Author: Feng Ziyin. fromLamplighter 71.
I can't count how many times my father was criticized during the entire "Cultural Revolution", because there were so many times that I can't count. Besides, he never told us about some criticisms, and I only heard from others later.
The four major leaders of Shanghai's literary and art circles - Ba Jin of the Writers' Association, He Luting of the Music Association, Zhou Xinfang of the Drama Association, and Feng Zikai of the Artists Association were all Shanghai's "Top Ten Key Criticism Targets" later.
Dad shouldn't be the president of the Artists Association and the director of the art academy. It may be better to spend time at home. No! I'm afraid it's not going to be any better. He wrote too many articles and painted even more.
Aren't the painters who paint landscape paintings in the academy also being criticized, what bones can be picked out in landscape paintings? There are so many bones to pick in Dad's paintings and articles. If you put it in the alley, it might be even worse.
The academy forced my father to explain "thoroughly", otherwise there would be a mass meeting - that time made my family very nervous. As for Dad himself, who has always been respected, suddenly became a prisoner, and his thoughts couldn't turn around.
However, it gradually became clear that this was a political struggle that affected the common people. Historically, there have been many cases in which ordinary people have fallen victim to political struggles.
As for the executors below, they are actually ordinary people. Some people are foolish and loyal, and some people dare not disobey orders, and that is forgivable.
Only those opportunistic elements who fish in troubled waters, in this troubled world, it is a good opportunity for them to show themselves. There is a saying that "the king of Hades is good, but the little ghost is unstoppable", and he has to let them behave and let them torture themselves!
After figuring this out, Dad stopped taking it seriously. He began to act and deal with it skillfully.
There are a lot of criticisms, in addition to the painting academy, what children's palace, art exhibition hall, Jiangxi Middle Road Youth Association, Shanghai Steel No. 3 Factory, Qiuxin Shipyard, Chongming, Chuansha, Chegou Brigade, Democratic Construction Brigade ......I'm afraid even my dad himself can't remember that much, and I can't even figure out the order.
During the fight in the Children's Palace, it is said that Mr. Tang Yun was severely beaten and his sticks were broken. Therefore, Mr. Tang was unable to participate when he dragged everyone out on the street. It is said that among the people who paraded the streets were Mr. Shen Roujian and so on.
Dad later said that during that street parade, a young man followed him and found an opportunity to whisper to him: "Mr. Feng, I admire you very much." ”
Chongming is the place where Mr. Cheng Yajun of the Academy of Fine Arts carried out the "Four Cleansing" movement. So my father was taken to Chongming, and Mr. Cheng also accompanied him.
Dad's cartoons were enlarged one by one and framed on cardboard to take away. Chongming is farther away, and you have to spend the night. That's when Dad got into the habit of sleeping in a kimono.
The two of them were criticized, and the rebels took the opportunity to buy hairy crabs in Chongming and bring them back to enjoy.
When he was in the Chegou Brigade, when Comrade *** was declared a traitor, a traitor, and a thief, the Workers' Propaganda Team lectured the "cattle": "Your general backstage has collapsed!" ”
God knows, I'm afraid none of the "cattle" have any connection with the *** comrades, how did they suddenly become their own general backstage?!
Feng Yiyin and his father Feng Zikai.
After my father passed away, I met a friend of Chuansha and asked him to write down the following situation:
In the autumn and winter of 1969, the Shanghai art circle sent people to drive a car and bring Mr. Feng Zikai to the Chuansha Assembly Hall for criticism.
At the criticism meeting, more than a dozen cartoons in Mr. Feng Zikai's painting collection were copied and enlarged on the entire blank paper, and the critic spokesperson criticized them one by one. Criticize one, tear off one, form a ball of paper, and throw it around Mr. Feng Zikai.
At the end of the criticism, when a person walked into the side of the stage with Mr. Feng Zikai with a bamboo broom, he symbolically swept over, and at the same time shouted the slogan: Sweep into the garbage heap of history!
At the criticism meeting, Mr. Feng Zikai asked him to sit on a stool because of his old age. It's just that when he criticized the climax, he was asked to stand.
After the criticism meeting, Mr. Feng Zikai was still taken away by car and left Chuansha.
This criticism is civilized, and Dad got into a car that he hadn't been in for a long time. I didn't let him stand long when he criticized. However, the rebels took great pains to prepare props before this criticism, and they probably had to rehearse them first, just like a rehearsal.
