Wu Ningkun was a graduate student at the University of Chicago when the People's Republic of China was proclaimed in 1949. He returned to China to accept a teaching post, eventually becoming a professor of English at Beijing University. But due to his U.S. connections, he fell under the suspicion of the Communist Party and was denounced as a counter-revolutionary. He was sent to a forced labor camp and spent 22 years in internal incarceration. Now living in the United States, he has published a memoir, "A Single Tear." Wu Ningkun was interviewed for COLD WAR in February 1997.

On returning to China after the Communists took power:

In my background there was always this desire to see a strong and prosperous China, also a free and democratic China, coming to being. [When] the Communists seemed to be doing that, all my friends and relatives in China urged me to come home and not become a White Russian in the States. Ever since my childhood or boyhood, China was subjected to the perennial humiliation of being invaded by the Japanese and other foreign powers. We didn't celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas but we always commemorated the national humiliation days. So in other words, we were probably, to put it simply, very nationalistic. So now was a time to do something for my nation and my people.

When I first returned to China ... I was welcomed by the government, you know, feted and escorted to different sites. ... [But] soon ... the campaign of ideological remolding of the intellectuals began. Everybody had to confess their past, especially their American contacts or relations over the years. ... So when my Communist bosses and my colleagues learned of my past, they began to suspect me. Not my friends, but the government did, because they asked me all sorts of questions. When I wrote an autobiography, as required, the professor in charge at the time called me into his home and said: "Why, you did write an informative autobiography, but aren't there more important things that you probably forgot? Would you like to reconsider?" So I said, "There is nothing to add." He started lecturing me, you know: "Our policy is this and that," you know. "So long as you tell all, we won't mete out any punishment." I said, "I came [back] to [come] home, not to make confessions. Good-day." ...

The Communists had high credibility at the time, you know; their performance was quite good at the time. Therefore, we also trusted them in this area of telling it all, especially when I felt there was nothing on my conscience. [I thought] the fact that I came all the way home to serve new China was enough, but no: they suspected I had connections with the Nationalists and I had connections with the Americans, so they had to pump and pump me and so it went on and on through each succeeding political campaign.

All this examination and confession was most frustrating, especially because I felt I was so conscientious in coming home. So I got more and more frustrated, and I got more and more angry. So I kept talking and talking and talking. I got myself into more and more trouble, because, [as] I didn't know at the time, everything I said was actually monitored. ... Whatever you said among your colleagues or to other people was actually recorded in detail. Whatever I said would be brought up at the next political campaign. "You said two sentences to so and so on such and such a day." Well, if I had anything on my conscience, I wouldn't have said it. It was just because I was oppressed and so frustrated, I had to say something to keep going.

On the Mao personality cult:

The Mao personality cult developed from the very beginning, but very slowly at first. ... It did not come to full blossoming until the Cultural Revolution, when he became the so-called "Four Greats" -- the Great Leader, Great Helmsman, Great Supreme Commander, Great Teacher -- "Four Greats," see. So [it] was obvious he [had] replaced Stalin and Beijing [had] become the center of world revolution. And his portraits appeared in every paper every day. The Red Guards were frantic about him. I thought it was bizarre and stupid! ... [They] issued the Little Red Book, quotations of Chairman Mao, and you had to carry it all the time. Whatever you did, you had to shout "Long live Chairman Mao." That was a bizarre time in Chinese history. I don't think any emperor had that honor before him.

I'm pretty sure Mao took the lead in making up the image himself as the great Marxist, and therefore the great leader of the world socialist movement. And of course the greatest leader in Chinese history. And emperors didn't have to say things in so many words: the minions would immediately know what he wants and do it better.

On being arrested:

I spoke pretty freely until 1958, when I was denounced as a Rightist. So I did not really survive well. The Communist way is to put the pressure on for awhile, and then make things more relaxed so that you would speak your mind and they would keep the record of it. And every time, they would tell you, "Oh this will never happen again." Like in 1955: I was denounced as a hidden counter-revolutionary and my apartment was searched and I was under house arrest. But when it was over, they apologized, said it was all a misunderstanding. So I felt okay; I wasn't [mad]. "You people went too far," [I said], and they admitted they went too far.

So [then] I spoke with greater urgency. The next campaign came, and of course I was courted and urged to speak. In 1957, the party leaders came [to people's] homes, to urge you to speak up, to help the party to rectify its work style, to help the [party] to do a better job. So I started speaking up, openly: "We need freedom of speech. Not only for ourselves, but for the party and for the nation, if the party is serious about rectification." And that's the end of my free speech!

After my denunciation I was of course publicly humiliated: I was deprived of everything, I was expelled from the ranks of the teachers and they sent me first to the detention center in Beijing, and then to the northern great wilderness on the Soviet border, facing Siberia, for forced labor reform.

The routine was hard labor, 12, 14, 16 hours a day. Sometimes it was nonstop, even when the temperature went down to minus 40 degrees. I survived, but I was sent back to the State Farm near Beijing. It became harsher because the whole nation underwent a historical famine. People were dying even outside the prisons. ...

I was relocated to [another] State Farm towards the end of 1960. Our food rations were already cut in [the first camp] in the great northern wilderness, but we still had real food; we still had corn bread and vegetables and whatnot -- enough to survive. But when I was relocated to the [second] State Farm, there was no real food at all. We collected the ... cabbage that's almost the staple for all the people in the Beijing area. But even the cabbages grown by the prisoners were sent to Beijing. So [after collecting the cabbage] we thought we would just sweep away the loose leaves. The officers came and said, "What? Collect them!" And then there were dry leaves; we just left them [behind]. [The officers said]: "[Collect] that too. This is going to be our food for the next two months."

And then we were given what they called food substitute, which was made from the roots of corn stalks and probably some grass and whatnot, which was indigestible. And people just got so sick. There was no real food, so they asked the families to send food parcels. So the government couldn't feed the prisoners anymore, but they still kept them at hard labor, putting [the responsibility] on the families. Luckily, my wife's family was [nearby] ... so I managed to survive. But one day, the officer sent me and three other men to a remote corner of the farm and said, "Go and dig a hole, a pit, three-by-six or two-by-four," you know. He never said what it was for. But when it was finished, we saw a cart pulled by a horse coming toward us with a corpse on it. His feet were not covered by the straw mat, and we lifted [it] -- [and it] was the guy who slept next to me. He had died of starvation. His family was in Hunan Province; they couldn't come to see him. And that's what the officer said at the time: "No food, no life."