A cultural counter-revolution

Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard
By Fan Shen
University of Nebraska Press, 2004
HC, 279 pp. US$24.95
ISBN: 0-8032-4308-1

By Damian Penny
web posted February 7, 2005

"Communism doesn't really starve or execute that many people.
Mostly it just bores them to death. Life behind the Iron Curtain is
like living with your parents forever – literally, in many cases.
There are a million do's and dont's. It's a hassle getting the car
keys. No, life behind the Iron Curtain is worse than that. It's Boy
Scout camp – dusty; dilapidated; crummy food; lousy
accommodations; and asshole counselors with whistles. …and
Mom and Dad will never come to get you – they're snoring in the
next bunk."

- P.J. O'Rourke, "What Do They Do For Fun in Warsaw?"
(1986)

O'Rourke was wrong about the starving and executing part, but
the rest is pretty accurate. Communist regimes killed at least 100
million people in less than a century, and in a few outposts the
killing hasn't stopped. Still, even when confronted with this grisly
figure, extreme leftists will probably tell you that, aside from a
few excesses, life was good for the vast majority of people living
under Communism. Wasn't everyone fed, employed, and made
to feel part of a magnificent, progressive movement?

That's why the hammer and sickle isn't as socially unacceptable
as the swastika, and why boxer/maniac Mike Tyson has big
tattoos of Che Guevara and Chairman Mao on his chest. It's also
why books like Gang of One, a fascinating memoir of life in
China from the mid-sixties to the early eighties, are so important.

Fan Shen did not spend much time in jail, but in a place like
Chairman Mao's China, did that really make much difference?
Even when he was "free" the state still told him, in minute detail,
what he could do, where he could go, and what he could think.
Individual ambition was suppressed, and thoughtless obedience
rewarded. The people worked for the good of the state, not the
other way around. And liberties generously allowed by the
Communists were just as easily taken away. A hated university
administrator explained the governing philosophy at an anti-
democracy "workshop":

"You young people often forget who brought liberation and
freedom to China. You must remember that our freedom is
socialist freedom, our democracy is socialist democracy, and
that they must be under the guidance of the Party. You must
never forget that on top of democracy there is the Party. The
Party hears the people and decides what's best for them. This is
what the Great Leader called democratic dictatorship."

Gang of One begins with a scenes of "subversive" books being
thrown on bonfires, "struggle rallies" in which people danced and
sang songs of praise for Chairman Mao, and massive assemblies
in which "enemies" of the regime – mostly dedicated Communists
turned in by rivals – were publicly humiliated and beaten. The
Cultural Revolution was in full swing, and Fan Shen, son of an
army officer, was quite enthusiastic about it at first.

At twelve years of age he threw his children's books into the fire
and organized a few of his friends into a grandiosely named
"Great Wall Fighting Team", a gang of Red Guards out to prove
their loyalty to the Party – not to mention the disloyalty of the
other, presumably less dedicated, Red Guards. In this age, you
were trapped in a kind of psychological dodgeball game in which
you had to report on your neighbor before he could report on
you.

Eventually, someone reported Fan's aunt and father, and that's
when his first doubts began to form. And then he was sent to live
and work among authentic "peasants" in an isolated Chinese
backwater, where he spent his days toiling on asinine agricultural
schemes ("Remodeling the Globe") while loudspeakers blasted
propaganda all day. After a stint as a "barefoot doctor" tending
to peoples' injuries after about a month of medical training, he
wound up working in a seemingly state-of-the-art aircraft
factory, then got into university and was ultimately awarded what
seemed like a choice teaching position, until he discovered that
the municipal water rotted teeth and made everyone sick, and
that no one ever scored a much-coveted transfer out of the city.

Everywhere he went, Fan was confronted by brainwashed
Communist cadres, pointless regulations subject to change at the
whim of the Party, and jaded bureaucrats whose indifference
could only be alleviated by family connections, subtle bribes or
blackmail. If China in the 1960s was like a particularly strict
summer camp, China in the early eighties – a "reform" period, at
least economically – was like living in a country run by the
Department of Motor Vehicles. That is, if the DMV could send
you to jail for frowning on your driver's license photo.

After years of perseverance, Fan was finally got a coveted visa
which allowed him to study in the United States – where he
remains to this day, teaching English at Rochester Community
and Technical College. (That brings to mind another P.J.
O'Rourke aphorism, about the difference between countries
you're not allowed to enter and those you're not allowed to
leave.) Unlike in China, he presumably will not need the
government's approval to take a job elsewhere.

Half the stuff in my house is made in China, and some say the
country has abandoned Communism in all but name. But despite
the skyscrapers and high-tech factories, the political situation
hasn't changed as much as we'd like to believe. As many as
twenty million people may languish in the Chinese Gulag. When
reformist leader Zhao Ziyang recently died after years of house
arrest, the censors quickly removed any mention of his name
from Chinese internet message boards.

One of the great ironies of the age is that people who sneer at
the stifling "conformity" of American society will invariably make
excuses for Communist dictatorships where conformity is official
policy, enforced with all the resources of the State. The Cultural
Revolution was perhaps the 20th century's most ambitious and
bloody attempt to destroy individuality itself, and the guy who
organized it still has his portrait up in Tiananmen Square. In a
world content to appease these totalitarian dictators, we need
people like Fan Shen to tell their stories.

Perhaps the saddest thing about dictatorship is that it drives the
brightest, most innovative thinkers away. Fan Shen simply
couldn't handle the doublethink and brutality anymore, and he
spent years trying to come to a land where ambition and
individuality were encouraged, not denounced. China's loss is
America's gain.

Damian Penny (damianpenny@gmail.com) is the author of the
widely popular blog Daimnation! (
http://www.damianpenny.com/).

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