文革 | 等待答案五十年

50 Years After the Cultural Revolution, a Son Awaits Answers on His Father’s Death

BEIJING — Fifty years after his father was killed, Chen Shuxiang still wonders what happened to his bloodied corpse. He keeps a frayed note from back then that let him make his way through the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution and pay the student zealots who beat his father to death to have him cremated.

北京。陈树祥（音）的父亲五十年前被杀，他仍想弄清那具血淋淋的尸体曾经历了什么。他挺过了残酷的文化大革命，至今还留着一张破损的条子，条子上写着他花钱让打死父亲的狂热学生将其火化。

He never found his father’s body. Ever since, he has hoped for answers, and waited for the students who killed his father to turn up, older and contrite, and say they were sorry. No one has.

他未找到父亲的遗体。自此之后，他一直希望得到答案，等待打死父亲的学生们站出来，能在年迈时幡然悔悟，说一句抱歉。但没有人站出来。

Mr. Chen is still waiting for a frank reckoning with the legacy of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and so is .

陈仍在等待对文化大革命进行坦诚的清算，中国也在等待。

“Just before he died, my father wasn’t even allowed a mouthful of water,” said Mr. Chen, 72, a retired teacher who lives in northwest Beijing, a few minutes’ walk from where his father lived. “It’s something I don’t like to think about even now, but also I want to hear from those who did this.

“父亲死前，他们连一口水都不让他喝。”72岁的退休教师陈说。他住在北京西北郊，距父亲生活的地方走路不过几分钟。“这些事现在我都不愿去想，可我却想听做下这种事的人说说看。”

“Why did they pick him out? Where did his ashes end up?”

“为什么揪出他来？他的骨灰哪儿去了？”

Half a century after  started the Cultural Revolution, his tumultuous drive to enlist ordinary Chinese to purge the country of ideological foes, many who lived through that time believe its legacy still haunts their country.

毛泽东发动文革半个世纪了，这一运动发动普通中国人清除国家意识形态敌人，在许多经历了那个时代的人看来，它仍在困扰着这个国家。

Many survivors, former Red Guards and historians said the official reticence had permitted a dangerous nostalgia for Mao’s time.

许多幸存者、曾经的红卫兵和历史学家说官方的沉默让许多人怀念毛的时代，这非常危险。

“If the ghosts of the Cultural Revolution are not dispersed and are allowed to grow, we’ll slide in the direction of another Cultural Revolution,” said , a former Red Guard who attended the high school where Mr. Chen was a student and then teacher. Mr. Bu became one of China’s most respected historians of the era. “More dregs of Cultural Revolution rhetoric, methods and doctrines will float up.”

曾经的红卫兵卜伟华说：“如果不驱散文革的鬼魂，任其生长，我们会倒向另一场文化大革命，文革词汇、文革方法和文革信条会沉渣泛起。”卜伟华上高中时，陈还是学生，后来陈当了老师。卜伟华是中国最受尊敬的历史学家之一。

“People who didn’t experience the Cultural Revolution know only that many officials were persecuted, but they don’t know that the numbers of ordinary people who suffered were 10 times, a hundred times, more,” Yang Jisheng, a Chinese historian said in a  in Beijing. “Unfortunately, nowadays there are some people doing everything in their power to cover up the mistakes of history.”

中国历史学家杨继绳近期在北京说：“没经历过文革的人只知道我们迫害了许多干部，却不知受难老百姓的数量十倍百倍，甚至更多。很不幸，现在有些人不遗余力地掩盖历史错误。”

The Cultural Revolution was Mao’s campaign to root out internal enemies who, he said, had been seduced by capitalism and the “revisionist” compromises of the Soviet Union. 

文化大革命旨在拔除国内敌人，毛泽东认为他们被资本主义和苏联修正主义引向歧途。

Students formed Red Guard groups to enforce Mao’s will, he gave them his blessing, and the tumult escalated, especially in schools, where students condemned teachers and officials.

