“The support between husband and wife”
In this interview, a man born shortly after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution recounts his research into the psychological factors behind whether someone would be able to survive or not through the suffering they endured. He arrives at a rather counter-intuitive conclusion: that it was not material conditions, but primarily the bond between husband and wife, and family writ large, that determined one’s ability to persevere.
He notes many cases of success, including the noted Wang Meng, who would go on to become a Minister of Culture for China later on in the late 1980s. He notes how, throughout his experience when sent away to Xinjiang, he was able to maintain his optimism through the support of his wife. However, I would like to add onto this portrayal of his experience. What his relative success shows is that having some kind of support structure, some kind of mental mechanism to cope with the harshness of life, he was able to find meaning through his suffering. In fact, later on, the basis for many of his most famous novels and short stories would come from his experiences during the Cultural Revolution, giving him the ability to not just survive, but even flourish long after his imprisonment ended, demonstrating the importance of purpose and meaning when surviving in light of dire odds.
On the other hand, he also recounts the example of Li Rui and the sense of alienation he must have felt during his experience. Going from being Mao Zedong’s personal secretary, he had the unfortunate fate of being banished to Anhui to undergo “reform through labor” for nearly two decades. Whereas his material separation from Beijing may have been startling on its own, it was his emotional separation from his wife that most characterized his dire circumstances, with his relationship transforming from one of mutual love and respect to enmity and distrust. From enjoying the emotional comforts of family, he now was labeled a “rightist” and denounced by his loved ones, sapping him of the psychological purpose to persevere through adversity. Ultimately, he would pass away in 2019, detached from his former family and censored by the very Party he had sacrificed his career for.
“Hope in Prison”
In this interview, a survivor of the Cultural Revolution describes his shock regarding the treatment of people during the 60s, and attempt to find meaning amidst what he saw as an otherwise senseless campaign. Unlike the previous interviewee, he notes how, upon being accused of being a spy due to his family’s Christian faith and overseas relatives, many of his siblings made a clean break with his father, taking an “evasive attitude” simply to preserve themselves. He recounts how, not sharing his siblings’ evasiveness regarding their father, he, too, was eventually imprisoned.
There, he experienced a complete alienation of his relationship with the outside world, finding no purpose in living in a world where he was not afforded the basic dignity, respect, or comfort others seemed to enjoy.
However, it was the kindness of strangers, including the company of one of his very captors and the support at work of people he thought of as dangerous convicts, that have him the motivation to live. Despite the bad hand society had dealt him, he nonetheless maintained his conviction that, even if the people around him were “bad guys,” they must have had some goodness in them.
This reminds me of Viktor Frankl’s own reflections in his classic memoir Man’s Search for Meaning, where he describes how simply the hope of one day being free gave him the psychological will to continue living. In much the same way, this man’s embrace of hope over bitterness, of life over death, enabled him to persevere despite it all.
“God Smiled Upon Us”
Ending on an optimistic note, in this interview, a former Sent Down Youth sent to the countryside in the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside” movement speaks of the extraordinary role of luck in his ability to persevere through the Cultural Revolution. For him, the life in the grasslands, while certainly tough, was at least stable and away from the chaos exhibited elsewhere.
Working in the Inner Mongolian region of China, he was able to immerse himself in the nomadic lifestyle of its inhabitants, being able to satisfy his intellectual curiosity in a way that was inaccessible to many affected by the movement elsewhere. Despite having to “learn everything from the beginning,” he found meaning in what he saw as a “new and magical place,” maintaining optimism that he could “learn and master everything.” His unusually positive recount of his experience as a Sent Down Youth is thus an outgrowth of the sense of purpose and belonging he found in being able to explore a hitherto new land. This sense of meaning that allowed him to persevere, if not flourish, is so ingrained in him that he mentions how, to this day, he still visits the grasslands every year.
