She
continued
to feel ill for weeks afterward.
Lifton-Robert-Jay-Thought-Reform-and-the-Psychology-of-Totalism
" The girl would then give an answer, "We can try.
" Three weeks later they would announce that they were lovers.
If the girl would say, "I cannot develop," he would continue arguing and returning.
The girl is supposed to be honored if a progressive person asks for her love.
.
.
.
If she spurns a progressive man, the Party will come and talk to her.
If she has a good reason, the Party will give in or they will ask if there is some way the man might change to be acceptable.
.
.
.
Many girls have babies.
At first a pregnancy was news, but later it was not.
They would say, "Sooner or later, they will be married, so what does it matter?
" They made love a kind of business.
She was both shocked and impressed when the president of the university was publicly denounced by his own daughter.
The president of our university had three children, two sons and one daughter. The Communists went to them and asked them to help against their father. The sons refused. The daughter was a graduate of the physics department doing research work. They went to her and told her that her father, Dr. Lu, was a traitor. . . . They persuaded the daughter to accuse him during a small meeting. It was very dramatic. She cried and shouted, called him by his first name. He sat there with
? GRACE WU: MUSIC AND REFORM 345
his head lowered and was very ashamed of her. Her mother was there and cried. Her father had been a doctor of psychology and was sixty years old. The daughter was so successful that they put her in a large meeting of the whole student body and she repeated her accusations. Everyone began to listen to her and her father's reputation now began to fall. 2
Grace described the special exhibits at which letters from the university president's files were displayed, demonstrating his Amer- ican connections and his alleged part in making Yenching a "stub- born castle of reaction. " Student guides took other students around the exhibit and explained "why we are poisoned here at Yenching," always ending their tour with the impassioned conclusion: "There is no way out but reforming. Hate your past, and you will find your way for the future. "
In music, Communist attitudes violated her aesthetic standards, and greatly confused her.
The Communists called modern Western music unhealthy. . . . We had many meetings on this. . . . They wanted a new form of music. . . . Modern music is too abstract and uncontrolled for them. French composers like Debussy they feel are unhealthy for the people. They say that this music gives the people queer thoughts and funny ideas. That if we listen to Debussy we will feel as though we are under water or watching the sea. They say that since there is really nothing like this, we will begin to think abnormally. . . . To them anything fantastic or abstract is abnormal and unhealthy. , . . They wanted us to learn folk songs and folk dances, to go among the common people who need healthy recreation. . . . They liked songs that named all of the histori- cal figures--like Mao. They said that these songs enable people to get educated with a healthy spirit. . . . I couldn't find a solution. . . . I thought, maybe their music was healthy, but it was not inspired.
She noticed that many of the other music students also had difficulty absorbing these policies. Some became so involved with meetings and reform activity that they did not have enough time to practice; others were in such psychological distress that they could not play; and many vocal students thought their voices unsuitable for folk songs. The authorities recognized that "thought problems" were likely to be particularly common among music students be- cause of their artistic sensitivities, and usually approached them with a certain amount of delicacy, allowing for individual variations. The
? 346 THOUGHT REFORM
net result was that Grace saw almost everybody around her succumb- ing to the thought reform program:
My friends changed their minds after a while. . . . They really did. They tried to give me advice. They told me that when they had believed in Western music, they were merely looking at life from the narrow standpoint of their own personal enjoyment. They found that the coun- try people enjoy folk music, and that there modern music was not wel- come. What is most important, they said, was that somebody appreciated their music. Sooner or later we must change our minds, they said, and it is easier to do it now. There were others who hadn't believed strongly in their own music, and they changed right away. Almost everyone changed. I began to wonder what was right.
At first, there were at least ten people who were strongly against the Communists. But gradually, as the pressure mounted, they turned over. . . . They would say, "Why should I lean on decayed theory? " They read only Communist books, saw things only from that point of view, and when they had a conflict they went to a Party member for advice. Some went over without a struggle, but even those with strong con- victions finally gave up and went over to the Communist side.
She felt increasingly isolated, out of step with all that was going on around her. Her difficulty was that she could neither completely deny to herself the validity of what the Communists were putting forward, nor wholeheartedly go along with it.
