Original subtitles

Where's the little red book?

This it--yeah.

This is a copy

of the "Book of Quotations" from Mao Zedong

that was universal during

the Cultural Revolution and, um,

on May 1, 1967,

up on the Tiananmen Gate Tower with Chairman Mao,

I got him to autograph my copy.

Now that was one

of the stupidest moments of my life,

because I really missed a terrific opportunity,

because with--I gave him my little ballpoint pen.

And with pen poised in hand, he looked at me and said,

"What do you want me to write?"

And I could've said, "Write a line of poetry,

or write a message to the American people,"

or whatever.

But I totally froze and I said,

"Oh, just sign your name."

What a jerk.

So he just signed his name.

♪

He was a great hero

and a great criminal all rolled up into one.

He was a genius whose genius got completely out of control.

♪

What every revolution needs are true believers.

In America, Sidney Rittenberg had taken the side of workers,

and of civil rights.

In China he saw himself on the side of history.

And if only for one brief historic moment,

he would become known

as the most important foreigner

in China since Marco Polo.

I'm thinking that I'm part of history.

That thought was my undoing later on.

But that's what I'm thinking.

I'm really--I'm getting to be part of history.

I can play a role.

♪

♪

Are my feet gonna be on camera?

No, they are not.

Okay.

They are not.

And we're rolling.

Okay.

Sidney, tell me

where and when you were born.

I was born on Rutledge Avenue

in Charleston, South Carolina,

August 14, 1921.

This was the start of a five year conversation.

One man's account of a journey

through the 20th Century's biggest revolution.

♪

For many Americans,

it was an event both remote and frightening.

China and America were isolated from one another

by the Cold War,

the politics and passions of the 1950s and '60s.

♪

But one American, Sidney Rittenberg, was there.

As close as a foreigner could be

to China's revolutionary upheaval.

It's an unlikely story, far removed from its beginnings

in Charleston, South Carolina.

♪

As a prominent Jewish family in the Old South,

the Rittenbergs still were outsiders.

From an early age, Sidney knew something about injustice,

and about China.

I grew up hearing that there were three things

that Charlestonians shared in common with Chinese.

First was that we ate rice everyday.

The second was that we worship our ancestors.

And the third was that we don't speak English.

Raised to be a southern gentleman,

he was headed to Princeton.

Instead he chose the University of North Carolina,

whose progressive environment of the 1930s

was tolerant of student activism.

By the time he was 19,

Sidney's participation in undergraduate politics,

and community action had attracted the attention

of a union organizer named Carpenter

in the nearby mill town of Roanoke Rapids.

Every month they put

one dollar each into a cigar box,

waiting for the day when they could hire their own guy

to organize a real union.

And then it was Carpenter

who wrote me a letter to Chapel Hill

saying that they had this cigar box of money

and that if I could come out

and help them set up a union,

they could afford to pay $6.00 a week,

which would go to Mrs. Glasgow,

who would give me bed and board in her boarding house.

And so that's what I did.

♪

At a time when American workers were struggling

for collective bargaining rights and a minimum wage,

Rittenberg took up the fight for textile workers,

for tobacco and quarry workers,

bus drivers, and steel workers.

And in Birmingham, Alabama, the newspaper guild.

His most memorable lessons

were being learned outside the classroom.

This big Birmingham cop comes up and he says,

"You can't be on the sidewalk.

You gotta get away from here."

And I said, "Look, according to police regulations,

half of this sidewalk is for pickets.

The other half is pedestrians."

And he says, "Yeah, but, you can't be a picket

because you don't work there."

And I said, "Okay, so I'm a pedestrian.

So I have a right to be here."

The right to be here.

So he looks at me with real pity in his eyes, real pity,

and he says, "Son, you ain't got no rights.

Rights are what you think you got."

Lesson in political science I never forgot.

Really.

What led you to China and to the Chinese Revolution?

Uncle Sam.

When America entered World War II,

Rittenberg was drafted.

The Army put him back in the classroom

for a crash course in Chinese.

Next thing I know, I'm on a train headed for Stanford.

Then I find myself in Chinese.

And quite to my surprise, from the very first class,

I just totally fell in love with this language.

♪

By the time Rittenberg shipped out to China,

the World War was over.

But a Civil War was in progress.

China's future would be decided in the conflict

between the ruling Nationalist Party,

and the insurgent Chinese Communists.

All around him, first as a GI, and then as an observer

for the United Nations Relief Organization,

Rittenberg was exposed to the corruption

and inequalities of Chinese life under the Nationalists.

He had made contacts among Chinese reformers,

including underground members of the Communist Party.

He was about to return to America

when a Party leader came to him with a question.

"Suppose I detained you here

and didn't let you leave tomorrow?"

And I said, "What would I do?"

He said, "Well, we need an engineer."

And I said, "Well, I'm not an engineer."

He said, "No, not that kind of an engineer.

We need an engineer to help us build a bridge

from the Chinese people to the American people."

And I said, "I would be overjoyed to stay.

My one request would be that if I stay,

I would like to be admitted to the Chinese Party."

♪

It was a life changing decision that began with a 500 mile trek,

mostly on foot, across terrain made perilous by steep mountains

and the Civil War's shifting battle lines.

It took him 45 days

to reach the Communist Guerilla headquarters in Yan'an.

For Rittenberg, there would be no turning back.

You were leaving America behind you.

Was there not pause for thought about that?

Not a bit, not at the time.

No, I thought I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

You know, for America's sake, as well

as for the Chinese Revolution.

I'm doing--these are the people that bear the banners of hope.

And I'm doing what I can to support them, so.

I had no hesitation about that whatsoever.

But you must've realized

it would not be viewed that way in America.

Well, of course, but look, when we were organizing

textile workers in North Carolina

it wasn't viewed very favorably either.

You know, really.

I mean, it was no better.

The Roanoke Rapids paper carried an editorial

about this alien element

who's here spreading class hatred in our little community.

So I was used to that.

♪

It is Yan'an that holds pride of place

in the story of the Chinese Revolution.

The romantic idea that a band of visionaries living in caves,

vastly outgunned and outnumbered, could one day

take over the biggest country in the world.

