I have already been back for ten years, during which time I have written a book. Of course, my purpose in writing was not to make money but for my descendants, for the organization and country that sent me on my mission and not to let down the people.

For an ideal: I only have one aim, and that is to be a witness to the times. Being imprisoned might not be your affair, but it is not mine alone; we are all caught up as fragments tossed in this whirlpool of history. As Chinese people, no matter what parties or factions we might have been in, for the sake of our people and our own ideals and burdens, we must do something. I was very young when all this began and I have to ask what it was all for in the end. It was all for ideals.

During the time of Mao Tse-tung and the Gang of Four, all of my relatives on the mainland suffered for being connected to me. But when I followed the government to Taiwan, my little sister in Fukien was only eight; what on earth could she have known about me? When the Communists found out that she had a brother in Taiwan, she could never become a cadre or do any studying.

In 1956 I was ordered by my organization to go to the mainland and set up radio antennaes, but I was soon arrested. First I was held in solitary confinement for eight years, not allowed to read books or newspapers or talk to anybody. I was left in a small cell to make a "self examination." I deliberately sang songs of defiance, as if I was asking to die. They would give me two warnings then manacle my hands and feet and tie me to the wall.

I never tried suicide. They always clearly told me that I would be shot. The most difficult days were after the investigation by the public security bureau was completed and the charges made. On every new year or festival the Communists would make a point of selecting two or three people for execution--"killing the chickens to frighten the monkeys." In the evenings, as soon as I heard the lock being turned in the door, I would get up and very naturally put on my clothes. The psychological pressure was enormous.

Preparing to die: Because they clearly knew who I was, they did not carry out my sentence, knowing there were a lot of people I had not handed over to them. From start to finish I can say that all I had during these eight years was myself. They used death threats and all kinds of pressures to try to force me to give them a list of names. I had prepared myself early on for sacrifice but I had to preserve the organization. No matter what anyone said, I was a member of the Kuomintang and would always remain loyal to my party. Anyway, I had already asked to be executed and things could get no worse.

Later on I was sent down to do hard labor in the remote province of Tsing Hai where the pressure was immense; you just had to finish the tasks they set you. What was an even bigger kind of pressure, though, were the thought-struggle sessions and mutual expositions. I was there for over 20 years and never sold out any of my fellows. No matter who said what to me, I would never report it to a cadre. My fellows respected me for this. I could sell my life to the hard labor, but as for selling out my fellows or writing a report for the cadres, I would never do it! If you did not join in, then you were standing on the side opposed to reform-through-labor and put in the position of being a counter-revolutionary. Luckily I could paint, measure and calculate and so became indispensable to them. They wanted me to do the statistics and there would always be some cadre or another seeking me out to do something. It is rather ironic that with so many contacts among the leading cadres nobody would dare to say anything counter-revolutionary to me.

On one occasion I had a gastric ulcer and had to stay in the brigade hospital, unable to do hard labor. They made me go and bury corpses instead. With the labor being so tough and the food so meagre, as soon as you saw any wheat growing out-side you would discard the husks and swallow it. You would eat anything you could catch, or weeds with some salt added. If you could find peas, then you ate peas. Because of this many people died from internal swelling and distention.

When a person died, their blanket would be used as a funeral shroud and they would be sent for burial. When I did the burying I advised the doctor that if there were not even any plaques for these graves then nobody would know whose they were in future. There happened to be a brick kiln there, so I recommended that they used two bricks, one to be placed inside the shroud and the other to be placed outside, on which were to be written in black ink the names and places from which the deceased came.

The "Gobi Sandbank" people: That graveyard was called the "Gobi Sandbank" and was to the west of the labor camp. The burials would usually take place after sunset or on a clear morning. Each time it would take more than an hour for the handbarrow to get there, and Gobi Sandbank became a kind of nickname for death.

Patients from the hospital would be sent to do the burying; they might be ill but at least they could eat properly. This was not because they were allowed to eat their fill, but because they could have what the other sick people left over.

Everyone was given two buns made from peas each day and if a patient could not eat then I would have theirs. Only if you ate properly could you have the energy to do the burials.

What gave me the strength to keep going was the conviction that I had done nothing wrong. When I went to the labor camp in Tsing Hai I felt very hopeless because such camps do not accept those sentenced to death but only those who have been detained indefinitely. No matter how many years you were imprisoned there, all were endless. Being sent there was the same as letting you decide for yourself whether to go on or die.

In the labor camp they did not beat me, but they did "rectify" me. What kind of "rectification"? In the evening they would take me out for interrogation and only let me go in the morning, without any sleep. Coming back in the daylight they would then want me to take part in study sessions so as to confuse my mind. This would go on continuously for a whole month.

If you are branded a "rightist" in the mainland, you can still be rehabilitated and leave the country. As for my kind of "special category," what they called "the inner circle," our treatment was the lowest. It is rather humorous really how, no matter which place I was sent to, I was always in the first group or the first section of the first brigade--always the most important and in the most worthy "first position" for strict observation.

Speaking out for suffering friends: As a Chinese person who has been through all this, what is there left to say? That day the foundation asked me to come and give a lecture, I told them how I was released from the labor camp in Tsing Hai with a man called Mr. Wu. My sister from Fukien immediately came to meet me and take me home, but he had nobody . All he could do was wait around in the work brigade until the end of last year, when he came to Taiwan. He had had a fiancee, but she became someone else's wife long ago. All alone, he was in great need of assistance.

Why did I get involved in the organization in the beginning? What can I achieve now? I myself want nothing, but I want to do something for my suffering friends because there are so many of them still undergoing hardships.

[Picture Caption]

Harry Wu is travelling the world to visit the lucky survivors of mainland China's labor camps and record their experiences. Last month he visited Lin Kun-jung in Taiwan and the two men promised each other that one day they would return together to a labor farm in the remote province of Tsing Hai. (photo by Vincent Chang)