48 THE GREAT PURGE
48 浩劫降临
(1966–67 AGE 72–73)
1966～1967 年 72～73 岁
AT THE END of May 1966, Mao set up a new office, the Cultural Revolution Small Group, to help run the Purge. Mme Mao headed it for him, with Mao's former secretary, Chen Bo-da, its nominal director, and purge expert Kang Sheng its “adviser.” This office, in addition to Lin Biao and Chou En-lai, formed Mao's latest inner circle.
一九六六年五月底，专为毛搞大清洗的中央文革小组(简称“中央文革”)正式成立。名义上的组长是陈伯达，实际掌权的是江青，康生做“顾问”。“中央文革”同林彪、周恩来一道成为毛的新内阁”。刘少奇的倒台只是时间问题。
Under the new cabal, the cult of Mao was escalated to fever pitch. Mao's face dominated the front page of People's Daily, which also ran a column of his quotations every day. Soon, badges started appearing with Mao's head on them, of which, altogether, some 4.8 billion were manufactured. More copies of Mao's Selected Works were printed—and more portraits of him (1.2 billion)—than China had inhabitants. It was this summer that the Little Red Book was handed out to everyone. It had to be carried and brandished on all public occasions, and its prescriptions recited daily.
为大清洗开道，对毛的个人崇拜被推到疯狂的顶点。每天的《人民日报》头版都有一栏“毛主席语录”，经常还有毛的巨幅照片。毛像章铺天盖地，两、三年中生产了四十八亿枚。毛的像印了十二亿张，《毛泽东选集》印了八亿套，超出全中国人口数量。这年夏天，以“小红书”着称的《毛主席语录》也上了市，全国人民人手一册，走到哪里，举到哪里，天天要念，要背，要摇晃。
In June, Mao intensified the terrorization of society. He picked as his first instrument of terror young people in schools and universities, the natural hotbeds for activists. These students were told to condemn their teachers and those in charge of education for poisoning their heads with “bourgeois ideas”—and for persecuting them with exams, which henceforth were abolished. The message was splashed in outsize characters on the front page of People's Daily, and declaimed in strident voices on the radio, carried by loudspeakers that had been rigged up everywhere, creating an atmosphere that was both blood-boiling and blood-curdling. Teachers and administrators in education were selected as the first victims because they were the people instilling culture, and because they were the group most conveniently placed to offer up to the youthful mobs, being right there to hand.
社会上掀起了恐怖的浪潮。毛挑天生好斗的青少年学生作制造恐怖的工具，拿学校老师当牺牲品。从街头巷尾到处竖起的高音喇叭里，从《人民日报》一篇又一篇的文章里，学生们得知学校由“资产阶级知识分子”统治着，教的都是“毒草”，老师把他们“当敌人”， 用考试来“迫害”他们。考试从此取消。学生被号召“保卫伟大领袖毛主席”。没人解释老师怎么可能加害伟大领袖，也没人说明伟大领袖到底出了什么事。
The young were told that their role was to “safeguard” Mao, although how their teachers could possibly harm “the great Helmsman,” or what perils might beset him, was not disclosed. Nevertheless, many responded enthusiastically. Taking part in politics was something no one had been allowed to do under Mao, and the country was seething with frustrated activists who had been denied the normal outlets available in most societies, even to sit around and argue issues. Now, suddenly, there seemed to be a chance to get involved. To those interested in politics, the prospect was tremendously exciting. Young people began to form groups.
学生们动了起来。他们本来就有强烈的政治参与欲望，这种渴望迄今完全受到压制。现在毛允许他们在他操纵下参与政治。他们激动地建立组织，按毛定好的调子、设下的框架行事。
On 2 June, a group from a middle school in Peking put up a wall poster, which they signed with the snappy name of “Red Guards,” to show that they wanted to safeguard Mao. Their writing was full of remarks like: “Stuff ‘human feelings!' ” “We will be brutal!” “We will strike you [Mao's enemies] to the ground and trample you!” The seeds of hate that Mao had sown were ready for reaping. Now he was able to unleash the thuggery of these infected teenagers, the most malleable and violent element of society.
六月二日，北京清华附中学生贴出大字报，结尾署上的是一个响亮的名字：“红卫兵”。意思是要保卫毛泽东。与一九五七年校园里的大字报迥然不同，这里毫无人性，毫无思想，除了蛮横就是乱骂：“什么“人情”呀……都滚到一边去！”“我们就是要粗暴！”“我们就是要把你们打翻在地，再踏上一只脚！”毛播下的“对敌人要狠”的种子正在破土而出，多年精心灌输的对他的无条件崇拜现在开花结果。那些血液里躁动着暴力，最容易受煽动的青少年，开始了为毛的冲锋陷阵。
To make sure that students were fully available to carry out his wishes, Mao ordered schooling suspended from 13 June. “Now lessons are stopped,” he said, and young people “are given food. With food they have energy and they want to riot. What are they expected to do if not to riot?” Violence broke out within days. On 18 June, scores of teachers and cadres at Peking University were dragged in front of crowds and manhandled, their faces blackened, and dunces' hats put on their heads. They were forced to kneel, some were beaten up, and women were sexually molested. Similar episodes happened all over China, producing a cascade of suicides.
毛下令学校从六月十三日起停课。他说：“现在停课又管饭吃，吃了饭要发热，要闹事，不叫闹事干什么？”六月十八日，北京大学校园里设起了所谓“斗鬼台”，几十个教师、干部被抓到人群前乱打乱斗，脸上涂墨汁，头上戴高帽子，罚跪、揪头发、连打带踢，妇女被乱摸私处。暴行在全国蔓延，自杀成风。
MAO ORCHESTRATED THESE events from the provinces. He had left the capital the previous November as soon as he had set the Purge in motion. Peking was no longer safe: it was full of foes he wanted to purge, and uncomfortably close to Russian troops on the Outer Mongolia border. For more than eight months, Mao stayed way down south, travelling incessantly.
毛在外省掌握局势。他是头年十一月发动文革时离开北京的，南下到中国腹地，八个月中不停地换地方住。
He was also relaxing and storing up energy for the coming tempest. He took walks in the misty hills along the lake at Hangzhou, and flirted at his twice-weekly dancing parties. That June, while mayhem was rising, he spent some time in a particularly serene villa that he had never been to, outside his home village of Shaoshan. He had ordered this villa built during his previous visit seven years before. While swimming in a reservoir there, he had been much taken by the secluded beauty of the surroundings, and said to the provincial boss: “Mm, this place is pretty quiet. Would you build a straw hut here for my retirement?” As the man was soon purged, nothing was done until Mao brought it up again a year later, in the depth of the famine. So began “Project 203,” the building of a giant steel and cement edifice called Dripping Grotto. The whole mountain range was sealed off, and the local peasants evicted. A helicopter pad and a special railway line were planned, and an earthquake- and atom bomb–proof building, with shock-absorbers, was later incorporated. Altogether, Mao stayed here for all of eleven days in that violent June, and never again.