I wasvery confused. . . . I felt lonely. . . . I wanted to keep putting off the problem, to not think of it until the next day. At times they seemed reasonable by their logic and theory. You got so you had to think back on your own logic and theory to understand how you really felt. . . . I found it hard to be alone with all the world on the other side. You feel like a stranger in that environment if you don't go over.
Singled out for much special attention, she was constantly accused of having a "technical point of view":
I was a hard worker, and was criticized for being seven hours at the piano and only two hours at the meetings. They said, "To you there is nothing but a piano. Think of the millions of your country's people. "
She observed the other's confessions and conformed to the ex- tent she thought necessary, but she did not always have complete control of her feelings.
? GRACE WU: MUSIC AND REFORM 347
The secret in writing a confession is to make up your mind what your deficiency is in their thinking. You won't get past this otherwise, unless you understand what they want to hear. . . . I made several points. You always need several points. . . . I said that before I was too much in music, and now I will do the work that people want me to do, be more practical and less technical in my approach. . . . That I despised Chi- nese music before, but now I have a new appreciation of it and hate Western music, that I must learn to love Chinese music and do my best with it, . . . That in the past I wasunable to tell the difference between my friends and my enemies, that I trusted certain persons like Mr. Moore but now I know I should not have, and that I should be more careful in the future. . . . That before I was isolated from the group and interested only in my own work, not interested in concentrating on the people whom I should be representing, but only on myself, and that now I would spend more time with the other students. . . . But after you have made all of these points, sometimes you wonder if you have been acting all of this or not.
Yet despite her concessions, she resisted active participation. W hen she was asked to play the accordion before labor or peasant groups, she insisted it was too heavy for her; and her one attempt to play before a group of workers was a fiasco.
After the first piece they didn't know enough to applaud. On the second piece they applauded at a pause. I stopped and they stopped. I started and they began to applaud again. I got mad. I refused to play to the ignorant workers. The Communists tried to apologize, saying, "We had no idea they were so uneducated. "
She also retained a strong inner resistance to the conversion that was demanded of her.
I had no idea of what would happen to me, but I thought I would rather give up my future than change. . , . What prevented me from turning over was a kind of belief. I believed that the world could not be like this.
Grace could not stand up under these pressures, however, and once more began to react with frequent bouts of diarrhea and other psychogenic symptoms.
I began to be sick quite often and this made them suspicious. . . . An activist came to my room and asked about my health. I said I get tired if I work too much. He asked me if I was really too busy, or if there was something on my mind, something in the subconscious which I
? 348 THOUGHT REFORM
didn't know. He said: "You must have been poisoned from so many years in missionary schools . . . maybe you are not open enough. We will try to solve things with you. We know you will change. "
Her symptoms continued, and became especially severe after some inoculations in connection with the alleged American bacte- riological warfare threat. 3
Everyone was compelled to take injections against the germ warfare. * . . In Peking we were the first to get them. . . . There were four things combined in an injection but I am not sure what they were. . . . They were very strong and many people died. Because I was so nervous and upset the nurse told me she was only giving me half. But I had two days of fever from it and then some heart trouble. My pulse was one hundred and twenty and one hundred thirty. I didn't know what was happening. The doctor said it was a reaction to the injection. I decided that I must get away.
She continued to feel ill for weeks afterward. At the end of that semester, although she needed only one more term to graduate, she decided to apply for sick leave from the university, pressing her case with an insistence that would not be denied:
At first the school doctors would not write my excuse. I went to the infirmary almost every day so that they would know I was sick. . . . I was determined to go. Finally they granted me sick leave for six months.
Almost immediately after she got home, she went to see a doctor who was also an old friend of the family. He told her that her ill- ness was psychological, due to the "shock" from the injection and the general tension of the situation she was in. He advised her to "go away someplace where you don't have to think so much. " Grace was not certain whether this was indirect advice to leave the country, but she was in any case hoping to do so.
