WHAT NEXT? After the victory in the war of resistance, Zhao Tingya and Zhao Tingying and other members of the Zhao clan profited from the war and endured rebuke, without any excuse for their behaviour. Yan Xishan was not willing to see them, and the Nationalist Party punished traitors, while meanwhile, the Communist Party relied heavily on military strength to seize national political power on a large scale. No matter how you put it, there was nothing good in store for the Zhao family. In a sentence, the Zhao family plight was wretched, and neither Yan Xishan, nor the Nationalist Party, nor the Communist Party were prepared to support this family financially.
Life was difficult for Daili. She couldn't live in Shanghai, and it would have been more difficult to continue on to Beijing, and the entire family had nearly become homeless. Therefore, the many members and friends of the Zhao family headed north, east, south and west to eleven different provinces, scattering in all directions.
Daili, taking care of little Zhao Jian, was distressed and terrified.
She thought for a while, still relying on the work of her own two hands to support herself during that time. Shanghai was full of heartbreak; in Beijing, it was difficult to earn a living, she could not stay in Taiyuan, so how about Xi'an? Daili decided to once more rely on the shelter of her "greatly compassionate and greatly merciful" [17] cousin Zhao Jusheng. It had been from this temporary residence that Daili had given birth to her daughter, and Daili and her cousin had a deep friendship.
In the spring of 1950, Daili, with Zhao Jian in tow, sought shelter in Xi'an.
Seeing her cousin Jusheng, both of them meeting in the midst of sadness, they embraced and cried. The child and the single mother could only rely on each other in the midst of their plight, which was greatly pitiful. Zhao Jusheng reassured Daili, and at the same time, begged all of her old friends from Shanxi for a way for Daili to be able to put food on the table.
It was quite peculiar. Zhao Jusheng had lived in Xi'an for a long time, and she had a lot of contacts, but she unexpectedly found a heavyweight from her hometown—the famous model worker Zhao Zhankui of the early Communist Party. It's a long story, but this old model worker was from Dinxiang County in Shanxi, and during the war of resistance he worked casting metal in a munitions factory in Yan'an, he was practical and hard-working; straight-forward and down to earth. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the besiegement of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia border regions, and the valiant general He Long, in the capacity of commander in chief of the united defence of the border area, specially ordered the Wenjiagou Munitions factory to which Zhao Zhankui belonged to urgently manufacture over a hundred thousand hand grenades to equip the troops in their battle against the enemy. He had not expected that munitions factory workers' union officials, such as Di Dejian, would suddenly raise the issue of workers' conditions and salary, opposing the ten-hour work system, and if their demands were not met, they would strike. Di and others requested that the Yan'an government authorities give the workers compensation, and this incident was the first industrial go-slow strike under the Communist government. It was enough! He Long came very close to ordering to have Di Dejian excuted by firing squad. In one regard, the Yan'an government were relentless in punishing Di and others, in the other, they established employment models, strengthening their political ideology, and relying on the power of the models to solve the problems of returning to work after stoppages. Yan'an's Liberation Daily enthusiastically published a report of the good Shanxi worker Zhao Zhankui's past accomplishments of practicality and reliability. Mao Zedong immediately used this model as part of high-level strategy. Farmers were to learn from Wu Manyou; factory workers were to learn from Zhao Zhankui; in the Taihang Mountains, people were to learn from Li Shunda; the military was to learn from Zhang Side, and cadres were to learn from Bai Qiu'en. Afterwards, it was added that the young should learn from Liu Hulan, Dong Cunrui, Huang Jiguang, Qiu Shaoyun; adolescents should learn from Liu Wenxue, those in industry should learn from Da Qing, those in agriculture should learn from Da Zhai, and the entire nation should famously learn from the good example of Lei Feng of the People's Liberation Army … thus, through the use of models, people's speech was focused, their ideas unified, and their actions organised. In every historical period the Communist Party established one, a few, or even many radiant models, publicising them to the ordinary masses as a new co-ordinate and frame of reference for them to walk with the Party. The results were effective, and were naturally very good—not only good, but especially good, exceptionally good.
