志异 Draft by Drama box December 2014 (english) | Página 20

But like ‘revolution’,
there are
many practical
considerations to
be made when
exile becomes a
reality, following
the same logic that
a revolution cannot
be sustained on
empty stomachs.

Column 1

organisation anytime they wished and led normal lives, but they
remained focused on their task of reestablishing contact with
their comrades. When they finally rejoined the party, two of their
children were sent away to China, where they were to be brought
up and educated as the seedlings of revolution. Their mother was
worried about them but their father was confident that fellow
Communists would take good care of his children. Without their
children around, they would avoid censure for being too attached
to their families and were able to fully embrace the cause of
‘taking the fight back home’.
Families must be broken up before revolution can begin. It was
not long before the couple took their youngest daughter with
them to Jakarta. There lay the boundary between party and
family as well as personal responsibility and responsibility to
the party. With their older children also waiting in Jakarta to be
sent to China, the family of five found themselves in a situation
of reunion and imminent farewell. There they lived under one
roof, but the children were now under the care of the party that
was responsible for their education, and they had to call their
parents ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’. As for the adults, they had to endure
one rectification campaign after another upon their return to the
party and the revolution.