How to be hopeful: Jung Chang on the moment she knew Mao’s China would become less brutal

By Dilip -

In 1971, Lin Biao, who controlled the Chinese army for Chairman Mao and was his right-hand man in the Cultural Revolution, fell out with his boss and tried to flee to Russia, but his plane crashed in Outer Mongolia and he was killed. Suddenly, Mao had to make concessions to the victims of his purges. My parents, who had been in the camps, came home. They came back separately. When I saw my father I was very sad and happy at the same time. Happy, because I hadn’t seen him for so long; sad, because he had aged tremendously, and had suffered so much, living in isolation in the mountains of Miyi, on the edge of the Himalayas in south-west China, for three and a half years.

For the first few days, he seemed at a loss in the big city and would refer to crossing the road as “crossing the river” and taking a bus as “taking a boat”. I had been to see my mother in her camp. She was only 38 when I saw her but she looked like an older woman. Also, her skin was burnt and peeling from the sun, because she had to work in the fields and the sun in that area, Xichang, in Sichuan, was very harsh. When she was first sent there, in 1969, she didn’t get breaks; while the others had a moment of rest, she had to stand and be denounced. Over the years, things did improve, and eventually she was released in 1971 and came home….

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/15/jung-chang-mao-china-less-brutal-hopeful

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