Chapter 39 17. My position is based on intuition

The situation of student assignment in Beijing is quite complicated, affected by various forces and factors, and it becomes more and more so later on.In the early days, an important factor was the relationship with the existing education system.Generally speaking, the backbone of the conservative faction is the vested interests in this system, while the leaders and backbone of the rebel faction are often some students called riffraff, which are different in today's terms, and they have more independent thinking spirit , quite resistant to the old education system, often excluded by party organizations, in a relatively suppressed position.Therefore, their rebellion contained some anti-traditional elements, and Tsinghua University can be regarded as a typical case of this situation.The situation at Peking University is very different. An obvious fact is that the leader of the rebels here is not a student at all, but a full-time party and government cadre.Nie Yuanzi's opposition to Lu Ping was essentially a struggle for power and profit within the party, and she was lucky enough to win because of some special needs.In fact, she is completely a traditional person, and she still leads the Peking University movement in a traditional way after she came to power.This kind of pattern makes the anti-traditional forces among Peking University students not only not differentiated, but still suppressed.Some people call this situation the congenital deficiency of the Peking University Movement.Although the New Peking University Commune is one of the five major rebel organizations in Beijing’s universities, it is not formed and gradually grown through resistance like Tsinghua’s Jinggangshan. On the contrary, it was organized from top to bottom by Nie Yuanzi after he established himself in the country. , including most of the teachers and students in the school.Not surprisingly, such an organization is unlikely to have much energy.In fact, the public opinion at that time almost regarded the Xinbei University Commune as the stronghold of conservatives, so that when people fought faction wars, if they wanted to prove that the other party was a conservative, the most powerful reason they gave was that the other party had received a new Support from Peking University Commune.

I am a member of the New Peking University Commune, but I have always been dissatisfied with the Peking University movement under the leadership of Nie Yuanzi.Under the control of the school's Cultural Revolution Committee, Peking University was basically a backwater.If there are waves, it is because some unlucky students are thrown into the water from time to time, which makes people feel even more depressed.It is popular on campus to fight against the "counter-revolutionaries" among the students. Big-character posters will suddenly be posted on the walls of the dormitories here and there, copying the "reactionary diary" of a certain student, and sometimes a group of people can be seen holding the student in the big-character Criticize and fight before reporting.After I read it, I found that the so-called reactionary was nothing more than a petty bourgeois sentiment, and the most serious thing was just an expression of confusion about the Cultural Revolution, which made me feel insecure.Some students were criticized for opposing Nie Yuanzi.Under such high pressure, some students commit suicide from time to time.What saddened me the most was the death of Shen Dali. She was my beautiful travel companion on the Shanghai-Beijing train when I was just admitted to Peking University. She committed suicide by taking poison by the Weiming Lake.I heard that after the incident happened, girls from the opposite faction screamed gloatingly in the corridor of the dormitory: "Guys from 307, that bitch is dead!" The large font proclaimed: "We must dig out the reactionary souls in this pile of rotten flesh and fight against them!" At that time, I was filled with disgust, convinced that her persecutors must be ugly, and she was killed by jealousy.That night, I wandered alone by the Weiming Lake, paying tribute to this beautiful innocent soul.The pale yellow light was reflected on the lake, and the old willow tree stood beside the lake with disheveled hair, shaking in the wind, as if calling out the grievance in her heart.

In fact, at the very beginning of the founding of the New Peking University Commune, there was an organization that opposed and resolutely opposed Nie, namely the Jinggangshan Corps.The organization is small in number, its cadres are in the philosophy department, and I don't like some of them, so I never considered joining.They have been vigorously condemning Nie Yuanzi's reactionary line. Although I am also dissatisfied with Nie, I think their tone is too high.However, around June 1967, Nie Yuanzi convened a meeting of teachers and students of the whole school to carry out organized criticism of the backbone of Jinggangshan, which made me make a judgment.I concluded that since she had begun to suppress the masses, from this moment she was indeed following a reactionary line.In fact, for any personal struggle, including the factional struggle in the movement at that time, I often took a certain position not based on a clear theoretical analysis, but out of an instinctive sense of justice.

At the same time, the New Peking University Commune itself was also undergoing a split.There was a combat team in the Department of Chemistry, headed by Lei Zhenxiao who later engaged in talent studies. Although he belonged to the Xinbei University Commune, he was very active in thinking and had been criticizing Nie Yuanzi from within.The big-character posters posted by this combat team are always very attractive, and I appreciate them very much.Since the name of this combat team begins with zero, its supporters gradually formed the so-called zero faction.By July 1967, the number of Zero Sects increased sharply. Once a parade was held, the team was mighty and mighty. Someone joked: "Lao Nie must be having a headache now. How many large trucks will it take to catch this small group?" Zero After the rise of the Pai School, the appearance of Peking University changed a lot. The repressed talents of the students burst out, and they showed their talents in big-character posters and debates, showing unprecedented vitality.There are so many big-character posters, most of them are critical of Nie, and they are full of irony.Nie was compared to Empress Dowager Cixi, and the nickname of Lafayette spread like wildfire.A mischievous student writes doggerel in capitals, and there is a poem alluding to her romantic affair with a certain political figure: "Xia chrysanthemum withers and autumn chrysanthemum blooms, because it is better than a romantic eye." Niu Huilin, the commander of the Corps, made his mark in the debate.My appreciation for Zero School is almost aesthetic in nature, I find this school happy, playful and alive.There are very few girls in the philosophy department, and there are even fewer beautiful girls. Unfortunately, the only one in my eyes is on the opposite side.I wrote a poem for her entitled "The Conservative Girl": "Girl, why are you screaming so loudly, and scolding your mother in a high-pitched voice? You have a beautiful face, but your mind is so confused, then It is full of conservative ideas. After a while you lower your head and read, as if you are very serious. To be honest, I have a feeling, I always feel that you are reading "Cultivation." Incidentally, although Liu Shaoqi The experience is very sympathetic, but I never liked this "cultivation" written by him.

The splitting of the Ling faction from the Xinbei University Commune has become an inevitable trend, and no one can stop it. At the end of 1967, Lingpai and Xiaojinggangshan merged into Dajinggangshan, announcing the completion of the split.The united Jinggangshan Corps had 5,000 members, and Zhou Peiyuan, a famous physicist and vice president of Peking University, was elected as the first general servant, that is, the chief leader.The old man had a sense of justice and always supported the students suppressed by Nie. However, he resigned under Zhou Enlai's advice shortly after he was elected, and was replaced by Niu Huilin.This is how I went from one faction to another during the Cultural Revolution at Peking University. What dominated me was not thoughts, nor interests, but intuition.Perhaps because of this, no matter which faction I am in, I am not a man of the hour, but just an ordinary person.I was content with this role, and never in my life had I thought of becoming a political figure, because I was self-aware and had neither the drive nor the ability to do so.