Monday, Feb. 05, 2007

Life and Death in Shanghai

This is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman who, despite 6 1/2 long years of imprisonment and torment in Communist China, not only survived but endured and even prevailed. It is a story that began more than 20 years ago but has special relevance today. That is so partly because many of those who benefited during a decade of madness not only have gone unpunished but are trying to make a comeback, and partly because a story that so vividly documents the triumph of the human spirit over inhumanity is always relevant. Nien Cheng, 72, born into a wealthy landowning family, met her husband, Kang-chi Cheng, in 1935 in England, where both were studying at the London School of Economics. The husband, a diplomat in the Kuomintang regime, was enough of an optimist to decide to remain in Shanghai with his wife and young daughter after the Communists overthrew Chiang Kai-shek in 1949 and gained power in China. He went on to serve as general manager for Shell, the only multinational oil company to stay on after Mao Tse-tung's triumph. When he died of cancer in 1957, Shell brought in a Briton as its new manager and hired Nien Cheng as his special adviser. In 1966, the year in which Mao launched the frenzied upheaval known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the company decided to pull out. Cheng was still remarkably prosperous. ''In this city of 10 million,'' she writes, ''only a dozen or so families managed to preserve their old life- style.'' She and her daughter Meiping were one of those families, living in a three-story house filled with antique furniture, books, works of art. There was a piano. There were three servants. Nien Cheng, in other words, was highly vulnerable to the two men who came knocking on her door at 6:30 on a hot July morning. One of them was a man she knew, Qi, a union official at Shell.

WITCH HUNT

''What do they want?'' I drowsily asked my maidservant. ''They didn't say. But they behaved in a very unusual manner.'' ''Tell them I'll be down presently,'' I said. ''Give them a cold drink and some cigarettes.'' I did not hurry. I wanted time to think and be ready to cope with whatever was coming. After tea, I went downstairs slowly, deliberately creating the impression of composure. When I entered the living room, both men were sprawled on the sofa. Qi stood up from force of habit, but when he saw that the other man remained seated, he went red in the face with embarrassment and hastily sat down again. It was a calculated gesture of discourtesy. In 1949, not long after the Communist army entered Shanghai, the new policeman in our area came unannounced to our house. He marched straight into the living room and spat on the carpet. That was the first time I saw a declaration of power made in a gesture of rudeness. I came to realize that junior party officers often used such exaggerated gestures to cover up their feeling of inferiority. ''We have come to take you to a meeting,'' Qi said. ''You have been so slow that we will probably be late,'' the other man added. ''What's the meeting about?'' I asked. ''There's no need to ask so many questions,'' the activist said. ''We would not be here if we did not have authority. All the former members of Shell have to attend this meeting. It's very important. Don't you know the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has started?'' The servants looked anxious as I left. We all knew that since Mao took over, innumerable people had left their homes during the political campaigns and never come back. At the technical school, the target of the meeting was Tao Feng, the former chief accountant of our office. After several hours of speeches denouncing Shell and the ''running dogs of imperialism,'' Tao Feng was led into the room wearing a tall dunce cap made of white paper with COW'S DEMON AND SNAKE SPIRIT written on it. (In Chinese mythology, these are evil spirits that can assume human forms to do mischief. Mao had first used this expression during the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957 to describe the intellectuals, many of whom were sent to labor camps for having taken up the Chairman's own invitation to offer frank and constructive criticism of the Communist Party.) In the office, Tao Feng was always full of self-assurance. Now he looked nervous and thoroughly beaten. He had lost a great deal of weight and seemed years older than only a few months ago. The young people behind me snickered. A man pushed a chair forward and told Tao Feng to stand on it. When he did and stood there in a posture of subservience in his tall paper hat, the snickers became uncontrolled laughter. Someone in a corner of the room stood up. Holding up the Little Red Book of Mao Tse-tung's quotations, he led the assembly in shouting slogans: ''Down with Tao Feng!'' ''Down with the running dog of the imperialists!'' ''Long live our great leader Chairman Mao!'' I was shocked to see Tao Feng raise his fist and shout with gusto the same slogans, including those against himself. ''Tao Feng will now make his self-criticism,'' the man leading the meeting announced. Without lifting his eyes, Tao read a prepared statement in a low and trembling voice. He admitted all the ''crimes'' listed by the speakers. He expressed regret for having worked for a foreign firm for more than 35 years and said he had wasted his life. He said he was ashamed he had been blinded by capitalist propaganda. After the meeting, the man in charge took me aside. ''You must make a determined effort to emulate Tao Feng and do your best to reform,'' he warned. ''I'm not aware of any wrongdoing on my part,'' I said. ''Perhaps you'll change your attitude when you've had time to think things over,'' said a second man. ''If you try to cover up for the imperialists, the consequences will be serious.'' I decided the meeting was not very important. The government's policy was always changing, like a pendulum swinging from left to right and back again. The Cultural Revolution seemed to me to be a swing to the left. When it had gone too far, corrective measures would be taken.

THE GATHERING STORM

My daughter Meiping was an attractive and intelligent young woman of 23. Growing up in Communist China, she had seen a society in which the children of the educated and affluent had enjoyed many advantages replaced, not by an egalitarian society but by a new system of discrimination against children like herself and their families. For instance, to be admitted into a good middle school, she had to score 80% on the entrance examination while children of workers and peasants got in with 60%. ''This is unfair!'' I had exclaimed at the time, indignant that my child was being discriminated against. ''But Mommy,'' said Meiping, ''the teacher told us the children of workers and peasants have to do housework or cook the evening meal after school, and their parents can't help them with homework. The treatment I get is fair if you consider all that.'' She had learned to be philosophical at a young age. ( Because my daughter had to try harder, she did well. In middle school, she was a student leader and won honors and prizes. She seemed happily adjusted. Although we lived in the midst of periodic political turmoil, I took it for granted that she would go to one of the better universities, be given a fairly good job because of her good marks and marry a nice young man. Instead of a university, she went to the new Film School of Shanghai. The acting profession was somewhat glamorous even in Communist China, but those who worked in it did not receive higher pay or enjoy better working conditions than factory workers or teachers. The function of an actress was primarily to entertain the masses, so besides appearing in films, she often gave performances in factories, rural communes, coal mines and oil fields, traveling with her unit all over China. It was an arduous life, but she believed she was rendering service to her country and its people. Now, as she munched her sandwiches, she told me about the day's events at her film studio. ''I spent the whole day writing Big Character Posters for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. We were told that the more one writes, the more revolutionary enthusiasm one demonstrates, so everybody wrote and wrote.'' ''Was that why you didn't come home for dinner?'' ''We gave up having lunch and dinner to show our revolutionary zeal. Actually everyone was hungry, but nobody wanted to be the first to leave.'' ''What did you write about?'' ''Oh, slogans and denunciations against all China's enemies -- Taiwan, Japan, Britain, the U. S. and the Soviet Union.'' On the night of Aug. 18, my daughter's 23rd birthday, I invited Li Zhen, a woman professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, to dinner. Things were bad there, she told me. ''All classes have stopped. Everybody has to write Big Character Posters. Do you know, one of my students told me quietly that they had to write posters against me to protect themselves?'' At that juncture we did not know that the Cultural Revolution was in fact a struggle for power between the Maoists and the more moderate faction headed by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. It later became known that the chief party secretary at the conservatory, who belonged to Liu Shaoqi's faction, was murdered when Jiang Qing, Mao's wife, decided to replace him with one of her favorite young men. While we were sitting out in the garden afterward, our conversation was < suddenly drowned out by a burst of noise from drums and gongs in the street. ''There's a parade of students passing the house,'' one of the servants said. ''It's probably the Red Guards,'' said one of Meiping's friends, a young actor. ''What are the Red Guards?'' I asked. ''It's something new for the Cultural Revolution, encouraged by Jiang Qing,'' he said. ''Someone told me she actually organized them herself and then pretended it was the spontaneous idea of the students. And since she is the wife of Chairman Mao, the idea is catching on.'' Group after group of young students continued to march past our house. Meiping, who had gone outside to watch, told us that the students were shouting, ''Protect Chairman Mao.'' ''Who is supposed to be threatening him?'' I asked. In his lofty position as a demigod, Mao seemed beyond human reach. ''I'll see Auntie Li home,'' said Meiping. ''I don't think there are any buses. The streets have been taken over by the paraders.'' Li Zhen and I said goodbye. That was the last glimpse I ever had of my dear old friend. A month later, she committed suicide after a particularly humiliating experience. The Red Guards placed a pole across the gate of the conservatory less than four feet from the ground and made Li Zhen crawl under it to demonstrate that she was ''a running dog of the British imperialists'' because of her education in England. They then held a ''struggle'' meeting to compel her to confess her ''love for Western music.'' She was found dead the next day, seated by her piano, with the gas turned on. The note she left said, ''I did my best for my students.'' The day after Li Zhen's visit, I read in the newspaper that on Aug. 18 Mao had reviewed the first contingent of Red Guards in Peking and given them his blessing. In the days afterward, the Red Guards in Shanghai took over the streets. They debated whether to reverse the system of traffic lights, as they thought red should mean ''go'' and not ''stop.'' Meanwhile, the traffic lights stopped operating. Goods they considered offensive or unsuitable for a socialist society they destroyed or confiscated. Because they did not think socialist man should sit on a sofa, all sofas became taboo. Innerspring mattresses, silk, velvet, cosmetics and clothes that reflected Western fashion were tossed onto the streets to be carted away or burnt. One day, I decided to venture out to see all this for myself. Red Guards were stopping buses and punishing passengers whose clothes they disapproved of. (In my old shirt and wide trousers, I blended in.) I saw a group of Red Guards leading an old man on a length of rope, shouting and hitting him with a stick. Suddenly he collapsed. When he did not get up, the Red Guards jumped on him. The old man shrieked in pain. ''Dirty capitalist! Exploiter of workers! You deserve to die!'' they shouted. I heard of other victims being humiliated, terrorized and often killed when they offered resistance. The newspapers and leading Maoists congratulated the Red Guards on their vandalism. I felt utterly helpless.

