The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Battlefield News, to promote and defend their actions. Jianhua also
learned that another teacher had died under suspicious circumstances.
One day, Fangpu visited Jianhua and invited him to be a star
reporter for Battlefield News. Fangpu looked different—he had put on
weight, was not so pale, and was trying to grow a beard. It was a
tempting offer from his friend, but something made Jianhua put him
off, and Fangpu did not like this, although he tried to disguise his
annoyance with a forced smile. Fangpu was beginning to frighten
Jianhua.
Students were now joining the East-Is-Red Corps en masse, but
within a few weeks a rival group, calling themselves the Red Rebels,
emerged on campus. Their leader was Mengzhe, a student whose
parents were peasants and who advocated revolution that was more
tolerant, based on reason and not violence, which he felt was the purer
form of Maoism. He gained some adherents, including Jianhua’s older
brother, Weihua, who was a student at YMS. Mengzhe’s growing
popularity infuriated Fangpu; he called him a royalist, a
sentimentalist, and secret counterrevolutionary. He and his followers
destroyed the Red Rebels’ office and threatened to do worse. It would
certainly cause a complete rift with Fangpu, but Jianhua contemplated
joining the Red Rebels. He was attracted to their idealism.
Just as the tension between the two sides was escalating into
outright war, a representative from the Chinese military arrived on
campus and announced that the army was now in charge. Mao had

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dispatched army units throughout the country to take control of
schools. The increasing chaos and violence that was engulfing YMS
was going on all over China, not only in schools but in factories and
government offices as well; the Cultural Revolution was spinning out
of control. Soon thirty-six soldiers arrived on campus, part of an army
unit known as the 901; they ordered that all factions disband and that
classes resume. There would be military drilling and discipline would
be reestablished.
Too much had changed, however, in the eight months since this had
all begun. The students could not accept such a sudden return to
discipline. They sulked and did not turn up at classes. Fangpu took
charge of the campaign to get rid of the soldiers: he put up posters
accusing the 901 of being enemies of the Cultural Revolution. One day,
he and his followers attacked one of the army officers with a slingshot
and wounded him. Just as the students feared reprisals, the 901 unit
was suddenly recalled from campus without any explanation.
The students were now completely on their own, and it seemed a
frightening prospect. They quickly allied themselves with one of the
two groups. Some joined the East-Is-Red Corps because it was larger
and offered better positions; others joined the Red Rebels because they
hated Fangpu and Little Bawang; and others thought one group or the
other was more revolutionary. Jianhua joined the Red Rebels, as did
his friend Zongwei.
Each side felt certain it represented the true spirit of the Cultural
Revolution, and as they yelled at one another and argued, fistfights
broke out, and there was nobody to stop them. Soon students were
bringing bats and sticks to the fights, and the injuries mounted. One
day some members of the East-Is-Red Corps captured some Red
Rebels and held them prisoners. The Red Rebels could not find out
anything about their fate.
In the middle of this tense moment, the Red Rebels discovered that
one of their members, a female student named Yulan, was actually a
spy for the other side. Infuriated by such tactics, they tied Yulan up
and began to beat her, to find out if there were more spies. Much to the
dismay of Jianhua, who considered this a betrayal of their ideals, they
battered and bruised her, but she revealed nothing. Soon Yulan was
exchanged for the prisoners held by the East-Is-Red Corps, but now
the antipathy between the two sides had reached a breaking point.

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A few weeks later, the East-Is-Red Corps suddenly left school en
masse and established their headquarters in a building in town that
they seized. Mengzhe decided to form a team of guerrilla fighters who
would operate in Yizhen at night to keep an eye on the Corps and do
some sabotage work. Jianhua was assigned to them as a reporter. It
was an exciting job. As they encountered the enemy in town, battles
with slingshots erupted. Then the Corps captured one of the Rebel
guerrillas, named Heping. A few days later, he was discovered in a
hospital, dead. The Corps had taken him for a ride in a jeep in the
desert, with a sock in his mouth, and he had suffocated along the way.
Now even Mengzhe had had enough and vowed revenge for this
horrible deed. Jianhua could only agree with him.
As the skirmishes spread throughout the town, citizens fled and
entire buildings were abandoned, and looters scoured them for goods.
The Red Rebels were soon on the offensive. Working with local
craftsmen, they manufactured the highest-quality swords and spears.
Casualties mounted. Finally the Rebels encircled the Corps’s
stronghold in town and prepared for a final offensive. The Corps fled,
leaving behind a small band of student soldiers in the building. The
Rebels demanded their surrender, and suddenly, from a third-floor
window, there was the young student Yulan screaming out, “I’d rather
die than surrender to you!” With the Corps’s bright red flag in her
hand, she shouted, “Long live Chairman Mao!” and jumped. Jianhua
found her lifeless body wrapped up in the flag on the ground. Her
devotion to the cause astounded and impressed him.
Now in control, the Red Rebels established their headquarters at
the school and prepared their defenses for a counteroffensive from the
Corps. They built a makeshift munitions factory on campus. Some
students had learned how to make grenades and various powerful
explosive devices. An inadvertent explosion killed several of them, but
the work went on. Zongwei, the artist, had had enough; somehow the
noble origins of the Red Rebels had been lost, and he feared the
expanding violence; he fled Yizhen for good. Jianhua lost respect for
his friend. How could Zongwei forget those who had been injured or
died for their cause? To give up now would be to say it was all in vain.
He would not be a coward like his friend. Besides, the East-Is-Red
Corps was downright evil and was capable of doing anything to take
power. They had betrayed the revolution.

