke, which had not been easy during the movement: "We are Revolutionary Rebels," he said, "and we are saying goodbye to a Revolutionary Rebel...

...The remainder no longer defended the Party Secretary, who was by this time well past help...

...Each of us might have been thinking "Well, you old rogue...

...Never again, for example, will the decision of a majority in committee be taken as gospel...

...There was still a good deal of the military man about him: battered, ex-pug face under crew-cut grey hair, and a habit, unlike his namesake, of saying little and saying it with punch...

...Ah," she said, "but think of what has happened in-between...

...The irony of the Cultural Revolution, as far as Chou Chen-ti was concerned, is that it...

...So, from a degenerate, "Cheke-cheke" Chou became a martyr...

...There was hardly any Chou Chen-ti left...

...Chang was never a Red Guard himself, because of his class origin, but he played a big part in organizing the "moderate" faction at the Institute...

...I learned that he was on probation to become a Party member, and that great things were expected of him...

...The people will be forced to think things out in the light of Mao's instructions, and they could have far worse guides than Mao in the present circumstances...

...He is one of tens of thousands of minor Chinese officials known as "ordinary cadres...

...Significantly, after the Cultural Revolution began, I never again heard him speak in this vein...

...Cheke-Cheke" Chou ANOTHER CHOU was far higher up the Party hierarchy in the Institute...

...At the time, I was pleasantly surprised to find that cadres such as he (he was vice-president of the Institute) could take a month off in the summer to play tennis and loll in the sea with the foreign teachers...

...This young man spoke on behalf of the students at the opening-day ceremony at the Institute...

...I attended some meetings of this kind, and I can testify that Chou and others like him put on a good performance...

...But in February came the news of a compromise policy toward the cadres, and a ray of light appeared...

...From our conversations I learned that he had been at Yenan with Mao...

...The Party Secretary, to his eternal shame, privately advised him to go to Peking on an "experienceexchanging" trip, thus sparing him the pain of denouncing his own parents...

...Nor could you say he was selfish...

...Will he ever be able to regain that complete trust...

...CHOU CHEN-TI works in the English Department of the Shanghai Foreign Language Institute...

...NOTEBOOK WHATEvER the initiators of the Cultural Revolution had in mind when they launched it, they must have expected to carry it further than it has gone, for the present situation shows all the signs of an unfinished job...

...He also knew he would be expected to take part in the raids...

...Here was this man, who had made a speech at the very first meeting I attended at the Institute, two years before, sitting up there on the dais again, in much the same position...

...Only this time, in stead of professors by his side, there sat the heroic fireball rebels themselves, who had put in months of shouting, screaming, struggle, risking the direst punishments, to bring the administra tion down...

...He came with some rebel students, and I was staggered to see him telling them what to do as in the "bad old days...

...There is an unbelievable amount of pure theater on most such occasions...

...To achieve these ends he was prepared to go to almost any lengths...

...This means that the young generation, particularly the students, who previously had almost boundless faith in all Party members, considering them representatives of Mao and the Central Committee, now have no vision of perfection besides the great man himself and his "close comrades-in-arms...

...I met this Chou at a seaside resort in the north, where we had a holiday together before going down to Shanghai for the academic year...

...Nevertheless, little by little, he scraped together some prestige, until one night he even came to visit me in my hotel—always a sure sign that someone was all right...

...I felt sorry for him, but had a sneaking suspicion that he himself would not mind so much...

...I could not have been more mistaken...

...His place would be taken by younger and more NOTEBOOK dynamic men, full of the rebel spirit that the movement had engendered...

...All kinds of things came out then...

...All through January he was under a cloud...

...As I got to know him, I found under his ex cited voice and manner one of the gentlest peo ple I had ever met...

...The Minister of Education was not impressed--luckily for Chou, because that Minister had been furiously attacked during the movement...

...for in the process of protecting his job and his family he had come close to losing his soul...

...He must have been appalled to find that each side used the same terms, each claimed the sole right to defend Chairman Mao and the Party, each carried out bold revolutionary coups...

...NOTEBOOK accorded to the "black-line" Municipal Committee...

...He was a chastened man, but on the up-and-up again...

...Then Chang spoke...

...In vain he bellowed sayings from the little red book, raised his fist to slogans with the best of them...

...For he was a "bourgeois reactionary authority"—even though a little one...

...When the Cultural Revolution began, Chang stood firmly by the side of the Party Secretary and the Party Committee...

...Somehow, in February and March 1967 the main advance balked and swerved aside leaving the average cadres mopping their brows...

...He evidently saw himself as a heroic figure, putting his strong young body between the forces of evil and the representatives of his beloved Chairman Mao...

...They were not going to let him off the hook easily...

...The movement was meant to "touch their souls," to lever them from their office chairs and tilt them out among the masses...

...No other student worked so hard to protect the leaders from the slanderous accusations of the rebels...

...A Bourgeois Revolutionary A MONTH AFTER I had arrived in China a student, Chang Fu-lan, showed me just how revolutionary one could be...

...Then he broke down and wept...

...He had done this by learning to say what the press said...

...And his whole future depended on the choice...

...I know, because she recited a speech that one of my students had written for her, a student who rather fancied himself as a stylist...

...Except that now he is wiser by half, and will not fall for the same tricks again...

...Shanghai...

...Finally (but it was not until the beginning of April) the last opposition caved in...

