Harvard Voices: Yong Xue

Yong Xue grew up in Beijing, China, during the height of the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976. After the movement ended with Chairman Mao Zedong’s death, Xue studied Chinese language and literature at Peking University and conducted research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences before applying for Yale’s graduate program with his wife, earning a master’s in East Asian studies and a Ph.D. in history by 2004. Serving as an associate professor of history, language and global culture at Suffolk University since 2004, he, his wife, and his daughter moved from Arlington to Harvard in 2009. Xue describes how his experience in China has influenced his passion for the humanities, social sciences, and activism.

When I was in first grade in 1969, I tried to beat up my teacher.

Yong Xue. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

It was the Cultural Revolution. At that time, this kind of thing was not that unusual. Mao provoked youngsters to revolt—to beat up officials and teachers. Almost all the officials needed to be purged and sent to the countryside to be educated by this kind of so-called “low class of farmwork” because Mao said that farmwork is the highest class. My parents actually were kind of high-ranking officials and were sent to the countryside to be re-educated during my early teens. In my teenage years they came back, but they were busy with their work and put under a lot of pressure. So, they didn’t have time with me, and somehow we had more freedom to do whatever we wanted. We just played outside. I didn’t study at all, and eventually in middle school I was still kind of illiterate.

Beijing was pretty much like North Korea now. I belonged to a privileged family, but a lot of families didn’t have enough food to eat. And culturally, we were worse than North Korea. In North Korea they have movies, dancing, and music. In China, we were all in Mao’s uniform. We had eight model dramas we were allowed to watch. I did not feel starvation materially at the time—we had food to eat, and we had fun. But I felt starvation spiritually and was eager to learn.

When I was 15, the Cultural Revolution ended and Chairman Mao died. My brother, who’s five years older, had already graduated from high school and was sent to the countryside to work—every year, graduates went to that place. When he came back, he told me how miserable the life was. The summer work was so hard that one of his friends actually tried to eat a fly to get himself diarrhea so that he could take a medical leave.

The big spiritual earthquake, metaphorically, for me happened about 1978, when I was 16 going on 17. At that time, China opened up, and we had a Democracy Wall in Beijing, where people put up big-character posters (dazibao) about social issues. Mao incited young students to “rebel” against the Party’s bureaucrats and criticized them using the big-character posters. In 1978, two years after Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, people used this form of communication to express their political opinions, which were quite educational to me.

I went to the wall at least once a week. My memory about what was exactly on the posters is not reliable because at the time, the new information was just so overwhelming. For example, I remember one told that a high school girl was sent to the countryside and desperately wanted to come back. In the end, she had to sleep with the village head or party secretary to do so. Other posters focused on how some areas experienced significant famine. Some just discussed political ideas, such as why the Cultural Revolution was wrong. I read, read, and read the posters. I couldn’t believe that Chinese society was so dark, so outrageously wrong.

Before that, we actually believed the communist propaganda—that we were privileged people, lived in a better society, had enough food, that the Americans were starving and they needed us to rescue them, that we had to carry our mission to serve humanity because we were so good in this communist society. Basically, in a matter of a few days, I was confronted with a different reality. I understood that we lived in extreme poverty. I became radicalized. Very naive, but radicalized.

I wanted to establish democracy in my country. That motivated me to choose humanities and social sciences in college. I was exposed to certain readings, like ancient Greek history and Athenian democracy. And then I graduated in 1983. At the very beginning, I tried to become a so-called public intellectual. A lot of arrogance there—you think you see further than the average person, that you need to educate people, know how to change China, bring new ideas in.

At that time, I think I pretty much established myself as a young journalist—I had columns in the Beijing Evening News and the Wenhui Book Review in Shanghai. And then, in 1989—the time of Tiananmen Square—the participants in this democratic movement got crushed down. That was a very depressing moment in my life. I lost hope, my career couldn’t get going—everything just ended all of a sudden. You saw the tanks on the street. Your friends got arrested. Some of them got killed.

At that moment, I decided to learn English. I thought, “I can’t have a meaningful career in my life if I don’t go to America to do a Ph.D.” Eventually, my wife and I ended up in a Ph.D. program at Yale. I graduated in 2004, and then I got a job at Suffolk University.

Not all of my career is the result of purposeful planning. Actually, we had a financial crisis at the end of our Ph.D program. When our daughter was born, day care cost us over a thousand dollars a month. We didn’t even have that money. So how could we make a living? At that time, the only thing I concluded was to write for newspapers.

We barely made it. I produced a lot of articles—good or bad, I don’t even know. I was just doing this for money to support my family. A year later, I got a job at Suffolk. But also at that time, I was thriving in writing.

One example when I felt my influence was very direct—you know about Chinese pollution, right? You’ll see these kinds of stories: Because of pollution, the bus drivers doing their daily routes got lost because they couldn’t see anything.

In 2006, the U.S. Embassy in China started to broadcast that pollution level in Beijing. Their purpose probably was to inform American residents there because the air is too dangerous. I just reposted and translated those American broadcasts every day on our own Chinese social media. If the Chinese government blocked it, I just posted a screenshot. And then I wrote several articles about the issue of the air and how that can kill people.

This eventually caused some panic among the Chinese public. My wife told me that one of her classmates emailed her saying, “Our local television cited your husband’s social media saying that the pollution is dangerous.” On the evening news, they cited my messages and my article, and then there was a lot of debate.

Then, around the 2008 Olympic Games, three American athletes entered the Beijing airport wearing masks because of the air. The Chinese public was really mad because, they said, the American athletes purposely tried to insult China. I was probably the only one who openly wrote an article in the newspaper saying the Chinese public should thank American athletes: By wearing masks entering Beijing, they helped to raise our awareness about this environmental issue. And then I followed up with another article saying if you go out with this kind of pollution, wear a mask—it’ll help you.

At that time, some newspapers were brave enough to go against all those government pressures and make me public. Eventually, the government acknowledged the problem. That year, China started to improve. During the Olympics, the government did something radical: They shut down everything. And then all of a sudden, in a few days, the air is pure—it’s a miracle.

Now, I recently turned 60. Before the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, it was this golden age for Chinese free speech. Now it’s over. You really can’t make the impact you used to be able to make. But I feel because of globalization, I can still have some impact in China. How can I contribute to Chinese society? How much of a difference can I make? I just feel I have a role to play.

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of interviews with Harvard residents conducted by Bromfield senior Olivia Ren in fulfillment of the school’s community service requirement. For details, please see the series mission statement below. The text has been edited for clarity and length.