with the outside world and Yin. He was ordered to write confessions and self-criticisms all day long. He refused to do so, declaring that there was nothing wrong in one human being loving another. After a week, he was marched out to work for extra-long hours in the rice paddy during the day, then sent back to the isolation room to write in the evening.
“She, too, suffered terribly Half her hair was shaved off down to the scalp—in a special style called the Yin-Yang haircut, designed for class enemies—a cruel play on the coincidence of their family names. She did not even bother to wear a hat, as if proud of the price she had had to pay for her passion.
“What’s worse, she was not allowed to see Yang. After a day’s work, she could only wander, alone, around the hut in which he was kept, hoping to catch a glimpse of his silhouette against the window. She kept repeating the lines he had taught her, ‘What a starry night this, / but not that night, long ago, lost. / For whom do I find myself standing here, / against the wind and the frost / deep in the night?’
“Not long afterward, Yang fell sick again. Because of his lack of cooperation with the school authorities, they made it hard for him to get proper treatment. The barefoot doctor believed that a silver acupuncture needle could cure any illness, because Chairman Mao said that traditional Chinese medicine could perform miracles. Yin was denied the right to visit him until the very last day of his life, when everybody could see that he was beyond hope. It was a cold day, and his hands in hers were even colder. All his roommates left the room, making one excuse or another, leaving the two of them together. Holding her hand, he remained conscious to the end, even though he was no longer able to speak. He died in his dorm room, in her arms. As a poem Yang had translated says: ‘If only your body, cold as ice, as snow, / could be brought back life / by the warmth of mine. . . .’
“Two years later, the Cultural Revolution came to an end. The cadre school dissolved. She went back to her college. Because of the English she had learned from him, she was assigned to teach English.
“As for Yang, it was officially declared that he had died a natural death. He had not been executed or beaten to death like some intellectuals, so there was no need to look into the specific circumstances of his last days. So many had died during those years. No one bothered. Nothing was done about him in the first few years after the Cultural Revolution.
“In the early eighties, the Party authorities issued a document entitled ‘Correction of the Anti-Rightist movement in the Fifties,’ in which having labeled such a large number of intellectuals as Rightists was acknowledged as a mistake, although ‘at the time, there might have been a few of them who harbored malicious intentions against the government.’ Anyway, the survivors were no longer Rightists, and they shot off firecrackers in celebration. There was a movie about such a Rightist who had been lucky enough to find his love during his Rightist years, and survived miraculously, of course, to make new contributions to the construction of socialism.
“Not so Yang. In a belated memorial service for him, Yang was posthumously de-Rightisted and called ‘Comrade Yang’ once again. A few of his colleagues attended the service. Some of them were actually summoned to it because the school authorities were worried that people might have already forgotten about him. At the memorial service, Yang’s death was declared a ‘sad and serious loss to modern Chinese literature.’ The event was reported in the local newspaper.
“There was a small incident not covered in the report though. Qiao Ming, one of the former cadre school leaders, also came to the service. Yin angrily spat in his face. People separated them in a hurry. ‘The past is past,’ people said to her, and to Qiao too.
“Life
“She, too, suffered terribly Half her hair was shaved off down to the scalp—in a special style called the Yin-Yang haircut, designed for class enemies—a cruel play on the coincidence of their family names. She did not even bother to wear a hat, as if proud of the price she had had to pay for her passion.
“What’s worse, she was not allowed to see Yang. After a day’s work, she could only wander, alone, around the hut in which he was kept, hoping to catch a glimpse of his silhouette against the window. She kept repeating the lines he had taught her, ‘What a starry night this, / but not that night, long ago, lost. / For whom do I find myself standing here, / against the wind and the frost / deep in the night?’
“Not long afterward, Yang fell sick again. Because of his lack of cooperation with the school authorities, they made it hard for him to get proper treatment. The barefoot doctor believed that a silver acupuncture needle could cure any illness, because Chairman Mao said that traditional Chinese medicine could perform miracles. Yin was denied the right to visit him until the very last day of his life, when everybody could see that he was beyond hope. It was a cold day, and his hands in hers were even colder. All his roommates left the room, making one excuse or another, leaving the two of them together. Holding her hand, he remained conscious to the end, even though he was no longer able to speak. He died in his dorm room, in her arms. As a poem Yang had translated says: ‘If only your body, cold as ice, as snow, / could be brought back life / by the warmth of mine. . . .’
“Two years later, the Cultural Revolution came to an end. The cadre school dissolved. She went back to her college. Because of the English she had learned from him, she was assigned to teach English.
“As for Yang, it was officially declared that he had died a natural death. He had not been executed or beaten to death like some intellectuals, so there was no need to look into the specific circumstances of his last days. So many had died during those years. No one bothered. Nothing was done about him in the first few years after the Cultural Revolution.
“In the early eighties, the Party authorities issued a document entitled ‘Correction of the Anti-Rightist movement in the Fifties,’ in which having labeled such a large number of intellectuals as Rightists was acknowledged as a mistake, although ‘at the time, there might have been a few of them who harbored malicious intentions against the government.’ Anyway, the survivors were no longer Rightists, and they shot off firecrackers in celebration. There was a movie about such a Rightist who had been lucky enough to find his love during his Rightist years, and survived miraculously, of course, to make new contributions to the construction of socialism.
“Not so Yang. In a belated memorial service for him, Yang was posthumously de-Rightisted and called ‘Comrade Yang’ once again. A few of his colleagues attended the service. Some of them were actually summoned to it because the school authorities were worried that people might have already forgotten about him. At the memorial service, Yang’s death was declared a ‘sad and serious loss to modern Chinese literature.’ The event was reported in the local newspaper.
“There was a small incident not covered in the report though. Qiao Ming, one of the former cadre school leaders, also came to the service. Yin angrily spat in his face. People separated them in a hurry. ‘The past is past,’ people said to her, and to Qiao too.
“Life
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