六月全国动乱四起时，他闹中取静，住進了一所他还从未涉足过的格外幽静的别墅：韶山村外“滴水洞”。那是毛七年前回韶山时授意建的。他当时在水库里游泳，对周围好似世外桃源的僻静动了心，对湖南省委第一书记周小舟说：“咯个地方倒很安静，我退休后，在这儿搭个茅棚给我住好吗？”周小舟不久被打成彭德怀反党集团的成员，“茅棚”也暂时没修。第二年，毛又对接任的张平化再提此事，于是有了称作“二0三工程”的滴水洞：一座钢筋水泥的单层巨厦。整片山全都封闭，居住的农家一概迁走，后来又在“洞”内添了防地震、防原子弹的特别房间。造价是天文数字，修的时间正是大饥荒最严重时。毛在这里一共住了十一天，再也没有回来过。
This grey monstrosity was surrounded, incongruously, by soft green hills alive with blazing wildflowers, and the back abutted onto the Mao family's ancestral burial ground. Its front door faced a peak called Dragon's Head, auspicious in the view of geomancy. This delighted Mao, who chatted jovially with his entourage about the feng shui assets of the place.
毛的灰色住宅不协调地坐落在柔和的青山绿水间，四周山花烂漫。房子背后是毛家老祖宗的坟地，面对龙头峰，是块风水宝地。毛看到很高兴，跟他的警卫们谈开了早年风水先生怎样把这里称作“龙脉”。
Though he was just on the edge of his native village, Mao did not meet a single villager. On his way, a little girl had caught a glimpse of him in his car, and told her family. Police descended at once, and warned the family: “You didn't see Chairman Mao! Don't you dare to say that again!” Meetings were called to warn the villagers not to think that Mao was there. Mao spent most of his time reading and thinking. He did not even go swimming, although the reservoir was right on his doorstep.
虽然毛回“家”了，但一个村民他也没见。在去滴水洞的路上，有个打柴的小姑娘好奇地朝忽然驶过的汽车看了一眼，恰好毛掀开窗帘往外观看，被小姑娘瞧见了，兴奋地回去报告了村里人。很快，公安人员就找到她家，警告她说：“你看错人了，车里坐的不是毛主席。你再不准乱说了！”村子里特地开了会，告诉老百姓不要“乱想”。毛任何外人都不见，除了看书，批阅文件，就是思索问题。散步不超过三百公尺，甚至人到水库跟前也没有下去游泳。
By the end of June, he was ready to head back to Peking and start the next stage of his Purge. En route, he stopped at Wuhan, where on 16 July he swam for more than an hour in the Yangtze, watched by tens of thousands of people. Like his swim a decade before, this was to send the message to his foes that, at the age of seventy-two, he had the health, the strength and the will for a gigantic fight. And this time the symbolic gesture was also intended for the population at large, especially the young. The message was distilled into one slogan: “Follow Chairman Mao forward through high winds and waves!” Chanted repeatedly from the now ubiquitous loudspeakers, it fanned the flames in many restless heads. Having cranked up his media to ballyhoo this swim to the maximum, even making it famous abroad, Mao returned to Peking on 18 July. He immediately adopted a hands-on approach, frequently chairing meetings with the Small Group that ran the Purge, and meeting every day with Chou En-lai, who was in charge of day-to-day business.
六月底，毛回北京的形势成熟了。途中他逗留武汉，七月十六日在成千上万的人观看下，在长江里游泳一个多小时。就像十年前一样，这是一场“政治游泳秀”， 毛在向他的政敌发信号：以七十二岁的高龄，他有这样的体魄、精力和决心来打垮他们。毛的信号也是发给全国人民，特别是年轻人的：“跟随毛主席，在大风大浪中前進！”无处不在的高音喇叭，配着音乐反覆喊这句口号，把已经躁动的头脑煽得更加狂热。这次游泳的宣传规模之大，连在外国也出了名，好些外国人提起毛时，都知道他的“游泳”。
Mao did not go back to his old house, claiming he did not like the way it had been redecorated. Instead, he moved into unexpected quarters in another part of Zhongnanhai—the changing-rooms of the swimming pools, which he made his main residence for the next ten years. He did not move there to swim. He was taking precautions against the possibility that bugging devices—or worse—had been installed during his absence.
七月十八日，毛回到北京。他立即召集中央文革小组会议，天天同主持日常事务的周恩来见面，过问详情。他异常忙碌，整天不是开会就是找人谈话。毛没有搬回他在中南海的房子“丰泽园”，说是刚维修过的房子住起来不舒服。其实，他是怕房里装了窃听器，或更可怕的东西。他搬進一个最意想不到的地方：中南海室内游泳池的更衣室。在那里他住了整整十年。
IT WAS IN these nondescript changing-rooms that Mao created the terror of “Red August,” with the aim of frightening the whole nation into an even greater degree of conformity. On 1 August he wrote to the first group of Red Guards, who had vowed in their posters to “be brutal” and to “trample” Mao's enemies, to announce his “fiery support.” He circulated this letter, together with the bellicose Red Guard posters, to the Central Committee, telling these high officials that they must promote the Red Guards. Many of these officials were actually on Mao's hit list, but for now he used them to spread terror—one that would soon engulf themselves. Following Mao's instructions, these officials encouraged their children to form Red Guard groups, and these children passed the word to their friends. Red Guard groups mushroomed as a result, invariably headed by the children of high officials.
就是在这几间单调的更衣室里，毛制造了“红八月”的大恐怖。八月一日，他给那些发誓“我们就是要粗暴！”“就是要把你们打翻在地，再踏上一只脚！”的清华附中红卫兵写信，“表示热烈的支持”。他把他的信，连同红卫兵凶神恶煞的大字报，印发给他几天前刚下令召开的中共八届十一中全会，要与会的各地大员支持红卫兵。这些人中的大部分不久将被毛清洗，但眼下毛用他们来推动红卫兵的发展。他们的孩子们组织扩大了红卫兵，红卫兵在全国势如燎原之火。
Learning from their fathers and friends that Mao was encouraging violence, the Red Guards immediately embarked on atrocities. On 5 August, in a Peking girls' school packed with high officials' children (which Mao's two daughters had attended), the first known death by torture took place. The headmistress, a fifty-year-old mother of four, was kicked and trampled by the girls, and boiling water was poured over her. She was ordered to carry heavy bricks back and forth; as she stumbled past, she was thrashed with leather army belts with brass buckles, and with wooden sticks studded with nails. She soon collapsed and died. Afterwards, leading activists reported to the new authority. They were not told to stop—which meant carry on.
八月五日，在高干子女成群，毛的两个女儿也曾就读的北京师大女附中，学生们第一次活活打死了自己的老师，五十岁的副校长卞仲耘。这位四个孩子的母亲，被强迫挑重担子来回跑，女学生们用皮带抽她，用带钉子的木棍打她，用开水烫她。卞仲耘就这样被折磨至死。当天晚上，学生到北京饭店请示北京新领导怎么办。没有任何人发话叫她们住手。
A more explicit incitement to violence soon came from Mao himself. On 18 August, dressed in army uniform for the first time since 1949, he stood on Tiananmen Gate to review hundreds of thousands of Red Guards. This was when the Red Guards were written about in the national press and introduced to the nation, and the world. A leading perpetrator of atrocities in the girls' school where the headmistress had just been killed was given the signal honor of putting a Red Guard armband on Mao. The dialogue that followed was made public: “Chairman Mao asked her: ‘What's your name?' She said ‘Song Bin-bin.' Chairman Mao asked: ‘Is it the “Bin” as in “Educated and Gentle?” ' She said: ‘Yes.' Chairman Mao said: ‘Be violent!' ”
八月十八日，掌权以来第一次穿上军装的毛，站在天安门城楼上检阅数十万红卫兵。红卫兵从此在全国、全世界出了名。打死卞仲耘的北师大女附中红卫兵，获得了派代表给毛戴红卫兵袖章的“殊荣”。现场广播说：“北京师大女附中的红卫兵宋彬彬给毛主席戴上了红卫兵袖章。毛主席问她：“你叫什么名字？”她说：“叫宋彬彬。” 毛主席问：“是不是文质彬彬的“彬”？”她说：“是。”毛主席说：“要武嘛！””，在“毛主席万岁！毛主席万岁！”的背景欢呼声中，现场女播音员说：“敬爱的毛主席，您的话我们记住了。”
Song Bin-bin changed her name to “Be Violent,” and her school changed its name to “The Red Violent School.” Atrocities now multiplied in schools and universities. They started in Peking, then spread across the country, as Peking Red Guards were sent all over China to demonstrate how to do things like thrash victims and make them lick their own blood off the ground. Provincial youngsters were encouraged to visit Peking to learn that Mao had given them enormous destructive license. To facilitate this process, Mao ordered that travel be made free, together with food and accommodation while traveling. Over the next four months, 11 million young people came to Peking and Mao made seven more appearances at Tiananmen Square, where they gathered in massive, frenzied, yet well-drilled crowds.
