Passersby stared at us, but I took no notice. I just wanted to see her. My brother cried. But my mother did not appear.

Years later, she told me that she had heard us. In fact, her psychopath guard had opened the window slightly so our voices would be louder. My mother was told that if she agreed to denounce my father, and to confess to being a Kuomintang spy, she could see us immediately.

"Otherwise," said the guard, 'you may never get out of this building alive." My mother said no. All the time, she dug her nails into her palms to stop her tears from falling.

Throughout 1967 and 1968, while Mao struggled to set up his personal power system, he kept his victims, like my parents, in a state of uncertainty and suffering.

Human anguish did not concern Mao. People existed only to help him realize his strategic plans. But his purpose was not genocide, and my family, like many other victims, were not deliberately starved. My parents still received their salaries every month in spite of the fact that not only were they doing no work, they were also being denounced and tormented. The main compound canteen was working normally to enable the Rebels to carry on with their 'revolution," and we, like the families of other capitalist-roaders, were fed. We also got the same rations from the state as everyone else in the cities.

Much of the urban population was kept 'on hold' for the revolution. Mao wanted the population to fight, but to live.

He protected the extremely capable premier, Zhou Enlai, so that he could keep the economy going. He knew he needed another first-class administrator in reserve in case anything happened to Zhou, so he kept Deng Xiaoping in relative security. The country was not allowed to collapse totally.

But, as the revolution dragged on, large parts of the economy slipped into paralysis. The urban population increased by several tens of millions, but virtually no new housing or other service facilities were built in the towns.

Nearly everything, from salt, toothpaste, and toilet paper to every kind of food and clothing, either was rationed or disappeared completely. In Chengdu there was no sugar for a year, and six months passed without a single bar of soap.

Starting from June 1966, there was no schooling. The teachers either had been denounced or were organizing their own Rebel groups. No school meant no control. But what could we do with our freedom? There were virtually no books, no music, no films, no theater, no museums, no teahouses, almost no way of keeping oneself occupied except cards, which, though not officially sanctioned, made a stealthy comeback. Unlike most revolutions, in Mao's there was nothing to do. Naturally, "Red Guardship' became many youngsters' full-time occupation. The only ways they could release their energy and frustration were in violent denunciations and in physical and verbal bat ties with each other.

Joining the Red Guards was not compulsory. With the disintegration of the Party system, control over individuals loosened, and most of the population was left alone. Many people just stayed idle at home, and one result was an explosion of petty fights. Surliness replaced the good service and polite behavior of the pre-Cultural Revolution days. It became extremely common to see people quarreling on the streets with shop assistants, with bus conductors, with passersby. Another result was that, since no one was looking after birth control, there was a baby boom.

The population increased during the Cultural Revolution by two hundred million.

By the end of 1966 my teenage siblings and I had decided that we had had enough of being Red Guards.

Children in condemned families were supposed to 'draw a line' between themselves and their parents, and many did so. One of President Liu Shaoqi's daughters wrote wall posters 'exposing' her father. I knew children who changed their surnames to demonstrate that they were disowning their fathers, others who never visited their parents in detention, and some who even took part in denunciation meetings against their parents.

Once, when my mother was under tremendous pressure to divorce my father, she asked us what we thought. Standing by him meant we could become 'blacks'; we had all seen the discrimination and torment such people suffered.

But we said we would stick by him, come what may. My mother said she was pleased and proud of us. Our devotion to our parents was increased by our empathy for their suffering, our admiration for their integrity and courage, and our loathing for their tormentors. We came to feel a new degree of respect, and love, for our parents.

We grew up fast. We had no rival ties no squabbles, and no resentment of each other, none of the usual problems or pleasures of teenagers. The Cultural Revolution destroyed normal adolescence, with all its pitfalls, and threw us straight into sensible adulthood in our early teens.

At the age of fourteen, my love for my parents had an intensity that could not have existed under normal circumstances. My life revolved entirely around them. Whenever they were briefly at home, I would watch their moods, trying to provide amusing company. When they were in detention, I would repeatedly go to the disdainful-looking Rebels and demand a visit. Sometimes I would be allowed a few minutes to sit and talk with one of my parents, in the company of a guard. I would tell them how much I loved them. I became well known among the former staff of the Sichuan government and the Eastern District of Chengdu, and an irritation to my parents' tormentors, who also hated me for refusing to show fear of them. Once Mrs. Shau screamed that I 'looked straight through' her. Their fury led them to invent the accusation, printed on one of their wall posters, that Red Chengdu had given my father treatment because I had used my body to seduce Yong.

Apart from being with my parents, I spent most of my abundant free time with friends. After I came back from Peking in December 1966, I went for a month to an airplane maintenance factory on the outskirts of Chengdu with Plumpie and Ching-ching, a friend of hers. We needed something to occupy ourselves, and the most important thing we could do, according to Mao, was to go to factories to stir up rebellious actions against capitalistroaders. Upheaval was invading industry too slowly for Mao's liking.

The only action the three of us stirred up was the attention of some young men from the now defunct factory basketball team. We spent a lot of time strolling on the country roads together, enjoying the rich evening scent of the early bean blossoms. But soon, as my parents' suffering worsened, I went home, leaving Mao's orders and my participation in the Cultural Revolution behind once and for all.

My friendship with Plumpie, Ching-ching, and the basketball players lasted. Also in our circle were my sister Xiao-hong and several other girls from my school. They were all older than I. We would meet frequently in the home of one or another of us, and linger there for the whole day, and often the night as well, having nothing else to do.

We had endless discussions about which of the basketball players fancied whom. The captain of the team, a handsome nineteen-year-old called Sai, was the center of speculation. The girls wondered whether he liked me or Ching-ching more. He was reticent and reserved, and Ching-ching was very keen on him. Every time we were going to see him, she would meticulously wash and comb her shoulder-length hair, carefully iron and adjust her clothes to look stylish, and even put on a lit He powder and rouge and pencil her eyebrows. We all teased her gently I was also drawn to Sai. I could feel my heart pound whenever I thought of him, and would wake up at night seeing his face and feeling feverishly hot. I often murmured his name and talked to him in my mind whenever I felt fear or worry. But I never revealed anything to him, or to my friends, or even to myself explicitly. I only timidly fantasized about him. My parents dominated my life and my conscious thoughts. Any indulgence in my own affairs was immediately suppressed as being disloyal. The Cultural Revolution had deprived me of, or spared me, a normal girlhood with tantrums, bickerings, and boyfriends.