Original Article: Criticizing Lin and Kong

Original Article: Criticizing Lin and Kong

When the Lin Biao incident happened, I just started my primary school.

I was born and grown up in a village in Northeast China. We had no access to official media, and one of the only sources of information was my next house neighbour. Some people would gather there after dinner to chat and smoke. One evening my grandma told my grandpa: People next door said that Lin Biao escaped to Russia, and his daughter Lin Dou reported it to the authorities.

A few weeks later, in a cold winter evening when we students were on winter vacation, I saw four big Chinese characters on four pieces of red paper reading “Criticizing Lin and Kong”on the wall on the school building.

I thought that Lin deserved the criticism, since he was a traitor to the revolution. But who would Kong be? There was only one family in my village with a family name of Kong. It did not seem that they were even related. Later I heard that it might be about the second child of the Kong Family … …

When the school started in the spring, the school authorities prepared for the students serial posters drawn in black ink on big pieces of crude paper about Kong’s bad deed many, many, many years ago. Then I knew that this event was not related to the Kong family in the village.

Then the criticizing moments started, the students and teachers were told to write criticizing articles to read in front of the classes, some were selected to read in front of the whole school. At the beginning, I was wondering why the kids of the leaders of the production brigades and party secretaries wrote better articles than I did. Soon I found that they had access to newspapers and radio broadcasts. Once I got some newspaper as oil bottle wrapping, I could copy the contents too, and my article was considered one of the best in school.

And I found that the Confucian ideas were not that bad or might not be wrong at all. I dared not to say that to anyone. I though that some of the phrases need to memorized. While Lin Biao was a counter-revolutionist, what was wrong with “Restrain to Achieve You Goal”? When in many games after school, without restraint to myself, big kids would beat me up.

所有跟帖： 

• 想起了培根的一句话：“读史使人明智。” -婉蕠- ♀ (316 bytes) () 06/26/2010 postreply 11:21:56

• Thank you! -美坛奇葩- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/26/2010 postreply 11:28:42

• 奇芭是毛主席的好学生 -bearsback- ♂ (41 bytes) () 06/26/2010 postreply 13:16:27

• lol... That is hilarious. Have a nice weekend. -婉蕠- ♀ (0 bytes) () 06/26/2010 postreply 13:51:36

• 你怎么就认准你那邻居跟老孔有一噶瘩呢。haha。 写的好。 -戏雨飞鹰- ♀ (0 bytes) () 06/26/2010 postreply 16:01:58

• That was the size of my little world. -美坛奇葩- ♂ (122 bytes) () 06/27/2010 postreply 15:01:03

• haha, good thing is that you had not known 孔已己 either before:) -戏雨飞鹰- ♀ (0 bytes) () 06/27/2010 postreply 15:57:23

• 写的真的很好。对童年的迷惑思考描写得真实感人。 -戏雨飞鹰- ♀ (0 bytes) () 06/26/2010 postreply 16:56:08

• 估计star也看过父母们跳忠字舞了。 -戏雨飞鹰- ♀ (0 bytes) () 06/26/2010 postreply 16:57:24

• :-) -美坛奇葩- ♂ (0 bytes) () 06/27/2010 postreply 14:37:19