宋彬彬改名“宋要武”，北师大女附中改成“红色要武中学”。北京红卫兵被派去全国教授如何打人，如何剃“阴阳头”，如何叫挨打的人舔自己流在地上的血。上海市上海中学的一名前红卫兵回忆道：“北京红卫兵南下，穿着军装，系着武装带，非常神气，对我们说：“你们这里怎么这么文质彬彬，一点革命气氛都没有？”我当时弄不懂他们说的“革命气氛”是指什么。一个北京来的女红卫兵从腰上解下皮带就开始示范怎么抽人。
为了让全国红卫兵更好地学习北京的榜样，为了让他们明白毛是他们的靠山，毛鼓励他们来北京“朝圣”，下令旅行、吃、住都不要钱。四个月内，总共一千一百万青少年来到首都，毛在天安门广场和长安街上七次接见他们，每次的人群都如山如海，若痴若狂，而又井然有序。
There was not one school in the whole of China where atrocities did not occur. And teachers were not the only victims. In his letter to the Red Guards on 1 August 1966, Mao singled out for praise some militant teenagers who had been dividing pupils by family background and abusing those from undesirable families, whom they labeled “Blacks.” Mao announced specifically that these militants had his “fiery support,” which was unequivocal endorsement for what they were doing. In the girls' school where the headmistress was tortured to death, “Blacks” had ropes tied around their necks, were beaten up, and forced to say: “I'm the bastard of a bitch. I deserve to die.”
在红卫兵暴行中受害的不光是老师。毛在八月一日给红卫兵的信中格外称赞了“北京大学附属中学红旗战斗小组”。这个组织已经在做一件特别的事：把同学按家庭出身划分为“红五类”、“黑五类”，由“红五类”对“黑五类”進行各种凌辱。《人民日报》报导毛在天安门城楼接见他们，称他们为“以敢于冲锋陷阵闻名的战斗组织”。在打死卞仲耘老师的北师大女附中，红卫兵强迫“黑五类”站在教室前面挨斗，拿一根长绳子绕过挨斗者的脖子，把她们拴成一串，动手打她们，逼她们“交代反动思想” 和父母的“罪行”，要她们不断说：“我是狗崽子，我是混蛋，我该死。”
With models set up by Mao, this practice then spread to all schools, accompanied by a “theory of the bloodline,” summed up in a couplet as ridiculous as it was brutal: “The son of a hero father is always a great man; a reactionary father produces nothing but a bastard!” This was chanted by many children of officials' families, who dominated the early Red Guards, little knowing that their “hero fathers” were Mao's real targets.
在这些榜样的带动下，把无辜的孩子变成牺牲品的做法遍及全国学校。当时有个着名的对联：“老子英雄儿好汉，老子反动儿混蛋”。不少高干子弟爱把这句话挂在嘴上。他们哪里知道他们的“英雄”父亲才是毛的真正目标。
At this initial stage, Mao simply used these children as his tools, setting them upon other children. When the Sichuan boss returned from Peking, he told his son, who was organizing a Red Guard group: “The Cultural Revolution is the continuation of the Communists against the Nationalists … Now our sons and daughters must fight their [Nationalists'] sons and daughters.” This man could not possibly have given such an order unless it had come from Mao.
让小孩子做牺牲品，无疑得到毛的鼓励。四川省负责人从北京开会回来后，对他做红卫兵领袖的儿子讲会议精神：“文化大革命是共产党跟国民党斗争的继续。原来我们跟他们斗，现在我们的子女跟他们的子女斗。”
AFTER TERROR IN SCHOOLS, Mao directed his Red Guards to fan out into society at large. The targets at this stage were the custodians of culture, and culture itself. On 18 August, Mao stood next to Lin Biao on Tiananmen while Lin called on Red Guards throughout the country to “smash … old culture.” The youngsters first went for objects like traditional shop signs and street names, which they attacked with hammers, and renamed. As in many revolutions, puritans turned on the softer and more flamboyant. Long hair, skirts and shoes with any hint of high heels were pounced on in the streets, and sheared by scissors-wielding teenagers. From now on, only flat shoes, and uniform-like, ill-fitting jackets and trousers, in only a few colors, were available.
毛接着把红卫兵暴行从校园引向社会，首当其冲的是文化人和文化。八月十八日在天安门城楼上，站在毛身旁的林彪，号召红卫兵“大破”“旧文化”。最早被捣毁的是传统的商店招牌、街道名称。长发、裙子、高跟鞋成了那些在街头挥舞剪刀的大孩子的牺牲品。从此以后多年，中国人只能穿平底鞋和千篇一律的外套裤子。
But Mao wanted something much more vicious. On 23 August he told the new authorities: “Peking is not chaotic enough … Peking is too civilised.” As Peking was the trail-blazer and the provinces all copied the capital, this was a way to pump up terror nationwide. That afternoon, groups of teenage Red Guards, many of them girls, descended on the countryard of the Peking Writers' Association. By then, a “uniform” was firmly in fashion for the Red Guards: green army-style clothes, often ordinary clothes dyed army green, or sometimes real army uniforms handed down by parents, red armband on the left arm, Little Red Book in hand—and a leather belt with brass buckles. Thus attired, the Red Guards rained blows with their heavy belts on some two dozen of the country's best-known writers. Large insulting wooden plaques were hung on thin wire from the writers' necks, as they were thrashed in the scorching sun.
八月二十三日，毛在中央工作会议上说：“我看北京乱的不厉害”，“北京太文明了”。当天下午，一群群红卫兵，多是女中学生，来到北京市文联的大院里。那时候，红卫兵有了自己的“制服”：绿军装(有的是父辈传下来的，有的是染的)、红袖章，手拿小红书，腰上系着带铜扣的宽皮带。那天日头特别毒，作家们被集中在文联院子里，在“XX站出来！”的喝声下一个个出列，脖子上被挂上事先准备好的大木牌，上面写着各自的名字，冠以“牛鬼蛇神”、“反动权威”等罪名。红卫兵用铜扣皮带劈头盖脑地朝他们打去。
The victims were then trucked to an old Confucian temple, which housed Peking's major library. There, opera costumes and props had been brought to make a bonfire. About thirty of the country's leading writers, opera singers and other artists were made to kneel in front of the bonfire and were set upon again with kicks and punches, sticks and brass-buckled belts. One of the victims was the 69-year-old writer Lao She, who had been lauded by the regime as “the people's artist.” The following day, he drowned himself in a lake.
