All language subtitles for PBS.Global.Voices.Morning.Sun.x264.AC3.MVGroup.org

MORNING SUN

The east is red

The sun has risen

Mao Zedong has appeared in China

He is devoted to the
people's happiness

Hu-er-hai-yo

He is the people's great savior

In 1964, a radiant sun lit up the stage of
the Great Hall of the People, in Beijing.

It was the 15th birthday of
the People's Republic of China.

A musical extravaganza,
"The East is Red",

celebrated the history of the revolution
that had created the communist state.

In the era of Mao Zedong
our people are happy.

But how can we forget
the suffering of the past.

In old dark China,

the earth was dark,

the sky was dark.

"The East is Red" show the young kids
like us why there had been a revolution.

The Chinese people had experienced
such an incredible suffering.

The Communist Party was founded
under these historical conditions

to save the Chinese people.

In "The East is Red",

Mao Zedong forms a
trinity with Marx and Lenin.

Prophets of a world revolution that
would lead to a utopian classless society.

In 1964, China's leaders were
divided over how to achieve that goal.

The future would depend
on how the past was defined.

In this staged history, all
other leaders were eclipsed.

Mao alone leads
the people to victory.

We were taught at a young age

that the true purpose of life was
not to seek happiness for yourself.

That was embarrassingly vulgar.

A glorious and fulfilling
life could only be achieved

by dedicating yourself to a
great revolutionary cause.

For that cause, you must
be willing to sacrifice your life.

One may be killed

But many others
will join the cause

I'd sung this song
myself at school concerts.

Tears would well up in my eyes.

My father had been
executed by the nationalists.

My mother had been imprisoned
and I was in jail with her.

Chairman Mao's statement, that
countless revolutionary martyrs

had sacrificed their
lives for the people,

wasn't propaganda.

For me, it was true.

"The East is Red"
presented a creation myth,

an historical vision,

a belief system, and
a moral landscape.

One in which a new
generation now came of age.

I longed to be a
professional revolutionary.

No normal job, no family.

I would simply spend all my time
rushing around for the revolution.

It would be the most thrilling
and colorful life imaginable.

Looking back on it today,

this feeling was actually part of a
universal and timeless adolescent impulse.

If I'd been immersed in
religious teachings instead,

maybe I would have
become one of the faithful.

The motherland, the party,
and the revolution came first.

And yourself, you
are nothing unless

you were part of
the great cause.

To be excluded was to be
left without a purpose in life.

That was very very painful.

"The East is Red" was the
biggest event I'd ever taken part in.

I was about 10 years old.

20 kids from our school's
choral group sang in it.

One day when I was about
to leave for the performance,

my father came in beaming.

He was the president
of China then.

He told me there will
be some great news.

Liu Ting's father,
Liu Shaoqi

had been Mao's closest
comrade for decades.

On October 16th,

he came with Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai
to meet with the cast of "the East is Red".

Zhou Enlai announced China
has exploded our first atom bomb.

We jumped up and down. It
felt like the stage might collapse.

The imperialists could bully China
because they had advanced technology

and we were so poor.

But now, sorry, we
have the atom bomb.

We can build our
country in peace.

You attack us, we'll get
you back with the bomb.

Now, I think no one should
have nuclear weapons,

But back then, I was ecstatic,

like I had the A-bomb
in my own backyard.

China it was claimed
to have another weapon.

One that no other
nation could possess.

Lin Biao, head of the armed
forces, called it a "spiritual atom bomb".

One more powerful than
the actual atom bomb

and far more potent.

It was Mao Zedong thought.

Only we can deploy this
spiritual atom bomb, Lin said.

We have a monopoly on it and the
imperialists can't compete with us.

Look!

Tears of joy on every face.

Everyone is happy.

They are listening.

Listening.

Listening to Chairman Mao's
earthshaking proclamation.

The People's Republic
of China is born!

The Chinese people
have finally stood up!

The climax of "The East is Red"

was the founding of the People's
Republic of China in 1949.

A victory for world revolution.

The young people who
watched the celebration in 1964

would soon take
the stage themselves.

They would do battle for
the future of that revolution.

What began as a campaign to transform
China's intellectual and artistic culture

would sweep the nation
into a frenzy of destruction.

Millions would suffer.

Untold numbers would die.

To this day the Cultural Revolution
remains passionately debated,

yet little understood.

There are complex
stories behind the pictures.

Stories about how a
revolution was made

and how revolution
itself would be undone.

A GREAT LEAP

The struggles of the
Cultural Revolution were foreshadowed

in long standing
differences among China's leaders.

In 1958,

Mao Zedong and the party leadership
had set the country a bold new objective.

A socialist economy
had been established.

China could now make a "great
leap forward" into communism.

Vastly expanded
collective farms,

people's communes, would
cause production to skyrocket.

A million home furnaces
would soon make as much iron

as the modern steel works
of Britain and America.

Mao and his comrades wanted to
believe the impossible was coming true.

Instead, there were
shortages of almost everything.

Li Rui was one of
Mao's secretaries,

whose candor Mao
had valued in the past.

I said to him "you've been a farmer. How
can you believe those impossible figures?"

I wrote Mao three letters.

I said "this can't go on."

At a Central Committee meeting,
he praised my ideas to the skies.

That was the high
point of my career.

After the meeting, lots of people
said "aren't you the big thing?"

In the summer of 1959,

Mao called a meeting to address
the excesses of the Great Leap.

But when senior leaders like Peng Dehuai
confronted him about the policy's failures,

Mao felt personally threatened.

He declared that the
party was under attack

from a well-organized clique.

Peng Dehuai's support
quickly dissipated.

He was denounced and deposed.

Mao's Secretary, Li
Rui, was also purged

as a member of
Peng's anti-party clique.

One day, when I was
9, my classmate said:

"Don't play with her.
Her father is a big rightist".

I burst into tears.

When I got home, I noticed
the service staff was gone.

My mother told me that my
father had made mistakes.

Later, he was sent to the
great northern wilderness.

With the ouster of the opposition, the
Great Leap Forward went unchecked.

There was widespread
famine and tens of millions died.

It was no longer possible for party leaders
to ignore the scale of the disaster.

In the spring of 1961,

the head of state, Liu Shaoqi,
and his wife, Wang Guangmei,

visited his home
province of Hunan.

They found it devastated.

Things were worse
than we had imagined.

People were very unhappy
but they didn't dare speak up.

Shaoqi urged
them to tell the truth.

He said "the top leaders
must take responsibility.

I apologize for your suffering."

In the spring of 1962, at a special
meeting of 7,000 key party leaders,

Liu Shaoqi declared that the
government's policies had led to disaster.

Mao conceded
partial responsibility

and left the day-to-day management
of the country in the hands of Liu Shaoqi

and other economic moderates.

Mao was soon displeased with how far
some of his colleagues were willing to go.

Encouraging family
farming and local markets.

"Never forget class
struggle", he declared.

Liu Shaoqi, wary that economic
recovery might be derailed,

persuaded Mao to circulate his
warning among party leaders only.

Although the Great
Leap had been halted,

those who had predicted
its failure were not forgiven.

Li Rui, who had witnessed many
deaths while exiled, could return home,

but he was not exonerated.

I was divorced. But I
could still see my children.

I wrote in a school
essay "Our party is great.

In three years of severe natural
disasters no one starved to death".

My father said "how do
you know no one died?"

I thought he was
such a reactionary.

Everyone knew nobody
had starved to death.

But he had the nerve to
say, "how do you know?"

Back then, you couldn't
talk about such things.

I knew how the party worked.

Once Mao had set the tone,
no one could contradict him.

By 1964, Liu Shaoqi's policies
had begun to revive the economy.

The National Day Parade
celebrated the new material prosperity,

even though banners still hailed the
triumphs of the Great Leap Forward.

Mao, however,

was increasingly
concerned about the leaders

who were willing to put
prosperity before politics.

Mao feared China would go the
way of its old mentor, the Soviet Union,

which he had last
visited in 1957.

He claimed Khrushchev's
communism was a sham.

Its economy encouraged
private farm production.

The Soviet education system was
turning out a new class of technocrats

lording over the masses.

Mao saw the world's
first socialist state

undergoing a peaceful
evolution toward capitalism.

For Mao, the lesson was clear.

Newly entrenched bureaucrats and educated
elites were corrupting the revolution.

To safeguard the
political revolution,

there must be a revolution
in education and the arts.

In the hearts and minds of all.

There must be a
cultural revolution.

By 1964, the expression was
frequently used in the press.

Hailed as a great achievement
in this revolution and culture,

"The East is Red"
represented new proletarian art.

The performance concludes

as the conductor leads the
audience in singing "The International",

the anthem of world socialism that the
people of China would now sing alone.

Chairman Mao said: "you young
people are like the morning sun,

our hope is placed on you."

We felt that we were
responsible for the whole world.

Our generation had
the duty to advance

both the Chinese revolution
and world revolution.

