In their book Mao, Chang and Halliday singled out Rongfen Wang as one of the few who saw the truth of the Cultural Revolution early on. And as someone who did something about it. She wrote personally to Mao, asking him, rhetorically, if he knew what he was doing; telling him that the C.R. was not a mass movement, but mass murder. And she resigned from the Communist Youth League. That got her twelve years in prison, and she attempted to take her own life--as so many Chinese did--by drinking insecticide.
Luckily, as an examplar of the good in the human spirit, she survived her suicide attempt. But she did not just survive, no Rongfen Wang did not just survive. Like other rare examples of courage and will,--Nelson Mandela, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Harry Wu, Martin Luther King-- Rongfen Wang's indomitable spirit persisted. She continues to fight against China's Great Wall of Silence with Youqin Wang and others, in the battle for Chinese history.
Red Guards, Maoists, Misanthropes (full translation)
Wang Rongfen
Logging onto the www.morningsun.org Web site, one is first greeted by a ghost-like image of Mao Zedong. In me this provokes a reaction something like what I imagine Jews feel upon encountering an image of Hitler.This Web site, entitled "Morning Sun," describes itself as devoted to scholarly research on the Cultural Revolution: "A range of techniques and perspectives are used in the Morning Sun website to reflect on the origins and history of the Cultural Revolution (c.1964-1976). We approach the period not from a simplistic linear perspective, but from a panoptic one, encompassing a broad overview while allowing the user to focus in on individual histories, narratives and events that reveal the complex contradictory forces that led to an era of unrivalled revolutionary fervor and political turmoil."In my browsing of the Web site, however, I have not found any exploration, analysis or unearthing of facts, not a single treatise or research report, but only posters and propaganda from the Cultural Revolution period, as well as the Web site's own promotional material, and a very strange female voice repeatedly instructing Americans how to say the Chinese words for "Long - Live - Chairman - Mao."A Web site dedicated to the exhibition of violence and praise of Mao. The facts that the Web site presents regarding Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards have nothing in common with what I know of them. The Chinese government's thorough repudiation of the Cultural Revolution in 1979 has now been turned on its head, and a reversal of the verdicts on the top three people blamed for the Revolution has caused an uproar. Given the lack of consensus, analysis of this Web site is best performed on a case-by-case basis. The Khmer Rouge, following the example of the Cultural Revolution, committed gross crimes against humanity for which its officials are now being tried by a United Nations tribunal. The evil performed during the Cultural Revolution was on a much grander scale than that of the Khmer Rouge and lasted even longer; it was genocide on an unprecedented scale. The prime instigator of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong, was the tutor of the Khmer Rouge and therefore the principal culprit in both atrocities. Heaven may have let Mao and Pol Pot off lightly, but history will never forgive them. As for Mao's Red Guards, the number of people they killed, the heinousness of their methods and the severity of their crimes far outstrips that of the Hitler Youth and qualifies them as a group dedicated to violent acts against humanity. Using this standard as a basis for analysis, the information that makes up the Morning Sun Web site is an advertisement for poison, in which the images of Mao Zedong and the Red Guards are used to peddle the toxic violence of the Cultural Revolution, giving glory to shame and portraying evil as the highest morality.The Web site home page: Long live Mao Zedong!The creators of the Web site have borrowed a cover photo from a Cultural Revolution-era issue of "Renmin Huabao" depicting a Chinese family performing a song on stage. Eight Chinese people are lined up from youngest to oldest; each wears a Mao badge and clutches a Little Red Book, their faces glowing with happiness and their lips parted in wide smiles. Leading them in song is a child of three or four around whose waist is wrapped the kind of leather belt with which Red Guards beat their victims. The words to the song they're singing are emblazoned beneath the enormous Mao portrait that hangs on the wall behind them: Long live Chairman Mao. The "wallpaper" of the homepage is quotations from Mao Zedong, highlighting the phrase from which the Web site draws its name: "You young people... are like the morning sun." A clamor of Cultural Revolution songs, television programs and films, The Morning Sun site map reflects the Web site's position. The first section is entitled "Living Revolution," and exhibits music and photographs collected from the early years of the Cultural Revolution. It includes radio broadcasts of revolutionary songs, anthems