Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

“Her parents hurriedly married her off to a petty government official. After Japan’s defeat her husband was branded as a collaborator, and as a result the only job his wife could get was in a chemical plant. There were no pollution controls, and when my mother went back to Jinzhou in 1984 and tracked her down she had gone almost blind from the chemicals. She was wry about the ironies of her life: having beaten the Japanese in a race, she had ended up being treated as a kind of collaborator. Even so, she said she had no regrets about winning the race.”

As young girls, Chang’s mother and the woman in the chemical plant had run in the same race. On the advice of her Chinese coach, Chang’s mother did not put forth her best effort, but the other girl ran hard and won the race. Her school’s Japanese headmaster later had the victorious girl expelled for failing to bow properly before a portrait of the emperor but, in reality, it was because she had defied Japanese expectations by winning. The Japanese people had been taught to believe that they were racially superior to the Chinese. Although the story of the woman in the chemical plant occupies only four paragraphs, her refusal to feed Japanese racism by diminishing herself, coupled with her refusal to harbor regrets over how her life had unfolded as a consequence, makes her one of the most courageous figures in the book.

“My mother supposed it was a bit like asking permission from the head of a family, and in fact that is exactly what it was: the Communist Party was the new patriarch.”

When Chang’s father decided to marry, he had to ask permission not from Dr. Xia or Chang’s grandmother but from senior Party officials. No single quotation better illustrates the irrelevance of family under the Communist Party. Although the Communists emphasized the idea of equality, they reproduced (and took advantage of) the hierarchies and patriarchy of pre-communist China.

“The Communists had embarked on a radical reorganization not just of institutions, but of people’s lives, especially the lives of those who had ‘joined the revolution.’ The idea was that everything personal was political; in fact, henceforth nothing was supposed to be regarded as ‘personal’ or private. Pettiness was validated by being labeled ‘political,’ and meetings became the forum by which the Communists channeled all sorts of personal animosities.”

The Communist Revolution demanded not only the subordination of the family but the complete submission of the individual. This might have been palatable had the Party been endowed with supernatural wisdom but, of course, it was not. Like all human organizations, it was filled with flawed people, in some cases deeply flawed. Party meetings to promote self-criticism invariably became platforms for sanctimonious scolds.

“The Party’s all-around intrusion into people’s lives was the very point of the process known as ‘thought reform.’ Mao wanted not only external discipline, but the total subjection of all thoughts, large or small. Every week a meeting for ‘thought examination’ was held for those ‘in the revolution.’ Everyone had to both criticize themselves for incorrect thoughts and be subjected to the criticism of others. The meetings tended to be dominated by self-righteous and petty-minded people, who used them to vent their envy and frustration; people of peasant origin used them to attack those from ‘bourgeois’ backgrounds. The idea was that people should be reformed to be more like peasants, because the Communist revolution was in essence a peasant revolution. This process appealed to the guilt feelings of the educated; they had been living better than the peasants, and self-criticism tapped into this.”

Chang’s father, among many others, believed that complete submission to the Party served a greater good. It probably never occurred to him, or it occurred to him too late, that complete submission was never a means to an end; complete submission was always the end Mao desired. This quotation also introduces the concepts of envy and guilt, both of which Mao manipulated to great effect.

“The two men would talk together for hours. They shared many ethical values, but whereas my father’s were dressed in the garb of an ideology, Dr. Xia’s rested on a humanitarian foundation.”

Reflecting on the death of Dr. Xia, Chang offers a profound insight. Her father was a fundamentally decent man, but his decency was cloaked in Communist ideology. Had the ideological cloak merely concealed the fundamental decency, her father might have shed the garment at will. Unfortunately, Chang suggests that radical ideologies prevent their adherents from distinguishing between the ideology’s message and some broader conception of the highest moral good. Dr. Xia could distinguish between the two. Chang’s father could not.

