Reflection: One Person, One Cosmos

------Conversation between Wang Beikun and Ying Ming

Location: Shenzhen, Date: August 12-20, 2021

Revolution, Counter-revolution and Farewell to Revolution

B: Mom, how did you know Great-grandpa's story?

M: Actually, Grandpa never sat down and talked to me seriously. The first time I heard about the term "historical counter-revolutionary" was in the 1980s when I was in elementary school. Filling out various forms, you would encounter the "Family background" column. Grandpa taught me to fill in "cadres" - in the 1980s, the Party decided to burn his confessions and related documents in his personal archive. The leaders in the bureau where Dad worked thought that he was capable and introduced him to join the Party. Since then, Grandpa had been a Party cadre. It seemed that he was proud of this title.

The "Family background" in the form never impacted me. It laid there like a fossil. Once, I couldn't help but ask, "’Family background’ is useless. What is the purpose of filling it out?” Grandpa said, "Children don't understand. They said that my father was a historical counter-revolutionary, and that was a terrible thing.”I, indeed, didn't understand it then. But I had a vague impression that “revolution” was good, and “counter-revolution” was bad.

B: I also know that, in China, “revolution” is a positive word, and “counter-revolution” is a derogatory word. This sounds strange outside of China. This year, I went to Stanford Summer Humanities Institute and chose the program of "revolution". When discussing it, everyone, by default, accepted that “revolution” and “counter-revolution” are neutral words. A classmate mentioned Edmund Burke's Reflection on French Revolution, which I was reading recently. Burke was a counter-revolutionary.

M: You're lucky to be able to see the outside world as a teenager. In China, It was after several generations that some people started to realize that violent revolution was not the historical necessity. You can jot down the title of a book, "Farewell to Revolution", which was published in Hong Kong in 1995 by Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu. It was not available in the market of China mainland. Read it later if you have opportunity.

However, you must not think that because you have not taken a detour, you have deeper understanding. Knowing a conclusion or an opinion only is nothing. We know E=MC2. So what ? It is definitely not the same thing as Einstein know E=MC2.

Moreover, whether we read this book or think about 20th-century China ourselves, we need to be aware of the hindsight bias. Imagine that, going back in time, situated in the complex environment, we asked ourselves if it was accidental or inevitable to choose this path and that path? We may immediately find it not easy to judge. Anyway, this book, for the first time, offered another possibility for Chinese readers, like what Robert Frost's poem says, “the Road not Taken”. In this sense, "Farewell to the Revolution" is like a milestone. I do believe that it will help us explore the future of China more rationally if we see"revolution" and "counter-revolution" as neutral words.

This book endures partly due to the polarization of evaluations in the current Chinese world. But I think the political intentions and positions of these evaluations are quite obvious. Didn’t you discuss “Everything is perspective” at Iowa Young Writers’ Studio this year? Your generation is some distance away from the past, and Perspective is different. I'm especially looking forward to seeing what you'll find from your own Perspective.

Nontheless, "counter-revolution" still suggests enemy or something like that in China, and it was the number one crime in China in your Grandpa and Great-grandpa’s time. This understanding generally goes back to the influence of the former Soviet Union during the May Fourth Campaign in 1919. As early as in the Kuomintang period, there was the crime of Counter-revolution.

B: Before that, Chinese already thought that "revolution" was good. One of the assignments I did in my World History class last semester was the Chinese Revolution. Sun Yat-sen was most happy to be called a "revolutionary".

M: Yes. Sun Yat-sen was interested in the French Revolution. It's interesting, Burke's book was already written by then. The example of the American Revolution was also there. But we selectively introduced the seeds of violent revolution. During the May Fourth Campaign, Chen Duxiu, the Editor-in-Chief of "New Youth", put the article of "Modern Civilization and French Democracy" at the very beginning of the magazine. Of course, the Chinese tradition can trace back to over three thousand years ago, and there were also anti-violence ideas. The most quoted example might be from "the Song of Caiwei"------"People don't know it is evil to exchange violence with violence." Anyway, in 20th-century China, it was the "barrel of the gun" that ultimately won, and the idea of "revolution" was sanctified.

B: It also has to do with language. "革命" or “change the fate” sounds like a radical change. "Revolution", and its Greek counterpart, "anacyclosis", means the cycle. That is to say, the power will be switched among the individual (monarchy), a few people (aristocracy), and many people (democracy). In a lecture at the Stanford Summer Humanities Institute, Prof. Eidelstein traced the etymology of “revolution”.