and poems praising Mao, such as "Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman," and selections from model operas and songs extolling the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution, such as "I am Chairman Mao's Red Guard," "The Proletarian Cultural Revolution is Good" and "Let's Study the Sixteen Points." There is also a "Cultural Revolution Television" showing six "channels" of clips: Channel 1: "A colossal parade in Tienanmen Square celebrates the cult of Mao." The accompanying recording is of a chorus singing, "The force at the core leading our cause forward is the Chinese Communist Party. The theoretical basis guiding our thinking is Marxism-Leninism," followed by shouts of "Long live the Communist Party!" and "Long love Chairman Mao! Long live! Long live! Long live!"Channel 2: A woman in Albanian costume sings, accompanied by two similarly costumed male musicians. A transcript of the accompanying narration reads, "Our closest comrades-in-arms, comrades from Albania, are performing a song in praise of Chairman Mao. Everywhere around the world, tens of millions of masses sing in one voice for you. Chairman Mao, you are the helmsman for the world revolution! People around the world will sing for you forever!" The song is followed by repeated shouts of "Long live Chairman Mao!"Channel 3: The film clip shows a parade in Tienanmen Square, huge posters of Mao in the streets and large groups of people of all ages reading their Little Red Books. A woman narrates, "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, personally launched and led by our great leader Chairman Mao, has achieved glorious success. Everywhere around our nation, revolutionary scenes seethe with activity. Everywhere shines the golden light of Mao Zedong Thought."Channel 4: Shouts of "Long live Chairman Mao" ring over a film clip showing Mao Zedong arm-in-arm with "personal secretary" Zhang Yufeng on Tienanmen Gate, reviewing a rally of more than a million Red Guards. Below is shown a sea of ecstatic young faces and dancing arms waving Little Red Books.Channel 5: A hodgepodge of footage accompanied by the scream of a train whistle. A female narrator says, "Chairman Mao's latest directive has inspired a nation of young people to go to the countryside. A great campaign is unfolding on a magnificent scale. Revolutionary parents, imbued with loyalty to Chairman Mao, are sending their children to the countryside to be farmers. Chairman Mao's great plan is to combat and prevent revisionism for a thousand years; it is the beacon lighting the advance of revolutionary youth. Farewell, you will learn and grow in the vast countryside! Farewell, you will advance along the bright broad road led by Chairman Mao.”Channel 6: Accompanied by wishes for long life, six portraits of Mao Zedong at different stages of his life are presented, each radiating with a godlike glow.Apart from the Cultural Revolutionary television, it is also possible to view short clips from films promoting class struggle and the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, such as "The Red Detachment of Women," "The Red Lantern," "On the Docks," "Never Forget," "Pine Ridge," "A Rooster Crows at Midnight," "Golden Road" and "Lenin in 1918."The Web site also presents "Ask Chairman Mao for the Answers," but there is some discrepancy between the description and the actual feature. The Web site description runs: "How should you resolve problems in your daily life? What should you do when you hear reactionary speech?... Mao Zedong Thought can answer all your questions and problems. This pamphlet, 'Living by the Book,' can be carried with you as a reference." This is not a display of material from that time, but rather the evangelizing of Maoists from the post-Cultural Revolution era.The section entitled "English Lessons" includes only one lesson, described as "education in service to proletarian politics" under the leadership of Mao Zedong. Do primary and secondary school students from that era remember any of the words and phrases learned in those "revolutionary teaching materials"? It turns out that this is the recollection of the Web site's creator.Depicting Trampling on Human Rights: Smash the Old World!This section of the Web site presents written materials and photographs from the Cultural Revolution, accompanied by a "Library" of 18 articles divided up under the headings "Educational Reform," "Smashing the Four Olds," "Overthrowing Reactionaries," "Establishing Ties" and "Human Miracles." Apart from the subtle criticism offered in "Smashing the Four Olds" and "Human Miracles," all of the essays are laudatory.