Their long march, a 6,000 mile strategic retreat,

found refuge here in the 1930s.

Their leader, a peasant rebel named Mao Zedong.

♪

I met Mao for the first time

on the day I arrived in Yan'an.

I walked in the door and there he was.

And I thought, "It's like a picture right out of history."

Here's a picture out of history.

Here's the man that's on the walls."

That's what I was thinking.

And underneath that was the feeling,

"And I am now part of that history."

The first thing he said to me was, he said,

"If you don't object,

I'm going to ask my secretary

to arrange a time for you to come

and spend a whole day or maybe two days with me,

just talking about America.

Not anything special, just about America.

Just talk."

His major interest in foreign countries

was always the United States.

The Communist leaders needed a fluent speaker

of both Chinese and English

to help establish an English language section

of what would become Radio Beijing,

the transmitter of Party policy to the world.

Sidney Rittenberg took the job.

But more than that, he wanted to belong,

to be one of them.

You had told the Communist leaders

you wanted to be a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Why?

Well, what I said was,

"If I stay here, I'm going to be cut off from the outside world.

And if I'm not a Party member,

I'll be cut off from the inside world too.

I won't know what's really going on.

So I want to be a member of the Chinese Party.

♪

Yan'an took on a meaning of its own.

It was a combat zone in the ongoing Civil War.

It was an incubator for many of Mao's ideas,

where Party loyalty and discipline

often were put to the test.

Those that survived the war, and the politics,

possessed a valuable revolutionary credential.

There was also an intimacy,

where friendships were formed, and marriages.

Rittenberg to a young radio broadcaster.

Mao to an actress from Shanghai named Jiang Qing,

who later would play a dramatic role in Party politics.

In Yan'an, Sidney Rittenberg

rubbed shoulders with China's future leaders.

On the left, Zhou Enlai, the future premier.

On the right, Zhu De, the military commander.

Rittenberg had become one of them.

At work, socially, at the movies.

There was an American diplomatic mission in Yan'an.

And once a week, there was a U.S. Army plane

that would fly in to bring supplies.

And they would also bring a new Hollywood film.

This was new to us.

Mao, and Zhu De, and Zhou Enlai, you would say are the leaders,

would gather in a little room at the U.S. Army Liaison Center

and watch this film, and I would translate.

The favorite, favorite films by all odds,

were Laurel and Hardy.

"Lolly Hardy."

As soon as they heard "Lolly Hardy" was gonna perform,

they would--everybody who could move would go there.

And it's very funny and they would make

lots of wisecracks and have great fun.

But they enjoyed these Hollywood movies.

And Mao would go to them?

Yeah.

To be fair, you have to say

that he tried to establish good relations

with the United States and Europe.

I was twice the interpreter when the message from him

was given to, once to an American diplomat,

once to a military man in China,

that he wanted good relations with America.

And specifically he said because he did not want

to be unilaterally dependent on the Soviet Union,

after the Communists came to power in China.

So there was an opening wide open for us at the time

which we ignored

because we were thinking ideologically.

Strange as it sounds.

And he was not.

And Mao always

longed to show the world

that China could be civilized and Democratic,

not like the crude Russians.

And he made several attempts

at opening the arena of public opinion

and every time he did,

the results didn't turn out the way he hoped they would.

And then he resorted

to the traditional system of Chinese rulers,

which was called in China,

"You kill the chicken to teach the monkeys a lesson."

So, the monkeys are the majority.

You can't kill them.

But you have to teach them to keep them in line.

So you take a chicken

and you hold him up before the monkeys.

And you excoriate him.

Everything from political conspiracies,

to he slept with his sister,

to everything about his personal life.

He was 100 percent low life.

It's called in Chinese,

"Making him stink," literally.

So, then after having exposed him

and turned everybody against him, you chop his head off.

Then you say to the monkeys,

"You see, aren't you glad you're not a chicken.

You're not chickens.

You're monkeys, you're okay.

Aren't you glad you aren't a chicken?

And by the way,

I know you will want to watch yourself carefully

that you don't get

into any of the ways of chickens.

You don't have chickenish ways

so that you might one day fall into the same,

kind of, in this category, and get same kind of treatment."

♪

The roots of China's Civil War went back to the 1920s.

The final showdown coming in the years after World War II.

By 1949, the fighting had turned in Mao's favor.

With Beijing about to fall to Communist troops,

Rittenberg was told to report for a special assignment.

The Nationalist commander of Beijing

was in process of surrendering.

They were still negotiating the terms,

and I knew that.

So very shortly they would peacefully entering Beijing

and I thought I'm going early

because I'm going to be

a liaison/interpreter in talks

between the new Chinese government

and my American government.

And I was just on top of the world.

But that's not what happened.

Not exactly what happened.

♪

What Rittenberg didn't know

was that the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin,

had named him as part of an international spy ring

uncovered in Moscow.

And that Stalin had asked Mao to have him arrested.

Instead of being on his way to Beijing,

Rittenberg was detained and on his way to prison.

And then I heard this tapping outside, approaching.

Tap, tap, tap, tap,

on the flagstones outside.

And what ran through my head was,

"Quoth the Raven, nevermore."

And the door opens

and this horrifying figure appears.

A, sort of, short thickset man

with huge eyes the size of cart wheels,

it looked like, and very thick glasses,

carrying a cane, which was what was tapping.

And as he came

and stood in the doorway,

he pointed at me and he said in a voice of thunder,

"Li Dunbai", my Chinese name,

"We have received orders from the Chinese People's

Revolutionary Military Commission to arrest you.

You have accepted a mission from U.S. imperialism

to sabotage the Chinese Revolution."

And the room spun round and round.

Just spun round and round.

And I saw stars shooting all over the place.

I just--

just shock, you know.

Just terrific shock.

You know, everyday is miserable

because you're alone, but you're not really alone

because every day you're sitting there

with your own potential madness sitting across from you,

watching you.

And you know, it's either you or him.

And every day, as I woke up,

I would--

right after starting to be conscious,

I would have this feeling that this huge stone is on top of me,

weighing me down.

My God, I'm still in this place.

Can't believe it, I'm still in this place.

I was confident when they would say,

"We have investigators all over the place.

They're checking you out.

