Isolation From Group Thought

In Thirty Years in a Red House Zhu Xiao Di talks about how, growing up, he rarely saw his family.  At one point his mother was at one camp, his father another, and his sister with family near Shanghai.  The root of communism idealist belief is equality and all for one and one for all.  I thought it was interesting when Di makes the distinction between Kennedy asking "not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."  The theory behind this is the same as communism--all for the good of the country.  However, there is a large distinction between the implementation of this belief in America and in communist China. 

A scene that was really moving for me was when Di came home to find his mom burning the playing cards.  They didn't know whether or not this would be considered counter-revolutionary.  That's fascinating!  They had to burn cards because they didn't want to seem of a different class etc.  Yet, they kept playing with them, simply using new cards each time.  This brought about the idea of how arbitrary what was and was not okay was.  Everybody was in a constant state of fear that something might be deemed inappropriate.  This is further reenforced by Mao's wife determining what art was and was not revolutionary based on her personal taste preference. 

Despite the main idea that communism brings a people together (and, in some ways it did: ie youths banding together, like-minded individuals seeking comradery and/or being cast off together) but at the same time, families and friends became disjointed.  There was a constant undercurrent of fear and isolationism amidst the tide of communism and a country seeking sameness.

Zhu Xiao Di

Reading Di's memoir, I can't help but think of the old saying, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." What stands out to me is the way the leaders used simple words to promote their own rise to power. For example, the idea of being a revolutionary. The word itself has several connotations: we think of a revolution as an change in the balance of power, an overturning of the current government or leadership. It also represents an influx of new ideas, as in a revolutionary way of thinking--the Industrial Revolution, for instance. But here, Di shows that the leaders turned the word "revolution" upside-down.

"In those days, one always tried to be 'revolutionary.' Ironically, when the word 'revolutionary' was used in China it meant the opposite of what it means in the West. Instead of pertaining to radical change, the word implied conformity with the authority or being 'politically correct.'" (27)

I don't see this as a simple translation quirk. By using the word revolutionary, it implies a change and gives hope to the people that they are going to be part of a new and improved era. But as long as the leader remains unchallenged, the word can represent anything. In this case, while people at the time do not see the danger, reader are able to understand that the "revolution" is a scheme for power. The idea is calculated to gather as many followers as possible and make the rest live in fear. As Di states, "Many people were inspired by Mao's vision for the nation's future and obtained strength from Mao's words to deal with strife in their individual lives. However, as happened many other times, a positive thing soon became a negative." (36)

Again, this leads to another word being twisted: "rebel." In this case, the young people who believed that they were rebelling were really playing right into their leader's hands. They were not rebelling, but following orders. The Red Guard acts as an army that lengthen's Mao's reach and tightens his hold on the people.

"Mao encouraged the young Red Guards to dare to rebel against everything. Advocated by his radical followers, especially his wife, even violence was applauded and praised. They emphasized the animosity between classes, and dehumanized those who had been labeled as 'class enemies.' The effect was that often morals and common sense were eliminated." (46)

The words that once began the "revolutions" have become even more corrupted:

"Mayor Ke liked to play a more radical role in the Party and he claimed to be more 'revolutionary' than his colleagues. The trouble was that such people never stop. They ultimately claim to be the only 'revolutionaries' and charge those who do not agree as 'counterrevolutionaries' or enemies of communism. In many cases, however, they are just hypocrites, and never believed in what they advocated. Or only banned others from doing what they themselves wanted to do." (103-104)

Di's memoir shows that there is nothing positive to be gained by being swept away in words and ideas. The book also champions education. Most of the young people, like Di's sister, were forced to become peasant workers, sacrificing their education. Instead of helping their country, this was a calculated way to prevent the people from becoming too knowledgeable, to try and keep them from questioning their government.

