The Forefathers Shattered My Communist Chains – Granite Grok

My story begins in Chengdu, China, at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution, an insanity that gripped millions of my countrymen. We were destitute, as were most Chinese during this period.

We lived in a primitive worker’s row house by a river sharing one tarp-covered outhouse and one water faucet with eight families. We had a mud floor that, after occasional flooding, would sprout mushrooms.

My parents were illiterate workers, so their positions in the state factory were too low to be rationed much food. A full belly was a luxury. My uncle even taught me how to trap rats for food. All we knew was a life of arduous labor and chaos. Little time was spent thinking of philosophical fantasies concerning ‘oppression’ and ‘rights,’ so we labored to survive, hoping only that we would endure.

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