RoR: Forum

That was very sad story Hong. It is a pity that your family had to go through it.
Collectivism really is cannibalism in a literal sense!

Thanks for sharing this story.

Post 1

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 5:15am

That was very moving, Hong.

Well done.

George

Post 2

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 8:57am

Hong, I think it is magnificent that you are capturing your family's history in this way. We often read of such things historically, but to see them from so personal a perspective sheds a whole new light on the evils of collectivism -- and the courage of those who thrived in spite of it.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

Post 3

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 9:11am

Hong

Like your previous articles here, I found this tremendously moving. I hope your father is able to visit you soon :-)

MH

Post 4

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 10:10am

Hong,

This is a very moving and fascinating story. I would like to hear more. What happened to your father's nephew? How did your father and mother escape the one child per family restriction? (I'm sure glad they did). Your grandmother must have told you many stories about your grandfather, I'll bet he was a very fascinating man as well, "..young, strong, unconventional.."

You are a very good writer. I thank you, as well, for sharing your stories.

Post 5

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 10:11am

Hong, thank you for sharing this moving personal story with us.

On many many levels it touched me. You have a flair for telling a story (like this true account) which captures the drama, and humanity in an understated yet powerful way.

John

Post 6

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 11:54am

Hong,

How difficult this must have been for you! And how much more relieved you must feel to get it out...

You are a wonderful storyteller, Hong, You observe Rule No. 1 of being a good writer:

Write truthfully about what you know.

I am very moved by your account. I read it and, frankly, it pissed me off in a kind of impotent way.

It made me want to get right up in the face of those who provide the intellectual foundation for this kind of tragedy (starving a whole people to keep up appearances of all things!) and drag THEM off to live under those conditions.

Oh shit anyway!

Back to you - I predict wonderful things for you in writing. Not bad for a little ole scientist. Not bad at all.

Michael

Post 7

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 9:24am

Wow, Hong. That was a very moving story. I think it's very important for such real-life horror stories of collectivism, and the success stories of those who overcame it, to be told. Would you consider writing a book based on your family's experiences?

Post 8

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 4:36pm

Thank your all for reading this thing and for your very kind words. I am very grateful to SOLO.

Yes, my father has got his visa and will come at the end of this month.

I know I left a lot of things out - I don't want to tax readers patience and it is already too long for a SOLO article.

To answer Mike's questions: my cousin (my father's nephew) could never adapt to the city life. He only managed to graduate from elementary school after staying in the same grade serval times. He happily went to the countryside to be a peasant around 1965 or 66. Later my father found a wife for him in their home village so he settled back, had four children - three girls and the youngest is a son. So the name of his family will now live on. After he went back, he could hardly write and all the letters he sent to my parents had been written by village "letter writers".

The "one child" policy was only enforced since the later 70' and early 80's, so it did not affect my family. It apparently also did not effect my cousin's family, being in a remote countryside and having had such experience in 1959.

My grandmother actually did not tell me much about older days, days before 59 - probably because I was still too young. Yes, I also imagine that my grandfather must be a fascinating character. My mother has always been very contemptuous toward my stepgrandfather's family because of my cousin's behavior, but she always speaks of my real grandfather with lots of respect. That says a lot about him.

To Laure, thank you very much for reading the article. As for whether I will write a book or not, geez, I don't know... I wrote this and my previous story all in a spur of moment because I could not hold it any longer. Yes, there are still a few more things that I know I have to tell.... You know Wladyslaw Szpilman, "the pianist"? He wrote his memoir in 1945, immediately after the end of WWII, and then moved on with his life, and according to his son, never talked about it again. It took me about 15 years living in America before I could understand the context of my family's and my own experiences. Yes, I have thought about writing. Actually it is my husband who started telling me since about a year ago that I was pretty good at writing and should write something. Of course I didn't believe him. :-). But I have started to write sporadically of whatever hit me at the moment. Interestingly, to me the process of writing is also a process of discovery. While you put your thoughts into words and on paper, you also understand them a lot better and sometimes find new meanings in old memory. This is also true for writing scientific papers.

Thanks again.

Hong

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 4/11, 5:04pm)

Post 9

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 5:08pm

Hong, as I suspected, you have a lot to tell, and you tell it very well. It is so important for these stories to be told. I eagerly await the story of the landlords in your family. Don't worry about the book; just write more stories. The book may or may not follow, but you will be helping many people to see many things they wouldn't know anything about without your insights.

Post 10

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 8:22pm

> writing is also a process of discovery.

Writing is a lens to focus the mind. This is a grim and powerful story.

> if only I can do the justice to preserve them in full. That�ll be the best tribute I pay.

I wonder if you know how important these stories are. For many years the Jews, the survivors have steadily and relentlessly "born witness" to the Holocaust.

I look forward to the day when the survivors of communism have born witness in such detail, so frequently, so loudly, so graphically, and so fully that the liberals can't escape it any more.

