Bitter Winds

Bitter Winds: A Memoir of My Years in China’s Gulag by Harry Wu, Wiley, 1994. 

Lao Gai

This book is about the 19 years Harry Wu endured as a political prisoner in China’s huge system of forced labor camps. They are called láodòng gǎizào (Mandarin pinyin), ((劳动改造)) which means Reform through Labor. The name is usually abbreviated to laogai. 

Harry Wu

Wu was born in Shanghai in 1937. He was educated by Jesuits, who gave him the Western name, Harry. In Communist eyes, he had a bad class background, because his father was a banker. Before his father died, his father told Harry that he regretted not having taken the family out of China when the Communists came to power. Wu studied at the Beijing Geology Institute. When he arrived, the Communist Party required him to list the names, addresses, occupations and ages of all of his relatives. At a later time, they asked him to turn over his private diary.

Arrest and Assignment to a Forced Labor Camp

Harry Wu was arrested in 1960 for being a counter-revolutionary rightist during the Anti-Rightist Movement. By performing manual agricultural labor in a prison camp, Harry was supposed evolve into being a new socialist person. He slept on a kang, a large adobe brick stove that stayed warm through the night, even after the fire went out. A political prisoner had to cooperate to a certain degree with the authorities in order to survive. On the other hand, if he cooperated too much, he became known to the other prisoners as a lackey or running dog of the wardens. Harry cooperated enough to become a leader of a small work group, and to often get to work at a desk, instead of in the fields. One thing the jailers tried to prevent was for the political prisoners to spend too much time together.

Great Leap Forward

Wu’s early years in the laogai took place during Chairman Mao’s failed agricultural experiment, the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). The prisoners ate mainly corn and sorghum. Rice was a luxury. They were able to eat some vegetables, by stealing them when working in the fields. There was little protein in their diet, and many prisoners swelled up from edema, or even starved to death. While working, the prisoners had to be careful to avoid cuts in their skin, which might lead to dysentery. Harry boiled his food, to guard against infection.

Wangzhuang Coal Mine

After a number of years, Harry Wu graduated from being a political prisoner to a less severe situation called forced job placement. The advantage of forced job placement was that you had more freedom, food and money. The disadvantage was that you now no longer had a fixed sentence and a hope for release when it was finished. Harry’s forced job placement was at Wangzhuang Coal Mine in Shanxi province. At first Harry performed manual labor, but later he graduated to being an inspector, due to his technical background. In 1970, Harry married an older woman, so he could live in a cave instead of in the male barracks. Wu also lived through the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards, and the Gang of Four. He endured the famous “jet plane position” torture, where his arms were held behind his back. 

Release

Wu was released from his forced job placement at the Wangzhuang Coal Mine in 1979. He became a teacher, first in Wuhan, later in Beijing. He left China in 1985 for California. He worked at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and later set up the Laogai Foundation in Washington, D.C.