Her family situation in Tientsin was far from calm: her father had lost his job; her mother was in the midst of a "nervous break- down," easily excitable and unable to sleep; and her younger brother and sister were also both home on sick leave, with illnesses ap- parently related to physical and emotional pressures of their work environments. Grace was particularly upset to find that her parents were not completely sympathetic with her antagonism to the new regime. At first they advised Grace to make a greater effort to get
? GRACE WU: MUSIC AND REFORM 349
along with the Communists; and only later, after they themselves had had difficulty, did they come around to her point of view.
Despite her problems, she managed to "rest, relax, and rebuild myself/' during the year she spent at home, at the same time con- tinuing with music lessons. She wanted to leave for Hong Kong as soon as possible, but her parents objected because she had no rela- tives there. Finally, at her insistence, they permitted her to work out an arrangement by which a friend of hers from Peking, already in Hong Kong, posed as her fiance, and sent her letters and telegrams urging her to join him there. These Grace took to the local officials when she applied for her exit permit. The ruse was so thoroughly carried out that even her brother and the family servants believed she was to be married, and her mother went so far as to go through the motions of preparing a trousseau. At first Grace encountered some resistance from the officials in her attempts to get the permit, but she wore them down with her usual histrionic persistence.
I went to the police station often--sometimes twice a day. . . . I showed the letters. . . . At first I was afraid, as the application was turned down. I know that when they investigated at my school, they were told to detain me because musicians might be needed later on. , . . They asked me why myfiance"didn't return to be married. Finally I went to them with a letter saying he was very sick. I told them I would kill myself if he died. I cried and cried. . . . After I had gone to the police station forty times, they gave in. . . . They gave me a one-way visa. They told me that once people go out, they never come back.
In Hong Kong Grace was not only still reverberating from these experiences--she also encountered new difficulties. Although she received a great deal of help from a minister to whom she had been referred by family friends, her legal status was uncertain and she had no regular means of financial support. She reacted to her problems with British immigration officials (they even advised her to wait in Macao until things were cleared up) with nervousness, headaches, palpitations, and diarrhea ("the old feeling returns"). And she stated (referring partly to our interview situation) that she felt as isolated in Hong Kong as she had on the mainland.
I used to feel lonely in Peking and that feeling still lingers on. Certain people are sympathetic about this or that, but not about everything. No one can really understand all. I can't tell them every trouble. I am still a
? 3 5 ? THOUGHT REFORM
stranger. . . . When people are nice to me it is because they know I am out of luck--not because they take me as a friend.
She also found much to criticize in Hong Kong. The atmosphere reminded her of a treaty port in China--just the sort of thing she had always disapproved of. She was especially uneasy about the im- morality--commercial and sexual--of musicians.
Things are different in a colony. I have found people who were respected on the mainland, but here they have changed. There's one vocal pro- fessor . . . who has a reputation for going out with women students. He told me he kept the tuition high so that those who could not pay would not come to see him. He said he cares only to make more money. People who come here seem to change entirely. All standards of morals are different here.
These feelings about Hong Kong, along with her other conflicts, led her to wonder whether the Communists might not have been, after all, on the right path.
When you are young and trying to find an answer, you wonder, "Am I wrong and are they right? " You are still on the point of trying to build something for yourself. . . . Should an individualist work with others or stay apart? The Communist theory is to work for the mob, the ordi- nary people. . . . They can give them what they need. If conditions get better they'll make things better for the ordinary people. . . . I am trying to see both sides. Maybe people have more trouble in a free sys- tem. Maybe it is easier in the Communist system. . . . I am sure I am doing the right thing. I couldn't fit in so I got out. . . . I gave up. But I am wondering about all of the others who are still there. . . . When you think of things like that you just can't get an answer. Too much is involved.