M: That makes sense. There is a Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis in the field of linguistic and cultural studies, which is about language’m impact on thinking. There are many interesting discussions about this hypothesis, both for and against. Personally, I think that the impact of language on thinking is usually not at the explicit level, but at the implicit level, the unconscious level. For researchers, they should have language sensitivity and consciously break the unconscious level, freeing themselves from the limit of the language.

However, it is impossible to completely break free from the shackles of language. The greatest philosopher of the 20th century—many think that there is no need to add "one of"—Wittgenstein believed that the boundaries of language were the boundaries of ideas. Philosophical and historical studies often begin with conceptual analysis and etymological study.

The Inferior Complex of the Ordinary People

M: Back to your question. Throughout my teenage years, Grandpa never gave a complete account of his experiences, except for casual conversations.

B: I recalled how Grandpa and you discussed current political affairs. When he saw me coming over, Grandpa would say, "the child is here. Stop talking about it." ”

M: Yes, that was his habit. He was burdened with a lifelong mistake, a letter he wrote for Great-grandpa when he was 17 — your age. When I was in my twenties, I often asked him about the past and slowly pieced together the past. But there are a lot of details that I still don't know. After Grandpa passed away last year, I found a box of letters and diaries that he had sorted out. He should have kept what he thought was most important. The day before Grandpa died, he said something to me that he also thought was most important. But, in my opinion, he deliberately covered something up, like his father. And I think what's covered is more meaningful.

Also in my twenties, I accompanied Grandpa to visit where had worked decades ago in Hefei. He suddenly said that he knew a person's phone number. He said that this person had blabbed him during the Cultural Revolution, and he wanted to see how the blabber was doing. I helped him find a telephone booth. When the line was through, I thought the other party might apologize, feeling guilty. Not that way. I heard a vague voice at the other end, which sounded cold and polite. It said, “Come to my place, please!” Strangely, Grandpa's voice became unstable. "No, no, no." he stuttered. Hanging up the phone, Grandpa leaned against the tree and smoked. His face was in the shadows. I was unable to see his expression clearly. But I saw his fingers shaking with his cigarette.

B: When I was in elementary school in Mexico, six or seven years ago, a Jewish classmate, Nuan, told me that his Great-grandpa was in his nineties and had escaped from Auschwitz. He would show Nuan the number printed on his arm and told him about what had happened to him in Auschwitz.

M: I was impressed by this incident you told me. For the first time, I realized that I didn’t take Grandpa's silence for granted.

B: You've shared this feeling with me. Learning about my Great-grandpa and Grandpa's experiences, I might be shocked more than you was. How can people be arrested without evidence? How can people dissappear without a trace?

M: It's true that I might not have such intense feelings as you do, since I’m closer to Grandpa and get used to it. When I listened to Grandpa’s experiences, if I did feel anything unforgivable. the feeling was targeted at those individuals, like the informant roommate and the heartless high school class dean.

Grandpa and I later read a lot of articles that studied the past. We admired the insight and courage of those authors, who were generally influential people in society: high-ranking liberal cadres in the CCP, intellectuals, former senior officials of the Nationalist army, capitalists, village gentlemens, etc. But, I shared a common psychological pattern with Grandpa, ie. an inferiority complex: those authors are assets of the state and their misfortunes have brought great losses to the country. We are little people not worthless in the historical torrent.

B: I talked to an American about Grandpa's reluctance to touch upon the past. He said that his relatives did not want to talk about the past when they returned from the vietnamese battlefield either. But I think they are different psychological patterns. My American friend’s relatives sufferred the PSTD, haunted by the brutality of the war. Perhaps, he had to drop petrol bombs in someone else's home, or witnessed the death of a comrade-in-arms. Those things are not the same as voices being oppressed.

M: I see what you mean. It is also a cruel experience, but cruel in a different way. The psychology of being unwilling to talk about the past is not the same either. In any case, in the heart of the U.S. capital, there stands a Vietnam Veterans Memorial on which the name of every person killed in the war was inscribed. Whether they received the justice they deserved, whether they were fair to their enemies, whether their country was fair to another country, might not be clear, every name was written down and seen.

Great-grandpa and Grandpa were in a somewhat different situation. First, they were in a big and forward-looking mechanism—in other words, a mechanism designed to forget the individual and the past. In the 1980s, the documents in Grandpa's personal archive, the evidence of his crime that had oppressed him or the evidence that the mechanism had persecuted its citizen were burned away. It was not an accident, but a routine operation then. In into the Jiabiangou, the author Yang Xianhui also mentioned that the documents in the archives were destroyed, when the wrong cases were redressed. As a result, the perpetrators, like the blabber Grandpa met, seem to do nothing wrong, calm, while the victims still tend to lapse into the shadow.