NIGHT OF THE RED GUARDS

On the evening of Aug. 30, while my daughter was attending a political meeting at her film studio, I was sitting alone in my study reading William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which had come from a London bookshop with which I had an account. The house was very quiet. There was not the slightest sound or movement anywhere, almost as if everything in the house were waiting helplessly for its own destruction. Suddenly the doorbell began to ring incessantly. At the same time, there was a furious pounding of many fists on my front gate, accompanied by hysterical voices shouting slogans. The cacophony told me that the time of waiting was over and that I must face the Red Guards. ''Open the gate!'' someone shouted. ''Are you all dead? Why don't you open the gate?'' As my servant let the Guards in, I stood up to put my book on the shelf. A copy of the Constitution of the People's Republic caught my eye. Taking it in my hand, I went downstairs. The Red Guards were 30 or 40 high school students, aged between 15 and 20, led by two men and one woman who were much older -- the ''teachers'' who generally accompanied the Red Guards when they looted private homes. As they crowded into the hall, a gangling youth with angry eyes stepped forward and said to me, ''We are the Red Guards. We have come to take revolutionary action against you!'' Though I knew it was futile, I held up the copy of the Constitution and said calmly, ''It's against the Constitution of the People's Republic of China to enter a private house without a search warrant.'' The young man snatched the copy out of my hand and threw it on the floor. Eyes blazing, he said, ''The Constitution is abolished. It was a document written by the Revisionists within the Communist Party. We recognize only the teachings of our Great Leader Chairman Mao.'' A girl came within a few inches of me and said, ''What trick are you trying to play? Your only way out is to bow your head in submission. Otherwise you will suffer.'' She shook her fist in front of my nose and spat on the floor. Another young man used a stick to smash the mirror hanging over the blackwood chest facing the front door. He tore the mirror's carved frame off its hook and hurled it against the banister. On the hook, he hung a small blackboard with a quotation from Mao: ''When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns still remain.'' The Red Guards read the quotation aloud as if taking a solemn oath. Then they told me to read it. One of them shouted to me, ''An enemy without a gun! That's what you are.'' They locked me in the dining room and then spread out. There was a heavy thud overhead. I could hear glasses breaking and heavy knocking on the wall. It sounded almost as if the Red Guards were tearing the house down. Later, when I was let out to go to the bathroom, I could see two bridge tables in the middle of the drawing room. On them lay cameras, watches, clocks, binoculars and silverware that the Red Guards had gathered from all over the house. These were the ''valuables'' they intended to present to the state. Mounting the stairs, I was astonished to see several Red Guards taking pieces of my porcelain collection out of their padded boxes. One young man had arranged a set of four Kangxi wine cups in a row on the floor and was stepping on them. I was just in time to hear the crunch of delicate porcelain under the sole of his shoe. The sound pierced my heart. Impulsively I leapt forward and caught his leg just as he raised his foot to crush the next cup. He toppled, and we fell in a heap together. The boy regained his feet and kicked me right in my chest. I cried out in pain. The others gathered around us, shouting at me angrily for interfering in their revolutionary activities. One of the teachers said to me, ''What do you think you are doing? Are you trying to protect your possessions?'' ''No, no, you can do whatever you like with my things. But you mustn't break these porcelain treasures. They are old and valuable and cannot be replaced,'' I said rather breathlessly. ''Shut up! Shut up!'' A chorus drowned out my voice. I picked up one of the remaining wine cups and said, ''This is nearly 300 years old. You seem to value the cameras, watches and binoculars, but better cameras, better watches and more powerful binoculars are made every year. No one in this world can make another wine cup like this one again. This is a part of our cultural heritage. Every Chinese should be proud of it.'' The young man whose revolutionary work I had interrupted said angrily, ''You shut up! These things belong to the old culture. They are the useless toys of the feudal emperors and the modern capitalist class and have no significance to us, the proletarian class. Our Great Leader Chairman Mao taught us, 'If we do not destroy, we cannot establish.' The old culture must be destroyed to make way for the new socialist culture.'' Pleading was not going to move the Red Guards. The time had come to try diplomacy. ''Please, Red Guards! Believe me, I'm not opposed to you. But remember, these things were not made by members of the capitalist class; they were made by the workers of a bygone age. I beg you to take them to the Shanghai Museum. You can consult their experts.'' A girl said, ''The Shanghai Museum is closed. The experts there are being investigated. Some of them are also class enemies. In any case, they are intellectuals. The capitalist class nourishes the intellectuals, so they belong to the same side. Now we are going to destroy the capitalist class, so naturally the intellectuals are to be destroyed too.'' Getting really desperate, I said, ''Don't you realize all these things are extremely valuable? You can sell them in Hong Kong for a large sum of money. You will be able to finance your world revolution with that money.'' Perhaps, being an older person, the teacher felt some sense of responsibility. She asked me, ''Are you sure your collection is valuable? How much would you say it is worth?'' ''As a rough estimate, at least a million yuan (($500,000 at the 1966 exchange rate)),'' I told her. The Red Guards were impressed. The teacher was by now anxious to save the treasures, but she was afraid to put herself in the wrong with the Red Guards. They all went to the dining room to confer.

AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE

I put the remaining wine cups in the box and went upstairs to inspect the damage. My heart sank. On the third floor landing were fragments of porcelain in colors of oxblood, imperial yellow, celadon green and blue-and-white. The third-floor rooms resembled a scene after an earthquake. The Red Guards had emptied my storage cupboard. Flour, sugar and food lay on top of heaps of clothing they had taken out of cupboards. They had already dealt with my fur coats and evening dresses with scissors. The ceiling fan was whirling. Bits of fur, silk and torn tissue paper were flying around. Tables and chairs were overturned. In my bedroom, the bedspread was soiled with footprints. The Red Guards had slashed the mattress, punched holes in the lacquered screen, smashed the porcelain lamps and crushed their white silk lampshades. In the largest guest room, where the Red Guards had carried out most of their cutting and smashing, a radio set was broadcasting revolutionary songs based on Mao's quotations. A female voice was singing, ''Marxism can be summed up in one sentence: revolution is justifiable.'' Through a window I saw bright, leaping flames in the garden. A bonfire had been lit in the middle of the lawn. The Red Guards were standing around the fire tossing my books onto the flames. My heart tightened with pain. Several Red Guards began hammering on the furniture and breaking my records. I said to a teacher, ''These records are classical music by the great masters of Europe. Why not preserve the records and donate them to the Music Society?'' ''You live in the past,'' he said. ''Don't you know that our Great Leader has said that Western music of any kind is decadent? We are going to compose our own proletarian music. As for the Music Society, it's disbanded.'' I was so tired that I could hardly stand. I asked the teacher for permission to rest. ''You may go to your daughter's room. She is an independent filmworker earning a salary. Her room is not included in our revolutionary action.'' In my daughter's room I lay down on her bed. Through the window I could see the faint light of dawn on the eastern horizon. When I woke, the sun was streaming into the room. I went to the kitchen and asked the cook to make coffee and toast. A pretty girl with two long plaits over her shoulders came in to watch me. She picked up my coffee cup and sniffed. Making a grimace, she asked me, ''What is this?'' ''It's coffee,'' I said. ''What is coffee?'' I told her that coffee was rather like tea, only stronger. ''Is it foreign food?'' She put the cup down with a clatter. ''I suppose you could call it foreign.'' ''Why do you have to drink a foreign beverage? Why do you have so many foreign books? Why are you so foreign altogether? In every room in this house there are imported things, but there is not a single portrait of our beloved Great Leader.'' Outside the kitchen, I saw a man who had not been with the Red Guards the night before. I could tell by his air of self-assurance that he was a party official. ''I'm a liaison officer of the municipal government,'' he said. ''It's my job to inspect the revolutionary action of the Red Guards. Have you been beaten or ill treated?'' ''No, not at all,'' I said. ''These Red Guards carried out their revolutionary action strictly according to the teachings of our Great Leader Chairman Mao.'' The Red Guards beamed. He said, ''That's good. It's not the purpose of the proletarian class to destroy your body. We want to save your soul by reforming your way of thinking. You will be allowed enough clothing and basic furniture to carry on a normal life, but you won't be allowed to maintain a standard of living above that of the average worker.'' Before he left, he told me, ''It's the objective of the proletarian revolution to form a classless society, where no one is above anyone else.'' After living in Communist China for 17 years, I knew that such a society was only a dream because those who seized power would invariably become the new ruling class. Even this very junior official in the party hierarchy could make arbitrary decisions about my life and lecture me and accuse me of crimes simply because he was an official and I was just an ordinary citizen. We were not equals by any stretch of the imagination.

HOUSE ARREST

A few days later, there came to my house a slightly built man wearing a pair of tinted spectacles. With him came two other men and a woman wearing armbands with the three Chinese characters for ''revolutionaries.'' ''You are the class enemy of this house, guilty of conspiring with foreign powers,'' the man said. ''Do you deny it?'' ''Of course I deny it! Who are you? What do you want?'' ''We are the Proletarian Revolutionaries.'' ''I never heard of such a title,'' I said. ''You are going to hear a lot about us. We are the Revolutionaries who represent the working class, which is the ruling class in China.'' The man with the tinted spectacles assumed a severe tone of voice. ''Where have you hidden your gold and weapons?'' ''What gold and weapons?'' ''You know what gold and weapons!'' ''I have no gold or weapons. The Red Guards have been here. They did not find any gold or weapons.'' ''You hid them. Our Great Leader told us that the class enemies are secreting gold and weapons. He can't be wrong.'' The Revolutionaries ripped open mattresses, cut the upholstery of the chairs and sofas, removed tiles from the walls of the bathrooms, poked in the fireplace and the chimney, lifted floorboards, climbed onto the roof, fished in the water tank under the ceiling and crawled under the floor. Darkness had long descended on the city when they decided to dig up the garden. They switched on the terrace lights and started digging. The damp, ash-covered lawn was trampled into a sea of mud; all the flower beds were dug up, and spades were sunk into the earth around the shrubs. They even pulled plants out of their pots. But they found nothing, for nothing was there to be found. In the end, physical exhaustion got the better of their revolutionary zeal. But they were fuming; they had lost face by not finding anything. The man in the tinted glasses was beside himself with rage. His face turned white, and his lips trembled. He raised his arm to strike me. At that very moment Meiping's cat, Fluffy, tore through the kitchen door, jumped on the man's leg and sank his teeth into the man's calf. Screaming with pain, the man hopped wildly on one leg, trying to shake the cat off. The others also tried to grab Fluffy, but the agile cat ran out of the house and climbed onto his favorite branch of the magnolia tree. From this safe perch, Fluffy looked at us and mewed. The wounded man was almost demented. He dashed to the tree and shook it. Fluffy hopped up to a higher branch, ran onto the roof of my neighbor's house and disappeared into the night. One of the men said, ''You keep a wild animal in the house to attack the Revolutionaries. You will be punished. As for the cat, we will have the neighborhood committee look for it and put it to death. You are very much mistaken if you think by making your cat bite us we will give up. We are going to look further for the gold and weapons.'' They locked me into the dining room. I resigned myself to the possibility of the total destruction of my home. Pulling three dining chairs together, I lay down on the cushions. I dozed despite the shouting and arguing outside. At daybreak, a woman Revolutionary said to me, ''You are not allowed to go $ out of the house anymore. The Red Guards will take turns watching you.'' I was astonished and angry. I asked her, ''What authority have you to keep me confined to the house?'' ''I have the authority of the Proletarian Revolutionaries. We are doing you a kindness in putting you under house arrest. A woman like you would be beaten to death outside. Do you know what's going on outside? A full-scale revolution.'' Two Red Guards detailed to watch me sat on chairs outside my room. Every now and then one of them would open my door to see what I was doing. My daughter was allowed to live in her own room, but I was not allowed to go in there or to speak to her when she came home, which was seldom; she had to spend more and more nights at the studio taking part in the Cultural Revolution.

