family had to leave the small county town and move to the countryside. Their misery compared with the Xi family in Beijing, was rather more material. When Peng Liyuan remembered her childhood, she described it as poor. She had to learn to do everything to try to help the family survive. One thing she remembered very well was that her family could not afford photos. There was only one photo made in 1966 with her younger sister. The only other photo was made in 1969 when she was seven. On the back of the photo was written: “This is the only photo of Peng Liyuan’s childhood.”
By 1969, three years into the Cultural Revolution, the chaos had calmed down slightly. That year Peng Liyuan got a new baby brother, the only son of the family, and a sign that normality and humanity had not completely been eradicated in China by Mao and Jiang Qin.
The Aftertaste
Of course, the short-sightedness of Mao’s free travel scheme eventually played itself out. It wasn’t free at all and cost the government of China a great deal. Soon or later it had to be stopped. As the winter of 1966 approached, the enthusiasm of the people ebbed as well and situations worsened for many. Xi Jinping and his young friends had to face this new reality that was temporarily masked by the excitement of exotic travel in the south of China.
Back in Beijing the situation was becoming worse for many families. Some of the veterans were evicted from their homes and relocated to much smaller quarters. Some families lost their accommodations altogether and were forced to move elsewhere, far from Beijing, as punishment. Xi’s family lost their home and his father’s salary was stopped completely. The family had already been moved temporarily to a small accommodation available to Qi Xin, Xi Jinping’s mother, who worked at the Central Party Academy.
Even as an employee of the Academy and a Communist Party member, Qi Xin didn’t hold any significant power to fend off the constant attacks. She was the wife of Xi Zhongxun and attracted the attention of the Red Guards. Her crime was that she didn’t draw a clear line between herself and her husband who had been branded a counter-revolutionary. So she was also critisized in public. All over the Academy were hanging posters written in black ink naming her as a traitor. She was paraded through the campus of the Academy in the typical humiliating style of the Red Guards, and the parade eventually became physical attacks as well.
The biggest part of the tragedy for Qi Xin was that her children had to witness it. The two youngest children didn’t fully understand what was going on, but her eldest daughter, Qi Qiaoqiao, was already twenty and read all those accusatory posters. She was shocked and challenged her mother:
“Mom, did you say some rubbish? You mustn’t be a traitor! Now it is different times. Although the masses are critisizing you, it still is down to whether you don’t say what you shouldn’t say, don’t be a traitor, adhere to the principles.”
As family members of Xi Zhongxun they had to suffer so much. One can easily imagine how terrible it must have been for Xi Zhongxun himself.
While the young teenage Xi Jinping was travelling with his mates in south China, terrible things were happening to his father. His father was being forced to attend numerous public gatherings orchestrated for self-criticized and public humiliation or even to be beaten. Such public self-criticism sessions for veteran cadres were common throughout China at that time. Such ‘struggle sessions’ were developed in the Soviet Union as early as the 1920s as a way to purge political opponents under the rubric of the ‘class struggle’. Mao effectively used this device of manipulating the mob, as have many others throughout history.
The former but now disgraced Vice-premier, Xi Zhongxun now found himself on the top of the ‘Capitalist Roadster’ list, the term invented to denounce those who had betrayed socialism, meaning Mao. Xi Zhongxun’s name was still in the memory of many people, but the Red Guards made sure that memory was not a good one. The Red Guards didn’t forget that Mao had said: “Using novels to fight the Party is a new invention”, his indirect but pointed criticism of Xi Zhongxun for having authorized the publication of The Biography of Liu Zhidan.
Xi Zhongxun was brought to the city of Xian where he used to be head of the province. In the ancient city of Xian where the Terracotta Warriors were later to be unearthed, Xi had to endure more public assaults. The northwest people of the area seemed to be every bit as brutal as their soldier ancestors, the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China.
Nowadays there is a picture of Xi Zhongxun on the Internet showing him standing on the back of a truck being driven through the crowds. Hanging on the front of his chest is a sign with his name. He was tortured by the Red Guards quite badly in Xian. This time he was close to death. Clearly the rather civilized house arrest of Xi Zhongxun since 1962 was being replaced with public brutality in the service of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Purge was now being enhanced with persecution.
Among the veteran cadres, the country’s President Liu Shaoqi, having been named the top enemy of the people and the socialist cause suffered the most. He became so ill from the constant public verbal and physical assaults that he didn’t recover and soon died anonymously in 1969. His death was not even told to the family for some time afterwards.
Similarly in 1967 Xi Zhongxun was tortured nearly to death. The news somehow reached his old colleague, Premier Zhou Enlai. Having sympathy for him and still with some power in his grasp, Zhou Enlai ordered an airplane to be dispatched to bring Xi Zhongxun back to Beijing for medical treatment. Xi was temporary put in jail, ostensibly as protective custody for his personal safety. This temporary arrest turned out to last for the next eight years.
But in this way, Premier Zhou Enlai saved Xi Zhongxun’s life. His heart was still on the side of the old veterans. Mao knew that. That was why he never trusted his Premier. He rather relied on his wife, the infamous Jiang Qing, than his loyal Premier. Today many Chinese would like to assert that Mao actually disliked his wife and protected Zhou which is just an empty wish of millions of Chinese to rewrite the memory of this brutal time with gentler brush strokes. Whatever good Zhou Enlai was able to do for the country as a whole, and unfortunate loyal citizens like Xi Zhongxun, he likely did on his own without any explicit or implicit aid from Mao.
The last academic semester of 1966 ended for most school children like a gigantic display of Chinese fireworks, with explosive, noisy, colorful and demonic glitters. Over a year’s break had now gone by in total chaos. All the schools and universities had been closed down. Not all students had the luxury of a travel holiday, and left largely to their own devices or manipulated by factions of the Red Guard, hooliganism was rampant. Something had to be done. Students had to return to study. So Mao said: “Continue Revolution by going back to schools.” But there was no going back to school. The education system was in shambles. The chaos on the street now moved into the classroom.
In her village, little Peng Liyuan was old enough to go to school. But even far from Beijing in rural areas, school was not the same as before. There was no joy in young children going off to school as before. On the contrary, school had become very uncomfortable. Not much real learning was going on.
Class started for Peng Liyuan at 8 A.M. The first thing students did in assembly was to sing The East is Red, a song to praise Mao.
“The east is red,
The sun is rising.
In China emerged Mao Zedong.
He serves the people for happiness
And he is a big saviour of the people.”
Day in and day out, Peng Liyuan and her fellow students had to sing the same song of praise. To worship is not a strange thing for any nation. But how they
