Banished!

Translator's Preface

Translator's Preface IN 1966, Mao Zedong, declaring that economic and political stability was corrupting the Communist Party's revolutionary spirit and increasing bourgeois elitism, organized a mass youth militia, the Red Guards, to seize control of the state and party apparatus. Thus began the Cultural Revolution, or "CultRev."1 The Communist Party Central Committee was replaced with the Cultural Revolution Committee, and local governments with Revolutionary Committees. Throughout China, political and social institutions were disrupted or closed down and the lives of its citizens thrown into turmoil. Those most affected were cadres, the educated men and women (many of whom, though not all, were party members ) who held posts in central and local governments, state-run enterprises, educational, and cultural institutions. They were persecuted by the Red Guards and then banished in huge numbers, along with middle-school students from the cities (the "urblings" of this story), to be reeducated in the true nature of the revolution by the peasants of the rural communes. Into this maelstrom the Tao family of Banished! is thrown: Tao, a writer and cadre; his wife, Su Qun, also a cadre; the grandparents; and the son, young Tao. As the book begins, Tao and Su Qun are finally released from the May 7 Cadre School farms to which they have been consigned after the "struggle sessions" led by the Red Guards, and they are invited to sign up for a new life in a poor and remote country area. This is the Glorious Banishment. Moving to the countryside certainly means material hardship for the family But more than that, it means a loss of status. In the upside-down world of the CultRev, because the Taos are urban and 1. The Cultural Revolution (or CultRev) is now more usually interpreted as an attempt by Mao to wrest power from his enemies within the party and consolidate his political position. However, for the purposes of this novel, the ideological interpretation is the one that counts. vii educated, they are placed lower than the most ignorant and indigent peasants in the new political pecking order. And this is not just a temporary setback: the Taos are given no hope that they will be allowed to go back home. Their books and other treasures have been confiscated or burned during the campaign to smash the Four Olds (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas). The process of Striking Root requires them to assume a new identity, to erase the family's past from their memory, and to put down new and permanent roots in Sanyu village. (To the young generation of Chinese today, the decade is almost unimaginably strange; hence the need for a glossary, which was actually written by Han Dong for the Chinese edition. Excerpts appear at the end of this volume.) How do the banished feel about their fate? In the story, Tao inculcates in his son the need to embrace their reeducation wholeheartedly Is this simple pragmatism, an attempt to protect young Tao and ensure a safe future for him? Or do the banished cadres genuinely cling to a faith in their leaders and the beliefs that made them dedicate their lives to the revolution? The question of political faith remains tantalizingly unanswered in Banished! In spite of all the privations, the CultRev was not an experience of unmitigated misery and violence for everyone in China. We can see different perspectives in the many books that have drawn their inspiration from that decade-from the charm and romance of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress to the high adventure, Jack London-style, of Wolf Totem. Banished! tells us about the pain of shattered hopes and beliefs, the frustrations of a writer forbidden to write, the fears of parents for their child. But there is affection, too, in the portrayal of the village and its inhabitants, just as there is dignity in the Tao family's struggles to adapt, survive, and protect their youngest member. For young Tao-a symbol of the future not just for his family but because his is the generation that will rebuild China in the post-CultRev years-the Glorious Banishment proves ultimately, and ironically, to be a formative, life-affirming experience. viii Translator's Preface ...