61

My family had missed me greatly—especially so with the bitter political turn. Our reunion was joyful, and I shared a special dinner with my wife and two children my first night back. But Lillian was tense. I knew that she was distraught about Jiang Qing's new political role, convinced that her vindictiveness would eventually be turned against us. But something more was bothering her.

“I have some terrible news,” she said that night after the children had gone to bed. She was whispering. With the advent of the Cultural Revolution, we had to whisper even in our own home.

“Tian Jiaying committed suicide,” she said.

I was stunned. Tian Jiaying was one of my best friends. As one of Mao's political secretaries, he had kept me informed about politics, and we saw eye to eye on many matters. I had thought often of Tian Jiaying in recent months, particularly since learning that Chen Boda and Jiang Qing were both on the new Central Cultural Revolution Small Group. Tian and Jiang Qing had never gotten along, and Chen Boda's opportunistic support of the Great Leap Forward had brought the two men into nasty conflicts. Tian Jiaying had never supported the Great Leap Forward and had become increasingly disaffected following Mao's purge of Peng Dehuai in 1959. I had expected my friend to be in trouble. But I had never imagined that he might take his own life—and so quickly, even before the real meaning of the Cultural Revolution was clear. Many of my close friends would take their lives during the Cultural Revolution. Tian Jiaying was the first.

I was shocked, too, that no one had told me. Surely other members of Mao's staff in Hangzhou and Wuhan must have known. Why had no one told me?

Lillian knew only that a few days after the formal decision to launch a Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on May 16, Wang Dongxing, as newly appointed director of the General Office, had talked with Tian Jiaying and then sent several staff members to take custody of his documents—a sure sign that Tian was about to be purged. The order to seize the documents of a man so highly placed would have had to come from very high up. Either Zhou Enlai or Mao himself must have issued it. That night, after the documents were seized, Tian Jiaying hanged himself.

Lillian was worried about me. Why had Mao sent me back to Beijing first, without him? She was convinced that Mao was testing me. He wanted to know what my attitude toward the Cultural Revolution would be, whose side I was on, whether I would remain loyal to him. She pleaded with me to lie low and say as little as possible. She was afraid that I, too, would soon come under attack and that I would not be able to bear the insults. She was worried that I might collapse under pressure and commit suicide.

Members of the Communist party are not allowed to commit suicide. Suicide is seen as a betrayal of the party. The family members of such traitors bear the dead man's label forever, known for the rest of their lives as the “wife of a traitor” or the “son of a traitor” and are condemned to the most despicable lives. Lillian would be fired from her job, forced into menial labor, and my whole family would be exiled. She pleaded with me that night not to take my life. “If you commit suicide, that would be the end of us all,” she said.

I promised that nothing would drive me to suicide. But I knew I would be attacked. And I knew that my family would suffer, too. An attack against one member of my family would be an attack against all. There was no escape.

My mind was racing. There was only one way out. “The day they arrest or imprison me,” I instructed Lillian, “you must file for divorce.”

Only much later did I realize how foolish I was. Divorce could not save my family. Repeatedly during the Cultural Revolution I saw whole families go under once one of them had come under attack. Death, divorce, or separation provided no reprieve.

I prepared myself for my first test. Lillian was right: Mao had sent me back to Beijing to test my loyalty to him. The day after my return, I told Wang Dongxing that Mao had asked me to meet with Tao Zhu to learn how the Cultural Revolution was unfolding. Tao would be arriving in Beijing the next day. Wang Dongxing asked me to help with the arrangements for Tao's housing in Zhongnanhai and to join him at the airport to welcome Tao.

As we drove from the airport back to Zhongnanhai, I told Tao of the assignment Mao had given me. “No problem,” Tao said. He suggested I visit Peking Union Medical College, now renamed Chinese Medical University, the next day. “I'll ask someone from the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group to go with you,” he said.

I hesitated. I was ill at ease with the leftists in the group. To get myself mixed up with any of them would mean becoming more involved politically than I wanted. It might imply that I was one of them, “standing on the side of the left.” For me to meet Tao Zhu was fine. Mao had set up the meeting. For me to meet with the leftists was courting danger. If I met with anyone in the group other than Tao and that person later got into trouble, I would have no protection. Mao could say that his instructions were for me to meet with Tao Zhu and no one else.

