China Witness (37 page)

XINRAN:
Did you see Mao Zedong in Yan'an?

CHANGZHENG:
Back then, the troops saw a lot of the chiefs, so I don't remember exact dates and places. But Mao Zedong came to give a speech to the guards training course, and I can still remember that today. He said: "Your guard duties are extremely important. Now you're guarding the Party Central Committee, and the people of Shaanxi and Gansu, but in the future you'll be guarding the whole of China." At the end of the course, Zhou Enlai came to talk to us too. Once during the course, there was an
air raid by thirty or more enemy planes. There were three or four hundred of us and we helped each other into the caves. After we came out, Yan'an had been flattened, and all those poor old people and children had been left without homes.

XINRAN:
Can you tell me who you were guarding in Yan'an?

CHANGZHENG:
Kang Shi'en.

XINRAN:
Kang Shi'en? The man who was Deputy Chairman of the State Council in the 1980s and died on 21 April 1995?

CHANGZHENG:
Uh-huh.

XINRAN:
And when did you leave Yan'an?

CHANGZHENG:
There was a call to demobilise, but I thought to myself, what will I do if I go back to the poverty of my home? So I didn't demobilise. I left Yan'an with the rest of the troops and we crossed the Yellow River, fought through the
Zhangjiakou Pass, then to the
Rehe River, and then we arrived in the north-east, and went to
Chengde. Me and my old woman, we married in
Jilin, in the north-east, and after we got married we set off with the troops to Tianjin, where our eldest daughter was born.

I remember a huge building in Tianjin which housed a department store and the residence of a big GMD official. Our bombs had destroyed this building. The ordinary people said to us: "Your bombs must have eyes!" After we had taken Tianjin, we went to
Shijiazhuang, and then came to Beijing.

XINRAN:
Mr Changzheng, can I interrupt you a moment? You say you fought through the Zhangjia Kou Pass. What army were you in then?

CHANGZHENG:
I was in the PLA, which started off as the Eighth Route Army, but afterwards everything got called the PLA: the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and other troops too.

XINRAN:
Were you with the Fourth Field Army then? From the places where you fought battles, it sounds like you must have been in Lin Biao's Fourth Field Army.

CHANGZHENG:
That's right – the Fourth Field Army.

XINRAN:
May I ask you who its chiefs were then?

CHANGZHENG:
Generals Wang Ming and Wang Zhen. In Yan'an, it was also
General Wang Ming. He was chief when we were clearing new land for cultivation, and he led us to the north-east too.

When the People's Republic of China was established, I attended the founding ceremony in Beijing. There were no trees and paths in front of
Tiananmen Gate then, and I watched from an earth embankment on the west side. After the ceremony was over, I went to the suburb of Dongbeiwang. After that, I got a train to
Hankou, then Guangxi, then
Vietnam. Then I went to Shanghai, Tianjin,
Qiqihar and
Manchuria. We had an old army friend who was working there as an official. He asked me if I'd like a trip to the Soviet Union. I said I couldn't possibly go, I was still in army uniform. But then I was sent there anyway. When people found out I'd been in the PLA, they were very nice to me. When their chiefs talked, I couldn't understand a thing, but there was one who spoke Chinese, so I could understand him.

I've been on the move for most of my life, going here and there. I went back with the army to Beijing, then Nanjing, then
Zhenjiang. Then I got a civilian job and moved to Tianjin.

XINRAN:
When did you leave the army?

CHANGZHENG:
In 1956. I got transferred from Tianjin to be a researcher at an oil depot, for what is now
Great Wall Lubricants, part of Sinopec. I worked there until I retired. The first time I went to the Daqing oilfield, the first oil well, I said to my boss I'd never seen an oil rig, I'd like to go and look. He said, go ahead. So in the evening, off I went. I was at the base of the oil rig and they gave me a quilt, and I spent all night there, carefully watching the drilling. The Daqing oilfield really pulled out all the stops for China. If it hadn't been for Daqing, we couldn't have run our vehicles, or developed our industries. The Americans, the British, even the Soviets had wanted to get a stranglehold on us then. Times were really hard, but we broke through. Just as in the grasslands, we never thought how rosy life would be now, so in the fifties, who would have imagined we would have televisions and fridges? At that time, our idea of a good Western meal was potatoes and roast beef from the Soviet Union!

