The Revenge of Heaven, subtitled Journal of a young Chinese, narrates the story of a sixteen/seventeen year old high-school student from AmoyThe transcription of Chinese geographic and personal names is taken from the American book publication. in Southern Fujian, People's Republic of China (PRC), written by two US-American scholars.
The student participated as a Red Guard in Mao Tse-tung's so-called Cultural Revolution from its inception. In July 1968,The Revenge of Heaven. Journal of a young Chinese. English text prepared by Miriam London and Ta-Ling Lee. Ballantine Books, New York 1972, p. 416 – 421. Hereafter cited as The Revenge of Heaven together with his second elder brother, he escaped to the Republic of China, Taiwan by swimming almost eight miles with the ebb current from Amoy to the offshore island Tatan which belongs to the Chinmen Archipelago. He subsequently attracted the attention of one of the Chinese assistants of Ivan D. London, psychologist and professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York in the United States of America (USA) who brought the former Red Guard into communication with him. Together with Miriam London, his wife and long-term collaborator, Professor London was conducting a large-scale research project on the social system of the PRC based upon refugee interviews. He followed up with the young man. Over the period of approximately 18 months the London's were able to collect source material from about 300 hours of interviews with him and additional statements he submitted in written form amounting to about 500 000 Chinese characters. When Professor London and his wife decided to publish the findings and research insights they had gained from that material, a pseudonym was required to protect their informant's family in the PRC. Having carefully studied their respondent during the 18 months of working increasingly closer with him they intended to present the former Red Guard to the public as "a real and genuine character"Richard Baum: China Watcher. Confessions of a Peking Tom. University of Washington Press, Seattle 2010, , p. 38. (Digitization, Retrieved December 6, 2020) and, therefore, chose the autobiographical first person account with a narrator fictitiously reading from his journal as the format of their research report. Ken Ling, as the former Red Guard was henceforth called, on the one hand contributed to the book as the author of all the raw material it based upon and for that was given credit by Ivan D. London in the preface to the original American publication. On the other hand, however, as the protagonist of the story "The Revenge of Heaven" reading from his journal and looking back on his Red Guard activities Ken Ling appears, of course, as the person studied by the American psychologist. He is certainly not the author of that study. The research report "The Revenge of Heaven" presented in the literary style of a novel was prepared by Miriam London with the assistance of the London's long-term collaborator Ta-Ling Lee.London, Ivan D. The Revenge of Heaven. A brief methodological account, Psychological Reports, 1974, 34, (hereafter cited as The Revenge. Methodology) (Abstract and download, Retrieved November 30, 2020)
Content The protagonist Ken Ling was the youngest of six siblings three of whom had already finished university and made their living far away from home in the North of China. His father, a middle-class bank employee, died of an illness when he was only one year old. He became the favorite of his mother, a factory worker, who continued to baby him even as he became older.The Revenge of Heaven p. 2
He was baptized and his mother encouraged him to adopt the spirit of Christian values and virtues.The Revenge of Heaven p. 35 – 42 His teachers in the Eighth Middle School in Amoy liked him, viewing him as well-bred, gifted and eager to learn. Despite his middle-class backgroundnot considered a good one in Communist Chinahis prospects to enter university seemed to be bright.
A student becomes a Red Guard However, everything changed on June 1, 1966The Revenge of Heaven p.1Children's Daywhen Ken Ling was awakened early in the morning by incomprehensible noises from the public loudspeaker system. After going to school and learning classes were cancelled, he returned home. When he came back to school in the afternoon to write letters of "determination" and "challenge" he was caught up in the maelstrom of one of Mao's campaignssoon to be called the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution"turning the well-mannered, diligent young man into a ruthless, rather presumptuous Red Guard bully. No longer accepting any authority above himself, with the exception of his mother who was unaware of her son's outside activities, he and his classmates believed that revolution justified whatever actions they undertook to destroy the Four Olds old thoughts, old culture, old customs and old habits.The Revenge of Heaven p. 42 – 53 They humiliated, tortured and killed their teachers with the utmost cruelty. Beyond this, they terrorized their teachers’ families, raiding their homes to destroy books, musical instruments, paintings and other cultural valuables and stealing everything that caught their eyes. However, this was only the beginning of student violence that was soon redirected against the local leadership of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the city's institutional framework and against the citizens of Amoy as a whole.
Journeys to Peking and the North of China With the emergence of organizational structures within the Red Guard movement Ken Ling gained increasing authority and power. After massive power struggles at the Fujian provincial level, he was appointed head of a delegation of ten of his Amoy middle school classmates traveling free of charge to Peking to link-up with Red Guards from other parts of the country, exchange revolutionary experiences and ultimately participate in a rally of a million Red Guards where Mao Tse-tung would appear in person. At the end of this almost three-month journey, Ken Ling and his fellow travellers also attended a mass interrogation involving up to hundred thousand people against Wang Kuang-mei, the wife of the then President of the PRC, Liu Shao-ch’i. For three days they inspected the embassy district of the capital, undertook a number of sightseeing tours in Peking itself, and traveled to other provinces in the Northeast. They even (accidentally) got as far to the Northwest as Lanchou.
