Decades After the Cultural Revolution, a Rare Letter of Remorse

By JANE PERLEZ

In an apology for his actions as a student during the Cultural Revolution, Chen Xiaolu, the son of China’s famed Foreign Minister, Chen Yi, published a notice in his school alumni blog in August. 

A profile based on interviews with Mr. Chen in the Saturday editions of the New York Times and the International New York Times refers to the apology, a rare expression of remorse from someone involved in carrying out Mao’s orders. 

Mr. Chen explains the apology was too long in coming, and says reflections on the past are necessary in order for China to move forward.
The apology attracted wide interest online, and also from colleagues who attended Middle School Number Eight, a prestigious school in the center of Beijing that catered to the children of the elite. 

Some of Mr. Chen’s teachers are still alive, including Wen Hanjiang, the school principal, now 89. 

Mr. Chen recently visited Mr. Wen, who was badly beaten during the dark days of the Cultural Revolution at the school. 

The elderly man accepted his personal apology, as did the other teachers who still live in Beijing and whom he visited, Mr. Chen said. 

In early October, Mr. Chen organized a dinner with former teachers and students, a convivial affair, he said, where the past was discussed in a friendly and forgiving way.
At the start of the apology, he refers to grainy black and white photographs from the summer of 1966 when the school was in turmoil, and the students, ordered by Mao to crush the old structures of power, were in charge. 

The photos show teachers being forced to do menial labor — digging a ditch, carrying heavy loads — while cocky students look on.
On a personal note, I met Chen Yi, the father of Chen Xiaolu, when he was foreign minister. 

I was in China at the time as a university undergraduate from Australia on a summer vacation in January 1967, and my fellow students and I were surprised, when we arrived, to find the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. 

We traveled by train up the eastern seaboard to Beijing with stops in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing. 

At our meeting at the Great Hall of the People Chen Yi was jovial, offering cigarettes and bantering about our trip. 

He was dressed in a rumpled Mao suit as he talked the language of the Cultural Revolution. 

There was little hint that the next month he would speak out against what Mao had wrought. 

Forty six years later his son decided to follow his example.
The following is a complete translation of Chen Xiaolu’s message of apology.

I want to thank our classmate for preserving these precious photographs, and to thank Huang Jian for making them public on August 18th. 

That period of time is unbearable to look back upon, but those are days that we’ll have to face our whole lives. 

As a student leader at Middle School Number Eight and the director of the school’s Revolutionary Committee, I bear direct responsibility for the denouncing, criticism and forced labor re-education of school leaders, some teachers and students. 

In the early stages of the movement, I actively rebelled and organized the denunciations of school leaders. 

When I later served as the director of the school’s Revolutionary Committee, I wasn’t brave enough to stop the inhumane persecutions, because I feared I would be accused of protecting the old ways and being a counter-revolutionary. 

It was a terrifying time.
Today I want to use the Internet to express my sincere apology to these people. 

Middle School Number Eight’s Old-Three-Classes student union is currently organizing a get-together with school leaders and teachers. 

I hope I can represent those Old-Three-Classes classmates who have hurt these school leaders, teachers and students in expressing our deepest apologies to them. 

I want to ask, will our classmates authorize me to make this kind of apology?
Recently you’ve seen in society a trend of trying to reverse the verdict on the Cultural Revolution. 

I believe that how one interprets the Cultural Revolution is matter of individual freedom, but unconstitutional and inhumane violations of human rights shouldn’t be repeated in any form in China! 

If it is repeated, we can’t even begin to speak of the happiness of the people, the wealth and power of the nation, or the Chinese Dream! 

My official apology comes too late, but for the purification of the soul, the progress of society, the future of the nation, one must make this kind of apology. 

Without reflection, how can we speak of progress!
Chen Xiaolu