They know everything about you."

I could say with confidence, "The more you investigate,

the more you'll find I'm telling the truth."

'Cause I did tell the truth.

So, I even told about my cousin Arthur

in Charleston who was in the FBI.

What did that have to do?

Nothing.

But I didn't want anything hidden

that they might dig up that I hadn't told 'em.

Then one day the door opened

and in came the warden of the prison, Yao Lun,

who was a high ranking official in the Security Ministry.

And he came in and brought a chair

and he shook hands with me.

Shook hands.

You do not shake hands with a counter-revolutionary.

And you don't sit down in a chair opposite him either.

So he said, "Look--"

He says, "We understand you now.

We understand you.

We know who you are."

He said, "We're going to give you

the best possible conditions for studying.

We'll give you paper, and pencil,

and any books that you want,

we'll do our best to find them.

And we'll give you a table, a chair here.

And we're gonna take the boards off the windows.

And you can stay here and study until your case is solved.

Or you can just forget about China

for the rest of your life and go back to America.

We'll let you go back."

And I said, "I'll stay here and study."

And I gradually stabilized and I studied,

like, I used to think

of those little monks in medieval cells,

voluntarily under a vow of silence,

and they're copying the ancient books and studying.

And I thought, "If they could do it, why can't I do it?"

And I did.

♪

Sidney Rittenberg will remain in solitary

for another five years,

during which China began to repair the damage

caused by years of war,

which included fighting American troops in Korea.

His wife, having no idea where he was, divorced him.

It was 1955 when his cell door

again opened to an official visitor.

So I sat down.

He shook hands and he turned--

he did not give his name,

but I found out later it was Ling Yun,

who was the director

of the counter-intelligence bureau,

and who later became the first minister

of the State Security Ministry,

which is, sort of, the Chinese CIA.

And, um, he told me that--

he said, "On behalf of the Central Government of China,

I'm here to apologize to you.

We got you wrong.

We made a bad mistake."

And after six years in prison, in 1955, you were released.

Why?

Why, finally, did they let you out?

Because Josef Stalin did the best thing

he ever did in his life.

He died.

Was the Party testing you?

Yeah.

That's the way I saw it.

And it was true because as soon as it was over,

my Party membership was not only restored,

but then now I became a real Party member,

with access to top leaders

and confidential, classified information.

So it was totally different.

♪

After I get out of prison,

I report to Radio Beijing for my new job.

And I'm in the director's office.

He's telling me about my new work.

And this young girl,

23 years old, 22 at that time,

brought his tea.

And when she went-- long pigtails.

And when she went out, she left the door ajar,

which she still does.

Left the door ajar, didn't really close it well.

And, uh... as he's talking

to me about my work,

I'm hearing an argument going on among the four secretaries

in the central office there.

And I hear this woman's voice saying--

well, they're talking about my former wife,

"Well, after all, he was gone for six years

and she didn't even know where he was.

So you can't blame her."

And then I hear this strident female voice say,

"What do you mean, six years?

If you really love somebody,

you're supposed to wait 6 years, 10 years, 20 years.

What does it matter?"

So that sort of got my attention.

And I heard the responses I couldn't hear very clearly.

And then I hear this strident voice again say,

"Well it seems to me, you gotta be pretty stupid

if you don't know

whether your own husband is an enemy."

I'm the secretary for the boss.

So everything he has a problem,

it just come to me to ask.

So, that's a start.

He was an American.

That's right.

And he just spent six years in prison.

I mean, what did you think of that?

You know, as, at the beginning

I didn't think he was American or Chinese

because just like it

is my job to help him.

So, I think of this person as honest

and for six years

he didn't give up or complain

or his beliefs.

So I thought this person is a good guy.

We found, in the course of all this coming and going,

that we shared certain things in common.

We both loved eating from the street stalls.

Loved it.

We both loved going to the movies.

And we loved to argue.

We argued incessantly about everything.

Incessantly.

And our viewpoints were very far apart.

And we enjoyed it.

You know, after that several months

that he wrote letter to me.

So ask me proud I would can,

you know, to be a good friends.

For someday we could marry.

Someday we can set up a family.

Then I should-- I got really angry.

I said, "I never have the mind--cross my mind."

I said, "What-- what is he thinking?"

So I left this note on her desk and I went home.

Next morning, early, I'm in my office

and I hear these footsteps.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp.

Very determined coming in.

And I know it's her, and over my shoulder from behind my back,

she flings this note down on the table.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, leaves.

And the note is written on a sheet of paper

and then twisted up, guerilla fashion,

the way they used to do the secret notes.

So I unfold it and it says, "Dear Comrade So and So--".

So I know this is trouble 'cause it's formal.

She says, "The kind of relationship

you have suggested has never entered my head

and is totally out of the question.

So the only road open to us

is to break off all relations.

Stop seeing each other totally.

I wish you success in all your endeavors.

Signed, Yulin.

P.S., since I've already promised to go with you

to Sun Yat Sen Park this evening,

I will, of course, honor my promise."

So I knew it was there.

I knew when I saw that P.S. so it...it was working.

So, that night, we went to the park and we were engaged.

♪

The Broadcast Administration was among the most important

agencies of government.

The voice of the Party.

And Radio, reaching into every corner of the country,

was its nerve center.

Not only was he back in the favor,

Rittenberg had been taken into the inner circle.

The only U.S. citizen who was a Party member.

What was your job at Radio?

I was a foreign expert... to, uh, polish the material

that went out in English and to advise

the Radio leadership on English language

broadcast issues, but actually I was the only Party member

in the English language section.

So, I was in fact, but not de-- de-facto, but not de jure,

I was in charge of that section.

What was life like for a foreign expert of your status?

Um...

I had the use of a car and driver at any time

for business or pleasure.

We had an apartment in the foreign experts building,

which meant we had hot water.

Nobody in China, except for a few tip-top leaders

and foreigners, had hot water, nobody.

We got tickets to all the great plays and operas and circuses.

We got, uh, vacation travel every year and so on,

so we were quite privileged and for me...

I got to go and listen to top leaders give talks,

give briefings, and things of that sort.

And you were well paid?

Well, in the local terms, I was paid better than Mao.

