Beijing in the Great Cultural Revolution: Investigation of the Appalling Massacre Happened in Daxing County

Beijing in the Great Cultural Revolution

Investigation of the Appalling Massacre Happened in Daxing County

[Author:Yu Luowen ]

Translated by Peter Guo, No Copyright Reserved

1. ORIGIN

It enumerated the methods that how the people in power damaged the "Black Five Categories" (landlords, rich farmers, counterrevolutionaries, bad members, rightist members) and their offspring in the Of Parentage written by Yu Luoke in 1966, in which there was a sentence of "cruelly 'pulled up completely with roots'", indicating the extremely cruel massacre incident of Daxing County which happened in August 1966.

However, the High School Cultural Revolution Report which managed by us had only three months of life span, and the newspaper also had been released only 7 issues, the writing space was limited and time was too little, leading to fail to complete the scheduled plans, though we tried to disclose and criticize the Fascist outrages of damaging mankind in every issue as far as possible. Luoke once even had an illusion of compiling a book before he was arrested, which specially collected and disclosed the horrible outrage that took place during the "Great Cultural Revolution ".

Sooner after Luoke was imprisoned, I was also put into the same prison, coincidentally the cell jailed one killer who participated in the massacre incident. Although he was ashamed of publicizing of his notorious doings, the other prison sufferers couldn't help to discuss his appalling evil doings and named him as a "butcher".

It was said that the slaughter of "Black Five Categories" in other places was to make them die rapidly, otherwise the village where the "butcher" lived in, except for beaten the old "Black Five Categories" to die by cudgels and split across the infant "Black Five Categories" into two halves, they imprisoned the teenage "Black Five Categories" and took the torture to those teenagers time by time as playing a "game".

They backed both hands of the male youth and hung up them by only the thumbs fastened, and then execute various kinds of torture; to the female youth, besides hung up and thrashed them, they did sex maltreatments on them. In the evening the butchers put down them and let them had a "rest", with the purpose to let them not die too fast and suffer more. In the mean time, they released the notices to the "Black Five Categories" who labored outside, compelling them to come back for "animadversion". Days later, all the male and female youth were dead.

For the teenage "Black Five Categories", they didn't even let pass. They didn't give anything to eat for the teenagers until they was hungry to a certain degree in the first several days, and then threw some eggplants to them to make fun by watching them grabbed the eggplants. Later their superiors released a designation of stopping massacre. Firstly the "butchers" treated the "designation" as nothing at all, and still there some people were dead.

Said according to the "butcher", imprison of him was not for the reason that he killed some people, but for he didn't respect the designation from his superiors. On the contrast, spoke of grievances for the innocent killed "mean people", Louke was ruthlessly sentenced death penalty.

Only twenty years after the Daxing Massacre Incident, there were some brief reports shown on some books and periodicals, from which we primarily knew that, the public security system of Daxing County conveyed the speaking of the minister of Public Security Xie Fuzhi in Aug. 26, 1966, from Aug. 27 to Sep. 1, there were 325 people killed, among which the oldest was 80 years old, and the youngest was just 38 days in the 13 communes with 48 brigades in this county. 22 families were annihilated in total (See Decade History of the Great Cultural Revolution, September 1986, Tianjin People's Publishing House).

The purpose of researches on the aggrieved history is to provide reference for posterities and make the society go forward, races progress, is a matter of great significance. But not until we really wanted to probe into this case, had we found it was so difficult to find the historical data! At first, I went to the Beijing Municipal Archives which was just opened in last year, unexpectedly couldn't find any information about the well known incidents that happened in the early stage of the "Cultural Revolution". There was not any material on the matters regarding the Red Guards' confiscation of people's property, people killing, and massacre in the villages, e.g. a most obvious example: in March 18, 1967, all avenues in Beijing were pasted pieces of the announcement from the Military Control Committee of Bureau of Public Security (so called "318 announcement"), which stipulated 11 kinds of people and their family that needed to be repatriation to rural areas. After that, the "11 kinds of people" became a special term, including landlords, rich farmers, counterrevolutionaries, bad members, rightist members, capitalists, sinister gang members, reactive military officers, pseudo policemen, pseudo military policemen and secret agents respectively. So influential official public documents but not found in the archives. Fortunately, there was the "Report of the Municipal People's Congress and Military Control Committee on the Relevant Allocation Problems Concerning the Dispatched People" which was released in March 23, 1967, could still provide evidences that there once bad been facts of driving people to the villages, and these immoral conducts started in 1966 and didn't over in 1967. The "report" indicated that being dispatched to the rural areas, some of them returned to, more than a half of them were defined as the "11 kinds of people". It said "in consistent with the dealing measures" in the "report", should continue to dispatch (people to rural). The so called "dealing measures" were indicated in the "318 announcement" that released 5 days ago. Even though so incomplete the archives were and the many entries in the table of contents were pasted with opaque adhesive tape, it seemed that I found something that shouldn't be publicized within one year.

Driving the people out of who had "problems" should be traced back to the years from 1959 to 1961, when the mayor and secretary of the Communist Party Municipal Committee Peng Zhen had a famous saying: will construct to become "glass plates, crystal stones*". Just at that time they hadn't attained large-scale dispatch activity. Since the beginning of "Cultural Revolution", it was inevitable to implement the repatriation. I turned over the government documents regarding compression of the city population from 1959 to 1962 to seek any clue about "glass plates, crystal stones"; it's clearly that nothing to be obtained. Since it was hard to find the needed materials, I turned to look for the involved parties in the massacre.