Her troubles in Hong Kong continued. She felt that as a northerner, she was discriminated against by the Cantonese who made up the bulk of the Chinese population. She sometimes wondered if a stranger standing near the house where she lived was a Communist agent sent to spy on her. And in addition, an old fear of the spirit world entered into her immediate living arrange- ments. She and others who lived in her boarding house began to hear strange sounds at night, including the sound of snoring, which seemed to come from the garden outside. One girl reported that she had seen the offending ghost, and Grace, along with most of
? GRACE WU: MUSIC AND REFORM 351 the others, decided to move from that house. She explained her
point of view with unintentional humor:
In China, if you are born of a nature called "the killing nature," you cannot hear a ghost. My roommate was of this nature. She had been to a fortune teller who told her this. . . . A person of this nature is harmful to his family. . . . And she had not married for fear something would happen to her husband or her family. . . . She seemed to have some- thing go wrong with every man she met. . . . I do not possess the kill- ing nature. . . . I was told this by a fortune teller whom I went to with my mother in Tientsin. . . . So it is possible for me to hear a ghost, although I have never seen one. . . . It is a sign of bad luck to hear or see a ghost. . . . If one appears, harm will come to the family. . . . The landlady and the minister say that we are Christians and should not believe in ghosts. . . . I do not believe in ghosts because I am a Christian, but I cannot help it if I hear them.
For a while she could not even find relief in her music, in the past her means of "forgetting everything. " She had great difficulty in locating a piano for regular practice; and even after she did, her anxiety interfered with her musical expression: "I couldn't control my hands. . . . I couldn't get hold of them. "
During the latter stages of our work together, Grace expressed some of her broad emotional conflicts in her descriptions of her dreams, and in her associations to these dreams. The first dream was related to her general fears, to family conflicts and to her residual doubts about having left the mainland and come to Hong Kong.
I dreamed that I was back on the mainland with my family. I talked again to my father. I was scared. I couldn't tell him what happened. Then I got afraid. I couldn't get an exit visa out again this time. I don't know whether I went to help the family or not. I woke up upset. I didn't know what the dream meant.
In her associations to this dream, Grace expressed her appre- hension about her situation in Hong Kong: "Sometimes I think the Communists will come here. . . . I cannot feel secure. " She went on to speak at length of her feelings of helplessness and guilt at being unable to arrange for her parents and for a close girl friend to join her in Hong Kong.
Concerning her parents, there was no clear need for her to do anything, but she was troubled all the same.
? 352 THOUGHT REFORM
My parents would like to come here, but it would be hard for my father to start all over in Hong Kong. . . . I feel very uneasy. I received a letter from them saying I shouldn't write much until I'm settled and have more time. . . . I feel duty towards them . . . not because I owe them anything . . . but I thought I could help.
Her feelings about her girl friend were equally strong, and en- meshed in more complicated external arrangements.
She was both shocked and impressed when the president of the university was publicly denounced by his own daughter.
The president of our university had three children, two sons and one daughter. The Communists went to them and asked them to help against their father. The sons refused. The daughter was a graduate of the physics department doing research work. They went to her and told her that her father, Dr. Lu, was a traitor. . . . They persuaded the daughter to accuse him during a small meeting. It was very dramatic. She cried and shouted, called him by his first name. He sat there with
? GRACE WU: MUSIC AND REFORM 345
his head lowered and was very ashamed of her. Her mother was there and cried. Her father had been a doctor of psychology and was sixty years old. The daughter was so successful that they put her in a large meeting of the whole student body and she repeated her accusations. Everyone began to listen to her and her father's reputation now began to fall. 2
Grace described the special exhibits at which letters from the university president's files were displayed, demonstrating his Amer- ican connections and his alleged part in making Yenching a "stub- born castle of reaction. " Student guides took other students around the exhibit and explained "why we are poisoned here at Yenching," always ending their tour with the impassioned conclusion: "There is no way out but reforming. Hate your past, and you will find your way for the future. "
In music, Communist attitudes violated her aesthetic standards, and greatly confused her.
The Communists called modern Western music unhealthy. . . . We had many meetings on this. . . . They wanted a new form of music. . . . Modern music is too abstract and uncontrolled for them. French composers like Debussy they feel are unhealthy for the people. They say that this music gives the people queer thoughts and funny ideas. That if we listen to Debussy we will feel as though we are under water or watching the sea. They say that since there is really nothing like this, we will begin to think abnormally. . . . To them anything fantastic or abstract is abnormal and unhealthy. , . . They wanted us to learn folk songs and folk dances, to go among the common people who need healthy recreation. . . . They liked songs that named all of the histori- cal figures--like Mao. They said that these songs enable people to get educated with a healthy spirit. . . . I couldn't find a solution. . . . I thought, maybe their music was healthy, but it was not inspired.