The Cultural Revolution and Youth

"Once the blindfold was there, it was very difficult to restore sight again." (36)
The book "Thirty Years in a Red House" could very well use this quote on the jacket for it often deals with the idea that political movements can be changed and usurped in meaning through the establishment of a cult of personality which has control over the educational and cultural means of a given society.
While I found this thread to be fascinating, what really set me to analysis was the use of youth by Mao. The man appears to have calculated the means of staying in power so successfully that it reminded of watching a skilled chess player. Where Stalin and Hitler used direct threat, murder and fear to obtain their goals, Mao seemed to have coopted the youth, particularly teens, to redistribute power and secure his position.
The idea that teens have more psychopathic tendencies (I know the defi nitions are in flux, but we can view this through the umbrella of the larger Antisocial Personality Disorder spectrum) is gaining some credence in many research circles and the idea that Mao could recognize this tendency, and exploit is so successfully, is chilling. He created a schism between parent and child at a time in development they tend to occur naturally and then replaced any parental authority with the idolization of himself. It harkens back to the children in Russia who learned to be "stukach" or informers for the Soviet apparatus. However, in China, these children were mobilized as gangs to commit public humiliations and tortures. He also took pains to limit education at this point (which, interestingly, was contrary to the needs of the Communist party when it first began the revolution) which enabled further radicalization and indoctrination of the young. The process also included stripping from children any exposure to contrary thought processes by eliminating the "Four Olds": old culture, old thoughts, old customs, and old habits. (37) Looking back to the beginning of class and Lifton, we can see the making of an atrocity-inducing situation.

Cycles of Humans and History and Hearts

What is even more interesting and ironic is that, today, Taiwan seems to have eliminated the mass poverty that my father and many others in his generation wanted to eliminate in China. History often develops in strange circles, and as the ancient Greek tragedies show, heroes sometimes hurt or even destroy themselves trying to avoid an inevitable fate. They [the Chinese communists] saw something they disliked and tried to change it, but got exactly what they did not want. Had they simply left well enough alone, they might have reached their goal.

~ Zhu Xiao Di, p. 24

Everything we feared about communism -- that we would lose our houses and savings and be forced to labor eternally for meager wages with no voice in the system -- HAS COME TRUE UNDER CAPITALISM.

~ some facebook meme accompanied by a picture of a puffin (why a puffin?)

The first quote seems to offer Di's take on Lifton's cycle of atrocity-producing situations--that history is cyclical in a theatrical way--that perhaps understanding how normal people make atrocious decisions is the same as understanding the tragic hero. I wonder if in Di's mother's and father's private political talks, she ever put it in those terms, as a theater company director.

The second quote speaks to Di's experience as a student in America; seeing the criticisms he learned of America from his Chinese elementary education just now in college beginning to be understood by American students who were unraveling their skewed patriotic version of history; and the analogical realizations for Di about China. His professor remarked how good countries can be at pointing out the flaws of others while being blind to their own crimes--which is to name the downfall of tragic heroes. That they lack self-discipline and go too far, eventually coming full-circle and embodying the ills they'd set out to combat.

Another moment of Di in America informs the downfall. Di recalls reading Kennedy's famous "Ask not..." quote and being shocked at how his rhetoric was the same as Mao's, yet the two were supposed to be political opposites. Di concludes that

the difference is not so much the idea, but how it is spread in society. In a healthier society, an idea inspires people by its moral power. When administrative authorities were used to enforce an ideal or ideology, it often led to serious problems (84).

Separating religion from politics, to the extent that America tries to and that Maoist China failed, could determine the latitude a society gives its tragicness--if you're not conflating your government with gods, you might hold on to some sort of perception of those in power as flawed mortals whose ambitions have to be questioned. Whereas, when "Mao's thoughts" became "Maoism," the tragic hero [the country, the Red Guard generation] lost its ability to think the same way.

Hurka warning about the dangers of "governments divorced from the heart," and Di's account of loveless China at the time ("almost like Victorian England"), and Orwell's love of life ("which when all was said and done, agreed with me so well"), and Lifton's and Mandelstam's love of their respective spouses throughout their lives and works, and Baldwin's mindful attempts to keep love in his heart for his brothers--that stuff says a lot. That's always the other cycle. Makes me want to spend the next few years reading all of William Blake.

rise to power

It was interesting to read this book directly following Hurka's book, as I felt that the contrast between Hurka's father fighting Communism and Di's father working underground for them to be profound. As I was reading the first few pages, while Di tells us of his father's actions before and during the Revolution of 1949 and his following high-ranking position, I couldn't help but compare to Hurka's father's experiences, and how similar they were despite being on opposite sides of the issue.

