Chapter 40 18. Original sin and repentance

Now let me recount Guo Shiying's situation after May 1963. After he was taken away from the chess board where I was playing, he went directly to the detention center.It is said that he was so angry that he wanted to beat someone, but he was escorted in with a bayonet.During his short imprisonment, his thinking changed drastically. One day in June, the family received a letter from him in the prison, and Guo Pingying later copied this letter in his letter to me.He wrote in the letter: "After I said all my heartfelt thoughts here, my eyes suddenly lit up. This change came so suddenly. I laughed and cried alone in the room, and I only felt that I became more relaxed. He also said: "The scene of us all reunited in laughter floated before my eyes time and time again. I saw my father's smile and my mother's smile through my teary eyes again and again...all of this was destroyed by me." Yes, but I must win them back. You know, I love you, and this love has been secretly hidden in my heart. Now I have concentrated my feelings for you for a year and a half. It cannot be expressed in words, and it cannot be expressed in words. It’s not tears that can vent. I just sincerely wish you well and hope you are happy.” Judging from these words, one of the important factors that prompted his sudden change was love and guilt for his parents, and the desire to reunite with his family.Shiying is a very emotional person, and he respects and loves his father very much. He once sighed to me: "What is the use of my life, if I can give my life to my father." When the relationship with the family is tense, he does often feel guilty, but he just doesn't know how to solve this contradiction.So going to jail actually offers a prodigal son's best chance of turning around.As for the change in the essence of thinking, it is not clear from this letter.

The decision to dispose of it was quickly made, and he was sent to work on the farm.Before the trip, he came to Peking University once during the summer vacation of 1963. I didn't see him because I went back to Shanghai for vacation.He asked Mr. Chen to tell me that we must have a chance to meet again.Teacher Chen also said that Guo Shiying has changed a lot, and I will be surprised when I see her. On the night of New Year’s Eve in 1964, the students in our dormitory were having dinner, and suddenly I heard someone shouting: “Guo Shiying is here!” Then I saw him standing at the door of the dormitory. Darker and younger.He looked at me with clear eyes, and said with a smile: "Forget about me?" I sat stupidly, staring at him, a warm current of joy flooded my whole body.At the grade party held that night, he sang a song "Long Live the Leader of the People" written by his father with great emotion. During the Spring Festival in 1965, he returned to Beijing from the farm to visit relatives, and then came to see me at school.We were walking the streets for a long time that night, and he missed the last bus back to town.He told me about his feelings on the farm, saying: The farm is too tightly organized and there is a solid system, and there is nothing I can do about it personally; if a few like-minded people work together to form a production team, it must be very interesting.He also told me that there was a girl on the farm who was pursuing him, and he had to be careful to keep the balance, which was very difficult.I asked him about his future plans, and he said that he was interested in cotton and wanted to study cotton planting.Sure enough, after working on the farm for two years, according to his own wishes, his student status was transferred from Peking University to Agricultural University, and he embarked on the road of studying agriculture without hesitation.At that time, I was participating in the Siqing campaign in the countryside. When I returned to school for a while, we made an appointment to meet in Beihai Park.We still corresponded from time to time. His last letter was written in January 1966, in which he invited me to his home, and Tudao and I went there together not long after.This is the last time we saw before the Cultural Revolution.

I keep all the letters that Shiying sent me.These letters show that he is really sincerely rectifying his past, analyzing the roots of "reactionary" thinking, and eager to embark on a new path.The few letters I wrote while on the farm were filled with such content.As might be expected, he attributes the root cause to individualism.That individualism was the root of all evil was one of the most popular arguments of the era, and he finally accepted it.However, he saw that individualism is based on a narrow and personal practice. Therefore, in order to overcome individualism, one must change the basis of practice and invest in comprehensive social practice.This is linked to Mao Zedong's instruction that intellectuals go among workers and peasants.In his letter, he excerpted a section of his diary, in which he compared himself with role models such as Mai Xiande and Jiao Yulu, saying that their starting point of thinking was what the people were like, and they never asked the question of "I", but the starting point of their thinking was " How about "I", even if I serve the people, I feel that this is "I am serving the people". If the word "I" is lost, everything is meaningless.The reason for this difference lies in different practices. Based on this understanding, he sincerely shouted: "Go to the workers and peasants, and roll him in mud! What is the cleanest in the world? Mud!"

Freedom of individuality used to be the value he admired the most, should he still want it now?He found an idea to convince himself.He said that in the past he equated communism with personality development, and believed that personality development should become the driving force and purpose of society. Now he realizes: "The theory of human nature itself is a reflection of class struggle, while communism raises the theory of class society. It is irrelevant.” That is to say, freedom of individuality, as a category of the bourgeois theory of human nature, cannot be used to explain communism in which classes have been eliminated.What can explain it?He admired a passage of Mao Zedong's statement that had just been published at that time, to the effect that after the elimination of classes, there would still be struggles between the new and the old, the advanced and the backward.Based on this, he concluded that communism is not a society where individuality develops absolutely freely, and conflicts between individuals and society will continue to arise.

Now that I reread these letters, I feel somewhat sad.If Shiying is only discussing theoretical issues, of course it is normal, and there is no lack of sparkle in his thinking.However, in fact, he conducts these thoughts under the domination of a compulsively accepted original sin consciousness, and the identity of the penitent has predetermined the path of thinking.He is a sincere person, he is not willing to say what he means, and he is not willing to be perfunctory. He must use his own mind to really understand the problem.This makes his confession not a blind conversion, but a rational choice.However, this is the only way to be more pitiful.The most precious thing in him is a strong spiritual instinct, which drives him to pursue the freedom of individuality and the right to independent thinking.His thinking may and has actually made mistakes of one kind or another. However, when he now denies the freedom of individuality with reasons such as individualism and bourgeois theory of human nature, he is not just criticizing the mistakes he did make, but more denying one's spiritual instincts.Beneath the seemingly conscious self-revolution lies the unconscious suppression of one's own spiritual energy.Of course, this kind of situation does not only happen to Shiying, but also to all intellectuals with relatively strong spiritual instincts, and I am no exception.The only difference was that in him this instinct was extraordinarily strong, with serious consequences, and had to be suppressed with extra effort.In the context of China at that time, intellectuals were guilty of original sin, and it was this spiritual instinct that was truly judged as original sin. The so-called thought remolding was a long process of fighting against it, and the effectiveness of remolding was reflected in whether it was successful or not. weaken or even kill it.Thinking back, how many people spend the best years of their lives battling their spiritual instincts when they should have let it bear creative fruit.

Needless to say, the above is my current understanding.Since I have always been more orthodox than Shiying, I was not only sincerely happy for his transformation, but also cheered vigorously beside him.