Summary

This set of primary sources focuses on a factory town in Northeast Yunnan, a province of China, during the end of the cultural revolution. It includes an interview with a Chinese writer Ban Xia. Through the interview, we simply want to share stories and provide first-hand accounts, whether they are about desperation or warmth, in a darker period of time.  

Biography of Ban Xia

We interviewed Hongyan Yang, a writer and lover of insects and nature. She published several books with her pen name, “Ban Xia” (which means “half of the summer”), including Gray Lead, Dark Red (Qian Hui An Hong in Chinese), a collection of stories that happened at the end of the Cultural Revolution in China.

Enterprise Factory Town

After the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, the government sent people from all over the country to help construct industrial factories and mines in remote areas. All of the factories and mines and the towns built around them were managed by state-owned enterprises. Yang grew up in one of these factory towns named “Si Kuang'' (“Mine Number Four”) and located in Northeast Yunnan province, which was one of the over 160 towns built for the first Five-year Plan of China. Her town specializes in lead and zinc mining. When we asked Yang how she would describe her hometown, she told us:

“[The factory town] was ‘a small kingdom.’ It was not a city, nor a county, nor a suburb village. It was independent and had its own hospital. We had cows, but [the milk] was only enough for [the town residents] to drink.” 

Life in An Enterprise Factory Town

In 1966, when the Cultural Revolution started, Yang was born into a family of a researcher father and an educated mother. Her maternal grandfather was a landlord, and thus, her mother, though educated, was viewed as inferior to those who did not go to school. Her father also appreciated life and words. Potatoes were their main source of food. When nearby villages produced excess vegetables, the farmers handed them to the town. The farmers were then referred to as “the vegetable team.” The town people used distributed tickets to exchange for food, clothes, and almost everything. Yang said growing up, her material life had been “poor and lacking,” but thanks to her father who enjoyed fishing, they had fish once in a while, and she “gained enough nutrition and seldom felt hungry.” There were better meals during grand holidays like the Spring Festival when fish would be brought from coastal areas. Nevertheless, on the whole, people in the factory town lacked meat and oil. 

Book: Gray Lead Dark Red

She recounted, from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl, stories that happened in the factory town she grew up in in Yunnan Province.

Story of Uncle Luo (Translation from Chinese from the Interview)

1:22:52 - 

Question: What was one memorable occasion that demonstrated a sentiment (happiness/sadness/excitement/etc.)?

Answer: Among my neighbors, there was an uncle with the last name, “Luo.” He brought me many joys. All the children loved to visit him and play at his place. He had four children: three were boys, and the other a girl. The girl was the “Leader of the Kids.” This uncle was really skilled in handicraft. He was a retired vehicle driver soldier from The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (another name for The Korean War in China). On their walls at home, he hung pictures of soldiers sitting on a transportation car from the 50s. Those looked mythical. It was a time period when people honored heroes. 

1:25:25 -

Uncle Luo was sent to our mine after he returned from the war. He was very skilled with his hands and loved singing. In his notebook, he wrote down songs from the former Soviet Union. Those songs were very beautiful, including “Katyusha,” “Uralskaya Ryabinushka,” and “Oh, Arrowwood Is Blooming.” I can sing some to you.

Banxia’s Singing of “Moscow Nights” (Chinese Version)

1:25:56 - 1:26:00

Lyrics:  Stillness in the garden, not a rustling sound

It had a beautiful melody. Young people in the 50s enjoyed it a lot.

[深夜花园里四处静悄悄]

Banxia’s Singing of “Katyusha” (Chinese Version)

1:26:09 - 1:26:25

Lyrics:  Katyusha set out on the banks, on the steep and lofty bank [...] she was singing a song about a grey steppe eagle

[喀秋莎站在那竣峭的岸上，歌声好像明媚的春光]...[她在歌唱草原的雄鹰]

“Katyusha” is a song that praises heroes. 

The Soviet Union had a deep cultural impact on my father’s generation. In the late 1950s, they [the Soviet Union] helped us [China] with construction. Experts from the Soviet Union came to Si Kuang and helped with construction there voluntarily. Later, China fell out with the Soviet Union, and they [the Soviet Union] required the experts to go back. For many years, things again were in stagnation here in China. 

This Uncle Luo recorded many songs in his notebook, and he could sing them. We were not allowed to sing them originally, since they were probably songs with a petite bourgeoisie sense. So, we secretly sang at his place. Houses were small at that time. There were no living rooms or rooms like that. The biggest room was supposed to be the living room, but everyone used it as the bedroom. Every family used mud bricks and waste bricks to build “piansa (small shelters).”

Uncle Luo really loved life, so he would sing often. His songs were extremely beautiful. Children did not know about love or things like that, but when we listened to the melodies he sang, it was slow and nurturing. 

He was also very skilled with his hands. He showed us slides using a projector he made himself. He used the mosquito net, which was white, as the screen. He put lights behind the net and drew on glass flakes. He drew big cars, characters, scenes from when he was a soldier, and landscape views. He placed the flakes in front of the light one by one, and the images were projected onto the net. We all were so delighted. He then told us stories. Our parents were a little rigid, not like Uncle Luo who brought us joy. 

