Wake up（129）

 

129

 

The dark night covered up everything again in a daze, making people feel miserable, lonely, and sleepless all night long. Chaotic days, empty memories, people don't even know if they still have a heartbeat.

The night wind was blowing outside the window, and the dim moonlight elongated the shadows of the swaying branches, which looked extraordinarily weird. In the house, sadness overwhelmed the temperature of Wu Qiankun, Pan Guangfu, Chai Jianhua, and He Jiafu, the four elderly people, and a thick layer of sadness floated in their hearts.

Mosquitoes started coming out constantly to harass. Chai Jianhua brought a plate of mosquito-repellent incense and lit it in front of the Buddha. The smoke began to linger in the house, bringing bitter melancholy and illusory dreams, drawing out the sentimentality from the bottom of his heart and lengthening it.

The old people were touched by the smoke of the mosquito coils to the wounds deep in their hearts. This pain has been hidden in the black spiritual world for a long time.

Wu Qiankun continued to tell Pan Guangfu, Chai Jianhua, and He Jiafu about the experience of the rightists in Peking University during the Cultural Revolution:

Among the 716 "rightists" at Peking University, five were sentenced to death for "counter-revolutionary crimes" during the Cultural Revolution. During the Anti-Rightist movement, Huang Zongqi, a student of the philosophy department and a "rightist", was sentenced to death for having a physical conflict with a Peking University student who was guarding him. A total of six "rightists" were sentenced to death, accounting for nearly one percent of the total 716 people. That is, almost one in every hundred people. This number of executions is not only a very high proportion for the group of "rightists" at Peking University, but also a very high proportion for Peking University as a school.

The five people who were sentenced to death during the Cultural Revolution were: Lin Zhao, a student of the Chinese Department, was executed in 1968; Ren Daxiong, a teacher of the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics, and Shen Yuandu, a student of the History Department were executed in 1970; Zhang Xikun, a student of the Department of Chemistry, was executed in 1976 execute.

Lin Zhao was sentenced to death in Shanghai on April 29, 1968. That was before the "May Day", the "Shanghai Revolutionary Committee" "sentenced death sentences to a group of "counter-revolutionaries" and executed them immediately." This is the Cultural Revolution's way of celebrating festivals.

Both Gu Wenxuan and Shen Yuan were sentenced to death in Beijing. On February 21, 1970, the "Beijing Public Law and Military Control Committee of the Chinese People's Liberation Army" issued a document, "distributing the materials of 55 criminals including Gu Wenxuan to various units", asking the "revolutionary masses" to "propose handling opinions". Shen Yuan is also in this material. Among the 55 people, Peking University "rightists" accounted for two. One of the functions of this approach is to create greater terror among ordinary people, as the old saying goes. They were executed on March 5, 1970, just two weeks after this material was released.

Ren Daxiong was sentenced to death in Datong City, Shanxi Province on March 28, 1970. In 1957, he translated some paragraphs of Khrushchev’s report exposing Stalin’s “Great Purge” that killed countless Russians in the English “Worker’s Daily” in the Peking University Library, and posted it on the school’s newspaper reading column for viewing. He was classified as a "rightist" and then sentenced, and then sentenced to death during the Cultural Revolution. It can be seen from the verdict that 13 people including Ren Daxiong were sentenced to death, without citing any legal basis, it only stated: In order to fully implement the "one three one" instruction issued by the great leader Chairman Mao's wife to "follow it", resolutely suppress counter-revolutionary sabotage activities. The so-called "One Three One" instruction refers to the "Instructions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Combating Counter-Revolutionary and Sabotage Activities" approved and issued by Mao Zedong, Zhongfa [1970] No. 3 Document. Mao Zedong's approval of the word "do it" in this document is the basis for the death penalty. This is an unprecedented death sentence format in the history of human legal system.

Wu Qiankun also recounted what happened to the "rightists" who stayed in Peking University. According to "The 63 Victims and the Cultural Revolution of Peking University": Four of the 63 victims were English professor Wu Xinghua, history professor Xiang Da, Chinese revolutionary history teacher Xu Shihua, and library science professor Wang Chongmin. He was classified as a "rightist" and was punished with a salary cut and a demoted position.

