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40 The No. 4 Re-education through Labour Camp in Henan Province (1975–79) In 1975 class warfare broke out again in China. The senior leaders indicated that it was not a good idea to keep the translation team so close to the capital and said that we should be separated. The No. 13 Department of the Ministry of Public Security decided to break up the team. Meanwhile the team administrators told us that they would be going back to their hometowns. At the same time they told us: “As for Jin Luxian: you are not permitted to return to Shanghai. There is no work unit in Shanghai willing to accept you. Your fellow translators are going to north-east China, to Shandong Province and to Henan Province, so you can choose any one of these destinations.” I considered that the north-east was too cold, that Zhang Ke was going to Shandong and I had no wish to remain with him, so I said: “I’ll go to Henan.” After a month a cadre from the No. 4 Xinxiang Production Brigade in Henan Province arrived and took Shan Jiaxiang and me back with him. The No. 4 Production Brigade was a really big work unit, with 2,000 prisoners and 200 employees. It had a factory, known as the Fire Prevention Machinery Works, which altered Liberation brand trucks and fitted them out as fire engines. There were three workshops, a farm and a brick works. Shan Jiaxiang and I were allocated to the design team, all of the members of which were employees who had stayed on after serving their sentences, about 20 of them. I remember some of their names, such as Sun Haochuan, Song Jinxiang, Zhang Chunxiang, Li Kexian and Lin Guorong. These employees had been technical staff, but in the Anti-Rightist Campaign had been designated rightists and sentenced to jail. When they had completed their sentences they were released, but chose to stay on. I was not a technician and was not able to do design work, so I was sent to manage a small library. The work was very easy and I could read. We were managed by two men named Li and Zhao who were both section heads. The 260 The Memoirs of Jin Luxian factory director was also named Li. I remember his name because every time he gave a speech, he would first stand up; but when they provided him with a chair he would not sit down on it, but rather squat on top of it. I learned that Henan people liked to squat. In fact Director Li was illiterate. He kept a diary in his pocket where he recorded things in a script that only he could understand. Once there was a rainstorm and there was a danger that the library might be flooded. The leaders told me to move the books to the third floor of another building. Since this was quite far away I used a truck to move the books. A former KMT officer named Liu Shuzhen, who had been pardoned and, since he had no relatives or family to return to, had been allocated a position in the factory, was detailed to escort me. He saw that I was over-burdened with unloading the books and carrying them up the stairs, but just watched me with folded arms. When I reached the third floor a young female cadre saw what was going on and immediately came downstairs to assist me in moving the books, going up and down several times. This was my first sight of Wang Chunxian. In comparison with that of Liu, Wang’s behaviour made a good impression on me. I later discovered that she was a graduate of the Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Education Programme and had a degree from the Department of Engineering at Zhengzhou University. After graduation she had been allocated work as a designer in the factory. Her father was the deputy commander of the Henan Provincial Police Bureau. In Henan she could be counted as a ‘princeling’ or privileged child of a senior cadre. After I had been at Xinxiang for several months, a manager who was also an employee named Hu Weiping asked me whether I would like to go to Shanghai to visit my relatives. Employees were permitted to make home visits. The Beijing authorities had given this permission to others, but not to me. I said that I’d like to go. He said...

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