学生们组成红卫兵集团执行毛的意志，受到接见后，混乱升级了，尤其在学校，学生谴责老师和干部。

Before retiring, Mr. Chen was an instructor at the prestigious Tsinghua University High School, the birthplace of the first Red Guard group. But even as students there moved from tirades against teachers to physical humiliation, with witch hats and parades, to beatings, Mr. Chen thought that his family was safe.

退休前，陈是堂堂清华附中的讲师，这里产生了第一支红卫兵。可当时，当学生们发表长篇反对老师的演说，在身体上对其进行凌辱，戴牛鬼蛇神帽，沿街游行，殴打老师，陈也不认为他们家有什么不安全。

His father was solidly working class, a barely educated boiler operator whose own father had done the same humble job. His mother washed clothes for extra cash. Mr. Chen, the eldest of seven children, had given up hopes of entering a university so that he could help support his siblings. He found a job as an instructor at the same high school where he had studied.

他的父亲是货真价实的工人阶级，一个没受过教育的烧锅炉的，祖父也干同样的粗活。母亲靠给人洗衣服补贴家用。陈是七个孩子中的长子，不抱希望能上大学，早早出来做工养活弟弟妹妹。他在他上学的高中找了个讲师的工作。

But on the evening of Aug. 27, 1966, as he turned the corner to his family’s home, he saw more than a dozen youths in green uniforms with red armbands, the favored uniform of Red Guards, Mr. Chen said. A neighbor spotted Mr. Chen and waved him away.

但1966年8月27日晚，他转过街角回到家时，看到十多个穿绿制服、戴红袖章的年轻人，这是红卫兵最喜欢的装束。一个邻居看到陈，就挥手让他离开。

When he crept back that night, the home was a shambles. His brothers and sisters were bawling; the dumplings his mother had been preparing for dinner were squashed on the walls and floor; his parents were missing.

晚上他偷偷潜回到家时，发现家中一片狼藉。弟弟和妹妹在哭嚎，母亲晚饭做的饺子被压扁在墙上和地板上，父母都不见了。

The next morning, his mother, Liu Wancai, stumbled home, barely able to talk, her clothes torn, her face covered in blood.

第二天早上，他的母亲刘婉才（音）踉踉跄跄地走回家来，衣服被扯烂了，脸上全是血，说不出话来。

“What about Dad?” Mr. Chen asked, according to his privately published memoir.

“He was killed,” his mother said. “It’s true. He died beside me.”

在自行出版的回忆录中，陈问：“爸爸呢？”妈妈说：“被杀了。真的，就是在我旁边。”

Ms. Liu and her husband had been taken by Red Guards, and he was accused of being a “class enemy,” she told Mr. Chen. The family of Mr. Chen’s father had once owned about three acres of land, enough to label the father a landlord, anathema to the revolution.

刘和她丈夫被红卫兵抓走，他被指控为“阶级敌人”。陈的父亲家曾经有18亩田，够得上地主，于是成了革命的对象。

The teenage mob threw the couple into the back of a truck and took them to a school where they were beaten with military-style leather belts, the favorite punishment tool of Red Guards; a jump-rope twisted into a whip; and shoes with nails jutting out, Ms. Liu later said. The mob then drove the couple to another school where the beating continued, including with iron rods.

刘后来说，还是少年的暴民们把夫妇俩扔进卡车后，将他们带到一所学校，用武装带抽打，这是红卫兵最喜欢的惩罚工具。他们把跳绳扭成鞭子，鞋底有钉子。后来暴徒把夫妇俩弄到另一所学校，继续暴打，还用上了铁棍子。

The father, Chen Yanrong, 37, insisted that the landlord label was wrong; his family had long given up the property. But back then, the younger Mr. Chen said, “the more you denied something, the more you were beaten.”

当时37岁的父亲陈扬荣（音）坚称地主的帽子戴错了，他家早就捐了产。可小陈说，在当时，“你越否认，就越要往死里打”。

As he lay in his own blood, Chen Yanrong begged for water. The students said no, and he stopped breathing soon after.

