" Regular
political
classes were started, as well as small group sessions for criticism and self-criticism; the latter at first took up about two hours a day and were not regularly held.
Lifton-Robert-Jay-Thought-Reform-and-the-Psychology-of-Totalism
We became more reactionary.
.
.
.
Now I am more critical of them.
They allow no personal freedom, and no freedom of silence.
.
.
.
They are liars and I do not believe them.
The second view was one of moderate praise, and a recognition of personal gain from thought reform.
Any Communist indoctrination, well taken, must leave some effects. It is not entirely bad. . . . A man who has been indoctrinated will always think differently as compared with those who have not been indoc- trinated--at least in certain respects. For instance, I might have been very haughty to my servants before, but now I would never treat servants as some of the Hong Kong people treat their servants. I think that this emphasis on labor and the respect they pay to labor is a very good idea. . . . Personally I had a great change. Before I had all of the ambitions that other people had. . . . I wasegocentric. . . . But now I really realize that the individualis. ratherinsignificant,
He tried to resolve his dilemma by transcending both views and withdrawing from all involvements:
People don't understand me. When they pick a quarrel with me, I don't respond--even if you persecute me. It is because of what I have been through. I am above human emotions.
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Yet the circumstances of Mr. Chao's departure from Communist China reveal he was susceptible to human emotions after all: he ran off with a Western woman who was leaving for Hong Kong. The affair dissolved after their arrival, and just at that time, travel between China and Hong Kong became much more difficult. He felt that if he returned to China, as he had more or less planned to do when he left (his wife, mother, and children were still there), he would not again have the chance to leave, and would also be re- garded with suspicion. His eventual decision to stay had little to do with ideological considerations:
I left only because of this woman. If I felt that I could move in and out freely I would have gone back. I wasn't too decided. . . . I could have been very useful to them [the Communists]--one of their propagandists in the foreign office or something.
In his contemplative moments, Chao took a somewhat Taoist or Buddhist view of his life, emphasizing its pointlessness and its nothingness. He expressed this view in one of his responses to the Thematic Apperception Test, when he was shown a blank card and asked to make up a story: x
On this piece of cardboard all I can see just now is empty whiteness. But if I look at it more intently I can imagine things which crowd into a life of many years. These things were the happenings in a man's career. When one came into this world he was just like a piece of white cardboard. There was no image, nothing engraved on it. Pretty soon when he got into contact with worldly things he carried out his own destiny and he could have painted many pictures of many kinds--some gay and some sad, some successful, some failures, some permanent, some ephemeral. And this seems to be what happened to me. In my life I have gone through all of the stages, but in a moment of self-complacency, it would seem to me that everything vanishes again into this original piece of cardboard, without picture, without color, and without emotions.
This passive resignation--real as it was for Chao--did not pre- vent him from calling into play the more active side of his char- acter. He showed extraordinary energy and effectiveness in finding work in Hong Kong, arranging for his wife and his children to leave Communist China, and then utilizing his Western contacts to set up employment for himself and residence for his family in England. There he will probably carry on ably, if without clear purpose.
? THE OLDER GENERATION 309
Chao's life story (even more than Hu's) indicates something of the vast emotional journey which many of his generation were re- quired to make from the "old China" of their youth to the Com- munist reform of their middle years. Taking into account the per- sonal, cultural, and political obstacles they faced, their accomplish- ments were often impressive; but each of these accomplishments was apt to be paid for with an increasing sense of anomie--with pro- found personal and social dislocation and unrelatedness.
Chao's oldest identities (oldest in the history of both his culture and his own life) were those of the fearful rural mystic and the "mother-directed" filial son. The first identity, which included both an awe of the supernatural and an imaginative richness, was his bond with generations of people from his local area. It formed a basic underlying identity upon which later more worldly ones were grafted, and it contributed to his inability to ever feel truly at home in the modern, urban world. Many Chinese intellectuals (including Hu) possessed similar elements of rural mysticism, however sup- pressed by the rational demands of both Confucian and Western teachings; but Chao reveals the strong staying power of this rural self, which made it both a refuge and an embarrassment.
Chao's relationship with his mother supplied him with some- thing of a conveyor identity, and allowed him to remain filial and at the same time move beyond the narrow world of filialism. It was not unusual in Chao's generation, especially if one's beginnings were rather humble, for a parent like this--rooted in tradition, but possessing the capacity to imagine a modern future--to help a child make this great emotional leap; nor is such a phenomenon confined to Chinese society. In Chao's case, more conflict was involved than he cared to reveal: he made clear his early dependency upon his mother, as well as his sense of gratitude and of personal debt; but from some of his test responses (descriptions of bitter disagreements between mothers and sons), I learned of his struggle to become inde- pendent of her control, and of the guilt and resentment which accompanied this struggle. This mother-son alliance of love and ambition was nonetheless the means by which a rural child of the old China reached the educational channels which transformed him into a sophisticated (if brittle) modern Chinese man.
Chao became immersed in his personal ideology of social ac- complishment and recognition and remained relatively detached
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from broad ideological movements. Although his developing iden- tity of the detached careerist was a natural outgrowth of his relation- ship with his mother, it was also an identity very frequently chosen by others during these chaotic years--a means of survival in a so- ciety whose moral cohesion was rapidly breaking down.
For Chao's generation, the path to accomplishment was Western learning, and the price of Western learning some degree of West- ernization. But by spending his early twenties in America, and by becoming a Westernized Chinese, Chao experienced the beginning of an almost interminable identity crisis. Before he went, he was able--with some difficulty--to handle the continuous adaptations and personal changes necessary for his advance within Chinese so- ciety; but the more jarring conflict of feeling both attracted to and repelled by the Western world was almost too much for him. Like many Asian students in the West, he felt himself simultaneously liberated and denigrated. In the midst of newfound possibilities for self-expression, he felt keenly his status as a non-Westerner, an Oriental. Along with the threat to his masculinity--Asian men are apt to look upon American women with trepidation, and Amer- ican women are likely to treat Asian men in a kindly, sisterly fashion--American society posed a more important threat to his general sense of autonomy: how much of his self would be con- sumed by this tantalizing new Western influence? Historical events both American and Chinese led Chao to value all that was West- ern; and men like Chao wavered between taking too great a plunge into Westernization and recoiling defensively into Chineseness. Facing all of these problems while for the first time navigating without his mother's help, Chao never fully recovered from the intense sense of identity diffusion initiated within him by his Amer- ican experience.
He returned to China much better educated in useful Western ways, but less sure of what he was and where he was going. His sensitivity to, and expectation of, rebuff made him, over the years, a resentful bureaucrat, another identity in which personal conflicts blended with the social realities of a frequently unscrupulous en- vironment. This identity also was common among those Chinese intellectuals who threw in their lot with the Nationalist regime
(the academic field was the only major alternative, and this had its own severe strains). What characterized the resentful bureaucrat
? THE OLDER GENERATION 3 1 !
was a lack of involvement in an ideal beyond himself, a nagging suspiciousness of others, and the kind of deep-seated self-hatred which is the inevitable outcome of losing a battle with one's sense of integrity.
Chao and many of his associates, naturally enough, attempted to carry over their detached attitude to thought reform; older par- ticipants in any case tended to be rather cautious. Yet this exag- gerated detachment was a liability as well as a strength. It did en- able Chao to keep a cool eye out for his self-interest; but it also rendered him susceptible to strong feelings of guilt and shame in response to Communist-style self-analysis. He was most disturbed by the exposure of his detached careerism, most impressed by the Communist program to devote oneself "wholeheartedly" to serving "the people/' As was also true for Dr. Vincent, this detached man --always refractory to ideologies--found much that was compelling in the ideology of Communism. The Westernized Chinese in Chao, although he did not verbalize this, was also vulnerable (had he not at times been contemptuous of things Chinese, and susceptible to alien and "subversive" influences? ). Confronted with such nega- tive identity elements as his alienation from his own heritage, his uneasy emotional passivity, and his ever-violated integrity, Chao could not fail to respond to thought reform's clear purpose and stringent morality.
