BEIJING — In 1970, when China was in the grip of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hongbing, a 16-year-old in Guzhen, a county in Anhui Province, made a fateful decision. During a family debate that year, his mother, Fang Zhongmou, had criticized Mao Zedong for his cult of personality. Her son and his father, believing her views to be counterrevolutionary, decided to inform on her. She was arrested that same day.
Mr. Zhang still recalls how his mother's shoulder joints gave a grating creak as her captors pulled the cord tight. Two months later, she was shot to death.
In 1980, four years after Mao's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the verdict on Fang Zhongmou was reversed. A local court declared her innocent.
In the months and years that followed, Zhang Hongbing and his father scrupulously avoided all reference to this episode. Only in retirement did his father raise the subject: As an adult at the time, he took responsibility for what they had done.
In 2013, the Chinese media reported the lifelong regrets of Mr. Zhang, then 59 years old. For years he would often break down in tears, howling and wailing. "I see her in my dreams," he said, "just as young as she was then. I kneel on the floor, clutching her hands, for fear she will disappear. 'Mom,' I cry, 'I beg your forgiveness!' But she doesn't respond. Never once has she answered me. This is my punishment."
Why, in those dreams, does Ms. Fang never say a word to her son? It's not, I think, that she wants to punish him, for she knows that the true blame lies with others — with those who were in power at the time. She — like the souls of all who perished during the Cultural Revolution — is awaiting their apology. She has been waiting for 44 years.
Recently, some who abused others during the decade-long Cultural Revolution have come forward in the media or on the Internet to apologize to their victims. Now retired, they express repentance in part because they cannot excuse what they did, in part because they are disturbed by efforts to put a positive spin on the Cultural Revolution. They have voluntarily confessed to shameful acts, in the hope that young people today will understand the grim history of that era. But the voices of the contrite do not carry far, quickly submerged among the flood of reports on international crises and domestic incidents, entertainment news and sports events.
In contrast to those conscience-stricken individuals, the Communist Party has never had trouble forgiving itself for the appalling blunders it has committed during its 64 years in power, and it tries hard to erase from the historical record all traces of those errors. In the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, many sought to repudiate it, but when our leaders realized that this kind of critique detracted from their own authority, they immediately suppressed such criticisms — quashing them so thoroughly it was as though they had never been voiced.
So in official discourse there is no truthful accounting of the Cultural Revolution, and it is only in society at large that discussion of it sometimes surfaces.
Now, helpless and indignant in the face of such ugly realities as environmental degradation, income disparity, pervasive corruption, theft and murder, drug abuse, human trafficking, land seizures and forced demolitions, many who lived through the Cultural Revolution have begun to wax nostalgic. That's because, when Mao was lord and everyone was under the regime's thumb, social problems were not so widespread and contradictions were not so acute.
Since efforts to confront the Cultural Revolution have so long been stifled, people born since then have no idea what happened. In June 2012, members of the graduating class of Central China Normal University in Wuhan took a graduation photo, all dressed in Red Guard uniforms. To these young people, the Cultural Revolution seems to have been nothing more than one huge party. Canny businessmen have latched on to this, using the Cultural Revolution to peddle their wares. Last August, on my way to Hangzhou Airport, I saw a huge billboard on the expressway that featured a female Red Guard, arms outstretched. "Comrades, here I am!" she cried.
China's dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands has ramped up anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese population. In September 2012, there were anti-Japanese protests in more than 50 cities. Japanese restaurants and Japanese cars were attacked, and Japanese businesses were set on fire. At the same time, many films and TV productions set against the backdrop of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 have been made in China's largest film studio: Hengdian, in Zhejiang Province. There's a joke that more Japanese have been "killed" at Hengdian than at all the actual battlefields put together — more, even, than the total population of Japan.
The attitude of the Japanese government toward its nation's history infuriates Chinese people. But the Chinese government also needs to reflect on its own record. We keep warning Japan that it runs the risk of repeating its mistakes if it will not face up to its history of aggression. Surely there is a lesson for us to learn, as well.
In today's China, more and more people speak in positive terms about the Cultural Revolution and hanker for a return to that era. Most of them don't really want to turn the clock back: It's mainly their dissatisfaction with current realities that fuels their interest in revolution. The itch for revolution, of course, may have different triggers. Some people are alienated by the increasing materialism of Chinese society, but many more are outraged by the emergence of interest cliques that marry political power to business profits. Even those who totally reject the Cultural Revolution are, in their own discontent, coming to think that its real mistake was the timing: It's now that we need a Cultural Revolution.
Yu Hua is the author of "Boy in the Twilight: Stories of the Hidden China." This essay was translated by Allan H. Barr from the Chinese.
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