No More Learning

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UNIVERSITY: MR. HU
Early in my stay in Hong Kong I was introduced to
Mr. Hu Wei-han, a native of Hupeh province in Central China, and a graduate of North China University, a large revolutionary university1 situated just outside of Peking. I met him in the customary fashion, through intermediaries: a Chi- nese acquaintance of mine was working closely with him in a "third force" (critical of both Communists and Nationalists) press service. Mr. Hu was then thirty, tall and thin, erect and dignified, if a bit rigid, in his bearing. Courteous and formal in the fashion of an upper-class Chinese, he spoke in quiet, measured tones, al- ways with intensity. I soon noticed that he rarely smiled; his facial expression was invariably serious, not infrequently sullen, never really relaxed. At the same time, he maintained throughout our sessions an unusual degree of enthusiasm and stamina.
Although he had left Communist China four years before, he was still cautious about interview arrangements. For a while, he preferred to meet at his own office, although later he came reg- ularly to my apartment. He insisted that the friend who had intro- duced us serve as interpreter (although months later, after a falling out with his friend, he welcomed the substitution of one of my regular interpreters). And at first he wondered whether I wasn't
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"something more than a psychiatrist. " But over the course of six- teen months of interviews (twenty-five meetings totalling about eighty hours), he became increasingly open and spontaneous. In- deed, after a few all-day sessions during the first weeks of our work together, we got to know each other quite well.
At the time Hu began his thought reform, he was no stranger to the Communist movement. He had been sympathetic to it since his middle-school days, and as a student leader at the Universityof Nanking he had worked closely with the Communist underground for several years. Just after the takeover, however, he became in- volved in a controversy with Communist officials which eventually led to his admission to North China University. Appointed to a special committee set up at the University of Nanking, he had spoken strongly in favor of keeping the University in session, in opposition to the Communist representatives who wanted it tem- porarily closed down. Not only was he overruled, he was "tricked into accepting their point of view. " Deeply upset by this experi- ence ("My views . . . were widely known. . . . Now I considered myself a failure. I had no face to see my fellow students"), he de- cided to leave Nanking. Hoping that things might be better in the north, he went to Peking and sought, through well-situated friends, some position within the Communist movement. Meeting with little success, he expressed his disappointment to one of these friends, who in reply offered the following advice:
Your thoughts are still those of the bourgeoisie. You must change for the great period ahead. You should go to North China University for ideological reform and they will help you to make the change.
Still wishing to find a place in the new regime, Hu accepted the idea that a change in his thoughts might be necessary. He took his friend's words seriously, and hearing that a class was about to begin, embarked on the short trip to the revolutionary university. A letter of recommendation which he had obtained from a high-ranking Communist official served as his admission credentials.
The Great Togetherness: Group Identification
Hu found himself in an atmosphere that was austere but friendly: an open area with low wooden buildings which served as living quarters and places of study; old students (who had arrived
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a week or two before) and Communist cadres warm in their greet- ings, helpful in their orienting tours, and enthusiastic in their talk about the revolutionary university, the Communist movement, the new hope for the future. He was assigned to a small group of nine other young intellectuals much like himself. Because of his superior knowledge of Marxism he was elected by this group to be its leader, which thus thrust him directly into the organizational hierarchy.
He discovered that the revolutionary university was a huge estab- lishment, tightly organized along Communist principles of "demo- cratic centralism. " It contained four large sections each with more than a thousand students. His section consisted of miscellaneous young intellectuals and was the largest; he estimated that it included about three thousand men and women. The other three were made up of "cultural workers" (writers and artists), older professors and former government officials (a well-publicized invitation to the school had been extended to many such prominent figures), and teachers in training. The nominal head of the institution, who gave the official welcoming speech and presided over other ritual oc- casions, was an elderly educator formerly associated with the KMT; real authority was in the hands of the four section heads, who were Party members, and the subsection heads and class heads who worked under them. Each class head was responsible for the re- form of one hundred students (ten small groups), and had at his disposal three special assistants.
These three assistants, who acted as links between the faculty and students, were the cadres. (This term is used for Communist "or- ganization men"--lower-level officials, usually but not necessarily Party members, whose lives are inseparable from Party activity, and who express at all times the Party point of view. ) The three cadres performed the day-to-day legwork of reform. They knew the pro- cedure well, not only because they had guided previous classes through it, but also because they had experienced it themselves as part of their training. 2 Each of the cadres had a designated function: the "executive cadre" was concerned with courses of study, reports, and records; the "organizing cadre" was most intimately involved with group activities and with the attitudes of individual students; the "advisory cadre" (the only one of the three who might be a woman) concerned himself with the students' personal affairs and reading habits, and offered counsel on ideological problems. Hu
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noticed that the three cadres assigned to his class worked as a unit; they were approachable separately, but always united in policy, and even made many of their public appearances together.