Of course, nothing is that black and white, and as we delve deeper into the novel, we come to see the Communism become an oppressive force under Chairman Mao. As throughout the rest of this semester, in our books we have been reading, the issue of atrocities and oppression continually comes up and how these cycles can repeat themselves as younger generations move away from the lessons learned from the old. What really struck me in this novel was how gradual the brainwashing and takeover of Mao is; as this person comes into power, the country is taught to revere and respect him and that his teachings are wise and unquestionable. This mindset is perpetuated until Mao becomes almost a "demi-god", and to disagree or show dissent can be punished severely. We watch, along with Di, as this mindset sweeps across the nation and influences an entire generation, who are being brainwashed and have not even realized it. Di begins to get a glimmer when, as he is practicing for an air raid with his classmates, when the whistle blows he immediately covers Mao's portrait with his own body in order to protect it. He is praised highly for this, as it shows he loves Mao more than anything, including himself; Di reflects that he does not know if this was true, but something changed in him that day.

This is the kind of thing that very much piques my interest, as I can draw these parallels both to other works we've read this semester, and to our current political situation now. It seems that it can take so little for someone like Mao - who radiates power through false modesty (calling his ideas Mao's Thoughts rather than Maoism) and has a charisma that draws people in - to rise to a dictatorship on the backs of the countrymen who support and idolize him. These people hold him in such regard that, when they are punished for their perceived rebellious actions, they gladly take the blame. They go over their own choices and actions and try to find where they went wrong, so that they may believe that their punishment was deserved. There is something terrifying in that, to me. These are the seeds that take root and make totalitarianism possible, and the oppressed may not realize what has happened until they have lost everything and they are already in too deep to be able to change it. And so the cycle begins again.

Di: How Hero Worship Can Destroy a Nation

After reading Thirty Years in a Red House, I was again reminded of the importance of bearing witness.  Di, like Mandelstam, teaches us that turning a blind eye to persecution hurts both the victims and the society at large.  In Hope Against Hope, Mandelstam discusses how fear and intimidation kept the Russian people from speaking out against Stalin's years of atrocities.  Di, on the other hand, attributes the Chinese people's reticence to their blind allegiance to Mao.  Even when the Chinese people, including the loyal Underground Communists, were confused by Mao's actions, they never thought to question him. Instead, the people questioned themselves and their loyalty to Mao's vision.    Di's book is an exploration into the dangerous effects of hero worship on a nation.

In an effort to indoctrinate Chinese  youth, the education system focused on Communist teachings and Mao's propaganda.  Students were taught to follow, not to think independently, as it was far more important to raise loyal Communists than intellectuals.  This type of brainwashing turned a whole generation into mindless members of the Mao cult. Since Mao was beyond reproach, young members of his Red Guard committed acts of violence and cruelty against anyone who could be seen as a threat to Mao, including some of his longest running supporters.  These young disciples were taught that preserving Mao's power justified any and all acts of persecution.   Mao's systematic indoctrination was so effective that the Red Guard never even questioned his decision to reward their hard work by sending them out to the far reaches of the poverty-stricken countryside.  Any decree issued by the god-like Mao was seen as crucial to the Communist cause, a cause more important than any individual.  This dedication was so ingrained in the Chinese mindset that "love became taboo" (Di 43).  Loyal members of the Red Guard had no time and no need for romantic love. They were not to see themselves as individuals, but soldiers in the fight to preserve Mao's vision of Communism.   As Di stated, "One was only allowed to love the country, the Communist Party, and the great leader, Chairman Mao" (43). 

As loyal as his young followers were, Mao also enjoyed the allegiance of the older generation.  The Underground Communists, the men and women who fought the Japanese during World War II and Chiang Kai-shek during the civil war, were so grateful to the peace and relative prosperity they enjoyed for seventeen years that they were willing to see Mao's Cultural Revolution as a temporary and necessary phase of communism.  The fact that many of these Underground Communists had remained loyal to the egalitarian ethos of communism and had done nothing wrong didn't prevent them from blaming themselves for the Cultural Revolution.  For example, when Mao began criticizing government officials, Di's parents, modest people who lived to serve the people, "could see some sense in his criticism" (45).  Di's parents believed in the importance of community and would never want to abuse their power in any way, whether intentionally or not, so "when they were asked to make self-criticism in public meetings, they did it in earnest" (45).   Members of the older generation  had "complete trust in the Communist Party and Chairman Mao, and once the idolization of Mao made him a demi-god, people's confidence in themselves lessened" (Di 45).  In other words, members of Di's parents' generation were so in awe of Mao that they readily accepted his condemnations. 

