Pal Nyiri
……My parents named me Nisha, and my younger sister Manna, because these sounded like names in Russian films.[1] But when I joined the army they said names with characters like “ya”, “na”, or “fen” sounded too sissy for a soldier and were not allowed. So in the army, I went by a different name.
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The Revolutionary Soldier
……It was in 1968, when I was 15, that I joined the army and was sent to Guangdong. You had a choice – to be a worker, a peasant or a soldier. Soldier was the best choice, especially as my father and maternal grandfather were soldiers too. My father later became commander of the Guilin garrison, but my grandfather was a much higher officer, of the ninth grade.[2] My mother was the director of the Guilin Science and Technology Committee. So if I had been older I could have been a Red Guard, as my class background was “revolutionary soldier.”[3]
……I joined the Third Department of the General Staff, the intelligence department that monitors foreign army’s communications. We were supposed to study a foreign language, but because the schools had been closed under the CR, our schooling was so poor that they first had to teach us Chinese reading and writing for a year. Mao Zedong told us to learn from Lei Feng[4], so I always volunteered to help. At night, I accompanied my classmates when they needed to go to the latrine at night and were afraid of the wolves. That’s why they made me squad commander. But I was also good at persuading people. Sometimes a teacher would ask me to help him explain a problem to the class. But in other ways I was very simple. I was shocked when I learned that Mao Zedong had had ten children with He Zizhen. For me, he had been a god, so I couldn’t imagine him doing such things.
……In August 1971, I was selected for Lin Biao’s Little Cruisers Corps (xiaojiandui).[5] One day in September, I was summoned to the headquarters of the Canton Military District. I was baffled because the car that came to get me was a jeep, rather than the usual truck. The political commissar, Yu Houde, received me in a huge office. He said: “Girl, you’re late.” Then he told me to go to my lodgings. I was to take my meals at the cadres’ canteen – these were meals with two dishes and a soup, not the turnip broth that soldiers ate – and in the rest of my time read the Selected Works of Mao Zedong.
[1] Not their real names.
[2] At the time, there were 23 grades in the People’s Liberation Army. During the Cultural Revolution, military ranks were abolished.
[3] In Mao’s China, people’s opportunities were largely defined by their class-background labels, which could not be changed. Poor and lower-middle peasants, workers, and revolutionary soldiers were “good class backgrounds.”
[4] Lei Feng was a model soldier whose self-sacrificing spirit was extolled in numerous campaigns during the Cultural Revolution and after.
[5] Lin Biao was Mao’s right-hand man during the formative years of the Cultural Revolution. After his death he was accused of plotting against Mao and of building up a military base of his own.