''YOU ARE GUILTY''

In the late afternoon of Sept. 27, I was taken to the same school building I had gone to in July. This time I was the object of the ''struggle'' meeting, attended not only by the Red Guards and the Revolutionaries who had come to my house but also by the former staff of Shell. The man with the tinted spectacles was in charge. He was quite a fluent speaker. He started with the Opium War of 1840, giving a vivid description of how the invading fleet of Britain bombarded the Chinese coast. He spoke as if it were I who had led the British fleet up the Pearl River. He described Shell as a multinational firm and said that Lenin had stated that such companies were the worst enemies of socialism. He turned to my family background, telling the audience that I was the descendant of a big landlord family, that my father was a senior official of the pre-Kuomintang government. He said that I went to England and was trained by the British to be ''a faithful running dog'' in one of their universities. My late husband was described as a ''residue of the decadent Kuomintang regime'' who was fortunate to have died and escaped judgment by the Revolutionaries. Throughout his speech, the audience shouted slogans; a number accused me of being a ''spy.'' When he had finished speaking, the Red Guard who had led the others into my home described its ''luxury.'' Another Red Guard told how I had tried to ''undermine'' their ''revolutionary activities'' by fighting with them to preserve ''old culture.'' A Revolutionary spoke of my stubborn arrogance and accused me of deliberately keeping a ''wild animal'' in the house to attack the Revolutionaries. Former employees of Shell were called upon to give evidence against me. I could see how frightened they all were, and I wondered what they must have gone through. The men who got up to speak were white, and their hands holding the prepared statements shook. None looked in my direction. The man with the tinted spectacles said, ''You have listened to the mountain of evidence against you. Your crime against the Chinese people is extremely serious. You can only be reformed by giving a full confession telling us how you conspired with the British imperialists in their scheme to undermine the People's Government. Are you going to confess?'' ''I have never done anything against the Chinese people and government. The Shell office was here because the Chinese government wanted it to be here.'' Everything I said was drowned by angry shouts and screams of ''Confess! Confess!'' and ''We will not allow a class enemy to argue!'' The Red Guards and Revolutionaries crowded around me, shook their fists in my face, pulled at my clothes and spat on my jacket while yelling, ''Dirty spy!'' ''Dirty running dog!'' ''We will kill you!'' They pushed me very hard. When the noise died down a little, the man in spectacles said, ''Our patience is exhausted. You are guilty. We could give you the death penalty. But we want to give you a chance to reform yourself. Are you going to confess?'' Everybody stared at me expectantly. I said nothing. The man beckoned to a youth at the back of the mob, who came forward with a pair of shiny metal handcuffs, then asked, ''Are you going to confess?'' I answered in a calm voice, ''I've never done anything against the People's Government. I have no connection with any foreign government.'' ''Come along!'' the young man with the handcuffs said. Parked in front of the school was a black Jeep. ''Are you going to confess?'' the man asked again. I was silently reciting to myself the 23rd Psalm, ''The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want . . . '' ''Have you gone dumb?'' ''Confess!'' They were shouting. I lifted my head and said in a loud and firm voice, ''I'm not guilty! I have nothing to confess.'' The young man from the police pulled my arms behind my back and put the handcuffs on my wrists. Then we got into the Jeep and drove off into the dark streets.

PRISONER 1806

The No. 1 Detention House, where I was to remain for 6 1/2 years, was the foremost detention house for political prisoners in Shanghai. It was an old establishment where the Kuomintang had once imprisoned Communists. The black Jeep drove through the main gate, along a drive lined by willow trees, then through another gate. I was undressed, searched, photographed, fingerprinted. ''While you are here, you will be known by a number,'' the man at the entry desk said. ''You'll no longer use your name, not even to the guards. Your number is 1806.'' I was taken out through another gate and into a two-story building where women prisoners were housed. The guard took me to a cell, then pushed the bolt back with a loud clang. I looked around the room, and my heart sank. Cobwebs dangled from the ceiling; the once whitewashed walls were yellow with age and streaked with dust. The single naked bulb was coated with grime and extremely dim. Patches of the cement floor were black with dampness. A strong musty smell pervaded the air. I hastened to open the only small window, with its rust-pitted iron bars. When I succeeded in pulling the knob and the window swung open, flakes of peeling paint as well as a shower of dust fell to the floor. The only furniture in the room was three narrow beds of rough wooden planks, one against the wall, the other two stacked one on top of the other. A cement toilet was built into one corner. Never in my life had I been in or even imagined a place so primitive and filthy. The guard came back with several sheets of toilet paper of the roughest kind, which she handed to me through a small square window in the door of the cell, saying, ''I'll lend you this. When you get your supply, you must return to the government the same number of sheets. Now go to sleep. Lie with your head toward the door. That's the regulation.'' I didn't want to touch the dust-covered bed. But I needed to lie down, as my legs were badly swollen. I pulled the bed away from the dirty wall and wiped it with the toilet paper. But the dirt was so deeply ingrained that I could remove only the loose dust. Then I lay down anyhow and closed my eyes. The naked bulb hanging from the center of the cell was directly above my head. Though dim, it irritated me. I looked around the cell but could not see a light switch anywhere. ''Please!'' I called, knocking on the door. ''I can't find the light switch.'' ! ''We don't switch off the light at night. In future, when you want to speak to the guards, just say, 'Report.' Don't knock on the door. Don't say anything else.'' I lay down again and turned to the dusty wall to avoid the light. Just before daybreak, the electric light in the cell was switched off. In the darkness, the dirt and ugliness of the room disappeared. I could imagine myself elsewhere. During all the years I spent in that prison cell, the short time of darkness after the light was switched off and before daybreak was always a moment when I recovered the dignity of my being and felt a sense of renewal, simply because I had a precious moment of freedom when I was not under the watchful eyes of the guards. At daybreak, we were awakened by a guard shouting, ''Get up! Get up!'' The shutter of the small window on the door was pushed open. An oblong aluminum container appeared. A woman's voice said impatiently, ''Come over, come over.'' When I took the container, she said, ''In future, stand here at mealtimes and wait.'' She also handed me a pair of bamboo chopsticks, wet and worn thin with prolonged usage. The battered container was three-quarters full of lukewarm watery rice porridge with a few strips of pickled vegetables floating on the top. I wiped the edge of the container with a piece of toilet paper and took a tentative sip. The rice tasted smoky, and the saltiness of the pickled vegetables made it bitter. The food was worse than I could possibly have imagined, but I made a determined effort to drink half of it. I decided that if I was going to be held here, I could clean out this cell. I found that I was allowed to buy supplies, so I got a washbasin, two enameled mugs for eating and drinking, sewing thread, needles, soap, towels, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and more toilet paper. I washed the bed thoroughly. I climbed onto my rolled-up bedding to wipe the dust-smeared windowpanes so that more light could come in. After I had washed the cement toilet, I still had enough cold water left to bathe myself and rinse out my blouse. When hot water for drinking was issued, I drank it with enjoyment. Plain boiled water had never tasted so good. Many weeks passed. One day merged into another. Prolonged isolation heightened my feeling of depression. I longed for some news of my daughter. I missed her terribly and worried about her constantly. Often I would be so choked with emotion that breathing became difficult. One day, in the early afternoon, I saw a small spider, no bigger than a good-size pea, climbing up one of the rust-eroded bars. Quite a long walk for such a tiny thing, I thought. When it reached the top, it suddenly swung out and descended on a thin silken thread spun from one end of its body. With a leap and swing, it secured the end of the thread to another bar. The spider then crawled back along the silken thread to where it had started and swung out in another direction. The tiny creature knew its job and was carrying it out with confidence. When the frame was made, the spider proceeded to weave a web that was intricately beautiful and absolutely perfect. Who had taught the spider how to make a web? Could it really have acquired the skill through evolution, or did God create the spider and endow it with the ability to make a web so that it could catch food and perpetuate its species? Did it act simply by instinct? I knew I had just witnessed something beautiful and uplifting. Whether God had made the spider or not, I thanked him for what I had just seen. A miracle of life had been shown me. Mao Tse-tung and his Revolutionaries seemed much less menacing. I felt a renewal of hope and confidence. I became very attached to the little spider. First thing in the morning, throughout the day and last thing at night, I would look at it and feel reassured when I saw that it was still there. The tiny spider became my companion. My spirits lightened. The depressing feeling of complete isolation was broken.