Wang Dongxing understood my dilemma instinctively and came to my defense. “The Chairman merely asked Dr. Li to talk with you, not other members of the Small Group. I don't think he should get involved with any of the others yet,” he said.

Tao Zhu agreed. He suggested I accompany minister of public health Qian Xinzhong the next day when he visited Chinese Medical University. Someone from Tao Zhu's Propaganda Department would accompany us.

Chinese Medical University was in turmoil, and our arrival on the campus was a major event. Qian Xinzhong was directly responsible for the functioning of the university. The students were on strike, and big character posters attacking university officials were everywhere. I was astonished to see that one of them was an attack against the minister of public health, Qian Xinzhong himself. He was accused of being a “Guomindang remnant.” Qian had once been a surgeon with the Guomindang army but had joined the communist side in 1934, after being captured during a battle in Anhui. In the past, the party had welcomed such “defectors” from the Guomindang, and Qian, to my mind, had joined the party early, during the war with Japan and before the final civil war between the nationalists and the communists. I would have thought his party credentials were impeccable. The atmosphere on the campus had the quality of a witch-hunt.

I thought of myself. Anyone outside my protective inner circle who investigated my background could make similarly irresponsible attacks, and the consequences would be terrible. My past would destroy me. I had joined the party late, well after liberation. My father had been a high-ranking official under the Guomindang, and my wife was the daughter of a landlord. The fact that I had been so thoroughly investigated and cleared in 1953 would mean nothing at all.

The students were in the auditorium, waiting for Qian's arrival, and the place was packed with highly emotional students. I could hear them shouting slogans even before we entered. I sat, unobtrusive and anonymous, in the back as Qian Xinzhong went to the stage. Comrade Xu, the representative from the Propaganda Department whom Tao Zhu had sent to accompany us, melted into the crowd and disappeared. The unruly students began shouting questions at those on-stage, and I heard accusations that Qian Xinzhong and the Ministry of Public Health had served only the “lords” and ignored the health care of the masses. They were quoting Mao's important “June 26 [1965] Directive” as their justification. Suddenly I realized that this June 26 Directive was the memo Mao had asked me to write after our conversation in June 1965, just before I went to join the “four cleanups” campaign with Wang Dongxing. It was the memo I had sent to Peng Zhen and minister of public health Qian Xinzhong. The contents of my conversation with the Chairman had been transformed into Mao's June 26 Directive and were being used to attack my friend Qian Xinzhong.

I was miserable. I liked and admired Qian. Had I not forwarded Mao's criticism to the Ministry of Public Health, he might not be going through this awful verbal harassment. Of all the people in the room, only Qian himself knew that I had written the directive, that I was accompanying him there at the suggestion of Tao Zhu and, by implication, Mao. Only Qian knew that I was Mao's doctor. I left the meeting shaken, vowing never to attend another like it. And I knew that I had to avoid the possibility of ever being interrogated and having my own past exposed. Forced to answer questions about my own past and family background, I would be destroyed. Wang Dongxing, seeing me so upset, agreed.

Tao Zhu's political fortunes changed quickly. He was purged in December of that year because he was too independent from Jiang Qing and because he continued to support many leaders, including Qian Xinzhong and Hubei party chief Wang Renzhong, who had been targeted for purge. After Tao Zhu and Qian Xinzhong had been purged, Comrade Xu from the Propaganda Department, who had accompanied us to the meeting at Chinese Medical University only to melt into the crowd, suddenly reappeared to accuse me. He wrote a letter to Chen Boda, the director of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group, charging that I had formed a close alliance with the now deposed Tao Zhu and had accompanied Qian Xinzhong to Chinese Medical University in order to defend the Ministry of Public Health. Chen Boda forwarded the letter to Mao, who in turn showed it to me.

“But you are the one who asked me to return to Beijing and see Tao Zhu,” I said.

Mao smiled. “If you are being accused of forming relationships with anyone, then I guess we have to say you're pretty close to me,” he said. He wanted me to write my own big character poster attacking Qian Xinzhong. I did not, but I never told Mao. Nevertheless, the Chairman saved me from being caught in the roundup of alleged Tao Zhu supporters. Others as innocent as I had no such protection.