But in men of Chao's age, emotional patterns are not easily altered, and in the long run the self-interest of the careerist served as the criterion for his judgments. We can take Chao's word that everything depended upon the job offered at the end of the process; this job assignment had great significance for everyone, for it in- dicated the way in which the Communists identified a man in their system, as well as the new identity patterns which he would be permitted to develop. Chao's affair with the Western woman thus served two purposes: it permitted him, at a difficult psychological moment, to reassert his Asian manhood where it had been most re- buffed; and it got him out of China. Not only had his old emo- tional balance been threatened; he was again feeling unappreciated and badly treated. His departure, and especially his failure to return, reflected his awareness (like Hu's) that his character was not com- patible with the Communist environment.
In the non-Communist world, Chao attempted to recover his
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detachment in the identity of a withdrawn Chinese sage. He com- bined the sophisticated ennui of one who has experienced every- thing with a return to early mysticism in the Taoist-Buddhist sense of the ephemeral nature of worldly experience (very much like Hu's father). His passions were not to be so easily stilled, but this at least was his ideal. Moreover, he had become expert in the tech- niques of personal survival: the extraordinary variety of cultures, subcultures, and stray environments which he had traversed were not wasted upon him; and in this adaptability, his character struc- ture is, after all, that of a modern man. 2
Like Hu, Chao represented something of an extreme: his sensi- tivities about his background and the extent of his frustration and withdrawal may well have been exceptional. His detached approach to the social movements of his time was, of course, just the opposite of that of Hu. Yet his combination of adaptability and anomie--a combination so crucial to the outcome of his thought reform--is another character pattern of great importance for twentieth-century China.
? 17
GEORGE CHEN: THE CON- VERSIONS OF YOUTH
For those who faced thought reform not as young
or mature adults, but as unformed teenagers, the process was as much a matter of education as re-education. Their reform took place in secondary schools and universities.
George Chen, our next Chinese subject, experienced thought reform on both of these levels: fifteen years old at the time of the Communist takeover, he was exposed to it first at a boarding school for two years, and then at a university for two additional years. He was twenty at the time that I met him, not yet one year out of Communist China.
He was introduced to me by a first cousin of his who was an acquaintance of mine. A slim, delicate-looking lad, George had a quality that was both distant and intense. He was shy and serious, but by no means reluctant to express himself, and--as became quickly evident during the interviews--both sensitive and intel- ligent. We met fourteen times over the course of one year; our sessions together totalled more than forty hours. At George's re- quest, the cousin who brought us together, and who had done some work with me before, served as interpreter; but during later interviews, I used, with George's consent, one of my regular in- terpreters.
CHAPTER
3>3
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George was born in Canton, the son of a middle-level Nationalist official. He was the fourth of eight children, the third of five boys. Through most of his childhood, he remembers, his mother was "the symbol of the family. " She had a more aristocratic background, and in times of difficulty her leadership and her money sustained them all. The close attachment between George and his mother had a crucial bearing upon his later life; but during his earliest years, he was attended to mainly by maids or amahs. One of these amahs
(said to be as strict as she was devoted) took care of him from birth until the age of two-and-a-half; and when she left, George experi- enced (as he was later told) a true infantile depression: he cried in- cessantly, called the amah's name, refused food, and resisted the efforts of others--including his mother--to take care of him. When he got a bit older, he began to realize that his mother found it very hard to care for her eight children; she was often short of breast milk, and became flustered by minor crises. He came to think of her as possessing "the virtues and the frailties" of womanhood: senti- mental, indecisive, kind, easy-going, and generous.
In the face of the Japanese invasion, the family moved to Hong Kong, where George lived from the ages of three to seven. During this period--and for most of his childhood--George remembers see- ing his father only infrequently, since distant assignments kept him away from home. George spent a good deal of his time with his two grandmothers, and each of these elderly women had a distinctive impact upon the boy. His paternal grandmother, a garrulous and opinionated lady, was kind to George and the other children; but she conveyed to them in no uncertain terms her moralistic, funda- mentalist Protestant beliefs: whoever did evil would be condemned to everlasting suffering in Hell, and only the good would enter Heaven and enjoy eternal happiness. George later learned that she had her own cross to bear: her husband, much to the disgrace of the entire family, chose to ignore them and lived with a concubine in another section of Hong Kong. Quite different was the influence of George's "adopted grandmother," who was the wife of George's great-uncle. (The great-uncle was an elder son, and since he and his wife were childless, they had "adopted" George's father in order to continue the main line of the family. ) This grandmother was a gay country woman who imparted to the children her own love of
nature, and delighted in taking them on outdoor excursions and in
? THE CONVERSIONS OF YOUTH 3 1 5
buying them frivolous presents,
George remembers himself as a very weak and sickly youngster,
who frequently suffered from indigestion, cough, and nervousness: "Whenever I would get very scared, this would cause me some ill- ness:" He was considered not strong enough to play with the other children, and was carried on the back of his amah longer than the others; despite the attention he received from his family members, he felt lonely a good deal of the time. Often kept indoors, he would sit on a small balcony and draw pictures of people, automobiles, and steamships he saw below, showing some talent in art and callig- raphy. He lived a great deal in the world of his daydreams, im- agining himself to be, instead of a weak little boy, a powerful hero, an armed policeman, a soldier, or a man of wealth who would deliver the family from its constant economic difficulties.
Even this small child was made to feel that everything was tem- porary, that he and the other family members were refugees in a very disturbed world, and that all of them had to somehow survive the indignity of living and dressing in a manner considered beneath the family station. And it was further suggested to him that if the family could only return to its home in Canton, everything would be all right: George's father would be able to join them, their finan- cial status would be better, the errant grandfather would come back and "end the family shame," and the family would be able to hold up its head once more.
Attending school from the ages of five to seven in Hong Kong, George was whisked to and from the building by his amah, and mixed little with the other children. Then the family moved to Chungking in central China and became part of a friendly wartime community. During the years he lived in Chungking, George's physical strength greatly improved, and he began to take part in all activities centering around the nearby school He emerged as an out- standing student. He became interested in Chinese history, par- ticularly in great heroes of the past, and developed the ambition of becoming himself a national hero.
In 1945, when George was ten years old, the war ended. The family made several quick moves, finally returning to Canton. In rapid succession, George was sent to three different boarding schools, two of them run by Protestant missionary groups. These were his first separations from his family; and during one period of
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three months, his mother was several hundred miles away from him. The homesickness which he experienced was largely a longing for her; he also contrasted his sense of "coldness" at being thrust among strange boys in shabby dormitories with the warmth and recognition he had known in Chungking.
When the family was finally reunited, however, he was faced with still another set of painful emotions, centering around an in- creasingly critical attitude toward his father. This protector, whose return he had so longed for, began to assume much less heroic pro- portions at close hand. Not only did George feel that he had been replaced in his father's affections by the younger children; he also began to realize that his father was not too good a family provider. Worse than this, he came to see his father as "not a reasonable man"--and to regard his outbursts of temper and general clumsi- ness in human relationships as extremely offensive.
In his distress, George turned to the religion offered to him in school. Influenced by his grandmother's earlier teachings and by the example of his older brother, who had become a Christian, George was baptized at the age of twelve, together with a younger brother and cousin. Behind this act, in addition to family influences, was a highly personal quest:
I then felt that life was very fleeting, and that nothing was very sure . . . thatwhenonedied,allofhishopesandachievementswouldperish with him . . . and that religion might be a way to a solution for all of this.