♪

According to Mao, the revolution required

constant renewal and vigilance,

often inspiring campaigns to target opposition

and to mobilize support for the Party.

In 1957, Mao sought the support of intellectuals,

encouraging them to speak their minds in a movement called,

"Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools

of Thought Contend."

He said "Let A Hundred Flowers Bloom,"

in the field of arts, literature and art.

"Let A Hundred Schools of Thought Contend,"

in academia.

But the intellectuals turned it into in politics.

"Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom", in politics

and "Let a Hundred Schools Contend."

So, they began saying and writing things like,

"Why should the Communist Party always rule?

Why shouldn't there be a multi

And why should we lean towards the Soviet Union?

Why shouldn't we have good relations with"

It was done with great artistry, I mean, when Mao

was conspiratorial, he was a master.

A master of conspiracy.

He let everybody talk, unchallenged, unhindered,

and everybody felt, "This is great," you know,

"This is great. What frabjous day, callooh, callay!" you know?

And then...an editorial appears on the front page

of The People's Daily, with no warning, saying:

"Why is this..."

Bang, from that day on, it was hammers down on the critics

and they were classified as rightists,

they were hauled up before big public meetings,

which were called debates, debates with the rightists,

but the other side of the debate was not allowed to speak.

And, so this was the campaign,

to clean out anti-socialist elements,

not from the Party, so much as among intellectuals

and Mao said, he used a very ancient quota--quotation.

He said, "Intellectuals have to learn

where their rice bowl is,"

like which side their bread is buttered.

But his real view of democracy, I think I got pretty clear on.

His real concept was...

he liked for people to meet

for a lively democratic discussion

of why his policies were correct and to point the finger

at people and places that were not correctly carrying them out.

Criticism, or to point to places where his policy

could be improved and made more effective.

That was fine, but to go flatly against his policy,

that's not democracy, it's counter-revolution.

There was a woman working there at Radio with me who was

the daughter of Mr. Sachs of Goldman-Sachs,

one of the founders, okay?

And she had been an American Communist since her school days.

Redder than a rose and...

you know, but she grew up on Park Avenue taking a walk

in the park with a limousine puttering along her side

and so on, she was to the manor born,

but when she came to China and started working there

and they started the campaign against the bourgeois rightists,

including some Chinese who were her friends,

she would not have it, she fought like mad

against what the Party was doing.

She told him, she said, "This is...this is a pure

and simple civil rights case, that's what we do in America,

we Communists, we stick our necks out, we fight

for hum--for civil rights."

And, uh, she said, "You can't do this!"

And I thought, "God, how backward

can you be," you know?

She doesn't get it.

And I used to try to calm her down, counsel her and so on.

No good, but how right she was...

in a sense.

You...believed in civil rights?

-Sure. -As a young man, you fought

-Sure

Absolutely...

and we really stuck our necks out for it.

In America?

Yes.

But, in China?

In China, until the revolution, yes!

Before coming to power.

That's what happens.

Once you get into power and you have to protect

your new power against the enemy who is still stronger than you,

civil rights becomes your enemy.

Intellectuals talk too much, they raise too many questions.

You have to keep 'em quiet.

And, uh, you know, I took part in hassling these people

and they were all innocent and good people.

That's, I think, that's the most serious mistake

that I have ever made.

I think the reason I couldn't see it was wrong was largely

because I was living a privileged life.

Everything about the regime was good for me.

Nothing bad in it for me.

So, I couldn't countenance the idea

of anything bad for anybody.

I wasn't paying attention, I wasn't feeling

what happened to other people.

Otherwise, I think I would have seen it.

So, it's--it's a kind of corruption

and that's exactly, I think, the kind of corruption

that ruins the whole thing once you get into power.

♪

The bugler was Mao's call to jumpstart the economy.

A mass movement called The Great Leap Forward

that organized China's peasants into vast rural communes

and everyone into do-it-yourself producers of steel.

Mao set out to challenge the Russians

and the West at any cost.

This was the frenzy that swept the entire country.

I thought it was working, I thought it was great.

Production was doubling and tripling, the villages

were serving free food, you know, people were told,

"Open up your stomach and eat your fill!"

First time in history, this was great.

Everything was free, everything was public issue

by the commune.

It was great, it wasn't true.

But, while I thought it was true, it was great.

♪

Officially, while communes were transforming the countryside,

small backyard steel furnaces were turning China

into an industrial giant.

In the end, neither claim would hold up to closer inspection.

Yulin worked on a backyard steel furnace that was called

The Eighth of March Women's Day Furnace.

I worked on another little furnace.

And...I, you know, I-I, I raked out the steel

and it was black like black mud and I asked the guy in charge

of the furnace, I said, "This stuff really steel?"

He said, "Oh, yeah, when we send to the big steel mills,

they-they know what to do with it."

Totally wasted.

People took their pots, the...the iron chains

that ran along some of the fences,

anything metal and just threw it into the furnace

and melted it down.

So...overnight it went up to eighteen million tons of steel,

but most of it was worthless.

♪

With great fanfare, local officials reported

the upward climb of wheat and steel production

and with it, a relentless rise for the economy.

To do otherwise was to suffer the political consequences,

but none of it was true and the result was disastrous.

The production figures were grossly exaggerated.

Everybody lied.

The lower leaders lied to the higher leaders,

knowing that they wanted big figures

and the higher leaders usually, whether they realized it or not,

reported them on up and the farther up you got

the more of a fool you were, really,

the more grossly deceived.

So, that was one of the great tragedies, that he had hundreds

of millions of villagers leaving the fields, going out looking

for iron ore, for copper, for aluminum, for whatever

minerals there were in order to set up village industries.

So, who was tending the crops?

Old people and children, that's all you saw.

We went around the country, that's all we saw in the fields,

old people and children.

So, there was this terrible famine.

In the famine that accompanied the latter days

of The Great Leap Forward, probably something between

25 and 35 million people died...

of hunger.

♪

During these years, Sidney not only worked at Radio,

but was a trusted translator of important Party documents

and of Mao's collected works.

He and Yulin raised a family and lived comfortably.

His position as a foreign expert protecting them from the worst

excesses of the mass movements.

