Former president Jiang Zemin.
Friday night Carmen and I were laying in bed. She was doing something sensible, reading a book; I was searching Google and Baidu for images and articles on Song Binbin. I saw the thumbnail of the man being struggled that was posted in the previous article. I couldn't make the man's face out very well in the thumbnail but the whole image had a different look to it so I clicked on it and was taken to the tianya.cn webpage. As I scrolled down and saw the the photographs I nudged Carmen. "Look at what they did," turning my laptop toward her. The captions were in Chinese but I recognized the photographs from the "Four Olds" campaign to destroy "old" customs, habits, culture and thinking. Photo after photo showed Red Guards destroying ancient shrines, pulling down statues of Buddha, smashing the archways of old Beijing, burning books, carrying old furniture out of looted residences.
Half-way down the page the theme changed to the struggle sessions and I saw the photograph of the man that I had clicked on.
"Look at this man's face," I said to Carmen.
"Hmm," as I took in the anguish. "That's one of the most powerful pictures of the struggle sessions I've seen."
I continued to look closely at the face.
"I think that's Song Binbin's father," I said to Carmen when I realized.
"No," she said, not knowing but disbelieving that he had been struggled.
"I think it is. I remember the pictures of him at his funeral."
I got out of bed and took the laptop into the kitchen. I highlighted the caption and copied and pasted it on Google-translate: "Song Ronqiong."
One cannot have a heart and be unaffected by that photograph of General Song. I felt bad, guilty-bad, the first time I've felt anything like that when thinking of Song Binbin. Her dad was struggled, and she was the worldwide face of the Red Guards who had humiliated and abused him. I also felt stupid (a more familiar feeling) because I had not known before that he had been struggled. The whole thing put a more human face on that worldwide face of the Red Guards, and made me question my efforts to hold her accountable.
Song Binbin does not photograph well. Even her schoolgirl picture reinforced what I thought I knew about her. Maybe I have just become too prejudiced from years of seeing only one thing, thinking only one thing about her, but to me, that schoolgirl picture looks like a mugshot. That face is the face of amorality. I don't see anything behind those black eyes, no soul, no goodness. I can see clearly in that photograph of the pig-tailed schoolgirl the monstrous Red Guard she was to become.
The photographs of Song Binbin taken at her father's funeral were first published in an English-language publication in Public Occurrences. I still feel disgust looking at her in those photos. She stands too erect in the photograph with Jiang Zemin. It's the haughty posture of the elite. Her sister leans forward slightly, her hand on her mother's wheelchair. She looks like she hurts. Binbin stands erect with her hands folded in front of her. If she and the military guard changed clothes I'm not sure I could tell which one had just lost a father. Neither do I see much more feeling in Binbin's face than in the face of that military statue. Binbin's sister though wears weariness on her face.
In the photo with Hu Jintao, Binbin bends slightly forward as Hu warmly grasps her mother's hand with both of his. He embraces her hands. There is a look of real sympathy in his face.
But look at Binbin's face. She's looking at Hu, she seems to be saying something to him, but she looks stern or offended, like she's a school teacher scolding a schoolboy. I don't see the hurt of a father's death there. Another sister looks down at the floor, sorrowfully contemplative. In Binbin I see the pride in a family so important that the President and former President of the nation come to pay their respects.
But now I imagine Song Binbin's immense pain. That could produce her absurd denial of everything, the absurd denial that Carma Hinton allowed the world to see in Morning Sun. It caused outrage in China and in the diaspora. I read recently that Song is deeply concerned to shield her family from more embarrassment caused by her past. But then she does things like putting together the most elaborate presentation package of any of the women name "Distinguished Alumna" at the Girls Middle School for its anniversary celebration. And proudly including the picture of her pinning Mao.
Maybe she just has a tin ear for public relations. Or maybe she's just the arrogant, soulless person that I always imagined her to be. But that photograph of her father made me wonder for the first time which it is.
...
Wait, wait, wait. No, now that I've had a day to think about it, my sympathy above is misplaced. I'm blaming it on too little sleep. That woman hid her face and told the world in Morning Sun that she had "just happened" to be on the rostrum with Mao on August 18, and that she was pushed forward by friends too skittish to offer Mao a Red Guard armband themselves. And that "Song Yaowu" was an invention of the press. Okay, okay. LOOK. I was a little tired when I wrote the above, OKAY. I wasn't thinking right. It won't happen again.
