Flee

Author: Wang Zexun
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-01-01
Features: This is an unflinching memoir of the flight of a Red Scarf youth fugitive. The protagonist suffers condemnation for speaking out, enduring humiliation and torture from that point on. Their love, spirit, dignity, soul, and all human qualities are carved away, living like an animal. Finally unable to bear the torment, they embark on a life of exile, from the Tarim River to the Taklamakan Desert, a "sea of death," and from the ruins of armed struggle in Inner Mongolia to the water towns and mountains of Jiangnan. They wander in, escaping time and again, witnessing every imaginable scene in the extreme sanctified class struggle farce, and even the lies that cast a shadow over everything blue. Whoever holds human aspirations becomes a "criminal." The "crimes" of the Red Scarf youth "criminals" are as absurd as myths: a careless word, a bow, a statement, or listening to a foreign radio station overnight could lead to labor re-education, imprisonment, sentencing, humiliation, tying up, beating, and public criticism. The public criticism varied—there were intellectual struggles, accompanying struggles, armed struggles, factional struggles; there were those who knelt on the ground, degraded like animals, being paraded; those covered in ink, mucus, and saliva, surrounded and attacked; and forced to assume variousabominable postures. As a result, among the Red Scarf youth, there were those who betrayed and spied, those who wagged their tails for favor, those who took advantage of others' misfortunes, and those who knelt collectively in apology. There were also those who supported each other, those who sighed with grief and worry. There was the earth-shattering call, "We must survive," and there was the grand and tragic mass escape through the Tian Shan Mountains in the face of perilous pursuit. Up to this point, the page of darkness andspectacle in the man-made age of ignorance no longer slips away from history. Included in the text is the true and painful situation of the Tarim River (once China'slongest inland river) and its being artificially desertified. The author, with a spirit of refusal to embellish, opened their heart and soul for twenty years, revising the manuscript five times. Although it still has rough edges, it possesses a harsh beauty, a profound directness that pierces through the essence of the Red Scarf youth's life of exile. Reading it is shocking and moving, bringing tears to one's eyes. This book is an unflinching memoir of the flight of a Red Scarf youth fugitive. The protagonist suffers condemnation for speaking out, enduring humiliation and torture from that point on. Their love, spirit, dignity, soul, and all human qualities are carved away, living like an animal. Finally unable to bear the torment, they embark on a life of exile, from the Tarim River to the Taklamakan Desert, a "sea of death," and from the ruins of armed struggle in Inner Mongolia to the water towns and mountains of Jiangnan. They wander in, escaping time and again, witnessing every imaginable scene in the extreme sanctified class struggle farce, and even the lies that cast a shadow over everything blue. Whoever holds human aspirations becomes a "criminal." The "crimes" of the Red Scarf youth "criminals" are as absurd as myths: a careless word, a bow, a statement, or listening to a foreign radio station overnight could lead to labor re-education, imprisonment, sentencing, humiliation, tying up, beating, and public criticism. The public criticism varied—there were intellectual struggles, accompanying struggles, armed struggles, factional struggles; there were those who knelt on the ground, degraded like animals, being paraded; those covered in ink, mucus, and saliva, surrounded and attacked; and forced to assume variousabominable postures. As a result, among the Red Scarf youth, there were those who betrayed and spied, those who wagged their tails for favor, those who took advantage of others' misfortunes, and those who knelt collectively in apology.