During the first days at the university, the cadres were rarely in evidence: the students were left to themselves in complete freedom, and told to "just get to know each other. " To Hu and to most of the others, the atmosphere was exhilarating. Initial reserve quickly gave way, and students began to reveal to one another details of their backgrounds, and of their frustrations, beliefs, and future aspirations. Forgetting his recent conflict with the Communists, Hu was caught up in the general enthusiasm and the high esprit de corps:
The revolutionary university seemed to be a place which brought together young people from all over with a great deal in common. We ate, slept and talked together, all of us eager to make new friends, The ten of us were at first strangers, but we quickly developed a strong bond. . . . I had very warm feelings toward the group and toward the school. I felt I was being treated well in a very free atmosphere. I was happy and thought that I was on my way to a new life.
Only one incident, which occurred about ten days after Hu's ar- rival, marred an otherwise perfect honeymoon period--an incident which revealed much about Hu, and initiated a pattern in his rela- tionship to school authorities which persisted throughout his six months at the revolutionary university. While taking an after- dinner stroll, he came upon an informal gathering of about one hundred students and three cadres. He listened as one of the cadres explained that Marxism was an "everlasting truth of so- ciety"; but during the discussion which followed, he got up and politely but definitely disagreed with this statement, asserting that Marxism was no more than a "guiding principle of a certain period'" which would probably be replaced by a new doctrine once the tran- sition from capitalism to socialism had been accomplished. Hu re- called the incident (possibly exaggerating it in retrospect) in dra- matic terms:
It was late at night, and there was no electric light. We had only an oil lamp and it was dim with shadows. When the discussion reached its climax . . . many of the students agreed with me. . . . and I was in a more powerful position than the cadres. . . . Someone started ap- plause and it spread to most of the group. Rarely could an idea in such opposition to the cadres gain such a response.
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Hu felt that this incident gained him respect among the other students, but that his outspoken behavior had caused the authorities to begin to regard him as an "individualist" and a man to be watched. Soon after this the same cadre began to criticize Hu strongly, to a degree that Hu felt was above and beyond the call of thought reform duty. He attributed this to his having caused the cadre a public loss of face, and gave a clear explanation of what he meant by this: "He was supposed to be the most distinguished per- son among us; by opposing him openly and gaining public support during the discussion. . . . I disgraced him in a Chinese sense. "
After two weeks of this shared informality, all the students in Hu's class were called together for "thought mobilization" meetings at which the philosophy of the program was forcefully presented. In- dividual thought reform was to be a part of the over-all reform of Chinese society. Just as past social evils had to be swept away, so did one have to remedy one's personal evil if he wished to take his place in this great renaissance. For a Chinese intellectual, reform was a particularly pressing matter: his talents were urgently needed by "the people," and yet his class background had so "poisoned" him that until he was reformed, he was unable to serve them.
Next came the beginning of formal courses, the first of which was entitled the History of the Development of Society. This course was followed by: Lenin--The State; Materialistic Dialectics; History of the Chinese Revolution; Theory of the New Democracy-- Maoism; and Field Study--visits to old Communist workshops and industrial centers. A leading Communist theorist came from Peking to deliver the opening lecture (there was just one lecture for each course). This talk was a memorable one: for more than five hours the distinguished visitor presented a carefully-documented exposi- tion of Marxist views on organic evolution (the emergence of man from lower primates by means of labor, or as a popular pamphlet put it: "From monkey to man, through labor"), and on social evo- lution (the development of human society from its primitive com- munist stage through subsequent "slave/' "feudal," "capitalist," "socialist," and inevitable "Communist" stages). The thousand stu- dents in the audience listened carefully, and took copious notes. There were no interruptions and no questions at the end.
Rather, the students quickly reassembled in their small groups to discuss the lecture material And from then on, these hsiieh hsi
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sessions continued virtually all day, every day, until they were in- terrupted for another marathon lecture introducing a new course. A major national event, such as a speech by Mao Tse-tung, might also be the occasion for larger gatherings, and a temporary change in the subject matter of the small group sessions as well.
As group leader, Hu guided the hsileh hsi discussions, and tried to clarify the lecture material for the other students. He and the other nine group leaders of his class held daily (sometimes twice daily) meetings with a cadre, during which each gave a rundown on the attitude and progress of the individual members of his group. The other students knew about these reports, but seemed, on the whole, to accept them as regular organizational procedure. Hu was instructed by the cadre to take a "relatively neutral" attitude in his group, and to encourage free and lively discussion. He enjoyed both his teaching and his organizational responsibilities. He shared with the other students a sense of pulling together toward a common goal in a spirit of crusade.
The Closing In: Conflict and "Struggle"
After a few weeks of this study, however, Hu noticed a gradual change. The cadre receiving his daily reports demanded more de- tailed analyses of the other students' behavior; less stress was put on Marxist theory and more on individual attitudes. Hu was no longer enjoying the role he was asked to play: "My intention was to help the students to study about Communism, but I soon began to realize that the Communists were more interested in my helping them to study the students. " At the same time, it was made clear to him that he was to be no longer neutral in his attitude, but was instead (in Mao's phrase) to "lean to one side," to support the "progressive elements," and to apply stronger pressures to the others in the direction of reform.