[Translator's note: The English version of the Web site includes English translations of some of these essays, but under different category headings, and also includes essays by Western scholars.]The 48 photographs collected in this section are brutal depictions of Red Guard violence that make one's blood boil. The Web site makes only a sweeping statement at the introduction of the section; there are no comments from people who actually experienced the Cultural Revolution, and no explanations of the background of the photos. The Web site's creator, Carma Hinton, knows Chinese and knows about some of the public figures and famous religious sites depicted, but there is not a single description of any of the photos.Even more inexplicable is the Web site's inclusion of "Jiang Qing's Denunciation of Feature Films," which quotes Jiang Qing's criticism of 11 films without further comment. Here is a sampling of Jiang Qing's criticisms:Hero in the Bandit's Den: "It prettifies the agent Ah Lan. That dance scene is an egregious display of the bourgeois lifestyle. It distorts the image of the underground [Party] agent. Made up, Commander Lei looks more like the enemy than the enemy. Wiping out the bandits is done without mobilizing the masses. It's all about sending people in. Like Snow in the Forest this [kind of depiction] comes from the Soviet Union."The Young People in Our Village: "It depicts four couples in triangular relationships and in the process distorts the [revolutionary] spiritual mien of youth in the country. There are no heroic figures; they are all middle-of-the-road characters. It vilifies revolutionary cadres; the older head of the commune is depicted as a stick in the mud; the accountant is made out to be a negative character."Five Golden Flowers: "The whole film is about one couple; everyone else is merely there to highlight their love affair. In regard to the ethnic minorities there is no attempt to depict them making any progress, their political maturation or the changes in their outlook. All they do is eat, drink and fall in love. All those love songs are [also] very problematic."Lei Feng: "It has faults. It is unreasonable to squeeze all of his good acts into just one day. The portrait of the Chairman in the film is bad; it constitutes a political error. It's no good that Lei Feng's legacy of good deeds is taken up by Wang Dali, a middle-of-the-road character. The portrayal of the head of the flood crisis operations team is inappropriate. He says to Lei Feng, 'You're a good successor [to the revolutionary cause],' but then he ends up dying. That's just wrong.'"Big Li, Little Li and Old Li: "Crass and vulgar. To set the film in an abattoir is itself devious. It hints that we will be slaughtered like pigs. The cadres are either fat pigs or skinny monkeys. They lock the workshop head in the freezer; all the cadres are made out to be like swine."Struggle for an Ancient City in the Fire and Winds of Spring: "Yang Xiaodong betrays weakness at a crucial moment; Jin Huan is like a fishwife: there's that silly scene when she stabs the enemy with her hair pin. Yin Huan is a middle-of-the-road character who constantly makes mistakes, and she falls in love the moment she lays eyes on Yang Xiaodong. Far too much time is devoted to their relationship. Two of the three times that Yang's mother appears it's to talk about her daughter-in-law. This is a distortion of the image of a revolutionary mother."Following are more sections entitled "Reddest Red Sun," "Stages of History" and "The East is Red," which although still under construction are already crammed with the epic revolutionary ballet "The East is Red," including a full video recording accompanied by transcripts in English and Chinese. The personality cult vehicle is described as "start(ing) out as a peasant love song... you can follow its progress to becoming a call to arms in the Anti-Japanese War, and a paean extolling Chairman Mao, the savior of the Chinese people... This stage production presented a creation myth, an historical vision, a belief system, and a moral landscape in which the generation of the Cultural Revolution came of age." The Web site strengthens the impact of the opera by presenting it in different contexts in several different sections.A dyed-in-the-wool Maoist, the producer of the Web site, Carma Hinton, is no adolescent girl, but a mature American woman in her 50s. Her enthusiastic promotion of Mao Zedong and the Red Guards and the inhuman Cultural Revolution is closely related to her family history. When teacher Chen Baokun was beaten to death, Hinton was an upper-classman at the No. 101 Middle School. She took part in the rebellion, and the Bureau of Foreign Experts tracked her participation. The Foreign Languages Institute had a European professor and his family who were humiliated and framed by her and ultimately imprisoned. At that time she was known as Carmelita, and residents of Beijing aged 60 or older are invariably familiar with her name. She was better known at that time than Song Binbin (renamed Yaowu) or Peng Xiaomeng, and was second only to people such as Kuai Dafu and Wang Dabing. Carmelita was the leader of the rebels among the foreign youth, and her photograph was published in People's Daily.Carmelita's mother Bertha Sneck was the prime muckraker among China's foreign residents. On August 31, 1966, she and Carma's aunt, Joan Hinton, and Joan's husband, Erwin Engst, put up what they called the "first Marxist big character poster by foreign experts," attacking the "cow demons and snake spirits" in the Bureau of Foreign Experts. They aggressively protested the generous