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By Root 254 0

looked discolored. Father ran inside to warm up and was spared any serious damage to his nose. Some people, who were not as fortunate, lost their ears in the cold. Father had seen several prisoners frozen to death, like bare tree trunks in the field. It’s hard to imagine how my father, a thin and physically feeble intellectual, managed to live through the long cold winters. He said he never got sick. In 1962 China and the Soviet Union officially ended their friendship and prepared for war against each other. The camps were closed. Among the more than two thousand prisoners, fifty were counterrevolutionaries—the most dangerous of criminals—and they were sent to Beijing. My father considered that to be a blessing. He would be able to see his family and the food would be better. In Heilongjiang, prisoners got by on bread made of corn chaff or wild vegetables. In Beijing, he could at least have sweet potatoes. Families could also send extra food to supplement the meager prison ration.

In October 1965 I graduated from high school and was assigned to a military farm in the northwestern province of Ningxia. Before I left, I visited Father. He grabbed my hands and held them for a long time. “You are eighteen already and will start a new life in the countryside. You should learn to take care of yourself. Are you confident about your faith? Do you know how to sing hymns?” When I answered yes to all of his questions, he smiled. I could tell he was very happy. I didn’t see him again for fourteen years.

Liao: How did the guards treat his religious belief?

Yuan: The guards were indoctrinated with Communist ideology. In their minds, there was no difference between religion and superstition. Monks and preachers were the same as witches and shamans. One day, a prison officer handed out some pamphlets on how to eliminate superstitious practices in China. My father stood up after receiving the material and said, “I don’t engage in any superstitious practices. My faith is true.” Those around him grew nervous. But the prison officer was curious: “You claim that you have true faith. Monks in temples are considered authentic believers of Buddhism. Were you a monk?” My father answered in a serious tone, “No, I wasn’t a monk in a native Chinese temple. If you really want to use a monk as a reference, I will say I’m a monk with hair in a foreign temple.” The prison officer burst out laughing, and after that my father’s nickname was “foreign monk.”

Liao: That officer seemed to be open-minded.

Yuan: Compared with those in other provinces, prison officers in Beijing were much more educated and civilized. Conditions were also better. But the good days didn’t last long. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution started and many intellectuals and former government officials were branded counterrevolutionaries. Within a short time, prisons in Beijing were full and the authorities again relocated prisoners with long sentences to Heilongjiang. My father was sent to a different farm. They had to start all over again—making bricks, building new dorms. By the end of 1966, even prisoners were mobilized for the Cultural Revolution and were told to expose each other’s anti-Party thinking and activities. My father was a “lackey of the foreign imperialists” and transferred to a jail for stricter supervision, which meant he had to attend political study sessions every day, listen to political speeches, and write confessions. In the area of politics, my father was an illiterate. Even though he sat through many political study sessions, his mind was elsewhere. He never paid attention. One day he was listening to a news broadcast with a group of prisoners when, absentmindedly, he wondered out loud, “How come we never hear President Liu Shaoqi in our daily newscast? Has he lost his position? Does it mean there is political infighting within the Communist Party?”

Liu Shaoqi had been purged by Mao, and my father’s remarks were reported. He was accused of “harboring evil intentions” against the Party. During interrogation, he kept his answers short: “Yuan Xiangchen, do you