''I WOULD RATHER DIE THAN LIE''

On a sunny morning in November, I was in the middle of the monthly scrubbing of bedsheets, when a guard yelled, ''Come out! You must go for interrogation.'' Interrogation! At last it seemed I was to come face to face with my antagonist. My heart pounded as I followed the guard. The long-awaited opportunity to have my case examined dispassionately was here at last. I found myself confronting two pale-faced men, dressed in the baggy and faded blue cotton Maoist uniform. About two yards from the counter where they sat was a heavy wooden chair for the prisoner. The room was very dark, but the little light that came through the window was focused on the prisoner. The walls were dusty, the cement floor black with damp. ''Do you know what this place is?'' the chief interrogator asked. ''This is the place where counterrevolutionaries who have committed crimes against the ! People's Government are locked up and investigated.'' ''In that case, I should not have been brought here,'' I declared. ''There must have been some mistake.'' ''The People's Government does not make mistakes.'' ''You will have to provide some evidence to prove what you are saying.'' I said. I was deeply disappointed that the long-awaited interrogation was turning out to be just like the sessions I had had before my imprisonment. ''Of course we have the evidence,'' the interrogator bluffed. ''Produce it, then,'' I said, calling his bluff. ''Why waste time having an interrogation? Why not just produce the evidence and punish the culprit?'' ''It would be an easy matter to produce the evidence and punish you. But that is not the policy of our Great Leader. The purpose of this interrogation is to help you change your way of thinking, to give you an opportunity to earn lenient treatment by confessing frankly so that you can become a new person. We are patient. We can wait. A woman like you will not last five years in this place. Eventually you will be begging for a chance to confess. If you don't you will surely die.'' ''I would rather die than tell a lie.'' ''You are audacious. But you can't talk your way out of your difficulties. The only way out for you is to give a full confession.'' I had a cold, and my head was starting to throb. ''First of all, we want you to write your autobiography,'' he said. ''Write everything down. Do not try to hide anything. We will check what you write with the material we already have about you.'' A guard took me back to my cell. I was hungry, tired and very disappointed. By nightfall a strong wind was blowing. The window of the cell was so badly fitted that cold air came through in sharp gusts. By then, the web of my small spider friend was already torn. Instead of making a new web promptly as it always had done in the past, the spider descended from the ceiling on a long silken thread. When it reached the floor, it crawled very slowly and with difficulty. My small friend seemed rather weak. It stumbled and stopped every few steps. Could a spider get sick, or was it merely cold? I saw it looking for a sheltered place away from the wind. Finally, in a crevice, it made a tiny web, not as well done or beautiful as the ones before, but the layered threads were thicker, forming something rather like a cocoon. Soon after, the spider crawled across the floor and disappeared under the bed. That was the last I saw of it. Next day, I wrote my autobiography rather quickly on just five sheets of paper. When I was led to the interrogation room, the interrogator scowled at me. ''Do you call this a serious effort at self-examination? You gave a statistical record of your life like someone writing down an account of daily expenditures. Why? Because you have something to hide!'' That night I had a nightmare, the first of many: I was on the narrow ledge of a sheer rocky cliff by the sea. The roaring waves of the incoming tide were rising to engulf me. It was pitch dark, I was utterly alone, and I was petrified.

PHYSICAL DETERIORATION

By the middle of December, winter came in earnest. A penetrating north wind swept the city with icy blasts. The window and door of my unheated cell rattled with each gust. I had on both my sweaters and a padded jacket, but still spasms of shivering shook my body. In the icy room, my breath made white, cloudy puffs, and I had to stamp my feet and rub my hands to bring blood to my toes and fingers. Something mysterious was happening outside. As winter turned to spring, I learned that Shanghai was in a constant state of upheaval. One day the newspaper ran a statement attributed to Defense Minister Lin Biao: ''Let us not exaggerate the seriousness of this situation. Many people have committed suicide or been killed. But these deaths are fewer than those incurred during the war against Japan or the Civil War, or even during natural disasters.'' These callous words made me sick with apprehension for Meiping's safety. At the beginning of my second winter at the detention house, I again developed a bad cold, which turned to bronchitis. My body shook with spasms of coughing, particularly severe during the night when the cell became extremely cold. A few nights later a man's voice announced over the loudspeaker that the No. 1 Detention House had been placed under military control. ''Some of you have not confessed,'' he said. ''The policy of our Great Leader Chairman Mao is 'Lenient treatment for those who confess, severe punishment for those who remain stubborn and reward for those who render meritorious service by denouncing others.' Tonight we will deal with some of the outstanding cases here.'' Then he called out one name after another of prisoners sentenced to death because they had not confessed their crimes. With each name the man / shouted at the top of his voice: ''Take him out! Immediate execution!'' His voice was an inhuman roar, charged with cruelty. The thought that this person was now in charge of my fate frightened me.

Starting the next day, the food got worse. Some days there was just a little dry rice with boiled cabbage, others just some boiled sweet potatoes. Hunger became a permanent state, an ever present hollowness. The flesh on my body slowly melted away, my eyesight deteriorated, and simple activities such as washing clothes exhausted me. From time to time, I was called for special indoctrination and questioning by militant guards. The guards used these occasions to abuse me verbally and to tell me I would be shot soon or kept at the detention house for the rest of my life. One morning, after coughing all night and being unable to sleep because of a headache, I could barely get out of bed. I asked for a doctor. The guard gave me two aspirin tablets and told me to drink plenty of water. I waited for the doctor, but he did not come. When I asked for him again, the guard said, ''The doctor has gone to the countryside to receive re-education through physical labor. I don't know when he will be allowed to come back. Maybe someone will come to take his place.'' Next day, a young man came to provide medical attention. After I told him I had a fever and had been coughing for nearly two months, he declared, ''You probably have hepatitis. There is a lot of it going around in this detention house. I'll examine a specimen of your blood.'' I was astonished. Any ignoramus would know that I had bronchitis, possibly verging on pneumonia, not hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver with symptoms entirely different from mine. What sort of ''doctor'' was this? When I looked at him through the small window, I saw a country lad, no more than 20 years of age, in a soldier's uniform. I realized he was not a trained doctor at all but had been given the job because Mao had said, ''We must learn swimming from swimming.'' Several days passed; my fever got so high that I no longer felt the cold in the cell. The guard told me to stay in bed. I slept most of the time, in a state of semiconsciousness, with fantastic dreams of myself floating in and out of the cell through the iron-barred window as if I were an ethereal spirit. One morning the young man came back and said, ''You don't have hepatitis. It's probably TB. A lot of prisoners have TB. You may go to the hospital to have a fluoroscope.'' The waiting room of the prison hospital could only be described as a scene of hell, full of emaciated human beings in tattered clothes, with pain and agony clearly written on their wasted faces, waiting patiently for the end. Besides the hunched figures on the benches, there were others wrapped in patched quilts lying on dirty canvas stretchers on the cement floor. When I was finally sent to see a doctor, she said I had high fever and probably had pneumonia. For the next few days, I drifted in and out of consciousness. When my mind came into focus again, I found my arm bound to the side of the bed. I was being fed intravenously. A woman in the ward came over to chat. She said, ''You were unconscious for six days. They thought you were going to die.'' She was as thin as a reed, with hollow cheeks, colorless dry skin, but burning bright eyes. ''Have you got TB?'' she asked. ''This is a TB ward. But I go back to the cell tomorrow because I no longer cough blood. When my condition deteriorates and I cough blood again, they will let me come back. They don't bother to cure us, but they don't let us die either.'' After another week, the doctor told me I could return to No. 1 Detention House. The pneumonia marked the beginning of serious physical deterioration. The prolonged lack of nutritious food, sunshine and fresh air made full recovery impossible and caused the body's aging process to speed up. It also reduced my mental powers to such an extent that I often found it difficult to concentrate on one subject for long. The prospect of losing my ability to think logically and analytically frightened me more than the fact that my hair was falling out by the handful, my gums bled and I had lost a great deal of weight.

