
I was 11 and into my second semester in high school. The "Criticize Deng and Counterattack the Right-Deviationst Reversal-of-Verdicts Trend” campaign was running into high gear. We were put on constant alert for possible afterquakes following the devastating earthquake in Tangshan. In the afternoon I heard the news either from the radio broadcast or other classmates. I tried very hard but tears just couldn't fall. On my way from classroom back to home, I saw the young soldiers who belonged to an artillery unit stationed in the school playground to help produce artificial rainfall in the area plagued by draught. I saw them wailing seated on the ground in a perfect circle. I had longed to be a soldier since my first memory. But I didn't. I didn't cry. For a moment I had infinite doubt about my true feeling towards the great Chairman. I recalled his frail frame and shaky gestures greeting foreign visitors in the newsreel I saw the day before. I actually had a vague feeling of the inevitable right there in the movie theater.
The first English sentence we leared in high school is "Long Live Chairman Mao." And the first song we learned to sing in English is "I Love Peking's Tiananmen."
The poem I liked most in high school is his "Shangsha."
长沙 独立寒秋,
湘江北去,
橘子洲头。
看万山红遍,
层林尽染;
漫江碧透,
百舸争流。
鹰击长空,
鱼翔浅底,
万类霜天竞自由。
怅寥廓,
问苍茫大地,
谁主沉浮。
携来百侣曾游,
忆往昔峥嵘岁月稠。
恰同学少年,
风华正茂;
书生意气,
挥斥方遒。
指点江山,
激扬文字,
粪土当年万户侯。
曾记否,
到中流击水,
浪遏飞舟。
CHANGSHA Mao Zedong
(1925)
Alone I stand in the autumn cold
On the tip of Orange Island,
The Xiang River flowing north.
I see ten thousand hills crimsoned,
And the woods in deep-dye;
The mighty stream, saturated with bluish green,
A hundred barges racing by.
Eagles cleave the air high up,
Fish glide in the shallow bottom;
Under the frosty sky all creatures are fighting for freedom.
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, who decides the destiny
Of this boundless land?
Once I was here with a hundred companions,
Vivid yet thick those rugged times.
Young we were, schoolmates,
At life's full bloom;
Filled with students' enthusiasm,
Boldly we cast all restraints aside.
Pointing to the land,
Setting the people afire with our words,
We counted the marquises in those years no more than muck.
Remember still
How, venturing midstream, we struck the waters
And waves stayed the speeding boats?
(my translation compiled and edited from various sources)
His words will stay...