At the peak of power Returning home to Amoy in January 1967, Ken Ling found that just as in Shanghai, the movement to set up communes – influenced by the model of the Paris CommuneDomes, Jürgen, The Internal Politics of China 1949–1972, C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., London (United Kingdom) 1973, p. 172 – was in full swing. Because of his Shanghai experience, after only a few days visit to that city, the seventeen year old was immediately recognized as an expert and appointed director general of all 147 factories of the newly established Amoy commune with its 730,000 inhabitants. This included 8000 students stationed in the factories who were under his command to "work toward the goal of increased production". Ken Ling had reached the peak of his rise to power.The Revenge of Heaven p. 264 – 276
The sudden fall Ken Ling was well aware that the communal effort was little more than an illusion given the constant infighting among powerful stakeholders. Further, an opposing faction within the cultural revolutionary movement, once almost driven into insignificance, was recovering from its defeat and raising new forces with the implicit support of the military. From February, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) openly moved in and took over the Amoy city government forcing Ken Ling to temporarily go underground.
During the second half of 1967 the power struggle in Amoy increasingly assumed the magnitude of a civil war and in that context Ken Ling lost his sweetheart, Mei-mei who was a passionate fighter for the cause of Mao's "Cultural Revolution". She was gunned down when she tried to rescue a co-fighter, who as it turned out afterwards had not even been wounded.The Revenge of Heaven p. 392 Ken Ling was devastated, wondering if her death was the revenge of Heaven –i.e., the revenge of the mythical force behind China's traditional rulers who were the guardians of the ″Four Olds″ –old thoughts, old culture, old customs and old habits.
At the same time, it became more evident, that the ″Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution″ would end and give way to the reestablishment of order under the control of the PLA.
With the loss of Mei-mei, his disillusionment and a highly uncertain future, Ken Ling decided it was time to leave the PRC. He and his second elder brother, who had already been considering leaving the country for a long time, started to explore ways and means to escape to "another world". In the evening of July 19, 1968, they finally met at the beach to start their swim to Tatan Island.The Revenge of Heaven p. 419
Publications Editions in five languages The first edition was published 1972 in English in the United States (USA) and the United Kingdom. A Chinese translation of the American manuscript appeared in Hong Kong the same year, a German edition 1974 in Germany, a Thai edition 1976 in Thailand and a French edition in France 1981, respectively. A reprint of the Chinese translation of "The Revenge of Heaven", under a new title with completely modified attributions and prefaces, was issued in Taiwan 2016.
The Revenge of Heaven. Journal of a young Chinese. Ken Ling. English text prepared by Miriam London and Ta-Ling Lee. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York (USA) 1972. The Revenge of Heaven. Journal of a young Chinese. Ken Ling. English text prepared by Miriam London and Ta-Ling Lee. Ballantine Books, New York (USA) 1972, SBN 345–02985–2-150 Red Guard: from schoolboy to “Little General” in Mao’s China. Ken Ling. English text prepared by Miriam London and Ta-Ling Lee. Macdonald, London (United Kingdom) 1972, . -天讎 : 一個中國青年的自述 Tian chou: yi ge Zhongguo qingnian de zishu, translated from the American original by Ms. Ting Kuang-sheng with the assistance of Liu K'un-sheng, Hsin-ching ch′uan-po Company, Hong Kong 1972 Miriam London, Li Ta-ling:In the German edition Ta Ling Lee appears in the Wade-Giles transcription of his name: Li Ta-ling. Maos kleiner General. Die Geschichte des Rotgardisten Ken Ling. Translated by Inge Neske. dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich (Germany) 1974, , (2nd edition 1982) Thai edition of "The revenge of Heaven". หลินเกิ้นผู้พิฆาตสี่เก่า (Destroyer of the Four Olds), Translated and compiled by Boonkerd Nao Siam, Bangkok (Thailand) 1976.Antiquarian bookstore's offer, retrieved Dezember 7, 2020 La vengeance du ciel. Un jeune Chinois dans la Révolution culturelle. Translated by Pierre Barroux, Hervé Denès and Albert Schmidt, Publication Robert Laffont, Paris (France) 1981, . 從前從前有個紅衛兵 Cong-qian cong-qian yo ge hong-wei-ping. The Story of a Red Guard, Ken Ling zuo-zhe, Da Guei Wen-Hua Publishing House, Taipei 2016, .
Different titles