Matters came to a head at the time of the first "thought sum- mary"; each student prepared one of these at the end of every course. The cadres passed along information--via group leaders and informal contacts in such places as the dining room--about the form these summaries should take: they were mainly to discuss the influence of the first course upon the student's previous views of society. A two-day period was devoted to writing the summary; then
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each of these students was required to read his to the other group members, each of whom offered criticisms. Some of the students, still influenced by the easy-going atmosphere of the honeymoon pe- riod, took the matter lightly and dashed off their summaries with- out much thought; but Hu noticed that the cadres took it very seriously, and that they made a practice of sitting in on some of the summary readings to make sure that the criticisms were thorough and penetrating.
Criticisms gave rise to countercriticisms, and group harmony gave way to tense antagonisms. The descriptions of past and present attitudes which students had so freely offered each other during the first days now came back to haunt them. Previously quiet stu- dents suddenly became "activists," stepping up the pace of criti- cism and intensifying the emotional tone within the group. Some of these activists identified themselves as members of the Commu- nist Youth Corps or of the Communist Party itself, thus emerging from an underground status. Their regular attendance at Party and Youth Corps meetings gave them a channel to the school hierarchy which, in terms of real power, superseded Hu's authority as group leader. When Hu realized this, he became increasingly uncom- fortable--aware that he was being informed on, but never quite sure just when and by whom. He also noted that the authorities had begun to shift students about from one group to another in order to make most effective use of activists, always keeping in his group one or two who could exert strong influence. And his experience with his own thought summary increased his apprehension. Al- though it was fully orthodox in form and content, he had made it somewhat terse. He was strongly criticized by an activist who ac- cused him of concealing details, and the interested presence of all three cadres convinced him that the faculty was showing special concern about his personal progress.
From this point on, pressures steadily mounted, and Hu lived in an atmosphere of criticism, self-criticism, and confession much like the prison environment of the Western subjects. Not only ideas, but underlying motivations were carefully scrutinized. Students were taken to task for failure to achieve the correct "materialistic view- point," "proletarian (or "people's") standpoint," and "dialectical methodology"--and the reasons for these failures were analyzed even more carefully than in prison reform. As a group leader, Hu
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helped to promote this orthodoxy; as a student, he was himself sometimes rebuked for failing to live up to it.
His advanced theoretical knowledge of Communism served him well, but it did not render him immune from the array of standard criticisms which in the revolutionary college covered an even broader spectrum than in the prison. The prisoner was attacked for his associations with imperialism and for his own "imperialistic traits"; the student at the revolutionary university was mainly under fire for his "individualism. " As interpreted from Mao's writings by cadres, activists, and the student rank and file, this term was ex- tended to include any tendency to follow personal inclinations rather than the path charted out by the Party. Since this meant "placing one's own interests above those of 'the people/ " individ- ualism was considered highly immoral. And so were the other faults for which the students were repeatedly criticized and for which they criticized others: "subjectivism"--applying to a problem a personal viewpoint rather than a "scientific" Marxist approach; "objectivism"--undue detachment, viewing oneself "above class distinction," or "posing as a spectator of the new China"; "senti- mentalism"--allowing one's attachments to family or friends to interfere with reform needs, and therefore "carrying about an ideological burden" (usually a reluctance to denounce the objects of one's sentimentalism); as well as "deviationism," "opportunism," "dogmatism," "reflecting exploiting class ideology," "overly techni- cal viewpoints," "bureaucratism," "individual heroism," "revision- ism," "departmentalism," "sectarianism," and (neither last nor least) "pro-American outlook. "
Hu, in the eyes of cadres and fellow-students, was clearly an in- dividualist. His unsolicited public debate with the cadre had given him this status at the onset, and his subsequent behavior did little to dispel it. Even though he conducted himself in an ex- emplary fashion--"progressive" in attitude, circumspect in man- ner, conscientious in carrying out his responsibilities as a group leader--it was clear to everyone that he was holding much of himself back. He did not join in group enthusiasms, and kept to himself as much as he could in such an environment. In his reports to the cadre as group leader, he maintained a correct standard of Communist-style analysis, but at the same time tried always to say as little as possible, and to avoid making damaging assessments of
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other students. These reports were a source of great inner con- flict to him: he hated the idea of informing upon others, yet he could not fully dissociate himself from the cadres' claim that these evaluations served a moral purpose in "helping" backward students; in any case, he felt compelled--as a means of adapting to pressures brought to bear upon him--to offer some degree of compliance.