With both generations under his spell, Mao, like Stalin, managed to destroy any threat to his power for years.  The major difference between the two was their differing styles of authoritarianism.  Mao created a mythical aura around himself that inspired blind loyalty, while Stalin stamped out dissidents through brutality and intimidation.  Both men effectively silenced their people, enabling a cycle of persecution in their countries. 

Then and Now

As mentioned in some of the previous posts, one of the most interesting bits of Thirty Years in a Red House  was how Di was able to show us why people would choose to follow communism. This of course brought back the idea of Chinese Thought Reform from Lifton, and the process of the youth turning against the older generation to follow what they thought was the best system.

I wonder (and hopefully we can ask him) how Di views Chinese youth and the level to which they 'buy in' to the government now. Obviously there are huge differences between the Communism that Di grew up with and the Communism (with heavy capitalist influences) that exists there now; however, the government still is repressive and controls a lot of information (internet access, etc.) How do these changes affect the way that people adapt and believe in the system? Does he feel that with the ability to access greater information (certainly information is easier to access now than in his time there, even with current restrictions) will eventually bring about the end of communism? Or will it continue to exist in a more open, pseudo-democractic/capitalist fashion? I suppose this is less a response than it is further questioning, but since China is the only communist regime we've read about that is still currently in power, it seems like they're pertinent.

"No one is seen in deserted hills, only the echoes of speech are heard."

I felt incredibly angry while reading this memoir, more than any other one we have read this semester. I think this comes from the fact that I did not know much of anything about China's modernization or the path towards it,as well as the feeling of shame that derived from my own actions in the past.

When I was still absorbed in my early 20's and obsessed with socialist idealism (very much disconnected from context and the repercussions of implementation) I remember a friend telling me that he was a Maoist. Knowing very little about China or Mao, I asked him why. He said that he believed the communist revolution in China was one of the most impressive events in the 20th century, and that Mao as a figure was inspirational and less harmful when compared to other countries' modernization process.

Now, considering the fact that I very strongly reject formulating my personal and political feelings around a human figure, I chalk up a lot of those punk kids (who were usually between the ages of 17-23) who liked to categorize themselves according to prominent political figures in history as naive an ill-informed. They wanted to latch onto a counter narrative that was opposed to the american/western ideology they were born to believe in. In this way they setup a binary system where the opposite of the failing capitalist system they see at home becomes the communist systems in the east. The answers to their problems could be found across the water. 

I was right there with them. 

I put a hammer and a sickle on red and yellow t-shirts and sold them to 21st century kids across Eastern Europe. 

I pledged allegiance to the United States Socialist Party propaganda and promoted these ideas in places where those closely related ideologues were used against their grandparents, forcing them into subservience, or fear, or torture, or death. 

We condemned Nazi punks yet propped up the same talking points Stalin would use to torture and destroy thousands and thousands of lives.

Our hearts were in the right place, but we were so disconnected from the context of our historical time period, and even worse, so were the kids who were getting an earful from us Americans, the same kids whose grandparents and great grandparents lived through this torturous form of suppression we were reproducing in 2010. 

Understanding that you can't choose your favorite political system like you can your favorite color, that red is made up of many different shades and displayed differently depending on context, is something that I've been learning throughout this course. When I decided to quit my band back in 2010, effectively sabotaging the entirety of the band in of itself, I think I was just starting to realize how ideologies can't be reduced to talking points or slogans pasted on social media pages. Still, its taken me years to untangle the deep rooted thought control that breeds through binary thinking. Xiaodi's memoir helped to elucidate the human side of these political systems. That was the most powerful part of this memoir to me; to see the people and who they were instead of the invisible faces behind slogans, orders, and doctrines. It is much harder to hate or love when you see the real human faces rather than a mask. 

