Chapter 26 Part Two (4) - Footsteps of the Traveler in the Great Desert

At this point in writing, I can't forget to follow up and report on another part of my kind—because they are an integral part of the victims of the 1950s.In a sense, they were the greater victims of that era.On the altar of the times, they have endured greater misfortune than us who stayed at Tuanhe Farm. Before the hanging train arrived at Turpan Station, someone jumped off the train and fled.Most of those who fled were hooligans.Thief or something.The old rightists are law-abiding, they have not changed their original intentions because they stepped into the desolate and desolate desert from the "Peach Blossom Spring"-the reason is very simple, they came to change their political appearance, as long as they follow the recruitment policy Promise, give them a little political warmth, and they will use all their strength to become a reliable team for reclamation of the desert.They are not only capable of martial arts, but also capable of literature—students and some teachers from various colleges in Beijing (including some whose families are in Beijing), almost all boarded the northbound train.

I remember that at the conference site that day, I met my former colleague, Chen Ye, a former reporter from China Youth Daily, and I had the following conversation with him: "Why are you leaving?" "Stay here, what's the future?" He is from his hometown in Sichuan, and he joined the underground party in Shanghai in the autumn of 1947. "When you go there, can you guarantee that your identity will change?" I said, "You are an old comrade of our party. Are you sure that all this is true?" "Damn it, I'll just believe it once again! It's more difficult there than here, and maybe I can get a little reward from the hardship." He said, "What's the point of staying in Beijing? The emperor's feet are in such a mess. Go here I can't see it at all. It's just another gamble in life. If I find out that I've been cheated, I still have two feet under my legs, so I'm going to be a tramp!"

He just went away.Before that, he also had dreams like me. He entered the door of "China Youth Daily" as an old party member and an old reporter.The head of the newspaper had promised him that when the environment became more relaxed, he would be transferred back to be the administrator of the paper warehouse first, and then make other arrangements according to the development of the situation.But the tighter and tighter political atmosphere shattered his little hope, and after he became disheartened, he had the idea of ​​going far away. Not long after he arrived at the frontier, he found that none of the promised conditions had been fulfilled—the same kind of people were building roads in the desert every day, so they complained everywhere.Especially with the escalation of the "Cultural Revolution" violence, the harsh class struggle scene started there, and the old right became a target for shooting again.Coupled with some of the same kind and non-kind at that time, in the spring of 1967, more and more people escaped from the desert——Chen Ye had the idea of ​​escaping from the boundless desert.

On August 1, 1968, the whole squadron of the reform-through-labor squadron he was in.Chen Ye made an excuse that he left the shovel on the construction site the day before, and he was going to the construction site to get the shovel back.The team leader in charge of him was surnamed Jin. He felt that Chen Ye, who was usually immersed in his work, would not have any problems, so he gave him the green light.After he successfully passed the guard's sentry post, he hurried to the place where he hid his clothes (he had already hidden them on the construction site the day before), he buried the changed clothes, put on new clothes and walked toward Ye Run towards the city.Yecheng is the broken leaf in ancient times. It is the place where Li Bai, the great poet of the Tang Dynasty, was born—he dared not take the road or take a long-distance bus.When it got dark, he stayed overnight at the home of a fellow Uyghur. They didn't know that he was a fugitive from the frontier labor camp, and they gave him two lamb legs to eat.At 3 o'clock the next morning, he left without saying goodbye and hit the road.

At that time, he was very upset and felt sorry for the fellow Uyghurs; but as a fugitive, he couldn't explain clearly to them, so he had to bow three times to the adobe house of the ethnic minorities before leaving.After that, he didn't dare to stay where he was for a long time, and embarked on the journey anxiously.He walked along the sand dune path for about a hundred miles before arriving at Yecheng.He fumbled in his pocket, and found that there were still more than 200 yuan in money and 100 catties of food stamps (this was accumulated and used when he was preparing to flee), and he began his wandering life.He originally planned to travel all the way south, but Red Guards checked at the bus station, so he had to wander around the three small streets in Yecheng.He spent the first night in the straw stacks; on the second day, he still couldn't board the car. Xinjiang was very cold at night, and he wanted to find a warmer place to spend the night.Just as he was wandering by a teahouse, the Yecheng police saw that he was behaving suspiciously, called him to the police station, and interrogated him.

Chen Ye initially told the police that he was a reporter from Sichuan - because he had a strong Sichuan accent. "What are you doing here?" "Interview." "Where is the interview?" Chen Ye said the name of a place indiscriminately - he has been in Xinjiang for more than a year and knows something about Xinjiang. "Do you have a press card? Take it out!" Chen Ye didn't want to reveal his original identity, but he couldn't get out of here at this time. In desperation, he had no choice but to hand over the former "China Youth Daily" press card as a talisman to the police.If he hadn't said in advance that he was a reporter from Sichuan, this amulet might still have some effect—even though it was issued in the 1950s, and the shell was already worn out; Let things go.But he just said that he is a reporter from Sichuan, which is different from the press card unit-he was taken to a shelter.