“She was twenty-two. At the same age, some twenty years before, her mother had been living as a virtual prisoner in Manchuria in a house belonging to her absent warlord ‘husband,’ under the watchful eyes of his servants; she was the plaything and property of men. My mother, at least, was an independent human being. Whatever her misery, she was sure it bore no comparison with the plight of her mother as a woman in old China. She told herself she had a lot to thank the Communist revolution for. As the train pulled into Chengdu station, she was full of determination to throw herself into the great cause again.”

Chang’s mother harbored resentment toward her husband and even occasional doubts about the Communist Party, but as she entered Chengdu in 1953, she reflected on the vast difference between her world and the world of her mother’s youth. The reflection made her feel grateful, and with good reason. As part of her work with the Communist Women’s Federation, she helped rescue concubines and close brothels. Mao, of course, had no real interest in improving the lives of women, either for improvement’s sake or because they were women and therefore had dignity. In a broader sense, however, the Communists’ egalitarian ideology, when acted upon by decent people, did seem to encourage these kinds of reforms.

“I grew up taking hierarchy and privilege for granted.”

Communists touted equality, but every society has its oligarchs and, in China, the Communist Party’s officials lived better than most everyone else. At Yibin, Chang’s father had been a regional governor. In his haste to move the family to Chengdu, he had been forced to take a lesser job, but he was still a high official. His family’s apartment occupied an entire floor of an apartment building, and the larger compound in which they resided had all modern amenities. Less than one percent of China’s people could live this way, but it was all Chang knew.

“Through my father’s constant reminding, I knew that being able to study undisturbed in a big, cool room with a parquet floor and mosquito-netted open windows was an enormous privilege. ‘You must not think you are superior to them,’ he would say. ‘You are just lucky to be here. You know why we need communism? So that everyone can live in a good house like ours, and in much better ones.’”

Far from raising standards of living, communism wrought destruction upon the people it was supposed to help. Mao added his unique twist, but the doctrine of complete submission is not a Maoist invention. It is a communist precept. Still, Chang’s father was not a ridiculous man. He was decent, sincere, and intelligent. His faith in communism and the Communist Party, therefore, says more about the dismal situation in China before 1949 than it does about him.

“My parents never said anything to me or my siblings. The restraints which had kept them silent about politics before still prevented them from opening their minds to us. Now it was even less possible for them to speak. The situation was so complex and confusing that they could not understand it themselves. What could they possibly say to us that would make us understand? And what use would it have been anyway? There was nothing anyone could do. What was more, knowledge itself was dangerous. As a result, my siblings and I were totally unprepared for the Cultural Revolution, although we had a vague feeling of impending catastrophe.”

For students of history who know the outcomes of past events, it is nearly impossible to experience the uncertainty of a now-vanished moment in time. On the eve of the Cultural Revolution, however, Chang’s parents felt bewildered by what was unfolding, and they had no idea what lay ahead.

“I could see that many pupils hated the whole thing, but nobody tried to stop it.”

Chang and many of her fellow students avoided participating in the Cultural Revolution’s most destructive activities, and yet they allowed those activities to continue without protest. Their sense of morality was at war with their Maoist indoctrination. They also knew that protest likely would have turned the mob’s wrath against them. This is a common feature of totalitarian regimes. Many people witness horrific behavior and say nothing because they don’t know whom they can trust.

“Like many Chinese, I was incapable of rational thinking in those days. We were so cowed and contorted by fear and indoctrination that to deviate from the path laid down by Mao would have been inconceivable. Besides, we had been overwhelmed by deceptive rhetoric, disinformation, and hypocrisy, which made it virtually impossible to see through the situation and to form an intelligent judgment.”

Chang explains why she joined the Red Guards. Not only did she have no idea what was happening around her, but she also had no way of knowing. Indoctrination made independent thought impossible, particularly for a 14 year old. Moreover, even if there had been no indoctrination there would have been no way to discern truth from falsehood.

“So our Great Leader’s parents had been rich peasants! But rich peasants were class enemies! Why were Chairman Mao’s parents heroes when other class enemies were objects of hate? The question frightened me so much that I immediately suppressed it.”

