28
In the summer of 1958, all of China was mobilized in the construction of massive water conservancy projects, and much of the country was participating in the backbreaking labor required to build them. Mao led the way. The projects were not merely economic, though the reservoirs were meant to improve China's irrigation system and thus to boost agricultural production, too. Mao also wanted to use the construction projects to honor manual labor and make it a respected form of work. It was part of his lifelong disdain for the arrogance of parasitic intellectuals and his glorification of the hardworking peasants and workers.
In Beijing, hundreds of thousands of people had volunteered—so party propaganda said—to build a new reservoir adjacent to the magnificent Ming tombs—the site, some thirty miles outside of town, where thirteen of the sixteen Ming emperors are buried, the ruins of their tombs tucked away in the rolling foothills. Army soldiers, party and government staff, workers from schools, factories, and shops—even the staff from foreign embassies—were all putting in their time. Every resident of Beijing must have been called in for a stint on the project.
Then China's leaders began participating, too, taking turns shoveling dirt as cameras clicked, recording the event for history.
In the afternoon of May 25, 1958, six buses filled with China's top party and government officials set out from Zhongnanhai, with Mao's bus in the lead. The Chairman was ebullient, sitting in the next to last row, chatting with everyone around. I was just behind him. “Normally, we big shots are waited on by others,” he said. “Now it's our turn to do some manual labor ourselves. Everyone says it's good to do some manual labor, but once they actually start working, they change their minds. People are working on the reservoir here for different reasons. Some really want to work. Some feel they have to. Still others consider manual labor some kind of golden trademark. Whatever the reason, doing some manual labor is better than not doing any at all.”
The site was swarming with people. Soldiers made up the main workforce, but there were paid construction workers, peasants from the surrounding area, and “volunteers” from the city, too. Mao's arrival was electrifying, and the huge crowd roared in approval, chanting slogans of welcome, as General Yang Chengwu, commander of the Beijing Military Region and director of the reservoir project, greeted the Chairman when he stepped off the bus. An entire company of soldiers was needed to clear the path so Mao and his entourage could work their way through the crowd to the tent that served as General Yang's command post. Yang briefed Mao on the work as we looked out over the site.
In the distance, the dam was under construction. In the foreground, in a vast bed of sand and rock, was a sea of humanity. Thousands of people were digging out huge rocks and great quantities of sand with nothing more than shovels, dumping the rocks and sand into huge baskets that were then transported by shoulder pole to waiting railroad carts that shuttled them to the dam. In front of the dam the process was reversed, as thousands took turns using their shovels to remove the rocks and sand from the carts and dump the dirt into huge baskets, which were then carried by shoulder pole to an agitator cart that ground the stones into gravel. There the gravel was gathered up again and transported by shoulder pole to the dam itself. It was backbreaking work.
Mao walked, followed by General Yang, the party leadership, and me, to the foot of the dam, where he took a shovel and began digging the gravel. The rest of us followed. We picked up our own shovels and began to dig. Mao was dressed casually, in a white shirt, light gray trousers, and black cloth shoes. It was very warm that day, and the sun was strong. Mao's face soon turned bright red, and he was quickly covered with a fine yellow dust. As he began to perspire, the furrows of water traced a cobweb pattern on his face. After little more than half an hour, General Yang urged the Chairman to stop working. “It's been a long time since I've done such work,” Mao said. “So little effort and already I'm dripping with sweat.” Mao retired to the command tent for a rest and some tea.
“Why don't you people from Group One come here for a month?” Mao said to me as he relaxed. “You need to experience some hardship. So many others from Beijing have come. The staff in Group One can't just leave.”
Mao's rectification of the party was continuing, directed not just at those who had “made mistakes” but at ordinary people like me. We were guilty, in the jargon of the day, of being “divorced from the masses.” The staff in Group One was living the good life—too good a life, Mao thought. We ate and dressed too well and were waited on by others. He wanted us to experience the life of the workers and peasants, to be tempered and reformed by living and suffering like them. Mao believed in the benefits of hard labor. He wanted us all—particularly me, a child of privilege whose life had always been soft—to eat a little bitterness. I was about to get my own taste of labor reform.
Mao's suggestion was not a matter of choice. I was hardly enthusiastic about the backbreaking labor, but I had to agree. “All right,” I responded. “But we need to go back to the city first to gather our things.”
Mao agreed.
The next morning a picture of Mao, shovel in hand, surrounded by smiling officials and ordinary people, appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the country. This classic photograph—testimony to the Chairman's devotion to the masses, to the respect he accorded physical labor, and to his willingness, despite his exalted position, to remain one with the people by participating in labor—has been reprinted in newspapers and magazines countless times and is included in every volume that sings the praises of Mao. It was the only time in the twenty-two years I worked for him that Mao engaged in hard labor, and he had wielded the shovel for less than an hour. Never in humankind has such a simple symbolic gesture galvanized a nation to such a frenzy of enthusiastic, backbreaking work.