作家们接着被塞進大卡车，运到曾是孔庙的首都图书馆。那里集中了北京各剧团的大量戏装、道具，红卫兵用它们点起一堆熊熊大火，把几十位中国最着名的作家、艺术家和演员按倒跪在火堆旁，对他们棍棒交加。挨打受辱的有年近七十的作家老舍，第二天，他投湖自尽。
The site, props and victims had all been chosen to symbolize “old culture.” The selection of the victims, all household names, was unquestionably done at the very top, since till now they had all been official stars. There can be no doubt that the whole event was staged by the authorities; the loosely-banded teenage Red Guards could not possibly have organized all this on their own.
打人的地点、火烧的道具、被打的人物，都经过事先策划安排，用来代表“旧文化”。受害者们是中国家喻户晓的人物，迄今为止被官方尊为“人民艺术家”， 拿他们做毒打对象毫无疑问是最上层的决定，松散结合起来的少年红卫兵只是打手。
Mao had also cleared the way for the atrocities to escalate by issuing explicit orders to the army and police on the 21st and 22nd, saying that they must “absolutely not intervene” against the youngsters, using uncommonly specific language such as “even firing blanks … is absolutely forbidden.”
为了使这天的暴行顺利進行，毛在八月二十一、二十二两天，给军队和公安人员分别下令，不准他们制止学生：“绝对不许动用部队武装镇压革命学生”，“严禁出动警察镇压革命学生”，“放空枪進行威吓也绝对不允许”。
To spread terror deeper and closer to home, Mao got the young thugs to make violent raids on victims selected by the state, which gave their names and addresses to the Red Guards. The boss of Sichuan, for instance, ordered the department in his province that looked after prominent cultural figures to hand out a list to his son's Red Guard organization—something he could only have done if Mao had told him to.
“八·二三”后，红卫兵暴行在全国升级，“抄家”开始。当局把牺牲品的姓名、地址交给红卫兵，让他们去抄这些人的家。像四川的负责人，就要专管“民主党派” 的“统战部”，把非党知名人士的名单交给儿子做领袖的红卫兵组织。
On 24 August, national police chief Xie Fu-zhi told his subordinates to pass out such information. Clearly responding to questions like “What if the Red Guards kill these people?,” Xie said: “If people are beaten to death … it's none of our business.” “Don't be bound by rules set in the past.” “If you detain those who beat people to death … you will be making a big mistake.” Xie assured his reluctant subordinates: “Premier Chou supports it.”
八月二十四日，公安部长谢富治要警察同红卫兵“取得联系”，“供给他们情况，把五类分子[中共统治下的“阶级敌人”： 地主、富农、反革命分子、坏分子、右派分子]的情况介绍给他们”，帮助他们抄家。有人问：红卫兵打死人怎么办？谢答道：“打死了就打死了，我们根本不管”，“如果你把打人的人拘留起来，捕起来，你们就要犯错误”。针对心有疑虑的人，谢说：“连周总理都支持。”
It was with the authorities' blessing that Red Guards broke into homes where they burned books, cut up paintings, trampled phonograph records and musical instruments—generally wrecking anything to do with “culture.” They “confiscated” valuables, and beat up the owners. Bloody house raids swept across China, which People's Daily hailed as “simply splendid.” Many of those raided were tortured to death in their own homes. Some were carted off to makeshift torture chambers in what had been cinemas, theaters and sports stadiums. Red Guards tramping down the street, the bonfires of destruction, and the screams of victims being set upon—these were the sights and sounds of the summer nights of 1966.
有了上面的引导，血腥的抄家席卷全国。红卫兵超越名单的局限，到处破门而入。他们烧书、撕画，砸唱片、毁乐器，凡是沾“文化”边儿的东西都在扫荡之列。贵重物品被没收，主人遭受毒打。在《人民日报》“好得很！”的欢呼声中，不少人在自己家里被打死。有的被拖到电影院、戏院、体育场，那里如今是刑讯的地方。一九六六年八月，大街小巷到处是红卫兵抄家的脚步声，拷打审讯的怒喝声，受刑者的痛苦呼叫声。
There was a short list of notables to be exempted, drawn up by Chou En-lai. This later brought Chou totally unmerited plaudits for allegedly “saving” people. In fact, it was Mao who got Chou to draw the list up, on 30 August, and the purpose was purely utilitarian. The only reason Chou had charge of it was because he was running the whole show, not because he stepped in to save people. The list comprised a few dozen names. By contrast, later official statistics show that in August–September, in Peking alone, 33,695 homes were raided (which invariably involved physical violence), and 1,772 people were tortured, or beaten, to death.
八月三十日，周恩来列了一份“应予保护的干部名单”。后来，人们常引用这张单子，说红卫兵抄家打人是中央文革小组指使，周恩来插手進来保护受害者。事实上，单子上的人都是毛泽东要保护的，“中央文革”的事周恩来也都管。名单要保护的不过几十个人，而据后来的官方统计，从八月二十四日到九月十日，仅在北京就有三万三千六百九十五家被抄，打死的有一千七百七十二人。
To cover himself, Mao had Chou En-lai announce to a Red Guard rally on Tiananmen on 31 August: “Denounce by words, and not by violence.” This announcement allowed most Red Guards to opt out of violence by saying that Mao was against it. Some victims were also able to protect themselves by quoting this back to their persecutors. But as perpetrators of atrocities went unpunished, violence raged on.
毛也曾伪善地说：“要文斗，不要武斗”。不少红卫兵得以用这句话作盾牌逃避打人，挨打的也希冀以此保护自己。可是，打人的、被打的，都看得很清楚，行凶的人完全不受惩处。暴力当然也就继续了下去。
One of Mao's aims with the house raids was to use the Red Guards as proxy bandits. They confiscated tons of gold, silver, platinum, jewelry, and millions of dollars in hard currency, which all went into the state coffers, as well as many priceless antiques, paintings and ancient books. The looting, along with mindless on-site destruction, cleaned virtually all valuable possessions out of private hands. Some of the plunder was exported to earn foreign currency.
毛要红卫兵抄家还有实际的目的：把民间尚存的财富挖出来送進国库。据后来的官方数字，北京红卫兵在一个月的时间内为毛政权增加了黄金十万多两、白银近三十五万两，还有无数现金和名贵的书、画、文物。有些文物用来出口换外汇。
The top few leaders were allowed to take their pick of the booty. Mme Mao selected an 18-carat gold French pendant watch, studded with pearls and diamonds, for which she paid the princely sum of 7 yuan. This was in line with the Maoist leadership's “un-corrupt” practice of insisting on paying for paltry items like tea leaves at meetings, but paying nothing at all for their scores of villas and servants, and having the de facto private use of planes and trains and other expensive perks.
抄家所得放在文物管理处，对毛、林、周、康生、陈伯达五位政治局常委的家庭开放。江青选中的有一只十八K金的法国怀表，表上镶有近百颗珍珠、宝石，在“咱们不白拿，给钱”的“原则”下，她付了人民币七块钱。类似的毛政权的所谓“不腐败” 的表现，还包括领导人开会喝茶付茶叶钱。至于众多的别墅，成群的仆人，随叫随到的专用飞机、火车，还有无数其他特权好处，都是一分钱也不用付的。
Kang Sheng, an antiques lover, privatized some house raids by sending in his own personal looters disguised as Red Guards.