Mao still wanted me actively involved in the Cultural Revolution. He was not going to allow me to stay on the sidelines. His test of my loyalty was relentless. Two days after his return to Beijing, he called me to his bedroom in the Chrysanthemum Fragrance Study. He wanted me and head nurse Wu Xujun to accompany his daughter Li Na to Peking University the following day. “Take a look at the big character posters, talk with the students, find out if they really are counterrevolutionaries,” he said.

While Mao had been in retreat in Hangzhou and Wuhan, refusing to return to Beijing and letting Liu Shaoqi take charge of the Cultural Revolution, Liu had sent work teams into the city's universities to direct the unfolding political movement. But Mao suspected that instead of supporting the student rebellion, the work teams had been suppressing the students, condemning them as counterrevolutionaries.

I did not like the idea of accompanying Li Na. Many people had known her when she was a history student there. I was afraid that if the three of us went together, people would think that Mao was involved.

But Mao was not concerned. “So what?” he said. “It's fine if they think I'm involved. You must support the students, though.”

Li Na invited several of her former schoolmates and professors to meet with us in one of the dormitory rooms. I said little as the students complained about the university authorities. Lu Ping, the president of the university, who had come to Li Na's aid when she had a cold and I came to take her to Beijing Hospital, was the object of particular opprobrium. The university party committee had suppressed their revolution, the students said, and when the work team came to replace the party committee, it too had intimidated the students, accusing the activists of being counterrevolutionary. After listening to the students' complaints, we strolled around the campus, reading the big character posters that were plastered everywhere. The whole university population seemed to be outside, and people were clustered in small groups, locked in political debate.

What was happening at Beida (Peking University) was of little interest to me, however. The real political problem was not on university campuses but in the highest ranks of the party. The leaders themselves had to find a way to resolve their differences, I thought. There was no need to involve the students.

Mao, of course, thought otherwise. He was at war with leading members of his own party, and now, even more than in 1957, he knew he could no longer rely on the party to rectify itself. Nor could he depend on the intellectuals to criticize the party. When he had called on them to “let one hundred flowers bloom, one hundred schools of thought contend,” they had responded not only by attacking his enemies but by arguing against socialism and criticizing the Chairman as well. During this Cultural Revolution, he would leap over the cumbersome bureaucracy of party and state and go straight to those whom he knew revered him, and he considered the young his most reliable allies. Only the young have the courage to do battle with the old political forces, he had told me in July, while we were still in Wuhan. “We have to depend on them to start a rebellion, a revolution. Otherwise, we may not be able to overthrow those demons and monsters.”

Mao had not needed me to report on the situation at Beida. He knew what was happening there. He had sent me to test my attitude toward the Cultural Revolution.

He wanted to know whether I thought condemning the students as counterrevolutionaries was correct.

“No, of course not,” I answered immediately. “How could so many students be counterrevolutionaries?”

“Right,” Mao responded. “That's exactly the question.” I had passed my first test. Shortly thereafter, he abolished the work teams that Liu Shaoqi had set up, charging them with trying to suppress the students and their revolt.

Having returned to Beijing, Mao emerged from retreat and his role became increasingly public. On July 29, 1966, he called a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, where some ten thousand students from Beijing's colleges and middle schools came to hear the official announcement that the work teams were being disbanded. The student rebels who had been victimized were now exonerated. Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were forced to take responsibility publicly for having dispatched the work teams in Mao's absence.

Mao did not intend to participate in the meeting. He refused to be publicly associated with the likes of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. But unbeknownst to either the leaders or the students, he did go to the auditorium. Just before the proceedings began, I joined him where he sat, hidden from view behind the curtain. Listening intently, Mao said nothing until Liu Shaoqi made what he called a “self-criticism.”

Liu's self-criticism was much like Mao's in 1962. Liu admitted to no wrongdoing, saying only that he and his associates were “old revolutionaries facing new problems.” Inexperienced, they did not yet understand how to carry out this Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

When Mao heard this, he snorted. “What old revolutionaries? Old counterrevolutionaries is more like it.”