There were 13 communes in that performed massacre, among which the commune was the most well known. The persons that commanded the massacre there were Gao Fuxing and Hu Defu, who are still alive; it was said that they manage grocers in the downtown areas of the county. I wanted to seek for them firstly; if succeeded, I would know who commanded them and their motivations at that time. I made great efforts to find out the younger brother of Gao Fuxing, but unexpectedly got the cheese, the "supervisors" upon them prohibited them to provide the historical data of that massacre incident to others with the reasons unknown.

Fortunately, that incident itself couldn't keep secrets; the activities behind the scenery didn't need to be said through learning about the kinds of facts. And the greater significance is on digging the root of this vicious incident and learning about why they happened so as to avoid happening again. The direct reason of Daxing Massacre incident was violence and killing of the Red Guards in urban regions. If make May 16, 1966 as the starting of the "Cultural Revolution", at the early June the "Red Guards" organizations with strong feudal colors appeared in high schools which eventually called as the "Old Red Guards". The only organizing principle of them was exclusively born in the families with high ascendancy. The "Red Guards" left the history two slogans and extremely notorious deeds.

The two slogans were: "rebellion is reasonable" and "hero father breeds brave children; reactive father breeds blamed children". The ashamed deeds to the mankind was the Fascist inhumane deeds that treating as if people's life was not worth of a straw, while the victims were those people in inferior position who had not any resistant ability and been repressed for years for no reason. The "Red Guards"s was not satisfied just only assaulting the presidents (principles) and teaching fellows in the schools, after "smashed" the "revisionism education system", they put excess efforts to the society, starting the activities of "break through the four olds" and bloody terrible "family property confiscation". It seemed that their job was to inexorably uncover the new "sinister gangs", destroyed the things that has traditional culture colors and oppressed and even killed the "black kinds" (pluses capitalists and "sinister gangs" based on the "Black Five Categories").

Mao Zedong saw those "Old Red Guards" on Tiananmen Rostrum tower in August 18. Song Renqiong's daughter Song Binbin wore a sleeve emblem for Mao Zedong. Mao asked Song what was her name if the Bin ( 彬，courteous) in the word "Wen Zhi Bin Bin" ( 文质彬彬, gentle), said "Wow! Yaowu ( 要武嘛，want violence)", therefore Song changed her name as "Song Yaowu". Since " ，the "Red Guards" became quite famous, ignorance, prejudice plus unlimited power, made them have beast like temper and minds without conscience.

The so-called "family property confiscation" was always confiscating and destroying all property, even if the old widows and widowers, were robbed everything in their home even some living items like bowls, chopsticks and bedding were also confiscated. Furthermore, the "family property confiscation" was always accompanied with "assault" which was an extremely cruel means. The common item during ""family property confiscation" was "shaving" "Yinyang hairstyle", hardly let the women pass. It was said "shaving", actually was shaving with depilation, sometimes pulled out the hairs handful by handful, even the skin of head was tore. There were often seen that some senior people slouched the bleeding heads with pink scalp, still in pillory through the streets. The crueler was that "washed" the heads, namely pouring the thick alkaline solution onto the wound places. The re was a "capitalist" family in the area near Dongsi (a street), where the senior couple were nearly beaten to die, and their son was compelled to beat them, the son in high school used a dumbbell to smash his father's head, himself finally became mad. It was quotidian phenomena that beating some people to die, on the sand beach street, some male "Red Guards" assaulted an senior lady using shackles and belts until she couldn't move, and a female "Red Guards" jumped on her belly until the senior woman were trampled to die.

A so called "Class Revenge Incident" broke out in the areas around Ganlanshi of Chongwen District, Bejing in August 25. It was said that a "house property lord" whose last name was Li couldn't endure the maltreatments using a kitchen knife threatened a "Red Guard" who watched him, and was killed. This incident was exaggerated and went the rounds to the "Red Guards" organizations in every school, the "small generals" in search of quarrels couldn't even give up the chance, thousands of hatchet men in soldier costumes and weapons in hands gathered in the street where the incident happened by special bus, "bloodily washed" these areas for 7 days, countless people mercilessly were beaten up and many people died of unnatural death. This was the "Ganlanshi Incident" that astonished. In this action, they confiscated the house of a "landlord's wife" (alone widow) near Chongwenmnen, compelled all the neighboring residents to take a bottle of boiled water for each family, pouring the hot water from her neck until the muscle on the neck scalded completely. Days later, her body threw in the house was full of maggots. The Shao's family in the Nangongkou Huton, formerly as an Intendant of Circuit in Qing Dynasty, stored a lot of balm and white sugar in his home. The "Red Guards" coerced this family to drink balm oil and have white sugar; Mr. Shao Zhongkuang who experienced this punishment said it was more unbearable than deadly assaults. Thousands of people in urban regions of were killed by the "Red Guards" during the last ten-day of August, 1966, and homicidal evil doings rapidly radiates to every suburb of , including Daxing County.

* Peng Zhen, the former mayor of Beijing city at 1960s-1970s, and one of the earliest heads of the Communist Party of China. The phase of "glass plates, crystal stones (玻璃板，水晶石)" means to spy the people to let there were no secrets hidden in the people, making the society clear and transparent like "glass plates, crystal stones". I think this had special meaning under that social circumstance, because at that time the culture revolution began, Beijing as the center of China, Peng should make the example for Mao Zedong, so he called for the police to digged out the "Five Black Categories".

Yu Luowen, the author and the narrator in the film of Morning Sun. Yu Luoke was his elder brother, an extraordinarily prescient critic of the Cultural Revolution and political manipulation in China, who was executed in 1970 for his ideas in his book, of parentage.