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Surviving the Cultural Revolution

Why should this tourist want to take my picture?
I’m just a woman who is very old—
He photographs me as I sweep the streets
And gather trash to justify my rice.

What could I tell this foolish, shallow man
Whose camera records but cannot see?
That both my legs are very weak and ache
From decades of hard work and revolutions.

That I am 85—born when Nanking
Was occupied and tortured by Japan.
I have no memory of World War II
Or how they snatched my father from our home.

But I remember China turning red
In 1948—the voice of Mao—
The speeches that I barely understood
Forever blared upon the radio.

I’d tell this tourist with the camera
My mother was a seamstress who could sew
Bright Peking Opera robes of silk and gold.
Then Mao arrived and everything turned gray.

His hate-filled communists rejected art.
My wish to be a dancer was soon crushed
So I could process coal for factories.
They made me old before I could grow up.

For twenty years we had no heat and starved.
I never married—Love could not survive
Such punishment. My mother was my heart.
She hid some costumes in the wall to trade.

In 1966 the Communists
Declared a war on history and culture.
They ruined everything my mother cherished.
A student mob destroyed her Opera silks.

My mother’s heart grew weak with too much grief.
And as she died the Party made me read
Aloud to her Mao’s Little Book of Lies.
My hatred grew as vast as the Great Wall.

And still the students rioted and burned
Destroying China’s treasures one by one:
Fine statues of The Buddha, of Guanyin,
Old scrolls, carved jade, plus treasures from the West.

I later found one scarf my mother hid.
I treasured it. It spoke of the old days.
The riots finally stopped. The decades passed.
McDonalds came with Nixon. And fast cars.

Then Disney came. Its gift of Mickey Mouse
Profaned remembrance of my mother’s silks.
Now tourists swarm. They hoard cheap souvenirs
And take my picture as I sweep the streets.

The Party makes me work despite my age.
I pick up the debris the tourists leave—
The Starbucks cups they toss about like rice.
But nothing that I do makes this land clean.

It’s not the man who took my picture’s fault,
But China will not ever be itself.
They’ve trapped the Yangtze River with a dam
And demon leaders rule us from Beijing.

As for the man who took my photograph
Here are the words I want to say to you:
The China that you seek you shall not see.
Its soul was stolen by the C.C.P.

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Poet’s Note: This poem is based on first-hand observations by the poet as a tourist in Beijing in 2001. He has given an identity and back-story to one of the ancient sweepers seen in these tourist centers. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has faced criticism for employing elderly individuals in low-paid street sweeping jobs. They are fired at will, lack legal protection and face severe social discrimination. Sweepers are at the bottom of society’s heap, with frequent reports of them being assaulted or even killed. Such workers are typically quite elderly, with low levels of education and badly paid. They are unable to stand up for their rights. Source: https://www.worldsweeper.com/Country/China/PoorTreatmentOfSweepers2015.html#:~:text=Ding%20came%20to%20Xi’an,basis%20and%20are%20easily%20dismissed.

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Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals.  He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel  Bleeding Stone.  He lives in Wimauma, Florida.

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13 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Brian, this is excellent prose capped by a perfect portrayal at the end of the stolen soul of China that fortuitously rhymed.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you, Roy. Actually, it’s blank verse as opposed to prose since the piece is in iambic pentameter. And it is indeed capped with an intentional couplet to give it finality. A completely unschooled and possibly illiterate worker at the very bottom of the social heap would probably not sound right speaking in rhyme since rhyme generally bespeaks a level of education and sophistication that this character has been cut off from by the C.C.P.

      Reply
  2. Joseph S. Salemi

    Brian, this is perfectly done. You create a portrait of a stolen life, of a life that has been bled dry of any hope or happiness, of a life that has been crucified on the Golgotha of political fanaticism. When I think of the millions of innocent persons whom this one brutalized woman represents, my hatred of Communists, Marxists, Socialists, left-liberals, and all others of that ilk grows so exponentially I can barely contain it.