My heart sank. I had been deluding myself about the Cultural Revolution, and now its purpose was clear. The ultimate targets were Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. They were the “counterrevolutionaries” Mao insisted were hidden in the party, the “party people in authority taking the capitalist road.” The Cultural Revolution was a campaign to destroy them.

Zhou Enlai followed Liu Shaoqi to the podium, trying to outline for the students the meaning and goals of the Cultural Revolution. Behind the curtain, Mao stood up to leave, ready to return to Room 118, his opulent suite in the Great Hall of the People, not far from the auditorium.

Then suddenly he changed his mind. “We have to support the revolutionary masses,” he said.

When Zhou Enlai finished his presentation, the curtains behind the stage parted, pulled back by several attendants, and suddenly, unexpectedly, like magic, Chairman Mao stepped through the opening and onto the stage. The crowd roared. Mao waved to the cheering audience, now thundering out its approval with rhythmic chants of “Long Live Chairman Mao! Long Live Chairman Mao!” as the Chairman himself walked back and forth across the stage, slowly waving, saying nothing, his face impassive. With the chants still echoing in our ears, Mao left the stage and walked in triumph back to Room 118, with Zhou Enlai trailing like a faithful dog behind. Mao had neither looked at Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping nor acknowledged their presence, and the two men, dazed, remained onstage. Few in the audience could have missed Mao's message. He was distancing himself from Liu and Deng.

Three days later, on August 1, Mao wrote a letter to a young student at the middle school run by Qinghua University. A group of youngsters there had formed a rebel organization they called the Red Guards, and Mao praised the organization and said that “to rebel is justified.” Mao's words were reprinted in student publications and immediately became the rallying cry of young people everywhere in China. Red Guard groups began springing up in middle schools and universities throughout the country.

Then, as if to support the big character posters that had begun appearing on campuses everywhere, Mao wrote his own big character poster. Entitled “Bombard the Headquarters,” its contents were quickly disseminated by the central authority. Mao argued that in the last fifty days or so, certain “comrades” at both the national and the local levels of government had taken a reactionary, bourgeois stand, enforcing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They are trying, he asserted, to strike down the spectacular Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. With Mao's blessing, the Cultural Revolution spread further as young people throughout China took to the streets to bombard their own party headquarters, certain that Mao himself supported their rebellion, assured that “to rebel is justified” and that they were good and right.

Mao continued to ignore the party bureaucracy. On August 10, 1966, he “received the masses” at the west gate of Zhongnanhai. Later, he stood atop Tiananmen to receive millions of Red Guards who had come to Beijing from all over the country. Eight times during the fall of 1966 I would stand with Mao atop Tiananmen—or sit with him in an open jeep—as he waved to the young Red Guards who had traveled from the far parts of the country to see their great leader. Lin Biao was there, too, his neurasthenia cured by his new political role. The sun shines brightest in Beijing during the fall, and the wind atop Tiananmen is strong, but Lin Biao apparently no longer feared sun or drafts. He accompanied Mao each time, smiling and waving to the crowds below.

I knew by then that the hostility to Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping I had first sensed at the Eighth Party Congress in 1956 was coming to a head, and that both were likely to be toppled. Still, for the great majority of his countrymen, the real purpose of Mao's Cultural Revolution remained unclear. In private, with only me and a few others to hear, Mao had said that Liu Shaoqi was a counterrevolutionary. In public, he was more conciliatory. When the Eleventh Plenum of the Eighth Party Congress convened from August 1 to 12, 1966, the Chairman's remarks were relatively benign. It would be monarchical if ours were the only party allowed to exist, he said, and it would be equally strange if the party were without internal factions. He even seemed willing to forgive those who had differed with him. We can't prohibit people from making mistakes, he said. We must permit them to correct their mistakes. But his words were deceptive. Mao did not really allow factions to oppose his views. Nor was he willing to forgive those who differed with him. Anyone who had previously opposed him, all those who had ever criticized him, would soon be ruthlessly purged.

The Chinese have a saying that it takes many years for a river to be covered with three feet of ice. It had taken many years for Mao to reach the point where he was able to purge his enemies, and the grudges he held often traced back to before liberation. To emerge victorious, he was willing to plunge the entire country into chaos.