Before long George lost interest in organized religion; but he never lost his concern about man's spiritual needs and the convic- tion that "life is much more than just its materialistic interpreta- tion,"
Whatever emotional help this religious orientation may have supplied him, George did succeed in righting himself, overcoming his youthful despair, and again distinguishing himself academically --this time especially in mathematics and physics. Still preferring literature to athletics, he continued to go his own way: "I was considered by others to be lonesome, although at the time I did not consider myself to be very lonely. "
Soon, however, he began to be troubled by sexual urges. He en- joyed the pornographic literature passed around in school as much as the next fellow, but he suffered more than most over his enjoy-
? THE CONVERSIONS OF YOUTH 317
ment. He dealt with the situation by establishing a personal taboo: "I felt very ashamed of myself. . . . I would prevent myself from touching these books even if they were available. " He found great relief by reading (at the age of fifteen) a Chinese translation of Lady Chatterley's Lover, after which "I no longer felt that sex was evil. " But this partial enlightenment by no means eradicated his moralistic condemnation of his self-stimulation nor prevented a developing tendency (as frequent in Chinese culture as in the West) to distinguish sharply between the "nice girls" he knew and the more lascivious objects of his fantasy. "I would imagine the sexual act with some sexy woman, never my wife or fiancee. . . . I never connect physical desire with emotional interest,"
He was in the midst of these adolescent conflicts at the time of the national political excitement preceding the Communist take- over. Although he had shared in the wartime patriotism and anti- Japanese sentiment, he was slower than most youths around him to develop sharp political convictions. When he was fourteen, he had criticized his older brother because of the latter's increasing in- volvement with left-wing causes, believing that "young people should not get into these affairs because they cannot do anything about them. " As he began to learn more himself, however, he too began to take a stand against the corruption of the Nationalist regime and in favor of far-reaching changes for his country, looking toward a "great leader" to bring them about. He had mixed feelings about the Communists: as a political party antagonistic to the Nationalists, he felt that they might be able to implement some of the necessary changes; but he could not help suspecting that they were "puppets of Soviet Russia. "
At this time, his father's activities caused him much resentment. With Communist hegemony imminent, his father--now at home, with little to do--spent hours eating and talking at tea houses, where, according to George, friends would come and flatter him and amateur palm readers would tell him of the brilliant career ahead of him. George bitterly condemned his father's self-indulgence, his eating too much, and his wasting of time and money. But he was even more angered by the futile, last-ditch anti-Communist activi- ties in which his father suddenly became involved, considering them nothing more than an escape from idleness, and potentially harmful to others in the family.
When the Communist armies entered Canton, however, George
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realized that he too felt hostile toward them because, although aware of the old regime's shortcomings, "I had always taken the Nationalist government as my mother country. " Shortly afterward, when he returned home from school on a visit, he learned that his father had fled to Hong Kong. His mother had been required to quarter Communist soldiers in the family home, and although they were well-behaved, she expressed to George her resentment of the intrusion. She also told her son that the new regime was likely to be no better than the Nationalists, and quoted the Chinese proverb, "Crows everywhere are black. "
At his Protestant middle school, he found that students around him varied in their sentiments. Many were enthusiastic about the Communists, and followed the lead of political activists who-- even in this age group--identified themselves as former members of the Communist underground. A significant number of students, however (some but not all of whom were Christian), shared George's suspicion of the Communists. But few had much sympathy for the defeated Nationalists, and George "felt foolish" about his own emotional loyalties to them.
Thought reform (or "political study") was soon initiated, but only gradually. Students were told that at the middle school level they were more "ignorant" than "contaminated.
" Regular political classes were started, as well as small group sessions for criticism and self-criticism; the latter at first took up about two hours a day and were not regularly held. Political instructors were chosen from among the most "progressive" of the old teachers. One of these presented the Communist doctrine in earnest, logical terms and had a profound effect upon George:
I was always moved listening to him. . . . It was under his influence that my thought began to change a few months after the liberation. Emotionally, I was still in favor of the Nationalist Government. All my family and relatives didn't like this new regime, and I myself also felt that the new regime was hostile to us. But rationally I could not oppose it. I thought its way of expression a little too exaggerated, but its princi- ples always right; moreover, morally I should support it, because it represented the people, and it was righteous and justified.
Beyond considerations of logic, George was deeply affected by such emotions as the urge to belong and the need for hope--to the point of experiencing something close to a religious conversion:
? THE CONVERSIONS OF YOUTH 319
How this occurred is a little vague. One night I went back to school alone. On the road to the dormitory in the campus there were only a few dimly-lit road lamps, and the place seemed very lonesome. I sud- denly felt very lonely, and had the understanding of what my own situa- tion was. I knew that I had no future, that people like us seemed to have been thrown out. And yet I could not even hate this regime. Then suddenly my thought turned towards the opposite direction. Perhaps this revolution was good for everybody. Perhaps all of us would one day be happy and satisfied just as the Communists had said. If so, why should I feel sorry any more? . . . I once thought that my change in emotion was made by the power of will after my intellectual understand- ing had changed. But I can see it in retrospect now, that whenever I was bothered emotionally by the thought of having no future and being thrown out politically, I always tried to think toward the opposite di- rection, and then would feel rather resolved in the new point of view.
Over the next two years, the Communist material presented in lectures, discussions, and reading assignments always appealed to the students' "conscience and compassion" so that "we could not neglect nor turn away from it," Even when the program seemed moderate, George felt that it was "very tense inside. " He occasion- ally experienced doubts, and he once expressed to a cousin the be- lief that the regime was undemocratic and illiberal. But his cousin disagreed with him, replying, "If you are right about this, what future can we have for our country? " George's doubts were also sup- pressed by his need to believe: "I thought to myself, 'If the Com- munists were really malicious and wicked, what would we do? ' This problem was too formidable. Everybody preferred the thought that they were righteous and just . . . and everybody was willing to believe this. "
Three mass campaigns--"Accuse Japan," "Accuse America," and "Enlist for the Army"--dramatically mobilized student emotions. The first of these campaigns, according to George, was especially effective because the students, young as they were, could recall personal antagonisms toward the Japanese:
Before the Accuse-Japan Meeting was launched, there was an Anti- Japanese-Rearmament Week, and all of the songs we sang during the war against Japanese aggression were played over the radio. This helped the students to remember wartime and to revive the old hatred. Then the Accuse-Japan general meeting took place for three continuous days. At first there were reports of the historical events of Japanese aggression in China, and the hideous plot of the American imperialists to rearm
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Japan. Then the students spoke freely about their own experiences, sufferings, and tragedies during the war. The first few speeches were pre- arranged by the Students7 League and the New Democratic Youth Corps. . . . The atmosphere was easily achieved. . . . Many students went up to the stage voluntarily, and even those who did not go up had just the same hatred for the Japanese and for the American imperialists.
George was deeply affected by this campaign, and critical of him- self for not being even more zealous: "I felt ashamed that I was less full of hate than the others. "
Similar passions were aroused during the "Accuse America" meet- ings, although George thought these less successful because students had less personal animosity toward America. But they did resolve to destroy all of the imported American bluejeans which they owned. In retrospect, George felt this to be "the epidemic spread of a fashion. . . . The fear of being considered lagging behind, and not the genuine change of an idea/'
The Enlist for the Army campaign, which lasted for one month, was more a means of eliciting the students' willingness to serve than an actual attempt to obtain military personnel. George de- scribed the movement's moral force, and the threat of ostracism to those who resisted:
Progressive students were always there to criticize those who were not willing to enlist, saying that they were just being selfish, since the fear of sacrifice or the consideration of one's own future were only selfishness. . . . The students who enlisted had some special activities together, and everybody wished to participate in these. . . . Those who enlisted called for the others to join them. . . . And those who did not enlist were not as well regarded. . . . To a student who did not enlist, this month was really a kind of persecution. . . . The constant meetings in large and small groups were a way of reproach. . . . You felt yourself all wrong. You found no way out of this. You felt that you could not stand among the enlisted when you met them. . . . The student who had not enlisted had already admitted inside his own mind that he was not right.