When criticized, he would admit his shortcomings, and even go on to make the proper self-criticism in attributing them to "ruling class" and "bourgeois" influences in his family and educational background. But there was something perfunctory in his manner of doing so, and the cadres sensed his inner resistance. Often one or more of them would make a friendly approach to him, suggesting that he seemed troubled by "ideological problems/' asking him to "talk things over. " They would go on to tell him that they con- sidered him a man of great promise, the type needed by the Party, one who would go far in the organization. They even described other cases of similar young men, also highly individualistic at the time of their thought reform, who had, after ridding them- selves of this deficiency, become high-ranking Communist officials.
Hu did not respond to these overtures. Instead he felt his inner opposition steadily mounting ("I was becoming more and more sick of the process"), and his inability to discuss his true senti- ments with anyone an increasing strain:
I could never have a chance to talk about these things or about what I considered to be right. I had to restrain myself constantly, to be patient, to avoid offending the cadres or the activists. I always had to conceal what was on my mind. . . . I could never feel easy.
Hu began to sense that the cadres were antagonistic to him, and he feared that, should he make one false move, they might well label him a "reactionary"--a dangerous accusation for anyone. He found himself in the paradoxical position of still retaining his general faith in the Chinese Communist movement, while feeling increasingly trapped in his personal thought reform experience.
His dilemma increased as the moralistic tone of the criticism and self-criticism process extended into every aspect of his daily existence. As in the prison setting (but in a "native" rather than "imperialist" frame) students were criticized for such "bourgeois" or "ruling class" characteristics as pride, conceit, greed, com-
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petitiveness, dishonesty, boastfulness, and rudeness. And when liaisons between the sexes developed (the revolutionary university was co-educational, although living quarters for men and women were completely separate) these were discussed within the small groups and evaluated solely in terms of their effect on the reform progress of the two people involved. If a "backward" girl friend was thought to be impeding a student's progress, he was advised to break off the relationship; but if both were "progressive," or if one were thought to be aiding the other's progress, the group would give its approval. One female activist gave evidence of a romantic interest in Hu, but he was unresponsive and highly suspicious (probably with justification) of her motives. Sexual unions were, on the whole, discouraged, as it was felt that they drained energies from the thought reform process. The opportunity for romance was limited anyway, since the days were taken up almost com- pletely by hsueh hsi, and the evenings by additional meetings and by reading. Sunday, although nominally a day of rest, was fre- quently devoted to self-examinationsthat had not been completed during the week; and such entertainments as there were--movies, plays, group singing, and dancing--were invariably tied in with some aspect of the Communist ideological message. Students in Hu's section were not expected to leave the grounds of the revolu- tionary university unless they had some special reason.
As in prisons, the atmosphere became saturated with individual confessions. Instead of criminal activities, each student was ex- pected to reveal everything about past affiliations with "reactionary" groups (usually the KMT regime or its student organizations). Each course became a vehicle for exposing more of his own self, for condemning more of the evil in his character. Each student developed a running confession, compounded of self-criticisms, thought summaries, and extracurricular self-examinations; this was a major indicator of his progress in reform. Taking shape both orally and in writing, its content became known to other students and to cadres and class heads. One's eagerness to reveal himself seemed to be more important than any specific thing revealed.
Like the Western prisoners, students vied to outdo each other in the frankness, completeness, and luridness of their individual confessions: one group would issue a challenge to another to match its collective confessions; personal confession became the major
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topic of discussion in small group meetings, large student gather- ings, informal talks with cadres, articles posted upon bulletin boards, and "wall newspapers. " Hu had the feeling that everywhere he went, he encountered the question, "Have you made your full confession? "
In his case, he had little in his past to conceal; indeed, his "pro- gressive" record, though he stated it with restraint, was a mark of distinction. What troubled him was a "secret" of the immediate present, and its consequences for his Communist future. For he was becoming obsessed with his own inner antagonism, and the dangerous rebel within him--the formulator of these obsessive thoughts--threatened always to expose the rest of him:
The intensity of my anti-Communist thoughts greatly increased. I de- veloped a terrible fear that these thoughts would come out and be known to all. But I was determined to prevent this, I tried to appear calm, but I was in great inner turmoil. I knew that if I kept quiet no one could know this secret which I had not confessed. But people were always talking about secrets . . . saying that it was wrong to keep secrets, that one had to confess everything. Sometimes during an ordinary conversation the cadre or a student would mention secrets, and I would feel very disturbed. . . . Or we would be called suddenly to an informal meeting, and someone would get up and say, "There are still some students in the university who remain 'antiorganization'. " I knew that no one else was thinking of me, but I couldn't help feeling very upset. . . .
The secret was always something that was trying to escape from me.
Part of Hu's "secret" was his growing disillusionment and despair:
I had thought that by entering the revolutionary university I could make a new start. Instead of this it had brought me mainly the loss of personal liberty. . . . I felt disappointed . . . infuriated a n d disgusted. , . . I had little hope for the future.
