The Story of My Father (4) 我的父親（4）
4
Although my mother’s foster-parents were “proletariat,” her biological mother later married someone who was classified by the CCP as a “thug.” As a result, my mother also became an outcast. She wasn’t allowed to go to high school after graduating from junior middle school. Going to university was even less possible for her.
母親的養父母雖是「無產階級」，但她的生母後來改嫁給一個被共產黨打成「惡霸」的人，母親因此受到牽連，也成了異類，初中畢業後就不讓她升高中了，當然就更不能再上大學。心高氣傲的母親覺得沒臉見人，一氣之下跑到遠遠的山裡躲起來，當起了鄉村教師。那年她才十六歲。
As a very proud young girl, my mother felt too ashamed to face anybody. So she ran away from the city, hid in a remote village, and became an elementary school teacher there. At that time she was only 16 years old.
In 1965, my parents married each other, but they weren’t able to move to the same place. Their work places were about 100kms (about 62 miles) apart from each other. At that time, everything was controlled by the party; and nobody could just move to another place or change their jobs freely.
1965年，父親與母親結了婚，但卻未能調到一起，彼此相距約兩百里地。
In 1965, my parents married each other. 1965年，父親與母親結了婚，但卻未能調到一起，彼此相距約兩百里地。
In 1966, I was born as their first child. And exactly at that year, the unprecedented “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” began.
1966年，他們有了我這個長女。也就是在那一年，「史無前例」的「文化大革命」開始了。
In 1967, when I was only one year old, my father was accused of being a “black pawn of reactionary capitalist-roaders.”
1967年，我剛一歲，父親被打成「走資派的黑爪牙」，當時他因急性肝炎正在住院，但也從醫院拖到臺上挨鬥，雙手被涂成黑色，以示他的「黑爪牙」身分。
At that time he had developed acute hepatitis and was hospitalized. However, nobody cared about his illness. He was dragged from the hospital to the big stage to be publicly denounced. His hands were painted with black ink to indicate his identity as the “black pawn of reactionary capitalist-roaders”.
After the public denunciation, he was ordered to write dozens of copies of “self-criticism,” and to post them at appointed places.
挨完了鬥，他還被責令抄寫若干份檢討書，張貼到指定地點。
As father was too weak to move at all, this grand task had to be accomplished by my mother, who was having maternity leave and staying with my father in Mianyang then. She tied me to her back with cotton tape, with a bucket of self-made flour paste in one hand, a big roll of dozens of “self-criticism” letters, which had been hand copied with a big brush pen in the other hand, and went out to post the letters. It took her the entire night to post them all.
父親身體虛弱到根本不能動彈，這項任務，只能由當時仍在綿陽休產假的母親代為完成。母親用布帶將我綁在背上，一手拎著一桶用麵粉熬製的漿糊，一手拿著一大捲用毛筆抄寫的「大字報」檢討書，整整貼了一夜，才算完成「任務」。
When I was two or three-years-old, my father was relocated to a remote township called Hanwang in Mianzhu County, Sichuan Province. There were only about 30,000 people in the town, and it was also about 100 kms away from my mother’s school. The workplace for my father to “settle down to be reformed” was a cereal processing machinery factory, which was newly built on a barren floodplain, with barely anything inside it yet.
大約在我兩三歲時吧，父親被發配到偏遠的四川省綿竹縣漢旺鎮。這是一個人口只有三萬的小鎮，距母親教書的地方大約也是兩百多里。父親「落戶改造」的糧機廠建在荒涼的河灘上，幾乎甚麼都還沒有。
（To be continued 待續 ）
My father in university. 父親學生時代的全身照。
