From the start of Black Dragon

It was too late to run away, and anyhow, where could they run to?

The girl snuggled closer to the old man, pressing herself against his chest and clutching the rough blue denim of his jacket. The young man stood alone, his hands twitching on the handle of a club.

'It's no use,' the old man told him. 'You'll only make it worse.'

The young man spat on the floor. Old Yeye had been a fighter, always standing up for the family honour, but now the oppressors had worn him down. Someone had to be strong; someone had to fight.

But he couldn't bring himself to say this.

Silence fell.

Then they heard the voices. Still distant, but growing louder every moment: the first group of Red Guards, making their way across the paddy fields to the family home.

Soon the chants were deafening, and coming from all sides. The house was surrounded; the attackers were closing in.

'Come on out and answer for your crimes!' The Red Guard leader's voice was made doubly inhuman by his use of a megaphone. 'You have two minutes. Otherwise we have cans of petrol here and we'll burn you alive.'

A great, natural roar went up: 'Kill! Kill! Kill!'

The old man shuddered; this wasn't the Chinese way, the gentle, orderly way of Confucius and Meng Zi ... The girl sobbed. The young man just hated back.

'They mean what they say,' said Yeye. He looked round the room, at the paintings and the calligraphy that hung there. The family collection, a symbol of all the old man held dear, but now a dangerous liability.

'Take everything off the walls,' he ordered.

'You can't think of those things now -' the young man began.

'Do as I say! WE'RE COMING!' Old Yeye called out.

'Forty-five seconds!'

'Here.' Yeye held out his arms, and the young man loaded him up with scrolls. The girl did the same.

The young man wrenched the last pieces off the wall. The character yong (eternal) penned in the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor. The boats on the river, sunlit and tranquil -

'We're coming,' Yeye called out again. The family ran across their courtyard, bowed down under their burdens as if in anticipation of the humiliations to come. A jeer greeted them as they opened their big oak front door; a crowd of faces stared at them, eyes full of hate.

'Take these,' Yeye said to the Red Guard leader, a man known throughout this part of Shandong province as the Red Tiger. The Red Tiger stepped forward, glanced at what was being offered and sneered.

'What are the Four Olds?' he asked.

'Er, ... Some old men?'

'You are ignorant as well as wicked. Old customs, old habits, old culture, old thinking. What does Chairman Mao want us to do with them?'

'Change them?'

'Destroy them!' The Red Tiger pushed Yeye away, with such force that the scrolls tumbled out of the old man's arms on to the ground. 'Make a pile of these vile things. All of you. We'll have a fire!'

'Down with the reactionaries!' shouted someone, who wanted more from the evening than a few paintings going up in smoke.

'Send 'em on a jet-plane ride!' somebody else added. The Red Guards' favourite torture involved making people stand bent forward, arms straight behind their backs, for hours on end.

'Put 'em in the cowshed!' cried a third.

'All in good time, Comrades,' said the Red Tiger. 'We have cultural work to do tonight.' He took a torch and held it aloft. The crowd fell silent, while the Tiger lowered his torch with slow, almost loving, deliberation. The dry silk and paper ignited at its first touch. For a second it seemed as if the picture scrolls had come to life; they were dancing with the agony of combustion; they were disintegrating into shards of ash and hurling themselves up a tree-high column of flame into the night sky. Then they were nothing. The flames died as quickly as they had arisen.

Old Yeye fought back the tears: he must not be seen to react.

'You were wise to hand over these disgusting objects,' said Red Tiger Zhang. 'But don't think all your crimes are forgiven.'

Yeye shook his head humbly: the leader turned away and began to read a long section from The Thoughts of Chairman Mao. The mob joined in, the few who didn't know the passage by heart mouthing along, hoping nobody would notice.

Old Yeye sighed with relief. He had saved the lives of his family tonight; he should be grateful. For how long, of course, that was a different matter. But now, in 1967, in China's Cultural Revolution, people like him could only live a day at a time.

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