The Life and Times of Book Idiot Zhou

Years later, long after he'd become disillusioned with the Communist Party, Zhou returned to his village and did something both unusual and courageous. He undertook a survey of the devastation wrought by his Red Guard team on his village of 2,500. According to his research, his team burned two tons of books, ransacked five Buddhist temples and four Taoist shrines, and chopped hundreds of old carvings -- dragons, phoenixes, gremlins and birds -- from the eaves of ancient courtyard houses. Dozens of his victims had been seriously hurt. Ten people committed suicide following beatings.

And he still wonders: "How do you think a society where that type of behavior was condoned -- no, not condoned, mandated -- can heal itself? Do you think it ever can?"

IT WASN'T UNTIL 1970 THAT THE MAYHEM OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION FINALLY ABATED. The following year, schools in Zhou's commune reopened after a five-year hiatus, and Zhou was able to graduate from high school. Lacking any connections to continue his education, he was put to work in the fields.

From 1971 until 1976, Zhou and the other men in his village dredged riverbeds, dug ditches and repaired the commune's irrigation system. In the summer, Zhou worked in bare feet. In the winter, the ice on the San Cang riverbed would pierce his straw shoes and slash his feet. Zhou rose each day at 4 a.m. and, with brief breaks for meals, worked until 9 p.m. Staggering home each night, Zhou felt like a walking corpse. Men on his work team frequently had to be carried away after collapsing from exhaustion and malnourishment.

Zhou's diet consisted mainly of corn, carrots and sweet potatoes, never meat. To this day, he becomes nauseated at a mere whiff of those vegetables. Though still in his teens, Zhou had a reputation as a good laborer and could keep up with the men in his work brigade. But he wanted to stop digging ditches. To do so, he needed someone with influence in the party.

One day in the fall of 1972, the local party chief approached 17-year-old Zhou with a proposition. He wanted to introduce him to a young woman. Party chiefs often played the role of matchmaker.

The party chief told Zhou that if he agreed to court the young woman, he would recommend Zhou for a position that would get Zhou out of the fields.

All in all, it was a remarkable offer. But Zhou eventually learned what had prompted it: The party chief and the young woman were lovers. The party chief was married, and he had promised to find the woman a husband to help cover up his infidelity.

Zhou balked. He loved literature and had devoured whatever novels he could find by Balzac, Tolstoy, Flaubert. He wanted the sort of romance he had read about, not a business deal brokered by a party boss. Zhou told the chief he would not marry the woman. The chief was enraged.

"Little Zhou," he said, wagging his finger at the boy, "you've been reading too much, and you've forgotten how to be decisive. You should know when to act, but you've become a book idiot" -- the Chinese term for a bookworm.

The Book Idiot nickname stuck.

IN OCTOBER 1977, the Shen Kitchen Commune's loudspeakers crackled with a report from the capital: University entrance examinations, which had been suspended since 1966, would be reinstated.