The Democratic Socialists of America's website is full of utopian promises. Lily Tang Williams grew up inside the version of those promises that Mao Zedong built, and in this opening episode of The Jenny Beth Show's Surviving Communism series she tells Jenny Beth Martin what it looked like for a poor family in Sichuan province: eight families sharing one outdoor restroom and one faucet, a six-year-old sent to the ration line at 5 AM, and a famine of 40 to 60 million people that reached a province that had never starved before.
Williams was two when the Cultural Revolution began and twelve when Mao died. She walks through what the Communist Party promised before it took power and what land reform, the people's communes and Mao's ten classes delivered instead. She describes her grandmother's year of struggle sessions, the banned Taiwanese love songs, a child so brainwashed she saw Mao's face in the clouds, and the lesson at seven that taught her never to trust anyone. Then a law student at Fudan University meets an American exchange student with a pocket Constitution, hears that her rights come from God and not from government, and decides she has to get out. She did, in 1988, with 100 dollars in cash.
Guest: Lily Tang Williams, Republican nominee for Congress in New Hampshire's Second District, speaker for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and a survivor of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
Key talking points:
• What the Communist Party promised before 1949, and what land reform and the people's communes delivered
• The famine that reached Sichuan, and what starving villagers traded to survive
• Mao's ten classes, five black and five red, and the year her grandmother spent in struggle sessions
• A six-year-old kept home a year to babysit because "nothing was for free"
• Too confident for the Young Pioneers: why a straight-A child was punished in a collective society
• Two weeks into law school: law as a tool for the ruling class to govern the masses
• The American exchange student, the pocket Constitution, and "your rights come from God, not from government"
• Lying to the Communist Party boss for permission to leave: "you don't own yourself"
• Socialist medicine: her mother's infected blood transfusion, a decade without a diagnosis, and bribing surgeons for a bed
• Why she is running for Congress, the rematch with Maggie Goodlander, and being blacklisted by the Chinese Communist Party
• The Democratic Socialists of America's promises, set against what she lived
• How to help get out the vote before Election Day: teapartypatriots.org, helpatthepolls.com, iwillsaveamerica.com
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00:37 — The Surviving Communism series: what is coming in October
02:08 — Welcome: Lily Tang Williams, candidate for Congress in New Hampshire
04:48 — Eight families, one outdoor restroom, one water faucet
05:50 — "We supposed to be the ruling class": the 5 AM ration line
06:57 — What communism promised: everything free, land for the peasants
07:44 — Land reform and the people's communes: "promise not kept"
08:55 — The famine: 40 to 60 million; Sichuan had never starved before
11:55 — Her grandmother's year of struggle sessions
13:21 — School under Mao: shut down, reopened six days a week
14:49 — Six years old, kept home a year to babysit her infant brother
18:19 — Music, radio and "spiritual pollution": the banned Taiwanese songs
20:45 — Mao dies: "who lied to my generation?"
21:45 — Three years of study, four boiled eggs, and the national exam
24:24 — Choosing law at seventeen to make China a rule-of-law country
27:39 — An American exchange student and a pocket Constitution
29:25 — "Your rights come from God, not from your government"
31:26 — Carry a Constitution: Jenny Beth Martin on why it matters here too
33:47 — Faculty at Fudan, two bosses: academic and political
35:51 — No jeans, no dancing, no hair past the shoulders
37:27 — Hu Yaobang, disco and coffee shops: a short liberation
40:58 — Landing in America with 100 dollars and a 1,200 dollar debt
41:43 — Meeting her husband the first night; the RA job that kept her here
44:15 — Health care in China: infected blood and her mother's dementia
46:30 — Bribing surgeons for a hospital bed
50:07 — Why she is running: "I fear the country I love becoming the country I left"
54:34 — "Made in America, not a bot": the choice in New Hampshire's Second District
55:06 — How to help from outside New Hampshire
57:06 — Blacklisted by the Chinese Communist Party, eleven years without her family
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