[Across
Chongqing , 20 or so Cultural Revolution cemeteries
were razed as the movement waned and Mao died. This one survived in part
because of its out-of-the-way location and a tolerant city party secretary in
the 1980s, said Everett Yuehong Zhang, an anthropologist from Chongqing at Princeton University .]
By Chris Buckley
They
are veterans of the Cultural Revolution and their kin, who at the Qingming
festival each year gather at the graves of family and friends killed in the
convulsive movement that Mao unleashed upon China . Cities and regions became battle zones
between rival Red Guards — militant student groups that attacked intellectuals,
officials and others — and up to 1.5 million people died nationwide, according
to one recent estimate.
Yet
this cemetery in Chongqing , an industrial city on the Yangtze River , is the only sizable one left solely for
those killed then. Mr. Zheng, 73, is one of the aging custodians of their
harrowing stories. He buried many of the 400 to 500 bodies here, on the edge of
a park in the Shapingba district.
“I
think about their memories and the lessons we should absorb, and I try to
comfort the relatives,” he said in an interview. “It would be impossible to
erase that time from our hearts.”
Fifty
years after the start of the Cultural Revolution, the cemetery embodies China ’s evasive reckoning with its legacy. Here
the tension between official silence and grass-roots remembrance is palpable.
The
cemetery is usually locked. But at the Qingming, or tomb sweeping, holiday, a
door opens for families and friends of the dead to hold vigils, light incense
and leave wreaths and other offerings at the graves.
This
year, officials took special precautions, attaching coils of barbed wire along
the top of the wall around the cemetery. They mounted surveillance cameras at
the entrance, as well as a sign in Chinese and English that read: “Historical
preservation, no photographing.”
On
Qingming day, which this year came on Monday, clusters of older people
registered at a booth to enter the cemetery, some joined by couples with
children. Dozens of guards hustled onlookers and journalists away, telling them
they could not even take pictures of the exterior.
“There’s
nothing to see,” one said. “Go away.”
Some
1,700 people were put to death across Chongqing during the worst clashes, which receded in 1968,
according to an official estimate by He Shu, the city’s unofficial chronicler
of that time. The total killed was probably higher.
Most
of the dead here were killed in fighting between youths who used rifles, machine
guns, mortars, tanks, even three armored ships that bombarded the shore.
Many
were factory workers. Some were condemned by Red Guards, and others were
bystanders caught in battles. The cemetery holds victims as young as 14; by
some accounts, one was 6.
As
the bodies piled up, rotting in the heat, faction leaders conscripted Mr. Zheng,
an engineering student, to dispose of them.
In
a cool air-raid shelter, he learned to inject them with formaldehyde, and he
chose the park site to bury them, using prisoners from the rival faction as
helpers. Some of the dead were photographed in Red Guard uniforms — military-style
clothes, belts and caps, and badges — while their comrades and family stood
proudly beside them.
“I
personally laid to rest more than 280 people,” Mr. Zheng said. “I bathed and
injected them with formaldehyde, I dressed them, I put them in graves, so my
nickname was the corpse commander. We were all sacrificial objects in a
political struggle.”
Across
Chongqing , 20 or so Cultural Revolution cemeteries
were razed as the movement waned and Mao died. This one survived in part
because of its out-of-the-way location and a tolerant city party secretary in
the 1980s, said Everett Yuehong Zhang, an anthropologist from Chongqing at Princeton University .
But
the past it contains has become a delicate topic with the coming of the 50th
anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. Focusing on that time offends President
Xi Jinping’s drive against dwelling on mistakes by Mao and the party. Although
his own family suffered grievously during the Cultural Revolution, he would
rather focus on past glories.
No
official memorial events have been announced to acknowledge the milestone; none
of the reports about Qingming by the state news media mentioned the Cultural
Revolution dead.
“The
Communist Party does not want to open this scar,” said Xi Qingsheng, 64, whose
mother, Huang Peiying, was buried in the cemetery after she was shot dead while
fleeing the fighting with Mr. Xi and one of his brothers. A Red Guard had idly
used them as target practice, Mr. Xi said.
“For
us, families who were direct victims, we’ve endured terrible struggles,” he
said. “We burn incense, kneel before the grave. I still come to the cemetery
every year to eat a meal with my mother and leave her some offerings.”
To
reach the graves, hidden among trees and bamboo, mourners walked through a park
where children squealed on rides, and men and women clustered around mah-jongg
tables in a beer garden. A group of teenage boys and girls took photographs of
themselves, apparently oblivious to the graves nearby.
“Outside
the wall, it’s society, with couples courting and the pursuit of material
things,” said Zhou Ziren, 72, a former Red Guard from Chongqing . “Inside, it’s back to an era when people
would die for their ideals.”
Some
120 stone and concrete pillars and tombstones mark graves built mainly by
schools and factories for their dead. Their inscriptions recall a time when Mao
was akin to a demigod for many, and dying in his name meant glorious martyrdom.
“Heads
can roll, blood can flow, but Mao Zedong Thought must never go,” an inscription
on one of the pillars reads.
“History
has frozen here into a pile of stones,” Mr. Zhou said, recalling a poem he
wrote about his first visit here. “Just like you can’t avoid the Auschwitz concentration camp or the Hiroshima nuclear bomb when discussing the Second
World War, we need to remember this period of history so that it cannot happen
again.”
Mao
started the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” in 1966 to purge China of “revisionist” compromises that he said
imperiled his revolution. He gave his blessing to militant students to enforce
his will. But the movement took a chaotic turn, and vicious rivalries broke out
between Red Guard factions competing to represent Mao’s vision.
In
Chongqing , the schisms erupted into war in the summer
of 1967, when militants seized weapons from armament plants. Most people buried
in the Shapingba cemetery supported the “August 15” faction that battled the
“rebel to the end” faction.
“We
had eight big weapons factories, making tanks and guns and other arms, and many
of the workers were ex-soldiers who knew how to fight,” said Wu Qi, a
businessman from Chongqing who watched the fighting as a teenager. “It
was like a real military battle.”
The
victims who have most haunted Mr. Zheng did not end up in his cemetery.
In
August 1967, after his August 15 faction had been under ferocious attack, in a
fit of fury he handed two prisoners to a crowd that stomped them senseless. A
day or two later, he let two Red Guards beat them to death. Their bodies were
thrown into a ditch on a university campus.
“This
was the greatest regret of my life,” Mr. Zheng said.
He
still remembers their names: Li Pingzheng and He Minggui.
Mr.
Zheng was arrested in 1970 and later convicted in connection with six deaths —
some of which he said he had no hand in — and imprisoned until 1983. He said he
dreamed of tracking down the families of Mr. Li and Mr. He and begging their
forgiveness on national television.
“There
is no sign to show where they are buried,” he said. “But I would like to tell
their families where to find them.”