Observing the other students around him, Hu felt that all were tense and agitated, without necessarily sharing his own response. In fact, many of the younger ones--those in their teens and early twenties--seemed to be throwing themselves fully, even ecstatically, into the reform process, thriving upon their activist frenzy. Others a bit older made a great public display of their progressiveness in what Hu considered an opportunist fashion, some of them seek- ing to compensate for incriminating ties with the old regime in the past. But Hu felt that almost everyone in his section who was over
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twenty-five was in conflict about how much of himself to surrender to the process.
Students' attitudes toward one another had changed greatly from the idyllic togetherness of the earliest days. The sense of common purpose had by no means completely disappeared; but the pres- sures which everyone was experiencing had converted the small group sessions into a complicated blend of eager analysis, cautious orthodoxy, covert personal antagonism, and beleaguered co-opera- tion.
Hu's own position grew steadily worse. His suppressed resent- ment was always just beneath the surface, and on one occasion, when he intervened on behalf of a female student in an argument with school guards, this resentment exploded openly. Hu was then required to make a special self-examination to condemn his mis- conduct, his lack of full faith in the Party's representatives, and the "individualism" at the bottom of it all. Cadres were no longer gentle and therapeutic in their approach to him, but made it clear that they considered him stubborn and unco-operative. One of them (his old nemesis) began to make indirect threats, implying that if his attitude did not improve, his case would be dealt with at a public gathering. Hu knew well what this meant; he had witnessed three such mass meetings. Two of these had been revivalist-like gatherings at which a student with a particularly evil past had been given a dramatic (and well-staged) opportunity to redeem him- self. Before an audience of 3,000 fellow students, this offender gave a lurid description of his misdeeds--political work with the Nationalists, spying for the Japanese, anti-Communist activity, stealing money from his company, violating his neighbor's daughter --followed by an expression of relief at "washing away all of my sins" and of gratitude to the government for "helping me to be-
come a new man. " The effect of the meetings had been an inten- sification of confession pressures and a widespread feeling that whatever one had done was mild by comparison and might as well be revealed.
Aware that he was not a likely candidate for this type of display, Hu worried about another kind of public exposure: the ultimate humiliation of the mass "struggle. " He had seen a student con- sidered to be a hopelessly "backward element" face an equally large audience to be denounced rather than redeemed; faculty members,
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cadres, and fellow students had embellished upon his "reactionary tendencies/' his stubborn refusal to change his ways, his failure to respond to repeated offers of "help" which all claimed to have made. It had been made quite clear that this young man's future in Com- munist China was quite precarious, and the ceremony had been a grim warning to Hu and other students of questionable standing.
Hu received one additional warning. A Youth Corps member personally sympathetic to him told him that his case had been critically discussed by cadres at Youth Corps meetings, and that he had better be more careful in the future. Hu was moved by this show of compassion, realizing that the other student had acted at considerable personal risk.
He did become more cautious, and tried to make a better reform showing. One of the ways he did this, at the same time finding some escape, was to spend as much time as possible alone in the library, immersing himself in the only reading material available--Com- munist literature. What he learned gave him added authority in the group; and the cadre's threats of public exposure were never carried out. Hu felt he had also been protected by his progressive past, his letter of recommendation from a high Communist official, his favorable standing among many of the students, his knowledge of Communism, and, perhaps most important, something in his character which made the cadres feel that he might be still salvaged as an effective Communist worker.
But his added readings, especially of Lenin's works, were also a source of anxiety. For he began to realize that what he was ex- periencing in thought reform was not, as he had preferred to be- lieve, a misapplication of Communist principles, but was in every respect consistent with Leninist teachings. He found himself ques- tioning the entire Communist structure. He achieved better external control; but his inner feelings of hostility, suffocation, and con- fusion were more intolerable than ever:
I had a very strong hatred for the Communists and for the whole sys- tem. But it was a general kind of feeling and I wasn't sure of its exact source. It wasn't directed exclusively against the Communists--but was rather vague and diffuse. I was very unhappy about the surroundings; everything from all directions was pressing upon me. I couldn't stand this pressure and wanted only to get rid of it. It was not a feeling of resistance--I just wanted to escape, I felt persecuted and depressed.
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He began to have nightmares and thought he was talking in his sleep; he would wake up anxiously, fearing that he might have re- vealed his "secret. " He was also greatly upset by a suicide which occurred during this stage of the reform program (a young student had apparently jumped into a well); this student had been a Youth Corps member and outwardly an activist, and his death led Hu to believe that "he too must have had some hidden secret. " Two other students had to be sent to mental hospitals, having apparently become psychotic. Many other students (Hu estimated their number as high as one-third of the student body) by this time had visible psychological or psychosomatic symptoms--fatigue, insomnia, loss of appetite, vague aches and pains, and upper respira- tory or gastrointestinal symptoms. 3 Hu himself suffered from fatigue and general malaise. He visited the school doctor, who gave him a reform-oriented and psychologically sophisticated diagnosis: "There's nothing wrong with your body. It must be your thoughts that are sick. You will feel better when you have solved your prob- lems and completed your reform. " And indeed, he shared with many other students a state of painful inner conflict. Yet the contagious cacophony of enthusiasm, tension, and fear was still, after five months, very much in crescendo.
