9.06.2006

Interview with an old Party Cadre

This friday for my one-on-one class I went with my teacher to interview an old Party Cadre that she knows. We walked over to his apartment which is in part of the railroad bureau's compound (its very common for people to live in company housing, especially if the company is older than 20 years) near the center of the city.

As we walked up the typically dirty staircase of their apartment building I didn't know what to expect; because every apartment staircase I've been in is filthy you never know if the apartment is going to be clean but poor or surprisingly lavish. Theirs was very nice but not in an extravagant way, the furnishings were all of high quality but it still seemed a bit spartan in a pleasing way. My first impression upon seeing the Cadre was that he was a rather frail old man, skinny as a stick and wearing rather large glasses. I soon realized that he was a very intelligent man who had an amazing life story to tell.

He was born in 1930 in the second largest city in the province which means he spent most of his childhood and adolescence under Japanese rule. His family were poor peasants (or at least that's what he told me they were classified as during the cultural revolution, lucky for them), and he attended highschool during the communist push into the north east, racing the nationalist party to capture the industrial heartland as the Japanese retreated. When he graduated in 1948 he joined the communist party. This has turned out to be a very profitable decision, as any party members who joined before 1949 now recive twice the amount in old age pension.

He told me about his unshakable faith in Mao during the Great Leap Forward, giving half of his already insuficcient meal ticket to factory workers. Buying an American radio in 1955 for 3 months wages, the first one among his friends to have this new invention. He told me about getting denounced by big character posters at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, since he was the fifth ranked person in his 单位 (work unit) of over 1000 people, and how he was incredibly confused because he still really trusted Mao. But he said he found some solution in his heart, basically that Mao was right and the problems were in the middle levels of the party. He was reinstated after martial law was imposed, shaken by Deng Xiao Ping's denounciation, and especially when he was denounced the second time. He told me about his reaction to the first newspaper article published criticizing Mao, albeit guardedly (Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong, officially), how he wasn't happy but at the same time felt it was important to have more openness.

We talked about his work with the railroad reforms as China modernized, the advising he still does for the railroad and the sorts of 关系 (special relationships) that he still has. We talked about him retiring and his present views on China which were by far the most exciting.

We talked about the present rot in society and in the Party, because during Mao's time there really wasn't much, a point he reminded me of a few times. I asked him if there might be a relationship between having a disciplined and centrally controlled party, and next to no economic growth. He agreed, but turned the question around and said that then there were no opportunities for corruption and every one believed in the Party and socialism. Now it is not like that, there are many opportunities, the center is weaker and the belief in a higher ideal is gone. Then he told me an anecdote which left a deep impression in me, especially because it came from a truly dedicated and intelligent party member. During the war when Mao was still a peasant revolutionary he had an encounter with the leader of a large minority group. They spoke of the great China that Mao would create if he won, and the man told him that every great empire in China had fallen because of decay, so how would Mao prevent that? And Mao replied that the people will always keep decay under control. He said it with a sort of glint in his eyes of someone who's been there and doesn't bother with excuses and I was really surprised that he had chosen to bring up that pointed of an anecdote. A while later, he mentioned that he really approved of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiaobu before him - agree with the leaders but fault the middle layers.

The last instance I want to relate was still talking about rot. He brought up the coal mine accident that happened in May of this year where 56 miners were trapped underground. He was really angered by this, blasting the managers for being inept and only looking at profit. He told me that he knew one of the top managers personally, although somewhat distantly, and that he had written him a letter, a very impolite letter. He had said, 'did you even go into the mine yourself? you had sure as hell listen to Hu Jintao and fix this situation, you had better see that the money the central government is giving you goes towards safety and doesn't end up in somebody's pocket'. He signed it with his full name and former position to give as much weight as he could. He said he doesn't expect a response.

It was a really great interview, about 2 1/2 hours of him telling stories and me interrupting occasionally, to say I understood less than the gist of what he was saying. I wouldn't say that anything he said contradicted what I've read in articles and class about changing politics here, rather confirmed it in an incredibly colorful and real way. Its easy to talk about the flaws of a planned economy. Its much more interesting to talk to someone who truly believes in socialism and Mao Zedong thought, and yet is by no means afraid to ask himself the hard questions of how to make it work and why things didn't work out like they were supposed to.

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