. . . He felt lonely, and he and others like him did not dare to unite or to encourage each other. Everyone was aware that this disturbance could be resolved by enlisting for the army. . . . I was among the en- listed.
George felt, however (again in retrospect), that there was a tendency in him to resist, and that "if I had a family member to talk to me personally or a girl friend to oppose it," he might not
? THE CONVERSIONS OF YOUTH 321
have enlisted. But his faith in Communism, like that of his fellow students, steadily increased.
This faith was then greatly undermined during a visit to his family in Hong Kong over the summer vacation. And this same sequence occurred the following year: reinforcement of his Com- munist beliefs at school on the mainland, then the emergence of critical views in Hong Kong. He attributed these shifts to the in- fluence of individual family members, as well as to an underlying sympathy for Western democracies. "When I was on the mainland I had to suppress this original affection and favor. . . . But once arriving in Hong Kong, the suppression was relieved and my ideas naturally went back to their original form. " In any case, the shifts were rather extreme: "On the mainland I thought the Communist aims to be just, and that I should devote myself to them. . . . In Hong Kong, I thought the Communist aims were but lies, their means too cruel, and that even if we did want to achieve a modern cosmopolitan country we should not follow the Communist way. " Whatever his vantage point, he was extremely impressionable: "I was quite inevitably sentimental: on the mainland I was willing to believe the Communists, and in Hong Kong I was willing to oppose them. "
He was nonetheless determined to return to the mainland for his university education, having passed his entrance examination for Peking University (China's leading academic center) before his second Hong Kong visit. His parents bitterly opposed this and urged him to remain with them. His father went so far as to issue what is in any culture the ultimate parental threat: "If you insist upon going to Peking, I cannot any longer consider you my son. " But George was less affected by this pronouncement than he was by his mother's obvious grief at the time of his departure. His conflict was so great that just after he got on the boat to go back to China, he had a strong urge to run ashore; and even after he arrived at Canton, the first mainland city on the way to Peking, he almost changed his mind again, and was dissuaded from returning to Hong Kong only by friends who urged him to remain for the sake of his education and his future.
At the University of Peking, George found the pattern of thought reform similar to that at middle school, but more intensive: not only did criticism and self-criticism within small groups become
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more focused and personal, but students were expected to be in- stigators as well as followers. During the Three Anti Movement --against waste, corruption, and bureaucracy--the first of a series of campaigns on the campus, it was the students who searched out these evils among all university employees, including faculty members. In fact, a student, as local Communist Party secretary, ran the campaign, and for some time virtually ran the university.
The movement followed the usual sequence: an announcement by Mao Tse-tung, editorials in leading newspapers about its pur- poses and general methods, and then preparation at the university itself. Posters were prominent everywhere, slogans and cartoon caricatures appeared on all the classroom blackboards (called the "blackboard press"), and loudspeakers broadcasted throughout the university--in dining rooms, dormitories, assembly halls, and depart- ment buildings. The campaign achieved its greatest intensity during a two-month period devoted entirely to its activities: students were required to remain at the university for what would ordinarily have been a one-month vacation period, and the beginning of the next term's classes was delayed for still another month. George served as a "detention guard," watching over those nonprofessional employees
(servants and clerical help) who were detained in special bed- rooms or classrooms, each isolated and subjected to a barrage of pressures to confess his past participation in corrupt activities. None of those singled out failed to confess, and some were sent to prison.
For George and the other students, the most impressive events were the public confessions of their professors (here the Three Anti Movement merged with the Thought Reform Campaign). Each faculty member was required to make a "self-examination" before the students of his own department, and criticize his political short- comings and also his deficiencies in teaching method and outlook. George was impressed by the influence which students could bring to bear upon their professors, especially so in the case of his own department head:
Professor M was the ex-chairman of the Chinese National League of Physicists, a very renowned professor. But the students did not like him too much. He muttered when he spoke, and he was not too sociable a person. . . . Allthe students were free to give their true opinions about his teaching, their criticism about him. They emphasized with him and with most of the professors that they neglected their teaching and were
? THE CONVERSIONS OF YOUTH J2J
more interested in research. . . . But his case was especially big because as faculty chairman he was accused about other aspects of university behavior. . . . He got up and accused himself of his previous dealings with the KMT, his friendship with KMT leaders. He also confessed that he had not been very enthusiastic in thought reform, and had not taken a very active part in the political classes among the professors. Then he said that when he had been chairman of the faculty committee, he had not really worked as a true chairman--that he had been only eager to write articles in order to get them published in magazines for his own international fame--and that his work was really for himself, not for his students. . . . The students kept adding criticisms, and he had to criticize himself on four occasions before he was allowed to finish. . . . Practically speaking, almost all of the professors "bowed their heads" in front of the Party. They were approved sooner or later. Some were very tough and stubborn at first, but then to everybody's surprise, they would turn about face and admit that they had been wrong.
George felt that some of these criticisms and self-criticisms were overdone, but thought most of them "reasonable"; for by now he was once more joining with group enthusiasms, and was in general accord with student actions.
During the Honesty and Frankness Movement which followed (also a part of the Thought Reform Campaign), students turned their criticisms upon themselves. They were told that in the past the government had been corrupt and the political system "irra- tional," so that people were forced to be dishonest; but now, with an enlightened and "rational" government, one could be "honest and frank" about everything. In addition to the usual details about their backgrounds, students were expected to confess such things as "intrigues and wrongs of parents," cheating during examinations,
listening to illegal radio broadcasts, and (especially for women) lies about age.
At first, George thought that any denunciation of his family would be immoral: "Prior to these meetings, I did not believe that family affiliation could be a mistake. " But group pressures soon led him to the opposite conviction, that it would be immoral not to denounce one's family: "The Organization [Party, Youth Corps, and government] kept emphasizing that attachment toward our families was selfish and wrong, since they had been against the wel- fare of the people. So I began to feel that by loving my family, I was neglecting my duty to my country," Like Hu, George felt guilty over keeping a secret: "I also thought that if each individual
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kept something secret, something only known to himself, it would certainly have a bad effect upon his work for the government-- and for the sake of the people, it was right to ask everyone to tell the truth. " And he was greatly influenced by the unanimous con- fession trend among the forty freshmen physics students in his section: "When I saw others criticizing their family happily, and I contrasted this with my own reluctance, I began to think that this must be due to my own selfishness. " By this time, his inner moral conflict had become inextricably merged with fear of external re- prisal, so that the only solution he saw was to submit.
I felt very confused and upset. . . . I knew that the matter must be settled--and that if I didn't do it well, the government would discover that I wasn't being frank enough and I would be in for trouble. I felt that if I could once and for all settle the turmoil in my mind, I would calm down and be able to feel that I had done my duty to my country.
In deciding what to confess, George was influenced by others be- fore him ("they set good examples for me") and by his realization that the purpose of the movement was to get people to confess those things they most wished to conceal:
To me the only thing I wanted to conceal was that I had come from a reactionary, bureaucratic family--so this was the thing to confess. . . . I told that my father had been a KMT official, a KMT party member, and had held important KMT positions. I said that he had been a reactionary, a man who worked for the welfare of his class which was against the welfare of the people. . . . and that my attachment for my family was selfish and wrong. . . .