爱文物的康生从抄家中所获甚丰。管抄家物资的人说，康生经常自己来挑来选，“一钻進库房就是半天”，“在抄家的时候，康老还特意嘱咐过我，说谁谁家的东西出来时，让我告诉他。”
Mao himself pilfered thousands of old books. Sterilized by ultraviolet rays, they lined the shelves of his enormous sitting room, forming the backdrop to photographs of him receiving world leaders and impressing foreign visitors. The room, Kissinger mused, looked like “the retreat of a scholar.” In fact, unknown to the American visitors, it had more in common with one of Goering's mansions adorned with art seized from victims of Nazism.
爱看书的毛泽东则开出长长的书单，把抄家得来的数千册古旧书据为已有。用紫外线照射消毒，这些书便堂而皇之地摆上伟大领袖会客室的一排排书架。以这些书为背景，毛会见了来自世界各国的领导人，同他们合影留念。他们无一不为这些书所显示的毛的博学倾倒，基辛格(Henry Kissinger)感慨地说他好似身在“学者的书斋”。美国人有所不知的是，“书斋”倒像纳粹元帅戈林(Hermann Goering)用来陈列从犹太人那里抢来的画的画廊，那里的书留着真正主人的斑斑血迹。
The regime squeezed something else out of these raids: housing space. The housing shortage was acute, as virtually no new dwellings had been built for ordinary urban residents under the Communists. Now the battered families who had been raided were squeezed into one or two rooms, and neighbors were moved into the rest of the raided houses, often resulting, not surprisingly, in excruciatingly bitter relations.
毛政权用红卫兵抄家还解决了其他实际问题。其中之一是住房的极度匮乏。中共掌权多年，基本上没为一般城市居民造过新房子。如今，被抄的人家被迫挤進一两间小屋子，把其他房间腾给趁火打劫的邻居。同一个屋顶下住着的人们，就像仇敌一样彼此痛恨。
Some families who had been raided were exiled to villages, escalating a process which Mao had already initiated in order to turn cities into “pure” industrial centers. In Peking, nearly 100,000 were expelled in less than a month from late August. One eyewitness saw the vast waiting room at Peking railway station crammed with children waiting to be exiled with their parents. Red Guards ordered the children to kneel down, and then walked around aiming blows at their heads with brass-buckled belts. Some even poured scalding hot water over them as a farewell souvenir, while other passengers tried to find a place to hide.
许多家庭在抄家后被赶出北京，下放到农村。毛政权一直在想办法减少城市人口，因为他们得为城市人提供基本生存条件，而放到农村就不管了。在北京，不到一个月的抄家浪潮中，将近十万人被赶下乡去。据作家郑义描述，在北京火车站的大厅里，一群随父母被驱逐出京，即将登车起程的孩子们被勒令在大厅里跪成一片，一伙身着黄绿军衣，臂带红袖章的红卫兵用皮带抽打他们，甚至有人拎起开水壶，朝着孩子们淋去，大厅里一片惨号。
IN SUMMER 1966 Red Guards ravaged every city and town, and some areas in the countryside. “Home,” with books and anything associated with culture, became a dangerous place. Fearing that the Red Guards might burst in and torture them if “culture” was found in their possession, frightened citizens burned their own books or sold them as scrap paper, and destroyed their own art objects. Mao thus succeeded in wiping out culture from Chinese homes. Outside, he was also fulfillling his long-held goal of erasing China's past from the minds of his subjects. A large number of historical monuments, the most visible manifestation of the nation's civilization, which had so far survived Mao's loathing, was demolished. In Peking, of 6,843 monuments still standing in 1958, 4,922 were now obliterated.
在抄家狂潮中，凡是家里有书、有艺术品的人，都日夜提心吊胆，生怕红卫兵闯進来看见，全家遭殃。吓坏了的人们或者自己动手烧书，或把心爱的书拉到废品店当废纸卖，或把珍藏的艺术品藏来藏去最后还是在恐惧中毁掉。毛泽东几乎把“文化”从中国人的家庭里一扫而光。家庭之外，一大批古迹，中华文明的标志，也被红卫兵扫荡破坏。仅北京一地，一九五八年保存下来的六千八百四十三处文物古迹，有四千九百二十二处在一个月中全部毁掉。
Like the list of people to be spared, the list of monuments to be preserved was a short one. Mao did want to keep some monuments, like Tiananmen Gate, where he could stand to be hailed by “the masses.” The Forbidden City and a number of other historical sites were put under protection and many were closed down, thus depriving the population of access even to the fraction of their cultural inheritance that survived.
古迹中的佼佼者受到保护。单子上自然有天安门城楼，毛还需要站在上面受大众欢呼。它们由军队進驻，有的关了门，人民也就无缘涉足。
Not spared was China's leading architect, Liang Si-cheng, who had described Mao's wish to see “chimneys everywhere” in Peking as “too horrifying a picture to bear thinking about.” Now he was subjected to public humiliation and abuse, and brutal house raids. His collection of books was destroyed, and his family expelled to one small room, with broken windows and ice-covered floor and walls. Chronically ill, Liang died in 1972.
中国最着名的建筑师梁思成，曾反对毛要“从天安门城楼望出去，看到处处都是烟囱”的“城市建设指示”，认为“那情景实在太可怕了”。他被抄家批斗，宝贵的藏书大部分被毁，一家大小被赶到一间二十四平方公尺的小屋里。在摄氏零下十度的严寒里，小屋的墙上、地上结着厚厚的冰霜，窗上的玻璃被外面的小孩一块块打碎。梁思成不断在病中，几年后默默去世。
Contrary to what is widely believed, the vast majority of the destruction was not spontaneous, but state-sponsored. Before Mao chided the Red Guards for being “too civilized” on 23 August, there had been no vandalism against historical monuments. It was on that day, only after Mao spoke, that the first statue was broken—a Buddha in the Summer Palace in Peking. From then on, when important sites were being wrecked, official specialists were present to pick out the most valuable objects for the state, while the rest were carted off and melted down, or pulped.
人们一般认为红卫兵对文化的摧残是“乱打、乱砸”，中心是一个“乱”字。事实上，大部分行动并非自发，而是毛政权指使的。在“八·二三”毛说“北京太文明了” 之前，红卫兵没有破坏文物古迹。毛发话的那天，第一处古迹才被砸：颐和园佛香阁的释迦牟尼塑像。之后破坏重要古迹时，上边常派有专家到场，把最宝贵值钱的文物挑出来送進国库，其他的拉到工厂作废铜烂铁熔掉，或到造纸厂化作纸浆。
It was Mao's office, the Small Group, which ordered the desecration of the home of the man whose name was synonymous with Chinese culture, Confucius. The home, in Shandong, was a rich museum, as emperors and artists had come there to pay homage, commissioning monuments and donating their art. The locals had been ordered to wreck it, but had responded by going slow. So Red Guards were dispatched from Peking. In their pledge before setting off, they said that the sage was “the enemy rival to death of Mao Tse-tung Thought.” Mao did, indeed, hate Confucius, because Confucianism enjoined that a ruler must care for his subjects, and as Mao himself put it, “Confucius is humanism … that is to say, People-centred-ism.”
