Chapter 39 Guo Xiaochuan in the storm

As a poet who wrote political lyric poems, Guo Xiaochuan once wrote "March to Difficulties" and "Shine, the Flame of Youth" in the 1950s, which aroused strong repercussions among young people at that time. Influenced by Lukacs' theory of human nature, humanitarian "poisonous weeds" such as "Deep Valley", "Snow White Hymn" and "One and Eight" were created.When the "Cultural Revolution" broke out, Guo Xiaochuan was serving as the secretary of the Writers' Association Secretariat, so a person like him naturally belonged to the "black line".He did not understand the "Cultural Revolution", and he lacked mental preparation.When his personal destiny suddenly reversed from red to black, he fell into deep distress.

In the summer of 1967, after three years in the countryside, Guo Xiaolin got an opportunity to return to Beijing to visit his parents.The fashion at that time was to compete to see who was more revolutionary.The educated youth on the farm put forward the slogan of not going home for three years or not visiting relatives for five years. If he hadn't received a transfer assignment, he might have to postpone visiting relatives for two years. Although it has only been three years, the "Cultural Revolution" has brought about tremendous changes in society, families, and everyone.Guo Xiaolin has the feeling of "the young one leaves home and the old one returns".When my father answered the door, he was wearing a homely T-shirt and white cloth pants.Guo Xiaolin's first impression was that his father was not as young as he remembered. He was old and made his son feel strange.When he was in middle school, Guo Xiaolin's father-son relationship was a bit like the relationship between Zhongjia Zheng and Jia Baoyu.The father occasionally sees his son (about once a week or two), and usually asks about his academic performance, while the son stands aside and respectfully listens to his father's instructions, usually very short, just a sentence or two.When he first went to the countryside, Guo Xiaolin once stole a photo from his father’s drawer—a photo taken in the 1950s to apply for a passport for visiting Suzhou.The father in the photograph was thin and handsome, with a serious Mayakovsky expression.When he was on the farm, he often took it out quietly, and his father was always so young and heroic in his impression.

Seeing his son's unexpected return, the father lost his composure for a moment because of his shock, and his hands trembled slightly.The mother burst into tears.The father quickly restrained and concealed his feelings, no hugs, no handshakes.A father must also be a little strange to his son.That night, father and son slept in the same room.Guo Xiaolin fell asleep quickly due to the exhaustion of the journey. In the middle of the night, for unknown reasons, he woke up suddenly and found a dark red light flickering in the darkness. It was his father sitting on his bed and smoking.How long has he been sitting?During the day, his mother had already told Guo Xiaolin that his father had been scolded and beaten by rebels from the People's Daily.After a long time, Guo Xiaolin heard his father say to him slowly: "I have thought a lot... You still don't know me very well, I want to have a long talk with you."

Later, Guo Xiaolin recalled in the article "Night Rain in Opposite Beds": "I would rather know the rainy night, and sleep in the opposite bed again." "On that day, our father and son were in opposite beds. 'The storm is overwhelming, and will eventually sweep him away..." "However, after my father said these few words, there was only silence. Finally, everything melted into the rock-like night again..." Half a month later, Guo Xiaolin was transferred back to Beijing from other places. His father had already been locked up in a cowshed, and lived together with many famous writers in the basement of the Federation of Literature and Art Circles building.Guo Xiaolin went to deliver meals to his father and was allowed to meet him in the basement passage.From the crack of the half-open door, one can see that the inside is full of beds like a hotel, and many writers he is familiar with and unfamiliar are sitting silently by the beds.Guo Xiaochuan lowered his voice and said to Guo Xiaolin: "Put me together with people like ×××, ×××! How can I be like them!" His expression was quite dissatisfied.Guo Xiaochuan is already in the 18th floor of hell, but he thinks that he is different from those black-line characters. He is on the "red line" and a revolutionary.

It should be said that there is another layer of "heart prison" that tortured Guo Xiaochuan.He wants to defend and express his loyalty.He wanted to confess his heart to the party, and he wrote many "odes" to this end.However, it was only because he refused to make a servile face to the Lin and Jiang Group and knelt down on the ground.He wants to maintain a little personality, a little self-esteem.As a result, the more loyal he was, the more he "infuriated him", and was denounced by Jiang Qing as a counter-revolutionary revisionist and "dishonest". In 1969, Guo Xiaochuan was sent to the "May 7th Cadre School" in Xianning, Hubei Province, along with many cadres from the Ministry of Culture, to undergo "reform through labor".

The Hubei Xianning Cadre School was built on a desolate lake beach.People live on the slopes of the lake, and every day they have to get up early and walk four or five miles down to the bottom of the lake to reclaim life and wasteland.The bottom of the lake is very hot, and summer is the busiest season, rushing to harvest wheat and sow rice seedlings.At noon, the temperature was as high as 42°C, and people were like wax figures in the scorching sun and steam, about to melt away.Cadre school students have to go to work at 4 o'clock in the middle of the night, get off work at 10 o'clock, go back to work at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and go back to sleep at 8 o'clock in the evening, sweating all day long.Writer Wei Junyi said in her reminiscence article that she could always see Guo Xiaochuan walking in the procession undaunted, like a farmer naked to the waist, holding a sickle in his hand, singing vigorously as he walked.

Whenever it rains, the newly built embankment road is soft and sparse, and it is necessary to walk seven or eight miles on this "concrete road" from each company to the school headquarters.When I put my feet down and then lifted them up, I was stained with a few kilograms of mud, and I had to shake them vigorously before I could take a step.There are three or four students in a room, each with a small mat. There is no table in the room. Guo Xiaochuan can only lie on the bed to write. , "Song of Patterns", "Three Sings in Jiangnan Forest Area".He wrote: How can we not be happy!

Because we work hard; How can we not be happy! —— Because we desperately revolutionized— "Song of Joy" Forest District Three Sings 2 In July 1971, he wrote a passionate ode to the great leader Chairman Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: "Crossing the Yangtze River for Thousands of Miles". Along Chairman Mao's Revolutionary Line Raise the red flag high. Grand plans-- "Crossing the Yangtze River" Two months later, the September 13th incident broke out. Poems such as "Crossing the Yangtze River for Thousands of Miles" and "Three Songs in the Jiangnan Forest Area" were described as reactionary poems "against the great leader Chairman Mao" in the "Criticism of Forestry and Rectification Movement".It is even said that the poem "Crossing" is a reprint of "Summary of Project 571".Guo Xiaochuan was subjected to brutal and unreasonable censorship and criticism.

In 1974, the Xianning Cadre School was ordered to merge with the Tuanbowa Cadre School in Jinghai County near Tianjin.The cadre school was relocated and the train transited in Beijing. The trainees took this short opportunity to go home to visit their families, relatives and friends. However, when the train arrived at Beijing Station, Guo Xiaochuan was not allowed to leave the station, and his fellow comrades were asked to take care of him.Guo Xiaochuan just sat in the station for several hours, then got on the train again and transferred to Tianjin Jinghai Tuanbowa Cadre School. At the Tuanbowa Cadre School, Guo Xiaochuan was again censored and criticized, and deprived of the right to write poetry.He was driven to a dead end again, and his heart was trampled on again.His allegiance was treated as dung.Since the movement, he has been beaten, insulted, isolated, imprisoned, watched in the toilet, and his family letters have been dismantled... Now he is deprived of the right to write poetry, which is tantamount to killing him! "There is nothing more sad than death," Guo Xiaochuan fell into deep mental pain.