SNAPPING BACK

I decided that if I was going to survive the Cultural Revolution, I needed physical and mental exercise. I devised a series of exercises that moved every part of my body from my head to my toes; I did this twice a day. At first, the exercise exhausted me, and I had to interrupt it with frequent rest. Also I had to avoid the prying eyes of the guards, as exercise other than a few minutes of walking in the cell after meals was forbidden. Nevertheless, I managed to exercise each day and after a few months I recovered my physical strength somewhat, as well as my feeling of well-being. For mental exercise, I first tried to memorize some of Mao's essays to enable me to understand his mentality better and to use his quotations more fluently when I had to face an interrogator again. But to study Mao's books for many hours a day was a depressing occupation for me, his victim. I turned instead to the Tang dynasty poetry I had learned as a schoolgirl. It really amazed me that I was able to dig out from the deep recesses of my brain verses that had lain dormant for decades. Whenever I managed to piece together a whole poem, I felt a sense of happy accomplishment. My persistent efforts to maintain sanity had a measure of success. But there were still moments when I was so burdened with hunger and misery that I was tempted to let go my tenuous grip on the lifeline of survival. At those times, I had to depend on conflict with the guards to stimulate my fighting spirit. ''How long do I have to wait for the government to investigate my case?'' I would shout at one of them. ''It's illegal to lock up an innocent person in prison. It's against Chairman Mao's teachings.'' ''Hush! Don't shout! The government will deal with your case in due course. You are not the only one.'' ''I'm innocent!'' I yelled. ''I've never committed any crime. You have no right to lock up a law-abiding citizen! I demand rehabilitation and an apology!'' ''Keep quiet!'' The guard was now shouting in anger. ''Have you gone mad?'' Sometimes my endurance outlasted the guards' patience, and they resorted to physical violence to silence me, hitting me or kicking my legs. They called me a ''hysterical old woman,'' but they never knew my real purpose in provoking them. Though my legs to this day bear scars inflicted by their heavy boots, I always enjoyed good humor and calm spirits after fighting with the guards. I needed human contact; even encounters with the guards were better than complete isolation.

Early in 1969, two months after Mao had turned on his old comrade Liu Shaoqi and had him denounced and expelled from the Communist Party, I was interrogated by five men. ''We are interested in those who made it possible for you and others like you to undermine the security of China on behalf of the imperialists,'' one of them said.

''Do you mean Liu Shaoqi?'' I asked. ''I assure you I have never met him.'' ''Liu was one of them.'' It occurred to me that when a Communist leader fell from grace, all who had ever worked with him were disgraced. So there must exist in the No. 1 Detention House a number of men and women whose fate was linked to Liu's and who would be sympathetic to him. If my defending Liu would earn me better treatment, it was worth doing. Assuming an air of innocent stupidity, I said, ''Honestly, I still don't understand what Chairman Liu Shaoqi did wrong.'' ''You are not allowed to refer to a traitor as 'chairman'!'' they all shouted. When they quieted down, I said, ''I wonder if the material on which the Central Committee based its judgment was reliable. You know how easily people can be frightened into making false confessions.'' I couldn't resist this dig. I was sure they at least suspected that the case against Liu was manufactured. (After Mao's death an official Central Committee document described how activists selected by Jiang Qing and Lin Biao tortured Liu's associates to make them provide false evidence.) In the spring of 1969, after nearly three years in prison, I was handcuffed and taken back to that same building where I had watched the crowd ''struggle'' against Shell's chief accountant, Tao Feng. I was half-thrown, half-dropped onto the floor. One man kept his hand on my head so that I could not look around. The other people in the room were shouting slogans demanding my downfall and destruction. ''Here she is!'' shouted the meeting's leader. ''We have brought her here so that she will be exposed for what she is. We'll let her see that we know all her secrets.'' Tao Feng stood up and began speaking in a faltering voice. ''I was a spy for the British imperialists,'' he said. ''I joined the British spy organization through this woman's husband. After he died, this woman became my boss. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, she warned me not to confess and promised me a large sum of money if I would hold out.'' I felt I must put a stop to this farce. I jerked my head up and laughed uproariously. There was a moment of stunned silence. The man behind me pushed my head down again. Another man shouted, ''What are you laughing at?'' ''If you put on a comedy play, you must expect the audience to laugh,'' I answered. ''Take her out! Take her out!'' the young leader yelled. I was dragged out and pushed into the waiting car. A woman Revolutionary kept her hand over my mouth to prevent me from speaking, but I was lighthearted. I thoroughly enjoyed breaking up their carefully planned meeting.

ANGRY VOICES, HOSTILE FACES

With the coming of warmer weather my general health seemed to improve somewhat. One piece at a time, I washed my winter sweaters and socks and laid them out to dry. Be prepared for a long stay in the detention house, I told myself. One spring day, I was handcuffed again and taken to a red brick building I had never seen before. Two strong women guards led me into a crowded room and deposited me in front of a microphone opposite the platform. One of them pushed my head down so that I was forced to look at the floor. The audience was shouting slogans and waving Little Red Books. A man in front of me gave an account of my family background and personal life. Each time my story was recounted I became richer and my way of life more decadent and luxurious. Now the farce reached fantastic proportions. When the speaker told them I was a spy for the imperialists, people jumped up and crowded around me to shout abuse.

Instinctively I raised my head to respond. The women suddenly jerked up my handcuffs. Such sharp pain tore at my shoulder joints that I had to bend forward with my head well down to ease the agony. They kept me in this position throughout the man's denunciation. Another man spoke about my ''disobedience'' to the Communist Party, my refusal to confess. The audience was now even more angry. I was pushed and fell to the floor. The female giants by my side pulled me up with their strong arms. The people in the audience worked themselves into a state of hysteria. Their shouts drowned out the speaker. Someone pushed me hard from behind. I stumbled and knocked over the microphone. One of the women tripped over the wires and fell, dragging me by the handcuffs. I fell in an awkward position. My face was pressed on the floor; many others fell on top of us in the confusion. Everybody seemed to be yelling. There was pandemonium. Finally I was pulled up again. Every few days, I was taken to another struggle meeting. When the audience was very violent, I suffered much. Afterward, I would be asked whether I was ready to confess. I would say, ''I have nothing to confess'' or ''I'm not guilty'' or simply remain silent. Then I would be taken to yet another struggle meeting. This ''rotating struggle,'' as it was called, was mind- numbing. Day after day, my ears were filled with the sound of angry, accusing voices, my eyes were blurred by images of hostile faces, and my body ached from physical abuse. I no longer felt like a human being, just an inanimate object. ; This series of interrogations lasted nearly seven months, until the end of 1969. Then I was no longer called to the interrogation room. Months passed. The misery of my life in the winter of 1969-70 was beyond imagination. Looking back on those months of heavy snowstorms, intense cold and constant pain, I marvel that I could have lived through it all. Rations were cut again. Often a small lump of fat rather than meat appeared with my rice. The processed straw toilet paper was replaced by something even coarser, and this also was rationed. In early spring, I again became ill with pneumonia and was taken to the prison hospital. I made a slow recovery, but prolonged hardship and privation were eroding my mental powers in a frightening way. The stalling of my investigation produced in me a deep feeling of despondency.