On May 20, 1981, Mr. Zhang Leping published an article in the issue of "Liberation**", about him and my father, entitled "Drawing Pictures and Knowing the Spring Breeze". One of the things about criticism is written:
During the Cultural Revolution, of course, we were in a catastrophe. Because he is the chairman of the Shanghai branch of the Artists Association, Shen Roujian and I are the vice chairmen, and when he fights, we always have to take turns to accompany the fight, sit in the "jet style", hang the list, and be treated the same.
Once, he was beaten in a factory in Zhabei. As soon as we arrived, we were hurriedly hung up and hurriedly put out for display. As soon as I appeared, it made me very strange: in the past, Mr. Zikai was always the protagonist, and I was a supporting role; And this time, I became the finger of a thousand people, and my worth doubled.
Looking down, it turned out that Zhang Guan Li Dai had hung Feng Zikai's brand around my neck. I pointed to the head of the rebels to my chest, and the audience laughed, and the farce turned into a comedy.
Mr. Lin Fang's article "The Matter of Mr. Feng Zikai" published in the "Xinmin Evening News" on February 10, 1983 mentioned the criticism of the new shipyard:
At the criticism meeting jointly held by a number of "rebel" organizations at the Qiuxin Shipyard that day, there were a large number of "bulls, ghosts, snakes, and gods" who were pressed by black, about twenty or thirty, including Mr. Feng.
However, the focus of that day seemed to be Zhou Xinfang and Yuan Xuefen. Mr. Feng and I sat on the bench face to face, listening to Dong Chao and Xue Ba at the front desk fighting Zhou and Yuan with water and fire sticks as if they were vicious, shouting loudly, fisting and fighting, completely in accordance with the drama of the Peking Opera "Wild Boar Forest".
Although the atmosphere was so tense, Mr. Feng was still as usual, quiet and solemn, indifferent, but there was a little sadness and melancholy in his eyes.
It wasn't until after the dissolution of the criticism committee that we took the same truck again, and when we arrived somewhere in Nanshi, Mr. Feng jumped out of the car, and it happened that a car next to him came across and sped past him. Everyone pinched a handful of sweat for him with an "oops", and then watched his back walking alone. This is my last impression of Mr. Feng.
Feng Zikai's father and daughter.
I don't remember when, but Li Lane was also ordered to supervise his father. I asked him to sweep the concrete floor in front of my house every day. It's not a heavy job, but it's painful!
I am not allowed to sweep at a young age, and Aunt Ying'e, who is a full-time cleaner, is not allowed to sweep, but I have to ask an elderly man in her seventies to sweep!
Can we bear it? I had to do a little bit of preparation for my father: put a long handle on my dustpan so that he didn't have to bend over. After a few days of sweeping, Mom took Daddy's place to do the work. Fortunately, no one came to check on the alley.
Sister Xian also recalled one thing. Once she brought her daughter Ah Chun to see her parents.
Dad was summoned to work for half a day in the morning, and he was very tired when he came home. After lunch, I was taking a lunch break, and suddenly a person came in downstairs, and my mother told me afterwards that it was the eldest sister of the cadres in the lane, and it turned out to be the villain who had the right to do it. She shouted: "Feng Zikai, go to work!" ”
Sister Xian hurriedly went downstairs and said to her: "Dad was tired for a long time in the morning, and his health was not very good, so he had slept. ”
The mother then went downstairs and said to the woman, "He went to work in the morning!" ”
The woman insisted that her father go. At this moment, Dad got up, and as he went downstairs, he put a jacket over his body and said, "I'll go, I'll go!" ”
I happened to be away from home that day, and when my sister entered the door just now, I saw some twelve or thirteen-year-old urchins in the alley holding wooden sticks and shouting slogans such as "cows, ghosts, snakes, and gods are not allowed to talk and move", running around. She was extremely uneasy and decided to follow.
But I was afraid that the woman would see through it and stop it. picked up Ah Chun casually, pretended to tease her all the way, and walked to the place where her father worked.
That's where the corners are in the alley. There are already a few "cows, ghosts, snakes, and gods" at work. Their job was to scrape off the old slogan paper off the wall and wash it clean.
The first sister saw her father leaning over and picking up a small tile as a tool, and began to scrape it. Nearby, five or six schoolchildren stood behind those who were forced to work with whips in their hands.
The first sister was afraid that they would come to her father, so she kept holding Ah Chun and standing aside. Then the eldest sister came over and asked her with a straight face, "What do you mean by coming here?" ”
Nothing, I'm holding the baby and playing. Sister Xian said.