...I have seen a girl of ten abuse her father's detractors with the rage of an Antigone...

...The students had seen through him and despised him...

...His first love has always been teaching, but because of his experience as a Party member he has risen to be a kind of Sub-Dean...

...Caution is about the last thing China needs in her petty officials...

...Cynicism is the one thing an ideology like Communism cannot tolerate, and the last thing China wants in her present stage...

...In November the rebels broke into the Party offices and ransacked the files, searching for proof that the Party Committee had kept forbidden "black lists," classifying students and teachers as leftists, mid NOTEBOOK dle-of-the-roaders or rightists...

...The streetlights ebbing away west from the great S-bend of the river...

...For the first time in his life, he found the golden phrases bereft of their magic...

...Oddly enough, my whole class stayed with him, though their original organization was disbanded and its leaders bitterly attacked...

...As the months went by, it became sickeningly clear that he had blundered...

...But he went on: "You flew in the face of the U.S...

...Like thousands of his kind, he chose wrongly...

...When I left Shanghai in April, Chou was almost rehabilitated...

...He was exceptionally dill NOTEBOOK gent, especially in political studies...

...Everybody laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was unorthodox...

...His grandmother, he once confessed to me, smiling sadly as he said it, still went to church, still gave her money to "those superstitious swindlers, the priests...

...To have risked contaminating his country's greatest asset—the optimism of the Chinese people—he must have had tangible victories in mind...

...The Bund, brilliantly lit by phosphorus lamps...

...In the guise of rigid Maoists, they will expand to fill the gap between the young and the old again...

...In the short run, this could be beneficial...

...Twice he was billed to appear, and I was invited...

...I had hardly been a model Maoist...

...He'll be one of your students...

...It used to be known as a Paradise of Adventurers...

...I had never seen anyone so worked up on an official occasion and said so...

...In the case of Chang Fu-lan, however, I think it was real enough...

...Around December 20, half the Institute changed sides, dropping the Party Secretary like a hot cake...

...But there are other consequences, equally important for the future...

...Even at this late stage, Chou joined in the outraged protest against this "fascist action" by a "handful of counter-revolutionaries...

...Now, therefore, an enormous chasm has opened up between the old man at the top and his children--a space so vast that it can only be bridged by religious adulation...

...I have not used their real names...

...In December and January, when power in the Institute swung to the extremists, Chang and a dwindling group stuck it out in opposition...

...Now the students started uncovering good things about him...

...It is plain that the new rulers of Shanghai, for example, are already getting the unswerving loyalty formerly This article appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review and is reprinted here with the author's per mission...

...He painfully explained his errors, describing how the evil Secretary had used him as a shield, had exploited his love for Chairman Mao to make him oppose Chairman Mao...

...For these were the very students who had terrorized the Institute for months, the fearsome Red Rebel Field Army, scourge of all bourgeois reactionaries in authority...

...But each time it was cancelled so that the studends could criticize Liu Shao-chi and his book "How to be a Good Communist...

...What he said is probably not so im portant...

...As early as June there were dazibaos accusing him of being a degenerate bureaucrat, isolated from the masses, a malingerer who pleaded poor health to get out of the weekly bout of manual labor...

...The Rebels, on the other hand, were prepared to go any length to get rid of the monsters who had betrayed Chairman Mao and subjected them—the revolutionary masses—to a reign of white terror...

...Confident that the Party Committee (which for him represented Chairman Mao and the Central Committee) would triumph, Chou worked conscientiously to protect it, writing scathing dazibaos against the rebel students...

...On the one hand, the prestige of the Party has been shattered in the main cities...

...Far from retiring gracefully, "Cheke-cheke" Chou simply swayed to one side and waited...

...That, I thought, would be the end of him...

...If Chou was prepared to stand up and publicly denounce the Party Secretary and his lackeys, he would be welcomed back to the side of the revolutionary masses...

...Barges on the Soochow Creek maneuvering into line for the long haul inland...

...What about the faith he lived by: his faith in the Party and in the members of the Party...

...I raised my eyebrows...

...I believe he was hurt very deeply by the movement...

...He had lost a lot of respect, but he still had his job and his family was intact...

...I was there on the day Chang himself changed sides...

...Until there is clear proof that such victories have been won, the Cultural Revolution must be considered a defeat...

...Result: in March, when the cadres were given a chance to join the rebel ranks, he was completely rehabilitated...

...Only decisions which accord with the thought of Mao will be considered correct...

...was about the only thing that could have made a man of him, the only way he might have been shaken into some sort of intellectual honesty...

...It was plainly a performance, and I cannot imagine that anyone took it seriously...

...This name stuck, and even the students adopted it, laughing when they heard him say things like "Mao Tse-tung's...

...There it is," he said...

...Deep down, he was only interested in two things: keeping his job as a teacher, and preserving his family intact...

...When the latter fell, therefore, Chou's star soared to a new height...

...It was a few days before I left China, so his speech that day brought me round the full circle...

...But not a word of it was genuine...

...He spoke so fast I could not catch a word, and my interpreter was left far behind...

...What about the rest...

...He was frank about the uncertainty of it all, about the experimental nature of much that the Party had done, and asked me to suggest improvements and innovations...

...He showed me around Peking when I arrived, keeping up a constant patter of doctrine to make sure I understood the true significance of the Imperial Palace, the Great Wall, and the Ming Tombs...