MANACLED

One afternoon in January 1971 I was summoned to the interrogation room once again. The call was so unexpected that my heart was pounding with excitement as I followed the guard. At the door of the interrogation room, the guard suddenly gave me a hard shove. Five more guards crowded around me, shouting abuse at me. ''You are the running dog of the imperialists,'' said one. ''You are a dirty exploiter of workers and peasants,'' shouted another. ''You are a counterrevolutionary,'' yelled a third. To show their impatience, they pushed me from one guard to another like a ball in a game. I became dizzy and breathless. A young male guard grabbed the lapels of my padded jacket, pulled me toward him and gave me a hard push. I staggered backward and hit the wall. He did this several times. All the while, the other guards continued to shout at me. My ears were ringing, my head was splitting and my body was trembling. I collapsed into a chair and closed my eyes. Suddenly a stinging blow landed on my cheek. A female guard shouted, ''Are you going to confess?'' A sharp blow landed on my other cheek as several voices shouted, ''Are you going to confess?'' I kept my eyes closed and ignored them. One of the female guards gave my cheek another smart slap, took my arms and draped them around the back of my chair. Another guard grabbed my wrists and clamped handcuffs on them. ''These handcuffs are to punish you for your intransigence,'' the female said. ''You will wear them until you are ready to confess. Only then will we take them off. If you confess now, we will take them off now. If you confess tomorrow, we will take them off tomorrow. If you do not confess for a year, you will have to wear them for a year. If you never confess, you will have to wear them to your grave.'' ''What about it?'' another male guard said. ''Are you ready to confess? Just say yes, and we will take the handcuffs off.'' I looked at them all and said in a feeble voice, ''I've done nothing wrong. I have nothing to confess.'' The militant female guard tightened the handcuffs a few notches. Another guard said, ''Follow me!'' A blizzard was in full force. The wind nearly knocked me over when I stepped out of the interrogation building. The guard led me to a small building in a corner of the prison compound, unlocked a small door and said, ''Get in!'' The room was very dark. I waited for him to switch on the light, but he just closed the door after me. Standing outside, he asked, ''Are you going to confess?'' When I did not reply, he snapped the lock and went away. I stood just inside the door in total darkness, trying to make out where I was. An unpleasant odor of staleness and decay assailed me. Gradually I realized that the tiny room had no windows. However, the door fitted badly; a thin thread of light seeped through the gap. When my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I saw vaguely that there was a wooden board on the dusty floor and a cement toilet in the corner. The room was no more than about five feet square. The handcuffs felt different. They were much heavier and thicker, with a square edge, not rounded like the others I had worn. My hands felt hot, and my fingers were stiff. I did not know how long I sat there. In a dark room, in complete isolation, time assumed a different meaning or had no meaning at all. My legs felt stiff and my head ached. The night dragged on very slowly. More and more I felt that I was buried in a cement box deep underground. My hands became very hot and uncomfortable. When I found it difficult to curl my fingers into a fist, I knew they were swollen. My hands became my sole preoccupation. I wondered how long I would remain manacled like this and how long I could live without food or water. When finally I heard the sound of a guard coming through the outside door, I stood up. ''Are you going to confess?'' a male guard asked. ''No, it's about my hands. They are badly swollen. Could you loosen the handcuffs a bit?'' ''Why don't you confess? If you do, the handcuffs will be taken off.'' In the morning, I was taken back to the interrogation room and told to confess. ''You deserve all you are getting!'' the female guard shouted. ''You are tired of living. I have never seen a prisoner as stubborn and stupid as you!'' A guard finally took me back to my regular cell and said to me, ''Now you will continue your punishment in here.''

UNENDING PAIN

When I was called to the interrogation room the day before, drinking water had just been issued. It was still in the green enameled mug on the edge of the table. Now I bent over the mug, removed the lid by gripping the knob on top of it with my teeth. Then I caught the edge of the mug with my teeth, gradually lowered my body to a squatting position, and tipped the water into my mouth. When the next meal was delivered I had to refuse it, even though I was famished, for I simply did not know how I could eat with my hands handcuffed behind my back. At bedtime, I unrolled my quilt and blanket and spread them over the bed. It was slow work and strenuous. Then I lay down, first on one side with my body weight pressing down on one shoulder and arm. My arm ached. Then I tried to lie on my stomach with my face turned to one side. While I was performing these acrobatics with my hands cuffed behind my back, I never stopped shivering. The room was bitterly cold. It was a long night of misery and suffering. On the third day, the hunger pains in my abdomen miraculously stopped. But I felt very weak. My eyes could no longer focus, and the usual sound of prison activities seemed to grow fainter and fainter.

Late that night, a voice at the door said, ''Come over!'' It was one of the older guards, who had always been humane. ''Why aren't you eating your meals?'' she asked me. ''I don't know how to eat without using my hands,'' I said. ''Think hard. There is a way. You have a spoon.'' The next morning, when the guard called the prisoners to get up, I felt something sticky and wet on my hands. Turning to the quilt, I saw stains of blood mixed with pus. The handcuffs had already broken my skin and were cutting into my flesh. I shuddered with a real fear of losing the use of my hands. But I figured out how to eat. When the woman from the kitchen offered me the container with rice, I turned my back to the door, and she placed the container in my hands. I took it to the table, picked up the plastic spoon and shoveled the rice and cabbage onto the table. With each movement of my hands, the handcuffs dug deeper into my flesh. My whole body was racked with pain, and tears came into my eyes. But I persisted until I got quite a bit of the rice onto the table. Then I turned around, bent over the table and ate like an animal. Although the rice I managed to eat each day did make me feel stronger, I began having difficulty walking. For some reason, the handcuffs were affecting my feet. Like my hands, they felt hot and painful. I staggered about, for my feet could not bear even the reduced weight of my emaciated body. The stains of blood and pus on the quilt became larger and more numerous as the handcuffs cut through more skin on my wrists. Either the weather suddenly got a lot warmer or I was feverish, for I no longer felt the cold but shivered from pain whenever I had to move my hands or stagger across the room.

Several more days passed. The handcuffs were now beginning to affect my mind, probably through their effect on my nervous system. I got muddled periodically and forgot where I was. I no longer remembered how many days ago I was first manacled. Life was just an unending road of acute pain and suffering on which I must trudge along as best I could. During moments of lucidity, I tried to discipline my mind by doing simple arithmetic. I would repeat to myself, ''Two and two makes four, four and four equals eight, eight and eight equals 16 . . . '' But after only a little while, my ability to concentrate would evaporate, and I would get confused again. After several more days, I no longer had the strength to stagger to the small window for rice or water. I drifted in and out of consciousness for some time, then passed out altogether. When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on the dusty floor. ''Get up! Get up!'' a man's voice was shouting. ''You are feigning death! You won't be allowed to get away with it.'' My arms were still bent to my back, but they were no longer handcuffed. The militant female guard was holding the heavy brass cuffs, all covered with congealed blood and pus. The guard probably considered them repulsive, as she was holding them gingerly by the chain with just two fingers. ''Don't think we are finished with you!'' the man said. ''There are other ways to bring you to your senses.'' The female guard gave my prostrate body a hard kick as they left the cell and locked the door behind them. Slowly I brought my left arm forward and looked at my hand. It was horrible to contemplate. Both hands were swollen to enormous size. The swelling extended to my elbows. Around my wrists where the handcuffs had cut into my flesh, blood and pus continue to ooze out of the wounds. My nails were purple and felt as if they were going to fall off. I touched the back of each hand, only to find the skin and flesh numb. I tried to curl up my fingers but could not because they were the size of carrots. I prayed to God to help me recover the use of my hands. After a while, I tried to get up. But I had to stifle a cry of pain, for my feet could not support my body. I managed to haul myself up to the bed. My woolen socks were stuck to my feet with dried pus. When I succeeded in peeling the socks off with my numb and swollen fingers, I saw that my feet were also swollen to enormous size. Under each toe was a large blister. I could not take the socks completely off because some of the blisters had broken and the pus had dried, gluing the socks to my feet. I managed to stagger to the door and called the guard. ''May I see the doctor, please.'' ''What for?'' ''My wrists and feet are injured. I need some medicine and bandages.'' ''The doctor does not give treatment when a prisoner has been punished.'' ''In that case, perhaps you could just give me some disinfectant ointment or Mercurochrome for the wounds?'' ''No, not allowed.'' ''May I have some bandages?'' ''No.'' Even with no help, I washed my hands and took care of my injuries, and eventually they began to heal. It took me many months of intense effort to be able to raise my arms above my head; it was a full year before I could stretch them straight above me. The deeper wounds where the metal of the handcuffs cut through my flesh almost to the bone left scars that remain with me to this day.