Back then, our favorite movies were North Korean ones, like The Flowering Town (1975) and When We Pick Apples (1971). Those North Korean films were whitewashed. They talked about the merits of socialism. Yet, it was also true that the songs in them were pleasing and the images pretty. Every time, Uncle Luo would go and watch two movies. He remembered the famous lines and songs and told them to me. 

Uncle Luo did not do much (have an important job). He had been a soldier, and later a guard for a storage house. Nevertheless, he brought me and the children in the neighbourhood countless happiness. Those were warm memories. 

Yet, he also did those kinds of things that my father despised. Electricity was provided evenly and limitedly, so if you stole any electricity, the whole building would experience a power cut. He built a space for showering. He made a big water tank and put a heating pipe in it. The water then became boiled, and he connected the tank with a shower nozzle. And, we could shower in the little brick shelters (piansa). I thought he was so clever and good at making things. Sometimes, I carried my bowl and went to their place to eat - I did not even eat at my home. 

During the cultural revolution, there were also these sweet moments. That time period was oppressive in many ways, but to a ten-year-old, there were also warm stories. 

Story of Liu Huilan

Question: You said that people during the cultural revolution felt lost and impulsive, but the children were simply curious, watching adults do different things. So, in your memory, was there an instance in which you were not just an outsider or observer, and you became involved in “adults’ affairs?”

26:52 -

Answer: I also mentioned this story in my book in a chapter called “Peeking Beauty Huilan Liu.” In the town, we had our own staff hospital. The “Beauty ” refers to a nurse at the hospital. She loved beauty a lot. People said she stepped in between a family, and so they regarded her as a hooligan. Before the cultural revolution, she graduated from a   school for medicine. She was sent to our town from Kunming, a big city. She had been a doctor with professional training, and then she was demoted to a nurse. 

I had tuberculosis when I was small. The treatment required me to get shots of streptomycin. I had to get the injection every day. There were always long lines at the hospital. One day, I was lining up to get my shot. I saw some nurses making cotton swabs with their hands. Hygiene was poor back then: they wrapped cotton with hands. She was also wrapping there, but no one talked to her. I observed her. I thought this nurse named Huilan Liu was very beautiful. Her hair was combed in one big braid, the way female youths from the big cities did. She tied the tip of her braid with an apple-green handkerchief. We did not have many hair accessories then. She did those all by herself. She also did something to her fringe. She looked as if she was from Revolutionary Operas, like the character Hongmei Li from The Legend of the Red Lantern. I enjoyed staring at her. I also thought she had a different aura from the rest. 

Then, someone scowled at her, “Go get boiling water at once!” 

There was a room that stored boiling water. People carried buckets and fetched water from there. I watched her leave to get water, a lesser job in the hospital.

After a while, someone rushed in and yelled, “That hooligan opposes us, the descendants of the proletariat, on purpose! Catch her and take her to a struggle session! Everyone goes to the town square.” 

Another person held a crying infant in their arms, and there was a big blister on the infant’s head. There was a nursery beside the water room. In the factory town, when parents went to work, they asked their relatives in the nursery to look after their children. As a youth from the city, Huilan did not know how to carry water buckets with a pole. So, she tripped and spilled the hot water (it’s not even boiling water, just relatively hot water) onto the skin of the infant. Immediately, someone dragged her up. The hospital became a mess. I wanted to know what the fuss was about, so I looked inside the hospital. Poor child! 

People said they were taking Huilan to the struggle session. I followed. Many people forgot about getting their shots. The doctors quit seeing their patients, too. Everyone rushed to a relatively flat yard. Many men tied her wrists behind her back. Some nurses wiped merbromin, used to treat infections, on her face, the “hooligan’s” face. It was an accident of course, but people hated her, so they found reasons to criticize her. Struggle sessions in the cultural revolution were common in my childhood. Some foul men took the opportunity to touch and pinch her. They spit at her. She was very poor. 

“Down with the hooligan!” People yelled. Later, they tied her up with a rope. The guards took her to custody in a jeep. We followed them all the way. Then, something happened that I remembered clearly to this day. 

The nurse’s name was Huilan Liu. “Down with Liu Huilan!” was what people called. I was in second or third grade back then. I mistakenly called “Down with Liu Hulan,” instead of “Huilan.” Liu Hulan was a hero who sacrificed herself for the greater goal of the communist party. How terrifying it was! An older girl was beside me. She was the leader of the kids, and I often followed her around. 

She said to me, “How dare you say ‘Liu Hulan’ instead of ‘Liu Huilan.’ You’d better watch out. I will turn you in.” Even kids in that time could turn others in. She never actually turned me in, but in my young heart, fear was planted. I was terrified: I could not sleep at night. If she told others I was “anti-revolutionary,” my classmates at school would criticize and judge me. My life would be doomed. I had to burden the fear of being turned in. Naturally, I learned to please this girl. I collected old materials, like glass shards and chicken feathers, and sold them for money. After I saved a little money, I bought red silk used to tie hair. I handed it to the girl secretly and said to her, “Please do not turn me in.” So, at ten, I learned to solve my problems by myself.