Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [40]
As for Fang Lijun, the offspring of a counterrevolutionary nationalist spy and criminal-gang member father and a religious secret society mother, he grew up in an impenetrable Daoist temple where there were no longer any religious activities. He was raised by an old gatekeeper, and later helped the old man with many temple repairs. He finished upper middle school in the process.
Fang Lijun was not allowed to go to college due to his shady family background. Because he was a few months too old, he was also not eligible to be sent to the countryside with the “old three classes” of 1967, ’68, and ’69. He was even less eligible to become a Red Guard. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, then, he’d been assigned to teach in an elementary school in the Mentougou district of Beijing. But before he could even start, the Cultural Revolution reached a more intense level, and he was sent off to work as a coal miner in the Muchengjian mine, and there he stayed for several years.
According to his account, one day in September 1971 he suddenly got the urge to see the Summer Palace. He had heard so much about it, but he had never visited it, and he thought it might be a long time before he would have another chance to go. When he got halfway there, however, the road was closed. He guessed that there was something going on, maybe some troop transfers, at the restricted military area on Jade Spring Hill near the Summer Palace. When he got back to the workers’ dormitory, he told everybody something big was going to happen in China. And it certainly did. In a short time the shocking news was broadcast that Chairman Mao’s designated successor, General Lin Biao, had betrayed the nation and attempted to flee, but his plane had crashed in Outer Mongolia.
Fang Lijun refused to go to work again after that. He told me that he believed “history had come to an end.” He wrote a small note and went to the bridge between Zhongnanhai Party Headquarters and North Lake, where he stuffed the note into a slit in the white-marble railing. The note said, “History has already come to a halt and will no longer move forward. From now on, all new revolutions will be counterrevolutions. Don’t try to fool me anymore. What right do you have to make me dig for coal?”
His asthma flared up again and he stayed in the dormitory. No matter how much his work unit threatened him, he would not go into the coal pit again.
He could not be sure whether it was in 1971, when United States Secretary of State Kissinger visited China twice, or in 1972, when President Nixon came, but anyway the Americans brought with them a list of relatives of Chinese American citizens who were being detained in China. At this time, when American–Chinese relations were thawing out, and in order to show their goodwill, the Chinese allowed a group of people to leave the country. One of them was Fang Lijun—because his father had long since left Nationalist Party political circles, and had been granted asylum by the American government as a pro-American political refugee.
When Fang Lijun received the notice, he went to the Public Security Bureau and was given a folded-up transit pass. He still strolled around the Summer Palace and the North Lake, enjoying the sites for a few days. Then he went back to the Daoist temple on the east side of Beijing to say good-bye to the old man who had raised him.
When the old man heard his story, he was very worried. “Why don’t you hurry up and leave?” he asked. “What if the policy changes and you can’t get out? Go and buy a train ticket to Hong Kong right away today.” The old man dug up a few pieces of gold leaf buried in one corner of the temple grounds. They were left over from some temple repairs, and he’d kept them there all these years. “Take these and trade them for money for your journey,” he said. “Your