Read Online Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China by Philip P. Pan - Free Book Online Page B

competing for her attention. When she saw the posters attacking their poem, she was moved to write and put up a verse of her own defending them. She was still a loyal Communist; she had recently written a series of poems glorifying the party. But by the spring of 1957, there were signs she was beginning to question some of the party’s actions, especially a recent campaign against independent thinking that resulted in numerous suicides in literary and academic circles. So naturally, she was excited by the Hundred Flowers Movement, which she believed meant the party was acknowledging its mistakes and asking the public to help set it straight. “On a spring day like this, everywhere people are discussing the rectification campaign, and we are full of excitement, just waiting,” she wrote at the time.
    What Lin Zhao and her friends didn’t know, and couldn’t have known, was that Mao was already having second thoughts about the campaign he had launched. The intensity and depth of public anger exposed by the Hundred Flowers Movement surprised him and threatened to undermine the party’s authority. On May 15, before Zhang even put up his poster at Beida, Mao sent a secret memo to party officials of Central Committee rank and above. For the first time, he used the term “Rightist” to describe those who admired bourgeois democracy and rejected the party’s leadership, and he blamed them for “the current spate of wild attacks.” On Mao’s instructions, the party did not announce his change of heart. “We shall let the Rightists run amok for a time and let them reach their climax,” he wrote. “Now that large numbers of fish have come to the surface themselves, there is no need to bait the hook.”
    Looking back, Zhang said, the first hint at Beida of Mao’s reversal may have come on May 22. It was a hot, muggy night, and Zhang was standing at the center of a large crowd that stretched into the darkness outside the cafeteria. Three exciting days had passed since he and Shen had posted their poetic call to arms, and the debate that evening seemed to begin like many that had unfolded on campus. But then it took an ugly turn. One student after another stood on a cafeteria table that had been dragged outside and began denouncing Zhang in unforgiving ideological terms. Some accused him of “inciting counterrevolution,” perhaps the most serious of political crimes in China. They were all party members, they had surrounded him, and they were taking turns berating him.
    Suddenly, someone else leapt onto the table. It was nearly pitch-dark, and few in the crowd could see who it was. But a woman’s voice—clear and melodious, with a soft southern accent—rose up over the din of the shouting male students. The clamorous audience hushed, as if enchanted. In the dim light of the night, Zhang could barely make out Lin Zhao’s face. But her words were burned into his memory.
    She said, “Aren’t we calling on people outside the party to offer suggestions? When they didn’t, we pushed them again and again to speak up! So when they finally do, why do we fly into a rage? Take Zhang Yuanxun. He isn’t a party member, or even a member of the Youth League. He wrote that poem, but is that enough for these people to get so angry and rise up like this to attack him?
    “What kind of meeting are we having tonight?” she said. “Is it a meeting for speeches or a struggle session? It shouldn’t be a struggle session, because we don’t need to denounce anyone. Who are we denouncing? Zhang Yuanxun? Why should we denounce him? You, sirs, who spoke just now, I know all of you. You are all party members in the Chinese literature department.”
    Zhang grew animated as he described the scene to Hu, gesturing with his hands and nearly jumping out of his seat as he spoke. “And just like that, she silenced them!” he said. “You see how bold she was?”
    Lin Zhao continued speaking, he recalled, and began describing what she called a