translation excerpt, revolutionary networking, memoir-novel of the summer of '66, lovelorn red guard sets out on a train to shanxi
▣ I have started reading Revolutionary Networking 大串联 by Xue Bing 雪屏, a novel published in 2012. It takes place during the period between 1966 and 1967 in which Red Guards began traveling around the country. At first, these were mostly pilgrimages to Beijing, where the young rebels were received by Chairman Mao. Later, Red Guards began traveling to major cities, countryside rallies, and sites of revolutionary history. This is an event that I first learned about from an older man, then in his fifties and is now in his seventies, who had gone to Beijing in 1966, as well as traveling as far west as Xinjiang. His daughter was ■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■. He remembered the period of free train-travel around China with nostalgia. He was envious of his friends that had made connections or put down roots in other cities. Most of the characters in this book are part of Red Guard factions, but he was not, as far as I know (he never admitted it to me, but ■ ■■■■ ■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■ ■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■, so there was nothing to hide). Although it does not present a wholly rosy picture of the 1960s in China, this book helps me understand why somebody might be nostalgic for a time remembered officially as ten years of chaos. Maybe there are political methods to learn from this episode, about how to unleash desires and libidinal drives. Maybe it can humanize people that are remembered as a faceless, shouting mass. A brief excerpt is below. As always, I advise that this translation is done without permission. No editor has seen it. It is only for you. As always, I will promise to translate more. I wouldn’t count on it. ▣
if not for HER, i would never have gotten on the train. i knew that once i got on, there was no way to get off. i knew that if i didn't get on, i might never see HER again for the rest of my life. there were so many people on the platform. it seemed that all of the five hundred thousands red guards that chairman mao had received the day before were there. as i squeezed onto a train bound for the northwest, the clip of my trousers broke and i had to use the strap from my backpack to keep them in place. i went down to see my companions in the twelfth carriage. i immediately regretted only carrying an army backpack, a towel, some underpants and socks, and a bit of cash and ration cards. they were all carrying shoulder poles with sacks tied to them. they laughed when they saw my blue underpants peeking out from my waistband. when they realized that i was alone, their mirth turned to puzzlement. they wanted to know where jia hui was. he was the organizer of our link-up group. i told them that his home had been searched the night before, and his mother and father had been detained. jia hui had to stay behind to look after his younger sister. i took from my pocket the red guard armband that jia hui requested i hand in to the leadership. he was being selfless, hoping that he would not bring shame to the red guards.
the school's red sun rebels faction of the red guards had organized a group for the link-up, but there were too many conditions to join. there were tests to undergo before the leadership would give permission. they might ask you to give your best friend two hard slaps across the face. they might demand that you scrawled on the forehead of a teacher they didn't like some revolutionary slogan. if your parents tried to interfere, the leadership would have you lead them out to march in the hot sun...
"they're stirring up trouble," jia hui said. "it's all on purpose. we aren't going to put up with it."
he had other complaints: "if you join their group, you have to cart around the baggage of all their bosses. if you get selected as an orderly, they get you running around like a dog for anything they need." he decided to form his own group to go on a link-up trip. "we'll have our own team. we won't have anything to do with those bastards. we'll run our own affairs." i was the first to volunteer myself for his group. jiang xiaotong was second. du shoulin was my shadow in those days, so he put up his hand, too. to pick the leader, we drew cards. jiang xiaotong won the leadership. he was the one to lead our hooting troop into battle.
the entire carriage, from the luggage racks to the spaces under the seats, was stuffed with red guards. i had to jam myself in. i came to red with only one foot touching the floor, trapped in the golden chicken pose. whatever hardship was ahead, the eyes of all the young people gleamed. it was the first time that most had left home. it was going to be completely free to travel, too. our red armbands gave us passage to any place in the country.
jiang xiaotong leaned in to whisper in my air, "where'd you get that underwear?"