But on the horizon was a political storm

in which no one would be protected.

♪

♪

The tragic failure of The Great Leap Forward

had fractured the Party's leadership.

Mao and his policies were being challenged.

Both his vision of the revolution

and his historical legacy were at stake.

In the crucible of the Cultural Revolution,

Mao's struggle for survival would become

the country's struggle for survival.

It was all about whether you were

really following Chairman Mao or not.

Not the Communist Party, the interesting thing was

that the Cultural Revolution began, really, as a revolution

against the Communist Party,

although nobody said it like that.

The key slogan with which the Cultural Revolution started

was "zàofan youli," "It's right to rebel."

And he put that into the hands of the young people

with the little red book.

"It's right to rebel," and that's all they needed.

These young people had grown up, as the saying goes,

"under the red banner," that's all they'd known

and they had been taught since infancy that the interests

of the Party and the government, the country, come first.

So, now all of a sudden, rebelling to reclaim

your personal interests became not only legitimate,

it was revolutionary.

And so the force with which this exploded was tremendous.

I saw it as a kind of, a redux of the Protestant Revolution,

the Protestant Reformation in Europe.

Previously, in the Medieval Catholic Church,

you didn't read the Bible, and interpret it,

the priesthood, from the Pope down,

told you what the Bible said that you needed to know.

Then came Martin Luther and company

and you had an individual, personal relationship with God.

You read the Bible, you decide what it meant, you followed it.

Exactly this.

Everyone got a copy of the little red book,

"Quotations form Chairman Mao."

What did it mean?

Up to you.

You read it, you decide what it means, you act on it.

There's no authority that can tell you what it means,

except for Chairman Mao, of course.

And one of the most enthusiastic people that I talked with

in the early days, and this was in January '67,

was Zhou Enlai, I had a long talk with him one-on-one,

in which he was saying, "Look at the freedom,

look at the atmosphere of freedom.

Anybody can say anything they want."

He says, "Can the American President do this?

Can he allow them to put up wall posters

on the walls of-of the White House?

Would they dare?"

But, now we have it in China.

He was carried away.

♪

It was the feeling of democratic rebellion that was in the air.

That was very powerful.

Young people making speeches that sounded like Patrick Henry

on the streets and at Radio.

And I remember saying to Yulin,

when I first started getting involved, I said,

"You know, I may end up covered with mud from head to foot,

but if anything was ever worth it, this is it."

♪

In the Spring of 1966, Mao issued, what he called,

"My Big Character Poster," with the slogan:

"Bombard the Headquarters"

♪

The right to rebel was to be a purge of the Party leadership,

the Big Character Poster became a weapon in the hands

of China's youth, the Red Guards.

At first, foreigners in China were told to stay out of it,

but Sidney Rittenberg, with the approval

of Premier Zhou Enlai insisted on taking part.

The-the place where I really got involved was,

one night I was walking home...

and I saw that, in the Radio theater,

there was some kind of meeting going on,

so I just poked my head in to see.

It was remarkable.

♪

Rival factions, each of them claiming to be

the true supporters of Chairman Mao, were organizing

throughout the country and Radio was no exception.

At this meeting, the security department as one,

resigned and joined a rebel group,

saying they had told their last lies for the Party.

Rittenberg was about to take sides.

That was really something to me, I mean, that was really

something like revolution.

The security department saying

that they had told their last lies for the Party.

Something big was happening here and so I also joined

the rebel organization.

There were two different groups, our group was called

the Rebel Regiment... to Defend Mao Zedong Thought.

The other one was called

the Brigade to Defend Mao Zedong Thought to the Death.

So, they were called the "To the Death Brigade,"

and they were set up by the Party secretary at the Radio.

They were his boys, his... his followers and therefore

they were condemned and denounced as "royalists,"

they were the royalists who were protecting the leadership

and we were the rebels.

And one amazing episode after the other.

♪

As happened elsewhere during the Cultural Revolution,

it wasn't long before the rebel groups at Radio

confronted one another, face to face.

♪

In the auditorium at Radio, Rittenberg looked on

and then took the stage.

A hubbub started among the audience

and pushing and shouting match between the so-called royalists

and the rebels, these two organizations.

So, something is brewing a fight.

So, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking,

"My goodness, in this auditorium,

not that easy to get in and out of,

if it really, if a big fight starts here,

it's gonna really be bad."

So, I went up on the stage and the girl,

the Red Guard leader, from the Radio Institute

was standing up there at the microphone,

really not knowing what to do and I went up to her

and I said, "Will you allow me to speak?"

And I said, "Who are these young people?

They're our successors, they're the successors

to the revolution, that's who they are.

And what are we supposed to be doing?

We're supposed to be using the democratic rights

that Chairman Mao has given us to air our opinions

and our grievances and to try to straighten out

the wrong things or stupid things that the leaders do."

So on and so forth.

That's all that's going on.

"So, what's the... what's the controversy about?

What is there to disagree with or to fight about about this?"

Everybody was just calm, coulda heard a pin drop.

But, what I didn't know was that they were recording my speech

about democracy and the right to speak and the right

to oppose and it went all over the country,

so the next day, I'm somebody.

I start getting phone calls from all ov--all over the country

and, so that, that started it.

So, I became very much in demand as a speaker

at Red Guard rallies and at universities

and to write for the paper and so on and so forth,

so everything changed.

And in the process, you became a celebrity?

Yeah, in the process, I became a celebrity.

It was the beginning of it.

It's hard to believe, but I spoke to everything,

from a meeting of over 100,000 in Tianjin

at the university there, uh...

to in the Great Hall of the People,

the Congress hall, to 10,000 leaders

from all over the country, to the uh, uh...

to the State Science Commission, to scientists,

and technologists, several hundred.

Uh, to huge audiences at all the,

all the major universities, um...

and over the phone to a meeting of thousands of Red Guards,

way off in Chian, to a huge workers conference in Shanghai,

everywhere, I was the speaker.

What did they want to hear from you?

Well, you know, it was a romantically built up figure,

this American who spoke fluent Chinese,

who was from the generation of Yan'an,

but unlike most of that generation,

actively supported the Cultural Revolution and stood

with the young people and was, had been named by Mao as a,

quote unquote, "international communist fighter."

