He Benxian Jianyang Region General Farm, Fujian Province, December 15, 1978 From Comrade Editor: Letters to the People 's Daily. Hong Kong: Joint Co., Hong Kong Branch, 1980. pp. 129-133.

Class and the Family

Comrade Editor:
My birth has brought me endless sufferings. Last September, I left home in anger. I am a political pariah: my spirit tortured, my body ill, my life doomed. Today, with tears in my eyes, I write this letter as does a man with a grave illness seek medical help.
By the time that I was born, most of the country had come under the warming rays of the new dawn, liberation. My infancy was spent in innocence under the red flag. As a child, I watched with fascination films showing the heroic deeds of Huang Jiguang, Dong Cunrei, Liu Hulan and Lei Feng) From an early age, I wanted to be a soldier in the People's Liberation Army so that I, like Huang Jiguang, could block the enemy's guns' advance and, like Lei Feng, could wholeheartedly serve the people.
Whenever I went into town and saw trains, trucks, boats, bustling crowds, wide streets, high buildings and thriving factories, my world would expand a bit and, returning, I would talk endlessly with my little friends about my experiences. I would imagine that, when I grew up, I would be a steel worker, braving the flying sparks before an open hearth furnace. Or maybe I would be a new-style peasant, racing through the fields on a tractor. Or maybe I would keep on going to school, acquiring the knowledge to become a philosopher or a creative writer.
I approached my teens just as Lin Biao and the "Gang of Four" were gaining control. They promoted the reactionary bloodlines theory, and my hopes and ideals, now at odds with my birth, popped one by one, like so many soap bubbles. After completing primary school, I was not allowed to attend a regular middle school because of my background. When my little brother finished primary school, an education cadre said, "We can't allow children from that kind of family to go to school." His comment cut me to the quick.
When I was seventeen, the peasants asked me to become a primary school teacher in the brigade's school. I threw myself into my work with relish but, two years later, I was thrown out by an education cadre. The reason given was that one with a bad class background should himself be receiving instruction from the poor and lower middle peasants.
One year, during army recruitment, I asked at the county's and commune's recruiting offices for permission to join, but I was wasting my breath!
Since infancy, I have received the party's class education. I understood the oppression and exploitation of the working people by the evil imperialists, Kuomintang reactionaries, landlords and rich peasants. When I thought of the rich peasant origin of my family, I realized that my ancestors could not have been good people. I became very angry with my family. I remember one year at Qing Ming Festival, I refused to go up to our ancestral tomb, participating instead in the tomb sweeping ceremony held by our school in commemoration of revolutionary heroes. I was beaten at home for that. From that time on, I have never practiced ancestor veneration, but I received no understanding for my change in attitude. Once I ran afoul of a young cadre over a small incident. Not bothering to scold anyone else, he spat out at me, "Landlords and rich peasants are liars." Then he added, "How dare you! To the last generation, you'll be a landlord-rich peasant!" I couldn't tell what was right or wrong. I mutely took his abuse, the tears streaming down my cheeks.
I started to read the works of Chairman Mao as well as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. I read some literature, newspapers, and magazines. I came to love and be greatly influenced by the works of Lu Xun. Mr. Lu Xun had not been born a proletarian, but he became a great proletarian revolutionary. I began to believe in communism and longed to be able to join the youth league and the Communist Party. I wished to spend my life striving for communism. From the point of view of some lower level leaders, however, I was the offspring of a parasite seeking to worm my way into power. It was as if our bodies were alive with contagion so that none even approached us, let alone taught us, helped us or encouraged us.
For many years now, my revolutionary ideals and energy of youth have lain shattered by unyielding reality. I, who used to have so many beautiful dreams, the romantic revolutionary of yesterday, have become a ruined, wasted man.
My mother would look at me with tears in her eyes and say, "Your mother has hurt you so." You see, she had been born into a poor peasant home. Just after liberation she made the mistake of marrying into my father's family.
I am the eldest, and now I am grown up. Mother always has hoped that I could marry and raise a family. I have loved several times, but the plays are all tragedies. One girl, understanding, said, "I like you but not your family. Not only could they bring disaster on me, but also on my own family. When my brothers and sisters grow up and want to join the youth league, the party or the army, when they want to start work or go to school, any investigation will show the bad connection and then they will blame me." She was right. Others were not alone in disliking my family. I, too, was disgusted by them. I wanted to leave them, to go to a worker's family having only a daughter so that I might become their son-in-law. Another girl said to me, "I would like you to join our family, but your family background could tarnish ours, so that we wouldn't be as good as other people." Naturally that would happen. I didn't want to harm others.
Having written this far, I cannot stop the tears from falling. Once more, I remember those tragic days after Chairman Mao died. The brigade party branch issued black arm bands to all others, but they would not give them to the landlords' and rich peasants' children. That experience is deeply etched on my soul.
So many times, I resolved to leave my despicable family. Last September, I gave my notice to the brigade party branch that I had left them.
Now I have no family. But under the leadership of the Central Party Committee led by Chairman Hua, I neither can nor do I wish to wander aimlessly as did Jia Baoyu; I neither can nor should escape to Yan'an to look for the revolutionary road as they did in the period of the democratic revolution. And so, in anguish, my hopes are extinguished. I ask that the party and the government might carry out policies more effectively in our village and release me from my sufferings. Whatever hard work they ask of me, I would willingly do. Even more so, I hope that others like me will no longer suffer as I have. I hope that, in going to school, finding work, enlisting in the army, in all these things and more, they will not meet obstructions. Let them work to the best of their abilities. It is better to unite with a few more people in pursuing the work of the revolution.