She noticed that many of the other music students also had difficulty absorbing these policies. Some became so involved with meetings and reform activity that they did not have enough time to practice; others were in such psychological distress that they could not play; and many vocal students thought their voices unsuitable for folk songs. The authorities recognized that "thought problems" were likely to be particularly common among music students be- cause of their artistic sensitivities, and usually approached them with a certain amount of delicacy, allowing for individual variations. The
? 346 THOUGHT REFORM
net result was that Grace saw almost everybody around her succumb- ing to the thought reform program:
My friends changed their minds after a while. . . . They really did. They tried to give me advice. They told me that when they had believed in Western music, they were merely looking at life from the narrow standpoint of their own personal enjoyment. They found that the coun- try people enjoy folk music, and that there modern music was not wel- come. What is most important, they said, was that somebody appreciated their music. Sooner or later we must change our minds, they said, and it is easier to do it now. There were others who hadn't believed strongly in their own music, and they changed right away. Almost everyone changed. I began to wonder what was right.
At first, there were at least ten people who were strongly against the Communists. But gradually, as the pressure mounted, they turned over. . . . They would say, "Why should I lean on decayed theory? " They read only Communist books, saw things only from that point of view, and when they had a conflict they went to a Party member for advice. Some went over without a struggle, but even those with strong con- victions finally gave up and went over to the Communist side.
She felt increasingly isolated, out of step with all that was going on around her. Her difficulty was that she could neither completely deny to herself the validity of what the Communists were putting forward, nor wholeheartedly go along with it.
I wasvery confused. . . . I felt lonely. . . . I wanted to keep putting off the problem, to not think of it until the next day. At times they seemed reasonable by their logic and theory. You got so you had to think back on your own logic and theory to understand how you really felt. . . . I found it hard to be alone with all the world on the other side. You feel like a stranger in that environment if you don't go over.
Singled out for much special attention, she was constantly accused of having a "technical point of view":
I was a hard worker, and was criticized for being seven hours at the piano and only two hours at the meetings. They said, "To you there is nothing but a piano. Think of the millions of your country's people. "
She observed the other's confessions and conformed to the ex- tent she thought necessary, but she did not always have complete control of her feelings.
? GRACE WU: MUSIC AND REFORM 347
The secret in writing a confession is to make up your mind what your deficiency is in their thinking. You won't get past this otherwise, unless you understand what they want to hear. . . . I made several points. You always need several points. . . . I said that before I was too much in music, and now I will do the work that people want me to do, be more practical and less technical in my approach. . . . That I despised Chi- nese music before, but now I have a new appreciation of it and hate Western music, that I must learn to love Chinese music and do my best with it, . . . That in the past I wasunable to tell the difference between my friends and my enemies, that I trusted certain persons like Mr. Moore but now I know I should not have, and that I should be more careful in the future. . . . That before I was isolated from the group and interested only in my own work, not interested in concentrating on the people whom I should be representing, but only on myself, and that now I would spend more time with the other students. . . . But after you have made all of these points, sometimes you wonder if you have been acting all of this or not.
Yet despite her concessions, she resisted active participation. W hen she was asked to play the accordion before labor or peasant groups, she insisted it was too heavy for her; and her one attempt to play before a group of workers was a fiasco.
After the first piece they didn't know enough to applaud. On the second piece they applauded at a pause. I stopped and they stopped. I started and they began to applaud again. I got mad. I refused to play to the ignorant workers. The Communists tried to apologize, saying, "We had no idea they were so uneducated. "
She also retained a strong inner resistance to the conversion that was demanded of her.
I had no idea of what would happen to me, but I thought I would rather give up my future than change. . , . What prevented me from turning over was a kind of belief. I believed that the world could not be like this.
Grace could not stand up under these pressures, however, and once more began to react with frequent bouts of diarrhea and other psychogenic symptoms.
