Chapter 45 23. Burning Manuscripts and Elegies

In March 1968, the struggle between the two factions in Peking University tended to intensify, and the armed struggle was on the verge of breaking out.What I am most worried about is the cardboard box under the bed, which contains all my diaries and manuscripts from middle school to then.If violence breaks out and these things fall into the hands of the opposing faction, materials for arranging crimes will definitely be found from them, and the consequences will be disastrous.However, where is there a safe place where I can hide this box full of documents?My brother-in-law's parents' home is in Beijing. I asked if I could deposit it, but I got a negative answer.Xiaozao helped me send some documents to the home of one of his relatives, but they were returned shortly after.This is understandable. At that time, the units and streets in Beijing were notified that they were not allowed to take in Peking University students and store their belongings.In desperation, I became cruel and decided to streamline my files, keep only a small part of them, and destroy most of them.At first I burned it, but it was too noticeable, and then I squatted in the toilet, tore the papers into pieces, and threw them down the toilet to flush them down the drain.This work took me several days.

One day in the middle of the day, news came suddenly that the New Peking University Commune was coming to occupy our 38th floor, and the students in Jinggangshan fled one after another.At that time, in the huge Peking University, there were only two adjacent student dormitory buildings in Jinggangshan's sphere of influence, namely the 34th and 36th floors.I picked a few books at random, bundled them together with a few undamaged documents, and put them on the 34th floor.Back to my dormitory, I wanted to pick up some more things, but suddenly felt disheartened. Lying on the bed and listening to the busy noise in the corridor, I felt that all this was infinitely far away from me.After the noise subsided, I stood up and walked out of the already deserted corridor empty-handed.

I got a room on the top floor of the 34th floor.Before that, under the attack of the opposing faction's slingshot, all the window panes in this room had been shattered. The 34th floor was originally a dormitory for girls, but now it is occupied by Jinggang Mountains. The room is also a scene after fleeing, with small objects of girls scattered around.I live in this room alone, sleeping in a girl's bed, and there are girls' panties on the bed, which greatly stimulates my senses.A loudspeaker was hung outside the window, broadcasting Jinggangshan's battle proclamation and insults against Nie Yuanzi all day long, which was deafening.At that time, the broadcasting of both factions shared this virtue.Perhaps because of the noise, no one wants to live in this room, and I would rather endure it in order to be alone.Taking advantage of the opportunity of being alone, I started to sort out the documents I brought over, mainly copying the poems that I thought I could find no major faults into a notebook, and excerpted a few pages related to Shiying from the recent diary.Then, I set those files on fire.There is only one notebook, and I am really reluctant to destroy it.When I was a freshman in college, with Shiying, I wrote down many things in my diary and on pieces of paper.I recorded his every word and deed, our conversations, my observations, admirations, and concerns about him.This is simply because he has become a staple of my life, both the most exciting and the most disturbing.In the summer vacation after his accident, one thing I did at home in Shanghai was to sort out all these contents in chronological order and copy them into a thick notebook with about 200 pages.I decided to keep this book and not destroy it unless it is absolutely necessary.

However, not many days later, Shiying died.This made me feel that the page of Guo Shiying in my life has really been turned. There is no Guo Shiying in the world, and I no longer have Guo Shiying. This book recording his past seems to have lost its meaning.So, with a kind of grief and indignation of being buried, I lit this book.In my life, I have regretted this action countless times.This incomparably vivid man, whom I had the privilege of being so close to during one of his finest hours, was never recorded in such detail as evidence I should have preserved for the world.Memory is too incomplete and unreliable, and many vivid details have been lost forever with this notebook of mine.I also regret that I destroyed all my diaries, from the age of fourteen to twenty-two, the whole youth.After that, I felt as if I had become a person without history, the most important years of my growing up left no words, the boy's secret joys and sorrows disappeared without leaving a trace, my Existence thus appears illusory.

A few days after Shiying's death, the fighting at Peking University escalated and became a real fighting.Before that, the two factions just abused each other through tweeters, or set up slingshots and fired stone bullets at each other.Those slingshots are also very powerful. People in Jinggangshan are proud that they have obtained a batch of rubber with excellent toughness from the Air Force, and the slingshots made of them have a long range.However, we can basically still move around freely on campus. In late April, the two factions had their first confrontation on the street south of the 36th floor. Teams from both sides were armed with armor and spears and fought.Since then, the two buildings occupied by Jinggangshan have become a real siege, and we are huddled inside, unable to cross the encirclement circle set up by New Peking University.For our defense, we built a cover passage between the two buildings and dug a tunnel. A gap was opened in the outer wall of the 36th floor facing the street as a temporary gate. A horizontal plaque with large characters.

