Years of Red Dust Read Free Page B

abreast of all the changes happening around us. In this world of ours, things change dramatically as from azure oceans into mulberry fields. So I have a suggestion. Let’s start something like a blackboard newsletter. I read about it in a Russian novel—a Soviet novel, I should say—where people post the big events on the blackboard as part of the socialist education. Our people here may not all be able to read newspapers or listen to radios, but from the blackboard newsletters at least we’ll have some basic idea of what is happening around us.
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    This is the last issue of
Red Dust Lane Blackboard Newsletter
for the year 1949. In September, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), exercising the power of the National People’s Congress (NPC), adopted the name People’s Republic of China for the new state. It is to be a people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the working class, based on the alliance of workers and peasants and in unity with all of China’s democratic parties and nationalities. It has decided upon Beijing for the country’s capital, the five-star red flag for the national flag, and “March of the Volunteers” for the national anthem. On October 1, 1949, on top of the Tiananmen Gate, our great leader, Chairman Mao, declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Long live the People’s Republic of China! Long liveChairman Mao. The Chinese people are happily bathed in the sunlight of liberation. Here is the new song entitled “The Sky of the Liberated Area Is Bright”:
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    Bright is the sky of the liberated area,
Happy are the people of the liberated area.
The Democratic government loves the people.
Countless are the good deeds of the Communist Party.
Hu hu hu hu hei,
Hu hu hu hu hei . . .

When I Was Conceived
(1952)
    This is the last issue of
Red Dust Lane Blackboard Newsletter
for the year 1952. It has been another successful year for our young socialist China. In January, Chairman Mao called on the Chinese people to launch a nationwide campaign against corruption, waste, and bureaucracy. The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee issued the directive for a campaign against the “Five Evils,” with the focus on the owners of private enterprises. Land reform being triumphantly carried out across the country, around 47 million hectares of farmland owned by landlords have been distributed to 300 million formerly landless peasants. A “study movement of ideological remolding” bore great fruit in educational, intellectual, literary, and art circles. In the ongoing Korean War, the Chinese People’s Volunteers won one victory after another. China has raised its international image by signing on to the Geneva War Conventions. Atthe end of the year, we can say proudly that great progress has been made on the task of restoring the national economy.
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    It was a dinner that Father and Mother could not put off anymore, having promised early last year, though they were still in no mood for it.
    Father, the owner of a hat workshop, had just learned of the necessity of identifying himself as a “capitalist,” a word that was crossed out in the new class system formulated by Mao. It might be unwise to invite other capitalists—birds of the same black feather—for a dinner party. Possibly another example of the so-called decadent bourgeois lifestyle. In the year 1952, when young socialist China was said to be surrounded by class enemies, the working-class people of Red Dust Lane watched, on high alert.
    Bu Xie, one of their close friends, was leaving for Hong Kong, and they knew why. The campaign of land reform had been in full swing throughout the country, and one of Xie’s relatives, a landlord in Zhenghai, had been executed because of his mumbled complaint about turning over the land certificate. What would the campaign of socialist