在破坏文化上，毛政权是导演。这突出表现在对孔子故居孔府的大破坏上。孔子是中国文化的代表，他的家也是文物苍萃的宝库，历代帝王，来这里朝拜，修建了宏大的古建筑群，留下了大量碑刻和无数艺术品。文革开始，当地人接到命令砸孔府。人们不忍心下手，于是“中央文革”专门把北京师范大学红卫兵派来。出发之前，红卫兵到天安门广场，举起拳头，用当时特有的语言，“向最最敬爱的伟大导师、伟大领袖、伟大统帅、伟大舵手毛主席庄严宣誓”，誓词说孔子“是毛泽东思想的死对头”。砸碑时，“中央文革”的指示具体到可砸什么，不可砸什么，“以明清划线”。山东省博物馆的文物专家到场告诉红卫兵该保留哪块碑，红卫兵便在上面写一个“留”字。
In the annihilation of culture, Mme Mao played a key role as her husband's police chief for this field. And she made sure there was no resurrection of culture for the rest of Mao's life. Partly thanks to her, for a decade, until Mao's death in 1976, old books remained banned, and among the handful of new books of general interest that were published, all of them sported Mao's quotations, in bold, on every other page. There were a few paintings and some songs around, but they all served propaganda purposes, and eulogized Mao. Virtually the only performing arts allowed were eight “revolutionary model shows” and a few films that Mme Mao had had a hand in producing. China became a cultural desert.
江青是毛毁灭文化的主要助手。在她的严厉管制下，文革十年，直到毛去世，书绝大多数被禁，只出了几本所谓小说，差不多每页都有黑字体的毛语录。画倒是有几幅，歌倒是有几首，无一不是歌颂毛的。舞台被江青的八个“样板戏”独霸，银幕上也只有寥寥几部钦准电影。数千年文明的中国，成了名符其实的文化沙漠。
BY MID-SEPTEMBER 1966, the country was thoroughly terrorized and Mao felt confident enough to start stalking his real target: Party officials. On 15 September, Lin Biao instructed a Red Guards' rally on Tiananmen Square that they were to shift their target and “focus on denouncing those power-holders inside the Party pursuing a capitalist road,” known as “capitalist-roaders.” What Lin—and Mao—really meant was the old enforcers who had shown distaste for Mao's extremist policies. Mao aimed to get rid of them en masse, and the call went out to attack them right across China.
一九六六年九月中旬，毛感到他在共产党内上上下下搞大清洗的时机成熟了。他简称“走资派”。让林彪在天安门城楼上向红卫兵宣布：“这次运动的重点，是斗争那些党内走资本主义道路的当权派。”简称“走资派”。但究竟谁是“走资派”毛没说明。他也不知道全国众多的干部谁反对过他，谁对他忠诚。毛的办法是先把他们全部打倒，换上新的人后，再一个个审查他们。至于忠实于他的人受冤枉、受委屈，毛是不在乎的。
For this job, new groups were formed, who sometimes called themselves Red Guards but were generally known as “Rebels,” because they were taking on their bosses. And these Rebels were mostly adults. The original Red Guard groups, most of them made up of teenagers, now fell apart, as they had been organized around the children of those same high officials who now became targets. Mao had used the young Red Guards to terrorize society at large. Now he was moving against his real enemies, Party officials; and for this he used a broader, mainly older force.
毛的工具此时不再以高干子弟为主体，而是遍地开花的、专整“走资派”的“造反派”组织。一九六七年一月，凭着造反派的冲锋陷阵，毛推翻了全国走资派。
With Mao's explicit support, Rebels denounced their bosses in wall posters and at violent rallies. But anyone who thought the Party dictatorship might be weakened had their hopes dashed fast. People who tried to get access to their own files (which the regime held on everyone), or to rehabilitate those the Party had persecuted, were instantly blocked. Orders poured out from Peking making it clear that, although Party officials were under attack, the Party's rule was not to be loosened one bit. Victims of past persecutions were banned from joining Rebel organizations.
共产党的控制一点也没有放松。一份份中央文件明文规定：不许抢档案(中共给人人都立了档案)，不许为以往政治运动迫害的人翻案，不许“阶级敌人”“混入革命群众组织”，“更不准他们自己建立组织”。把矛头指向毛泽东或中共的人，不是被监禁，就是被枪毙，其中知名的有林昭、遇罗克。
After some months to generate momentum, in January 1967 Mao called on Rebels to “seize power” from their Party bosses. Mao did not differentiate between disaffected officials and those who were actually totally loyal to him and had not wavered even during the famine. In fact, there was no way he could tell who was which. So he resolved to overthrow them all first, and then have them investigated by his new enforcers. The population was told that the Party had been in the hands of villains (“the black line”) ever since the founding of the Communist regime. It was an index of how deeply fear had been embedded that no one dared to ask the obvious questions, like: “In that case, why should the Party go on ruling?,” or “Where was Mao all these seventeen years?”
对毛来说，造反派的用场是帮他惩罚失去权力的走资派，方式是写大字报攻击，开批斗会，打骂侮辱，游街示众等等。这也挺对不少造反派的胃口。他们有的恨领导，乘机报复。有的想往上爬，看到这是一条捷径。那些早就手痒痒以打人为快事的，那些虐待狂们，现在是过瘾的时候了。
The Rebels' basic assignment was to punish Party cadres, which is what Mao had been longing to do for years. Some Rebels hated their Party bosses, and jumped at the chance to take revenge. Others were hungry for power, and knew that the only way to rise was to be merciless towards “capitalist-roaders.” There were also plenty of thugs and sadists.
Stalin had carried out his purges using an elite, the KGB, who swiftly hustled their victims out of sight to prison, the gulag or death. Mao made sure that much violence and humiliation was carried out in public, and he vastly increased the number of persecutors by getting his victims tormented and tortured by their own direct subordinates.
A British engineer who was working in Lanzhou in 1967 caught a glimpse of life in one remote corner of the northwest. Two nights after being entertained at an official dinner, he saw a corpse strung up from a lamp-post. It was his host of two nights before. Later, he saw two men being deliberately deafened into unconsciousness by loudhailers—“so that no more reactionary remarks enter their ears,” his minder told him.
The first senior official tortured to death was the minister of coal, on 21 January 1967. Mao hated him because he had complained about the Great Leap Forward—and about Mao himself. He was exhibited in front of organized crowds, and had his arms twisted ferociously backwards in the form of torment known as being “jet-planed.” One day he was shoved onto a bench, bleeding, shirtless in a temperature well below freezing, while thugs rushed forward to cut him with small knives. Finally, a huge iron stove was hung around his neck, dragging his head down to the cement floor, where his skull was bashed in with heavy brass belt buckles. During all this, photographs were taken, which were later shown to Chou—and doubtless to Mao.