He experienced the relief of one who has carried out his obliga- tions: "I had the feeling that what I did was right, because it was what the government required me to do, and that it was proper behavior. " But his family attachments could not be severed, and he could not avoid recurrent guilt:
When I would receive letters from my family, or look through my lug- gage and see reminders of home, I felt sorry about what I had done. . . . Other students told me that after they had made their confession they considered their relationship with their family ended, and that they felt great relief and did not have to worry any more. . . . I did not feel this way.
The second view was one of moderate praise, and a recognition of personal gain from thought reform.
Any Communist indoctrination, well taken, must leave some effects. It is not entirely bad. . . . A man who has been indoctrinated will always think differently as compared with those who have not been indoc- trinated--at least in certain respects. For instance, I might have been very haughty to my servants before, but now I would never treat servants as some of the Hong Kong people treat their servants. I think that this emphasis on labor and the respect they pay to labor is a very good idea. . . . Personally I had a great change. Before I had all of the ambitions that other people had. . . . I wasegocentric. . . . But now I really realize that the individualis. ratherinsignificant,
He tried to resolve his dilemma by transcending both views and withdrawing from all involvements:
People don't understand me. When they pick a quarrel with me, I don't respond--even if you persecute me. It is because of what I have been through. I am above human emotions.
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Yet the circumstances of Mr. Chao's departure from Communist China reveal he was susceptible to human emotions after all: he ran off with a Western woman who was leaving for Hong Kong. The affair dissolved after their arrival, and just at that time, travel between China and Hong Kong became much more difficult. He felt that if he returned to China, as he had more or less planned to do when he left (his wife, mother, and children were still there), he would not again have the chance to leave, and would also be re- garded with suspicion. His eventual decision to stay had little to do with ideological considerations:
I left only because of this woman. If I felt that I could move in and out freely I would have gone back. I wasn't too decided. . . . I could have been very useful to them [the Communists]--one of their propagandists in the foreign office or something.
In his contemplative moments, Chao took a somewhat Taoist or Buddhist view of his life, emphasizing its pointlessness and its nothingness. He expressed this view in one of his responses to the Thematic Apperception Test, when he was shown a blank card and asked to make up a story: x
On this piece of cardboard all I can see just now is empty whiteness. But if I look at it more intently I can imagine things which crowd into a life of many years. These things were the happenings in a man's career. When one came into this world he was just like a piece of white cardboard. There was no image, nothing engraved on it. Pretty soon when he got into contact with worldly things he carried out his own destiny and he could have painted many pictures of many kinds--some gay and some sad, some successful, some failures, some permanent, some ephemeral. And this seems to be what happened to me. In my life I have gone through all of the stages, but in a moment of self-complacency, it would seem to me that everything vanishes again into this original piece of cardboard, without picture, without color, and without emotions.
This passive resignation--real as it was for Chao--did not pre- vent him from calling into play the more active side of his char- acter. He showed extraordinary energy and effectiveness in finding work in Hong Kong, arranging for his wife and his children to leave Communist China, and then utilizing his Western contacts to set up employment for himself and residence for his family in England. There he will probably carry on ably, if without clear purpose.
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Chao's life story (even more than Hu's) indicates something of the vast emotional journey which many of his generation were re- quired to make from the "old China" of their youth to the Com- munist reform of their middle years. Taking into account the per- sonal, cultural, and political obstacles they faced, their accomplish- ments were often impressive; but each of these accomplishments was apt to be paid for with an increasing sense of anomie--with pro- found personal and social dislocation and unrelatedness.
Chao's oldest identities (oldest in the history of both his culture and his own life) were those of the fearful rural mystic and the "mother-directed" filial son. The first identity, which included both an awe of the supernatural and an imaginative richness, was his bond with generations of people from his local area. It formed a basic underlying identity upon which later more worldly ones were grafted, and it contributed to his inability to ever feel truly at home in the modern, urban world. Many Chinese intellectuals (including Hu) possessed similar elements of rural mysticism, however sup- pressed by the rational demands of both Confucian and Western teachings; but Chao reveals the strong staying power of this rural self, which made it both a refuge and an embarrassment.
Chao's relationship with his mother supplied him with some- thing of a conveyor identity, and allowed him to remain filial and at the same time move beyond the narrow world of filialism. It was not unusual in Chao's generation, especially if one's beginnings were rather humble, for a parent like this--rooted in tradition, but possessing the capacity to imagine a modern future--to help a child make this great emotional leap; nor is such a phenomenon confined to Chinese society. In Chao's case, more conflict was involved than he cared to reveal: he made clear his early dependency upon his mother, as well as his sense of gratitude and of personal debt; but from some of his test responses (descriptions of bitter disagreements between mothers and sons), I learned of his struggle to become inde- pendent of her control, and of the guilt and resentment which accompanied this struggle. This mother-son alliance of love and ambition was nonetheless the means by which a rural child of the old China reached the educational channels which transformed him into a sophisticated (if brittle) modern Chinese man.
Chao became immersed in his personal ideology of social ac- complishment and recognition and remained relatively detached
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from broad ideological movements. Although his developing iden- tity of the detached careerist was a natural outgrowth of his relation- ship with his mother, it was also an identity very frequently chosen by others during these chaotic years--a means of survival in a so- ciety whose moral cohesion was rapidly breaking down.
For Chao's generation, the path to accomplishment was Western learning, and the price of Western learning some degree of West- ernization. But by spending his early twenties in America, and by becoming a Westernized Chinese, Chao experienced the beginning of an almost interminable identity crisis. Before he went, he was able--with some difficulty--to handle the continuous adaptations and personal changes necessary for his advance within Chinese so- ciety; but the more jarring conflict of feeling both attracted to and repelled by the Western world was almost too much for him. Like many Asian students in the West, he felt himself simultaneously liberated and denigrated. In the midst of newfound possibilities for self-expression, he felt keenly his status as a non-Westerner, an Oriental. Along with the threat to his masculinity--Asian men are apt to look upon American women with trepidation, and Amer- ican women are likely to treat Asian men in a kindly, sisterly fashion--American society posed a more important threat to his general sense of autonomy: how much of his self would be con- sumed by this tantalizing new Western influence? Historical events both American and Chinese led Chao to value all that was West- ern; and men like Chao wavered between taking too great a plunge into Westernization and recoiling defensively into Chineseness. Facing all of these problems while for the first time navigating without his mother's help, Chao never fully recovered from the intense sense of identity diffusion initiated within him by his Amer- ican experience.
He returned to China much better educated in useful Western ways, but less sure of what he was and where he was going. His sensitivity to, and expectation of, rebuff made him, over the years, a resentful bureaucrat, another identity in which personal conflicts blended with the social realities of a frequently unscrupulous en- vironment. This identity also was common among those Chinese intellectuals who threw in their lot with the Nationalist regime
(the academic field was the only major alternative, and this had its own severe strains). What characterized the resentful bureaucrat
? THE OLDER GENERATION 3 1 !
was a lack of involvement in an ideal beyond himself, a nagging suspiciousness of others, and the kind of deep-seated self-hatred which is the inevitable outcome of losing a battle with one's sense of integrity.
Chao and many of his associates, naturally enough, attempted to carry over their detached attitude to thought reform; older par- ticipants in any case tended to be rather cautious. Yet this exag- gerated detachment was a liability as well as a strength. It did en- able Chao to keep a cool eye out for his self-interest; but it also rendered him susceptible to strong feelings of guilt and shame in response to Communist-style self-analysis. He was most disturbed by the exposure of his detached careerism, most impressed by the Communist program to devote oneself "wholeheartedly" to serving "the people/' As was also true for Dr. Vincent, this detached man --always refractory to ideologies--found much that was compelling in the ideology of Communism. The Westernized Chinese in Chao, although he did not verbalize this, was also vulnerable (had he not at times been contemptuous of things Chinese, and susceptible to alien and "subversive" influences? ). Confronted with such nega- tive identity elements as his alienation from his own heritage, his uneasy emotional passivity, and his ever-violated integrity, Chao could not fail to respond to thought reform's clear purpose and stringent morality.