On her pilgrimage to Peking, Chang saw Mao’s “rather grand” childhood home, which revealed that Mao himself had come from relative privilege (323). The revelation raised an obvious question about Mao’s hypocrisy. Chang’s indoctrination had programmed her to ignore such questions, and that is what she did. The most interesting thing about this quotation, however, is the confidence with which Mao showcased his parents’ home. Chang kept silent about his hypocrisy, as did everyone else. No one dared to question him.

“‘Seize power’ (duo-quan)! This was a magic phrase in China. Power did not mean influence over policies—it meant license over people. In addition to money, it brought privilege, awe, and fawning, and the opportunity to take revenge. In China, there were virtually no safety valves for ordinary people.”

Chang knows that Western readers have a different understanding of power, so she explains that in China there was no conception of power as conveying responsibility, nor was there any notion of power being limited by consent. This applied to people in government, and it applied to the millions of ordinary people whom the Cultural Revolution transformed into thugs. The ‘safety valves’ to which she refers include such things as constitutions and the rule of law, but they also include habits of mind—shared assumptions, for instance, about the value and dignity of every human being.

“Unlike most revolutions, in Mao’s there was nothing to do.”

The Cultural Revolution allowed for only two conditions: rampage and idleness. If teenagers were not engaged in the former, they had little choice but to languish in the latter. Schools were closed, books were banned, and nearly all forms of entertainment were prohibited. This brief quotation illustrates an even more fundamental element of the Cultural Revolution. With no external enemy to be found, Mao nonetheless succeeded in placing nearly one billion people on a permanent war footing.

“I have often dreamed of my grandmother since, and awakened sobbing. She was a great character—vivacious, talented, and immensely capable. Yet she had no outlet for her abilities. The daughter of an ambitious small-town policeman, concubine to a warlord, stepmother to an extended but divided family, and mother and mother-in-law to two Communist officials—in all these circumstances she had little happiness. The days with Dr. Xia were lived under the shadow of their past, and together they endured poverty, Japanese occupation, and the civil war. She might have found happiness in looking after her grandchildren, but she was rarely free from anxiety about us. Most of her life she had lived in fear, and she faced death many times. She was a strong woman, but in the end the disasters which hit my parents, the worries about her grandchildren, the tide of ugly human hostility—all conspired to crush her. But the most unbearable thing for her was what happened to her daughter. It was as though she felt in her own body and soul every bit of the pain that my mother suffered, and she was finally killed by the accumulation of anguish.”

Chang’s heartbreaking valedictory for her grandmother illustrates that, in traditional China, beauty and talent often condemned a woman to a life of submission and frustration. It also reminds readers that those who die by starvation or violence are not the only casualties of tyranny. Doctors told Chang’s sister and brother-in-law that there was nothing wrong with their grandmother, and in a purely physiological sense that was probably true, at least in the days when mental and physical ailments were regarded as separate. Nonetheless, the Cultural Revolution killed Chang’s grandmother.

“His words and the peasants’ stories shook me to the core. It was the first time I had come across the ugly side of Communist China before the Cultural Revolution. The picture was vastly different from the rosy official version. In the hills and fields of Deyang my doubts about the Communist regime deepened.”

Working alongside the peasants at Deyang from 1969 to 1971, Chang learned what had happened in the countryside since 1949. The man whose words shook her to the core had been a production leader during the Great Leap Forward. He explained, for instance, that he was only following orders when he confiscated the peasants’ woks and stoves for use in steel production, and he bemoaned the fact that the peasants in his commune had made him a scapegoat for the ensuing famine. Notwithstanding her intelligence, curiosity, and voracious reading habits (when she had access to black-market books), Chang had never heard the truth about the Great Leap Forward, so tight were the regime’s controls on information.

“Lu Xun had been my father’s great favorite. When I was a child, he often read us essays by Lu. I had not understood them at the time, even with my father’s explanations, but now I was engrossed. I found that their satirical edge could be applied to the Communists as well as to the Kuomintang. Lu Xun had no ideology, only enlightened humanitarianism. His skeptical genius challenged all assumptions. He was another whose free intelligence helped liberate me from my indoctrination.”