I began to be sick quite often and this made them suspicious. . . . An activist came to my room and asked about my health. I said I get tired if I work too much. He asked me if I was really too busy, or if there was something on my mind, something in the subconscious which I
? 348 THOUGHT REFORM
didn't know. He said: "You must have been poisoned from so many years in missionary schools . . . maybe you are not open enough. We will try to solve things with you. We know you will change. "
Her symptoms continued, and became especially severe after some inoculations in connection with the alleged American bacte- riological warfare threat. 3
Everyone was compelled to take injections against the germ warfare. * . . In Peking we were the first to get them. . . . There were four things combined in an injection but I am not sure what they were. . . . They were very strong and many people died. Because I was so nervous and upset the nurse told me she was only giving me half. But I had two days of fever from it and then some heart trouble. My pulse was one hundred and twenty and one hundred thirty. I didn't know what was happening. The doctor said it was a reaction to the injection. I decided that I must get away.
She continued to feel ill for weeks afterward. At the end of that semester, although she needed only one more term to graduate, she decided to apply for sick leave from the university, pressing her case with an insistence that would not be denied:
At first the school doctors would not write my excuse. I went to the infirmary almost every day so that they would know I was sick. . . . I was determined to go. Finally they granted me sick leave for six months.
Almost immediately after she got home, she went to see a doctor who was also an old friend of the family. He told her that her ill- ness was psychological, due to the "shock" from the injection and the general tension of the situation she was in. He advised her to "go away someplace where you don't have to think so much. " Grace was not certain whether this was indirect advice to leave the country, but she was in any case hoping to do so.
Her family situation in Tientsin was far from calm: her father had lost his job; her mother was in the midst of a "nervous break- down," easily excitable and unable to sleep; and her younger brother and sister were also both home on sick leave, with illnesses ap- parently related to physical and emotional pressures of their work environments. Grace was particularly upset to find that her parents were not completely sympathetic with her antagonism to the new regime. At first they advised Grace to make a greater effort to get
? GRACE WU: MUSIC AND REFORM 349
along with the Communists; and only later, after they themselves had had difficulty, did they come around to her point of view.
Despite her problems, she managed to "rest, relax, and rebuild myself/' during the year she spent at home, at the same time con- tinuing with music lessons. She wanted to leave for Hong Kong as soon as possible, but her parents objected because she had no rela- tives there. Finally, at her insistence, they permitted her to work out an arrangement by which a friend of hers from Peking, already in Hong Kong, posed as her fiance, and sent her letters and telegrams urging her to join him there. These Grace took to the local officials when she applied for her exit permit. The ruse was so thoroughly carried out that even her brother and the family servants believed she was to be married, and her mother went so far as to go through the motions of preparing a trousseau. At first Grace encountered some resistance from the officials in her attempts to get the permit, but she wore them down with her usual histrionic persistence.
I went to the police station often--sometimes twice a day. . . . I showed the letters. . . . At first I was afraid, as the application was turned down. I know that when they investigated at my school, they were told to detain me because musicians might be needed later on. , . . They asked me why myfiance"didn't return to be married. Finally I went to them with a letter saying he was very sick. I told them I would kill myself if he died. I cried and cried. . . . After I had gone to the police station forty times, they gave in. . . . They gave me a one-way visa. They told me that once people go out, they never come back.
In Hong Kong Grace was not only still reverberating from these experiences--she also encountered new difficulties. Although she received a great deal of help from a minister to whom she had been referred by family friends, her legal status was uncertain and she had no regular means of financial support. She reacted to her problems with British immigration officials (they even advised her to wait in Macao until things were cleared up) with nervousness, headaches, palpitations, and diarrhea ("the old feeling returns"). And she stated (referring partly to our interview situation) that she felt as isolated in Hong Kong as she had on the mainland.
I used to feel lonely in Peking and that feeling still lingers on. Certain people are sympathetic about this or that, but not about everything. No one can really understand all. I can't tell them every trouble. I am still a
? 3 5 ? THOUGHT REFORM
stranger. . . . When people are nice to me it is because they know I am out of luck--not because they take me as a friend.
