The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a tragic chapter in China’s history. Its devastating effects reached countless individuals, including myself, my family, and many other innocent people. As a child, I witnessed the brutal torture and beatings that my mother, a teacher, endured at the hands of a gang of violent students, the Red Guards. The images of her half-shaved hair, a urine pot hanging from her neck, a high paper hat on her head, and the scars on her face, are forever ingrained in my memory. They also looted our home, confiscated our all possessions, and expelled us from our home to a remote countryside as “class enemies.” During the over one thousand miles journey, my mother was forced to kneel between train seats, with a female Red Guard stepping on her head the entire time.
What lay ahead of us was even tougher. We were forced to live in a rundown pigsty in a small and poor village, where we had to work hard in the fields to survive, suffering torture, bullying, and beatings.
1. After a long and humiliating journey by train, we arrived in our hometown Wharf City, a place I had never been before. As “class enemies” were not permitted to reside in cities, on the same day of our arrival, we were taken away by truck to the next place.
I had no idea where the truck was headed. In the late afternoon, the Red Guards unloaded our family from the truck in an open field. I saw a large yard by a pond in front of us. To the left of the entrance, there was a long wooden sign that read “Revolution Committee of Flower Town People Commune,” and a pair of stone lions flanked the gate. I learned later these mansions used to belong to my family and were confiscated by the Communist Party. The Red Guards transferred us to the local police station before departing on their “revolutionary tours” to Beijing, where they would pay homage to Chairman Mao.
After spending several nights sleeping on the floor at the Detention Center, two officials escorted us out of the town. The older of the two, named Lu, reassured us, “We have found you a lovely three-room house facing south, not far from here. Go with us.” At the time, we were all taken in by Lu’s words.
Walking along the winding village road, passing over one bridge and three villages, the two cadres didn’t show any signs of stopping, instead, they urged us to quicken our pace. My mother asked the cadres where our destination was as we couldn’t move any further. The cadres only responded with “almost there.” Finally, we heard someone shout “They’re coming!” from a crowd under a big tree at the crossroads in the front. As we approached, a terrible odor hit us, with flies buzzing around us. A large dung pit was right by the roadside.
Just then, a tall man with dark skin rushed over to the commune cadres, shaking their hands overzealously. Later, I found out he was one of the two village heads, nicknamed Lao-wai. The cadres had arranged the transfer and were eager to complete their task. After a brief conversation, Cadre Lu pointed to a shed behind the manure pit and declared, “That’s your new home.”
As I surveyed the scene, disbelief washed over me. The structure that was supposed to be my new home was a small grass shed, divided into three sections by earthen walls. The southern side was completely open, exposing its interior to the outside. Its overall size from east to west was less than 20 feet, and no windows or doors were in sight. Also, the shed was so low that even my little brother had to duck to enter. “Is this shed meant for human occupancy?” “Does the village have dwarves similar to those in the fairy tale ‘Snow White’?” My confusion sparked.
Meanwhile, my mother asked, “What is this shed for?” An older man with a brown face replied, “During the Great Leap Forward in 1958, the People’s Commune wanted us to raise pigs collectively. But when the shed was built, the big three-year famine struck and many villagers starved to death, leaving us with nothing to feed the pigs.” The man seemed eager to talk but was interrupted by a dry cough from Lao-wai. The old man immediately changed his tone and said,
“Oh! We’ve never raised pigs in it!”
Pigsty!? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Tears streamed down my face. The cadre Lu saw me crying and sneered, “Ha! What are you crying about? Do you really think you can still live in your great-grandmother’s mansion? That’s just a pipe dream!” The group of young people around us erupted in laughter. My anger and frustration welled up inside of me. I wanted nothing more than to hide from their mocking gazes, but there was nowhere to turn. I ran to the small grass shed – pigsty as a refuge.
The pigsty did not have any typical scent of pigs. I grumbled to myself, “So the old man was telling the truth after all.” The ceiling, constructed from crop stalks, was covered in a thick layer of dust and spider webs. Some of the stalks had started to fall apart and disintegrate. As I brushed my hand against the earthen wall, dry earth crumbled under my touch, making a rustling sound like gentle rain. At that moment, I was still young, barely reaching five feet in height. The roof’s peak was less than a foot above my head, making me hunch over as I walked under the sloping incline. I couldn’t help but worry, “How will my taller mother and second brother manage to stand up in here?”
There were four holes in the north-facing wall, meant for ventilation. I thought with frustration, “This may be suitable for pigs, but we are human beings.” Bending over, I peered out through one of the holes and saw that the area outside was overgrown with weeds.
At that moment, I heard the old cadre outside, warning my mother. “You should be grateful to the villagers for providing you and your family with a place to live,” he said. “You should embrace the education from the peasants and seriously reform your thoughts to repay the Party’s kindness and leniency towards you.” I sighed, “What a great ‘merc’ this is for us!”
