re: #238 quickjustice

Great job, Zombie!

A brief comment about Mao: as a young man, he taught at the Yale School in China, and spoke English fluently. In 1948, when Chinese communist soldiers started murdering American missionaries in the streets during the civil war, one of my cousins traveled through the lines to meet with Mao, and negotiate a cessation in the killings. In exchange for the “truce”, the missionaries pulled out of China.

I’ve met many young Chinese students here in NYC who tell me that their parents— scholars, teachers, and educated professionals— were banished to the countryside to work in the fields during the Cultural Revolution, and for ten years thereafter. They remember those years as lost time without education or hope, as gaps in their lives.

I know many survivors of the Cultural Revolution as well. It was a thousand times more horrific than most Americans realize.

One friend had to live in the Manchurian countryside, out in the frozen fields, for several years as a teenager, surviving on eating weeds. His father had misspoke at a meeting and was banished for re-education with most of his family. (Both father and mother eventually died as a result of their living conditions.) My friend was not allowed to attend school between the ages of 12 and 30. But in secret, he studied all by himself. In the ’80s he returned to school as an adult, did well, got a visa to attend an American university, and came and stayed. Now he is a leading engineer here, greatly respected, winning awards, getting awarded patents, making big cash. He refuses to speak Mandarin any more, so great is his hatred for what happened to his family during the Cultural Revolution.