That night, the interrogation of him was escalated: "We have already asked the China Youth Daily, and there is no one like you." Chen Ye thought for a while, if they really asked Beijing, it would be impossible to answer that there is no such person as Chen Ye; Beijing can only answer that he is a rightist.So he boldly asked back: "Show me the phone records." "We have called your hometown in Sichuan, and you are not alone." Chen Ye knew that all of this was a fraud against him for the convenience of their interrogation.Then he became bolder: "Could it be that I am a grandson who jumped out of the cracks in the rock? You have never called at all."

That night's interrogation ended here. Afterwards, he was left idle in the shelter, where he ate corn bread and drank vegetable soup every day.These days are the saddest days for him, because in the days when he had nothing to do, he suddenly remembered that in half a month, it would be the 21st anniversary of his participation in the underground party in Shanghai-at that time, the Kuomintang arrested people everywhere. To arrest the communists, they will be executed if they are caught; I was not caught by the enemy back then, but now in this frontier shelter, in order to survive, I have to deceive myself and others to weave lies in order to protect myself... What is Chen Ye's crime? ? !

One day, the policeman who was interrogating him came to the detention room again, followed by a reporter from Xinjiang Daily in the region.The incompetent policeman stopped talking, but asked the reporter to question him: "Tell me, who was the first president of People's Daily?" "Fan Changjiang." "Where is the first person in charge of Xinhua News Agency?" "Wu Lengxi." The reporter asked him some questions about news work, and Chen Ye answered them fluently.With no flaws to be found, the interrogating reporter had no choice but to tell the policeman that he was a real reporter.The interrogation hastily withdrew, but he was not released from the shelter.It was only then that Chen Ye realized that in this chaotic year, all places were busy fighting, such a problem that is very easy to find out, but he couldn't find it out—that's good, he had hope to be released up.But he waited day by day for 46 days (he spent the 21st anniversary of joining the party in the shelter), and finally got the result—this result was not a comedy, but unexpected The beginning of another tragedy.

Unfortunately, another escapee named Qi Xingzhong from the labor reform team was arrested.Although he was not locked in the same room as Chen Ye, Chen Ye saw him through the window.The police did not treat him as civilized as they did Chen Ye. They punched and kicked him during the first interrogation. After being beaten black and blue, the escaped man knelt on the ground and confessed his status as a labor camp.This has already made Chen Ye's heart flutter. What he never expected was that when the cadres of the labor reform team came to the shelter to collect Qi Xingzhong the next day, they proposed to go to each room to see if there were any other escapees. No. was housed here - because since the "Cultural Revolution" began, the number of escaped numbers has been increasing day by day.

