July 28, 2026, Roots and Refuge Retreat at BCBS

When I was 19, I was planning to go to Times Square to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  Learning about my plan, my father looked worried, “If possible, don’t go,” he said.  “You never know when the crowd could turn irrational and you could be in danger.” His response surprised me and was uncharacteristic of my dad.  He was adventurous and rarely discouraged me from anything.

It’s only in the last years of his life, when he finally wrote down many of his stories, that I finally connected his response to his experience during the Cultural Revolution.  

At the age of 18, full of passion and idealism, responding to Mao’s call to “send ‘educated youth’ to the countryside and learn from the farmers”, he volunteered to go to a remote region of Guangdong province with his classmates.  Outgoing and charismatic, my father was soon appointed as a student leader.  In this land of virgin forests, full of red maple trees and fresh air, they sang, cooked, and worked on the land together.  Life was simple but also joyful. 

A year later, as the Cultural Revolution took on a fervent and dark tone, absolute loyalty to Mao became mandatory. When my father questioned the claim that “Mao’s thought is the pinnacle of philosophical development,” he was labeled an anti-revolutionary and was sentenced to one year of solitary confinement.  

As there was no prison, he was sent to live with a farmer, isolated from the rest of the community.  Each day they hung a wooden sign around his neck with iron wire and dragged him out to be criticized in public.  His friends turned against him and denounced him one by one.  It was a purity test, your survival versus mine. As he returned to the farmer’s house in the evening, blood stained his neck.  The farmer was an old man with a daughter with epilepsy, barely had anything to eat for himself and his daughter. Yet, every evening, after the denunciation rallies ended, the old farmer quietly ladled another bowl of thin congee and pressed crushed herbs against the cuts on my father’s neck. The farmer was illiterate; he didn’t care for the political movement, the slogans or the labels.  What he saw was a young boy being tortured and humliiated daily.  

My father later told me, “Not only did this farmer save my life, giving me food and medicine, but it was his kindness, that kept me alive in the darkest year of my life.  It made me believe that even in the darkest times, there was kindness in people, and in the world.  And that kept me going.” 

Throughout that year, my father never apologized for what he said or admitted that he had done anything wrong.  He was released a year later and eventually redeemed when the Cultural Revolution ended.  What moved me was that he emerged from this experience having more faith in the kindness of people rather than being embittered.  Looking back, I wonder if every new immigrant he housed, every elderly neighbor he taught to use a computer, every friend he helped was, in his own way, another bowl of congee returned to the world.

As I read my father’s story, I finally understood his caution of crowds. He knew how quickly a crowd could lose its sanity and humanity. Yet he also knew that even in those times, kindness can be found. Sometimes it lives in a poor farmer with almost nothing to give, who still finds enough rice for one more bowl of congee.