---

Here are the notes I took, pointing to specific passages I find particularly interesting. 

"most Chinese believe that to take an individualistic stand was foolish. They had learned from experience or it had been drilled into them that the only way to survive was to go along with the tribe."




Right from the beginning of the book It's really interesting to see how the early communists in China were treated how radicals and anti-communists were treated in the Soviet Union. If you were suspected to be a communist or you were an activist of any kind you would be eliminated. We talk a lot of history repeating itself, and this is just another example of how it's not just about political groups being evil, but systems of power and control attempting to maintain their hegemonic positions through violence.




Even more complex is how the rise of communism in China came about: as a response to being occupied by another country while the government let it happen. I am wondering how violent that occupation was, and today even think about the reasons someone would feel nationalistic pride even if the opposing force was peaceful (which I doubt it was, but even hypothetically if they were, no one wants to be controlled ever).
"I still suspect that my fathers unexpected death in 1990 was accelerated by the student demonstrations in 1989. Although history never repeats itself exactly, events can be very similar. Witnessing such similar social tragedies must have been deeply painful to an aged man with such wide genuine social concerns. He certainly didn't want to see the event turn out to be such a tragedy (9)."




"It was true that a simple and thrifty lifestyle was encouraged for everyone, and especially for Communist government officials. It was considered sinful to waste, and officials were not allowed to live luxuriously (15)."


"When the word revolutionary was used in China it meant the opposite of what it means in the west. Instead of pertaining to radical change, the word implied conformity with the authority or being politically correct (27)."

"One of the articulated goals of the cultural revolution was to eliminate the 'four olds': old cultures, old thoughts, old customs, and old habits (37)."

This quote encapsulates a terrifying idea; erasing culture for the benefit of those in power. What's even more terrifying is to mobilize youth to turn against older customs and see old customs as threatening. To make anyone see their own cultures' history as an evil that needs to be eliminated, but also enact violence against those who carry even symbols of that culture, seems to me the most violent form of mind control there is.


"When they searched people's houses at night, some Red Guards liked to beat people. This made me believe that violence was a human instinct that would surface if it were not subdued by morals and other considerations such as punishment (39)."


Jesus Christ.


The exposing of people based on family history or past employment suggests that in this society there is no such thing as redemption. In addition, it feels like the same kind of system that attempts to expose people based on conjecture rather than punishable actions observed. What's even more ironic are the types of actions that are punishable or shameful. It seems that many of the sinful actions are things that were against old culture, such as divorcing wives after the communist revolution. That was a revolutionary act, yet now it is punished as unfaithfulness.

This all seems to culminate in the one quote on page 43: "the entire generation of youth at the time experienced a psychologically distorted adolescent development."

This immediately clashes with his father's philosophy that carries throughout the book, summed up in a passage on page 45:


"I often heard my father say, "it was the people who had supported is in our earlier struggles against Chiang Kai-shek's government. Now we the communists are in power, we should never forget their support and abandon their interest." He would always quote Lenin to end his talk, "Forgetting the past means betrayal."
















"Even at a personal level, I wondered if it was nobler to speak my criticism of our political system and to be put into prison as a dissident, or to keep a painful silence and use the limited freedom I had in my classroom to crib are independent thinking among my students. Which was nobler? 'To be or not to be: that is the question." Time has not her passes Shakespeare by, and the question he put forward is still meaningful today (211)."

Seeing Outside Your System

Throughout this memoir, I was impressed with Di's very sober and balanced take on growing up under the Chinese Communist system. There's a sense of the author emerging from childhood ignorance whenever he refers to the ways he used to see things, yet I was intrigued by the author's tone in such instances. He does not seem to claim that he was duped as a child, rather it seems more like the older "I" has widened his perspective. While Di experiences plenty of disillusionment and his family suffers through the Cultural Revolution and still after, the narration maintains a balanced tone. Rather than devolve into a bitter take down of Communist China, Di does not ignore "the positive values," both in the system and in his own experiences, and his analyses of the negative values are measured and thoughtful rather than vindictive. 

