Why Chinese artist Liu Dahong can’t get the Cultural Revolution out of his system
The decade from 1966 to 1976 ‘is like a big mine; the more I dig, the more material I find’, says artist, who hopes his works will encourage people to think about the period
OUTSPOKEN OUTCAST I was four years old when the Cultural Revolution started, in 1966. My memory of that time is clear and strong. My parents were excited initially because my father had been a victim of the 1957 anti-rightist movement. As a student leader at the Shandong Teachers Training College, in Jinan, he was labelled a rightist because he was outspoken. My mother, heavily pregnant, begged the school to let him complete his degree, which he did. But his social standing was low and he wasn’t allowed to become a teacher for years. My mother suffered, too. She was one of few women in Qingdao who finished high school and had a good office job with the city government. But she was sent to work in a factory for being married to a rightist. At the time of the Cultural Revolution, my father was a teacher at a night school for cadres and workers. My parents thought it was a chance to rebel and set the record straight.
GRUDGE CULTURE For a young child, the beginning of the Cultural Revolution was great. Everything took place in public and everyone could take part – singing, dancing, debating or criticising people. I thought my life was very rich. One of my sisters was around 10 years old, and she and her friends would perform on the street as part of the propaganda to promote Mao Zedong Thought. She didn’t really understand what was going on. My father, who was in his 30s, joined the Red Army. At my mother’s factory, the workers had political debates. They protected the managers they liked; life became very hard for managers the workers didn’t like. Nothing too extreme happened at my mother’s factory but elsewhere, managers were beaten to death by workers who bore a grudge against them. That’s why the Cultural Revolution became such a tragedy; too many grudges.
As the Cultural Revolution wore on, I started to feel hopeless. We all sat around waiting for old Mao to die.
REBEL YELL The Cultural Revolution allowed my parents to vent their anger. It didn’t actually improve their lives. It was a mirage. In fact, my father didn’t have a chance to seek revenge. Very soon, the authorities announced rightists were not qualified to rebel. It wasn’t a chance for rightists to turn things around. Some of my father’s colleagues at the night school attacked him for being a rightist. They showed up at our home, saying they had to teach my father how to behave and he had to conduct self-criticism. My mother yelled at them and chased them away. She had the right to speak because she was a factory worker.
WAITING FOR THE END I remember clearly when Zhou Enlai died, in 1976. My father was on his way to work and he heard it on the news. He cried. My mother, however, said there wasn’t a single decent person among the whole lot of them, Zhou included. As the Cultural Revolution wore on, I started to feel hopeless. We all sat around waiting for old Mao to die. When he did, life started to get back to normal. People who criticised each other during the Cultural Revolution pretended nothing had happened. The authorities’ message was clear: look ahead, not back. Everyone was involved in the Cultural Revolution so where would it end if you started picking over the bones?