Find Thought Summary: Submission and the New Harmony
The announcement that it was time to begin work on the over- all thought summary (or final confession) implied that relief was in sight, but it also made clear that this last effort would be the crucial one. At a mass meeting, faculty members emphasized the importance of the summary as the crystallization of the entire re-
form experience, the final opportunity for each student to resolve his thought problems. For the next two days, small group sessions were devoted almost entirely to discussions of the form of the summary. It was to be a life history, beginning two generations back and extending through the thought reform experience, de- scribing, candidly and thoroughly, the development of one's thoughts and the relationship of these to actions. It was also to analyze the personal effects of thought reform, on one's character as well as one's view of the world, including but going beyond what
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had already been written and discussed in previous thought summaries. It would require anywhere from five to twenty- five thousand Chinese characters (roughly equivalent to the same number of English words); but content was much more important than length. And each man's summary had to be approved before he could graduate. Rumors circulated among the students of "backward elements" having been asked to repeat the entire thought reform course, and of "reactionaries" or "enemies of the people" sent to prison for reform by labor.
After a ten-day writing period, students read their summaries to the small group. They encountered even more prolonged and pene- trating criticism than before, since everyone was now required to sign each confession read, to signify his approval and his respon- sibility for letting it pass. In Hu's group, some students were kept under critical fire for several days and wrote many revisions. As usual, the students themselves worked upon each other, but cadres and faculty members had the final say; they later added their own evaluative comments to the thought summaries. The final docu- ment then became a permanent part of the student's personal rec- ord, and (in the possession of his superiors) accompanied him throughout his future career.
Hu, determined to surmount this final hurdle, concentrated upon using his theoretical knowledge to produce an acceptable final con- fession. He knew that two special emphases were required. The first, an analysis of class origin, gave him little difficulty: he could readily place his family in the "landlord" or "rural ruling class" category, and attribute to this circumstance his own evil character traits and false ideas. He called himself an "exploiter," and accused himself of "having adopted a stand diametrically opposed to that of the people," and having been in the past "actually . . . an enemy of the people. "
But the second requirement was not quite as simple, for it was the denunciation of his father, both as an individual and as a representative of the old order. This was the ultimate symbolic act in the thought reform of young Chinese, and many found it to be extremely painful. A cadre noticed that Hu was particularly reluctant to criticize his father, and began to prod him about it at every opportunity: "He said that the most important part of the reform of an intellectual was the denunciation of his father--since
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the intellectual almost invariably comes from a wealthy family which must have been anti-Communist, and if he does not de- nounce his father he cannot be a faithful citizen of the new regime. " Hu tried to beg off, claiming that he had retained no clear im- pressions because he and his father had been separated during much of his childhood. The cadre insisted however that "the father is a hero to every small boy/' and demanded that Hu take a stand for or against him.
Two letters which Hu received from his family home at about this time suddenly gave the problem a new tragic dimension. The first letter, written by his uncle, carried the disturbing news that his father had been publicly "struggled" and then imprisoned dur- ing the land reform campaign in Hupeh, and asked Hu to use his influence with the Communists to secure his father's release. A day or two later, Hu received a second letter, from his father, telling that he had been released from prison, but that all of the family holdings had been taken from him, and that the family situation was still very dangerous. Hu had difficulty describing to me his feelings at this time, which were compounded of shock, guilt, and anger. At the beginning of land reform, Hu had written to his father to urge him to surrender voluntarily most of his land holdings to the surrounding peasants, and to co-operate fully with the Com- munists in the manner of an "enlightened landlord. " The father had followed his son's advice; and now Hu felt that they both had been deceived. He recalled his last meeting with his father, when he had refused to follow his father's advice. He had decided to enter the distant University of Nanking, contrary to his father's wishes that he choose an institution closer to home; now he kept hearing the words of his father's parting admonition:
You young people no longer think of the older generation. Your affec- tions towards us must be very light. You do not understand how an old man feels about his son. Our affection for you is beyond your compre- hension.