Late in the evening of Mao's symbolic act, we met at the indoor swimming pool to plan Group One's participation in the water-conservancy project. Mao had just taken a swim, and he and Jiang Qing were resting by the pool, drinking tea. “This Ming tombs reservoir project is a major undertaking,” Mao said. “Hundreds of thousands of people have volunteered their time and their labor. Even foreigners are involved. We can't let them down. Starting tomorrow, the staff in Group One—you, the secretaries, the bodyguards—will go there to work for ten or twenty days. The job is simple. You just dig gravel, deliver it, walk around in the sunshine or rain. Just work until you are exhausted. If you really can't stand it, let me know. I'll bring you back.”
Mao would not go back to the site. He was too busy, he said. He wanted one secretary and one guard to stay behind. Everyone else in Group One was to go. “Do it for me,” he said. “Represent me.”
“Your health is not good,” he said, turning to Jiang Qing. “You don't have to go. But don't drag others' feet. Let your staff go.”
“I just need two nurses,” Mao's wife replied. “The others can go.” The reduction in her staff would be a hardship for Jiang Qing.
We left the next day, led by Ye Zilong and Wang Jingxian, the new head of Mao's security. Cadres from all the central organizations of the party and government and from the Beijing municipality had committed themselves to working at the site for twenty days. Group One was a bit laggard. Most other organizations had already been at work for five days.
Even at hard labor, Group One remained a privileged elite. Others were living outdoors, in makeshift lean-tos of woven reed mats, open to the elements. General Yang Chengwu found us quarters in a classroom in one of the middle schools of neighboring Fangshan county. The room was bare and only about twelve square meters. We slept on the floor, using our quilts as bedding. The nine of us were packed like sardines, able to fit only by sleeping on our sides. If one person moved, everyone else was forced to shift his body, too. With the noise and the heat and bodies perpetually in motion, sleep was almost impossible. Under the circumstances, however, we were grateful for our high-class accommodations.
General Yang also assigned us the best shift, from midnight to eight in the morning, another mark of our privilege. By late May, the days were already scorching, and working at night spared us the worst of the heat. We ate our breakfast after returning from work—a coarse cornbread called wowo tou, rice porridge, and pickled, salty vegetables—then spent each morning in study sessions devoted to convincing us that all advances in human civilization were the result of hard labor. Lunch was a bit better than breakfast—some cooked vegetables, some rice, and a bowl of soup—but the ingredients were coarse and poorly cooked, and my appetite was gone. We would sleep after lunch, waking at nine or so in the evening to begin preparing for work.
The site was an hour's walk from the school. We would set out a little before eleven. Mao said that the work was simple, and he was right. I used a shovel to dig stones and earth from the riverbed, emptying them shovelful by shovelful into big baskets. When two baskets were full, I attached them to a carrying pole, hoisted the pole onto my shoulders, and carried them to one of the open railway carts that were transporting the gravel to the dam site. I was still young—only thirty-eight years old—and very healthy. I had been athletic in my youth—a gymnast and a basketball player. But this was the most arduous work I had ever done in my life, and the muscles I was using were completely different from the ones I had used in sports.
The nights were cool, but after an hour or two, I was soaked with perspiration and my body ached all over. For others, digging with a shovel seemed as natural and easy as lifting a fork was for me, and many people at the site were able to suspend six baskets from their carrying pole without apparent effort. There was a certain rhythm to their gait, as beautiful as a dance. They would trip along with the carrying pole bouncing up and down, their bodies bobbing, so that when the carrying pole was up, their shoulders were down, and they never seemed to carry the full weight of the load. In front of the railway cart, they used another motion, first swinging the baskets back and then directing them forward, so the heavy load seemed to fly out without effort, dumping the rocks and sand right into the proper spot. Most members of Group One had grown up in the countryside and were used to work like this. But to me, every hoist of the shovel was like lifting a thousand pounds, and I staggered under the weight when I slung the carrying pole over my shoulder, and it cut into my flesh.
Much as I tried to imitate my peasant comrades, I continued to stagger awkwardly under the load and my body never stopped aching. One night, exhausted, I lost my balance completely, dumping my baskets and landing in the cart myself—to the great amusement of everyone around. “It's a little different from using a stethoscope and scalpel, isn't it?” they joked. For the first time in my life, I had a fleeting sense of inferiority. I was able to console myself in the knowledge that these peasants and workers would look equally awkward with a stethoscope or a scalpel in their hands. For the first time, too, I began to get a concrete sense of how horrible life must have been for the rightists who had been sentenced to reform through hard labor. At most, I would be forced to suffer for twenty days. Rightists were forced to do such nearly unbearable labor day after day, month after month, year after year. How many of them could survive?
Some people suggested that I switch jobs and serve as the doctor treating work injuries instead. The proposition was tempting and I would have liked to accept it. but Mao had sent me to taste a little bitterness. If I had served as the site doctor, he would accuse me of shirking my assignment.
