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Breaking Four Olds |
| Written by Peter | |
| Friday, 09 May 2008 | |
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Share it:      Breaking the Four Olds The storm of ‘breaking the four olds’ covered all the villages of the Maidian People’s Commune. The Red Guards went everywhere to break the ‘four olds’, tearing all the paintings except Chairman Mao’s smashing all the chinaware that was painted or even had patterns and collecting all the books, except Chairman Mao’s works, and throwing them in the fire. Mr. Xu Wenxuan was about 60 years old in 1966. He had been a tutor in the families of rich merchants and higher officers teaching classical Chinese to the children in these families. Coming from a family of three continuous generations of scholars, he received the traditional classic Chinese education, so he was good at writing articles and poems in classical Chinese as well as being noted for his calligraphy. Therefore, he was known to most people within a circumference of 100 square Chinese Li (a Chinese Li is 500 meters). However, the things which really made him famous were his books. From grandfather to grandson, they all liked books very much while he himself liked books so much that he was thought to be crazy. He spent most of money he earned on books. Some people said that if he had bought fields instead of buying books, he would have become a landlord. His personal collection of books was the largest in the north China, numbering more than 3,000 books. Some of them were priceless treasures printed in the Ming and Sung Dynasties (about 500-800 years ago). Therefore, he was chosen to be a member of the branch of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee of his country. After the liberation in 1949, he could not go back to his classical Chinese teaching, so he returned to his home village to become a peasant. Although he had little commonsense about agriculture, he was welcomed by the villagers because he was reasonable, honest and polite and he could write antithetical couplets for them before Chinese New Year or if a family had a son about to be married. It was said that he could only be sent to do light physical labor. Usually, he was sent to watch the birds. When the birds, such as sparrow, were eating the millet in the field, he should drum them out with a small gong. However, he always forgot his job because he immersed himself in the reading. When his villagers found that he was reading again, they just smile favorably, and nobody blamed his breach of duty. Being a poor peasant, he did not meet with any troubles in the various political movements. During the storm, many people in the poor and middle peasant families tore up or burnt books on their own initiative and told the Red Guards or cadres that they had broken ‘the four olds’. But, how about Xu Wenxuan’s books? He had more than 3,000 books, which were too many to be attacked, while he would never consent to have his books burnt by others. His books were his life, he thought. One day, the disaster happened. It occurred when he was out because his wife knew that here husband’s books had to be broken up sooner or later and she could not bear to see the old man watching the books burned before his eyes. So she let him go and visit his relatives, then she asked the Red Guards in the village to do her the favor of taking Mr. Xu Wenxuan’s books away while he was absent. The books were carried to the city as a great achievement in breaking the four olds in the county; the manuscript of articles and poems which he had written were taken to the feeding rooms for cattle and pigs and were burned to provide faggots to cook the feed for three days. When he came back from his visit and found what had happened, he got a shock and fell to the ground at once. His son put him on the bed and asked a doctor to treat him. A week later he was cured but he seemed ten years older that he actually was. Every day he looked at the empty bookcases quietly for a long time and whenever he thought about his collection of books, he would cry. The books had been collected by four of his family members over three generations and every cent which was saved from his meals. “What is the guilt of my books, O Heaven?” he cried, but he dared not cry in public, only at home. His wife tried to keep him get over his worries but in vain. In his poem, ‘Crying for my Books’, he wrote: Thousands of books, smoke to the sky. Emperor Qin would be shy.[Emperor Chin was a very famous dictator in the Qin dynasty2,200 years ago; he burned many books and killed 500 intellectuals. Chairman Mao said: “Compared with us, Emperor Qin was nothing. What we did to the intellectuals is a hundred times more than he did.”] The last step of breaking four olds was to put them into the fire, such as books, paintings, records of family trees, and even brightly colored clothes which might be worn by women when they got married and were kept at the bottom of a box until that time. Around the fire, the ‘four elements’ and their offspring were force to kneel on the ground facing the fire while the Red Guards tormented them from behind, pulling their her and cutting the women’s hair and putting ash on their heads and faces.
Copyright 2008 Peter |
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