This didn't surprise you?

That you were playing this role?

No, that was my role, that was my role to play.

That's why I always wore Western clothes,

rather than Chinese clothes because I wanted

to be recognized as an American

who was working for the Chinese Revolution.

The four principal Red Guard leaders in Beijing

were from the four biggest universities and I became

sort of their father, confessor, and counselor.

One talk I had in the park with these four fearsome chieftains,

really fearsome, I mean, they were it in those days,

and I asked them, I said, "What do you--what do you

want to do after the Cultural Revolution is over?"

And they all said, "We want to go to America."

And I said, "Why?"

I mean U.S. imperialism was the enemy of choice

in those days, so why do you want to go?

And Kuai Dafu said, "Well," he said, "I just wanna see

what it is about the Capitalist system that makes it so secure,

makes it so stable," he says that,

"There's the United States, the chief of world imperialism,

an exploiting society and yet there's no worry

about being overthrown, you don't worry about people

talking or whatever that the system's gonna collapse."

Why, he says, "Cause I wanna go and see."

That's what they were like.

You'd become an important person.

Sort of, yeah.

Sidney...your words were circulated

throughout the country!

People wanted you to speak,

people wanted you at mass rallies,

Uh-huh.

You had the ear of Zhou Enlai,

you had the ear of Jiang Qing, Mao's wife!

Yes, and when it all collapsed around my ears, I had the voice

of my father saying, "Fools names like fools faces

often found in public places."

Well, I was thinking that we were building a new world.

that the Cultural Revolution was building

a new democratic socialist world.

And yet, you knew of the violence that was going on

and people's careers being ruined and good people,

people you knew, people who were your friends

and colleagues, being struggled against

at mass meetings which you attended.

How was this affecting you?

You know, I made some feeble attempts to...

protest or to do something about the...

brutal way that people were treated

at these mass-struggle meetings.

I felt this was wrong, I was against it,

I bleated a few times at people and then I dropped it

because it is written, "A revolution is not like

inviting guests to dinner," it can't be that civilized,

that courteous, that gracious, that gentle.

And it wasn't.

It wasn't.

♪

During its most violent years, 1966 to 1969, the devastation

and brutality of the Cultural Revolution were not always

visible to the outside world, much less understandable.

At the time, eyewitnesses rarely documented the convulsions

of a country that had turned against itself.

It was an era of chaos and confusion.

♪

That's the Cultural Revolution, it's like a national holiday

mixed with unbelievable cruelty.

You see, and...

I mean, there were high school Red Guards,

I know one high school Red Guard unit that captured and tortured

the kids from a rival high school Red Guard unit,

recorded their screams, and played them

for all of their troops to harden them

to struggle with the class enemy.

So, I mean real fascist storm trooper tactics were going on.

Some...elderly people who had once been shopkeepers,

not a crime, according to Mao Zedong doctrine,

they had been shopkeepers, therefore viewed as capitalists,

and had been working for state owned stores forever,

but they were killed by these young kids

in their anger at the exploiters.

There was a schoolteacher who got a knock on his door

in the middle of the night, opened the door,

and was stabbed to death by several students.

It's unbelievable brutality and cruelty

as the background of this whole revolutionary firm hand.

And for the army and the police, it was basically hands-off.

If they're not setting fire to public property

and major destruction, stay out of it.

It was a catastrophe of historic proportions.

You could only compare it to a catastrophe

like the Holocaust in Europe.

In fact, Li Xiannian, when he became president,

called it a Holocaust, he said,

"This is our Chinese Holocaust."

And how many millions of people died?

I've never seen an accounting,

and I'm not sure anyone knows,

but you go to China, today,

and I don't think you can find any family

that doesn--that didn't have at least one member

that was seriously damaged in the Cultural Revolution.

Because today, this faction would be on top,

and tomorrow, another faction.

So up and down, round and round.

Lin Biao announced publicly

in the second year of the Cultural Revolution--

Lin Baio was Mao's second in command at that point--

he said that more army men,

more soldiers had been killed

in the first period of the Cultural Revolution

than in the largest military campaign in Chinese history.

So you can imagine,

millions and millions of people perished.

At the Radio where we were working,

four people that we knew

committed suicide in the first week

of the Cultural Revolution.

People like one woman who had been on the Long March,

and the old Red Army was suddenly accused

of being a counter-revolutionary and a traitor

to the revolution

and she just jumped off the roof

and ended it.

Four people that we knew.

So the damage was enormous.

♪

Power at the top was wielded

by the central Cultural Revolution group,

whose leaders became known as the Gang of Four.

Most prominent among them was Mao's wife, Jiang Qing.

When the Rebel Regiment at Radio met resistance

from those still in authority,

Rittenberg went to Jiang Qing for help.

She wasn't the same woman he remembered

from the Saturday night dances in Yan'an.

What happened was amazing to me because I had--

I had known Jiang Qing since 1946 in Yan'an.

She started as an ambitious young person,

very little talent as a movie actress,

but great talent as a political actress.

Now, I could not recognize her as the same person I had known.

The thing that popped into my head

was the image from the old Hollywood movie,

A Tale of Two Cities,

in which Madame Defarge,

the French radical woman,

was played by Blanche Yurka, terrific,

and, oh, she was just storm and stress incarnate.

You know, just fury,

revolutionary fury.

And that's what Jiang Qing was like,

not rational at all.

She also had the chief of staff of the army there,

and the--

and a deputy chief of staff in charge of military training.

And she said--

well, the gist of what she said

in her rantings was that we are determined.

We're going to tear down

every single bureaucratic institution in China

and build them all up again.

The way that chairman Mao's revolutionary line demands,

to be revolutionary institutions.

And she said,

"When I went to the Radio institute,

they wouldn't let me in the gate, at first."

And I told them,

"If you don't let me in,

I have a column of cadre

in Zhongnanhai in the central committee quarters,

I'll bring them here and we'll knock down your gate."

And she repeated that statement.

She said, "Well, I'll knock down any gate

that doesn't let in the revolution,

any gate that protects revisionism."

♪

The door seemed open

for an unprecedented course of action.

No rebel group had yet taken

over a central government department,

let alone one as politically sensitive

as the broadcast administration.