But in men of Chao's age, emotional patterns are not easily altered, and in the long run the self-interest of the careerist served as the criterion for his judgments. We can take Chao's word that everything depended upon the job offered at the end of the process; this job assignment had great significance for everyone, for it in- dicated the way in which the Communists identified a man in their system, as well as the new identity patterns which he would be permitted to develop. Chao's affair with the Western woman thus served two purposes: it permitted him, at a difficult psychological moment, to reassert his Asian manhood where it had been most re- buffed; and it got him out of China. Not only had his old emo- tional balance been threatened; he was again feeling unappreciated and badly treated. His departure, and especially his failure to return, reflected his awareness (like Hu's) that his character was not com- patible with the Communist environment.
In the non-Communist world, Chao attempted to recover his
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detachment in the identity of a withdrawn Chinese sage. He com- bined the sophisticated ennui of one who has experienced every- thing with a return to early mysticism in the Taoist-Buddhist sense of the ephemeral nature of worldly experience (very much like Hu's father). His passions were not to be so easily stilled, but this at least was his ideal. Moreover, he had become expert in the tech- niques of personal survival: the extraordinary variety of cultures, subcultures, and stray environments which he had traversed were not wasted upon him; and in this adaptability, his character struc- ture is, after all, that of a modern man. 2
Like Hu, Chao represented something of an extreme: his sensi- tivities about his background and the extent of his frustration and withdrawal may well have been exceptional. His detached approach to the social movements of his time was, of course, just the opposite of that of Hu. Yet his combination of adaptability and anomie--a combination so crucial to the outcome of his thought reform--is another character pattern of great importance for twentieth-century China.
? 17
GEORGE CHEN: THE CON- VERSIONS OF YOUTH
For those who faced thought reform not as young
or mature adults, but as unformed teenagers, the process was as much a matter of education as re-education. Their reform took place in secondary schools and universities.
George Chen, our next Chinese subject, experienced thought reform on both of these levels: fifteen years old at the time of the Communist takeover, he was exposed to it first at a boarding school for two years, and then at a university for two additional years. He was twenty at the time that I met him, not yet one year out of Communist China.
He was introduced to me by a first cousin of his who was an acquaintance of mine. A slim, delicate-looking lad, George had a quality that was both distant and intense. He was shy and serious, but by no means reluctant to express himself, and--as became quickly evident during the interviews--both sensitive and intel- ligent. We met fourteen times over the course of one year; our sessions together totalled more than forty hours. At George's re- quest, the cousin who brought us together, and who had done some work with me before, served as interpreter; but during later interviews, I used, with George's consent, one of my regular in- terpreters.
CHAPTER
3>3
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George was born in Canton, the son of a middle-level Nationalist official. He was the fourth of eight children, the third of five boys. Through most of his childhood, he remembers, his mother was "the symbol of the family. " She had a more aristocratic background, and in times of difficulty her leadership and her money sustained them all. The close attachment between George and his mother had a crucial bearing upon his later life; but during his earliest years, he was attended to mainly by maids or amahs. One of these amahs
(said to be as strict as she was devoted) took care of him from birth until the age of two-and-a-half; and when she left, George experi- enced (as he was later told) a true infantile depression: he cried in- cessantly, called the amah's name, refused food, and resisted the efforts of others--including his mother--to take care of him. When he got a bit older, he began to realize that his mother found it very hard to care for her eight children; she was often short of breast milk, and became flustered by minor crises. He came to think of her as possessing "the virtues and the frailties" of womanhood: senti- mental, indecisive, kind, easy-going, and generous.
In the face of the Japanese invasion, the family moved to Hong Kong, where George lived from the ages of three to seven. During this period--and for most of his childhood--George remembers see- ing his father only infrequently, since distant assignments kept him away from home. George spent a good deal of his time with his two grandmothers, and each of these elderly women had a distinctive impact upon the boy. His paternal grandmother, a garrulous and opinionated lady, was kind to George and the other children; but she conveyed to them in no uncertain terms her moralistic, funda- mentalist Protestant beliefs: whoever did evil would be condemned to everlasting suffering in Hell, and only the good would enter Heaven and enjoy eternal happiness. George later learned that she had her own cross to bear: her husband, much to the disgrace of the entire family, chose to ignore them and lived with a concubine in another section of Hong Kong. Quite different was the influence of George's "adopted grandmother," who was the wife of George's great-uncle. (The great-uncle was an elder son, and since he and his wife were childless, they had "adopted" George's father in order to continue the main line of the family. ) This grandmother was a gay country woman who imparted to the children her own love of
nature, and delighted in taking them on outdoor excursions and in
? THE CONVERSIONS OF YOUTH 3 1 5
buying them frivolous presents,
George remembers himself as a very weak and sickly youngster,
who frequently suffered from indigestion, cough, and nervousness: "Whenever I would get very scared, this would cause me some ill- ness:" He was considered not strong enough to play with the other children, and was carried on the back of his amah longer than the others; despite the attention he received from his family members, he felt lonely a good deal of the time. Often kept indoors, he would sit on a small balcony and draw pictures of people, automobiles, and steamships he saw below, showing some talent in art and callig- raphy. He lived a great deal in the world of his daydreams, im- agining himself to be, instead of a weak little boy, a powerful hero, an armed policeman, a soldier, or a man of wealth who would deliver the family from its constant economic difficulties.
Even this small child was made to feel that everything was tem- porary, that he and the other family members were refugees in a very disturbed world, and that all of them had to somehow survive the indignity of living and dressing in a manner considered beneath the family station. And it was further suggested to him that if the family could only return to its home in Canton, everything would be all right: George's father would be able to join them, their finan- cial status would be better, the errant grandfather would come back and "end the family shame," and the family would be able to hold up its head once more.
Attending school from the ages of five to seven in Hong Kong, George was whisked to and from the building by his amah, and mixed little with the other children. Then the family moved to Chungking in central China and became part of a friendly wartime community. During the years he lived in Chungking, George's physical strength greatly improved, and he began to take part in all activities centering around the nearby school He emerged as an out- standing student. He became interested in Chinese history, par- ticularly in great heroes of the past, and developed the ambition of becoming himself a national hero.
In 1945, when George was ten years old, the war ended. The family made several quick moves, finally returning to Canton. In rapid succession, George was sent to three different boarding schools, two of them run by Protestant missionary groups. These were his first separations from his family; and during one period of
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three months, his mother was several hundred miles away from him. The homesickness which he experienced was largely a longing for her; he also contrasted his sense of "coldness" at being thrust among strange boys in shabby dormitories with the warmth and recognition he had known in Chungking.
When the family was finally reunited, however, he was faced with still another set of painful emotions, centering around an in- creasingly critical attitude toward his father. This protector, whose return he had so longed for, began to assume much less heroic pro- portions at close hand. Not only did George feel that he had been replaced in his father's affections by the younger children; he also began to realize that his father was not too good a family provider. Worse than this, he came to see his father as "not a reasonable man"--and to regard his outbursts of temper and general clumsi- ness in human relationships as extremely offensive.
In his distress, George turned to the religion offered to him in school. Influenced by his grandmother's earlier teachings and by the example of his older brother, who had become a Christian, George was baptized at the age of twelve, together with a younger brother and cousin. Behind this act, in addition to family influences, was a highly personal quest:
I then felt that life was very fleeting, and that nothing was very sure . . . thatwhenonedied,allofhishopesandachievementswouldperish with him . . . and that religion might be a way to a solution for all of this.