XINRAN:
How did you get to know your wife?

CHANGZHENG:
We met in the north-east. After we got there, almost all my army mates found themselves partners and married, and so they introduced me to her. That was 1947. The day we were married, I had just arrived at her parents' house when someone shouted: "The planes, the planes are coming!"
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They pulled me into the house and we dashed for the cellar, and that was where we got married, with planes flying overhead,
dropping bombs on us. My wife had no wedding dress, we had absolutely nothing. But we've never been parted.

XINRAN:
How many children have you got?

CHANGZHENG:
Five. Our eldest daughter, then a second daughter, then a son, then a third daughter, then our youngest son.

XINRAN:
How do your children's lives compare to yours when you were young?

CHANGZHENG:
I don't know. I'm just an army man. It's mainly been my wife who's done all the work. She brought all our kids up.

XINRAN:
Do you argue? Are there things you fight about?

CHANGZHENG:
We don't fight about anything. She knows how I suffered on the Long March, and the health problems it left me with, and she's very good to me. Now that I'm old, she does everything for me. She gets the food, she's the buyer, the phone-answerer, the messenger, the nurse, the cook, and so on and so on. She has a lot to cope with.

XINRAN:
From what I hear, you haven't been idle since you retired, you still give patriotic education classes. Isn't that right?

CHANGZHENG:
Yes, that's right. I've taught in primary, secondary, right up to university level – I've lectured at
Qinghua University, for instance. I've given more than 430 talks. More than 130,000 people have been at my classes, and I can still remember which schools I've taught at.

XINRAN:
Why do you enjoy going to talk to them about your experience?

CHANGZHENG:
I'm very concerned about whether or not the next generation understand us. We suffered so much hardship and so many people died. As the new generation grows up, I want them to remember those fallen comrades. They died for us today and they cannot be forgotten.

XINRAN:
If your children asked you what were the worst and the happiest things which have happened to you in your life, what would you tell them?

CHANGZHENG:
The time when I'm happiest is when I look at my children and grandchildren. That's what makes me happiest. My second daughter has a grandson too, that's my great-grandchild, so the fourth generation has arrived. My childhood may have been hard, but now I'm very fortunate. That's made me think of a song I know. [He begins to sing at the top of his voice]:

Our childhood was steeped in the waters of bitterness,
We follow the Red Army to fight all over China. Hey!
We rush into the forest of guns. Hey!
We run through the rain of bullets. Hey!
We cross the mountains and the grasslands. Hey!
We weave cloth and make clothing. Hey!
We pass our days amid flames and gunpowder smoke. Hey! . . .
Our spirit remains undimmed. Hey!
Our guns will never get old and die. Hey!
New China is springing up.
We're on the road to the Four Modernisations.
Love is everywhere in China
And we will never forget the goodness of the Communist Party. Hey!

XINRAN:
You sing well! Do you remember any other songs?

CHANGZHENG:
There's "Yellow River":

The wind is moaning,
The horses are neighing,
The Yellow River is thundering . . .
The Yellow River is thundering,
Troops laden with weapons charge forward,
So many heroes fighting the Japanese . . .
We're protecting China, protecting the Yellow River,
Protecting China's mountains, protecting China.

XINRAN:
Can your children sing them?

CHANGZHENG:
No, they never learned them properly.

XINRAN:
You say that things were hard in the past. Your generation suffered so much. What was the worst thing you suffered? And what have you enjoyed most?