The zeal for revolutionary ideals was
accompanied by an underlying fear.

It was an age ruled by both
the poet and the executioner.

The poets scattered
roses everywhere.

While the executioner
cast a long shadow of terror.

They were entwined,

creating the environment in which
we learned the culture of revolution

during the 1950s and 60s.

UNLEARNING

With two paddles we row

Little boat glides
across the lake

A beautiful pagoda is
reflected in the water

In the 1950s, after
the communist victory,

school children imbibe
the culture of revolution.

But they were also exposed to
the art and literature of the past

and of the outside world.

The Central Philharmonic
Symphony's Orchestra

presents Beethoven's
9th Symphony.

Ballet, introduced into China only
since liberation, has developed rapidly.

By 1964,

such performances were being
criticized as the wrong kind of culture

still holding sway
over the stage in China.

What was futile, bourgeois and
revisionist had to be repudiated.

The art should celebrate
the heroes of the new society,

the workers, the
peasants, the soldiers.

Around 1964 and 65,

a so-called "revolutionizing
movement" took place in schools.

It did two things.

On the one hand, the revolutionary content
in our education was greatly emphasized.

On the other hand,

the more moderate, universal,
and humanistic values were negated.

We were cut off from them.

In school libraries
as well as bookstores,

Western classics from Shakespeare
to Tolstoy had been readily available.

Young people eagerly
read Victor Hugo,

Romain Rolland, John
Steinbeck, and Jack London.

But the most popular Western book was
an 1897 English novel called The Gadfly.

The novel had a huge
impact in revolutionary Russia.

A film version of it
scored by Shostakovitch

was dubbed into
Chinese in the 1950s.

The Gadfly never ceased to
appeal to the young people of China.

Though through the turbulent years
to come, its meaning would change.

Set in Italy, it's the tale of
innocent, idealistic Arthur,

a student in a
Catholic seminary.

His beloved mentor is a prominent priest
who lavishes affection on the young man.

Since my mother's death

you're the only family I have.

I also have no one
in the world but you.

You're like a son to me.

Arthur is in love with Gemma.

The two young people are inducted into
a secret organization of revolutionaries.

I swear to give my all to the
struggle for Italy's freedom.

I read the book many times.

It's a mix of revolutionary idealism
and romantic love, a tragic tale.

The Gadfly represented
all of our ideals.

The revolutionary language moved me,
but deep down it was its religious aura.

The book had a huge influence
in shaping our revolutionary faith.

Arthur, under the seal of confession,
reveals he belongs to the secret group.

But the priest
notifies the authorities

and the revolutionaries
are arrested.

Betrayed by the church,

Arthur learns
another terrible truth.

His beloved mentor
is actually his father.

I believed in you the
way I believed in God.

Leaving behind a
fake suicide note,

Arthur will flee Italy
and roam the world.

When he returns years later,
he will be a changed man.

- He will be...
- The Gadfly!

It's the Gadfly!

"The Gadfly",

the crippled, scarred,
Byronic mocker,

the revolutionary outlaw,

a passionate heart
beneath his ironic exterior.

Having rejected the church,

he has confirmed
his faith in revolution.

We were deeply moved.

He had an indomitable
revolutionary spirit.

But there was more.

We were fascinated by the
Gadfly's romantic, legendary life.

Something not found in works
created under the Communist Party.

Even the Gadfly was too complex and
ambivalent a figure for the new times.

China needed
simpler, purer heroes,

ready to respond
unquestioningly to the party's call.

The model fighter
in this war of civility

was the People's Liberation
Army Soldier Lei Feng.

After his accidental
death in 1962,

tales of his humble good
deeds were turned into a legend,

featured in countless images,
songs and in a feature film.

The inspiration for
his everyday heroism

came from being a diligent
student of Mao Zedong thought.

The selected works of Mao were being
distributed throughout the Armed Forces

on orders from Lin Biao,
the Minister of Defense.

Before the 10th grade, we were
allowed to read all kinds of western books.

But later on, all those
books were denounced.

In essence, the campaign
to learn from Lei Feng was:

read Chairman Mao's books,
obey Chairman Mao's words,

be Chairman Mao's good soldier.

And then you had to be loyal to an
individual, not your revolutionary ideals.

This contradicted the spirit
of the western books I'd read.

Although the Gadfly
and Jean-Christophe

were the kinds of books that
really meant something to us,

the pressure to conform
was overwhelming.

So-called "thought reform"

is a process that gradually takes
away your ability to think independently.

Your own true thoughts and feelings
have to be constantly repudiated.

For example, Adventure
in the Bandit's Den

is a movie about a People's
Liberation Army undercover agent.

Let's dance!

Play a rumba!

My favorite scene was
Alan dancing the rumba.

I thought the way she
moved was very beautiful.

But the message of the film was
that she was shameless and depraved.

But all she did was
dance the rumba.

Nowadays, aren't rumba
dancers everywhere?

Besides, the actress was pretty.

She had a great figure.

For a bunch of boys at an all-boy
school, her appeal was obvious.

At that time I would
criticize myself.

I wondered deep down if I
was some kind of pervert.

I believed my
thoughts were dirty.

Now with, scientific knowledge, I
see that I was sexually repressed.

An individual in the
revolutionary cause

is like a bolt in a machine.

I want to be a revolutionary
bolt that will never rust.

Become a bolt, a
part of a machine?

If you had any brains at all,
why would you want to be a bolt?

Compare Lei Feng to Mao.

When Mao was young,
he had his own ideas.

He challenged society.

Mao was creative and
led a remarkable life.

But we were supposed to be
passive and obedient, like Lei Feng.

I really regret at having missed out on
the revolutionary era of blood and fire.

Now all we could be were bolts.

It was possible to unlearn
selfish bourgeois thinking.

It was possible to learn to be a
shiny bolt in the socialist machine.

But it was not possible
to be born again

or to unlearn the
family background.

Both my father and my
mother had been capitalists.

Around 1964-65, the issue of class
became increasingly emphasized.

The press constantly said that people from
bourgeois families must reform themselves.

If a person did something wrong, a
family background would be pointed out.

Naturally, this made you think
that anyone with a bad background

was born guilty, in
a state of original sin.

In our political education courses,
we watch films and discuss them.

For example, there was a
film called "Never Forget".

The film's title, Never Forget,

was taken from Mao's earlier
warning to the party leadership,

"never forget class struggle".

Now, it was heard everywhere.

The male lead, though
the son of a worker,

neglects his responsibility in
the pursuit of material comfort.

What a nice fit.

Then of course, the root cause
of this problem had to be dug up.

As usual, it was the influence
of someone from a bad family.

To be from a "bad family" meant that your
parents were on the wrong side of history.

They had been
dispossessed by the revolution

and were still seen as potential
enemies of the new society.

The mother-in-law had
been a shopkeeper in the past.

Heedless of the new trend
for revolutionary selflessness,

she encourages the young
couple to make money on the side.

My child!

You belong to the working class!

If you keep selling
this and selling that,

you'll sell out all your
working class qualities.

Papa!

The influence of the
old society persists.

People like your mother-in-law
can be found everywhere.

This is a form
of class struggle.

It is a class struggle without
the sounds of guns and cannon,

a class struggle in the
guise of everyday chitchat.

It is a class struggle
that's hard to detect,

a class struggle
that's easy to forget.

Never, never forget!

My older brother Yu Luoke was
one of the best students in the school

but he couldn't
get into college.

It was very unfair

The reason of course
was his family background.

Some people thought
things weren't fair.

But they had always been unfair
in different ways at different times.

In the old society, they had the advantage
of higher education for generations.

The poor people
had no education.

So they could never catch up.

The competition was
unfair to begin with.

Some people felt the
admissions policy was too biased,

but I thought it
wasn't biased enough.

The children of senior party officials
had the best family background

unless their parents
had fallen from grace.

Li Rui, Mao Zedong's
one-time secretary,

who had been labeled as an
enemy during the Great Leap Forward,

was again banished in
1963 to a remote rural area.

A classmate from an army
family wrote in an essay:

One of us has a father who
was an enemy of the party.

But she talks politics nonstop
tricking us into trusting her.

Shouldn't we examine her from
the perspective of class struggle?

Her essay was read as a model
composition in front of the whole school.

People would point
at me and whisper:

She's the one. That
essay about her.

I was thoroughly humiliated.

I even wish that my
father didn't exist.

That he'd died a martyr long ago.

He was a burden I
have to bear forever.

While we were taught about
enemies when we were younger,

those enemies
existed in the past.

They were in the
movies and in novels.

They weren't among us.

But by 1964 and 65, you got the feeling
that enemies were right next to you.

WIND AND WAVES

Enemies within the party, Mao was
convinced, were the most dangerous.

They could be uncovered
in the most theatrical fashion.

In November 1965, an
obscure historical opera

was attacked in the
press as a political allegory

about Mao's suppression of
critics of the Great Leap Forward.

