7. Just a Scholar

Abstract

The author was unable to avoid the ten-year calamity, the Cultural Revolution, and especially sad for him was his involvement in Liangxiao, the Great Criticism Group of Beijing and Qinghua Universities, the group that drafted articles on orders from the Gang of Four. In the fall of 1965, the author went with other department members to the Xinghuo in the eastern suburbs of Beijing to take part in the campaign. Late one desolate night in the autumn of 1967, Red Guards from the Peking University Commune came to search the author's house and confiscate items. Aside from personal verbal insults and physical injuries, one other thing that was widely prevalent during the Cultural Revolution was the wilful deprivation of people's freedom without any sort of legal process. Shortly after the fall of the Gang of Four, numerous rumors about Liangxiao came into circulation in society. Keywords: Beijing university; Cultural Revolution; Four Clean-ups campaign; New Peking University commune; Qinghua University; Zhou Yiliang