We entered and exited through this gap on the street, but we still had to be careful, because the street outside was blocked by the firepower of the slingshots of the New Peking University.There is another layer of danger, that is, they use binoculars to monitor the street, and if they find someone walking out of the gap, no matter whether they are going west or east, they will pass a certain school gate they control, and they will rush out to arrest people.My attitude towards faction warfare is very indifferent, almost neutral, so I am confident that they will show mercy to me.So, once, when I really wanted to go to town on errands, I walked out of the gap openly and headed east to the bus stop.However, as I approached the station, a man on a bicycle blocked my way, and then a group of people rushed over and grabbed me.They took off my coat, wrapped it around my face, and took me to a place.I can feel that this is a room, some people are talking next to me, some of them are girls.The interrogation started, and I asked me where the tunnel was. I laughed and said, "You can't capture these two buildings. It is meaningless to know where the tunnel is. If you can capture it, you will know when the time comes. Why ask?"In fact, I have never been to the tunnel, and I really don't know the exact location, so I said this out of anger.Of course, what I got was a heavy beating, turning me upside down, punching and kicking me.When I was beaten, I heard those girls laughing crisply, which really made me look at women with admiration.The interrogation didn't last long, and I was taken to another place. After removing the clothes covering my face, I found several students from the opposing faction in my class standing in front of me, including Li Zhuqing.Li is a transfer student, much older than me, and has always been friendly to me like a brother.He said he wanted to talk to me, and I replied that I didn't want to talk as a prisoner, and I wanted to talk later.As soon as the words fell, the two foreign students who escorted me were furious, and they raised their hands to beat me, but Li stopped them.Li was still friendly to me, walked through the campus with me silently, and sent me out of the school gate.As soon as I got back to the building, a classmate in my class who worked at the headquarters in Jinggangshan immediately came to condolences to me.It turned out that the headquarters monitored the phone calls of New Peking University, heard the call between the group who arrested me and my class at New Peking University, and understood the whole process.Inevitably he complimented me on my bravery and told me that I was spared further torture because of the intercession of those in my class.

In fact, my bravery is not at all due to loyalty to Jinggangshan, but just a natural reaction when I am insulted.At that time, most of the people guarding the besieged building were diehards, and some thought it was fun, and actively participated in the battle of fighting spears and shooting slingshots, but I had never even touched the tape of a slingshot, let alone fighting a spear.People are trapped in the building, there is nothing to do except fighting, and they gather to play poker or chat every day. I am also very tired of this kind of environment.Therefore, after being arrested, a classmate suggested that I live in the College of Geology, and I readily accepted it.At that time, the student organizations in colleges and universities in Beijing were divided into two factions: the Tian faction and the local faction. Jinggangshan of Peking University belonged to the local faction, and the geology Dongfanghong was the headquarters of the local faction, so they were very happy to take in refugees from the local faction.I lived in a student dormitory there and got on really well with the simple-hearted engineering students.

During the period of living in a poor building and taking refuge in the Institute of Geology, there is only one thing that I really can't forget, and that is the death of Guo Shiying.In order to disperse the sorrow in my heart, I have no other way but to write poetry.In those days I wrote thirty-five poems, which have been preserved as Lamentations.I write that I walk through the crowds, looking for a voice, I ask it not to hide from me, because the dead and the living are not afraid of the resurrected ghost.I also write my favorite poems, but I have no interest in poems. I am most familiar with poets who cannot express the feeling of pain.These are the real feelings at the time.In the two months after Shiying's death, I seldom went to Guo's house. I used to go to play with Shiying. He is gone, and I have such a reserved personality, so it would be embarrassing to go again.However, I really missed that family in my heart, so I wrote a letter to Guo Pingying one day in June and started our correspondence.In the situation at that time, we can only use some revolutionary rhetoric to cheer ourselves up, but the real grief cannot be expressed in any language.Pingying was quite sober about this, and she didn't want to talk empty words, so she asked me to write about Shiying's time at Peking University, which she didn't know very well.So, I lay down on the bed in the shelter of the Institute of Geology and wrote for four days at a stretch. I wrote forty-two pages on 32-page paper and mailed it to her.Twenty years later, when I returned to Beijing after taking the postgraduate entrance examination, Pingying returned this long letter to me.It is thanks to her suggestion that I write these recollections while their impressions were still quite vivid, and thanks to her for the perfect preservation of the papers. In 1976, when I was in Guangxi, I also used my memory to write about Guo Shiying's past during Peking University, titled "The First Lesson of University".Now I have checked these two documents and found that there is not much discrepancy, which shows the deep impression that experience left on me.Of course, there are still some discrepancies. After all, the memory of thirteen years is more worn out than the memory of five years.Now and in the future, when I write about Guo Shiying, I have the basis of these texts at hand, and I don’t have to search hard in my memory for more than forty years. This is a great fortune among misfortunes.