The second point is even less noticeable, yet may be worth more pondering in the long run. it is the collective unconsciousness of small people. During the "May Fourth" period, people came to realize the individuals and subjects. But it seemed inappropriate to talk about the small "me" in front of wars. After the liberation, the individuals dissappeared into the mass.

So, the citizen would feel grateful, in stead of angry, when the authority burned away the evidence of persecuting him. He felt he was accepted by the society and the people.

B: I’m thinking about participating in education assistance projects in recent years. Whether I visited the rural families in Guizhou or in Henan, most of the children would sincerely say to us, "thanks to the State!" or "Thanks to the Government!" Though we explained that we were NGO volunteers, not from the State or the Government", they would habitually thank the State again.

M: The volunteers need the support and cooperation of the local education bureau and the county government. NGO also need to accept the management and supervision of the government.

B: Don’t we owe thanks to them? We’ve run a dual economic system for decades, sacrificing the benefits of the peasants for the development of the cities. The government and the city people should thank them. Now, in this project, each student is funded no more than 2000 yuan a year. Whitman once said, "I'm not a bit tamed. " But, in China, the disadvantaged are most tamed.

M: Social work concerning various people often has to balance many factors before it can be done. But I think what you're talking about makes sense. The collective unconsciousness of small people and the habitual obedience manifest themselves in all aspects.

B: I feel I’m a small person as well. I don't know what I can do in the future.

M: I don't know either. But try to be a person with the ability to think independently. I believe in a Chinese idiom, “Do something for others if you have the opportunities; Live a meaningful live for yourself if you don't have opportunities.”

B: Now, back to our topic. I feel a sense of responsibility. I'm luckier than my parents and grandparents, and it's my responsibility to figure out what happened to them.

One person, one cosmos

B: Mom, your conversation with Grandma Lanqing was full of indirect quotations.

M: It hit my sore spot. The direct witnesses are gone. Last summer, we went to see Grandpa. I attempted to talk about Greatgrandpa. He refused. Now, I realized that it was wrong to approach the topic directly. If, as before, I talked about other things and slowly introduce this topic, he could say something. I didn't expect Grandpa would pass away in three months. Although I am in my forties, I am still so ignorant. I didn't realize that an eighty-year-old man was like a candle in the wind that could go out at any moment. I couldn't associate Grandpa with death until he was gone right before my eyes.

B: Me too. I wish Grandpa should talk about his past with me. I said I had a sense of obligation. As William Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” What we look like today is actually related to what we have experienced. But can studying history prevent bad things from happening? I am a little skeptical.

M: I kind of see what you mean. You're talking about "learning from history". Scholars who study modern Chinese history also say the same thing, like Yang Jisheng, who studied the Three-year Famine. He believes that one of the meanings of his work is "not to let historical tragedies repeat themselves." But, his opponents will easily retort that not understanding the three-year famine will not lead to a repetition of the historical tragedy either. Historical events are usually formed by a complex of factors. The time has passed. it is not so easy to repeat history, even if you want to repeat it.

B: So it's no use studying history.

M: Let me try to elaborate. There is an attitude of utilitarian in history study. We study history because people and things in the past are useful for the future. Consequently, we would stress those great people, pillars of the society. The Suppression of the Counter-revolutionaries Campagin, the Anti-right Campaign, the Cultural Revolution etc. are bad because so many great people have been wronged. But this seemingly reasonable attitude is suspicious, because it means that the small people can be carelessly erased.

B: Actually, most people are small people.

M: Actually, everyone can be a small person. For example, the girl who won the diving at this year's Tokyo Olympics would be an abandoned girl in rural Jiangxi Province, if she did not receive care and support.

B: I do feel that we have a small person perspective in our history class right now, and I love it. As the American Yawp preface says, “in the past we heard choruses, but now we have to listen to all kinds of discordant sounds.”

M: I also feel close to the perspective of small people, because my family and I are small people. Unlike Grandpa, I live in a time that allows more freedom. It is possible for me to reflect on the inferiority of small people, to realize that each person, no matter how small, is an entire cosmos. He or she does not live for the benefits of the future generations. He or she live for him/herself. He or she is of independent value.

I just said, “it hit my sore spot”. It was not only because Grandpa brought lots of secrets away with him, but also because I know that Grandpa did not resolve his inner contradictions. He didn’t convince himself of the meaning of this life. And I dimly realized something, yet I missed the opportunity to enter his heart.