Within the party, the mayor of Beijing
defended the work and its author.

But the drum beat of
criticism continued in the press.

Soon the media was calling on
the people to take an active part

in the Great Socialist
Cultural Revolution.

The term "Cultural Revolution" had
moved from the arts page to the front page.

In May 1966,

the official who wrote the opera and
the entire city government of Beijing

were publicly denounced for pursuing
an anti-party anti-socialist black line.

They were the first high profiled
casualties of the Cultural Revolution.

It was profoundly
shocking to students

that such leaders would be
plotting against Mao and socialism.

Many had been dissatisfied with
the education system for some time.

Now they would connect
their problems at school

with the anti-party conspiracy
being uncovered in the media.

Mao, they felt, understood
them and was on their side.

His unpublished remarks about
education had been circulating among them.

He said "why shouldn't students
dose off when lectures are boring?

Unscheduled exams are
like surprise attacks.

Students are
treated like enemies.

Bourgeois intellectuals must
no longer control our schools".

We wanted the Cultural
Revolution to come to the schools.

We were inspired by the new radical
thinking that was coming out of the army.

Mao Zedong's thought was
emphasized over everything else.

I put up an essay on the class
bulletin board criticizing the school.

Initially, we trying
to be constructive

but the school leaders
reacted to criticism

the way that the
communist party always did.

With repression.

We were accused not of pushing
extreme revolutionary ideas,

but rather of challenging
the Communist Party.

That is we were being anti party

and that was a
terrible crime back then.

People followed us, eavesdropping
on our conversations and taking notes.

When we wanted to talk,

we'd go to the ruins of the old
imperial gardens near our school.

It was deserted and quiet there.

By the end of May,

we agreed that everyone
who is critical of the school

should sign their
essays with one name,

speak with one voice.

We chose the name "Red Guard".

There were about 20 of us.

Meanwhile, at
Peking University,

a group put up a
handwritten poster

denouncing the school's leaders for
sabotaging the Cultural Revolution.

Such big character posters were the only
way for people outside the official media

to reach a broader audience.

Rather than being suppressed,

the poster was
published on Mao's orders.

It appeared in the media
with an inflammatory essay

that attacked the university
as an important base

for the Black Gang of
deposed Beijing officials.

Before this, we were under great pressure
and had decided to keep a low profile.

After hearing the broadcast,
we realized what was going on.

On June 2nd, we wrote a manifesto
and signed it "The Red Guards".

It was the first time this name
appeared on a big character poster.

The publication of the
Peking University poster

created confusion and uproar
on campuses across the country.

In the following days, the small group
of Red Guards put up more posters

accusing their high school of imposing
bourgeois revisionist educational policies.

Some of their fellow students
ridiculed the Red Guards.

Others saw in them an ominous
threat and called them Black Guards.

Hidden enemies were constantly
being exposed in the press.

They were called demons,
monsters, members of black gangs.

Young students excited about
their chance to make revolution

were primed by the media to
uncover enemies themselves.

I disliked my teacher.
He was also very ugly.

Our heads were full of stereotypes and
I thought that he looked just like a spy.

Movies gave us the impression
that anyone could be a spy.

Every evening, I would hide behind
the bushes near the teacher's dormitory

to watch his every move.

Would he be
sending radio signals?

Or carrying out some reactionary activities
to sabotage the Cultural Revolution?

Since the nationalist government
had been defeated not too long ago,

we imagined that its
agents were still everywhere.

It was only natural for us to
suspect our teacher of being a spy.

Soon most schools
were paralyzed.

The Central Committee of the Party
sent out hastily organized work teams

to direct the
emerging revolution.

The work team said the school's
leaders are under investigation.

The Red Guards are
in fact reliable leftists.

The students and teachers who
had opposed us now supported us.

But once the work team
replaced the school's leaders,

it's said that a Red Guard
organization was not necessária.

The party never tolerated
spontaneous organizations,

but we didn't want
to simply disband.

Ever since I was a child, I've been
fascinated by the story of the Monkey King.

I loved his defied attitude
towards pompous authority figures.

The Monkey King wreaking havoc in heaven
was the quintessential act of rebellion.

This is a rebellion!

Your Majesty, this wicked
monkey must be punished!

Mao once said if the central
leadership of the party went revisionist,

he would call on monkey kings from
the grassroots to wreak havoc in heaven.

So I wrote an essay called long "Live
the spirit of revolutionary rebellion".

It included lines
about the Monkey King.

The point was we should dare to oppose
anyone who violated Mao Zedong thought.

The others liked it so it
was signed "Red Guards".

The work team was alarmed.

They said advocating rebellion
under socialism is reactionary.

So I wrote a second essay
responding to the charges against us.

The combative language we used

was influenced by the
rhetoric of the new leftists,

but it also included
our own innovations.

"We revolutionaries are
monkey kings", they declared.

"We will turn the old
world upside down,

smash it to pieces, create
chaos, and make a huge mess.

The messier the better."

July 16th marked the 11th annual
swim across the Yangtze River

in honor of a historic
swim Mao made in 1956.

This year, completely unannounced,
Mao appeared at the event.

The chaos he had caused

had been left to be sorted out
by Liu Shaoqi, the Head of State.

The work teams had
to conduct a purge

while trying to maintain
order and prevent abuses.

As was common party practice,

work teams were calling anyone
who questioned their authority

a counter-revolutionary,

generating further frustration
and anger among students.

Nine days after his swim,

Mao's heroic feat was suddenly reported
with great fanfare in the national media.

The picture in the
newspaper was so grand.

There was old Mao
waving his hand.

He may as well have
been standing on the water.

It was the style of a revolutionary
leader unparalleled in all history.

Our school quickly
organized swimming classes.

Everyone had to become good
enough to swim across the river.

The media spoke
of a new tempest,

a dramatic fight against
the forces of reaction.

Everyone should be ready to follow
Chairman Mao through the wind and waves.

Mao returned to Beijing and
he brought the storm with him.

He ordered the work
teams to withdraw

and he told party leaders:

"Anyone who represses a student
movement will come to no good end."

RED AUGUST

Mao's wife, Jiang Qing,

had championed the revolution in the
performing arts since the early 1960s,

but was rarely seen in public.

Now she stepped onto the political
stage to play a high-profile role.

In late July 1966,

she addressed crowds of students

as a member of Mao's handpicked
Cultural Revolution leading group.

A Red Guard handed Jiang
Qing our essays about rebellion.

He also wrote a note.

It said "some people say
our essays are reactionary.

Please give them
to Chairman Mao.

We'd like to know
what he thinks".

Mao immediately composed
a response to the Red Guards,

affirming their right to rebel.

Although this response was only
circulated among party leaders,

people soon
learned of his stance.

Students throughout the city
rushed to call themselves Red Guards.

New groups proliferated.

Each with their own
self-styled agenda.

Many children of old revolutionaries donned
their parents faded military uniforms

and put on armbands in imitation
of early images of the Red Army.

They declared that
they were born red.

They were the natural heirs
of the original revolution.

The natural leaders
of this new rebellion.

They made up a saying that
summed up their sentiments:

"Father, a revolutionary,
son, a hero.

Father, a reactionary,
son, a bastard."

So they argued:

"students from bad family backgrounds had
no right to call themselves Red Guards."

They were sons of bitches.

Some were even beaten up.

On August 1st, a major
party conference began,

behind closed doors as usual.

Mao took the chair.

Changes in leadership and
party thinking were impending.

On August 5th, Mao circulated a note
entitled "Bombard the headquarters",

which could only mean that top party
leaders were the object of his wrath.

Once again, Mao praised the big character
poster put up at Peking University

and claimed that this note
was his own big character poster

as though he too were a
rebel outsider trying to be heard.

Just as party leaders were
puzzling over Mao's note,

students now freed from
the control of the work teams

competed to demonstrate
their revolutionary zeal.

They lashed out at teachers
and school administrators.

Some students made school
administrators do hard labor on campus.

As they worked, the students
beat and insulted them.

It was a hot and
muggy August day.

Bian Zhongyun, the vice principal
collapsed under this treatment.

She had high blood
pressure and heart trouble.

I wasn't at school at the time,
but I heard about the beatings later.

The next morning we were all sitting in our
classrooms when the PA system came on.

The message that
day was very curt.

Bian Zhongyun is dead.

There's no need to
talk about it anymore.

Everyone froze in their seats.

For a long time, the room was so
quiet that you could hear a pin drop.

The way I felt?

Well, I was scared stiff.

A couple of months ago
she was an authority figure.

And now she was
simply beaten to death.

We heard about
many cases of violence.

We were very concerned and
decided to alert the central leaders.

On August 6th I wrote a document called "An
urgent appeal", condemning the violence.

But it met with
instant opposition.

Some Red Guard leaders said:

"It put a damper on
the mass movement."

Later on, we heard that
Mao also opposed our appeal.

If the cultural revolution was
about this kind of violence,

I couldn't be a revolutionary.