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As life at the school settled down and the Red Rebels built up their
defenses, Jianhua visited his family, whom he had not seen for a while.
When he finally returned one night to school, however, he could not
believe his eyes: his Red Rebel comrades were nowhere in sight; their
flag was no longer flying above the school. Everywhere there were
armed soldiers. Finally he found a few comrades hiding in a school
building, and they told him what had happened: Mao was reasserting
his authority once and for all; he was picking sides in various local
conflicts to help create some order; and the military in the county had
come down on the side of the East-Is-Red Corps as the more truly
revolutionary group. The repercussions of this could be awful.
Jianhua and several other comrades decided they would try to
escape and regroup in the mountains, where Mengzhe had apparently
fled, but there was a blockade throughout the county and they were
forced back to school, which had become more of a prison, overseen by
the East-Is-Red Corps.
Now the Rebels could only expect the worst. To the Corps, they
were a bunch of counterrevolutionaries who had beaten and killed
their comrades. Then one day, as the Red Rebel members on campus
were huddled together in a room, the leaders of the East-Is-Red Corps,
including Fangpu and Little Bawang, entered with grenades tied to
their belts. Fangpu carried a blacklist of all those who were to be taken
from the room, clearly for some nefarious purpose. Fangpu appeared
friendly toward Jianhua and told him it was not too late to change
sides, but Jianhua could no longer see Fangpu in the same light. His
friendliness made him seem even more sinister.
That night they could hear the screams of their blacklisted
comrades from another building. Then news reached them that Corps
members had found Mengzhe, beaten him up, and marched him back
to school, where he was under arrest as well. In the room next to where
Jianhua and his friends now slept, they observed Little Bawang and his
team covering the windows with blankets. They were transforming it
into a torture chamber. Soon they noticed former Red Rebels limping
about on campus, afraid to talk to anyone. Then it was Jianhua’s turn
to be taken into the room. He was blindfolded and tied to a chair in a
most uncomfortable position. They wanted him to sign a withdrawal
statement, and as he hesitated to do so, they began to beat him with a
chair leg. Jianhua screamed, “You can’t do this to me. We’re
classmates. We’re all class brothers. . . .”

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Little Bawang would have none of this. Jianhua had to confess his
crimes, the part he had played in the various battles in town, and name
names of other Red Rebels hiding somewhere on campus. The blows
on his legs became more intense, and then they began to hit him over
the head. Still blindfolded, he feared for his life and in a panic
suddenly spilled the name of a fellow Red Rebel, Dusu. Finally they
carried Jianhua, unable to walk, out of the room. He quickly felt
intense regret that he had named Dusu. What a coward he had been.
He tried to warn Dusu, but it was too late. The torturing of other Red
Rebels continued in the room next door, including his brother Weihua,
beaten to a bloody pulp. Mengzhe had his head shaved, and when they
saw him next, his face was covered in the most hideous bruises.
One day Jianhua was told his old friend and comrade Zongwei had
been captured, and when Jianhua went to see him he was unconscious,
his bare legs full of large punctures, blood oozing everywhere. They
had flailed him with steel hooks for refusing to admit his crimes. How
could the rather harmless Zongwei inspire such savagery? Jianhua ran
to get the doctor, but when they returned it was too late: Zongwei died
in his friend’s arms. The dead body was quickly carted away, and a
cover story was created for how he had died. Jianhua was ordered to
remain silent. A female teacher who refused to affirm in an affidavit
the official East-Is-Red Corps version of his death was beaten and
gang-raped by Little Bawang and his followers.
In the months to come, Fangpu extended his powers everywhere, as
he essentially ran the school and classes resumed. Battlefield News
was the only newspaper allowed. The school itself had been renamed
East-Is-Red Middle School. With the Corps’s power secure, the torture
chamber was dismantled. Classes largely consisted of reciting quotes
from Mao. Every morning they assembled before a giant poster of
Chairman Mao and, brandishing their little red books, chanted to his
long life.
The East-Is-Red members began a scrupulous rewriting of the past.
They held an exhibition to celebrate their victories, full of doctored
photographs and fake news reports, all to bolster their side of events.
An enormous statue of Chairman Mao, five times larger than life, was
now installed at the school gate, towering over everything else. The
former members of the Red Rebels had to wear white armbands that
described their various crimes. They were made to kowtow before the
Mao statue several times a day while classmates kicked them from

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behind. The former Red Rebels had become like the reviled teachers,
cowed and obedient.
Jianhua was forced to do the most menial labor, and having had
enough of this, in early summer of 1968 he returned to his hometown.
His father sent him and his brother to a farm deep in the mountains
where they could be safe and work as laborers. In September,
determined to finish his studies, Jianhua returned to school. The few
months away had given him some perspective, and now when he
looked at the East-Is-Red Middle School, it appeared in a very different
light: everywhere he saw signs of unbelievable destruction—classrooms
completely torn up with no desks or chairs, the walls full of peeling
posters and crumbling plaster; the science labs devoid of all
equipment; piles of rubble around the campus; unmarked graves; the
music hall blown up by a bomb; and hardly a reputable teacher or
official left to resume their education.
All of this destruction in a few short years, and for what? What did
Heping and Yulan and Zongwei and so many others die for? What had
they been fighting over? What had they learned? He could no longer
figure it out, and the waste of their young lives filled him with disgust
and despair.
Soon Jianhua and his brother joined the army, to escape the school
and bury their memories. Over the following years, as he drove an
army truck delivering stone and cement, he and his comrades watched
the slow disassembling of the Cultural Revolution, all of its former
leaders falling into disgrace. After the death of Mao in 1976, the
Communist Party itself finally condemned the Cultural Revolution as a
national catastrophe.
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