Mei Niang: Students Reading Classics

Author: Mei Niang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-01-01
Features: Her mother's passionate nature was once forced to be buried, but after wiping away the dust, she remained unrestrained and free. From the age of twenty-eight to eighty-one, the cruelty and harshness of life did not wither her gentle and delicate feminine sentiments. Readers who turn back to look at her will, if they calm their minds and listen to her gentle words, examine the era reflected in her works, deeply realize the vicissitudes contained in that time. The social suppression and blows against her mother were nothing compared to my strike to distance myself from her during the Cultural Revolution. For a long time afterward, I wanted to avoid this issue and find excuses for myself. But I came to understand that there were no excuses here—no explanation could be meaningful. I had already done something that stripped me of my humanity. The more I sought excuses, the more I exposed the brokenness and loss of my humanity. I have always believed myself to be kind, charitable, and compassionate, yet I committed heinous and inhumane acts against my own mother. I have always followed the principle of "repaying a drop of kindness with a flood of gratitude" and the action guideline of "do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself," yet why did I fail to practice this with my own mother? The party may not understand my mother, society may not understand my mother, but I cannot claim not to understand my mother. Why didn't I use my own mind to think and discern back then? To gain even a little trust from others in society or within organizations, I was willing to harm my own mother; to demonstrate my "revolutionary" nature, I was willing to sacrifice the lives of my own family first. It cannot be excused that such situations were rampant during the Cultural Revolution. If everyone had the strength to preserve their unquenchable conscience and moral compass, the disaster of the Cultural Revolution would not have reached such depth and breadth.