67

I was still hiding in the plant on July 27, 1968, when word came that Mao had ordered workers from his six “personally directed factories,” and ones under control of the 8341 Corps, to form “worker propaganda teams” to take over Qinghua University. Mao now wanted two universities, Qinghua and Beida, to come under his “personal direction” too.

Qinghua was one of the best and most famous of the country's universities, specializing in science and engineering. Its student rebellion was almost as famous as the one at Beida. In the spring of 1966, Liu Shaoqi's wife, Wang Guangmei, had been in charge of the work team sent to direct the Cultural Revolution there. She had supported the party leadership and been opposed by the most radical and rebellious of the students. In April 1967, the students had taken revenge against Wang Guangmei when one of the leading student rebels, Kuai Dafu, led a massive struggle session against her. In 1963, Wang had met with Indonesia's President Sukarno and, as the wife of China's head of state, wore a traditional-style Chinese qipao and a string of pearls. This, the students said, was evidence of her decadent and bourgeois life-style. During the 1967 struggle session at Qinghua, Wang was forced to wear a tight-fitting qipao and a string of Ping-Pong balls around her neck as thousands of students shouted slogans calling for her downfall. The university had been ungovernable ever since. Now Mao wanted to reestablish order and was willing to do so by force.

At four o'clock that afternoon, workers from the textile factory and soldiers from the 8341 Corps would be leaving the factory for Qinghua. I did not have to join them. But I wanted to go. I wanted to see the takeover of the university myself.

Sun Yi, the deputy director of the military-control committee at Beijing Textile Factory, was in charge of the contingent from our factory. We set out by truck, 150 people in all, piled more than ten to a truck. Hundreds of trucks from other factories also converged at the Qinghua University gates, forming an occupying force thousands strong. Later reports said 30,000 people participated. At the entrance to the campus, Yang Dezhong, political commissar of the Central Garrison Corps and director of the overall operation, took charge. Jumping down from the trucks, we were organized into military formation, and at Yang's command, we began marching onto the campus. I stayed toward the back, walking with the medic, Li.

The march was orderly at first, but when we reached the building housing the physics department, the lines ahead of us suddenly stopped and commotion broke out. The students had set up barricades to stop us. Yang Dezhong ordered us to remove the barriers and continue marching forward.

Dusk had settled by then, and it was difficult to see. I could only stay in formation, following the people ahead, walking blindly. I had no idea where we were going.

Suddenly, I heard an explosion and the whole place was pandemonium. Voices were yelling that a bomb had gone off and people had been killed. The march halted again, and soon we saw three bloodied bodies being carried away.

It was now completely dark. I could see nothing. Our formation was in total disarray, but still we were moving forward. Then I heard gusts of wind. The people in front turned and began running in my direction, their hands shielding their heads. I halted in my tracks, dumbfounded, trying to figure out what was wrong, when the medic, Li, took off his jacket and put it over my head. Only then did I realize that the gusts of wind were rocks flying through the air. Rocks were flying everywhere, little nut-sized stones showering down like rain, and my fellow marchers were finally breaking ranks, running in all directions. Li grabbed hold of me and ran, too, pulling me in what he thought was the direction of the entrance gate. But he was unfamiliar with the huge campus, and it was so dark we could see nothing. By the time we finally found the gate, we had become completely separated from the marchers from our factory. We saw no one we recognized. Then a heavy rain began to fall, drenching us to the bone. We sat on the roadside in the pitch dark, in pouring rain, wondering what to do. By then it was about four in the morning, and other marchers, equally bewildered, had begun to join us.

I saw a car pull up alongside us, and heard a voice. Suddenly, I realized that my name was being called. It was Mao's driver, Zhang Zhengji. “Hurry, he's looking for you, Dr. Li,” Zhang was saying.

“Who is looking for me?” I wondered, still bewildered.

“Who else but Chairman? He's at the Great Hall of the People. He's asked the students to be there, too.” I left Li behind, and Zhang Zhengji drove me to the Great Hall of the People.

Mao's aides surrounded me as I walked in, plying me with questions. “You've suffered so much, Dr. Li,” they were saying. “How many rocks hit you?” I was such a mess from the rain and from running that they thought I had been wounded in the melee.

My head ached and I felt sick from hunger, fatigue, and cold, but I had not been hit by the rocks. Wu Xujun gave me some tiger balm ointment to rub into my temples for my headache. After a bowl of noodles and a painkiller, I felt much better.

