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Here is an excerpt:
Tilanqiao
Communism is not love. Communism is a
hammer, which we use to crush the enemy.
hammer, which we use to crush the enemy.
– Chairman Zedong Mao –
Time magazine, September 13, 1963
“Number 494! Number 495!” called Officer
Zhang, standing in the middle of Xuhui District Police Station. “Pack your
things! Today I permit you to see each other!”
Wenli Chen, Prisoner Number 495,
packed his few possessions – underwear, comforter, towel, toothbrush, a pinch
of soap and a white-enameled cup with a blue lip – into his barely used, 1950s canvas
traveling bag. He stood inside his cell, waiting.
It was January 25, 1969.
“Go! Go! Go!” ordered Officer Zhang, after
he unlocked the cell door.
Chen hurried outdoors, toward a large,
olive-green Black Maria, with two doors in the back. The wagon resembled a
World War II ambulance. He stepped inside and saw his best friend, Jijia
“Joseph” Wu, Prisoner Number 494, who was thin, sort of short and wore
eyeglasses that gave him the appearance of an owl.
Once the doors shut, the wagon sped
off, with siren blaring.
“They’re coming!” yelled a boy on the
road, among a group of youths who ran after the Black Maria.
At Jiao Tong University, Chen, Wu and several others were
ushered into the auditorium. With their arms cuffed behind their backs, they formed
a line up on the stage and faced an audience. Chen saw his tiny, gray-haired mother
in the crowd.
A soldier stood behind Chen and
pushed his shoulders down in a bow formation while pulling his hands up. Behind
the soldier, a military representative read out the sentences in a shrill voice,
with hits of staccato.
Chen heard his name called.
“Active counterrevolutionary criminal
Wenli Chen, male, age 28, birthplace Zhongshan,
Guangdong province, of bourgeois
family background, student, unemployed, residence Number 354 Xinhua Road.”
“Active counterrevolutionary criminal
Wenli Chen, from a bourgeois family, has had reactionary thinking ever since
the Liberation. He has hated Socialism deep to his bones ever since the
Liberation. Since 1956, he has used a radio receiver to listen to the stations
of the enemies. He has scattered rumors everywhere, drumming up support and
waving the flag and screaming and shouting for imperialism, revisionism and
reactionaries. Since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution he has … actively
recruited counter-revolutionary members and organized a current
counterrevolutionary group. Criminal Chen has attacked the Socialist system
furiously, attacked Zedong Mao Thought, that of infinite brightness, attacked
and slandered our Great Leader Chairman Mao and the Proletarian Headquarters
headed by Chairman Mao and Vice Chairman Biao Lin, as deputy. Criminal Chen’s
crimes were serious. After the case had been uncovered, Criminal Chen set up a
conspiracy of silence with the other criminals, compelling them not to confess
their crimes. The criminals were investigated, and their crimes were confirmed…
“According to the law, Criminal Wenli
Chen is sentenced to 15 years in prison.”
Minutes later, the shrill voice paused,
and the hearing concluded. No lawyers. No judge. No court.
“All prisoners will be escorted to
the prison now!” the military representative announced.
A muscular, post-military Chen climbed into the back
of the olive-green Black Maria police wagon and sat on the floor next to Wu,
his friend accused of being a member of Chen’s “counterrevolutionary group.”
For a fleeting second the two made eye contact, and then Chen glanced out the
front windshield.
Comrade Wang caught him. She was the
head of investigations for Xuhui District’s Hunan Road Neighborhood
Association.
“This one is real bad!” Wang screamed
as she pushed Chen’s head down and jerked up his hands, cuffed behind his back.
She screeched, “He’s still looking outside!”
Wang’s comrade, sitting on the bench,
said to Chen, “Fifteen years is very heavy. In Tilanqiao, if you are good and
willing to transform, we will reduce your sentence. If you are bad, we will
increase your sentence.”
After a short ride, the wagon slowed
down at a guarded entrance, almost stopped and Chen stole another peek. Mounted
on the side of the front gate was a white sign with black, Chinese characters
for shanghai city prison, commonly
known as Tilanqiao for the surrounding area where the massive institution
stood, at 147 Zhangyang Road.
Slowly, the wagon drove through one
gate, then another and rolled to a stop inside the prison. The doors in the
back opened, and the prisoners jumped down. Escorted into the reception
building, where handcuffs were removed, Chen looked at his freed hands, swollen
and red. One by one, the men were fingerprinted.
Chen gazed outside and saw Comrade
Wang. A faint smile tugged at his lips, while he looked at her.
“You are real bad! Our investigation
is not finished yet. We will add to your sentence!” she screamed, stomping the
ground.
A prison guard in the front said
loudly to Comrade Wang, “There is nothing for you to do. You can go now.” To Chen,
he added, “Don’t worry about them. They are crazy.”