Chen Ye's fate was decided in this way - he and the new escapee were handcuffed at the same time, and put on a Jiefang truck to return to the labor camp.When the truck passed through the labor reform site, Yu Liren, Liu Shikang, Ha Changlin, Zhang Fengjia...all of them cast worried eyes on him.Chen Ye smiled at them, he was ready to be punished, and everything was left to fate. He was thrown into solitary confinement. That night, a big masked man came in (it was a faceless guard), tied him with ropes, and then hung him on the beam.The torture tools used to torture him were leather whips and wooden sticks. While beating, the masked man cursed fiercely: "Rightist counter-revolutionaries, I tell you to run away—" "You run to the edge of the sky, and we can catch you back!" Curses and sticks were intertwined, and Chen Ye's pants were smashed in a short while. Because in the Yecheng Asylum, Chen Ye got enteritis; after a few sticks, the liquid feces soup sprayed out from the anus. This action aroused the thug's anger even more, and he was whipped for a while, and beaten with a wooden stick for a while - until the shit pants that Chen Ye was wearing were also smashed, and he was not let down from the wooden beam.At this time, Chen Ye was completely naked—and with the feces soup running down his legs, the confinement room was full of blood and feces. Chen Ye, who had fallen into a coma, lay on the ground and heard several instructions: "Don't lie on the ground and pretend to be dead, get up and clean up!" "Put on pants and don't show your dick!" "You can't die if you get dizzy, do you hear that?" There was a knock at the door—the goons went out. Chen Ye lay on the ground overnight, and the physical torture continued the next day.He dragged his blood-stained body, and after cleaning up the smell of feces, the team leader called him out of the confinement room and made him suffer another kind of torture: On the ground full of camel thorns in the Xinjiang desert, the team leader ordered him to stand on the ground with bare feet The camel stabbed and turned in circles while reading Quotations from Chairman Mao).Accompanying him was Qi Xingzhong, who was captured together with him—Qi was not a rightist counter-revolutionary, and walked three times; Chen Ye, an out-and-out "enemy spear", walked five times on a camel thorn.After five laps, Chen Ye was stabbed until he lost consciousness. Not to mention working hard, he couldn't even walk. Picking thorns - he himself could not see the soles of his feet, and his fellow Wang Jizu and Zhou Shizi, who were also imprisoned in the strict supervision class for escaping, carefully pulled out the burrs on his feet.Then, Chen Ye, Wang Jizu (who returned to work in the Xicheng Branch of the Beijing Public Security Bureau after being rehabilitated) and Zhou Shizi (who returned to Wuhan after being rehabilitated) commented on the "Cultural Revolution"—putting aside personal experiences, the country was also This "Cultural Revolution", which was disastrous to the country and the people, was dragged to a very dangerous brink.Chen Ye's attitude was the most intense. He said that he was going to stay in the strict control class until the "Cultural Revolution" fascists died. At the beginning of 1969, Wang Jizu and Zhou Shizi left the strict management team successively. The empty Diwozi (the strict management team was set up in Diwozi) left Chen Ye alone, and he refused to return to the team.But these days, he has not been idle—27 foreign transfer personnel from the foreign transfer team came here to ask him to investigate the situation of the former Shanghai underground party comrades. During this period, Chen Ye wrote a total of more than 200 copies Materials transferred from outside - prove that Zhang San is not a traitor, and prove that Li Si is very firm in the struggle against the enemy.These materials can completely prove that Chen Ye is a good Bolshevik—however, he was imprisoned in the underground den for two years and fifteen days. Facing the darkness, he was ready to "sit through the prison".During this period, such an unforgettable event happened: In one day, a member surnamed Fan from Shanghai was imprisoned in the strict supervision class, just because he heard the whistle blowing that day, and he got up a little late on the kang, and he was punished first. He knelt on the ground, and then refused to give him food.Seeing how pitiful he was, Chen Ye brought him a bowl of water to quench his thirst.The staff in charge of them gave Fan a gun butt as soon as he went up, and cursed at the same time: "My god, your mother——" Chen Ye was aroused, and scolded the management staff back: "The **** is in Shanghai, why do you scold the old man! Who gave you the right to scold others?" "I'm going to beat you counter-revolutionary!" He said, looking at the butts of two guns on Chen Ye's legs. Coincidentally, at that time, a staff member transferred from Shanghai came to Chen Ye and saw all this in his eyes.Out of public interest, the foreign transfer personnel expressed limited dissatisfaction with this brutal beating on the spot.When the transferees left, Chen Ye was in bad luck.They tied his hands behind his back to a tree and beat him severely with a whip—for 40 minutes until the beating man was tired.When asked here, Chen Ye's hands behind his back were strangled until purple and blue; his body was swinging back and forth on the tree like a pendulum following the rhythm of the whip. "I'll kill you counter-revolutionary!" "You beat me to prove that you are much worse than those Kuomintang spies." Chen Ye shouted unyieldingly, "If you beat me to death, it proves that you are a villain who is the enemy of the Communist Party to the end!" "Are you still stubborn?" Baba whipped again. When Chen Ye was released, he had already become a blood man.In order to prove that his behavior was a revolutionary behavior, the managers asked Chen Ye to write a confession in the den after he woke up, and quoted the Red Book "There is no love for no reason in the world, and there is no love for no reason." "Hate", let him admit that the bowl of water sent to Fan was a matter of class feelings and class hatred.Chen Ye declared that I would not leave Diwozi unless the assailant confessed to him—in this way, Chen Ye became "an unrepentant 'granite'", and of course he really became a savage living in Diwozi. .Until later, the labor reform team forcibly pulled him out with a car—at that time, he was already skinny, like an unearthed mummy. He and his kind went to Xinjiang voluntarily.Chinese intellectuals have never been afraid of hardships. To put it more vividly, it is like the tongue twister sung by hawkers who sold old clothes in the past: this is sold by me It won't wear out for three years it's wet and dry it kicks and kicks Chen Ye and his kind did not flee in fear of the hardships of the desert—how did he, Wang Jizu, Zhou Shizi, Sun Benqiao, and Wang Tongzhu (the latter two were shot in Nanjing at the same time as Lu Lushan and Yao Zuyi) come and go?I am afraid that the political pressure exceeds the life load they can bear.Especially for an old revolutionary like Chen Ye, the connotation of his escape is very rich.After he was rehabilitated, he came to see me in Beijing, and when he told me about this past, he still had no complaints or regrets about his leaving the "Peach Blossom Spring"—the only thing he hated was the bloody dark night of the "Cultural Revolution".He believes that the reason why the "Cultural Revolution" is so fierce is because of the deep root of the "Left" disaster in the party.A ray of fireflies ignited raging flames, causing many founding generals to die under their own butcher knives. Chen Ye's perception is profound and rational - because his life was almost buried in the desert in the northwest...