We shall see later that these words were less than fair; but this did not save Hu from his sense of remorse, and from castigat- ing himself for disobeying his father and for not remaining close enough to him to be a help in a time of crisis. He began to imagine --from descriptions he had heard of land-reform "struggle" meet-
? THE REVOLUTIONARY UNIVERSITY 269
ings in the north--the picture of his father being insulted, spat upon, beaten, and stoned at the hands of a "people's court. " He pictured his father imprisoned in chains; he remembered a sordid prison he had visited years before, and even more vividly his own experience of having been briefly imprisoned by the Nationalists because of his anti-government activities as a university student: "I relived all of my sufferings through this vision of my father meet- ing the same fate. " Soon grief gave way to resentment: "I over- came my sorrow with my desire for vengeance. " He identified him- self closely with his father, and saw in both their maltreatment evidence of basic Communist hypocrisy and evil:
I began to feel that my father and I, each of us in his own way, were enemies to the Communists. My father was old and useless, and was therefore persecuted by them. I was young and useful and so the Com- munists were still trying to win me. . . . I was considered by the other students to be an able man. My father enjoyed great respect among the peasants of the countryside, and was always generous to them in time of need, never the greedy, cruel, heartless landlord, which the Com- munists always spoke about. . . . Both my father and I had tried very hard to work with the new regime; yet both of us were being victimized. I realized that the Communists had no sense of fairness or justice. They insisted upon beating down any person who held prestige among those around him outside of Party circles, and they would do whatever they thought necessary to accomplish this, no matter how "enlightened" such people might be concerning Communism. . . . I thought of the old model I had developed in my mind in the past of a Communist ideal state which would give land to the poor, and offer a new solution for a corrupt society. But I realized that Communism did not fit this ideal, and that the Communist is a very cruel man who uses the poor and their resentment against the rich for the purpose of furthering his own power.
As he told me these things (and especially when he referred to his father) Hu lost his usual composure, sometimes turning troubled eyes to the floor, at other times pacing restlessly about the room. He seemed more anxious than at any other time during our interviews; and at the next session I was told that he had remained agitated after our meeting and had insisted upon spending several hours alone with the interpreter discussing these same experiences.
Hu said nothing about the two letters to anyone around him in the revolutionary university. He found a compromise solution to the cadre's demand that he denounce his father by using a tortuous
? 2JO THOUGHT REFORM
form of Communist reasoning: after mentioning his father's benevolence to the peasants, he went on to condemn his acts as "even more reactionary than the ruthless abuse . . . by the vicious landlords" because "these good deeds helped to render the posi- tion of the ruling class even more unassailable" (a statement which echoes Father Luca's remark that, "What you do that is good-- is bad--precisely because it is good! ").
In presenting his own life history, Hu was careful to play down his leftist student activities, and even related them critically to the "individualism" which was a central theme of the document. Only later did he realize how much an expression of personal submission this summary was:
It is a report very much against my own will. If you put this final thought summary before me now, I could write a new summary contra- dictory to it in each sentence. If it isn't fear, what else could push one to do something so completely against his own will? If I had not been so fearful I should have refused to write something like this.
He could not tell me how much of the summary he believed at that time. It included ideas which he did not believe even then, others which he believed then but subsequently discarded, and still others--as he explains in an eloquent testimony to the power of language--so enmeshed in Communist patterns of thought and speech as to defy evaluation:
Using the pattern of words for so long, you are so accustomed to them that you feel chained. If you make a mistake, you make a mistake within the pattern. Although you don't admit that you have adopted this kind of ideology, you are actually using it subconsciously, almost automatically. . . . At that time I believed in certain aspects of their principles and theories. But such was the state of confusion in my own mind that I couldn't tell or make out what were the things that I did believe in.
Hu noticed that after the thought summaries were completed (all in his group, and apparently in the other groups as well, were even- tually accepted), most of the students seemed to experience a great sense of relief. They had passed through their trial and made their symbolic submission; and many--especially among the young-- seemed to feel that a closer bond had been established between themselves and the government.
? THE REVOLUTIONARY UNIVERSITY 271
But for Hu there was no great relief and little or any feeling of bond. Still depressed and disappointed, his strongest desire was to leave the environment as soon as possible. He had previously de- cided to return to Nanking--the past scene of happy and success- ful days--and seek a job and a way of life (possibly as a school teacher) outside the main currents of politics. He had already written friends there who had sent him money for the journey. Therefore, when students were given cards to fill out to state their job preference, Hu paid little attention, and left his card blank-- preferring to make his own arrangements. His action was con- sidered an unfriendly one; it would have been quite different if he had indicated no choice and had added a note, as some students did, saying that he left the matter entirely up to the govern- ment's discretion. A cadre called him in for a talk, and when he defended his action on the basis of wishing to become a school- teacher in Nanking, he was told, "We can assign you to a school- teacher's job, but it would do you good to work in the countryside. You have been too long in the big cities, and maybe that is why you have not been so activist. "
When the job assignment did come through, however, it was as a political workerand teacher in an obscure North China militaryarea --a kind of assignment generally considered highly undesirable. No one was required to accept the job offered him, although most stu- dents had little choice, since they were unlikely to find an alternative position and they knew that a job refusal would not look well on their records. But Hu, without too much logical consideration, did de- cide to refuse the assignment--at least at first. Three days later, after constant visits from cadres and activists, he reversed himself and once more succumbed to the wishes of the authorities. He could not say just why he did this, but the implication was clear that he wished to make one last effort to fit in with the new regime, and hoped that life outside of the revolutionary university might be less oppressive. He also stated that the idea of actively fighting Communism in the future was already taking shape in his mind, and that he considered the job a good opportunity to obtain greater firsthand knowledge of Communist procedures. While this second
'reason might well have been an attempt to justify that which he felt emotionally impelled to do, it is quite possible that, confused and fearful as he was, ideas of adapting himself to Communism and of
? 272 THOUGHT REFORM
fighting Communism existed simultaneously within him.
