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Chinese haunted by bloody ‘Red August’

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Liu Jin, left, and Feng Jinglan were students at the school where Vice Principal Bian Zhongyun was beaten to death in 1966, but they
say they were not present when it happened.

By Tom Lasseter
Posted Sep 1, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Sep 26, 2018 at 7:04 PM

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The schoolgirls slapped and punched their vice principal, then grabbed table legs and beat her unconscious. Bian
Zhongyun was then left to die, slumped in a garbage cart in the Beijing high school’s courtyard.

On that afternoon in August 1966, Bian became an early murder victim of the Cultural Revolution, a movement that
would leave millions of Chinese dead, injured or mentally broken in the decade that followed.

Although 44 years have passed since the “Red August” that unleashed the floodgates of violence in Beijing and across
the nation, there’s never been a complete public accounting in China about what happened. Bian’s killers have yet to
be named.

“Even after all these decades, their crimes are still being covered up,” said Wang Jingyao, 89, Bian’s widower. Wang
has kept the bloody, soiled clothes that Bian wore the day she was killed. He wants to know who killed his wife.

“But it’s very difficult to find out in China,” he said.

Even as analysts across the world speak of China’s bright economic future, at home this August there remains a page
missing from the country’s past.

Observers say the reason is obvious: Mao Zedong, who fanned the flames of the Cultural Revolution out of fear that
the government was growing too moderate, is the historical bedrock of the Communist Party. To delve into the
destruction Mao wrought could lead to a questioning of the political system itself.

Chinese official histories acknowledge that the period was bloody and chaotic, but they give little detail about what
happened, especially when it comes to individual murders. State museums often don’t mention the event at all.

The Cultural Revolution formally began in the spring of 1966, but the wider bloodshed began that August after Mao,
dissatisfied with the government for not acting boldly enough, urged more radical action. Red Guard units attacked
those with “bad class backgrounds” with impunity, universities were shut down, and millions were sent to the
countryside to do manual labor.

“The Cultural Revolution changed the life of our generation completely, and it wreaked havoc on China. It was a
catastrophe,” said Wang Duanyang, who as a teenager led a Red Guard group in Tianjin, a city southeast of Beijing. “I
feel regret. ... I have done a lot of things that you may think ridiculous and insane, but those things were done in a
particular context.”

Wang wrote a book that described the humiliation and beating of his school’s leaders and local officials that he
witnessed, and in 2007 he paid to have 1,000 copies published. In the foreword he apologizes “to the people who I’ve
hurt.” He handed out the volume to friends and acquaintances, but commercial distribution wasn’t an option.

“According to the Chinese government, any (unauthorized) book related to the Cultural Revolution is not allowed to
be published,” said Wang, whose own father, an author, was denounced as a “rightist” during the movement.

Beyond Mao’s legacy, the history is sensitive because those involved in assaults on their fellow Chinese almost
certainly included future leaders of business and politics.

Looking over pictures of himself with fellow Red Guards in 1966 and beyond, Wang pointed to young men who
grew up to be a vice minister, an influential party official in Shanghai and the director of an important state history
museum.

Wang Youqin, a former student at Bian’s school who’s written a book about the Cultural Revolution, named a
prominent Chinese bank executive and a senior administrator at a Shanghai university as having knowledge about
Bian’s death.

“They have become people with power and with money,” said Wang Jingyao, Bian’s husband. “The central
government wants to cover up for them and protect them.”

Wang Youqin, who’s a senior lecturer of Chinese language at the University of Chicago, has created a website and
ongoing research project about Bian’s death and the Cultural Revolution, but Chinese authorities blocked the site.

“If there was a trial, I would go to the court and give evidence, but there is no trial,” Wang Youqin said. “They say
that generation was fed by wolves’ milk; they never really understood that what they did was wrong.”

A moment later, Wang corrected herself, saying that there are former Red Guards who are sorry for their actions,
but “for some people who were Red Guards, they don’t want you to expose their bloody past.”

During the afternoon of that Aug. 5, Wang said, she saw students pour black ink on administrators’ faces and drag
them around and then “people went to the carpenter’s room and got broken table legs with nails in them.” At that
point, Wang said, she left.

Bian already had been subjected to “struggle sessions” in which students kicked and beat her with wooden training
rifles. They plastered her house with signs that accused her of party disloyalty and taunted that she’d “trembled all
over” while getting doused with water and having her mouth stuffed with mud “just like a pig.”

The day before her death, more than a half-dozen students whipped Bian and another teacher with belts and buckles.

One of the senior student leaders present the afternoon of Bian’s murder, Liu Jin, agreed to speak about the
experience. Liu was joined by a friend, Feng Jinglan, who was also there that day.

Only when pressed on the murder did the two women, now in their 60s, acknowledge that Bian and four other
administrators were frog-marched around the schoolyard and beaten. Both said they were in another part of the
school when it happened.

So who, exactly, was responsible?

“It was a group action. A lot of students beat Bian Zhongyun, maybe just hitting her on the back or slapping her,”
Feng said. “But her death is not the responsibility of any one individual.”

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