When Red is Black

a major setback during the Anti-Rightist Movement in the mid-fifties. Suddenly condemned as a reactionary Rightist, and deserted by his friends and relatives because of his Rightist status, he stopped writing poems, although he continued translating such books as were approved by government, like the works of Charles Dickens and Thackeray, about whom Karl Marx had made favorable comments, or those of Mark Twain and Jack London, some of whose works showed an anti-capitalist tendency. He was then transferred to the Chinese department, in an effort to prevent him from disseminating ‘decadent Western ideas’ in English at a time when most of the Party officials did not understand a single word of English.
     
    “At the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, Yang turned overnight into a target of revolutionary mass criticism. He was forced to denounce himself. His college years in the States were described as years of espionage training, and his translations of English and American literature as attacks on proletarian literature and art in socialist China. In the early seventies, with more and more new class enemies being discovered in the course of the unprecedented revolution, Yang became a ‘dead tiger’—it was no longer so much fun for revolutionary people to beat him up. Like other ‘bourgeois intellectuals,’ he was then sent to a cadre school in the countryside. It was there that he met Yin.
     
    “They were both cadre students, but there was a marked difference in their political status. Yang, a Rightist with serious problems in his past, was at the bottom. Yin, a Red Guard who was charged with ‘minor mistakes’ in the Great Revolution, was made a group leader, responsible for supervising members of the group to which Yang belonged.
     
    “At this time, some still believed in everything Chairman Mao said, even there at the cadre school. A well-known poet wrote in ecstasy about the cure of his insomnia through physical labor in the fields, as a result of following Chairman Mao’s instruction. Some were disillusioned, however, in spite of Mao’s ‘newest and highest directions’ set forth in those endless Party documents. After a day’s hard labor, a few of them started thinking. Theoretically, after having successfully reformed themselves through hard physical labor and political studies, the cadre students should have been able to ‘graduate’ and have new jobs assigned to them. After a couple of years, however, they knew they had been pretty much forgotten. It seemed they were never going to be allowed to go back to the city, even though they were no longer at the center of the revolution.
     
    “Yin, too, found reason to reflect. No longer so sure about the correctness of her actions as a Red Guard, she realized that she had been used by Mao. She tried to think about her future. As an ex-Red Guard, her prospects were bleak, she admitted to herself. If she were ever to return to her college, it would not be as a political instructor. She was no longer in any position to give political talks.
     
    “Then she began to notice Yang. He worked as a kitchen helper. It was not considered a burdensome job; he gathered firewood, prepared rice and vegetables, and washed dishes. There was a local peasant chef responsible for the cooking. So between meals, Yang had time to read books in the kitchen—English books—and to write, too.
     
    “The cadre students were not supposed to read anything except Chairman Mao’s work or political pamphlets. But there had been an unusual event the previous year: Chairman Mao had published two new poems in the People’s Daily, and an English translation was required. Mao’s Poetry Translation Office under the Central Party Committee in Beijing, or someone in the office, remembered Yang and consulted him with respect to a few words. There was one especially difficult phrase—’Don’t fart.’ That was exactly what Mao had written, but the official translators were worried about its vulgarity. Yang was able to find some reference to that word in Shakespeare, which put their minds at ease. Thereafter, Yang was allowed as a special case to read English books, for the school authorities anticipated that there might be other important political assignments in the future.
     
    “Yang suddenly fell sick. Due to ill nourishment and hard work, not to mention the effects of the persecution he had suffered for many years, what began as flu soon turned into acute