"i borrowed a pair," i said. i gave him a cuff.
i knew he was making fun of me. the day before, we had been marching at the east end of jinshuiqiao, and i had pissed my pants instead of breaking ranks. my comrades were not going to let it go easily.
the train began to pull away. people began to open windows and lean out to wave goodbye to the people on the platform, whether they knew them or not.
at the back of the carriage, a debate began between groups from beijing university and tsinghua university. they were arguing about the relative strengths of the red guard rebel faction leaders nie yuanzi and kuai dafu. if there was enough room to cock back an arm, they might have come to blows. jiang xiaotong said he didn't care about either of the leaders up for debate. he preferred tan houlan of beijing normal university. none of us bothered to argue with him. maybe we didn't really care, one way or another.
i knew that jiang xiaotong did, though. i knew he practiced giving speeches. he mimicked lenin, with one hand tucked in his pocket, the other waving in the air. his accent was never quite right, though. he had only arrived from baicheng in the northeast the year before last.
beside me, du shoulin stared out the window. it seemed like he was in his own world. when i looked closer, however, i saw that he was weeping. i bent down to ask if he was going to miss his mother. "i don't have a mother," he said.
"will you miss your father?"
"i don't have a father," he said.
"who are you going to miss?" i asked.
"i'm going to miss beijing."
jiang xiaotong grunted dismissively. "look up there," he said, pointing at the front of the carriage. "they've been singing since they got on." i looked, too, and saw six or seven girls with braided hair.
the girls had brave looks on their faces. they didn't seem at all homesick. i couldn't help but think of her. there was one girl in particular that reminded me of HER, with a long braid over her shoulder and two dimples in her pink cheeks. this girl lacked only HER bright, clear eyes. i started to wonder once again: why did SHE leave me, without even a word of goodbye, or a letter to bid me farewell? that was the secret of secrets. i could only solve it by finding HER.
i had no idea exactly where the train was headed. i don't think my comrades knew either. we had agreed only on the time that we would arrive at the station in the morning. we decided to take whatever train was leaving earliest. we planned to meet in the twelfth carriage. yang dongsheng was the first to get on. the door was blocked by people, so he climbed in through a window.
yang dongsheng was a year younger than me, but he was already balding. it was because of the army cap that he always wore. he went around with a pin of chairman mao stuck to his chest. when he got into it with someone, he puffed out his chest so that everyone could see the pin, and roared, "if you've got the guts, give me your best shot—right here!" the pin became for him a protective amulet. he was an orphan. his father and mother had both died in korea.
even if my parents were both still alive, i understood how he felt. my family lacked the warmth that others seemed to have. my mother had joined the representatives' meetings of the red guards, and my father had joined the workers' rebel headquarters. that put them at odds. every moment together, they were arguing until they were red in the face. nobody bothered with household tasks, so i was forced to fend for myself.
zheng jianguo was getting into it with the tsinghua university students, so we did our best to press through the crowd and offer our support. jiang xiaotong asked him what was going on. zheng jianguo told him that the tsinghua students had supposedly tried to steal his camera. their defense was that they suspected zheng jianguo of secretly snapping pictures of them. he might be a spy, they concluded. yang dongsheng informed them of the name of our school and let them know that zheng jianguo was taking pictures for the school's revolutionary bulletin. just as things were about to kick off again, a member of the railroad police arrived. he was wearing a red armband, too. he waded in and pulled everyone aside. he pulled out a notebook and read from regulations on strengthening public security work in the great proletarian cultural revolution. that meant that if they continued causing a disturbance, they could be found guilty of crimes against the cultural revolution. everyone calmed down after that.
i had heard that some men caught stealing steamed buns on the train had been paraded through each carriage with pointed paper caps on. their clothes had been torn to rags by the crowd, so that their asses were hanging out.
the railway cop was a red-faced, hearty-looking man, who looked more than capable of dealing with any trouble on his train. even against the odds, he probably could have handled us. the two sides in the disagreement separated, with the tsinghua group sent to the back of the carriage and us to the front, right near where the girls with pigtails were singing.
zheng jianguo was the type of guy that didn't stew over disagreements. as soon as the girls were within range, he started snapping pictures of them. they were only too happy to oblige, even striking poses for him. a conversation started up between our groups and theirs. the girls turned out to be from beijing normal university.