Chen, officially Tilanqiao Prisoner
Number 6641, waited in a large room with many others, including his best
friend.
“We’re capsized in a shallow ditch,”
Wu, with tears in his eyes, whispered to Chen.
“Everything depends on God,” Chen
said.
Just then another door opened, and a
guard ordered the group of men, two by two, into the prison yard, where more
guards stood.
“How many years?” a guard asked each
one.
“Fifteen years,” said Chen, when it
was his turn.
“Go! Go! Go!” the guard directed him toward
Cellblock Number 3, where he and his friend, Wu, were separated.
Escorted into the five-story block
building and up the stairs to the second floor, Chen heard shouting.
“Where are you coming from?” yelled a
prisoner, from somewhere inside the bowels of the cellblock.
“New sentencing!” answered another
prisoner, somewhere.
“You are not allowed to yell!” yelled
one of the guards.
Chen walked down a corridor, lighted
by dim, overhead bulbs dotting the ceiling every 10 to 15 feet. To one side,
the outer wall with windows. To the other side, a row of dark cells. Escorted
to the end, finally, around 4 p.m., he found himself at Cell Number 45.
Calmly, Chen entered the tiny cell, approximately 4.5
feet by 7.5 feet, made even smaller with a raised wooden floor recessed into
the cement room to permit the inward swing of the iron-bar door. He sat down
between two of his three cellmates.
To his right, next to the eight iron
bars, sat Zhenhua Jin. Around 30, he was a Chinese doctor of acupuncture, a
type of doctor that was also a fortune teller, an astrologer of sorts. He was
in Tilanqiao, because he knew Mao’s birth date and checked the fortune of the chairman.
Unfortunately, someone reported him to authorities, and he was arrested and
sentenced.
Across from the acupuncturist sat
Zhifang Xu, snug between the grille gate and the neiwu, the neat stack of
inmates’ belongings. An old man, in his late 50s or early 60s, he had
complained that the rations he received from the People’s Government were not
sufficient, which meant that he was not happy with the Communists, which meant
that he attacked Socialism, which meant that he was a counterrevolutionary.
To Chen’s left sat Wenbin Qing,
around 50, who insisted on sitting in the corner, across from the bucket used
for human waste. Before the Communists seized power on October 1, 1949, he had
been a top-of-the-line Grade-8 Worker for a factory, where he had joined his
co-workers, underground Communists who had agitated for more money. After the
takeover, Qing was falsely accused of joining a pseudo People’s Liberation
Army.
Chen’s first few months in Tilanqiao
were dull and routine, even the day when his entire second floor moved up to
the fifth floor. Most of the time, inmates sat in study groups, the daily
brainwashing sessions. But occasionally, the daily boredom was alleviated
during yard time, when the men were ordered to the basketball courts, bald
patches of cement with sparse wisps of weeds. Between two cellblocks, they
usually walked around and around the circumference of the yard, but sometimes
they watched performing teams of prisoners.
Many artists found themselves behind
bars, after the Communists rounded up and arrested them during the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the regime’s attempt to rid China of the
Four Olds – old culture, old customs, old habits and old ideas. Those arrested included
dancers from the Shanghai Ballet Institute and musicians from the Shanghai
Brass Orchestra, the Shanghai Choir and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.
Because they produced nothing for the
State, musicians and artists were classified as bad elements, one of the Nine
Categories of Enemies: landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad
elements, rightists, traitors, spies, capitalist roaders and intellectuals,
which was the Stinking Ninth. Not classified as criminals, the entertainers had
been processed through the administrative system under the military
administration, and most had been sentenced to labor-reeducation farms or
factories. Only labor-transformation cases were classified as criminal and
processed through the People’s courts.
Inside the prison walls of Tilanqiao,
the entertainers marched and sang revolutionary songs, as they held up their
“Quotations from Chairman Zedong Mao,” a pocket-sized book with a red plastic
jacket slipped over plain cardboard covers.
A few times, Chen saw Haishen Lu
perform. A famous singer in the Shanghai Choir, he was tall and thin and sang
like an Irish tenor, with a rich tone and a vibrato that hinted of classical
training. For the inmates, Lu performed the “Usuli Boat Song.” Normally, its
stirring notes and lines celebrated the beauty of a simple life upon the Usuli River,
but during the Cultural Revolution the lyrics had been perverted with political
propaganda.
Tilanqiao inmates had their own in-house
prison ballad, “Song of the Tilanqiao Prisoner,” which they would secretly sing
among themselves:
One enters the prison, scared and trembling;
Two by two, in line;
Three meals, every meal is not enough;
Four seasons, without a jacket;
Five-story mansion;
Six relatives, you cannot rely upon;
Seven and a half feet is the size of the kennel;
Eight iron bars, each one strong and firm;
In the end, why am I here?
Really, I don’t know why!
†††