My school, Teachers
College Girls High,

was the best girls school in
Beijing or even the whole country.

How could students from such
a school go from being nice girls

to being murderers?

Back at the party conference,

Mao railed against top leaders for
using work teams to suppress the masses.

His second in
command, Liu Shaoqi,

was quick to blame himself for
failing to keep pace with Mao's thinking.

Newly favored was Mao's
unflagging devotee, Lin Biao,

head of the army, the tireless promoter
of the chairman's universal wisdom.

None of this
maneuvering was public.

On August 9th, the People's
Daily printed a red banner headline.

Decision by the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of China

on the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution.

It heralded a new stage in
the advancement of socialism

and gave unprecedented
prominence to the role of young people.

In the past, grown ups
never took us seriously,

but now they paid attention
whenever we opened our mouths.

At the time we felt the
revolution was a grand festival.

Just like Lenin said.

In the middle of the
night, on August 17th,

we were suddenly notified that a
rally would be held the next morning

at Tiananmen Square.

We weren't told
who would be there.

But we all thought
that Mao might appear.

In the early hours
of August 18th 1966,

before the rally
officially began,

Mao suddenly walked
into Tiananmen Square.

It was unheard-of.

State and party leaders
regularly appeared,

but on the rostrum
overlooking the square,

to review major parades
or address mass rallies.

But Mao was here,

as the first light of day
was coming from the east.

A primary school classmate
of mine shook hands with Mao.

She didn't wash
her hands for days.

Everyone wanted to shake her hand,
because she had shaken Mao's hands.

I often wondered if I'd had
such an exhilarating experience,

would I have been more passionate
about the Cultural Revolution?

Can something like that change
the way a person feels and acts?

I don't know.

When we saw the light of dawn,

we felt as if this was the
dawn of a new era for mankind.

We felt that we were about to
embark on an unprecedented revolution.

It would bring about a society that
was truly egalitarian and democratic.

One without private
property or selfish thoughts.

A brand new society.

The Little Red Book,

a distillation of
Mao's writings,

had been circulating
in the army since 1964.

Now there was a
copy in every hand.

Chairman Mao came over to one
end of the rostrum and waved to us.

He was wearing a People's
Liberation Army uniform.

This made us even more excited.

A great revolution was
really about to begin.

Chairman Mao was
already dressed for it.

Advance! Advance!

Our team faces the sun and
sets foot on the motherland.

We were suddenly told that the Red Guard
should send delegates up to the rostrum.

We were ecstatic.

We shook hands with Mao and said: "we
wish Chairman Mao a long life without end".

And he said: "even a
long life comes to an end".

Standing next to Mao was Lin Biao,
the chairman's new second in command.

Way down the line stood the
former number two leader, Liu Shaoqi.

Lin Biao's speech praised the new
red soldiers and fueled their rebellion.

The counter-revolutionary
revisionists

must be toppled and smashed.

They must never rise again!

The events of the day were
made into a propaganda film

and narrated by a Red Guard.

The young people who have been imbued with
a sense of history from "the East Is Red"

were now on the
stage themselves.

Beloved Chairman
Mao once said to us

"You young people are
full of vigor and vitality.

You are in the bloom of life,

like the morning sun.

Our hope is placed on you."

The Red Guards were all excited.

They went around putting
armbands on party leaders.

Someone said "Binbin, why
not give one to Chairman Mao?"

So I went up to him.

A Beijing Red Guard
named Song Binbin

put a red armband
on Chairman Mao.

Chairman Mao asked
her "what's your name?"

She answered "my
name is Song Binbin".

Chairman Mao asked:
"isn’t 'Bin' a gentle person?"

She said "yes."

Chairman Mao said
"better to be militant."

I was very naive and took
it to be a casual remark.

But an article soon appeared
in the newspaper with the title

"I put a red armband
on Chairman Mao".

It was written in the first person
and signed "Song be Militant".

With my name, "Song
Binbin", in brackets.

I couldn't believe the press
would fabricate a new name for me

and put words in my mouth
for their propaganda needs.

My name didn't
belong to me anymore.

I had to change it.

So my friends helped me
find a new single syllable name

by randomly picking a
word out of a dictionary.

Lin Biao's speech at the rally
was broadcast across the country.

We must destroy the influence
of the exploitative classes.

Their old ideas, old culture,
old customs, old habits.

Old ideas, old culture,
old customs, old habits.

They would come to be
called simply "the four olds".

Red Guards, Red Guards

Burning with revolutionary zeal

Tested by the storm
of class struggle

Tempered by battle
our hearts are red

Standing firm direction clear

Our revolutionary spirit strong

We follow the Party
with full devotion

We are Chairman Mao's Red Guards

There was a famous hair salon.

It displayed photographs
of all kinds of hairdos.

When the Cultural
Revolution came,

they were seen as examples
of bourgeois decadence.

A group of Red Guards
took over the place.

We said to them:

"When the revolution starts to dictate the
style of people's hair, clothes, and shoes,

isn't the revolution
being trivialized?"

Temples and shrines
were ransacked.

Despite official designation
as cultural treasures,

many irreplaceable
objects were destroyed.

We were told to assemble
at the Central Art Academy.

Old sculptures from the Tang, Song
and Ming dynasties were piled in the heat.

Also statues of David and alike.

The kind used in
drawing classes.

The rebels were
full of themselves.

They struck poses as
they smashed everything.

They lit the pile and
made us stand around it.

It was one of the hottest
days of the summer.

The flames rose 100 feet.

They ordered us to
get down on our knees.

They sang and they kicked us,
forcing us closer to the flames.

What did it look like?

Animals in a song and dance
ritual about to cook their captives.

Were there any rules for
wiping out the four olds?

No, the kids made them up.

So a lot of things went wrong.

I was against much of that.

But there were also things that
though I think they're wrong now,

appealed to me back then.

I have to be honest.

For example, Christianity.

At the time I thought
what happened was great.

Why?

Because the imperialists
had bullied China in two ways.

One was with guns
like in the Opium War.

The other had to do
with spiritual opium.

The priests and nuns
never did anything good.

They were part and parcel
of cultural imperialism.

The Red Guards
searched the homes

of officials of the
pre-revolutionary government.

Former landlords who
now lived in the city.

Former capitalists who had
long since given up their assets.

The local police asked the
Minister of Public Security

if the Red Guard
should be stopped.

No, that would be unwise.

Give them the names of known
reactionaries and keep out of their way.

Those rounded up were made
to write self-denunciations.

They wore their
names on their backs.

Capitalist, landlord,

criminal, pervert.

Many were then
driven out of Beijing

in the name of purifying
the "revolutionary capital".

We knew our home would
be a target sooner or later.

We fit a category.

My parents had
both been capitalists.

Finally one day the Red
Guards came charging in

and turned our
house upside down.

It was terrifying.

They forced my parents
to kneel and beat them.

The searches uncovered
all kinds of things.

House or land
deeds, gold and silver,

and old official
appointment certificates.

They were even
hidden in the walls.

There was a fellow who had been a
Brigadier General in the Nationalist Army.

They found his uniform
and some weapons.

I didn't take part in the
beating but I watched.

I really wanted to beat him
because I felt such hatred.

The past was still too close.

As the son of a martyr, I remember
all too well how we suffered in prison.

The nationalists
buried my father alive.

Many of my friends also
had painful memories

of their family sufferings
and persecution.

And now we'd come
across someone like this.

So what if he was beaten up?

At the time we
felt he deserved it.

It was only just.

It was impossible for us to calmly consider
the legalities and his human rights.

I believe that if such people got
back into power, they chop off my head.

Those kids who are the most
revolutionary chanted Mao's quotation:

"A revolution is not a dinner
party or writing an essay.

Or painting a picture
or doing embroidery.

A revolution is an insurrection.

An act of violence by which
one class overthrows another.

So this great directive of Chairman Mao's
legitimized all those acts of brutality.

A revolution is not a dinner
party or writing an essay.

The quotation came from a 1927 report
Mao prepared for the Communist Party

about violent peasant
uprisings in Hunan province.

It was contained in
the Little Red Book.

These methods weren't invented
during the Culture Revolution.

We'd seen a lot of this in revolutionary
films as we were growing up.

This is the big landlord!

A tyrant!

A blood-sucking monster!

Down with tyrants
and evil gentry!

Mao said in his Hunan report:

"The peasants are angry.

Put dunce caps on the landlords.

Drag them through the streets".

Mao then went further saying:

"whether you think such
brutality is good or bad

is the test of a
true revolutionary".

Mao argued that the peasant violence was an
inevitable response to landlord oppression.

To address past wrongs it was
necessary to go to extremes.

"Even some of our revolutionary
comrades say it's terrible", Mao declared,

"but in fact it's excellent".

The People's Daily used
the expression "it's excellent"

as the headline for an
editorial praising the red guards.

And everybody understood it as
a reference to Mao's 1927 report.

