I first met Yang Lin at a prison transfer station in Chongqing.
It was the spring and summer of 1969, during the Chinese Communist Party’s campaigns to “cleanse class ranks” and implement policies tied to the Ninth Party Congress. Across the city, those sentenced during the Cultural Revolution were gathered at the Nan’imen municipal labor reform transfer station, awaiting assignment to prisons or labor camps.
Our group from Beibei arrived first. Prisoners from other districts followed, filling cells that faced each other across a narrow corridor. That was where I saw Yang Lin for the first time.
Like everyone else, we wanted to know each other’s sentences. In low voices, someone asked, “How many years?”
“Twenty,” he said, raising two fingers.
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“What for?”
“A diary.”
By mid-August, all detainees had arrived, and transfers began. Those sentenced to less than ten years were sent to labor camps. Anyone with a sentence longer than ten years, classified as a “serious offender,” was transferred to the Sichuan Provincial Second Prison in Chongqing’s Nan’an district.
Inside the prison, new inmates went through induction training. We studied prison rules and were required to confess guilt. There was also manual labor, including road work. After the National Day holiday, inmates were assigned to different brigades. I was placed in the First Brigade; Yang Lin went to the Seventh.
We later had occasional contact through work assignments. When Yang Lin came to our brigade, he usually asked for materials such as wire for making fan guards or metal strips for assembling stools, which each prisoner used during study sessions and rest periods. When I visited his brigade, I requested specialized materials from their mechanical workshop, such as lacquer. Only a small portion was used for production; most of it went toward private work for prison cadres.
We crossed paths many times but never spoke at length.
The ‘Xinsheng’ electric fan
Yang Lin’s Seventh Brigade operated the prison’s mechanical workshop. They produced small electric motors that sold well. A former inmate named Liu Mingzhe, who had been kept on after completing his sentence, proposed developing a household electric fan. Prison authorities initially rejected the idea, calling it unnecessary.
Liu continued working on it in private and eventually succeeded. Once the prototype was completed, the authorities reversed course and ordered it into production. The Chongqing hardware and electrical supply company accepted the product.
The fan was later marketed under the name “Xinsheng.”
By the time we arrived in 1969, it had already entered production. Output increased year by year, with ongoing technical improvements.
In 1979, I was transferred to the prison’s technical archives office, where inmates assisted in drafting designs and organizing documentation. While waiting for my political rehabilitation, I completed the final set of revised drawings for the Xinsheng fan under Liu’s guidance.
I was released that July. Liu was rehabilitated the following year.
Years later, during a reunion with former inmates, Liu mentioned Yang Lin. He said Yang had escaped and gone into hiding, while his family reportedly went to the prison to ask for him. In the end, the matter was settled during the period of political rehabilitation. I accepted this account and did not ask further questions.
In 2005, I visited Liu at his home in Hongyan Village. His wife had died shortly before his rehabilitation, and he lived alone. We talked for a long time. As I was leaving, I told him, “I am your last student,” referring to the final design work we had completed together.
He immediately stopped me and insisted I should not say that. He stood there watching as I walked down the slope.
He was a skilled technician, modest and reserved. I later learned he had passed away.
Another former inmate from the Seventh Brigade, Li Yongchang, later organized a group of former prisoners to open a factory producing electric fans modeled on the Xinsheng design. The business did well for a time before closing as air conditioners became more common.
Early political rehabilitations
In 1978, Chinese authorities issued a directive removing the “rightist” label from those targeted in earlier political campaigns. Rehabilitation cases began to follow.
The first political prisoner in our prison to be cleared was Tu Deyong, a lecturer from the Chengdu Institute of Telecommunications Engineering. During the Cultural Revolution, he had written a letter urging renewed focus on production, referencing Deng Xiaoping’s earlier approach. The letter was intercepted and treated as a political offense. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and assigned to the Seventh Brigade.
After the Xinsheng fan gained commercial traction, the local supply company provided the brigade with a black-and-white television. Tu took responsibility for maintaining it and occasionally traveled between brigades for repairs. That was how I came to know him.
He was later rehabilitated and released. His institution sent a car to bring him back, and a formal rehabilitation meeting was held.
By mid-1979, releases became more frequent. I was among those cleared and released that summer.
Later that year, I visited Tu in Chengdu. He mentioned that prison officials had once asked whether Yang Lin had contacted him, suggesting Yang had gone missing.
The disappearance of Yang Lin
Years later, I heard Yang Lin’s name again. Someone told me that in their district there had been a prisoner sentenced under nearly identical circumstances.
His name was Yang Lin.
He had been convicted of “counterrevolutionary” charges for writing a diary and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Some people still remembered him.
By Huang Guangzu
Editor’s Note: This article is based on personal recollections and testimony. Details related to individuals and events during the Cultural Revolution may not be independently verifiable.