She also found much to criticize in Hong Kong. The atmosphere reminded her of a treaty port in China--just the sort of thing she had always disapproved of. She was especially uneasy about the im- morality--commercial and sexual--of musicians.
Things are different in a colony. I have found people who were respected on the mainland, but here they have changed. There's one vocal pro- fessor . . . who has a reputation for going out with women students. He told me he kept the tuition high so that those who could not pay would not come to see him. He said he cares only to make more money. People who come here seem to change entirely. All standards of morals are different here.
These feelings about Hong Kong, along with her other conflicts, led her to wonder whether the Communists might not have been, after all, on the right path.
When you are young and trying to find an answer, you wonder, "Am I wrong and are they right? " You are still on the point of trying to build something for yourself. . . . Should an individualist work with others or stay apart? The Communist theory is to work for the mob, the ordi- nary people. . . . They can give them what they need. If conditions get better they'll make things better for the ordinary people. . . . I am trying to see both sides. Maybe people have more trouble in a free sys- tem. Maybe it is easier in the Communist system. . . . I am sure I am doing the right thing. I couldn't fit in so I got out. . . . I gave up. But I am wondering about all of the others who are still there. . . . When you think of things like that you just can't get an answer. Too much is involved.
Her troubles in Hong Kong continued. She felt that as a northerner, she was discriminated against by the Cantonese who made up the bulk of the Chinese population. She sometimes wondered if a stranger standing near the house where she lived was a Communist agent sent to spy on her. And in addition, an old fear of the spirit world entered into her immediate living arrange- ments. She and others who lived in her boarding house began to hear strange sounds at night, including the sound of snoring, which seemed to come from the garden outside. One girl reported that she had seen the offending ghost, and Grace, along with most of
? GRACE WU: MUSIC AND REFORM 351 the others, decided to move from that house. She explained her
point of view with unintentional humor:
In China, if you are born of a nature called "the killing nature," you cannot hear a ghost. My roommate was of this nature. She had been to a fortune teller who told her this. . . . A person of this nature is harmful to his family. . . . And she had not married for fear something would happen to her husband or her family. . . . She seemed to have some- thing go wrong with every man she met. . . . I do not possess the kill- ing nature. . . . I was told this by a fortune teller whom I went to with my mother in Tientsin. . . . So it is possible for me to hear a ghost, although I have never seen one. . . . It is a sign of bad luck to hear or see a ghost. . . . If one appears, harm will come to the family. . . . The landlady and the minister say that we are Christians and should not believe in ghosts. . . . I do not believe in ghosts because I am a Christian, but I cannot help it if I hear them.
For a while she could not even find relief in her music, in the past her means of "forgetting everything. " She had great difficulty in locating a piano for regular practice; and even after she did, her anxiety interfered with her musical expression: "I couldn't control my hands. . . . I couldn't get hold of them. "
During the latter stages of our work together, Grace expressed some of her broad emotional conflicts in her descriptions of her dreams, and in her associations to these dreams. The first dream was related to her general fears, to family conflicts and to her residual doubts about having left the mainland and come to Hong Kong.
I dreamed that I was back on the mainland with my family. I talked again to my father. I was scared. I couldn't tell him what happened. Then I got afraid. I couldn't get an exit visa out again this time. I don't know whether I went to help the family or not. I woke up upset. I didn't know what the dream meant.
In her associations to this dream, Grace expressed her appre- hension about her situation in Hong Kong: "Sometimes I think the Communists will come here. . . . I cannot feel secure. " She went on to speak at length of her feelings of helplessness and guilt at being unable to arrange for her parents and for a close girl friend to join her in Hong Kong.
Concerning her parents, there was no clear need for her to do anything, but she was troubled all the same.
? 352 THOUGHT REFORM
My parents would like to come here, but it would be hard for my father to start all over in Hong Kong. . . . I feel very uneasy. I received a letter from them saying I shouldn't write much until I'm settled and have more time. . . . I feel duty towards them . . . not because I owe them anything . . . but I thought I could help.
Her feelings about her girl friend were equally strong, and en- meshed in more complicated external arrangements.