This time, facing the enemy, Mao's instructions regarding studying Zhao Zhankui were firm, with no room to manoeuvre. At the time, after reading the report from the Liberation Daily, he personally gave a call to central committee secretary Deng Fa, saying, "Rewarding Zhao Zhankui for his accomplishments isn't about rewarding an individual, it's about fundamentally increasing manufacturing in the border regions and in other areas, and the emerging issue of improving work. I often hear people say that we should find our own Stakhanov[18], Comrade Zhao Zhankui is the Chinese style Stakhanov. You must collect his good qualities, establish him as a model, and promote it to every factory and production unit." From there, a vigorous and large-scale movement to "learn from Zhao Zhankui" emerged in the border regions of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia.
After 1949, almost without a doubt, Zhao Zhankui became the foremost national model worker, and a representative for wor-kers in the northwest. He participated in the first meeting of the first session of the CPPCC, and was successively elected as the National People's Representative at the first and second sessions of that conference. In 1950, Zhao Zhankui had the honour of being appointed as vice-chairperson of the Assembly of Labour Unions of the Northwest and Shaanxi Province, and he actively worked as deputy minister of the Northwest Military and Political Committee Labour Department. Even until today, sixty years later, the Chinese National Assembly of Labour Unions still selects sixty "New Chinese Influential Labour Models" as a national day celebratory activity, among which Zhao Zhankui is still included in the list of honours.
Zhao Zhankui was born in 1896, and he passed away on August 26, 1973.
Now, what does that veteran "worker's emblem" have to do with the fate of Daili and her child?
Zhao Zhankui's accomplishments were already widely known in the government and military of the northwest, he was a household name. However, people only knew that he spared no effort in his work, little did they know that he was originally the apprentice of Shanxi capitalist industry, and that he learned sand casting in what is now the copper round wire factory affiliated to Shanxi munitions factory, where his technique grew better every day; or that after that he worked for three years on the Tongpu railroad in Jiexiu. The cultural backdrop was one of honest faith of popular tradition, he treated the master worker, his teacher, like a father figure, and he often had dealings with Shanxi's capitalists. At that time, the relationship between the factory owner and the workers was very good, being considerably happy and harmonious.
In 1938, when the Japanese occupied the Tongpu railroad, Zhao Zhankui fled his post, and left directly for Yan'an. At that time, Zhao Zhankui held a position for the Northwest Military and Political Committee's Labour Department, and Zhao Jusheng from Shanxi, without expanding much effort, was able to entrust the matter to him, and immediately established a mutual connection with Zhao Zhankui, who shared a hometown with her. The deputy minister of the Labour Department Zhao Zhanku enthusiastically made introductions for his fellow townsman Zhao Daili, and she became an accountant for the Labour Department, where she was treated well. In this period, she encountered almost no difficulties.
Let's return to complete our train of thought: when Zhao Zhankui arrived in Yan'an, he was already over forty years old, and he didn't number among the violent revolutionary activists. He had only followed factory regulations, he was honest and consid-erate, having relied on a lifetime of skill to scrape a meagre living for his family. It was only afterwards that he became an official, so seeing a single mother and child from his hometown in trouble, he felt compelled to help them. There is an ancient doctrine, long buried deep in our hearts, which naturally impacts us greatly, that is, if we can help others, we should give our utmost. According to Zhao Jian's memory, Zhao Daili had stayed in contact with Zhao Zhankui's relatives until recent years, and her mother had been grateful to Zhao Zhankui's family for her whole life.
Isn't this the "Theory of the End of Class Struggle" ?
The so-called class struggle in Chinese civilian society wasn't always an acutely observable condition. When it was acute and difficult, we must ask, where was ceremony? Where was traditional virtue? Where was benevolence and love? Where was support for the poor and needy?The two great classes had struggled for thousands of years, and had lost their harmony—this doctrine was grotesquely abnormal.
In this manner, Daili participated in Communist Party revolutionary work. She went to work in the Northwest Military and Political Committee Organisational Complex, in the Labour De-partment, and she came home from work alone with her small daughter, together with those revolutionary workers and peasants who had conquered the whole nation; she studied documents, she ate in the dining hall, and she passed through a happy period of her life. Unfortunately, this young woman from a rich family had never received any Communist Party organisational training, and she was nearly completely unfamiliar with the collectivisation that had occurred early on the periphery of the Party, and her life of suffering and struggle, her existence, appeared in all respects unconventional. For example, where female comrades would often wear grey uniforms, or old army "Lenin suits" , with wide pants, and coarse cloth in a single style, some with an ammunition belt around their waist, some with a small pistol, Daili often dressed up in a cheongsam, even wearing high heels, long silk stockings, a colourful headband, and appeared in public like that in broad daylight in liberated areas. If this didn't speak of the capitalist class, what did? Added to her complicated family background, and her experience wandering destitute from north to south across the country and having worked in Nationalist controlled areas, all of this together made her especially intolerable to the military aesthetic standards of the revolutionary female soldiers. If she had not been introduced by Zhao Zhankui and guarded by the "hero of her hometown" , I'm afraid that she might have been listed as an enemy, or at least, marked as being on the list of Nationalist Party "Exceptionally Suspicious Persons" .