第一个被打死的高级干部是煤炭部长张霖之，时间是一月二十一日。他曾对毛和毛的大跃進表示不满。两年前毛开始说要整“党内走资本主义道路的当权派”时，刘少奇问他谁是这样的当权派，毛不假思索地脱口而出：“张霖之就是！”如今，在江青亲自导演下，张霖之被多次残酷批斗，一位目击者偷偷在日记中写到：
一九六六年十二月二十八日……
张部长被送至台上，强行按倒跪下。他使劲抬头，李XX，载XX猛扑上前，用力压。接着，又有四个人一齐踩在他的小腿上，让他无法再站。又有些人拿着一根钉着木牌的棍子插進衣领，张部长拚力反抗，棍上的倒刺把他的耳朵、脸、鼻子都划破，顺着脖子淌血。会刚开完，李X X和一群人扭着张的胳膊串过大、小礼堂游斗，后又到院里斗，大门口斗。张部长站在一把凳子上，上衣被扒光，在零下十七度的严寒里冻着。他遍体鳞伤，双手举着木牌，又气又冻，全身哆嗦。有几个家伙说他站得不直，就用小刀子捅他、割他……
一九六七年一月十二日……
汾西矿务局的李XX来京，还带来一个特制的六十多斤重的铁帽子。……斗争会一开始，几个小子就拎着铁帽子往张部长头上扣。他双腿打战、脸色蜡黄，汗珠直往下掉。不到一分钟，铁帽子就把他压趴在台上，口吐鲜血。这么折腾了三四次，张部长已奄奄一息，昏死过去。
最后，打手们把一个大铁炉挂在他的脖子上，用皮带铁头打裂他的后脑骨，他就这样死去。有专人拍照，照片送到了周恩来手里 -- 毫无疑问，也到了毛泽东的眼前。
Photographing torture had hitherto been rare under Mao, but it was done extensively in the Cultural Revolution, especially where Mao's personal enemies were concerned. As Mao's usual practice was not to keep records for posterity, let alone proof of torture, the most likely explanation for this departure from his norm is that he took pleasure in viewing pictures of his foes in agony. Film cameras also recorded gruesome denunciation rallies, and Mao watched these displays in his villas. Selected films of this sort were shown on TV, accompanied by the soundtrack of Mme Mao's “model shows,” and people were organized to watch. (Very few individuals had TV in those days.)
毛并不喜欢为后世留下纪录，也不想张扬他统治的残暴，为什么照相？答案最 可能是他要看这些照片，看他的敌人受罪心里痛快解气。一些批斗大会还拍了电影，毛在他的别墅里看录像。有的批斗大会的影片也在电视上放映，配的音乐是样板戏。当时很少私人有电视，造反派被组织起来观看。
Mao was intimately acquainted with the types of ordeal visited on his former colleagues and subordinates. Vice-Premier Ji Deng-kui later recalled Mao doing an imitation for his entourage of the agonizing “jet-plane” posture which was routine at denunciation meetings, and Mao laughing heartily as Ji described what he had been through.
毛很清楚他从前的同事、部下们在受什么样的罪。纪登奎副总理曾回忆，毛问他挨了多少决斗，纪说他挨了几百次斗，坐了“喷气式飞机”。“毛主席听了，哈哈大笑。他老人家还亲自学做喷气式的样子，低头、弯腰、并把两手朝后高高举起，逗得大家哄堂大笑。”
Eventually, after two or three years of suffering in this manner, millions of officials were exiled to de facto labor camps which went under the anodyne name of “May 7 Cadre Schools.” These camps also housed the custodians of culture—artists, writers, scholars, actors and journalists—who had become superfluous in Mao's new order.
在这样的日子中过了两三年，百万干部被流放到乡下的“五七干校”，待遇仅比劳改犯好一些。被放逐到五七干校的还有文化人：作家、艺术家、学者、演员、记者，在毛的新社会里没有他们的容身之地。
THE REPLACEMENTS FOR the ousted cadres came mainly from the army, which Mao ordered into every institution in January 1967. Altogether, over the next few years, 2.8 million army men became the new controllers, and of these, 50,000 took over the jobs of former medium- to high-ranking Party officials. These army men were assisted in their new roles by the Rebels and some veteran cadres who were kept on for continuity and expertise. But the army provided the core of the new enforcers—at the expense of doing its job of defending the country. When one army unit was moved away from the coast opposite Taiwan to take control of a province in the interior, its commander asked Chou En-lai what would happen if there was a war. Chou's answer was: “There will be no war in the next ten years.” Mao did not believe Chiang would invade.
取代各级干部的是军队。一九六七年一月，官兵们受命進驻全国每个单位。此后几年中，成为新当权者的有近两百八十万人次，其中五万成为县以上中高级负责人。在这批人的领导下参与管理的有造反派代表，还有留用的老干部，以保持政权的运作照常進行。如今的军队什么都管，国防倒成了其次。当担任海防任务的李德生都被调去安徽接管内政时，李请示周恩来：“万一有情况怎么办？”周答道：“仗，恐怕十年打不起来”。毛不相信蒋介石会打進来。
In March, with the new enforcers in place, pupils and students were ordered back to their schools—although, once there, they could only kick their heels, as the old textbooks, teaching methods and teachers had all been condemned, and nobody knew what to do. Normal schooling did not exist for most young people until after Mao's death, a decade later.
三月间，学生们被召回学校，尽管在那里他们什么也学不到。以往的教学秩序、方式、内容不复存在。教育恢复正常，是毛死后的事了。
In society at large, the economy ran much as usual, except for relatively minor disruptions caused by the personnel changes. People went to work as before. Shops were open, as were banks. Hospitals, factories, mines, the post, and, with some interruptions, transport, all operated fairly normally. The Superpower Program, far from being paralyzed, as is often thought, was given unprecedented priority in the Cultural Revolution, and investment in it increased. Agriculture did no worse than before.
社会上，人们照常上班，商店照常开门，银行照常营业，医院照常看病，工厂、矿山、邮政、交通，大体上都在运转。军工企业比以往抓得更紧，给了更多的投资。农业生产不比往年差。中国没有失控。
What changed, apart from the bosses, was life outside work. Leisure disappeared. Instead, there were endless mind-numbing—but nerve-racking—meetings to read and reread Mao's works and People's Daily articles. People were herded into numerous violent denunciation rallies against “capitalist-roaders” and other appointed enemies. Public brutality became an inescapable part of daily life. Each institution ran its de facto prison, in which victims were tortured, some to death. Moreover, there were no ways to relax, as there were now virtually no books to read, or magazines, or films, plays, opera; no light music on the radio. For entertainment there were only Mao Thought Propaganda Teams, who sang Mao's quotations set to raucous music, and danced militantly waving the Little Red Book. Not even Mme Mao's eight “model shows” were performed for the public yet, as their staging had to be under draconian central control.
然而，人们的生活有了巨大的变化。变化主要在业余时间。娱乐如今全然消失，取而代之的是学不完的“红宝书”，念不完的《人民日报》社论，开不完的使人头脑麻木、情绪紧张的会议，参加不完的批斗大会，看不完的对“走资派”和其他“阶级敌人”的“喷气式”。残忍的暴力成了公众日常生活的组成部分，每个单位都设有自己的牢房，称作“牛棚”，折磨着自己单位的人。无书可读，无杂志可看，无电影可观，无戏剧可欣赏，收音机里也绝无轻音乐可让人放松。唯一的歌舞来自“毛泽东思想宣传队”，在当当响的乐声中挥舞着小红书，唱着语录歌，雄赳赳、气昂昂地蹦跳着。就连江青的八个样板戏，老百姓也难以看到。
ONE TASK OF the new enforcers was to screen the old cadres to explore whether they had ever resisted Mao's orders, even passively. Each of the millions of ousted officials had a “case team” combing through his or her past. At the very top was a Central Special Case Team, a highly secret group chaired by Chou En-lai, with Kang Sheng as his deputy, and staffed by middle-ranking army officers. This was the body that investigated people personally designated by Mao. Since he especially wanted to find out whether any of his top echelon had been plotting against him with the Russians, the key case in the military was that of Marshal Ho Lung, the unlucky recipient of Russian defense minister Malinovsky's remarks about getting rid of Mao. All Ho's old subordinates were implicated in this case, and Ho himself died as a result.