terms of their employment and stressed that their children "must become staunch and dependable successors to the revolution, and must not be allowed to become revisionists," and on that basis demanded that they and their children participate in "revolutionary activities." Following is an excerpt from that Marxist big character poster, the wording of which incorporated a unique Western flavor into a stridency matching the most radical Chinese activists: Big Character Poster Directed at the Bureau of Foreign Experts. Why have foreigners working at the heart of world revolution been pushed onto the road of revisionism??? Which cow demons and snake spirits have ordered this treatment for foreigners? Foreigners working in China, regardless of which class they belong to or what attitude they have toward revolution, have all received the same treatment of "five nos and two haves": The "five nos": 1) No physical labor; 2) no thought reform; 3) no opportunity for contact with workers, peasants or soldiers; 4) no class struggle; 5) no production struggle. The "two haves": 1) high remuneration; 2) all manner of privileges.On what ideological basis has this treatment been established? It is not Mao Zedong thought, it is Khruschev thought, it is revisionist thought, it is the ideology of class exploitation. What is the purpose of doing this? What is the result? 1) It makes foreigners who want revolution unable to grasp Mao Zedong thought, and only able to parrot its precepts; 2) It causes a decline in the revolutionary will of revolutionary foreigners, so that they slide onto the road of revisionism; 3) It hinders China's foreign children from growing into staunch revolutionaries. 4) It causes segregation between revolutionary foreigners and their Chinese class brethren, destroys their class sentiment, destroys proletarian internationalism. We feel this is not someone else's problem, but is a problem that affects the principles of world revolution, and we firmly oppose this kind of treatment.We resolutely desire to become staunch revolutionaries and steadfast warriors against revisionism. In order to advance the struggle against American imperialism to the end, we are determinedly engaging in physical exercise and testing ourselves. Our children must become staunch and dependable successors to the revolution, and must not be allowed to become revisionists.For this reason we make the following demands: 1) Treat us as class brethren and not as capitalist experts; 2) Allowed and encourage us to take part in physical labor; 3) Help us undergo thought reform; 4) Allow and encourage us to closely integrate with the worker and peasant masses; 5) Help and encourage us to take part in the three great revolutionary activities; 6) Our children and the children of China should receive the same treatment and the same strict demands; 7) Our living standards should be the same as Chinese workers of the same class; 8) Abolish all privileges. Only in this way can we become the revolutionaries required by Chairman Mao.Long live the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution! Long live the great unity of the peoples of the world! Long live the great and invincible Mao Zedong Thought! Long live Comrade Mao Zedong, great leader of the Chinese people, of the oppressed world proletariat and of the oppressed peoples of the world! Long live!U.S.A.: Yang Zao [Erwin Engst], Shi Ke [Bertha Sneck], Han Chun [Joan Hinton], Tangpu Jinsen [Ann Tomkins], August 29, 1966What kind of psychological urges led these Western adults, raised in Latinate intellectual circles, to become rebels? A group of Americans running to the heart of the city to vindicate themselves, not hesitating to fuel the flames licking the feet of the head of the Foreign Language Bureau, not conferring with their colleagues, speaking for China's foreigners in calling for a decline in their living standards, and speaking for all foreigners in pledging loyalty to a tyrant. I do not believe that they were duped and misled; only being blinded by lust for gain could lead them to make such fools of themselves and act in a way so shaming to their ancestors.On September 8, Mao Zedong wrote a memo on the big character poster by Bertha Sneck and the others:"To Comrades Lin Biao, Premier [Zhao Enlai], Chen Yi, Tao Zhu and [Chen] Boda:I agree with this big character poster; foreign revolutionary experts and their children must be treated the same as Chinese and not differently. Please discuss this among yourselves and make all things the same. Please decide how to go about it."Under this imperial edict, Carma's family jubilantly found their wishes fulfilled. Carma's aunt, Joan Hinton, proclaimed Mao Zedong savior of the world in a meeting to "expose and criticize the capitalist reactionary road of the Foreign Experts Bureau": "Now we hear Chairman Mao's voice! Chairman Mao has no boundaries, he is the liberator of all the peoples of the world, he unreservedly believes the people can liberate themselves. With just a few words, Chairman Mao has smashed to smithereens the schemes and intrigues of the counterrevolutionary revisionists causing