Even though the editorial neither
mentioned the report nor praised violence,

it was clear that the extreme actions of
the Red Guards were not to be criticized.

The other kids
started beating her up.

We were in a very small room.

Should I also beat her?

I was 15 years old and I
thought I was being tested.

I felt that I had
to charge for it.

I didn't want to be
a cowardly deserter.

I could have
chosen not to join in,

but that required a greater
courage, the strength of conscience.

Later I thought
"what if I didn't join in?

My Red Guard comrades
would have thought I was a traitor.

But so what if
they thought that?"

I made the wrong choice and I
have to take responsibility for it.

Yang Rae was not
the only young person

who overcame an initial
reluctance to use violence.

The pressure to
do so was intense.

I had a good friend who
came from a worker's family.

She told me that at first she
couldn't bring herself to beat people.

But to be accepted by
the other Red Guards,

she felt that she'd have to be
as revolutionary as they were.

She said "so I followed their
example and started beating people".

People were reading the
posters denouncing me.

I was sweeping the floor.

Two young men saw me.

They took off their leather
belts and started beating me.

When they got tired,
they ordered me to kneel.

I did. They beat me some more.

Then they took a break and
ordered me to take off my jacket.

I folded it nice and neat and
waited for them to start up again.

She told me that once she started
beating people, she became addicted to it.

She said: "I got
quite a high from it".

The people you beat
up didn't dare fight back.

You felt so heroic.

I can't remember
her exact words,

but it was something like
"you felt so incredibly strong.

People were afraid of you.

You had this
awe-inspiring prowess".

Normally, would I have let
anyone lift a finger against me?

I'd never lost a
fight in my life.

And those circumstances,

if I fought back, my whole
family would have been destroyed.

So I decided to show them that a man taking
a beating could have dignity and prowess.

I didn't let out a
sound as they hit me.

I used martial arts techniques
to control my breathing.

I counted the blows.

They hit me 224 times.

My shirt was soaked through
with blood. It stuck to my back.

She told me "you
know how bad it got?"

I wouldn't stop beating
someone until my arms hurt.

I thought this was really scary.

Because she was
actually very nice.

And we had been
friends for a long time.

She wasn't a bad person. Yet
she could do something like this.

After the Cultural Revolution,

some young friends of mine
found the guys who beat me.

Should be teached them a lesson?

I said let them go.

They'd behaved that way at
the start of the cultural revolution.

Later their families must
have been victimized too.

No one could have escaped
the cultural revolution.

Their own family's sufferings
were retribution enough.

That's the way it was.

I didn't take part in smashing the
four olds or the house searches,

but rumors were everywhere.

Song Bin Militant, the one who
put the red guard armband on Mao,

was brutally beating people up.

I was very upset because I had
always been against violence.

Red Guards from other schools
would come to check me out.

You're the one? You're
not what we expected.

I didn't fit their idea
of a revolutionary.

My name and my
image were hijacked.

I'd lost control
over my identity.

I was furious.

But I was also sad that people suffered
because of what that name stood for.

When I first joined
the cultural revolution,

I thought we were going to repudiate
bourgeois policies and education.

But it turned into something
altogether different.

In August, Beijing
was a city of horror.

The streets were
deserted in the afternoon.

If you saw small gathering of people, you
knew that someone had been beaten to death.

We went around trying
to stop the violence.

In one household, the
mother had been killed.

Her son showed us her body.

We found out which
red guards did it.

We went to their school and
told them they had to stop.

But at the same time, people were also
being beaten up in our own high school.

Leaders of mass organizations
couldn't control their members.

All we could do was appeal to the cultural
revolution leading group to intervene.

But no one listened to us.

The violence spread out
of control like a plague.

A NEW LONG MARCH

Mao's first review
of the Red Guards

led to a series of mass
rallies in Tiananmen.

Young people from around
the country flock to the square

to see and be seen
by the Chairman.

In the movies, people waved
little red books and wept.

Now, it was happening
all around me.

But to my surprise, I
didn't feel all that excited.

And yet since everyone else was
jumping up and down and shouting,

I acted the same way.

Maybe the atmosphere
was contagious.

Today, high school kids
get hysterical over rock stars,

yelling and jumping,
even fainting.

We laugh at these kids.

What is there to worship
in those rock stars?

They're so shallow.

But these kids can
laugh at what we did.

What was there
to worship in Mao?

An old guy in an army suit
who had nothing to do with you?

He couldn't even sing or dance.

From Beijing, those who
had seen the chairman

went out to link up
with other groups

to spread the new word of rebellion
from school to school, town to town.

Young people were even given
free passes on trains and buses.

For most, it was their
first experience of freedom.

Freedom from
parents, from school.

Freedom to come and go
and meet other young people.

They were the successors
to the revolution.

They were the masters of a new
China and they wanted to see inheritance.

One group from the city of Dalian
decided to march to Beijing on foot.

They were praised
in the People's Daily.

The headline taken
from one of Mao's poems.

"The Red Army fears not
the difficulties of a long march."

It was changed to read "the Red Guards
fear not the difficulties of a long march".

The long march,

when the communist forces trekked over
8,000 miles to the north in the mid-1930s,

was the central event in
Chinese revolutionary mythology.

The long march became a
metaphor for the revolution itself.

I wanted to go on a march,
but my mother said no.

You know nothing about
the world outside Beijing.

So I waited until she left for
work and wrote her a note.

I used the line by Mao

and said that she was like a woman with
bound feet waddling behind the revolution.

Then I left.

A few of us traveled to
Mao's birthplace in Shaoshan

and then we went
our separate ways.

I headed for Zunyi.

Magnificent town of Zunyi

Towering high above
the Wujiang River

Zunyi was an important
stop on the long march.

Here, Mao's military strategy
was adopted by the party.

This marked his ascendancy
as undisputed leader

and led to the ultimate
success of the long march.

I thought this was one of the
most heroic episodes in history.

So I wanted to retrace the route
myself, just like the Red Army.

It was so romantic.

On December 1st, I was alone
in Zunyi with only one penny left.

I bought a piece of candy and
had a little celebration for myself.

I'd just turned 16.

Then I started my
own long march,

carrying a bunch of Mao's
writings and wearing straw sandals.

Every point along the
way of the long march

was a stop on a
sacred pilgrimage.

Past Zunyi was
the Luding bridge.

A nationalist garrison had destroyed
the wooden planks that covered it.

17 heroes took the bridgehead,

some dying in the process.

The long march was a
symbol of revolutionary ideals

made concrete by individual
sacrifice and daring leadership.

Like pilgrims,

the young people walked to reproduce in
themselves the revolutionary experience.

They retraced China's
revolutionary past

in search of its even more
truly revolutionary future.

The cultural revolution was
heating up at my film studio.

But I wasn't interested.

All I wanted to do
was make films.

So I thought "I could go out and
film the Red Guards on their ???".

I heard that some red guards from
the Inner Mongolia Teachers College

were going on a march.

I went to check them out.

They looked great.

Everyone wore army uniforms.

The most fashionable
style at the time.

The group was going to march
350 miles south from their home.

To the terminus of the
long march at Yanan.

Then on to be Beijing.

I used the 16 millimeter
movie camera, a Bolex,

the kind you have to wind up.

Where we were going, there was
no electricity to charge batteries.

Young people from the
villages were thrilled to see us.

They'd rush over and ask
for leaflets in Mao's writings.

These places were very remote.

Visitors brought
great excitement.

We arrived at the Yellow River.

Huge chunks of ice were
coursing downstream.

It was scary. How
could we get across?

We talked to local boatmen.

They were willing to help.

The boat edged
forward amid ice flows.

Everyone felt as if this was
our moment, our great test.

Little Red Book in
hand, they chanted:

"Be resolute, fear no sacrifice,
overcome all difficulties to win victory".

And someone burst out
with the chairman Mao poem:

The Red Army fears not
the difficulties of a long march

and they all chanted together.

The Red Army fears not

The difficulties of a long march

One thousand mountains
and ten thousand rivers

Mean nothing to them

When we reached the other side,

we thanked the boatman for
helping us on our great journey.

They said "give our
greetings to Chairman Mao".

The people here were
so kind and sincere.

They didn't have enough food,

but they'd offer us a solid
meal while they ate porridge.

It was very touching.

Once we stayed
with an old woman,

she wanted to give us a
special treat, fried cabbage.

She used only a
single drop of oil.

Usually she only did
this for New Year's.

We couldn't even taste the oil.

But for her it was
a very big deal.

I started to wonder, how come
so many years after the revolution

people are still so poor?

It was a mountain near the
town of Shenmu with temples on it.

Look at all these Buddhist
statues, the four olds.

These were remnants
of futile superstition.

So bang, bang, bang. They
went in and smashed everything.

At the time, we
were quite excited.

We got some real
revolutionary action shots.

Looking back now,
it was ridiculous.

The group had marked 350 miles

and come to the
revolutionary city of Yanan.

To a New Society
Advance! Advance!