    The West has done many unspeakable things to China and Chinese culture, going as far back as the Opium Wars and the forced port concessions. But the absolutely worst thing we did was invent Marxism and Socialism, and allow those two Occidental poisons to enter Chinese thinking and destroy China’s art, tradition, literature, high culture, and folkways. Need I add the mass famines that have starved millions to death, the political executions that killed just as many, the ongoing genocide of minorities, the deliberate creation and spread of COVID worldwide. and the total crushing of any hope for political freedom in the Chinese people? The CCP makes the Nazi Party look like small-time pikers.

    This profoundly upsetting poem, in the voice of one poor, crushed, and utterly oppressed old woman, is a searing testament to Chinese Communist brutality. And to all you CCP operatives who keep an eye on the internet for anyone or anything that criticizes your rotten government — I hope you read this, and I hope you drop dead. Tell that to your stinking political commissars.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Joe, you saw right to the very heart of this harsh critique of the CCP and I am extremely grateful both for the generous comment as well as your gut reaction to it. When I was in Beijing I was astonished to see very elderly people sweeping the sidewalks and the streets — especially when it was clearly difficult for them to do such manual labor at their advanced ages. You can tell the quality of a society by the way it protects its most vulnerable. By this criterion, China is very poor indeed.

      The import of communism was a huge mistake for a venerable, ancient culture. And of the many brutal acts caused by Mao’s China, the event that has most triggered my revulsion is the Cultural Revolution which I have seen depicted in several films, including ‘The Red Violin” and “The Last Emperor.” It was a mindless, violent rage against all aspects of refined culture. I read that 90% of Tibetan monasteries were destroyed during this insane period, along with an unspeakable number of national treasures and treasures from the West. And there were between 1 and 2 million deaths.

      I don’t recall anyone marching for justice in China. Then or now.

      Reply
  3. Warren Bonham

    What a great story. It’s one we keep flirting with emulating. Poems like yours will help us keep the menace at bay.

    Reply
  4. Brian Yapko

    Thank you very much, Warren! I often wonder to what extent poetry can make a difference. In the scheme of things does it really matter? But I’m a big believer in bearing witness. And maybe that can help keep the menace at bay. One hopes. Mustard seeds.

    Reply
  5. Evan Mantyk

    Brian, regarding the poetry itself, I would call it blank verse done right. Without rhyme, blank verse works best, I think, with certain elements, often those are alliteration, extended metaphors and similes, tightly drawn narratives, and flourishes of rhyme at key points, often at the ending. Your use of these, particularly the latter two, is perfect.

    In an age when youth and many others seem unaware of the pitfalls of communism and socialism, your narrative exposes them well. These ideologies are nominally supposed to help workers, the people at the lowest position of the social pyramid, such as the street sweeper depicted here. That is supposed to be a primary goal. Yet, ironically the workers are the ones who lose out even more in communism and socialism. Meanwhile you have people like Xi Jinping whose father was a leading communist in the founding the current regime. He is essentially an elite Party aristocrat in place because of his bloodline. The same traditional pyramid that the CCP sought to overthrow is still, in many ways, there and functioning. My Chinese friends tell me that it is very likely that the Mao family would still be ruling (like the Kims in N. Korea) had Mao’s male heir not been killed by Americans in the Korean War. But, in China, it is also not the traditional pyramid because the CCP has eviscerated the traditional system, by removing the divine presence that is above and superior to the pyramid (“of The Buddha, of Guanyin”). With the absence of the divinely-tied moral component for elevation up the pyramid—which provides order, meaning, and healthy perspective on life to everyone, from street sweepers to the ruler—China today, under the CCP, has a sick and bankrupt system.

    Thank you for bringing this to light so beautifully and effectively, Brian. Bravo!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you very much for the generous comment, Evan, and for the sharp criticism of the corrupt Chinese government.