That night, five of us lay side by side on the hay in the pigsty. The village had no electricity, and we hadn’t got an oil lamp yet. I lay down beside my mother in the dark, our heads resting against the north wall, and our feet pointing towards the outside in the south. Mosquitoes were buzzing around my head; it was their turn at night. I was exhausted and quickly fell asleep. If someone had walked by that day, they would have seen five pairs of feet belonging to humans of varying sizes protruding from the pigsty.
2. During the difficult days, my mother used this phrase to encourage us: “Amidst barren peaks and rivers dry, A glimmer of hope appears nearby.” She said, “Since this is so, let’s take it easy.” She led us to remake the pigsty livable. On the east side, the largest section of the pigsty was designated as our bedroom. We partially removed the earthen wall to create a door that connected to the other sheds. We constructed a wall on the southern side of the room using mudbricks from the interior walls and left an opening at the top for a window. The frame was created by inserting tree sticks into the opening, and we utilized a piece of broken glass we had gathered from the street as the windowpane so that light could enter and provide a view.
We also transformed the west shed into a storage room, leaving a smaller window facing the south. The middle shed became our “living room” and main entrance. My mother requested two cardboard boxes from a local grocery store, and my second brother fashioned a doorframe using bamboo poles and created a cardboard door. The villagers marveled at our ingenuity, praising we changed the pigsty to “a three-room house with a south-facing door and windows on sides.”
My mother’s hair, which had been forcibly shaved by the Red Guards, had grown back, but remained short and spiky, easily becoming matted with dirt when she leaned against the adobe walls. To remedy this, we mixed dried wheat straw, hair, and mud together to create a paste. Using a kitchen knife and cooking spatula as tools, we applied the mixture to the inside walls of the pigsty, layer by layer, until it was thick enough to prevent further deterioration and wind.
However, raising the height of the pigsty was impossible. Consequently, we had to bend in and out of it many times a day. Over time, all of us, except my grandma, became accustomed to the low entrance, and our backs became flexible. Unfortunately, my grandma often forgot to duck and hit her head, resulting in many large and small bumps on her head, as well as tiny wooden splinters piercing her forehead. I would often assist her in removing these splinters.
One year later, my uncle came to visit us. This was my first encounter with my mother’s family, as she had not seen them since I was born. When my mother left her family, my uncle was still a teenager, but by this time, he had matured into a strong man, towering over 6 feet tall.
Being cramped within the small confines of the pigsty, he appeared even larger.
The day after his arrival, he used a shovel to dig down the ground of the pigsty by more than a foot. Not only was my uncle able to stand up, but we all had more room to move around. He also intentionally left a two-foot-wide section against the wall. This created a small earthen platform as a bed. My entire family praised him for his creativity.
The earthen bed quickly became my favorite spot. However, the good times did not last long as a severe rainstorm caused the water level to rise. One morning, I woke up to find that my shoes were floating in the water. We filled the dug area with sand and soil, leaving the earthen platform about half a foot above the ground. I continued to sleep on it until I left the village.
3. The grass roof of the pigsty had been worn down over the years by rain and wind and leaked profusely. On rainy days, big rain was outside and small rain inside. Even after the rain stopped falling outside, the drips inside the pigsty would persist. We had to place all of our pots, pans, and bowls, large and small, throughout the pigsty to catch the raindrops. Despite the challenges, my mother used the opportunity to teach me a poem by Du Fu, a famous poet of the Tang dynasty in China: “Roof ceaselessly leaks, nowhere dry on bed, Rain taps incessant, thread of unbroken thread.”
One night, after a long day of work, I was tired and fell asleep. Suddenly, I was jolted awake by a loud noise. The sounds were coming from the roof and making the dirt shake as the roof fluttered. I sat up and peered through the hole in the back wall, a group of young men tossing something onto the roof. My mother went out to chase them. She was only one step away from catching them, but she stopped. When she came back, I asked her why she let them go. My mother replied, “What can we do even if I caught them? It’s enough that they got scared.”
The following day, a villager noticed that all of the grits she had collected to lay the foundation for her new house behind the pigsty were missing and became angry, shouting, “Who took all my grits? Who raised these lazy donkeys?” My mother calmly informed her, “Your grits are all on the roof of the pigsty.”
The pigsty leaked even more after their mischief. We couldn’t stay there if the issue wasn’t fixed. So, we purchased the necessary materials and hired three people to replace the roof.
We spent all of our savings, and finally, the new wheat straw roof was installed.