CHANGZHENG:
It
was
very hard, but it was for our country. The Party and China have looked after us well. You see, when the People's Republic was established, I went to the ceremony. At the Spring Festival every year, I go to the Great Hall of the People. I've been interviewed by reporters from other countries, and by people from the Army Museum. Canadian reporters were here doing an interview. They said to me: "You can't go to Canada, but your photo can go."

XINRAN:
Your songs will go to lots of places in the world too, and everyone will read the words of the songs you have just sung.

CHANGZHENG:
What a pity they can't hear me sing.

XINRAN:
If you could live your life again, how would you live it? Would you choose the same life as before?

CHANGZHENG:
Of course I would.

XINRAN:
Would you still follow the Communist Party, and suffer all those hardships?

CHANGZHENG:
Ha! If I'd known in advance, of course I wouldn't have. But if we hadn't been through all that, would we have peace today? We were fighting every day, so of course everyone suffered. But because of us, China stopped fighting, so it was well worth suffering for. Otherwise our children and grandchildren would go through what we went through as children. China has developed and changed enormously; this sort of development never happened before.

XINRAN:
How do you know China has changed so much?

CHANGZHENG:
I like to follow the news, I watch the TV news, I read the Party magazine
Qiushi
, and the newspapers – the
Workers News, People's
Daily, Beijing News, Beijing Times
and
World of the Elderly
. My eyesight is good, I can read the small print perfectly. The one I like most is
Qiushi
.

XINRAN:
Why?

CHANGZHENG:
Because it's put out by the Central Committee, and there are a lot of study topics.

XINRAN:
Have you told your children and grandchildren stories of when you were young?

CHANGZHENG:
Yes, I have. They know most of it. My children and grandchildren come and see me on Saturdays and Sundays. These children of mine all understand how to behave properly.

XINRAN:
What kind of people would you like your grandchildren to turn into in the future?

CHANGZHENG:
Well, that depends on their abilities.

XINRAN:
You're ninety years old now. Do you have any unfulfilled wishes?

CHANGZHENG:
Ninety years old . . . No I haven't. My health is quite good, and I go out every day to do morning exercises or to do other things, and everyone says I'll easily live to be over a hundred.

XINRAN:
What would you like to do most now? If you had the time and energy?

CHANGZHENG:
Keep myself fit. When I go out every day I take my dragon-head walking stick given to me at the Great Hall of the People. I do at least 5,000 paces daily, that's 50,000 paces every ten days. I'm not boasting. To get really fit, live a bit longer, see China change. Those are
the things that will make me even happier. I go to bed at nine thirty at night, get up at six and eat breakfast. Once I've eaten I go out and do my exercises and my paces. I told the reporter from the China–Japan Friendship Association: "I did the 25,000 li Long March, and now I've walked a new Long March of 25,000 li."

XINRAN:
Do you know where your granddaughter Yanyan is now?

CHANGZHENG:
I'm not exactly sure where she is. Sometimes she writes to me.

XINRAN:
She's in England.

CHANGZHENG:
I had heard but I don't know anything about it. Her granny keeps in touch with what she's doing, I don't.

XINRAN:
You say that you saw Chairman Mao. Did you know that many people are saying that Mao made mistakes? Do you agree?

CHANGZHENG:
I can tell you that Chairman Mao was a very open-minded man. When we were clearing land for cultivation, he planted vegetables too. When we were tending our vegetables, we saw Chairman Mao in the vegetable garden too. Think of that . . . a chairman, tending his vegetables just like a peasant. He did neglect some things though. He didn't even keep an eye on his wife,
Jiang Qing. He used to say: "Women are like the weather – they can't be controlled." But he was a terrific man.

XINRAN:
Are the cadres nowadays the same as they were before?

CHANGZHENG:
Of course not, they're nothing like they were before. You can see it on the news every day. Cadres nowadays do nothing but "eat, take, extort and demand". In the past, whether they were senior cadres or ordinary cadres, they would be disciplined if they did wrong.