Chapter 2 A General Account of the Wang Jin Incident

Violence was typical of the CR. It started in schools with teachers as targets. Encouraged by the publicity surrounding the big-character poster by Nie Yuanzhi on June 1, 1966, the schools of 7th to 12th grades and universities in suspended classes the next day. At first, the struggles between the youths and teachers were only verbal or written. But on June 18, 1966, doz- ens of teachers and students were physically abused in Beijing University. On July 26, Jiang Qing praised the violence of that day by calling it a “revolutionary act.” Her speech was as a lit fuse to a barrel of gunpowder. The CRGCC guid- ing the CR issued a bulletin entitled The Splendid Results by for the Last Half Month on September 5, 1966. The bulletin said that by the end of August, more than a thousand persons had been killed. “Splendid results,” indeed. From the title, it can be seen that the killing was considered a victory to be praised—certainly not hooliganism (Wang Youqin, 2010). Spasms of vio- lence characterized the CR for months. This chapter recounts one such violent incident, the killing of a man named Wang Jin by the Red Guards at the NFL School on September 29, 1966. The senior author of this book was a student at the NFL School at the time and much of the following account is based on interviews with eyewit- nesses and students of the school, and more importantly, on the investigation report prepared by the rebels shortly after the death. What makes the Wang Jin incident notable is not that it was uniquely violent (millions of Chinese were slaughtered in the CR) or entirely un- called-for (which, as we show later, it was), but that it spawned a five-month period of protests and demonstrations, various investigations, and ulti- mately an admission by Party authorities that the killing was a doctrinal “error.” The incident thus reveals something about the existence, tactics and ultimately the futility of domestic resistance inside China to the more abusive predations of the CR. At the beginning of the Red Guard movement, only those of “red revolu- tionary” family origins were actively involved, that is, revolutionary officers, revolutionary cadres, and revolutionary martyrs. They considered themselves as the automatic heirs to the revolutionary cause and did not want people from other groups to have a share in the revolution regardless of their revolutionary fervor. Their slogan was, “Only leftists may rebel and no rightists are allowed

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004360471_004 A General Account of the Wang Jin Incident 19 to cause any disturbance.” These Red Guards are now often referred to as the old Red Guards or noble Red Guards in comparison to the Red Guards from ordinary families. From late June to late July, the Red Guards of the School affiliated with Qinghua University (QU School hereafter) in Beijing put up three big- character posters calling for rebellion and upheaval to safeguard the revolution from reactionaries and rightists. They swore to “rock the old world apart with clubs.” They also pledged their loyalty to Mao. In response, Mao wrote to the Red Guards saying that the Party expressed enthusiastic support for their acts. The ensuing violence reached its peak in August, 1966. This was, in a more con- temporary phrase, state-abetted, state-sanctioned terrorism against certain segments of the state’s own people. On August 5, 1966, , the deputy principal of the Girls School affiliated with the Beijing Normal University (BNU Girls School hereafter), was beaten to death by her students. She became the first person in the education- al sector beaten to death in Beijing in the CR. On August 18, 40 students and Red Guard representatives from that school went up to the Tiananmen Square Rostrum and were received personally by Chairman Mao. Bian Zhongyun’s murder and its aftermath are considered in later chapters of this book. , a leader of the Red Guards of the BNU Girls School, pinned a Red Guard armband around Mao’s arm. Mao asked Song Binbin her name and suggested that she change it to Song Yaowu. In Chinese, Binbin means “refined and courteous” while Yaowu means “want arms.”1 The photo that recorded the interaction and became an iconic symbol in the CR carried an important mes- sage to the country: namely, that the violence of the Red Guards was supported by top leaders including Mao himself. Song’s photo with Mao and her name “Want Arms” soon became very popular across the county. Before long, a mas- sive wave of violence, the Red Terror of August as it was called, spread from Beijing to all corners of the country. Inspired by the violence in Beijing, a surge of violence was pushed up by the Red Guards in Nanjing. In Chinese, Nanjing means “south capital.” About a thousand kilometers south of Beijing, Nanjing has long been a major cen- ter of Chinese culture, education, politics, and economy and it was a natural urban locale to which the CR soon spread. The Wang Jin incident by the old Red Guards at the NFL School, the subject of this chapter, marked the climax

1 Some sources translate Mao’s comment as “Want Violence …” but in any case, the reference to “arms” in our translation definitely refers to something akin to force or strength (as in military arms or a “call to arms” and not to arms as in “arms and legs.”