Despite the pretty appearance, the new roof did not meet our expectations. A severe storm hit soon after, with thunder rumbling in the distance and strong winds tossing the golden straw on the roof. Fearing that all of our hard work would be for nothing, our family bravely faced the downpour and used our bodies to press down on the eaves of the pigsty. After the rain subsided, we applied a thick layer of mud around the straw on the eaves and used thin iron wire to secure the straw from one end of the roof to the other. We felt released that we got it done.
4. To our surprise, the village head Qi-jun demanded that we pay rent for the pigsty. He counted the rent starting from the first day of our stay in 1966, which came to a total of forty-eight yuan. This was a huge amount considering a full day labor of an adult male could only earn 20 cents at that time. My mother argued with him, “Why is the broken pigsty worth so much money? It was our effort to repair it.” Qi-jun did not listen and ordered four men to move our stuff outside, spitting out, “You can’t move in without paying rent.” To escalate the situation, he refused to distribute food rations to us and banned us from leaving the village. With no place to go, we had to stay outside of the pigsty.
Unluckily, it began to rain heavily the day after we were driven out, drenching all of our belongings, and leaving our family soaked to the bone like chickens. Despite the compassion of several individuals in the village, they were hesitant to challenge Qi-jun’s orders. However, two elder villagers stepped in as peacemakers and said, “Why don’t you pay thirty yuan first?” My mother replied, “We spent all our money replacing the roof. We don’t have any money on hand.”
The old men then glanced at the pig tied up at our doorstep, suggesting, “Sell your pig.”
Pigs were often seen as a “cornucopia” by the local peasants. To supplement earnings from the fields, we started to raise pigs as other peasants for extra income. Our pig was thriving and growing rapidly, adding over half a pound per day. Our goal was to sell it once it reached 200 pounds so that we would have money to cover our regular expenses.
Under relentless pressure, we finally made the difficult decision to sell the pig. However, the day before the planned sale, the pig suddenly became ill, refusing to eat or even walk steadily. I tried tempting it with its favorite green vegetable leaves but to no avail. The pig wouldn’t even touch them, and I couldn’t tell if its vision was blurry or if it simply had no appetite.
Desperate for a solution, we took the pig to a veterinarian in town. By this point, the pig was unable to walk on its own, so we placed it in a large basket and carried it using a shoulder pole. The pig let out a loud grunt and initially struggled, but gradually stopped moving. Its voice grew softer and then faded.
While taking a quick break by the road in a village, a few people came to see our pig. One man identified the pig’s illness as Hoop Eye and quickly punctured its eyelid with a sewing needle. The pig bled dark blood, the man shook his head and sighed, “It’s too late.” Hoop Eye is a common illness among rural free-range pigs, which can be fatal if left untreated. We learned that the treatment is to release a small amount of blood from the pig’s eye and sprinkle salt on the cut. Unfortunately, we didn’t know this beforehand.
Our pig stretched out its legs and died in front of us. I couldn’t help but sob loudly, with tears and snot streaming down my face. My mother and second brother were also grieving. The people around us gave us advice, “Drain the blood quickly! You can still sell the pork.” A few warm-hearted people helped us slaughter the pig, and one brought a scale and a bag. We sold some in this village and traveled to nearby villages. For those who didn’t have cash, we exchanged pork for soybeans. We traded it for a large bag of beans and returned in the late evening.
Before we finished dinner, two young men arrived and forcibly took my mother away.
Soon after, Qi-jun angry voice could be heard, accusing my mother of attempting to deceive him. He demanded that she kneel down and ordered others to assault her. I was tearful and felt heartache hearing my mother’s cries of pain but was helpless to stop it. The beating continued until late into the night, with four men standing guard to prevent my mother from taking her own life.
The following morning, the soybeans we obtained were taken from us. We moved back to the pigsty, but it took my mother a week to fully recover from her injuries sustained during the beating.
My mother said, “To die is easier than to live on. Many times, people thought I might choose to end my life, but that is not who I am. Though life has not been easy for me, I refuse to give up on myself, my children, and my family. I have too much respect for life and will not let my difficulties define me. I will continue to live and see what the future has in store.”
*
We lived in the pigsty for six years until 1972, when my mother was reassigned to a fruit tree farm to continue her labor reform, and we were finally able to leave. When the Cultural Revolution ended, I was able to attend college, and in 1992, I came to the U.S. to pursue further education. After completing graduate school in Massachusetts, I moved to Washington, D.C., where I worked in a nonprofit organization, conducting occupational safety and health research until my retirement two years ago. At present, I live in Maryland with my husband, enjoying a happy and peaceful life. The nightmare of my childhood is now behind me, and I sincerely hope that such suffering never happens again, anywhere, and to anyone.
*This is an excerpt from the memoir with the same title, which won the Best Category (Survival) Memoir award in the 2023 Memoir Book Competition