陈扬荣倒在自己的血泊中，他要水喝。学生们不给，很快他就没气儿了。

“There was some randomness to who was seized upon,” said , a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a new study, “The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China.” “The most important thing was really to show that we — the organization — we’re the real revolutionaries.”

宾夕法尼亚大学教授、《红卫兵的产生和中国政治激进主义》作者杨国彬（音）说：“抓谁不抓谁都有些随意，最重要的是表明我们这个组织是真正的革命者。”

By later official accounts, 1,772 people were killed in the tumult across Beijing in August and September 1966. There were probably more, including suicides and people killed after being expelled from the city.

后来官方统计，1966年8月到9月间，1772人死于暴乱。加上自杀和被赶出城去后被杀的人，可能数量会更多。

The Red Guards who took Mr. Chen’s parents came from one of the city’s top schools, Peking University High School, according to his mother as well as later official documents.

母亲和后来的官方记录显示，把陈的父母抓走的红卫兵来自于北京一所顶尖高中——北大附中。

They were among the first wave of Red Guards, who were usually the offspring of party officials. Later Mao turned on his own political elite, and the first wave fell from grace, giving way to new “rebel” Red Guard factions that then waged bloody battles against other Red Guard factions.

他们是第一波红卫兵，多是干部子弟。后来政治精英也被打倒了，于是第一波失势了，新的“造反派”红卫兵上台，向其他红卫兵组织发动血腥的斗争。

The day after his father was seized, Mr. Chen asked Red Guards from his school to write a note allowing him to go to Peking University High School to pay the Red Guards there for the cremation. But at the school gate, he heard people say that there had been ruthless beatings there overnight and that two corpses had been taken away.

父亲被抓当天，陈让他们学校的红卫兵写了个条子，允许他去北大附中花钱请那里的红卫兵把父亲火化。

Afraid, Mr. Chen left without entering or seeing his father’s body. He still has the note, tucked away in the back of a picture frame.

因为害怕，陈没有进去看父亲的遗体，他仍保留着那张条子，被塞在相框后面。

His mother died in 2011, and was never able to identify her attackers. The family left space at her grave for her husband’s remains, should they ever be found.

母亲2011年去世，一直也不知道谁是行凶者。家里给丈夫留了放骨灰的地方，如果能找得到的话。

After Mao died in 1976, the family received 2,500 renminbi, equal to about $380 at current exchange rates but a more generous sum back then, in compensation for the father’s death. 

1976年毛泽东逝世后，陈家得到2500元补偿，在当时算挺多一笔钱。

Peking University High School also gave the family a statement acknowledging that the school’s Red Guards, who called themselves the Red Flag Struggle Group, had killed him.

北大附中也给他家发了个文，承认学校的红卫兵（当时自称红旗战斗小组）杀死了陈父。

But no one has ever come forward to take responsibility for the death, Mr. Chen said.

陈说，但没人出来为他的死负责。

Peng Xiaomeng, a former leader of the Red Flag group who is now in her late 60s, has worked under a different name as an editor for an economic policy journal in Beijing. Reached by telephone, she seemed startled to be asked about events 50 years ago but said she did not recall the episode.

红旗小组曾经的领导人彭晓梦（音）现在快七十岁了，她后来更了名，在北京一家经济政策杂志做编辑。电话联系到她时，被问到五十年前的事，她很吃惊，她说自己记不清了。

“I really don’t know whether it was the Red Flag group,” she said. “I have nothing else to say.”

“我真的不知道是不是红旗小组，我没什么可说的。”

Mr. Chen stood by his mother’s recollections, which were corroborated by official documents.

陈站在母亲的回忆材料旁，官方记录都证实了这些材料。

“Even now, these people are all like this, all evading responsibility,” he said, his voice choking. “They say: ‘I wasn’t at the school. I wasn’t at the meeting. I didn’t know.’ 

“直到现在，这些人在都回避责任。他们说，我当时不在学校，我没参加那个会议，我不知道。”陈的声音哽咽了。

“After 50 years,” he said, “they still haven’t gained any understanding.”

“五十年了，他们还未获得理解。”

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