Soon after I entered the first year of high school, the Communist Party came proclaiming the slogan, "Liberated!” I saw men and women of the Liberation Army staging performances on the streets, dancing the “Farmer Song,” playing waist drums and talking with people in a friendly way, which was quite different from both the apathy and arrogance of the former Kuomintang policemen. I felt a sense
of refreshment, as all this made a good impression in my young brain. In school,the atmosphere also was quite animated. In the election for the president of thestudent union, candidates of the upper grades and their campaign teams delivered lively speeches, performance, slogans and posters. It all felt really democrati-c. I also read many new books such as "Little Erhei’s Marriage," "The Vicissitudes of Li Jia Zhuang," "Rhymes of Li Youcai," "A Brief History of Social Development,” "The Story of Long March" and so on. In my mind everything was fresh, forward-looking and full of vitality. However, the situation quickly changed in less than a year. The first event was the "Suppression of Counter Revolutionaries" campaign which was carried out swiftly and violently. Every couple of days someone was singled out to be shot, a classmate's uncle was killed and the former
high school principal was shot. Once a few hundred students led by teachers of our high school were sent to watch the public execution of a family “counterrevolutionary” group branded as "Wu Jun" (Armed Squad). All 25 members were shot. Several appeared to be children but were listed as being 18 years old. The charge was simply the words: "Harboring Wu Jun.” Then every day at noon when we went back home for lunch, we would see at the exit of the jail a number of prisonerspushed onto a truck and driven to some market town to be shot. My eldest uncle was graduated from the Police Academy of Guangzhou and later was appointed the chief of Xingning County Police Bureau for two years in the pre-communist era. Buthe felt it incompatible with his interests, so resigned and became the principal of Dexin School. Later he was arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. A police chief from the KMT era sentenced to only four years was unusual. Seeing -so many people killed every day, his family and my grandfather were scared hal-f to death. My nascent feeling of freshness and excitement gradually disappeared and I began to feel horror. Land Reform In the late 1950, Xingning County began Land Reform. At the beginning, under the guidance of our teachers, we studied "The Land Reform Law" with great enthusiasm. Then we went to the mountainous ar-ea to publicize the law. At that time the public security was not good in mount-ainous areas, so the government gave the lead teacher a pistol. Nevertheless, w-e were enthusiastic to explainthe Land Reform Law door-to-door, to hold song an-d dance performances and to mobilize poorpeasants to participate in the land re-form.Before long we perceived that many teachers were in low spirits because th-eir families were classified as “landlord” or “rich peasant” and had to “r-eimburse” a lot of money. Almost at the same time the government called for the purchase of "victory bonds." In fact, it was required that each personbuy the-m, with a certain amount deducted from their monthly payroll. We noticed that many teachers soon were frowning. My family was classified as “professional and small land lessor” because my parents were medical persons and with only a littl-e ancestral land for lease. After land reform, my parents offered the
land to the government. So we didn’t suffer direct impact from land reform. Butmy grandfather was classified as "businessman and landlord.” In fact, he was inhis 70s and owned neither a business nor much land. But he was escorted to his village to be denounced and struggled at an assembly several times. Probably because of his popularity, he didn't suffer much torment. Almost everything in my grandfather’s home was confiscated, yet he still was ordered to reimburse the pea-sants for what he had “exploited” from them. Actually, they set an eye on my
parent's part. If my parents would not pay for my grandfather’s alleged exploitation, they would torture my grandfather. So my parents had to pay again and aga-in. Finally my parents sold their new three story building to pay, so the authorities backed off. My parents had worked hard for more than 10 years to save money to construct that building. They were preparing to move in, live upstairs anduse the downstairs as a clinic. Unexpectedly, it had become a political footballand a burden to them. My parents were deeply disappointed and shed many tears.
Many “poor and lower middle peasants” were allocated the lands and properties
of landlords and rich peasants and were happy for a time. But before long the government called for “farming cooperation” and reclaimed all lands for “collective ownership,” forming “agricultural producers' cooperatives” and mandating collective labor. Peasants had to pay “public grain” (agricultural tax ingrai-n) and sell "surplus grain" (a kind of obligatory transaction). The state then
monopolized the purchase and marketing of grain and other produce, leaving peasants with almost nothing. Finally peasants were force to join “people's communes” nationwide. The people's commune plus the other events of “Great Leap Forward” (see below) led the national economy to a depression and finally the Great Famine. More than 30 million Chinese starved to death, a tragedy which authorities blamed on "three years of natural disasters.” Early 1952, the “leaders of top rank” (It was said Chairman Mao Zedong and the Secretary of the Central-south Bureau Tao Zhu) denounced land reform in Guangdong as "right deviation" with “too few counterrevolutionaries killed,” and ordered that "at least one should be killed in every village" (see "Meizhou History" Series Sixteen, 2003). Ther
-e fore they sent cadres from north China to Guangdong to "make amends". A largenumber of the local cadres who had fought bravely in guerrilla warfare were termed "localists" and were purged or put in jail. All landlords and rich peasants were subjected to cruel torture: hands tied across the back or only a thumb tied up and then hung on a tree to swing, mouth filled with slurry or fecal water, beard burned, nostrils penetrated with a rope and pulled like a cow, a snake placed in the crotch, etc. Many were tortured to death on the spot (see "Xingning County Chronicle" 1985). During the most intense period of persecution, every now and then one of my schoolmate’s or teacher’s families was in misfortune. I ha-d an intimate classmate, whose father had gone to Southeast Asia in his teenage to work for years. After saving some money he came back home to buy a few mu (1
mu equals 666.7 square meter) of fields. That caused him to be designated as a landlord. My classmate by then was out of school. Once we met and I asked with concern about his father. His face sank and he turned his head away, saying in a choking voice, "nothing, nothing.” Later I learned that his father had been sho-t. Almost all well-known persons in the county (so called "little and big 'Chiang Kai-sheks’" by Mao) were arrested on trumped up charges and killed. My kindhearted grandfather was not spared because of his position and reputation in the community, especially in the church (a so-called "imperialist lackey"). It was said that one representative of the peasant union recommended sparing my grandfather but was brutally rejected by an official sent from north China. Learning that my grandfather had been killed, my father almost collapsed and all the family w-as left in grief and fear. It was difficult to live any longer in our communit-y. At that time occurred the Korean War, when the government called for physicians with medical college degrees to participate in the "construction of national defense" to support remote areas. My father and two other local physicians enrolled, all the three were prestigious doctors in Xingning County. My father determined to leave forever the place of "heart dripping blood" with grief and indign-ation. The other two choosing to leave their hometown also were bitter. These d-octors were assigned to the remote counties of west Guangdong province, with my father was sent to the People's Hospital of Xinyi County. In 1953, when there w-as still freedom to change residence, my mother moved us seven siblings to Guangzhou. She had to take care of seven children, so decided not to look for a job.