WHAT'S HAPPENED TO MEIPING?

One day in the fall of 1971, a large bundle was deposited on the floor of my cell by a guard. After I had signed the receipt, I took the bundle to my bed and untied it. To my astonishment, I found the padded jacket, the fleece-lined winter coat, the two sweaters and the woolen underpants the Red Guards had allowed my daughter to keep after they looted our home in 1966. The padded jacket of navy blue woolen material lined with maroon silk was new in 1966, and it looked new now. With trembling hands, I picked up the white porcelain mug Meiping used for tea and found it was stained faintly brown inside. It had not been washed, and the tea had dried. My heart thumped faster and faster as I examined each article. I could not help thinking that something terrible had happened to my daughter not long after I was arrested. She had probably died. That was why the clothes had hardly been worn. Perhaps her death had happened rather suddenly and unexpectedly, so that she did not have time to wash the mug she had used for tea. I rushed to the door, hoping to find out the truth. ''These things you have just given to me -- they are my daughter's clothes and quilt,'' I said. ''Yes,'' answered the guard. ''What's happened to my daughter?'' ''Nothing has happened to her.'' ''Do you mean to tell me that you know for a fact my daughter is alive and well at this moment?'' ''Why should she be otherwise?'' The guard walked away. After a few weeks of anxiety, with little food and hardly any sleep, I became sick once more, with a high fever and delirium. I was again taken to the prison hospital. I recovered, but then I had a bad hemorrhage. When the bleeding was brought under control, I was taken to the hospital for an examination. The ''doctor'' was a young woman in her early twenties, with an armband of the Revolutionaries. She was clumsy, and after the brief examination she told the guard I had cancer of the uterus. I did not believe her because I was sure she was not a qualified doctor. But apparently the guards and others at the detention house believed her. My treatment improved. More months passed. Suddenly, on March 27, 1973, after the midday meal, while I was walking about in the cell, a guard opened the small window and said, ''Pack up all your things.'' ''All my things?'' I asked her. ''Yes, all your things. Don't leave anything behind.'' In the interrogation rooms, the interrogator said, ''I will read the conclusion arrived at by the People's Government on your case.'' He read a document that said I ''deserved punishment'' but added, ''In view of the fact that she is politically backward and ignorant, we decided to give her a chance to realize her mistakes. After 6 1/2 years of education in the No. 1 Detention House, we observed a certain degree of improvement in her way of thinking and an attitude of repentance. We have, therefore, decided to show her proletarian magnanimity by allowing her to leave the detention house as a free person.'' He lifted his head and looked at me. ''Haven't you something to say? Aren't you grateful? Aren't you pleased that you can now leave as a free person?'' I tried my best to control my anger. ''I can't accept your conclusion. I shall remain here in the No. 1 Detention House until a proper conclusion is reached about my case. A proper conclusion must include a declaration that I am innocent of any crime or political mistake, an apology for wrongful arrest and full rehabilitation. Furthermore, the apology must be published in the newspapers in both Shanghai and Peking, because I have friends and relatives in both cities. As for the conclusion you have just read, it's a sham and a fraud, and you all know it.'' The interrogator said, ''The No. 1 Detention House isn't an old people's home. You can't stay here all your life.'' ''It doesn't have to be all my life. I'll stay here until you give a proper conclusion to my case. If you are ready to give one tomorrow, I can leave tomorrow.'' The interrogator stood up. ''I have never seen a prisoner refusing to leave the detention house before. You must be out of your mind. In any case, when the government wants you to go, you have to go. Besides, your family has been waiting for you since morning.'' Did he mean my daughter was out there waiting? Oh, how I longed to see her! Suddenly two female guards came into the room. One on each side, they dragged me out to the gate, and pushed me into the street.

A HAUNTING SADNESS

The young woman waiting to greet Nien Cheng outside the prison was not Meiping, as she still kept hoping, but her goddaughter Hean, the daughter of an old friend. Hean took Cheng to a small house where the released prisoner had been assigned two rooms on the second floor. But what had become of Meiping? Hean did not answer. Only when Cheng insisted did Hean tell her that Meiping had committed suicide on June 16, 1967, during Cheng's first year in prison. At least that was the official story -- that she had jumped from the ninth floor of the Shanghai Athletic Association building while being interrogated. Cheng refused to believe it. She went to the Athletic Association building and learned that it had been covered with scaffolding at the time of Meiping's interrogation; it would have been almost impossible for her to jump to her death. Cheng was determined to learn more, though friends warned her that she was under surveillance and in great danger. Police agents claiming to be Meiping's friends came to visit Cheng at odd hours and urged her to seek revenge. Suspecting a trap, she refused. Groups of schoolchildren suddenly began harassing her in the street, shouting, ''Spy! Imperialist spy!'' She narrowly escaped death when a mysterious bicyclist deliberately knocked her down in the path of an oncoming bus. Her health slowly improved, however. She did not have cancer but merely a hormonal disturbance. And she began to benefit from the changes in China's overall political situation. When Chou En-lai died in January 1976 the radicals were still in control, but on the night of April 5, during a festival when the Chinese traditionally visit their ancestors' graves to pay respects, a climactic event occurred. As huge crowds thronged Peking's Tiananmen Square to honor Chou with flowers, wreaths and poems, supporters of Jiang Qing sent in police and militia to disperse the mourners. ''Thousands were killed,'' writes Cheng, ''and tens of thousands wounded. Those found with poems were condemned as counterrevolutionaries and shot without trial. It took the cleaners of Peking two days to hose away the blood and remove everything including the corpses.'' In September 1976, Mao Tse-tung died and the ferocious Jiang Qing was arrested for conspiracy, along with the rest of the infamous ''Gang of Four,'' whose members had played such a pivotal role in prolonging the Cultural Revolution. Then began the glacial process of ''rehabilitation.'' Cheng petitioned the police to investigate the death of Meiping. But not until October 1978 did a committee of officials finally come to her house ''to apologize to you for the wrongful arrest and imprisonment you suffered.'' The police also unfroze her bank accounts and promised her retroactive interest, and when she declined to accept the interest, they said, ''You will have to accept. It's government policy.'' Her main goals now were to punish the murderers of her daughter and to get to the U.S., where two of her sisters had lived since the 1940s. At a key point in Chinese-U.S. trade talks, when China wanted to appear liberal-minded, Cheng seized the opportunity to apply for a passport -- and got it. She also received unofficial word that her daughter had been abducted and beaten to death by the Red Guards, who presumably were trying to force her to denounce her mother, and that the government had arrested the man considered guilty. Only after she left China did Cheng learn that the killer had been given a wrist slap: a sentence of two years. In September 1980, Cheng left China, moving to Ottawa for about three years, then to Washington, D.C., where she now lives. ''In Washington,'' she says, ''I live a full and busy life. Only sometimes I feel a haunting sadness. At dusk, when the day is fading away and my physical energy is at a low ebb, I may find myself depressed and nostalgic. But next morning I invariably wake up with renewed optimism to welcome the day as another God-given opportunity for enlightenment and experience. My only regret is that Meiping is not here with me.''