Ye Youyi and Long Yue Yuan outside a restaurant
after dinner.
I couldn't meet again with Mr Wang until November 27 because I had already booked up earlier days other interviews and activities.
Ms. Ye had a fundamental goodness about her that was apparent at first meeting. She felt morality at a visceral level. Right and wrong were clear moral values to her, not intellectually complex concepts, as they were to her cousin and the Red Guards and the Chinese government. Ms. Ye has written movingly of how she once loved and idolized Mao, and of how she came to be disenchanted. Her account has been reprinted here.
One exchange with Ms. Ye particularly touched me. She asked about divorce law in America. I explained that most states had what are called "no-fault" laws, meaning that there does not have to be an allegation of wrong-doing by one party of the other. A simple declaration of "irreconcilable differences" suffices. With a sincerity on her face that was so natural with her, she asked, "Ben, is that law available to all classes in America?"
I explained that the laws in America applied to everyone equally. What I thought, but didn't say because I didn't want to get off on an entirely different topic, was "She thinks there are classes in America."
The following paragraph is a combination of personal opinion and fact, labeled as such. The personal opinions are vigorously disputed by others.
There are classes in America, of course, but not in the way that Ms. Ye used the term. (opinion) The observations of Tocqueville down to present day survey research have uncovered the American's belief in class fluidity. (fact) That is, "Today's pauper can be tomorrow's millionaire;" "Anyone can grow up to be president." (fact as to the belief; opinion as to the reality) Americans do not believe that the classes in America are immutable. (fact) Most Americans, do not resent the rich, for tomorrow, or in the next generation, one or one's offspring could be the rich. (fact as to the belief) For this reason, class appeals are not often successful in American politics. (fact) The rich are admired for their achievements, not resented for their privilege (as a very general statement, fact). The American's belief in opportunity could not be sustained if there were laws, de jure or de facto, that applied to different classes, as Ms. Ye thought. (opinion; many argue that the laws are de facto different for different classes or interests)
Ye's personal story of devotion and disenchantment is consistent with that of many other memoirs that have been published. Mao was loved by many ordinary Chinese. His policies were supported by many ordinary Chinese. That love and support were drummed into the people daily. To express even tepid enthusiasm for Mao was dangerous. But there was still genuine love, personally felt, admixed with that fostered by state coercion.
The perpetrators of Red Terror violence were not forced to beat and murder. Mao created the Cultural Revolution, he encouraged revolution in the schools, he validated it after it had begun, but he and the state did not force the students to be violent. The Red Guards were created by the students themselves, not by the state. The students as individuals, and self-led groups of individuals, committed violent acts that they, individually and in self-led groups, chose of their own free will.
The government, the aging Red Guards who committed violence, and their supporters, exonerate the perpetrators as having no individual responsibility because the Cultural Revolution was a mass movement; the perpetrators did not have the free will to act otherwise.
Many, many students never committed any acts of violence, however. Rongfen Wang did not commit any violent acts, Youqin Wang did not commit any violent acts. Jang Chung did not commit any violent acts. Contrary to what Song Binbin said in Morning Sun, her presence on the rostrum of the Forbidden City on August 18 was not happenstance. She had chosen to become a Red Guard, she proudly wore its armband and ecstatically fastened a Red Guard armband onto Mao.
The government, the former Red Guards, and their supporters do not claim that the violence was right, they claim that the wrongs are not the responsibility of individuals.
This is a crucial point because it acknowledges that the perpetrators still knew the difference between right and wrong. In societies governed by laws a person cannot be held responsible for a crime if he or she did not know the difference between right and wrong. The Red Guards knew that hurting and killing people was wrong. Still, they made the personal choice to hurt and kill.
In societies governed by laws participating in a violent mass movement is called a riot; it is not a defense to individual acts of violence. Nor does state coercion exonerate an individual who has committed violent acts. The Nazis defense at Nuremberg, of having "just followed orders" was rejected. The Chinese government rejected this defense in the "Gang of Four" trial. Jiang Qing defended herself as having just followed orders: "I was Chairman Mao's dog. I bit whoever he told me to bite."
On the day between the two interviews of Ye Youyi we went to the Forbidden City. In the Imperial Garden two smiling Chinese women approached us with a camera. Of course we would take their picture. But their actions indicated that there was some misunderstanding. After several seconds of hand-gesture communication we understood that they wanted to take a picture of us. They wanted a picture of the foreigners as a memento and to show their friends.
I remembered that a similar thing had occurred in Tienanmen Square when I visited in 2006. We noticed a woman taking a picture of these unusual looking foreigners, the tall man and the blonde woman. We smiled at her and she smiled back, a little sheepishly.
Perhaps they were not unsophisticated Chinese photographing the exotic. Perhaps they were undercover state security officials who were photographing any and all foreigners.
However it was, the idea of The Foreigner has always been prominent in China's relationship with the rest of the world. Non-Chinese indeed would have been a startling sight worth documenting inside the Forbidden City in imperial times. China was a walled country, Beijing a walled city, the Imperial compound a walled section of that city.All of those physical walls have come down now but there are still psychological walls. China's Great Wall of Silence refers to these barriers. I remember a conversation with a Chinese emigre who was reluctant to speak with me. He said that he had casually told an American colleague of the Red Guard background of a fellow Chinese, also living and teaching in the U.S. Word had gotten back to the former Red Guard and he had warned against saying such things in the future to "white people."
On the morning of the 25th, we tried again with the air conditioning. The hotel had assigned a personal representative to us. Whenever we needed anything we had our own contact person. We called Summer. She came up to our room. She spoke perfect English. We explained to Summer that we needed a little winter. She asked us if we were leaving and if so when we were coming back because she was going to have an engineer look into the problem. We had a full day planned and told her the room would be empty. Summer said it would be taken care of by the time we returned.