Before long George lost interest in organized religion; but he never lost his concern about man's spiritual needs and the convic- tion that "life is much more than just its materialistic interpreta- tion,"
Whatever emotional help this religious orientation may have supplied him, George did succeed in righting himself, overcoming his youthful despair, and again distinguishing himself academically --this time especially in mathematics and physics. Still preferring literature to athletics, he continued to go his own way: "I was considered by others to be lonesome, although at the time I did not consider myself to be very lonely. "
Soon, however, he began to be troubled by sexual urges. He en- joyed the pornographic literature passed around in school as much as the next fellow, but he suffered more than most over his enjoy-
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ment. He dealt with the situation by establishing a personal taboo: "I felt very ashamed of myself. . . . I would prevent myself from touching these books even if they were available. " He found great relief by reading (at the age of fifteen) a Chinese translation of Lady Chatterley's Lover, after which "I no longer felt that sex was evil. " But this partial enlightenment by no means eradicated his moralistic condemnation of his self-stimulation nor prevented a developing tendency (as frequent in Chinese culture as in the West) to distinguish sharply between the "nice girls" he knew and the more lascivious objects of his fantasy. "I would imagine the sexual act with some sexy woman, never my wife or fiancee. . . . I never connect physical desire with emotional interest,"
He was in the midst of these adolescent conflicts at the time of the national political excitement preceding the Communist take- over. Although he had shared in the wartime patriotism and anti- Japanese sentiment, he was slower than most youths around him to develop sharp political convictions. When he was fourteen, he had criticized his older brother because of the latter's increasing in- volvement with left-wing causes, believing that "young people should not get into these affairs because they cannot do anything about them. " As he began to learn more himself, however, he too began to take a stand against the corruption of the Nationalist regime and in favor of far-reaching changes for his country, looking toward a "great leader" to bring them about. He had mixed feelings about the Communists: as a political party antagonistic to the Nationalists, he felt that they might be able to implement some of the necessary changes; but he could not help suspecting that they were "puppets of Soviet Russia. "
At this time, his father's activities caused him much resentment. With Communist hegemony imminent, his father--now at home, with little to do--spent hours eating and talking at tea houses, where, according to George, friends would come and flatter him and amateur palm readers would tell him of the brilliant career ahead of him. George bitterly condemned his father's self-indulgence, his eating too much, and his wasting of time and money. But he was even more angered by the futile, last-ditch anti-Communist activi- ties in which his father suddenly became involved, considering them nothing more than an escape from idleness, and potentially harmful to others in the family.
When the Communist armies entered Canton, however, George
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realized that he too felt hostile toward them because, although aware of the old regime's shortcomings, "I had always taken the Nationalist government as my mother country. " Shortly afterward, when he returned home from school on a visit, he learned that his father had fled to Hong Kong. His mother had been required to quarter Communist soldiers in the family home, and although they were well-behaved, she expressed to George her resentment of the intrusion. She also told her son that the new regime was likely to be no better than the Nationalists, and quoted the Chinese proverb, "Crows everywhere are black. "
At his Protestant middle school, he found that students around him varied in their sentiments. Many were enthusiastic about the Communists, and followed the lead of political activists who-- even in this age group--identified themselves as former members of the Communist underground. A significant number of students, however (some but not all of whom were Christian), shared George's suspicion of the Communists. But few had much sympathy for the defeated Nationalists, and George "felt foolish" about his own emotional loyalties to them.
Thought reform (or "political study") was soon initiated, but only gradually. Students were told that at the middle school level they were more "ignorant" than "contaminated.
" Regular political classes were started, as well as small group sessions for criticism and self-criticism; the latter at first took up about two hours a day and were not regularly held. Political instructors were chosen from among the most "progressive" of the old teachers. One of these presented the Communist doctrine in earnest, logical terms and had a profound effect upon George:
I was always moved listening to him. . . . It was under his influence that my thought began to change a few months after the liberation. Emotionally, I was still in favor of the Nationalist Government. All my family and relatives didn't like this new regime, and I myself also felt that the new regime was hostile to us. But rationally I could not oppose it. I thought its way of expression a little too exaggerated, but its princi- ples always right; moreover, morally I should support it, because it represented the people, and it was righteous and justified.
Beyond considerations of logic, George was deeply affected by such emotions as the urge to belong and the need for hope--to the point of experiencing something close to a religious conversion:
? THE CONVERSIONS OF YOUTH 319
How this occurred is a little vague. One night I went back to school alone. On the road to the dormitory in the campus there were only a few dimly-lit road lamps, and the place seemed very lonesome. I sud- denly felt very lonely, and had the understanding of what my own situa- tion was. I knew that I had no future, that people like us seemed to have been thrown out. And yet I could not even hate this regime. Then suddenly my thought turned towards the opposite direction. Perhaps this revolution was good for everybody. Perhaps all of us would one day be happy and satisfied just as the Communists had said. If so, why should I feel sorry any more? . . . I once thought that my change in emotion was made by the power of will after my intellectual understand- ing had changed. But I can see it in retrospect now, that whenever I was bothered emotionally by the thought of having no future and being thrown out politically, I always tried to think toward the opposite di- rection, and then would feel rather resolved in the new point of view.
Over the next two years, the Communist material presented in lectures, discussions, and reading assignments always appealed to the students' "conscience and compassion" so that "we could not neglect nor turn away from it," Even when the program seemed moderate, George felt that it was "very tense inside. " He occasion- ally experienced doubts, and he once expressed to a cousin the be- lief that the regime was undemocratic and illiberal. But his cousin disagreed with him, replying, "If you are right about this, what future can we have for our country? " George's doubts were also sup- pressed by his need to believe: "I thought to myself, 'If the Com- munists were really malicious and wicked, what would we do? ' This problem was too formidable. Everybody preferred the thought that they were righteous and just . . . and everybody was willing to believe this. "
Three mass campaigns--"Accuse Japan," "Accuse America," and "Enlist for the Army"--dramatically mobilized student emotions. The first of these campaigns, according to George, was especially effective because the students, young as they were, could recall personal antagonisms toward the Japanese:
Before the Accuse-Japan Meeting was launched, there was an Anti- Japanese-Rearmament Week, and all of the songs we sang during the war against Japanese aggression were played over the radio. This helped the students to remember wartime and to revive the old hatred. Then the Accuse-Japan general meeting took place for three continuous days. At first there were reports of the historical events of Japanese aggression in China, and the hideous plot of the American imperialists to rearm
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Japan. Then the students spoke freely about their own experiences, sufferings, and tragedies during the war. The first few speeches were pre- arranged by the Students7 League and the New Democratic Youth Corps. . . . The atmosphere was easily achieved. . . . Many students went up to the stage voluntarily, and even those who did not go up had just the same hatred for the Japanese and for the American imperialists.
George was deeply affected by this campaign, and critical of him- self for not being even more zealous: "I felt ashamed that I was less full of hate than the others. "
Similar passions were aroused during the "Accuse America" meet- ings, although George thought these less successful because students had less personal animosity toward America. But they did resolve to destroy all of the imported American bluejeans which they owned. In retrospect, George felt this to be "the epidemic spread of a fashion. . . . The fear of being considered lagging behind, and not the genuine change of an idea/'
The Enlist for the Army campaign, which lasted for one month, was more a means of eliciting the students' willingness to serve than an actual attempt to obtain military personnel. George de- scribed the movement's moral force, and the threat of ostracism to those who resisted:
Progressive students were always there to criticize those who were not willing to enlist, saying that they were just being selfish, since the fear of sacrifice or the consideration of one's own future were only selfishness. . . . The students who enlisted had some special activities together, and everybody wished to participate in these. . . . Those who enlisted called for the others to join them. . . . And those who did not enlist were not as well regarded. . . . To a student who did not enlist, this month was really a kind of persecution. . . . The constant meetings in large and small groups were a way of reproach. . . . You felt yourself all wrong. You found no way out of this. You felt that you could not stand among the enlisted when you met them. . . . The student who had not enlisted had already admitted inside his own mind that he was not right.