毛的新当权者们有一项重要的工作：审查被打倒的干部们，看他们是否反对过毛，抵制过毛的指示。这些干部们每人都有一个“专案组”。在最上层的是“中央专案组”。这个极端秘密的机构由周恩来任组长，康生为副，组员是陆海空三军调来的中级军官，专门审查毛想审查的人。毛特别关注的是中共上层有没有人同苏联合谋想推翻他。因为苏联国防部长马利诺夫斯基曾对贺龙说要他“搞掉毛”，所以军队系统的第一要案是贺龙专案。案子株连整个贺龙从前的部下，贺本人死在监禁中。
The Central Special Case Team had the power to arrest, interrogate—and torture. They also recommended what punishments should be meted out. Chou's signature appeared on many arrest warrants and recommendations for punishment, including death sentences.
中央专案组权力极大，决定抓谁、审谁、拷打谁，也对谁该受什么处置向毛提出建议。组长周恩来的签字落在许多逮捕证，处理报告上，包括建议判处死刑的报告书上。
While suspects were being interrogated under torture, and while his old power base endured unprecedented suffering, Mao cavorted. The dancing still went on at Zhongnanhai with girls called in, some to share his large bed. To the tune of “The Pleasure-Seeking Dragon Flirts with the Phoenix,” which was deemed “pornographic” by his own regime, and long banned, Mao danced on. One by one, as the days went by, his colleagues disappeared from the dance floor, either purged, or simply having lost any appetite for fun. Eventually, Mao alone of the leaders still trod the floor.
在同事、部下备受苦难时，毛的日子过得是依然故我。中南海的舞会仍旧为他举办，伴舞女郎用大汽车运進运出，有的也上了他的大床。在被斥为“淫秽”而早就禁止的“游龙戏凤”之类乐曲中，毛依然踱步似的跳着舞。随着时间的流逝，同事们一个个从舞厅里消失，有的被清洗，有的失掉了作乐的兴趣，渐渐地，舞池里的领导人只剩下毛一个。
Out of his remaining top echelon, there came only one burst of defiance. In February 1967, some of the Politburo members who had not fallen spoke up, voicing rage at what was happening to their fellow Party cadres. Mao's old follower Tan Zhen-lin, who had been in charge of agriculture during the famine (showing how far he was prepared to go along with Mao), exploded to the Small Group: “Your purpose is to get rid of all the old cadres … They made revolution for decades, and end up with their families broken and themselves dying. It is the cruellest struggle in Party history, worse than any time before.” Next day, he wrote to Lin Biao: “I have come to the absolute end of my tether … I am ready to die … to stop them.” Foreign Minister Chen Yi called the Cultural Revolution “one big torture chamber.”
在没被打倒的政治局成员中，一九六七年二月爆发了一场反抗，反对文革给他们的党和干部造成的灾难。对毛一直忠心耿耿的谭震林，在大饥荒时管农业，对毛也没有怨言，这次忍不住了，对中央文革小组发作道：“你们的目的，就是要整掉老干部，你们把老干部一个个打掉。几十年的革命，落得家破人亡，妻离子散。这一次，是党的历史上斗争最残酷的一次，超过历史上任何一次。”第二天，他给林彪写信说他到了“忍无可忍的地步”，“我想了好久，最后下了决心，准备牺牲。”外交部长陈毅说：“文化大革命是历史上最大的逼供信”。
But these elite survivors were either devoted veteran followers of Mao's, or men already broken by him. Faced with his wrath, they folded. With the critical duo of Lin Biao and Chou behind him, Mao had the dissenters harassed; then, when they had been suitably cowed, he extended them an olive branch. The mini-revolt was easily quelled.
可是，这批人毕竟跟毛多年，对毛诚惶诚恐。毛对他们发了一通雷霆之怒，他们就像霜打的小草一样蔫了下来，向毛作了检讨。毛左有林彪，右有周恩来，显然是无往而不胜。对这些反抗了他的人，毛用造反派惩罚他们，惩罚够了又给他们些甜头吃吃。反抗被毛轻易地压了下去。
Not cowed as easily as the Politburo members was a brigadier called Cai Tie-gen, who even contemplated organizing a guerrilla force, making him the only senior cadre known to have thought of trying to “do a Mao” to Mao. He was shot, the highest-ranking officer executed in the Purge. Saying farewell to a friend who was nearly shot with him, he encouraged him to continue the fight, and then went calmly to the execution ground.
不那么容易压倒的干部中有一位蔡铁根大校。他不仅在日记里谴责毛，甚至还在流放之地和几个朋友谈论上山打游击。他被以反革命罪判处死刑，是文革中被枪毙的最高级军官。行刑前，他向狱中的难友道别，然后从容赴死。
There was other truly heroic resistance from ordinary people. One was a remarkable woman of nineteen, a student of German called Wang Rong-fen, who had attended the Tiananmen rally on 18 August 1966, and whose reaction to it showed astonishing freshness and independence of spirit, as well as courage. She thought that it was “just like Hitler's,” and wrote to Mao posing a number of sharp questions:
在一般老百姓中更有许多壮丽的英雄。其中一位是个十九岁的姑娘、德语学生王容芬。在参加了一九六六年八月十八日天安门广场上的红卫兵集会后，她的反应远远超过了时代局限 -- 她觉得这“和当年的希特勒简直没什么区别”。她给毛寄出这样一封抗议书：
“What are you doing?
请您以一个共产党员的名义想一想：您在干什么？
请您以党的名义想一想：眼前发生的一切意味着什么？
Where are you leading China?”
请您以中国人民的名义想一想：您将把中国引向何处去？
“The Cultural Revolution,” she told Mao, “is not a mass movement. It is one man with the gun manipulating the masses.
文化大革命不是一场群众运动，是一个人在用枪杆子运动群众。
I declare I resign from the Communist Youth League …”
我郑重声明：从即日起退出中国共产主义青年团。
One letter she wrote in German, and with that in her pocket she got hold of four bottles of insecticide and drank them outside the Soviet embassy, hoping the Russians would discover her corpse and publicize her protest to the world. Instead, she woke up in a police hospital. She was sentenced to life imprisonment. For months on end, her hands were tightly handcuffed behind her back and she had to roll herself along the floor to get her mouth to the food that was just tossed onto the floor of her cell. When the handcuffs were finally removed, they had to be sawn off, as the lock was jammed with rust. This extraordinary young woman survived prison—and Mao—with her spirit undimmed.
同样内容的一封信她用德文写出。把这封信带在身上，她到药店买了四瓶DDT杀虫剂，然后走到苏联大使馆附近，把毒药一瓶瓶喝下。她想让苏联人发现她的尸体，把她以死来反抗文革的事传向世界。可是，她醒来是在公安医院里。她被判处无期徒刑，在监狱里受到非人的磨难。有一次看守把她的手拧在背后，上了半年的“背铐”， 吃饭是滚在地上用嘴啃看守扔進来的窝窝头。当背铐终于取下来时，锁已经锈住，用钢锯才锯开，手已经动不了。这位不凡的女性活下来了，活到了毛泽东死的一天，活到了走出牢房的一天，精神丝毫不减。