Rittenberg and the Rebel Regiment

were emboldened to act.

Well, the next big thing was on New Year's Eve

when we all--

the Rebel Regiment leaders

gathered...

in the--in their office,

and they decided that the time had come

for them to take power,

to take over the leadership of the Radio, formally.

Run the whole thing.

And nobody had ever done this

in a government organ before,

let alone in such an important one as this.

So we marched in, eight or ten of us,

we marched into the central editorial office,

where the two deputy directors

were there in charge,

and we just read, we read them a notice saying

that the Rebel Regiment was taking over command

of the State Broadcasting Institute,

and from this day on, you're working for us.

A few days later,

a statement came

from Mao Zedong himself saying,

"If rebels at Radio have taken over, good for them.

Now there's some dissention among the rebels.

They should be counseled to unite."

That's all.

In those days, a word from Mao,

it was called the newest supreme directive.

Supreme directive,

so that was law.

And so this great elation about we got approval.

But why did he imagine-- you know, that was one

of the greatest lessons of my life,

what happened in the next few weeks.

Here's what happened at Radio,

and similarly, everywhere.

These guys come into power

over an organization of 7,000 people,

very complicated.

They have no idea even how to manage the motor pool,

let alone the whole thing.

Revolutionary zeal was the order of the day,

but political fury was no substitute

for practical experience, or management skills.

When the leadership of the Rebel Regiment was challenged,

power became an end in itself.

And these guys, they would go

to the living quarters

of the dissatisfied people,

they'd break open the locks on their desk drawers,

they'd confiscate their diaries,

they'd read their mail,

they'd put them in confinement.

So very quickly,

it turned from this great democracy

into a great dictatorship.

So that's when I came

into face to face argument with Jiang Qing.

I said, "You shouldn't support these people

because they're suppressing their opposition.

They're not practicing democracy."

But she was supporting them.

There's a meeting of the full Radio staff

in which she speaks, I speak,

the Rebel leader speaks,

and I really thought

I may never get out of this place alive,

'cause there was only one entrance.

It's a music hall, there's no back entrance.

I have to go through all these--

this crowd to get to the front door.

But I was so...

angry,

and I said, I said,

"You know what you're doing?

You're using the methods that the oppressors use

to get rid of opposition.

You're doing exactly the same thing,

you're denying them the right to speak,

you're holding people by force

in confinement,

even the representative

of the Cultural Revolution leading group.

Look what you turned into.

And you think you have the right

to call yourself

Regiment to Defend Mao Zedong Thought?"

And they're very angry,

they don't like this at all.

Then someone, who turned out later

to have been inspired from on top,

suggests that we set up a three,

a committee of three,

to conduct a rectification campaign

to restore unity at Radio through education,

and that I be the chairman of this group,

and be in charge.

♪

Sidney Rittenberg had risen to a political position

unheard of for foreigners in China.

He was in charge of a critical government agency.

Broadcasting was a key battleground

in the Cultural Revolution.

But as he would soon discover,

his role was being manipulated from the very top.

Jiang Qing was using Rittenberg's committee

to put her own faction in control.

Now, here's where I made my really big mistake,

really big mistake.

I should have quit right then.

I should have quit,

but I was too much

into the power and the glory to quit, really.

I was too much into that feeling

that I'm part of history,

and if I quit now, I'm nothing.

I just couldn't let it go,

so I decided, well, I'll keep working on it,

you know, from the inside.

But I should have known,

I should have known.

You know, one day, I had my picture taken

in a group photo with Mao

and two weeks later,

the picture's reprinted in another paper,

and I'm blacked out.

What happened, what went wrong?

Well, it was happening to so many people,

it wasn't just me.

That's one thing that impressed me

in solitary the second time,

that these people,

the President of the People's Republic of China, Liu Shaoqi,

Mao's anointed successor

in writing,

and the leading exponent of Mao's thought...

almost overnight, he became a prisoner

and was finally hassled to death.

So, I thought to myself,

these people still haven't gotten

that if it's not safe for everybody,

it's not safe for anybody.

Whoever you are,

if you don't have certain protections,

that you could be the number two man in the land,

and you could still drop, just like that.

It was happening to so many people.

It wasn't just me.

♪

♪

Here I am, I'm back in solitary.

Who would have thought it?

Who could believe it?

And one night,

about two, three years

into this term in solitary...

the prison is now

in the hands of young fanatics,

Red Guard types, in the army,

and the original people who ran the prison,

including the warden, who came and talked to me,

are now locked up in cells in the prison.

And, um, I heard them one night,

after sleep time,

torturing a female prisoner.

You could hear the blows,

you could hear her scream and groan and plead,

and you have to lie there

and there's nothing you can do about it.

And that was a terrible feeling.

And I felt like the pit and the pendulum.

You know, I felt the walls closing in,

and I'm having palpitations, I'm sweating,

and I'm terrified this time it's gonna get me.

And how many people were ruined in those prisons

in the Cultural Revolution.

I--I have no idea the numbers,

but the wrecks all over the place,

the ones still alive.

They got out, but were just wrecks.

But I kept saying to myself,

they control the stimulus.

They try to break you down

and make you jump,

but you control the response.

They don't control the response.

So you can modulate the response.

They can't...

make you jump whenever they want you to jump.

And, those-- those were empowering,

those bits of knowledge were empowering.

And another thing that was--

you know, another experience like that.

The second time in prison,

after a couple of years,

I start thinking one day,

you know, even if I ever get out of this place,

which I didn't think would happen.

Why?

Because the same Mao Zedong

had made the same mistake twice

about the same American,

and he was now a god-head.

Were they ever gonna be ready to admit

that they'd done it again?

I thought very unlikely.

Yulin was sent to labor camp,

just a little over three years.

And because...

she wouldn't play ball,

she was given very hard labor no other woman had.

Wouldn't play ball.

The smart thing to do in the Cultural Revolution was

if your spouse, or child,

or parent, or close friend

was accused

of being a bad person,

you made a show of cooperating with the authorities.

You revealed some things

that you figured wouldn't really hurt the person,

but it'd make it look

like you were trying.

And she couldn't do that.

