Background information
Background: Geography, location, labour camps and cultural revolution
The region “Fruit Farm” is located in the southwester Chinese province of Sichuan, deep in the Liangshan autonomous region, situated in the southeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau at an altitude of about 2,400 meters above sea level. Surrounded by mountains and the Yalong River— known locally as the Jin River —it is a six-hour bus ride through the mountains to the nearest city, Xichang.
Originally inhabited by the Yi ethnic minority, the area was turned into a military-run farm in 1958, identified only by the post office box number "909". During the anti-rights campaigns, the area was filled with prisoners and turned into a laogai farm (labour camp in the PRC). It was isolated by the surrounding mountains. Escape attempts often ended with prisoners freezing or starving to death. The construction was followed by the Cultural Revolution. Many people were sentenced for political reasons and deported to labour camps for political reasons. Many died as a result of persecution or deportation.
During Deng Xiaoping’s “Boluan Fanzheng” campaign to correct the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution, many political prisoners were rehabilitated. But some were bound to the place by decades of imprisonment. Life in Fruit Farm normalised and the strong class division between prisoners and police slowly dissolved. Former prisoners and police were now allowed to attend the same hospital and their children were allowed to go to school together.
In 1994, all labour camps were converted into prisons. In 1996, Fruit Farm was officially renamed "Yanyuan Prison" (盐源监狱). By 2012, the prison has been relocated, and Fruit Farm was repurposed as a drug treatment center, renamed “Green Homeland.” In 2013, China officially abolished the “re-education through Labour" (Laojiao) system, but “reform through Labour” (Laogai) still exists.
The unresolved past remains a taboo topic for all residents. Eyewitnesses to the past have died without leaving any records or chronicles. Traces are destroyed and blurred.
Background: My Father
My father was born in 1938 and survived the Sino-Japanese War. At the age of 13, in the early years of the People's Republic of China, he was convicted of theft and sentenced to forced labour as a road builder between Tibet and Sichuan.
It was rumoured that he and a few others tried to escape to foreign countries by crossing the Yarlung Zangbo River. During the escape, my father was arrested. He was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment as a counter-revolutionary, and to further forced labour, first as a miner, then in road construction, and finally as a gardener at Fruit Farm.
He spent most of his life in the prison system. During his time at Fruit Farm, many prisoners had previously been teachers, engineers and other intellectuals. The prisoners educated my father: he learned Chinese, poetry, calligraphy and how to play the harmonica and the erhu. He also learned to survive by watching his friends die of hunger, persecution and suicide. In the end, survival was all he had left.
Deng Xiaoping's reform turned him from a prisoner into a worker. He was able to return to his family, but the conditions of the labour camp re-educated him to be socially inadequate. He was hot-tempered, trusted no one and constantly suspected everyone around him of wanting to harm him. He therefore continued to live at Fruit Farm and worked as a gardener, he and the other former prisoners who stayed are been called"remaining farm employees”(留场就业人员).
After his retirement, he remained in the ‘old and disabled’ group with other prisoners from that time, who also no longer fitted into family life and saw Fruit Farm as their home. Despite changes to the place over time, for this group, it remained a waiting ground for the end of life.
My father’s only wish was for me to live a simple, normal life—never going hungry today, tomorrow, or the day after.
Background: Myself
I was born during Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening-Up” era, after years of political turmoil. Four years after my birth, the place was officially renamed as Fruit Farm. Despite further name changes, my identification with the place has always been tied to Fruit Farm.
I grew up there like the other children. At the local prison school, all my teachers were police, and most of my classmates were the children of police. Influenced by my surroundings, I once aspired to become a police myself. I took it for granted that my family were also members of the police. Other groups of people, such as prisoners and farmers, were ‘the others’ to me and I usually ignored them.
Us and them.
Police and prisoners.
Good and bad.
This was how I perceived society in Fruit Farm as the norm. Words like criminal, execution, death sentence, and iron shackles, though frightening at first, became normalised through repetition.
When I was 5 or 6 years old, my parents often played mahjong with others in the prison’s old activity room. One day, while I was swinging back and forth on an iron door at the side entrance, a tall, thin man in a police uniform tried to get through. I playfully closed the door. Furious, he grabbed my collar through the door and slapped me. I was shocked and ashamed but I didn’t tell my parents. From that moment, I realized a social gap existed between my family and the police, as though we belonged to a lower class.
Later, when the prison relocated and the local school was dismantled. I moved to my aunt's house in the big city to continue my studies. It was the first time I saw Fruit Farm from the outside, from a distance.
The once normalised words lost their neutrality. I realised for the first time that Fruit Farm was a labour camp. Place names took on a new meanings: Farm Administration, Production Brigades 3, 5, and 7, Infrastructure Brigade, Livestock Brigade, Elderly and Disabled Brigade.
The structure became clear: The police were omnipresent in the Fruit Farm — they were police and also mayors, judges, teachers and doctors. Former prisoners took on roles as barbers, gardeners, and cooks. The prisoners and the Yi minority were hidden in everyday life. No one spoke of the past. But the camaraderie of playing mahjong brought everyone together.
When I learned my father had been a prisoner at Fruit Farm, I already don’t wanted to be a police anymore. The market economy gave me a broader perspective on society, while politics and history receded from everyday life. The ‘Mao period’ is the trauma of many families, but people keep quiet about it.
Having a former prisoner as a father seemed both exotic and dangerous. I wanted to know more about this history. I only vaguely knew that it was linked to the Cultural Revolution—a “difficult time.” My schoolbooks summarised it in a few ambiguous sentences. The unanswered questions kept me wanting to know more.
Political prisoners, criminals, police, and their offspring—people like me—live “harmoniously” atop the graves of victims of our common past. Nobody was able to talk about it. How did the past become a taboo?
Background: Ghost stories
If I am getting ready to speak at length about ghosts, inheritance, and generations, generations of ghosts, which is to say about certain others who are not present, nor presently living, either to us, in us, or outside us, it is in the name of justice. […] It is necessary to speak of the ghost, indeed to the ghost and with it.
—Derrida (1994, xix)
In Chinese communist narrative and patriotic education, there are many martyr stories in which the main character fights with his life for the country against violence (usually called American or Japanese imperialism). Such a righteous death is remembered by their descendants.
On the other hand, the people portrayed as enemies of the people during the Cultural Revolution were labelled as 'cows, scoundrels and ghosts (牛鬼蛇神)'. These people are excluded from 'communist' social life and portrayed as 'examples' of 'the other'.
In parallel, there is another traditional narrative - the unjust dead continue to exist as ghosts, looking for a home.
Their unexplained deaths also became ghost stories that my mother used to scare me or stop me from doing many things: "Don't do that, or the ghost XXX will come and take you away!" The memories of persecution and injustice became an instrument of repression in the form of ghost stories, which were then used to discipline children to follow their paths.
Nana Xu