We are the vanguard
of working people

An old Buddhist pagoda
overlooked the city.

The pagoda was a sacred symbol
of the revolutionary holy land.

Actually it was
just an old relic.

But it was endowed with a new meaning,
because Mao had once lived in the area.

In the 1930s and 40s,

Yanan had attracted young
people from all over the country,

who wanted to fight for a
strong and independent China.

Later, it was always depicted as a place
where revolutionary ideals were realized

through camaraderie
and hard work.

The army and the people

Working side by side

Yanan represented a golden age.

An egalitarian
self-sufficient utopia.

The young people of the 1960s imagined
it as an idyllic world of proto-communism,

from which the
revolution had strayed.

We went to see the plot
once farmed by Chairman Mao.

Red Guards were
scraping up the dirt.

They reverently wrapped it
in paper and took that away.

They were behaving
like religious pilgrims.

But I didn't dare say that.

Such a comment could mark
you as a counter-revolutionary.

If someone told on you, you'd be
denounced in a struggle meeting.

What was not on exhibit for
the new revolutionary tourists

was the darker legacy of Yanan.

In the early 1940s,

a rectification movement
identified numerous enemy agents

among loyal party members.

The fear of infiltration led
to intense denunciations.

Li Rui, a young man attracted
by the ideals of Yanan,

experienced the
terror first hand.

Under torture, people
could say anything.

"I'm a spy".

"Well, a spy has to report to
someone. Who are you working for?"

I was named.

During my interrogation, they handcuffed me
and made me stand until my legs swelled up.

This was routine.

Even worse with a tiger bench,
beating, being tied to a cross.

Later, Mao realized that all
the charges were groundless.

He bowed and apologized to us.

Yet the real problem of unrestricted
power was never addressed.

But back then we were so
dedicated to our communist ideals,

we felt that mistakes
were unavoidable.

Li Rui's generation of revolutionaries
forgave the party and stayed loyal to Mao.

For them, the Yanan
years were a rite of passage.

For Li Rui's daughter
and her fellow students,

1966 saw the beginning
of their journey of discovery.

Walking through the countryside
had an impact on my whole life.

I saw China through
different eyes.

I realized how
insignificant I was.

In school, we had imagined
transforming the whole world.

It now seemed rather farfetched.

What I saw in my travels didn't
match my idealized vision of China.

People were just busy
fighting each other.

I was disheartened
by this revolution.

I realized that I knew nothing
about the realities of China.

I was ignorant of the
very meaning of revolution.

So I decided to drop out of the
movement and do some serious reading.

GREAT DISORDER

While students roamed
the country in late 1966,

the cultural revolution leading
group directed their attacks

on the so-called
bourgeois reactionary line

of the state
president Liu Shaoqi.

He and his cohort, including
leaders like Deng Xiaoping,

were blamed for
suppressing the masses

and leading the
cultural revolution astray.

The correct aim of the
movement, Mao had emphasized,

was to unseat people inside
the party taking the capitalist road.

Many of the "capitalist roaders" were
the parents of the first Red Guards.

Jiang Qing and her colleagues

had nothing but praise for these
Red Guards the previous summer.

Now they were blamed.

They were no longer
revolutionary trailblazers.

Instead, they had been
serving Liu Shaoqi's policy

when they had suppressed students
who had bad family backgrounds.

What Jiang Qing said then really
appealed to the common people.

For example, she
criticized the saying

"father reactionary,
son a bastard".

She said: "that's garbage".

Her parent outrage made us
feel as though she was our savior.

She actually spoke
up for people like us.

At the same time, Red
Guard violence was halted.

We were relieved.

There were many excesses as
the Red Guard moved and grew.

We were opposed to these
things right from the start.

We appealed to the Cultural
Revolution leading group,

but they thought we were
just getting in the away.

And now they blamed everything on
us and took no responsibility themselves.

I lost all respect for them

and I wrote essays
criticizing Jiang Qing by name.

Red Guards! Red Guards!

Burning with revolutionary zeal

Within a few short months,

the Red Guards who had been at
the forefront of the Cultural Revolution

became its opponents.

Now, they were suppressed.

They had assumed that the
revolutionary enterprise was theirs alone,

but the tide had turned and they found
themselves on the wrong side of history.

Red Guards! Red Guards!

Meanwhile, the students who had
been excluded from the red guards

formed their own organizations.

They all claimed the
name for themselves.

Their grievances now
had a legitimate target.

It was Mao's enemies who had
caused all their suffering in the past

and they all pledged to fight for
Chairman Mao's revolutionary line.

Higher and higher ranking
officials were denounced

at mass rallies as
capitalist roaders.

Soon, China was in a
state of virtual anarchy.

Rebel groups
clamored to be heard.

Manifestos, independent
newsletters and papers proliferated.

The communist party had
always controlled the press.

Now no one was in charge.

Students did
whatever they wanted.

We started our own paper.

We imitated Mao's
calligraphy for the title.

The Cultural Revolution
in high schools.

We published the essay
on family background.

"On family background"
was written by Yu Luoke,

Yu Luowen's older brother.

In the essay he declared that all
young people should be treated equally.

The discrimination based on the
class status of your parents in China

was little different from
the caste system in India

or racial discrimination
in the United States.

If young people read "On
family background" today,

they'd probably think "what's the
big deal? What it says is obvious".

But back then,

if an essay so much has
raised the issue of equality,

it was a very big deal.

Some people even told us:

"I used to feel life
wasn't worth living,

but after reading this
article, I can go on."

Equality meant the equal
right to make revolution.

What does the class
status of your parents

have to do with whether or
not you are a revolutionary?"

Yu Luoke's essay asked,

"the question of who should lead the
revolution is not determined in the womb".

To survive in that society, you
had to be part of the revolution.

There was no alternative.

Only those who were allowed to
follow Chairman Mao in making revolution

had a future.

Why did we fight for the right to make
revolution and not some other right?

Because there
were no other rights.

There was only one right,
the right to make revolution.

While some took the opportunity to
protest against their own oppression,

others followed what was held
as "Mao's grand strategic vision".

They were intent on
unmasking "China's Khrushchev",

the number one capitalist
roader in the party.

The man who had opposed
the Great Leap Forward,

who advocated capitalist
economic policies.

This traitor to the revolution
was none other than Liu Shaoqi.

Liu's wife, Wang Guangmei, became
the ritual scapegoat for her husband.

She was taken to a mass
rally at Tsinghua University,

where she had advised the
now discredited work team.

It was a farce. It was unreal.

In your wildest dreams, you couldn't
imagine how they tried to demean me.

They forced me to wear a fancy dress
and a necklace made of ping pong balls.

We were stunned. We
felt like animals in a zoo.

People said: "those are
Liu Shaoqi's children".

As if we were animals.

She refused to kneel.
The crowd screamed.

The speakers demanded

"why were Liu Shaoqi's orders always
followed and Chairman Mao's ignored?"

They accused my mother of suppressing
the students on my father's orders.

They denounced her background.

They said she'd attended
a missionary college

and had weaseled her way into the
communist party to influence my father.

Government officials were dragged out
to endless rounds of struggle meetings.

They were often beaten
and tortured in makeshift jails.

Many died.

Among their numerous crimes,

they were accused of
having been too lenient

toward anti-party
elements in the past.

Casualties of earlier
purges, like Li Rui,

were brought back from exile and
denounced as living proof of their crimes.

The rebels were denouncing
government ministers.

They wanted Li back.
To put me on display.

So I got a chance
to go home for a visit.

I got home and saw my
parents in the living room.

I was shocked because I felt as
though my father didn't exist anymore.

He had faded away
and should never return.

He represented danger. All
he'd ever brought us was harm.

My father said "oh,
you've grown so tall".

I blurted out: "dad".

Then I regretted saying it.

"What's wrong
with me?", I thought.

I'm a Communist
Youth League member.

I thought I was so
firm in my convictions.

How could I call him dad?

All the feelings I had from my family,
my children, had to be suppressed.

For years I'd had to bury
them deep in my heart.

At school the next day
I dutifully made a report.

I said: "my father came for
a visit. And I called him dad.

That was wrong.

It shows that I have
not fully reformed myself.

I will try harder".

Through the early
months of 1967,

the rebels hailed the
nationwide revolutionary storm.

The bizarre rhetoric,
the violent language,

and the moral outrage
were not just for show.

In a system that lacked any channels for
airing grievances and resolving conflicts,

the movement provided a rare
opportunity for people to vent their anger.

People in power had always
suppressed the masses,

while taking good
care of themselves.

So when Mao said to overthrow
officials taking the capitalist road,

all those in authority
were dumped.

The masses couldn't care
less who was taking what road.

Initially, at least,
it was liberating.

But without the rule of law,
a mob mentality took over.

This is no way to affect change.

In the end, everybody gets hurt.

You can say that the Cultural
Revolution was the first time

people had a chance to
challenge the privilege of the party.

Yet at the same time, human
rights were reduced to nothing.

