(6 of 29)
On the evening of Aug. 30, while my daughter was attending a political meeting at her film studio, I was sitting alone in my study reading William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which had come from a London bookshop with which I had an account. The house was very quiet. There was not the slightest sound or movement anywhere, almost as if everything in the house were waiting helplessly for its own destruction. Suddenly the doorbell began to ring incessantly. At the same time, there was a furious pounding of many fists on my front gate, accompanied by hysterical voices shouting slogans. The cacophony told me that the time of waiting was over and that I must face the Red Guards. ''Open the gate!'' someone shouted. ''Are you all dead? Why don't you open the gate?'' As my servant let the Guards in, I stood up to put my book on the shelf. A copy of the Constitution of the People's Republic caught my eye. Taking it in my hand, I went downstairs. The Red Guards were 30 or 40 high school students, aged between 15 and 20, led by two men and one woman who were much older -- the ''teachers'' who generally accompanied the Red Guards when they looted private homes. As they crowded into the hall, a gangling youth with angry eyes stepped forward and said to me, ''We are the Red Guards. We have come to take revolutionary action against you!'' Though I knew it was futile, I held up the copy of the Constitution and said calmly, ''It's against the Constitution of the People's Republic of China to enter a private house without a search warrant.'' The young man snatched the copy out of my hand and threw it on the floor. Eyes blazing, he said, ''The Constitution is abolished. It was a document written by the Revisionists within the Communist Party. We recognize only the teachings of our Great Leader Chairman Mao.'' A girl came within a few inches of me and said, ''What trick are you trying to play? Your only way out is to bow your head in submission. Otherwise you will suffer.'' She shook her fist in front of my nose and spat on the floor. Another young man used a stick to smash the mirror hanging over the blackwood chest facing the front door. He tore the mirror's carved frame off its hook and hurled it against the banister. On the hook, he hung a small blackboard with a quotation from Mao: ''When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns still remain.'' The Red Guards read the quotation aloud as if taking a solemn oath. Then they told me to read it. One of them shouted to me, ''An enemy without a gun! That's what you are.'' They locked me in the dining room and then spread out. There was a heavy thud overhead. I could hear glasses breaking and heavy knocking on the wall. It sounded almost as if the Red Guards were tearing the house down. Later, when I was let out to go to the bathroom, I could see two bridge tables in the middle of the drawing room. On them lay cameras, watches, clocks, binoculars and silverware that the Red Guards had gathered from all over the house. These were the ''valuables'' they intended to present to the state. Mounting the stairs, I was astonished to see several Red Guards taking pieces of my porcelain collection out of their padded boxes. One young man had arranged a set of four Kangxi wine cups in a row on the floor and was stepping on them. I was just in time to hear the crunch of delicate porcelain under the sole of his shoe. The sound pierced my heart. Impulsively I leapt forward and