the girl with the dimples was called li caiying. she was born to be a teacher of the people. when she spoke, there was always a note of patient admonishment in her tone. she asked our names, and when it came my turn, i told her that i was called shi lei. she squinted at this, looking as if she was puzzling over it.
i learned later that she was fourteen months younger than me. she was born under a red flag, in the new society, while i only just missed the founding of the republic by a month, and came into the world of the old society. she was an elegant and cultivated young woman. it was a shock to learn how she spoke of her father, who was, at least by her account, a boorish man, who spoke in the most vulgar way. he sent his daughter to a normal university because he wanted her to come home and teach him how to read. liu chunpei whispered in my ear that i should quit staring at her. "a little more tact is required in a situation like that," he said.
liu chunpei was the classic pale-faced scholar. he liked pushkin. our teachers appreciated him. girls did, too. many stories were told with liu chunpei in the jia baoyu role. jiang xiaotong said he had it all figured out: someday women would be the death of liu chunpei. i was not pleased to be chided about staring at a girl by a boy renowned as a dandy. sure, i was staring at li caiying, but only because she looked like HER.
li caiying asked where i was going to get off. i was honest when i told her that i had no idea. it was all down to where jiang xiaotong thought he might best put his ambition to work. the rest of us would go with the flow. jiang xiaotong said that we should do our best to understand society from the grassroots level. he had an idea that we could go to work with a production team in the countryside. once we had understood everything there was to understand there, we would move up to a production brigade. from there, we would move to a commune, then to a county capital, moving towards larger centers. we would encircle the cities from the countryside, as chairman mao advised. a few of the normal university students were fascinated by jiang xiaotong's plans and pledged to join us. their reverent expressions impressed jiang xiaotong so much that he neglected to engage us in the process of democratic centralism. nobody put up any objections, anyway. perhaps they knew it was useless, as it was clear jiang xiaotong was in power. maybe it was just too hot to care. everyone was sweating in the carriage. even li caiying had sweat beading on her honey peach pink cheeks.
the girl beside li caiying took out oval compact from her bag and looked in its mirror while smoothing her bangs and dabbing sweat off her nose. li caiying slapped her arm gently and scolded her for not overcoming the vices of a bourgeois lady and for still being infected with the worship of foreign ways. the girl with the mirror was named du yi. she was the only one of us that had a watch. it was a pocket watch on a silver chain. she kept it tucked away most of the time in a very secret place. nobody could have found it on her, even if they searched.
suddenly, a girl beside us shouted, "we're not in beijing anymore!" we had passed the outer limits of the capital. du yi turned to the girl, who wore her plaits tied in buns on top of her head, and asked where we had arrived. "we're in huailai county now," the girl replied.
she was helpless to conceal her excitement. i heard later that she had never left the city before. she had never even been to the western hills before. lugouqiao was as far as she had gone before that day on the train. it was no wonder that she was fixated on the scenery rolling by outside the window. the girl's name had once been you yan, but she had changed it before the trip to you fanxiu—surname you, given name combat revisionism—which did not seem to suit her sweet disposition.
while i talked with li caiying, du yi got her attention with a frown. "what's wrong?" li caiying asked.
"what's that smell?" du yi asked.
zheng jianguo chuckled. "apart from the stench?" he asked. "look around. everyone's got bare feet in army sneakers."
du yi put a sleeve across her nose. "i can't take it," she moaned.
at that moment, somebody cut in to recite, "a revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous..." as if a fuse had burned down, the entire carriage exploded with the sound of everyone joining in to finish the lines.
du yi bowed her head in shame, showing off her pale neck. jiang xiaotong patted her shoulder and comforted her. "it's nothing to worry about," he said. "you just need to go among the poor peasants and receive reeducation." du yi nodded energetically and sincerely.
i never had jiang xiaotong's abilities. maybe it was because my political consciousness was not sufficiently developed. i read newspapers, but i skipped the editorials. jiang xiaotong digested critique of the gotha program in under a month—and he even wrote his own notes on it! that was why he had become our leader. not me. ordinary me. i was sick of my ordinariness. i hated that i didn't miss my mother or father but my grandma and my cat.