“Many years later, I learned that Yin Luoyi was hauled before her classmates and denounced for her "traitorous" thoughts. Scarlet, who had introduced Yin to Erica, was asked to make a speech attacking Yin. To her credit, she refused. Yin was expelled from Beijing University and sent in disgrace back to her home in north-east China. I have no idea what happened to her. Nor do I know what befell Professor Zhao and his family. I only hope that eventually they were all able to join the exodus to the West. May God forgive me; I don't think they ever will.”

-- From Red China Blues by Jan Wong

In 1972, US President Richard Nixon shocked the world by walking down the steps of Air Force One in Beijing and shaking hands with Zhou Enlai. Shortly after he met with Chairman Mao in what Henry Kissinger would later describe as their, “encounter with history.” Nixon himself described it as “the week that changed the world.”

Three months later, 19 year old third-generation Canadian-Chinese Jan Wong also arrived in China after leaving McGill University in Canada inspired by her Marxist professors and repulsed by the war in Vietnam. She spent six years in China and became one of the first foreigners to study at Peking University where she earned a history degree.

She returned to North America to study journalism at Columbia but before she left China she condemned fellow student Yin Luoyi, one of the chosen few selected to attend the “Harvard of China” (and one of the only universities in the country in operation) to years of hard labor and shame.

Walking around the Beida lake one day (where author Lao She had drowned himself 8 years before to escape the punishment of the Red Guards) Wong and Erica, the only other foreign student at Beida, were approached by Yin Luoyi. She asked them about wages in America, if it was true if everyone had a refrigerator – questions the young Maoists answered grudgingly – and finally asked if they could help her get to America. Wrapped up in the rhetoric of the times Wong, at the time a fervent Maoist, reported Yin to their teacher.

Peking University – Photo: Kent Wang

Yin’s encounter with history, and with these two young idealistic foreigners, resulted in condemnation by the history department and a forced trip back to the countryside where, treated as a criminal and forced to do manual labor, she embarked on a years long odyssey to work her way back into society and clear her name and reputation.

For decades, Wong forgot about the episode and enjoyed a successful, at times controversial, career as a journalist until the mention of the incident in her 1996 book Red China Blues reminded her, and earned her the wrath of readers who struggled to understand what could drive a young woman to shatter the life of a classmate over such a seemingly benign request.

 

 

In 2006, Wong returned to China with her family and, amidst research for another book, went about finding Yin Luoyi and trying to make amends. Her book Beijing Confidential: A Tale of Comrades Lost and Found and subsequent appearances on radio and TV shows have earned scorn and condemnation.

It’s hard to listen to Wong’s story of betrayal and the sentencing of Yin without feeling a surge of anger and disgust at this privileged woman from the west whose naïveté and the foolish idealism she’d adopted destroyed the life of another teenage girl. But, while I in no way condone Wong’s acts, I believe the angriness of the reactions to the story are born out of fear – what would I really do in that situation? – and a lack of understanding.

Twenty seven years later, Beijing is a modern city and still a difficult place for foreigners to live. Despite Facebook, the ability to use broadband modems to download movies onto our laptops, Sype to video-chat with our parents once a week and all the other amenities previous generations of expats never enjoyed, living in a foreign country is still a trial. I’ve become frustrated and lost my temper and said things to people I never should have said because I didn’t understand what was going on.

When I accused a driver in Huairou who’d chatted with me and invited me to his home of cheating me I was able to text message him an apology when I found out I was wrong about how much his services should have cost. He was gracious enough to answer back and forgive me my ignorance and outburst of anger.

Photo: yoheiyamashita

I attended a Jewish primary school and after a certain amount of Holocaust education the righteous anger started to tire and thin and I began to wonder what I would have done if I were a German in World War II. It’s not a conclusion I’m happy about but as much as I hope otherwise, I’m doubtful I would have stood up and done anything extraordinary.

What Jan Wong did in 1972 was a terrible thing and not exactly analogous to Nazi Germany, but by responding in anger and disgust we slam the doors on a deeper examination – one that might shake our faith in ourselves that we would have done differently. While these investigations into our moral foundations may find them not as sturdy as we might have hoped, that’s the only way we can assess those faults and work at strengthening them before some seismic event tests them.

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Related Links

At that time
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