Lu Xun was a celebrated Chinese writer from the early 20th century who died in 1936. Chang describes Lu as a humanitarian, which is also the word she used to describe Dr. Xia (see #6 above). She used that phrase to distinguish Dr. Xia from her father, whose morality, though sincere, had been deformed by ideology. Lu was her father’s favorite writer, and yet Lu was not ideological. Mao also cited Lu with approval, which suggests that Lu posthumously suffered a fate common to great writers: his words were put to uses he never intended.

“Indeed, few had any visitors at all: the Cultural Revolution had brutalized human relationships, and alienated countless families.”

The “few” Chang mentions were fellow detainees in her father’s camp at Miyi. Chang and her siblings made multiple visits to the camp. Ironically, the family whose interests he had subordinated to the will of the Party stood by him long after the Party had abandoned him. As this quotation suggests, however, the Communists and in particular the Cultural Revolutionaries had largely succeeded in their quest to destroy the Chinese family.

“On the day of his release, she brought him new clothes. His first words to her were, ‘You shouldn’t have just brought me material goods. You should have brought me spiritual food [meaning Mao’s works].’ Tung had been reading nothing but these during his five years in solitary. I was staying with his family at the time, and saw him making them study Mao’s articles every day, with a seriousness which I found more tragic than ridiculous.”

Tung was a family friend whom Chang and her mother visited in 1972. He was another Party official who had been imprisoned since 1967. His enduring devotion to Mao, notwithstanding Mao’s persecution of him, illustrates the complete physical, mental, and spiritual submission the Party had imposed on so many of its members.

“To me, the ultimate proof of freedom in the West was that there seemed to be so many people there attacking the West and praising China.”

While studying English, Chang came across several articles written by Mao-worshipping Marxists in the West. At first, Chang felt anger toward foolish Westerners who loved China’s totalitarian society but hated their own. Upon reflection, however, she realized that the freedom with which Westerners criticized their own regimes constituted those regimes’ greatest virtue.

“With the help of dictionaries which some professors lent me, I became acquainted with Longfellow, Walt Whitman, and American history. I memorized the whole of the Declaration of Independence, and my heart swelled at the words ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and those about men’s ‘unalienable rights,’ among them ‘Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ These concepts were unheard of in China, and opened up a marvelous new world for me. My notebooks, which I kept with me at all times, were full of passages like these, passionately and tearfully copied out.”

Even at Sichuan University, with its stifling atmosphere of Maoist intolerance, Chang’s gradual awakening from indoctrination continued. Her emotional reaction to the U.S. Declaration of Independence illustrates that document’s world-changing power. No matter how many times they have been challenged, distorted, or altogether ignored, the Declaration’s “self-evident truths” appealed to Chang on the other side of the world centuries after they were written.

“My blurred perceptions surrounding his image came sharply into focus. It was Mao who had been behind the destruction and suffering. Without him, Mme. Mao and her second-rate coterie could not have lasted a single day. I experienced the thrill of challenging Mao openly in my mind for the first time.”

In 1974, Chang read a magazine article that described Mme. Mao as her husband’s “eyes, ears, and voice” (495). Her “thrill” at “challenging Mao” is noteworthy, as is the amount of time it took for the challenge to manifest. Notwithstanding her family’s plight, her instinctive aversion to tyranny, and the general broadening of her mind, Chang could not bring herself to reject Mao altogether until eight years after the Cultural Revolution began.

“For days I wept in silence. I thought of my father’s life, his wasted dedication and crushed dreams. He need not have died. Yet his death seemed so inevitable. There was no place for him in Mao’s China, because he had tried to be an honest man. He had been betrayed by something to which he had given his whole life, and the betrayal had destroyed him.”

Chang’s valedictory for her father is shorter than the one she composed for her grandmother (see #16 above). No doubt her memories of her father and the fate he suffered were even more painful to recall and more difficult to put into words. He had given his complete submission to a Party that demanded nothing less of him, and yet he also ‘had tried to be an honest man. Those two conditions cannot coexist. Where submission prevails, honesty is impossible. When he resisted the Cultural Revolution, he chose honesty over submission. The choice killed him, but it is also his monument.