People tried to make my job easier, explaining how best to conserve my strength, demonstrating how to carry the pole without taking the weight. But it was hopeless. One night, when a rainstorm hit and I was soaking wet and trembling with cold, Wang Jingxian suggested that I quit and go back to the middle school. But everyone else was still working, and I could not leave. So I worked even harder and was soon covered with sweat despite the rain and the cold.
By the fifteenth day, I was totally exhausted. I had hardly slept or eaten, and I had used up every reserve of energy my body could muster. The aches persisted in every muscle, and at every step I was filled with agony. The original twenty-day working period for party and government cadres was over, but since Group One had arrived five days late, we had to decide whether to continue. No one—not even the physically strong Long Marchers—wanted to continue. But no one wanted to risk being labeled a backward element by suggesting we quit and go home. We decided to continue for another five days.
General Yang Chengwu saved the day. He came to congratulate us on our work. “Your labor here shows your enthusiastic support for this project,” he said. “Whether you work fifteen days or twenty doesn't matter. The Chairman needs you. One hour of work for the Chairman is more valuable than five days of work here. As the director of this project, I order you to leave.” He laughed. We burst out laughing, too, delighted with his command. We had been ordered back to Zhongnanhai!
The meeting continued, though. We had to select a model worker from our team.
I was nominated. “Dr. Li made heavy demands on himself,” one member of our group said. “He is so educated, but still he never put on airs. He worked right beside us, never lagging behind, persevering to the end. That's not easy.” The majority agreed.
I could not accept the honor. It would be ridiculous to be designated a model worker for a job I despised. I had come because Mao had ordered me to, not because I wanted to work. And for me the honor was of little value. I was a doctor. My pride came from my medical skills. Besides, I knew Group One. If I, the doctor and intellectual, should be singled out as a model in manual labor, staff members like Ye Zilong would surely resent me. They would have one more excuse to continue their sniping.
I rejected the honor. “As an intellectual, I have to be reformed through labor,” I insisted. “I cannot be named a model worker. Otherwise my reform would have no meaning.” Some members of the group continued to insist. But I was adamant.
Ye Zilong decided the matter. He did not want me to be selected. “The doctor has already insisted several times that he does not want the honor,” he pointed out. “I think we should respect his wish.”
But the team could not agree on another model worker. Again, General Yang Chengwu found the solution. “All of you work for the Chairman,” he said. “All of you are dedicated to your work. All of you have set a fine example. Every one of you is a model worker. So we will name your team a model team.” The matter was settled. Everyone was delighted. We could return to Beijing with honor.
I did not return home when the van dropped us off in Zhongnanhai. I had not bathed for more than two weeks, and I was filthy. I could not face my family like that. I went instead to Xinghua Yuan, one of the few old-style luxury bathhouses still operating then. For five yuan, the equivalent of the price of ten pounds of pork, I was ushered into my own private room with a comfortable cot and a bath. An attendant drew a tubful of hot water, and I immersed myself in the bath, allowing myself to relax for the first time in weeks. After I had soaked for a while, the attendant rubbed my dirty body with a hot towel, let the water out of the tub, and drew another full, hot bath. After I had soaked some more and washed myself with soap, the attendant lathered and scrubbed my back, let out the water again, and filled the tub a third time with hot water. Again, I immersed myself, succumbing to the pleasures of the bath. My bath complete, my body clean at last, I lay on the cot while the attendant massaged my aching muscles. In the meantime, my filthy clothes, which had been taken away to be scrubbed, reappeared clean, dry, and neatly folded. After two hours of luxuriating at the bathhouse I was finally ready to present myself to my family. I went to my mother's in Liulichang.
My appearance was still a jolt to my mother and my wife. “You have lost so much weight!” they both exclaimed. My wife could sympathize. She had spent only one day working in the reservoir and had returned sunburned and exhausted. They encouraged me to stay at home and rest.
I dared not rest. Mao was waiting, and I wanted to be the one to tell him of my misadventures. I gobbled down my mother's delicious dumplings and went immediately to the Chairman.
He was resting with Jiang Qing by the side of the pool. “Look at you,” he teased. “You're not strong enough to catch a chicken! So you fell into the cart, huh? Lucky you got out fast. You could have been delivered to the dam along with the gravel!” I had come too late. The story of my two weeks at hard labor had already been reported.
“How was it?” Jiang Qing wanted to know. “Was it fun in the cart?” I knew from her nurse that Jiang Qing had been gloating. “They all eat so well and stay in nice places and get the best treatment everywhere just because they're on the Chairman's staff,” she had said. “Now it's their turn to suffer a little.”
“You almost didn't make it,” Mao commented.
“I'm exhausted,” I had to confess. “It wasn't exactly pleasant.”
“You intellectuals only know how to talk and write. You have no idea what it is to do manual labor. It's not idle talk when I say intellectuals ought to do manual labor every now and then. It's a way to get close to the masses and to appreciate the collective power of the people. You should try to participate in labor more often. It'll be good for you.” Mao's words were frightening. I did not look forward to going back.
The story of my two-week bout with hard work made the rounds of Zhongnanhai. For a long time thereafter my ignominious tumble into the railroad cart was the standing joke.