No one had any legal protection.

Anyone could be attacked for
being reactionary or whatever.

Rebel seized power

and while the old system
was being smashed,

its bureaucratic
ways were replicated.

Soon the rebels themselves
were forming contending factions.

Grandstanding and dramatic gestures
mark the progress of factional fighting.

Positions were occupied,
defended and lost

amidst the blare of loudspeakers
and the faints of warfare.

All swore to fight to the death in defense
of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line.

On June 5th, 1967,

the two factions at Harbin went from
staging sit-ins to fighting each other.

I climbed up a tree so I could
take pictures of the whole scene.

They all had clubs and they fought
over the public address vehicle.

At the College of
Civil Engineering,

two groups fought
over a building.

The people upstairs thew everything
they could find at their attackers.

When they ran out of things to
throw, they remembered the library.

"Get the killer books
and take them upstairs."

Of course, the killer books
were the big thick ones.

If you were climbing up a ladder
and a book came pelting down,

you'd get a big lump on your
head or you'd be knocked down.

This wasn't the
worst of the violence.

Workers at a weapons factory
drove tanks out into the streets.

They blasted each
other with the cannons.

For some, it was pitched battle.

Others were just
fighting to survive.

The factional chaos also offered
abundant opportunities for the ambitious.

In the summer months of 1967,

the cultural revolution
leading group

encouraged students to demand that
Liu Shaoqi appear before the masses

Students surrounded the party compound
of Zhongnanhai, in Central Beijing,

and demonstrated
in a constant vigil.

Although Liu and his wife were
safe from those outside the walls,

rebels inside, among
the compound staff,

grabbed them and held
impromptu denunciations.

You can say my father
represents the tragedy of China.

Once he took out the
constitution and said:

"you're not allowed to beat
people or to search their homes".

Later, he referred to
the constitution again:

"I'm still the president and I
still have the right to be heard".

Wasn't it all a bit too late?

How could the cultural revolution
have reached such a point?

The words of a single person,
Chairman Mao, could overwrite party policy

and party policy
could override the law.

And here was my father,

a man who'd worked for the revolution
for decades and he came to a tragic end.

I'm not saying he
didn't make mistakes.

He'd gone along with Chairman
Mao and purged others.

After 1949,

the Communist Party had launched
one denunciation movement after another.

Chairman Mao said bad elements always
make up five percent of the population.

A very large number.

Imagine trying to
jail that many people.

Mao once said out "of great
disorder, great order is achieved".

Mao believed that the
threat to the revolution

could only be removed
by mobilizing the masses.

As China was brought to
the brink of disaster, however,

the masses themselves
were the threat.

Now it was time for order.

And Mao had the
means to impose it.

Mao had never lost
control over the army.

It would be the instrumental force
behind a harsh new revolutionary order.

Having smashed the old world,

rebels of all persuasions
would join the first Red Guards

on the wrong side of history.

The free for all atmosphere of
the preceding months dissipated.

Those who had used the relative
anarchy to question the system

were now systematically
singled out.

The Cultural Revolution
leading group said

"'On family background'
is a poisonous weed".

Our paper was closed down.

My brother was put
under surveillance.

He was followed everywhere.

Far more poisonous than
Yu Luoke's many essays

were the entries in
his personal diary.

In May 1966,

as the media whipped up popular zeal to
weed out enemies of Mao Zedong thought,

Yu Luoke quoted
Montesquieu's Persian Letters.

"In order to love and
conform to one's religion,

it is not necessary to hate and
persecute those who do not conform to it."

The word "religion",
wrote Yu Luoke,

can simply be replaced
by Marxism–Leninism

or someone's thought.

The diary fell into the
hands of the authorities.

On January 5th 1968, he went
to work as usual but didn't return.

We knew he'd been arrested.

DOWN TO EARTH

By the end of 1967,

I was sick of the factional
struggles at school.

I didn't know what the
revolution was about anymore.

Just then, recruiters
came to sign up workers

to build a factory
in a remote area.

There it would be safe from
attack by the imperialists.

I could be a worker, the kind that Chairman
Mao wanted, a revolutionary worker.

Like the morning
sun still rising.

Although I was treated as a so-called
bastard, I wrote in my diary every day.

Follow Chairman
Mao in revolution.

I thought if I died
for the revolution,

my diary would convince people
of my true revolutionary loyalty.

Chairman Mao's latest
directive has inspired,

a nation of young people
to go to the countryside.

This is Chairman
Mao's grand plan

to prevent revisionism for
a thousand years to come.

For some time small numbers
of young people from the cities

had been settling
in the countryside.

By really becoming
one with the people

they hoped to put
their ideals into practice.

In late 1968, colleges were still
closed and urban jobs scarce.

A huge backlog of high school
students had built up in the cities.

Now these rest of young
people had somewhere to go.

Farewell, you will learn and
grow in the vast countryside.

I went to the
countryside voluntarily.

At first, I felt a great
sense of mission

to help close the gap between
the countryside and the city.

Change should
start with ourselves

so that we could carry the cultural
revolution through to the end.

The imagery was upbeat.

Not only in the official media,

but even in personal
photographs.

Other stories left
no visual record.

Rumors about me reached
the village before I arrived.

Song Bin Militant is
coming to settle here.

The one who burns,
loots, and rapes.

The villagers were afraid
and they didn't want me there.

But by working hard with them,

I was able to gain their acceptance and
they came to treat me with great kindness.

My father named me Binbin

because he wanted a daughter
who was gentle and refined.

And I was indeed like that.

If my name hadn't meant gentle, Mao
wouldn't have said "better to be militant".

And then there wouldn't
have been all these rumors.

The name Song Bin Militant
is totally against my beliefs.

It's sad how history could
have played such a bad joke.

We'd already had doubts
about the cultural revolution.

How come the political struggles
under our great leader were so devious?

Once we got to the countryside,
we were in for a greater shock.

The realities of China had nothing
to do with what was in our books.

The lives of the peasants
were truly miserable.

This experience led to a
further liberation of our thinking.

We began to confront
the larger political myth.

The so-called superiority
of the Socialist system.

I often wondered why Mao sent
us young people to the countryside,

because it turned so
many of us into heretics.

Mao should have known that
the peasants would tell us things.

For example, around 1960,
many people had starved to death.

So we started to
feel disillusioned.

It was a very painful process.

My thinking underwent
a fundamental change.

We read a lot of Western literature
and we talked to each other.

The countryside
was a vast free realm.

In the city, if you listen Voice of
America, your neighbor would report you,

but in the countryside, we
were beyond anyone's control.

As these young people were
questioning their revolutionary faith,

the personality cult of Chairman
Mao grew ever more extravagant.

Devotion images
were more numerous.

The adulation, more excessive.

There was a Mao for all
seasons, a thought for every clime.

This is a school for deaf-mutes.

Their love for Chairman
Mao knows no bounds.

And yet they cannot shout
"Long live Chairman Mao!"

Mao's thought could
answer all questions.

It could even
cure the incurable.

Using the brilliant
thought of Mao Zedong

new experience is gained in
the treatment of deaf-mutes.

Long live Chairman Mao!

Long live Chairman Mao!

After two months
of careful treatment

all 105 students
regain their hearing.

We wish Chairman Mao
a long life without end!

The deeply oppressed deaf-mutes
cannot repress their rage.

All their anger is
focused on Liu Shaoqi.

He pushed the counter-revolutionary
revisionist line on public health.

He called our
condition incurable.

He is the deadly enemy of
working people and deaf-mutes.

Down with Liu Shaoqi!

Long live Chairman Mao!

The Chinese Communist
Party's 9th Congress

opened on April
1st, 1969 in Beijing.

Shrouded in secrecy
and long overdue,

the 9th Party Congress in 1969
was the first to be held in 13 years.

It came in a moment of great
victory for the Cultural Revolution,

the media declared.

Most of the delegates were new,
thrown up by the Cultural Revolution.

Many of the original central committee
members were absent, having been purged.

Mao took the chair.

On his right, Premier Zhou Enlai,
who would weather every political storm.

On his left,

the party's Vice Chairman and
Mao's heir apparent, Lin Biao.

Lin Biao was written into the party's
constitution as the chairman's successor.

In his report to the Congress,

he reaffirmed the party's verdict
on the head of state, Liu Shaoqi.

This momentous
revolutionary storm

has swept away the
capitalist headquarters

of the traitor, enemy-agent
and scab, Liu Shaoqi.

Liu Shaoqi, Mao's previous
handpicked successor,

had not been seen
in public since 1966.

The 9th Congress was a
declaration of victory for the Maoists.

But we'd already begun
rethinking the Socialist system.

We were the first students to
identify with their radical thinking,

but we soon discovered
it was just a delusion.

Back then all debate was within the
framework of revolutionary ideology.

That is whose ideas were closer
to revolutionary fundamentalism.

It's like past debates
within the church.

Some advocated that the people
should have direct access to God's words.