I was particularly taken with a passage in which Di jumps ahead to graduate school, and he recalls hearing American classmates remarking on the differences between the history they study now and the histories they were fed in middle and high school. Di realizes that his American contemporaries "had been taught mostly about the glorious part of American history and the advantage of its political and economic systems" (33). We can look back even further to a sort of indoctrination-lite in elementary school with the cheery, patriotic stories of the first Thanksgiving, George Washington and the cherry tree, etc, etc. We are told as children that America is the greatest country in the world and that capitalism and our brand of democracy are the only way to go, in a fashion not so dissimilar from the picture book propaganda that taught Di and other Chinese children that Communism was the only way to go, and that their heroes were doing constant battle with American and Japanese villains.

We extricate ourselves from these easy histories by exposing ourselves to worlds beyond our system. Much of the pain caused by the Communist system came because the Communist leadership was to insular. It sustained itself on the simple narrative that it had created, and leaders from Mao to Deng brutally repressed dissent or even ideas that didn't fall into line. Di does not fall into that line because it obscures the world beyond, and his father instilled in him the values that allowed him to grow outside of the narrow psychological plot provided by the state.

Questioning is Key

Although after completing Zhu Xiao Di's Thirty Years in a Red House I feel more aware of what I don’t know than I have throughout most of this course, I feel with even more certainty that reading this book has lessened that ignorance. Yes, I'd also been in the dark about much of the history we've encountered thus far, but I feel most ill-informed about the stories of China's history. 

Thus, I am grateful for Di's ability to tell the story of his life in China and of the political, social, and cultural issues surrounding that life while maintaining his determination to reveal the lack of logic and reason behind many of the decisions that were made by those in power. He is determined to chase his questions until he finds at least the beginning form of an answer. And he dissects the psychological causes and effects of this history. 

As he narrates his story, he reveals many "ironies of history," stacking up more and more evidence that there were few logical reasons for the country and its people to be living the way they were. It would have been enough to read of the impoverished conditions he lived in, of the camps his parents were sent to, the terror of the education system. But Di recounts much more, and necessarily so. His story would not be his story if it were not inextricably bound to the story of China and its government; in writing one, he must write the other. 

He does an immense job of bringing us closer to an understanding of why and how, psychologically, so many people would choose to follow communism, or choose to join certain waves of political groups. To us Westerners, it seems impossible to understand how a people could choose to be a part of a group that led to the country's misery, but Di's book helps us to understand the complexities (many of which are psychological) behind these issues. The following passage exemplifies his ability to clarify a people's thought process: "Yes, communism had such appeal that it seemed easy to understand!" he writes. "Anyone would believe that he understood communism while actually confusing the ideal with reality" (105).

I was similarly impressed by his ability to track the changes occurring in the people—in the country as a whole—throughout years and decades (and throughout the book). Though there are many of these moments to choose from, one that I recall particularly well is one in which he discusses learning English, and listening to the radio to do so. "My father found out what I was doing, but he didn't stop me. He just asked me to be careful," Di writes. "When I heard some interesting news related to China, I would tell my father and he seemed to be interested, too. Now it was more than just learning English. The society was gradually reopening to the outside world" (134). 

Interested as I was in reading of the impact that learning English had on Di and his country, I was perhaps even more interested in the explicit distinctions he makes for his Western audience. He writes of the difference between democracy and communism in a way that I'd never read before and in a way that helped me view these political terms with a new, important understanding. "Most Westerners thought of Communism and democracy as mutually exclusive systems, but in China, democracy had once been embraced by the communists, and democracy was both a method and a part of their goal" (201). After reading this, I realized that my inability to understand what these terms actually meant had been stopping me from truly understanding the problems within them and their roles (past and present) in different countries.

I was moved by his attempt to find an answer or cure to the “social disease” that plagues China, particularly by his interactions with his students. In the scene where he uses Shakespeare to plant questions in his students’ minds, where he admits that he doesn’t even have the answers himself, I found myself thinking how important this work (his work) is. Asking people to question what they believe and why they believe it; asking people to find the point where logic seems to have been set aside: this questioning is key to change, and it seems that if nothing more Di has begun a line of questioning that is integral to change in China, in communism, and in the countless situations that have and continue to lead to atrocities.