By 1954, the Northwest Military and Political Committee was disbanded. Daili successively held offices at the Shaanxi Labour Department, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and in the work unit of the Provincial Transport Department Automobile Fittings Company. She still worked as an accountant, but the discrimination she faced because of her circumstances grew more and more severe. In those harsh and bitter years, no-one could run away from endless political investigation. According to the memories of the elderly Daili, she only knew that she co-operated in her investigation by the "Ningwu Investigation Unit" at least eighteen or twenty times. It was extremely fortunate that she had only studied in Taiyuan, and that she had never lived in Ningwu; that she had never participated in any organisations of the Nationalist Party or of Yan Xishan. Every time there was a campaign, every time she was examined, every time she was investigated, her position was as precarious as an egg on a ledge, but she remained "intact" and was able to preserve the source of her salary that supported her and her daughter's existence.
Before the Cultural Revolution, Daili held a high-level accounting position, with a monthly salary of around seventy yuan. For a single mother with one daughter, to earn this much money would have almost counted as a sin to many people, and others were full of resentment. According to her daughter Zhao Jian, around 1965, the economy had eased a little, and not only did her mother enjoy reading books and the newspaper, but she would also dress up to wander around department stores, sometimes treating it as a walk, and she would wander for a long time. Of course she wanted her life to be a little better. Isn't this the habit of all people? But the poor peasants of the countryside and the urban poor would not act that way! They would firmly oppose such a pasttime!
Campaign after campaign, people stared with bloodshot eyes, saying, "investigate her politics!" , which was not unlike stating an envy of her economic circumstances. To put it another way, under a system of public ownership, one's political fate and economic conditions were inseparable, and they almost seemed to be the same struggle. For a long time, in researching the cruelty of the Cultural Revolution, we naturally paid attention to political trends and the struggles between different factional groupings and focussed on ideological battles, while easily ignoring elements of economic interest. In reality, the battle-to-the-death between the two great schools had an intimate relation with the economic conditions of individuals under the system of public ownership.Those who lost would lose their salary and their whole family would struggle, finding it impossible to make a living. In the beginning of the rebellion, the greater part of the initial forces simply advanced demands to implement economic compensation, and not any "ideological line" . In a similar way, the "Cultural Revolution" was also a product of the conditions of public ownership, its degree of severity closely related to the degree of economic planning.
In the middle of long-term campaigns, Zhao Daili and her daughter were still able to experience temporary relief, relying completely on Daili's salary to survive. What was truly harrowing, and the worst of her misfortunates, was that despite not having participated in any organisations in her youth, this anarchist had in fact already been treated as a suspected spy—a frightening prospect. In those years, in the Nationalist-controlled districts of Guizhou, Yunnan, Chongqing, Hunan, Guangxi, Zhejiang, and Fujian, among others, many Nationalist groups energetically implemented campaigns, crying out "An inch of China is a pint of blood, a hundred thousand youths in the army of a hundred thousand" and other slogans, and many educated youths joined the army and participated in the "Three Youth Groups" or the "Youth Army" . After 1949, having participated in these activities could claim a persons' life, making it difficult to avoid prison, or many years in labour re-education—it was a common sight.
Zhao Jian recalled painfully: after watching the movie Outwitting Huashan, her classmates' collective quickly treated Daili as a carbon copy of the female spy in the film. Although it was beyond belief, and exceptionally painful, she was treated as a secret service agent to the extent that people cursed and bullied her, as if the idea that she was the daughter of a female spy was not imagination but reality.