division among the proletariat of the world. We have shaken off our fetters! The door has been opened to us! Now it is up to us to swim on our own!" Carma Hinton's family members were allowed to fulfill their wishes to join the Chinese in the violence of the Cultural Revolution. The People's Daily published a photograph of Carma and other children of foreign experts returning to Beijing after participating in the big link-up of the Red Guards, with the deceptive caption, "Carmelita Hinton leads a delegation of American youths to Beijing."When the United States embarked on its dialogue with China in 1971, Zhao Enlai invited Carma's father, William Hinton, back to China, and during the seven months of his visit, Hinton was summoned to see Zhao five times, with Carma and her stepmother, Joanne Raiford, accompanying him each time. Often Carma's paternal grandmother, Carmelita Hinton, as well as her mother, aunt and uncle were also present. The Hinton family appeared with Cambodia's Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan on their lonely foreign affairs stage, serving as guests of honor in a barbarous country spurned by the rest of the world. During the lengthy interviews with Hinton, Zhao Enlai explained the origins and goals of the Cultural Revolution and allowed Hinton to visit Wang Guangmei, the widow of Liu Shaoqi, to gain an understanding of Liu's crimes. He also said a great deal to distance himself from the ultra-radical Rebels of the “May 16 Corps,” in particular Liu Lingkai, a student at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. At that time, Zhang Jianqi, a student at the Metallurgy Institute who had early on put up a big character poster criticizing Zhao Enlai, had been executed, and Zhao, who had the reputation of erring on the side of mercy, was still not placated, but launched a national movement to purge counterrevolutionaries that became the most wide-scale and long-lasting white terror movement, continuing right up until the end of the Cultural Revolution.After returning to the United States, William Hinton busied himself with two matters: one was to create a U.S.-China Friendship Association, of which he became the founding chairman, and the second was to publish "New China" Magazine, in which he included an article about his meetings with Zhao Enlai, publicized China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and became an iron-clad Maoist helping China export the violence of the Cultural Revolution. Fortunately Hinton was only a fellow-traveler and did not personally take part in the evil committed by Mao's disciples in the Khmer Rouge or the Baader-Meinhof Gang.Young Carmelita followed the "class line" principle of "the son of a hero will be a good man," and now in her 50s continues to use the same tools as her father and aunt to earn a living while doing her utmost to continue her family's work by spreading to every corner the promotion of violence in service to the Great Leader. Promoting violence is the purpose of the film "Morning Sun" produced by Carma and her cohorts, and the section of her Web site devoted to explaining the purpose of this film about the Cultural Revolution, she uses the questions William Hinton posed to Zhao Enlai in his interviews regarding the origins and the history of the cultural revolution. The film uses a real person with a false name to express the feelings of the film's producer: "Their parents killed our parents, so now we must kill them." Leaving aside whether or not their parents actually did kill your parents, your killing them still constitutes murder.The Cultural Revolution entered history 40 years ago, and the Red Guards of that time have become grandfathers and grandmothers, but Carma continues to teach the bloodline theory to the third generation with cries of "kill, kill, kill." Even in China it is impossible to mount such an aggressive rehabilitation of the Cultural Revolution, yet it can be performed so brazenly in the United States of America. I don't understand why in the United States, where human rights were first incorporated into a national constitution, taxpayers' money has been used to subsidize a Web site and film that trample on human rights, promote violence and sing the praises of a tyrant.Translated by Stacy MosherThe author: Wang Rongfen, a 19-year-old student of German, attended the Red Guard rally at Tiananmen Square on August 18, 1966, and saw in it a horrifying resemblance to Hitler’s Germany. She wrote a letter to Mao Zedong demanding: "What are you doing? Where are you leading China?" and described the Cultural Revolution as "one man with the gun manipulating the masses." She attempted suicide, but was rescued and sentenced to life imprisonment. Wang is cited in the book Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, as a rare example of "truly heroic resistance from ordinary people" during the Cultural Revolution. The authors note, "This extraordinary young woman survived prison – and Mao – with her spirit undimmed."
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Friday, January 25, 2008
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