Fortunately, there were many people who scraped quickly, and even more fortunately, those students did not use force, so the first sister was slightly relieved. I didn't wait until my father finished his labor and came home together that I was relieved.
In those days, you could see big-character posters plastered on the streets with Daddy Dou. It is said that there is a picture in the comics, with a human head and a turtle body, and the turtle back is written "** veteran Fengzi Quan". Playing with words (獃 is a stupid traditional Chinese character, the left side of which is written in the same way as the traditional Chinese character on the right side of Kai character) is really hollow out and boring!
People are afraid of being famous, and pigs are afraid of fat. People who are not famous are relatively stable. Like my father, as soon as the big-character poster hits the street, even our family members, and even his relatives and friends, will be implicated.
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, news came from all sides, only to learn that my father implicated many people who admired him, and they were also tortured!
According to the feedback from all sides, Dad is quite calm about criticism. He just smokes all day long. In the cowshed, he sat up straight. Someone asked him if he was tired like this, and he said that he was not tired when he sat up straight.
When there are no outsiders, he is funny and optimistic, and he talks and laughs freely. He often talks about literary and artistic vocabulary and terminology, compares the reading of Japanese and English, and talks about the differences in the content of Japanese and English words. I also talk about things in life.
Sometimes I was called by the rebels for interrogation, and when I came back, it seemed that there was no such thing, as if I had gone to urinate once, and continued to talk.
Some people also said that he added "three is not afraid of shyness, and four is not afraid of pain" after "one is not afraid of hardship, and two is not afraid of death". It sounds chilling.
It was also said that the rebels asked him during their criticism: "Why do you believe in Buddhism?" Dad actually said: "Buddhism is believed by everyone, not by me." Buddhism has a history of thousands of years. "I heard from other people, not me directly.
However, it is precisely because my father believes in Buddhism that he can think openly and can hold on to this unprecedented catastrophe. Not only did he think about it, but he also persuaded others to want to open it.
Mr. Tang Yun said in an article written in "Liberation" on May 26, 1981:
I remember that in the early winter of 1969, when we went to work in Caohang Commune in the suburbs of Shanghai, Feng Lao often talked with me.
On one occasion I confided to him my pessimism, saying that when the campaign was over, I would go to the countryside to find a quiet place for the rest of my life.
Feng Lao didn't think so, and he said to me, "Old Tang, you shouldn't leave. Stay in Shanghai, Shanghai will need you to paint more in the future. This group of people is perverse, and it will not last long. Just wait, you'll see what happens to them. You have to make a little more contribution to the country, and don't have such negative thoughts. His words still leave a deep impression on me to this day.
Although his father persuaded Mr. Tang Yun like this, in fact, he must have had various ideas himself in this movement. It's been too long, the Anti-Japanese War only endured for eight years, and the "Cultural Revolution" lasted for ten years!
According to the people of the art academy, in 1968, when the instructions on "strictly prohibiting forced confessions" were issued, the art institute called the people in the "cowshed" to talk about their feelings, and everyone who talked cried. Dad was among them.
Yes, how could he not cry! To extract a confession is to be beaten into a confession. It has been a year and a half since the "Cultural Revolution" to believe in the words of those who have been beaten into confessions, and then criticize and torture them in every way!
Those who have been scolded have long been scolded, those who have been beaten have already been beaten, and those who committed suicide have long since died. It is only now that the instructions have been issued, how can it not make people cry!
In the midsummer of 1967, the academy was divided into two factions: the "Red Flag School" and the "Killing the King of Hell".
The "Red Flag Faction" hid him in the art school at that time on Caoxi North Road (the school where the students had come to copy our house) and locked him up, which was called "quarantine and censorship".
Sometimes he was temporarily transferred to the film studio opposite. Dad was like their prey, and he had to be at his mercy.
Mr. Shao Luoyang of the painting academy was also locked up in the same room. After my father passed away, I also visited Mr. Shao and learned some about the situation at that time.
On June 28, 1979, my father's unjust case was so-called "rehabilitated", and his ashes were placed in the Longhua Revolutionary Cemetery.
On July 11th and 12th, in Shanghai's "Xinmin Evening News", a long article by Mr. Shao Luoyang was published, "Picking up the Lights and Stormy Nights, Telling the Past from the Beginning".