Although discriminated against through long-term political investigation, Zhao Daili was still not ferreted out for repeated public criticism and denouncement, but on one day in 1966, her life was engulfed by the hurricane that would rip away all veils. In the ancient city of Xi'an, public denouncement and destruction was getting madder by the day. Just imagine, in that campaign, how many countless true Communists from good class backgrounds, not yet having escaped hardship, were labelled as reactionaries. The vicious public denouncement and criticism of Daili would have been nothing out of the ordinary. The elderly Daili remem-bered, that once a staff member was denounced for the slightest thing, and he was violently beaten on the spot with three consec-utive blows, and, unable to get back up after falling down for a third time, he was beaten to death then and there. The murderers took the body and burned it, dumping it carelessly in the Xi'an moat, so that he died without a burial place. During the days and nights of ceaseless public criticism, Daili's dormitory room was raided many times. Several cheongsams and high quality articles of clothing were taken, as well as several silk stockings, two pairs of high-heeled shoes, which were put on public display as "sins" . With great difficulty, she retrieved several old photographs, which had already been crossed out in red pen and had been numbered 52 and 53. The remaining photographs had been destroyed to the point where nearly nothing was left. Yet, the violence of the Red Guards of Xi'an was still less than that of the Red Guards of Daxing in Beijing, Dao County in Hunan, and my own familiar Taihang mountains, and other places where "reactionaries" were tortured and killed. People with a profound hatred of humanity, what are you going to do about it?
That Daili was able to live on is nothing short of a miracle.
She didn't think too much, only that she couldn't die, or carelessly admit to any sins, because she still had a lovely daughter, and she had to go on living for her.
From girlhood, Daili admired freedom, yearned for revolution, sought progress, revered independence, was strict with herself and lenient with others, but still she met this sorrowful end. Even Ba Jin himself experienced every kind of insult, narrowly escaping. There were still many intellectuals, great and small, and excellent authors who died violent and unnatural deaths. As the saying goes, a revolution would eat its own daughter.
The room gradually became dark; we could see from the sky that it was already evening.This beautiful woman's words were filled with sadness, again she sobbed. Daili's fate is unsettling: seventy years later, after having endured the elements, and the myriad changes of the world, she had endured the vicissitudes of time, and even though she was alone and without help and struggled to walk, she was not able to feebly capitulate. She is truly a woman who stuck to her conviction.
Her life reveals the real history.
Daili was never married. Zhao Jian never saw her father.
A beautiful woman in a troubled world.
I had to ask one final question, "We've seen the seven letters that Ba Jin sent Daili, but what of the letters that Daili sent Ba Jin in those years? Are they still with us?" Lacking Daili's version of the story is greatly regrettable. I knew that the chances were slim, but I still directed this question to the mother and daughter of the Zhao family—they shook their heads in silence, gazing blankly. Indeed, after seventy years, the letters had disappeared, and there were not even drafts. We can only hope that researchers of Ba Jin will pay attention to the matter in the future.
With the consent of Zhao Daili and Zhao Jian, I've reproduced some old photos from the Zhao family album. I wanted to make the text more complete for readers living in an era of peace, and to make it more vivid, so that you can join us in searching for Ba Jin's Daili.
Zhao Jian held position with China Construction Bank in Xi'an until her retirement.In the city of Xi'an, there are many people from Henan, and in her younger days, Zhao Jian married a reliable Henan man, later giving birth to a daughter. None of us have seen this daughter, but we wish her well, and hope that she will never have to experience the tragedy of the life of her grandmother.
Li Bin and I left Zhao Daili and Zhao Jian. We went downstairs; the traffic of the ancient city of Xi'an rolled on, and a hundred thousand lights shone. Finishing for the day, multitudes of workers each hurried home to their respective families. On the street, a beggar played the erhu: it wasn't "The Waters of the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers" , but a flowing melody, "Entering a New Age" . In the dancing light, the pedestrians walked as if they were flying.
In the autumn of 1964, at the invitation of Shanxi writers, Ba Jin visited Taiyuan, Datong, Dazhai, and Xinghua Village among other places to collect folk songs. I don't know if he still remembered "The Taiyuan Spring of 1936" , nor do I know if he still remembered that at No. 20 Slope Road, there lived a young woman named Daili, who had sent him a number of letters, and discussed many things. All of this is only speculation.
Recently, it was reported that the asteroid named after Ba Jin continues its travels through the vast, boundless and hazy universe. Even after experiencing much suffering, in this way, a Chinese author finally found perfect freedom.
I think of heaven and earth without limit, without end, and all alone tears fall down.[19]
We wish them all well, the lovers of freedom.
Taiyuan—Beijing
October 2009
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