She kept saying and writing,

"My husband is a good man,

you're wrong."

She wrote letters to Zhou Enlai.

She never told me, but after I came home,

I opened this old book

and out floated a copy of a letter

that she wrote to Zhou Enlai,

and turned out, there were lots of them.

"My husband is an American."

"He is a good man."

"He's a real friend of China."

"He's a revolutionary

and you're making a mistake."

So for that, she got beaten,

she got spit on,

she got parked on a stool

outside of the women's bathroom,

so that everybody passing

would--would spit on her or curse her.

There was a big poster behind her on the wall saying,

"This is the unrepentant wife

of the dog of an imperialist spy."

One of the interrogation team

visited us in Beijing

shortly after I was released.

And he told us

that about three months into the interrogation,

they had sent up a report saying,

"We think this man is telling the truth."

And that Jiang Qing had sent word back saying,

"We know he's guilty, your job is to make him talk."

♪

On September 9, 1976,

Mao Zedong died.

Just days later, The Gang of Four was arrested.

The Cultural Revolution was officially over,

but it would be another year before Rittenberg was set free.

In all, he had spent

15 years, 11 months and 14 days in Chinese prisons,

all of it in solitary confinement.

Sometime in mid-October, early October,

after the National Day,

I hear familiar tones coming from the prison cell

right across the little courtyard from me.

It was Jiang Qing,

and I immediately knew

if she's in, I'm going out.

November 18, 1977,

the door to the cell opened.

They had double padlocks on the cell.

The door opened on Saturday morning,

which is very unusual,

and the keeper came in with a safety razor

and handed it to me and said,

"Have a good shave, they're gonna come

in a couple hours to take you home."

A shave with no shaving cream, or brush, or anything,

just a razor.

So, then began a remarkable procession.

First, they brought

a brand new pair of shiny leather shoes.

Then they brought a silk tie.

Then they brought a brand new suit.

Then they brought a silk shirt.

So I'm transforming myself,

and the guards at the window,

his eyes are as big as saucers,

and he opened the little door and he said,

"What's going on?"

And I said, "I'm going home."

Okay.

So I went out and Yulin was waiting

in a little reception room,

and...

I went in, some of our old friends were there,

and I put my arms around her, and she was crying,

and I patted her on the back and said,

"It's okay now, it's all over, it's okay, it's okay."

♪

♪

I was part of a movement

for human progress, I felt.

And I wasn't just a me in a prison cell,

I was part of this world

of people

who were struggling and studying and working

for freedom and happiness, for progress.

And as long as I was part of that,

wherever I was,

I was part of something that was moving forward

and that would win.

So I think that's what kept me.

I never thought of giving up.

What don't we know about the Cultural Revolution?

Oh, I think 95 percent we don't know.

And when I say we don't know,

this generation of Chinese don't have a clue

about what happened, not a clue.

They don't know anything,

maybe someone in their family told them a story or two,

but most people don't talk about it.

Though these young kids-- and if you talk to them

about the Cultural Revolution they say,

"How, how could that happen,

how could people be like that?"

I think it's an enormously important period

in human history to study and to draw lessons from.

How do people behave when there are no holds barred,

when everything is up for grabs,

when you can do it any way you want,

together with anyone you choose,

how do they behave under those circumstances?

It's--it's important information for the human race, I think.

♪

What should we understand about Mao Zedong?

I think he was a great historic leader

and a great historic criminal,

both parts.

And I think the reason I say criminal is

that he arrogated to himself the right to conduct

these enormous social experiments

that involved upturning the lives

of hundreds of millions of people,

when he himself did not know

what the outcome was gonna be.

He thought it was okay for him

to experiment like that.

And that, I think, was criminal

because

it created famines, in which tens of millions died,

and it created the Cultural Revolution,

in which nobody knows how many died,

and it--usually when he took off,

it ended in disaster,

but he kept trying.

Are there things that you look back on with personal regret

that you're sorry for, or sorry about?

Mhm, sure.

Yeah, being involved in struggles against people

in China.

With one group against another group,

or with a party against people who were singled out

for struggle for criticism,

that was terribly wrong.

Wrong--more wrong for me, I think,

because being an American,

so an outsider, really.

What went wrong?

Two of my closest, longest friends in China

both described what went wrong in exactly the same words.

After it was all over,

they said to me,

"You forgot you were a foreigner."

I think in a word that's part of what went wrong anyway.

More seriously, more basically what went wrong

was that I was in total delusion as to what was possible

and what was really happening in China.

After I got out of prison, and I was able to see

that the problems in the system were systemic problems,

not problems of good man and bad man,

and that some of the basic tenets

of what was called Marxism-Leninism were wrong,

then I restored my ability to criticize

my own basic premises,

and I felt like a free man.

If you put one drop

into the long river of human history,

that's immortal,

that goes on wave after wave,

drop after drop,

long after you know it or don't know it.

It has nothing to do with whether you're aware of it.

Your contribution is your immortality,

that's something that lasts.

So you either make a difference,

or you don't make a difference,

in which case, you're just a piece of mud,

just swept away and doesn't matter,

but you can matter.

Sidney Rittenberg making history.

Yeah.

History rolled right over my body.

I really think that if I had gone to China

and just worked in English,

polishing and teaching and writing and whatever,

and not had any part of politics,

and not joined the Party,

I would have been able to make more of a contribution,

and do less damage.

I think that's undoubtedly true.

But that's not what I wanted.

I wanted to be in the Party.

I wanted to be a revolutionary.

♪

Shortly after he was released from prison,

Rittenberg went to the American Embassy in Beijing

and explained that he had lost his passport.

He was given a new one.

With Yulin and the children,

he moved back to the United States in 1980.

♪

They had left almost everything behind in China,

and had to start over again in America.

Yulin as a cooking instructor,

Sidney teaching adult education classes.

Then their lives took one more dramatic turn,

and put Sidney back on the road that had taken him to Yan'an,

and into the heart of the Chinese Revolution.

In a new era of US-China relations,

he found a new role,

now as a valued resource in the US-China dialogue.

And with Yulin as a consultant to American companies

now engaged in the new global economy.

Sidney Rittenberg was back at work,

building his bridge between America and China.

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