      I’m grateful for the discussion of blank verse as a potentially effective form of poetry depending on subject and treatment. I simply find that it is the best tool available for certain subjects and speakers: there are subjects too raw to comfortably accept the discipline of rhyme and there are speakers for whom the structured thought implicit in rhyme is beyond reach. If such characters are to have a poetic voice (one which does not devolve into free verse), blank verse seems the best option. To me, to try to have this elderly illiterate victimized streetsweeper present her tale in the form of a sonnet would be obscene.

      I’m especially grateful for your discussion of Chinese history and politics. I did not know that about Mao and the dynastic political monopoly he almost founded. But it does not surprise me. The French Revolution, after all, led inexorably to Napolean. Communism comes a bit later but the foreseeability of seeing leaders abuse their stolen power is the same. Communism is a loathsome form of government which violently overturns the status quo only to simply replace it with a corrupt concentration of power in the hands of the amoral, the unqualified and the envious. And no matter how strong and harsh the language we use to describe it, the reality is infinitely worse.

      Thank you again, Evan. I so appreciate your publishing this poem!

      Reply
  6. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Brian, you have a remarkable knack for breathing poetic life into moments in history that make me think deeply about our present circumstances, and this poem has hit me hard.

    Its plain-speaking, matter-of-fact tone adds to the grave message. This stark image: “My mother was a seamstress who could sew/Bright Peking Opera robes of silk and gold. /Then Mao arrived and everything turned gray” together with the image of the student mob destroying these opera silks, makes me think of the mindset of many of today’s students, stoked by social media and ideological education systems. As for Mao’s “Little Book of Lies” – how apt this is in our gender-fluid-what-is-a-woman era. “My hatred grew as vast as the Great Wall” is a symbolic and significant touch – very clever.

    My heart bleeds for your cruelly treated, elderly lady whose history and culture have been torn to shreds by her very own government. The closing couplet is a daunting and haunting warning to all who choose to ignore the clear and present danger on our own doorstep here in the Western world. Brian, as ever, well done and thank you very much indeed!

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Thank you so much, Susan! What I love about this comment is that you get not only what the poem is about historically but the REASON why I wrote the poem — not only to call out the C.C.P. (which truly deserves it) but because of the parallels I see in modern Western culture — the student mobs, the Little Book of Lies. You read into it exactly as I would have hoped.
      Leftists would like to explain away the Cultural Revolution as an aberration in the march towards social justice but an awareness of history makes it clear that it is not an aberration but rather the natural and foreseeable consequence to the type of anarchic society-destroying at which Leftists so excel. Think of the Bolshevik Revolution, the French Revolution. Pancho Villa. It happens over and over again and it is happening here and now in the West — we are witnessing its early stages. London is a no-go zone. And I can’t wait to see what New York is like a few years into a Mamdani administration.

      I’m very moved by your reaction to this old lady who has lived through so much history. She is, of course, a composite of real people who I watched working so hard at an age when they should have been allowed to rest. It was upsetting to witness and a betrayal of the whole idea of “venerability for the aged” that was always the norm in traditional, pre-communist Chinese culture.

      Reply
  7. Adam Sedia

    This is an intimate illustration of what too many in the West fail to realize: the historical China is gone. It survives only in diaspora communities. And your dramatic monologue of the old sweeper-woman captures this on a personal level. I’m also glad you added the footnote: you tell the world you are speaking from direct experience, which lends an authoritative voice for any who might be skeptical.

    Reply
    • Brian Yapko

      Adam, thank you so much for reading and commenting. You are so right — the historical China is gone other than diaspora communities. Although I have been to Taiwan and it is also preserves what China might have been had the Communists never taken over. It is vibrant and respectful of its history and it is FREE. This is why a free and independent Taiwan is essential! Even Hong Kong, which the CCP promised would remain autonomous, has had its freedoms greatly curtailed. The CCP does not keep its promises.

      Thank you for appreciating the footnote: I have been haunted by the sight of this woman and the other old people I saw sweeping the streets ever since that trip to China 20 years ago. I worried about them hunched and obviously aching with arthritis. And there was nothing I could do about it. But the memory stayed and I’m glad to finally speak out about it.

      Reply

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