Actually they were reclaiming from the
clergy the right to think for themselves.

Similarly with the
Red Guard movement,

the people reclaimed
from the party apparatus

the right to think
for themselves.

That is any authority
figure could be questioned.

Of course at first that was limited to
anyone under Mao or even under Lin Biao.

But it was only one small step
away from questioning them too.

By the time of the 9th Congress,

all I could do was laugh
at how absurd they were.

In the film, the leftists are seated on the
left and they get a lot of time on camera.

The rightists are on the right.

They're the old party officials and
the camera pans over them quickly.

The film shows
something very rare.

You actually hear Mao
speaking in his own voice.

As to the political report
made by Comrade Lin Biao,

do you all agree?

Raise your hand if you agree.

Passed.

The repeated assertions
of unity and victory

masks deep divisions among
what were merely temporary allies.

The only unchangeable figure,

the only fixed point was Mao.

Within two and a half years,

the firmly enshrined
successor, Lin Biao, would fall,

both figuratively and literally.

Accused of plotting
to assassinate Mao,

Lin Biao died in a
mysterious plane crash.

The only certainty was that the
charred bodies were those of Lin,

his wife,

and his son.

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!
THE REVOLUTION IS DEAD.

Lin Biao was the one who
attacked my father most viciously.

And then suddenly Lin Biao was
no longer Chairman Mao's successor.

Now they said he'd been plotting
to assassinate the chairman.

This had a profound impact on the
way people saw the cultural revolution.

So we wrote to Chairman Mao
"we want to see our parents".

I said I can't see them.

Being in a place like this.
How can I face my children?

Everyone knows that
Qincheng is a prison.

A place for locking
up bad people.

And that's where I
am. I can't see them.

He said "it is Chairman Mao's
directive that you see them".

"How can you say it's
his directive", I asked?

And he took out a note
written by the chairman.

The father's dead but
they can see the mother.

We were astounded
when we read this.

Seeing the note, I asked:

"Shaoqi's dead?
Can this be true?"

He said "Yes, he's dead.

But the children can see you.
This is the chairman's order".

But he wouldn't tell
me what happened.

He said "that's none
of your business".

We later learned that my father had
died from pneumonia in the city of Kaifeng.

When they carried his body out,
he didn't even have any clothes on.

They kept him alive until
the 9th party congress,

so he could be denounced
as a living example of a traitor.

After that, it didn't matter.
He felt ill and was left to die.

Liu Shaoqi died on
November 12th 1969.

Institutional extremism was
filling every corner of society.

New and heinous plots were
constantly being uncovered and thwarted.

Prisons and labor camps filled
up and new ones were built.

A combination of state power and what
was dubbed "the dictatorship of the masses"

dealt ruthlessly with the ever
changing face of counter revolution.

Everyone involved with
our paper was interrogated.

We were pressured to say things that
would incriminate my brother or each other.

But no one gave in.

We admired the Gadfly.

It was my brother who
introduced me to the book.

We used the Gadfly's example
to encourage each other.

He wrote to his girlfriend
before his execution.

"Then am I a happy
fly? If I live or if I die."

I wrote a poem to my own
girlfriend using these lines.

My friends, you
are such poor shots.

We were inspired by his calm
defiance even when facing death.

I think everything we did
was worthy of his example.

The police came to our house
with a notification for my father.

"Sign this", they said.
"Your son's been shot."

My father was so devastated. He
crumpled on the spot and wailed.

"What's all this crying for?

You're supposed to draw a clear
line between yourself and your son."

That's the way they talked.

The revolution was devouring
old revolutionaries like Liu Shaoqi,

as well as the children of
fallen capitalists like Yu Luoke.

Individuals regardless of
their background or history

could all be
sacrificed in its name.

As China descended
into darkness,

the world presented on
stage was ever more luminous.

It was a sanitized realm in which
enemies were constantly vanquished.

Heroic struggles
forever victorious

and martyrs for the cause celebrated
with shrill calls for ongoing revolution.

We must...

Learn from them, offer
our lives to world revolution

Be bolts that never rust

Raise high the red
flag and advance

Raise high the red
flag and advance

By now, the one-dimensional heroes of a few
model works had lost any power to inspire.

The cycles of revolution
left the population exhausted.

Pent-up frustrations would take
several years to find an outlet.

Zhou Enlai, for decades premier
of China, died in January 1976.

He was regarded as a
bastion of moderation

compared to the extremists who
had risen to power in the chaos.

My awakening came late.

It was not until the April
5th Tiananmen incident

that I finally became
disillusioned with Mao.

April 5th was the traditional
Chinese Day of Remembrance.

But in 1976, it would
herald the passing of an era.

Crowds spontaneously
gathered in Tiananmen Square

to lay wreaths and recite
poems in Zhou Enlai's memory.

They came to honor the dead,

but the outpouring of grief
was a protest against the living.

"The people weep while
jackals laugh" one poem read.

Squads of the workers
militia were sent in with clubs.

I had believed in the Communist
Party because it was for the people.

Now it was beating
the people up.

It wasn't the party
I thought it was.

I felt very sad.

I started to have
doubts about Mao.

Then I thought "if Mao was
wrong, my father might be right".

But I didn't know where my father
was. Whether he was dead or alive.

The April 5th Tiananmen
incident was devastating.

At 1976 we already felt alienated
from the cultural revolution.

The culture revolution had pushed the
revolutionary culture of Socialist China

to ever greater extremes.

At the same time, it
exposed its dark side.

In this context, one thing Marx said
about revolution could be reversed.

That is "long live the revolution.
The revolution is dead".

Whoever tries to immortalize revolution
will be the one who kills revolution.

That's exactly what Mao did.

Mao himself wouldn't die
until September that year.

But the protest in Tiananmen

signaled his passing as surely as if
he had already drawn his last breath.

Within weeks of Mao's death,

the so-called "Gang of Four",

Mao's wife and her
radical associates,

were arrested and
eventually tried.

The reign of revolutionary
fundamentalism had come to an end.

Now the Gang of Four
was blamed for everything.

Just as Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi
and Lin Biao had been before them.

Although there was
talk of a Gang of Five,

public debate about Mao
would be stifled time and again.

Obstacles to the rehabilitation
of those who'd been jailed,

exiled or killed
over the decades

took years to overcome.

After a two year search,

Li Nanyang finally located her father
in a remote village in Southern China.

She hadn't seen him in 11 years.

My father waited for
me to call him dad.

I hadn't used that
word for so many years.

It took me a long
time to get it out.

I knew that as soon
as I called him dad,

the clear line that I had
drawn between myself

and an enemy of the
party would vanish.

He would simply be my father.

I finally came out
with it. And he cried.

Those were the
happiest days of my life.

Finally, I was free
to speak my mind.

Unlike 1967.

She was too young then and it was
at the height of the Cultural Revolution.

After we talked, I
said to my father:

"You have been wronged. You're a good
person and I'll try to clear your name."

Around 1979,

many so-called bourgeois and
revisionist films were shown again.

The Gadfly was among them.

Seeing at this time,

I was struck by something
that I hadn't really noticed before.

It was the prison cell conversation
between the Gadfly and his father.

You've lied to people, saying
confession is confidential.

You've also lied to God.

You took your sacred
vows and you broke them!

Arthur.

Arthur lashed out at Montanelli.

It was a denunciation
mixed with a lingering love.

A hope that he might change.

But he realized
this was impossible.

The scene made me think
about the revolutionary culture

that I had internalized
when I was younger.

What had attracted me and
what I had come to reject.

The attraction was a
sense of moral justice.

And as I reflected on the lies
and deceptions we'd experienced,

just like Arthur,

I thought about my cardinal.

My relationship with the
culture of the communist party.

It felt very much like
Arthur's farewell to Montanelli.

Now I too would
see my own cardinal.

My red cloak clergy
recede into the distance.

On January 1st 1979,
I received the telegram.

Returning to Beijing
on January 4th.

I jumped up from my bed.

My father's case was resolved.
The sun has finally risen for me.

For several months
afterwards I was in a daze.

I'd been called a
bastard for 20 years.

And suddenly I'm a revolutionary.
Accepted by everyone.

And people acted as though
it had always been that way.

The new evaluation
I received at work

now read like the eulogy
for a revolutionary martyr.

For years, I thought I was good
enough to be a communist party member,

but they never let me join.

Now, overnight,
everything had changed.

Not because of
anything I'd ever done,

but because my father's
name had been cleared.

At that moment,

the revolutionary ideals
that had always sustained me

suddenly collapsed.

Everything was a
lie. Nothing was true.

From the moment my
father was rehabilitated,

I wanted nothing more
to do with the party.

Nothing more to do
with the revolution.

For many the revolution is dead.

Utopian promise now
appears in different guises.

But the specter of
Mao is never far away.

When people feel
oppressed and powerless,

when a system permits no
legitimate protest or descent,

Mao emerges as a possibility.

A champion of
the right to rebel.