In the spring of 1956 Mao announced a policy known as the Hundred Flowers, from the phrase 'let a hundred flowers bloom' (bai-hua qi-jing), which in theory meant greater freedom for the arts, literature, and scientific research. The Party wanted to enlist the support of China 's educated citizens, which the country needed, as it was entering a stage of 'post-recovery' industrialization.

The general educational level of the country had always been very low. The population was huge over 600 million by then and the vast majority had never enjoyed anything like a decent standard of living. The country had always had a dictatorship which operated by keeping the public ignorant and thus obedient. There was also the problem of the language: the Chinese script is exceedingly difficult; it is based on tens of thousands of individual characters which are not related to sounds, and each has complicated strokes and needs to be remembered separately. Hundreds of millions of people were completely illiterate.

Anybody with any education at all was referred to as an 'intellectual." Under the Communists, who based their policies on class categories, 'intellectuals' became a specific, if vague, category, which included nurses, students, and actors as well as engineers, technicians, writers, teachers, doctors, and scientists.

Under the Hundred Flowers policy, the country enjoyed about a year of relative relaxation. Then, in spring 1957, the Party urged intellectuals to criticize officials all the way to the top. My mother thought this was to encourage further liberalization. After a speech by Mao on the subject, which was gradually relayed down to her level, she was so moved she could not sleep all night. She felt that China was really going to have a modern and democratic party, a party that would welcome criticism to revitalize itself. She felt proud of being a Communist.

When my mother's level was told about Mao's speech soliciting criticism of officers, they were not informed about some other remarks he had made around the same time, about enticing snakes out of their lairs to uncover anyone who dared to oppose him or his regime. One year before, the Soviet leader, Khrushchev, had denounced Stalin in his 'secret speech," and this had devastated Mao, who identified himself with Stalin. Mao was further rat fled by the Hungarian uprising that autumn, the first successful if short-lived attempt to overthrow an established Communist regime. Mao knew that a large proportion of China 's educated people favored moderation and liberalization. He wanted to prevent a "Chinese Hungarian uprising." In fact, he effectively told the Hungarian leaders that his solicitation of criticism had been a trap, which he had prolonged after his colleagues suggested bringing it to a halt, in order to make sure he had smoked out every single potential dissident.

He was not worried about the workers or the peasants, as he was confident they were grateful to the Communists for bringing them full stomachs and stable lives. He also had a fundamental contempt for them he did not believe they had the mental capacity to challenge his rule. But Mao had always distrusted intellectuals. They had played a big role in Hungary, and were more likely than others to think for themselves.

Unaware of Mao's secret maneuvers, officials and intellectuals alike engaged in soliciting and offering criticisms.

According to Mao, they were to 'say whatever they want to say, and to the full." My mother enthusiastically repeated this in the schools, hospitals, and entertainment groups she looked after. All kinds of opinions were aired at organized seminars and on wall posters. Well-known people set an example by making criticisms in the newspapers.

My mother, like almost everyone, came in for some criticism. The main one from the schools was that she showed favoritism toward 'key' (zhong-dian) schools. In China there were a number of officially designated schools and universities on which the state concentrated its limited resources. These got better teachers and facilities, and selected the brightest pupils, which guaranteed that they had a high entrance rate into institutions of higher education, especially the 'key' universities. Some teachers from ordinary schools complained that my mother had been paying too much attention to the 'key' schools at their expense.

Teachers were also graded. Good teachers were given honorary grades which entitled them to much higher salaries, special food supplies when there was a shortage, better housing, and complimentary theater tickets. Most graded teachers under my mother seemed to have come from 'undesirable' family backgrounds, and some of the ungraded teachers complained that my mother placed too much importance on professional merit rather than 'class background." My mother made self-criticisms about her lack of even handedness regarding the 'key' schools, but she insisted that she was not wrong in using professional merit as the criterion for promotion.

There was one criticism to which my mother turned a deaf ear in disgust. The headmistress of one primary school had joined the Communists in 1945 earlier than my mother and was unhappy at having to take orders from her. This woman attacked my mother on the grounds that she had got her job solely on the strength of my father's status.

There were other complaints: the headmasters wanted the right to choose their own teachers, instead of having them assigned by a higher authority. Hospital directors wanted to be able to buy herbs and other medicines themselves, because the state supply did not meet their needs.

Surgeons wanted larger food rations: they considered their job to be as demanding as that of a kung-fu player in a traditional opera, but their ration was a quarter less. A junior official lamented the disappearance from Chengdu markets of some famous traditional items like "Pockmark Wong scissors' and "Beards Hu brushes," which had been replaced by inferior mass-produced substitutes. My mother agreed with many of these views, but there was nothing she could do about them, as they involved state policies. All she could do was report them to higher authorities.

The outburst of criticisms, which were often personal grouses or practical, nonpolitical suggestions for improvements, blossomed for about a month in the early summer of 1957. At the beginning of June, Mao's speech about 'enticing snakes out of their lairs' was relayed down orally to my mother's level.

In this talk, Mao said that 'rightists' had gone on a rampage attacking the Communist Party and China 's socialist system. He said these rightists made up between 1 percent and 10 percent of all intellectuals and that they must be smashed. To simplify things, a figure of 5 percent, halfway between Mao's two extremes, had been established as the quota for the number of rightists who had to be caught. To meet it, my mother was expected to find over a hundred rightists in the organizations under her.

She had not been very happy about some of the criticisms made to her. But few of them could even remotely be considered 'anti-Communist' or 'anti-socialist." Judging from what she had read in the newspapers, it seemed there had been some attacks on the Communists' monopoly of power and on the socialist system. But in her schools and hospitals, there were no such grand calls. Where on earth could she find the rightists?

Besides, she thought, it was unfair to penalize people who had spoken up after they had been invited, indeed urged, to do so. Moreover, Mao had explicitly guaranteed that there would be no reprisals for speaking up. She herself had called enthusiastically on people to voice their criticisms.

Her dilemma was typical of that facing millions of officials across China. In Chengdu, the Anti-Rightist Campaign had a slow and painful start. The provincial authorities decided to make an example of one man, a Mr. Hau, who was the Party secretary of a research institute staffed by top scientists from all over Sichuan. He was expected to catch a considerable number of rightists, but he reported that there was not a single one in his institute.