The year 1976 was an extraordinary year in modern Chinese history. Big events were unfolding at a breathtaking pace: Premier Zhou Enlai’s death on January 8, the Tiananmen Incident on April 5, the death of Marshal Zhu De, father of the Red Army on July 6, the Tangshan Earthquake on July 28, Chairman Mao Zedong’s death on September 9 and the downfall of the Gang of Four on October 6.
By this time, the 25-year-old He Yanguang had been transferred back to Beijing and had become the deputy director of the Chongwen District Chemical Fiber Plant and also a member of a local Party committee. Premier Zhou Enlai, who was widely respected by the Chinese, died in January that year. People mourned him in all kinds of forms. But the ‘Gang of Four’, seeing the premier and his posthumous influence as the major barrier to their bid for the highest power, tried all possible means to obstruct people’s mourning and staged thinly veiled attacks against the late premier. This angered He and millions of Chinese. The simmering anger and resentment erupted at the Pure Brightness Festival, which fell on April that year, the day the Chinese traditionally pay homage to the dead.
Thousands upon thousands of Beijingers, carrying wreath, converged on Tiananmen Square to express their love for the late premier and in doing so showed defiance to the Gang of Four. The world’s largest square turned into a sea of wreath. He Yanguang led the mourners from his factory to the square. The mourning activities were ruthlessly put down and more than 100 people from He Yanguang’s factory would later be incriminated.
The defiant He Yanguang spoke up at a meeting of the local Party committee. He said that the Shanghai-based Wenhui Daily was attacking Premier Zhou Enlai by innuendo and Shanghai’s first Party secretary must be held accountable for this. He was referring to Zhang Chunqiao, a member of the Gang of Four. On hearing such comments the committee director presiding over the meeting hastily dispersed those in attendance, later telling him, “You cannot go on like this. You must mend your ways, now!” He Yanguang however believed that some people must speak up. What he did was driven by the mindset of a martyr. He was burning with the passion to dedicate himself to the fight. “By that time, nobody could talk me out from what I was determined to do,” he recalled.
On May 6, 1976, one month after the Tiananmen Square Incident, He Yanguang was arrested. He stayed in the prison for seven months and underwent 49 separate interrogations. He was unaware that the Gang of Four and its followers had drawn up a list of people to be executed until after their demise and his subsequent release from prison. Among those on the list had been He Yanguang.
20 Years: From Left to Right
He Yanguang thus sums up the transformation of ideas undergone by those of his generation, “It was the September 13 (Lin Biao) Incident that made people think. It was the April 5 (Tiananmen) Movement that rallied people’s strength to fight against the despotic Gang of Four. It is the reform and opening up that make it possible for people to know China anew and the world afresh.”
Many Chinese have traveled to developed countries since the late 1970s. But different eyes see things differently. He, on his part, always compares what he sees to what he was told in his formative years. “I visited Australia and the United States. I saw little differences between the lives of rural and urban people. Even in the desert, people eat, drink and use the toilet much the same as those in the cities. In our elementary and high school years, we were told that Communism was to eliminate the ‘three major distinctions’ between town and country, industry and agriculture, physical and mental labor.’ They have long achieved this.”
After the late 1970s, many new things appeared in China – land was contracted to farmers, enterprises were reformed based on the stock-share scheme and private enterprises mushroomed across the country.
All this is taken for granted by the younger generation. However, for He and the people of his generation, all this represents a sharp departure from the old practice and creed, as he writes in his blog, “In the last 30 years of our rapid growth, can you name one single step forward that was free from the influence, help and even ‘pressure’ from the civilized societies and rule-by-law countries? For years, we had targeted our criticism at the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity of the capitalist society and guarded against their extolling of human rights as though human rights were a monster. Today, however, we have at least begun to entertain the ideas of building up a ‘democratic’ country ‘ruled by law’ and intend to protect private property and the citizen’s basic rights.”
Elaborating further He explained, “I used to be a ‘leftist’ but now I have become a ‘rightist.’ If somebody tries to pull me backward to my past, no way!”
As a result, He is extremely sensitive to Cultural Revolution-style fever and intolerance. “Whenever I see North Koreans in TV documentaries burning with revolutionary fever and looking as if they were molded by the same cookie cutter, and also the grand scenes of Saddam Hussein reviewing his troops a few years back, I tell myself, ah, these are old tricks we used to be up to.”
When asked “Don’t you think the zeal displayed by the post-1980 generation is much the same as that demonstrated by your generation?” He Yanguang replied, “It does not measure up to ours, we shouted revolutionary slogans but we seldom spoke with dirty words.”
However, he does not think all people of the post-1980 generation are na?ve and fanatic. “I’ve met many people born after 1980 who are reasonable and well read. During my recent tour around the May 12 earthquake-struck areas in Sichuan Province, I saw many volunteers offering their help. They were all born after 1980. At the same time, some people of my generation are opposed to my opinions and perceptions.”
“People with different experiences and different ways of looking at the experiences come to different conclusions. So there should be tolerance towards different voices.” He added.
In He Yanguang’s eyes, the younger generation will certainly be given to more thinking and pondering when they have experienced a whole lot more. “They are now showering scathing words on us. But I believe this is only a superficial and transient phenomenon.”
August 2008