After Mr. Shao introduced the life of the old dean Feng Zikai in the article, he mentioned the situation where the two of them were locked together:
In the midsummer of 1967, Shanghai was full of the evil wind of "doubting everything and overthrowing everything", and Feng Lao and I were both "isolated", but we still had some freedom, we could go to the dining hall to eat, we could go to the well to draw water, and there was a "cowshed" for two people, and two short beds.
Feng Lao has a bottle of medicinal wine, which can be drunk at night. He showed me a copy of his excerpts from Lu Xun. He was dragged out and criticized almost every day. He was big-hearted and never cared. The night is quiet, although the snail lives in the room, but the sea and the sky are wide.
Regarding the "two short couches" mentioned in Mr. Shao's article, Mr. Shao said that the rebels gave his father a brand-new wire bed obtained from the house to sleep on, and Mr. Shao only slept on an ordinary hard bed. They don't think much of them are good to their father, maybe it depends on his age.
As for Mr. Shao's statement that his father drank "medicinal wine" in the "isolation" room, he fell for his father! Dad is a heavy drinker, and he must also drink rice wine, and he is not used to drinking other wine. For this, he left Taiwan, which did not have Shaoxing wine.
Now he is isolated in an art school, without alcohol, and lives like a year. Prison visits are allowed, and family members should be allowed to visit and give gifts at art schools. My mom and I often go to deliver things.
Once, my father whispered, "Bring me some wine!" ”
Will it be a problem to let them know? ”
It is said to be a medicinal wine for healing. ”
Oh, good! In this way, although my father was quarantined, he was able to drink Shaoxing wine every day.
There is another thing, which is also the strategy of my father to use his brains to deal with the rebels. Dad's denture had one of his dentures and I can't remember when it fell out.
At one point during his quarantine period, he said to the rebels: "I just fell and fell my teeth. ”
Can you eat? "It seems that I met a rebel with a conscience who actually cared about my father's food.
It's inconvenient......Dad took the opportunity to say.
In this way, Dad actually won a chance to go back and fill his teeth.
Just this time, my brother and I were ordered to pick up our dad from art school. We supported my father and happily crossed the road to the starting point of No. 42 in front of the film studio.
There happened to be an empty car parked. We hurriedly got into the car, hoping that the car would leave the place early. But there are still few passengers, and the driving time has not yet arrived.
As if I had some premonition, I looked at the art school across from me, anxiously waiting for the second to pass. Suddenly, a man ran out of the school, went straight to Route 42, and got into the car. I quickly stood up and greeted me with a smile.
Feng Zikai! You can't go back! You haven't handed in today's inspection yet. ”
My brother is a fierce man. The face has become very unsightly. I hurriedly stood up, covered him a little, and said to the man, "Dad is very unwell today, probably not digesting-".
Before I could finish speaking, my father immediately stammered, "I'll go back and write and make up when I come." ......I will definitely write well, write longer, and dig deep into the roots of my own thoughts......”
yes, yes! We will supervise him to write ......"I've had all the good things to say.
Fortunately, at this time, the time to drive was almost up, and the driver came up. The rebel hesitated, and hurried out of the car.
The car is gone! It's an ambulance! If the car hadn't been driven at this juncture, if the rebel had a wolf's heart and lungs, and would have dragged his father out of the car, today's events would have been unimaginable!
It's not that Dad can't go back to reunite with his family, but that his younger brother will definitely have a big quarrel or even fight with that person. What good results will happen if a son of the "Black Eight Categories" fights with the rebels!
The younger brother is a very sincere person, so he is very unsuitable to deal with the rebels. I remember one time in order to persuade him to be superficial in politics, he and I had a heated argument and finally quarreled. He walked away in a rage and didn't talk to me for a long time.
Oh, yes! We grew up under our dad's education. Dad taught us to be sincere. He celebrates the innocence of children and hates the hypocrisy of adults. But in these dark days, will this way of being a man work?!
Although he escaped the catastrophe that time and was able to go home and live a happy life for a few days, Dad still had to go back and continue to undergo the "quarantine review". And once he was cut off part of his beard when he was being criticized.
Dad came home and took it with a normal heart. He even wittily said: "Wildfires can't be burned, and spring breezes blow and regenerate." It will grow in a few days. ”
In the preface to the book "Another Life Painting Collection" published in 1947, my father said that he never imagined that he would be able to publish a picture album after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. He asked Shinmei, who was only nine years old at the time, to draw a picture of these two lines of poetry as the title page.
Unexpectedly, twenty years later, Dad encountered a more powerful "wildfire", but this time he finally couldn't wait for the spring breeze to come!