All that was left was the graduation ceremony. The first part of this was devoted to an admission ritual for new Party members:
facing a huge photograph of Mao, nine faculty cadres solemnly took their oaths, suggesting to the 3,000 students in the audience (according to Hu) "the honor, the great difficulty, and the im- portance of becoming a Party member. " Hu felt that the students were almost forgotten in the excitement surrounding the new Party members, although faculty representatives and visiting officials (there to recruit personnel from among the graduates) did con- gratulate the students upon the completion of their thought reform, and urge them to continue to follow its principles in their future
work.
When Hu arrived at his assignment in North China, he was re-
quired to undergo a two-month training period whose routine, except for more rigorous physical training, was not too different from that of the revolutionary university. At the end of this train- ing, when he was faced with the prospect of accepting a permanent assignment with the army, Hu was unwilling to go through with it and requested that he be permitted to leave. He had been no hap- pier there than at the revolutionary university; he had, in fact, found the new cadres under whom he worked to be, if less devious, more crude and unpleasant than those he had dealt with during his re- form. The antagonisms he had observed between older and younger cadres, and between the military authorities and the rural peasant population, had confirmed his critical feelings toward the regime. In addition, he feared the possible outbreak of war with the West, and believed that should this happen his own position would become much more dangerous. But most important of all perhaps was his reluctance to become involved in any commitment to the regime that would make it impossible for him to get away in the future.
Communist authorities made strong attempts to get Hu to change his mind, but he pleaded failing health and inability, as a south- erner, to tolerate the extreme cold (from which he actually did suffer). He was finally permitted to depart, although he was given virtually no travel credentials. He headed for Nanking, selling some of his belongings to finance the trip. There he found only a few positions available, all of which he felt would involve him too
? THE REVOLUTIONARY UNIVERSITY 273
closely with the regime. He wished to visit his father in Hupeh; but from all he could learn> he decided that it would be much too dangerous. After a few weeks in Nanking, he was called for question- ing by the police because of his idleness; and he felt it was unsafe to remain there. Through friends with whom he was staying he discovered that it was possible to leave China by way of the Hong Kong border (during early 1950, such travel was still not too diffi- cult). He quickly decided to do this; and even an expression of affec- tion from a girl he met in Canton (of whom he had been very fond during his middle-school days) could not deter him from leaving his country and entering the British Crown Colony.
? CHAPTER 15 A CHINESE ODYSSEY
Many of Hu's emotional experiences have a familiar
ring, since the psychological pressures at a revolu- tionary university closely resemble those in a prison. There is the assault upon identity, although without any physical brutality; the establishment of guilt and shame; a form of self-betrayal; alter- nating leniency and harshness; a compulsion to confess; the logical dishonoring of re-education; a final confession, elaborate and in- clusive rather than terse; and an even greater emphasis upon the experience of personal rebirth. There are also important differences, such as the development of group intimacy ("the great together- ness") before the emotional pressures. But these differences, sig- nificant as they are, do not warrant a new step-by-step analysis.
To get at more basic contrasts and more basic underlying prin- ciples, we must, as with the Westerners, turn from the process to the individual, and follow Hu beyond his thought reform, first back over his early years and then through his Hong Kong life. Al- though the program which Hu encountered at the revolutionary university was typical enough (the other fourteen Chinese sub- jects, especially those four who had attended a revolutionary univer- sity, confirmed this), his responses were obviously unusual. Why was this so? What was there in his background and his character which led him to feel as he did? What can his experiences teach us of the reform conflicts and life struggles of Chinese intellectuals in general?
274
? A CHINESE ODYSSEY 275 Childhood and Youth: Background for Reform
Symbolically enough, Hu's life began in exile. His father had been a high-ranking Nationalist official during the early years of the Chinese Revolution, and had spent many years in distant assign- ments or in flight from his enemies. One of these flights (from the forces of Yuan Shi-k'ai, a powerful general who sought to restore the monarchy and place himself on the throne) took him to Kansu, a remote province in the northwest. There he married Hu's mother, a relatively uneducated woman of undistinguished family back- ground; and it was there that Hu was born and spent the first four years of his life. His only memories of that period were of the frightening folk tales which his maternal grandmother told him (of owls who carried off bad little boys, and of devils disguised as men who, simply by looking at little boys, caused them to disappear) and of that same grandmother's unhappiness when Hu and his parents left their Kansu home. The themes of fear and unhap- piness which appeared first in these recollections recurred frequently throughout his reconstruction of his childhood.
When Hu was six years old (the family had spent two years in more or less temporary dwellings) Hu was moved to his father's family home in Hupeh Province, and he remained there or nearby for the next thirteen years. But this move, rather than uniting the family, marked the beginning of long separations; his father was away most of the time, appearing only on rare occasions, and then briefly and often unannounced.