In Fremont, California lies a beautiful home with 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, and a 3 car garage with an Infinity sitting in the driveway. The front of the house has a front lawn mediocrely landscaped and it faces Stanford Avenue, a wide street that leads to Mission Peak. Many may interpret this as the American Dream but what is truly fascinating about this home isn’t necessarily the exterior, but its inner work. This is the home of two Cultural Revolution survivors: Mama — a middle school teacher from Guanxi, China — and her daughter, Melanie Wong — a Chinese refugee who is now a retired real estate agent. “Mama was beaten by her own students,” Wong explained. A few minutes later, Wong’s younger sister Hilda joined us in the dining room and continue the conversation, “Mama couldn’t wear shoes . . . she had to walk barefoot to and from the concentration camp while wearing a sign that said, ‘I’m a bad person.’” The words came out of her mouth with ease. “Once when she got to the concentration camp, she had to report to the Red Guard by writing what a terrible person she was.” Hilda continued. The stillness in the dining room turned slightly uncomfortable, they spoke with minimal hesitation as the details of their trauma began to unravel.
To truly understand the Wong family is to first understand their mother who passed away last year, they referred to her as Mama. She was born on February 17, 1921 in a city called Yong Yuen located in the Guangxi Province of China. She grew up in an upper middle-class environment with 7 brothers and sisters, all of whom were well-educated and prospered. Hilda turned to Wong for confirmation, “ They also owned a gold mine, right?” Wong didn’t budge and simply shrugged at the question — nobody can confirm whether the gold mine truly exists, so the family left it as a rumor.
“She was the smartest out of all her siblings,” Wong explained. “She (even) left to go study in Shanghai for a few years when she was young.” A few of her siblings studied abroad in Germany while her own studies remained in China. Her father, Ma Xiao Jun, was a famous General in Chiang Kai-shek’s military for the Nationalist Party of China: Kuomintang. He taught her Chinese Calligraphy when she was very little and she continued her craft in her later years. “She was praised for having beautiful writing, that is why she continued Chinese Calligraphy,” Hilda boasted. “Everybody knew she had really good handwriting, her father would make her sign his name,” Hilda continued while laughing. Her calligraphy work was even published in a book created by one of her old friends and former students who currently resides in the Bay Area. I asked to see a copy but they didn’t have one on hand.
In 1946, one year after Mama graduated from University, Wong was born. And three years later, Wong had a little brother named Daniel — the same year Chairman Mao’s Communist Party defeated the Nationalist Party and declared China as The PRC: The People’s Republic of China. In the midst of this political shift, Mama’s father, Ma Xiao Jun, fled to Taiwan — leaving his life in China behind, never seeing his family again.
Mao reasserted his authority over the Chinese Government by launching the Cultural Revolution. The distribution of the Red Book and propaganda posters acted as brainwashing tools to spread Mao’s ideals — this influenced millions of students, peasants, and farm workers to convert themselves into Mao’s brigade: the Red Guard. They turned schools into concentration camps and captured political officials, professors, teachers, even members of their own family who opposed Mao’s political agenda. And Mama would be one of them.
She was separated from her family, leaving Wong and her siblings to fend for themselves. Wong, at 20 years old, was left in charge to care for her brother and their youngest sibling, Hilda, while their mother was held captive. “I (once) walked to the concentration camp where Mama was and brought her medicine, the Red Guard cut off her hair,” Hilda explained while looking down at the dining table. Wong and her siblings no longer had the opportunity to receive a formal education. In fact, all of the children who didn’t submit to Mao’s political agenda were left uneducated. “The only option was to be sent to the country side and you can only study the Red Book . . . there was nothing else,” Wong explained with a blank look on her face, “everybody was sad, everybody was depressed . . . everybody was poor, there was no hope.”
The Wong siblings — including a few other children from their neighborhood — turned to swimming as a means to pass the time, they practiced everyday. “Even Mao Swam!” Hilda cried, “So nobody suspected anything.” To their discretion, they would practice swimming in a nearby river to not only escape what was going on around them, but as a tool to fight. Wong and her brother, Daniel, planned to swim from Yantian Harbor in Guangdong to Laichi Wo Village in Hong Kong where they would be free of Mao’s control over China. Daniel would be the first to make the attempt. “I didn’t swim in a straight line due to the water current, so the total (number of) hours was about 8 to 10,” Daniel explained. His first attempt was in 1967, but he was captured by the Red Guard and thrown in a concentration camp. Like his mother, he was beaten and tormented. But unlike his mother, he was released after a month in captivity. “We didn’t know if he was alive or dead, but then we saw him walking towards the house like nothing happened,” Wong and Hilda said with a subtle smile.
In 1969, Mama was already released from the concentration camp but she was still forced to endure the harsh control of the Red Guard. She started teaching her children English and, despite her own feelings, encouraged her eldest children to follow through with their plan. “She was very sad,” Hilda explained while staring directly at me. Hilda stayed behind to be with Mama while Wong and Daniel escaped. “We were sent to the country side in Yingde, Canton and lived in the mountains for 8 years, the Government placed us in a house and we worked as farmers,” Hilda explained. Mama made some extra money on the side by helping farmers with clothing alterations. The farmers called her, Popo — it means “grandmother” in Cantonese.
Two years would have passed until Mama and Hilda heard from Daniel and Wong. “We didn’t know if they even made it . . . it wasn’t until President Nixon forced China to open their borders, we (finally) received a letter from Daniel saying that he was alive,” Hilda explained. They made it to the then British-colonized Hong Kong, but they knew that Britain’s control was only temporary. “The US was taking in refugees,” Wong explained. “Mr. Burke sponsored all of us and the only reason why was because he liked that we all wanted to go to school . . . if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be here.” Freedom never looked so good.