Mao was waiting for me in Room 118. He was sitting on a sofa reading when I went in. He stood up as soon as he saw me and came forward to greet me. I rushed toward him. He took both my hands in his and looked at me closely before speaking. I sensed that he really did like me, despite the strains in our relationship and Jiang Qing's repeated accusations against me. “What a sorry situation you're in,” he said. “You're totally soaked.” I explained that the rain was heavy.

“You've had a rough time, haven't you?” he asked, knowing what an adventure I had just had. “Are you hurt? Don't cry.” He had mistaken the tiger balm ointment on my face for tears.

“I'm not hurt,” I said. “But three people were hurt by bombs. I don't know whether they are alive or not.”

Wang Dongxing had also been there and reported that one person had been killed; the other two were expected to recover.

“Why don't you change your clothes and get some rest now?” Mao suggested. He had invited some of the leading radical student leaders—Kuai Dafu of Qinghua University, Nie Yuanzi of Beida, Tan Houlan of Beijing Normal, Han Aijing of Beijing College of Aeronautics, and Wang Dabin of Beijing College of Geology—to meet with him and with members of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group. He invited me to join the meeting.

Mao, for now, had decided to protect me. By inviting me to join the meeting, he was signaling his intention to the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group. Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Kang Sheng, and Jiang Qing would all attend the meeting. Seeing me with Mao, they would know that I was still one of his people and should be left alone. Perhaps I would not be abducted after all.

Jiang Qing greeted everyone else at the meeting warmly but said nothing to me, pretending I was not even there. Mao may have exonerated me, but she had not. Her accusation that I had tried to poison her still stood. Her behavior bothered me less, however. With Mao's protection, I felt safe again, and for once I appreciated being a member of Group One.

Mao's protection was only temporary, however. I had passed his tests so far, but my loyalty was still under scrutiny and the tests would continue.

Mao's meeting with the students that day was a milestone in the Cultural Revolution. He wanted the student factions to stop fighting and unite and warned them that if they kept splitting in two, there would soon be two of every school—two Qinghuas, two Beidas, two Beijing Normal universities.

The students were a feisty bunch, and I remember Han Aijing in particular. “Both sides have been using the Chairman's words to justify their actions,” he pointed out to Mao. “But the Chairman's words can be subject to different, even conflicting, interpretations. While the Chairman is alive and can settle the disputes, such problems can be resolved. But when the Chairman is no longer with us, what shall we do?”

Kang Sheng and Jiang Qing were furious. “How dare you talk such nonsense?” they demanded.

But Mao liked the question. He had alluded to the same problem in his earlier letter to Jiang Qing. “When I was young, I used to ask such questions myself,” he said, “questions that others would not dare to raise. Certainly my words can be given different interpretations. It's inevitable. Look at Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity—all these great schools of thought have broken down into factions, each one with a different interpretation of the original truth. Without different interpretations, there can be no growth or change. Stagnation will set in, and the original doctrine will die.”

But Mao's meeting with the students did not achieve its goal. The students could not unite, and Mao apparently decided that his faith in the young had been misplaced. Several days later, on August 5, Mao announced he wanted to present the workers a gift of several mangoes that had been given to him by Pakistani foreign minister Mian Arshad Hussain. The gift was the signal to the country that Mao had lost faith in the feuding, factionalized students and that he was placing his hope now in the workers. Not long after, the student leaders were sent to the countryside, and millions of ordinary middle school and university students followed. They could be reformed in the countryside, Mao said. Students had to “learn from the poor and lower-middle peasants.”

Mao gave the mangoes to Wang Dongxing, who divided them up, distributing one mango each to a number of leading factories in Beijing, including Beijing Textile Factory, where I was then living. The workers at the factory held a huge ceremony, rich in the recitation of Mao's words, to welcome the arrival of the mango, then sealed the fruit in wax, hoping to preserve it for posterity. The mangoes became sacred relics, objects of veneration. The wax-covered fruit was placed on an altar in the factory auditorium, and workers lined up to file past it, solemnly bowing as they walked by. No one had thought to sterilize the mango before sealing it, however, and after a few days on display, it began to show signs of rot. The revolutionary committee of the factory retrieved the rotting mango, peeled it, then boiled the flesh in a huge pot of water. Another ceremony was held, equally solemn. Mao again was greatly venerated, and the gift of the mango was lauded as evidence of the Chairman's deep concern for the workers. Then everyone in the factory filed by and each worker drank a spoonful of the water in which the sacred mango had been boiled.

After that, the revolutionary committee ordered a wax model of the original mango. The replica was duly made and placed on the altar to replace the real fruit, and workers continued to file by, their veneration for the sacred object in no apparent way diminished.

When I told Mao about the veneration being accorded his mango, he laughed. He had no problem with the mango worship and seemed delighted by the story.