Free The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations by Zhu Xiao-Mei

not solely in charge of the Revolution!”
    A semblance of calm was restored. Each class was placed under the authority of a soldier. To calm the extremists’ enthusiasm, the army interrogated them about the details of their own activities over the “last seventeen years”—as the expression went—that is, since 1949.
    But the lull in the storm was short-lived. A new rift appeared, between those who supported the soldiers and those who opposed them. The latter maintained that the army’s intervention was anti-revolutionary. They wrote to Madame Mao, accusing the military of stifling the Revolution. Mao himself took the students’ side, proclaiming that investigations into what they had done in the “last seventeen years” should stop; the only thing that mattered was their support for the Revolution today. A few days later, an order from the Central Committee came down: the soldiers were to vacate the premises.
    One by one, I was deprived of my reference points: first the director, then the army…Clearly, I didn’t understand a thing about either the Revolution or the class struggle. I was tired of always being on the wrong side, losing each battle, making a mess of everything. My friends kept repeating that Mao was always right, that the best strategy was to follow him, even if it wasn’t always clear where he was leading us. So, we followed. It was the safest way—the only way—to reassure ourselves. We had to go forward, abandon music, heed Chairman Mao’s call, and seize the initiative of the Revolution.

    The soldiers’ departure foretold disaster.
    In late July, a directive from the Ministry of Culture ordered the suspension of all classes at the Conservatory. The “Conservatory without music” became the “Conservatory without teaching.”
    Soon after, it was announced that Mao was going to deliver a key speech in Tiananmen Square. Before hundreds of thousands of frenzied young people brandishing The Little Red Book , a group of students presented Chairman Mao with an armband with “Red Guard” written on it. By accepting it he officially gave the movement his blessing. The most extremist students at the Conservatory now believed they had taken power with Mao’s public and unconditional support.
    The first victims were the Chushen bu hao. At first, I kept a low profile, but I quickly understood that I was of no interest to the Red Guards. Mama Zheng, the man who had looked after us like a mother, was much more interesting prey.
    The extremist students went to the infirmary, the very place where, for so long, he had taken care of us. They forced him to his knees and shouted insults:
    “What were you doing in Indonesia, you dirty dog? Why did you come to China? Why did you give your fortune to the Conservatory, you stinking bourgeois? Spy!”
    The old man didn’t know what to say. He wept, voicelessly.
    That night, there was a thunderstorm over Beijing. We couldn’t sleep because of the thunder and lighting, the wind and the rain. We lay silently awake in the dormitory listening to the storm—together, and yet so alone.
    In the morning, we learned that Mama Zheng had hung himself from a tree in the courtyard, in front of the infirmary.
    We didn’t dare look at each other, but we remembered the storm and the sky’s fury. Images of Mama Zheng came back to me—how he would rub my hands when I was eleven, his glasses of hot water that had done me so much good. I felt that something unimaginable had occurred.
    And yet, at that time in my life, I could no longer separate the guilty from the innocent, the victim from the torturer. Deep in my heart I asked Mama Zheng: Why didn’t you trust Chairman Mao? Why, like Gu Shengying and Li Cuizhen, did you lack courage?

    Shortly thereafter, the Conservatory’s siren went off at two in the morning. We awoke with a start and were ordered to assemble immediately in the auditorium. This time it was Cunzhi, one of my schoolmates and a wonderful bassoonist, who