. . . He felt lonely, and he and others like him did not dare to unite or to encourage each other. Everyone was aware that this disturbance could be resolved by enlisting for the army. . . . I was among the en- listed.
George felt, however (again in retrospect), that there was a tendency in him to resist, and that "if I had a family member to talk to me personally or a girl friend to oppose it," he might not
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have enlisted. But his faith in Communism, like that of his fellow students, steadily increased.
This faith was then greatly undermined during a visit to his family in Hong Kong over the summer vacation. And this same sequence occurred the following year: reinforcement of his Com- munist beliefs at school on the mainland, then the emergence of critical views in Hong Kong. He attributed these shifts to the in- fluence of individual family members, as well as to an underlying sympathy for Western democracies. "When I was on the mainland I had to suppress this original affection and favor. . . . But once arriving in Hong Kong, the suppression was relieved and my ideas naturally went back to their original form. " In any case, the shifts were rather extreme: "On the mainland I thought the Communist aims to be just, and that I should devote myself to them. . . . In Hong Kong, I thought the Communist aims were but lies, their means too cruel, and that even if we did want to achieve a modern cosmopolitan country we should not follow the Communist way. " Whatever his vantage point, he was extremely impressionable: "I was quite inevitably sentimental: on the mainland I was willing to believe the Communists, and in Hong Kong I was willing to oppose them. "
He was nonetheless determined to return to the mainland for his university education, having passed his entrance examination for Peking University (China's leading academic center) before his second Hong Kong visit. His parents bitterly opposed this and urged him to remain with them. His father went so far as to issue what is in any culture the ultimate parental threat: "If you insist upon going to Peking, I cannot any longer consider you my son. " But George was less affected by this pronouncement than he was by his mother's obvious grief at the time of his departure. His conflict was so great that just after he got on the boat to go back to China, he had a strong urge to run ashore; and even after he arrived at Canton, the first mainland city on the way to Peking, he almost changed his mind again, and was dissuaded from returning to Hong Kong only by friends who urged him to remain for the sake of his education and his future.
At the University of Peking, George found the pattern of thought reform similar to that at middle school, but more intensive: not only did criticism and self-criticism within small groups become
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more focused and personal, but students were expected to be in- stigators as well as followers. During the Three Anti Movement --against waste, corruption, and bureaucracy--the first of a series of campaigns on the campus, it was the students who searched out these evils among all university employees, including faculty members. In fact, a student, as local Communist Party secretary, ran the campaign, and for some time virtually ran the university.
The movement followed the usual sequence: an announcement by Mao Tse-tung, editorials in leading newspapers about its pur- poses and general methods, and then preparation at the university itself. Posters were prominent everywhere, slogans and cartoon caricatures appeared on all the classroom blackboards (called the "blackboard press"), and loudspeakers broadcasted throughout the university--in dining rooms, dormitories, assembly halls, and depart- ment buildings. The campaign achieved its greatest intensity during a two-month period devoted entirely to its activities: students were required to remain at the university for what would ordinarily have been a one-month vacation period, and the beginning of the next term's classes was delayed for still another month. George served as a "detention guard," watching over those nonprofessional employees
(servants and clerical help) who were detained in special bed- rooms or classrooms, each isolated and subjected to a barrage of pressures to confess his past participation in corrupt activities. None of those singled out failed to confess, and some were sent to prison.
For George and the other students, the most impressive events were the public confessions of their professors (here the Three Anti Movement merged with the Thought Reform Campaign). Each faculty member was required to make a "self-examination" before the students of his own department, and criticize his political short- comings and also his deficiencies in teaching method and outlook. George was impressed by the influence which students could bring to bear upon their professors, especially so in the case of his own department head:
Professor M was the ex-chairman of the Chinese National League of Physicists, a very renowned professor. But the students did not like him too much. He muttered when he spoke, and he was not too sociable a person. . . . Allthe students were free to give their true opinions about his teaching, their criticism about him. They emphasized with him and with most of the professors that they neglected their teaching and were
? THE CONVERSIONS OF YOUTH J2J
more interested in research. . . . But his case was especially big because as faculty chairman he was accused about other aspects of university behavior. . . . He got up and accused himself of his previous dealings with the KMT, his friendship with KMT leaders. He also confessed that he had not been very enthusiastic in thought reform, and had not taken a very active part in the political classes among the professors. Then he said that when he had been chairman of the faculty committee, he had not really worked as a true chairman--that he had been only eager to write articles in order to get them published in magazines for his own international fame--and that his work was really for himself, not for his students. . . . The students kept adding criticisms, and he had to criticize himself on four occasions before he was allowed to finish. . . . Practically speaking, almost all of the professors "bowed their heads" in front of the Party. They were approved sooner or later. Some were very tough and stubborn at first, but then to everybody's surprise, they would turn about face and admit that they had been wrong.
George felt that some of these criticisms and self-criticisms were overdone, but thought most of them "reasonable"; for by now he was once more joining with group enthusiasms, and was in general accord with student actions.
During the Honesty and Frankness Movement which followed (also a part of the Thought Reform Campaign), students turned their criticisms upon themselves. They were told that in the past the government had been corrupt and the political system "irra- tional," so that people were forced to be dishonest; but now, with an enlightened and "rational" government, one could be "honest and frank" about everything. In addition to the usual details about their backgrounds, students were expected to confess such things as "intrigues and wrongs of parents," cheating during examinations,
listening to illegal radio broadcasts, and (especially for women) lies about age.
At first, George thought that any denunciation of his family would be immoral: "Prior to these meetings, I did not believe that family affiliation could be a mistake. " But group pressures soon led him to the opposite conviction, that it would be immoral not to denounce one's family: "The Organization [Party, Youth Corps, and government] kept emphasizing that attachment toward our families was selfish and wrong, since they had been against the wel- fare of the people. So I began to feel that by loving my family, I was neglecting my duty to my country," Like Hu, George felt guilty over keeping a secret: "I also thought that if each individual
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kept something secret, something only known to himself, it would certainly have a bad effect upon his work for the government-- and for the sake of the people, it was right to ask everyone to tell the truth. " And he was greatly influenced by the unanimous con- fession trend among the forty freshmen physics students in his section: "When I saw others criticizing their family happily, and I contrasted this with my own reluctance, I began to think that this must be due to my own selfishness. " By this time, his inner moral conflict had become inextricably merged with fear of external re- prisal, so that the only solution he saw was to submit.
I felt very confused and upset. . . . I knew that the matter must be settled--and that if I didn't do it well, the government would discover that I wasn't being frank enough and I would be in for trouble. I felt that if I could once and for all settle the turmoil in my mind, I would calm down and be able to feel that I had done my duty to my country.
In deciding what to confess, George was influenced by others be- fore him ("they set good examples for me") and by his realization that the purpose of the movement was to get people to confess those things they most wished to conceal:
To me the only thing I wanted to conceal was that I had come from a reactionary, bureaucratic family--so this was the thing to confess. . . . I told that my father had been a KMT official, a KMT party member, and had held important KMT positions. I said that he had been a reactionary, a man who worked for the welfare of his class which was against the welfare of the people. . . . and that my attachment for my family was selfish and wrong. . . .
He experienced the relief of one who has carried out his obliga- tions: "I had the feeling that what I did was right, because it was what the government required me to do, and that it was proper behavior. " But his family attachments could not be severed, and he could not avoid recurrent guilt:
When I would receive letters from my family, or look through my lug- gage and see reminders of home, I felt sorry about what I had done. . . . Other students told me that after they had made their confession they considered their relationship with their family ended, and that they felt great relief and did not have to worry any more. . . . I did not feel this way.