And the stories will come from Hungary.

They will come from Russia.

They will come from Poland.

They will come from China.

They will come from Cuba.

And there will come a day when the piles of corpses east of the Elbe are made as visible as the photographs of stacked bodies at the Holocaust museums.

And there will be polite silence no longer.

And then we won't hear about the "noble experiment" any more.

And there will be as many movies and television series made on the viciousness of communism and communists and Mao and Lenin and Stalin are there are on Hitler and the nazi era.

And the world will be sane and clean again.

Post 11

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 9:06pm

Sounds like "I have a dream...."

Post 12

Monday, April 11, 2005 - 10:32pm

I can see that. I wasn't consciously copying it.

Post 13

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - 12:11am

Hong,

Thank you.

When I have time again - maybe in 2006 - I'll have to give in to the urge that came over me when reading your history, and write down mine too. Keep on.

Post 14

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - 7:20pm

Michael SK,

Thank you very much for being �pissed off� by my story, and for your generous comment on my writing. Does your fortune telling always work?

Philip,

Thanks for your wonderful post a la �I have a dream�. I do dream of that there will be museums commemorating my family members and all the victims of Communism, so that every one will know and will never forget. I've learnt that there is one that is in the working in DC, but have no ideal when it will open. Also I haven�t forgot the questions you asked me in another thread. This story may answer some of the questions regarding my background. Hopefully I can get back to the rest of your questions soon. Don�t hesitate to ask anything. I appreciate very much that you are interested.

James,

Although I am writing and posting these things out of purely selfish reasons, I am very pleased that you think they will also be of value to others. I think so too. Yes, there are also quite some stories from my mother�s side of family � the fate of the riches, opposite that of my father�s family, and equally devastating.

Adam,
I can hardly wait to read your history that will be illuminated with your remarkable insights.

Post 15

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - 10:32pm

Philip Coates: Haha : ) Excelent post. (#10)
Hong Zhang: Thanks.

Post 16

Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - 12:47am

Hong, Adam, it hadn't struck me before that stories like yours --of lives lived under communism -- have so rarely been told. They are like the stories of the Holocaust survivors: they must be told if future generations are to avoid living them again. Hong, don't be stopped by concerns about your writing skills; that's what editors are for. Your story is too important to be lost.You owe it to the young Hong -- and perhaps to all the other young Hongs, past and present -- to tell the world the truth about communism. Nothing has so powerful an effect as first-hand reports; they make the evils matchlessly real to the reader, as is evident by the responses you've been receiving. They effect us like novels: they bring abstract concepts -- concepts of fascism and/or communism -- down to the perceptual level, and force us to experience them as if first hand.

Barbara

Post 17

Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - 9:38am

Hong, Thank you for your post. It is important to bear witness when we can out of both justice for the victims and to help insure these things are not repeated, if possible. My father's father was born in Russia. My great grandfather brought most of his clan to Kansas in the late 19th C. when the Czar revoked their priviledge of not serving in the military in exchange for their wheat farming expertise in the Ukraine. They were German stock who left Germany in the very early 1800s to avoid military service. They were Mennonites who became Seventh Day Adventists. In this country Adventists served in the military but as medics, not armed combat soldiers. Anyway, those who stayed in Russia were starved to death by Stalin in the 1930s. But beyond that I have no stories to tell; the witnesses were all killed that way. This is the kind of thing that motivated me to go to Vietnam and try to kill communists--that is stop communism with brute force since that seemed to be what it'd take at the time. The U.S. was successful there until it abandoned South Vietnam, as I came to know it would, to the invading Noth Vietnamese. I knew it would because that war was so badly fought by us that it cost too much to sustain freedom there. So much for Kennedy's altruistic speech about "bearing any burden." Our conduct in that war was based on altruism and lies and thus failed.

Thank you again for your family's story.

--Brant

(Edited by Brant Gaede on 4/13, 1:44pm)

(Edited by Brant Gaede on 4/13, 1:46pm)

Post 18

Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - 6:39pm

Barbara,

...it hadn't struck me before that stories like yours --of lives lived under communism -- have so rarely been told.

Exactly. There are probably 8 or 10 books written by Mainland Chinese people if you search all the books on Amazon, and that's pretty much it. I am yet to be aware of a single museum or memorial dedicated to the victims of Communism, except perhaps the Berlin Wall. And German people have set aside a national day to commemorating the fall of Berlin Wall. But that's far from enough.

At the moment, I owe it most to my parents. I can't possibly imagine how my father has bore those burdens on his conscience for so many years and still be able to find joy in life and live productively. When he first came to the US, it was not only a complete different world to him, it was several worlds over from where he had come from. And the first thing he told me was how he had left his kinsmen to die in year 59. (BTW, my aunt and her daughter who died were the mother and sister of my surviving cousin.).

So I have this project in mind that after my father come, I shall chat with him as much as I can and learn more about his experiences.

Hong

Post 19

Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - 7:06pm