Both Wu Xinghua and Xiang Da were "caught out" at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and sent to the "cowshed" and "reform through labor team". On August 3, 1966, when Wu Xinghua was "reformed through labor" in front of the office building in the west gate of Peking University, he was forced to drink sewage from a nearby chemical plant in a ditch and passed out after being poisoned. The Red Guards denounced him as "playing dead". Wu Xinghua died that night at the age of 43. The autopsy was performed after death, not for medical purposes, but because the Red Guards wanted to prove that he "resisted the Cultural Revolution's suicide" and made him more guilty.

Xiang Da was brutally "struggled" in August 1966. He knelt under the poisonous sun and was beaten on the narrow platform outside the balcony railing on the second floor of the department office. Fortunately, he did not fall from the top. At the end of September, he and other "ghosts and snake spirits" from the history department were taken to Taiping Village, Changping County to work. At night, the door of their dormitory was locked, and they were not even allowed to go out to use the toilet at night. Xiang Da has kidney disease, can't urinate, and his whole body is swollen, but he is not allowed to be sent to the hospital for treatment. He died on November 10.

Xu Shihua committed suicide by throwing himself into water in Xiyuan near Peking University, and Wang Chongmin hanged himself on the mountain behind the Summer Palace. Their deaths cannot actually be understood as "suicide" in the usual sense. They ended their own lives after being persecuted for a long time and suffering severe physical and mental trauma.

Wu Qiankun said:

Wang Xinzhong, Cheng Qingming, and Liu Pinxin from the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics of Peking University were classmates who enrolled in 1949, and they all stayed at the school to teach after graduation.

In 1957, the Peking University Party Committee of the Communist Party of China called on the masses to "help the party to rectify the wind." Wang Xinzhong wrote a big-character poster to criticize the atmosphere of punishing others at that time. Therefore, he was designated as an "extreme rightist" and sent to a labor camp.

Cheng Qingming was a member of the CCP General Branch and Secretary of the Communist Youth League of the department at that time. At the meeting to delineate "rightists", he disagreed with the designation of two students and was accused of "covering up rightists". "designated" as a "rightist", expelled from the Communist Party, demoted and reduced salary. During the Cultural Revolution, Cheng Qingming was accused of being an "active counter-revolutionary" for discussing the Cultural Revolution with his friends in private. He was once tied to a bunk bed in a student dormitory with his feet off the ground and severely beaten. In 1969, he was regarded as a typical example of "refusing to confess" and "resisting strictness". He was arrested and imprisoned at the "struggle meeting" in the auditorium of the office building of Peking University. After more than a year, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison and sent to Shanxi Prison to serve his sentence. At the end of 1978 he was released near the end of his sentence.

Liu Pinxin had doubts about the classification of two classmates as "rightists". She did not dare to express her thoughts publicly, but wrote them down in her diary. During the Cultural Revolution, the diary could be used as a basis for conviction. Liu Pinxin was "struggled" for a long time. Not only was she "struggled" during the climax of fighting against others, but she was also dragged into the "struggle" during the "anti-resurgence" in 1973. She was once grabbed by the hair and slapped. After being subjected to such cruel torture, Liu Pinxin lost her mind. At the end of 1978, Cheng Qingming went to visit after he was released from prison. She had lost her memory and did not know Cheng Qingming.

While the old people were talking, Nanshan Yun came to make tea and water for them again.

Wu Qiankun looked at the young Nanshan Yun and said:

Today's young people probably don't know about the anti-rightist struggle, and even they can't say anything about the Cultural Revolution. I remember that when I was young, I always looked at the starry sky at night. It was my honor to be accompanied by stars, so that I was no longer alone. Sometimes it makes me forget the darkness of the world, the fear of walking in the dark, and the helplessness. I hope that the starry sky is bright every night. But it's just a dreamy feeling. In the dark night, I always feel like there is a strange demon following me behind me. When you find that there is no follower, continue to walk quickly. My mood is always uneasy. Now, when I am alone at home, I sit quietly with my chin resting on my back, but my eyes stare at the distant starry sky through the window, and the ghosts of the past are still flying in my mind.