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caught his leg just as he raised his foot to crush the next cup. He toppled, and we fell in a heap together. The boy regained his feet and kicked me right in my chest. I cried out in pain. The others gathered around us, shouting at me angrily for interfering in their revolutionary activities. One of the teachers said to me, ''What do you think you are doing? Are you trying to protect your possessions?'' ''No, no, you can do whatever you like with my things. But you mustn't break these porcelain treasures. They are old and valuable and cannot be replaced,'' I said rather breathlessly. ''Shut up! Shut up!'' A chorus drowned out my voice. I picked up one of the remaining wine cups and said, ''This is nearly 300 years old. You seem to value the cameras, watches and binoculars, but better cameras, better watches and more powerful binoculars are made every year. No one in this world can make another wine cup like this one again. This is a part of our cultural heritage. Every Chinese should be proud of it.'' The young man whose revolutionary work I had interrupted said angrily, ''You shut up! These things belong to the old culture. They are the useless toys of the feudal emperors and the modern capitalist class and have no significance to us, the proletarian class. Our Great Leader Chairman Mao taught us, 'If we do not destroy, we cannot establish.' The old culture must be destroyed to make way for the new socialist culture.'' Pleading was not going to move the Red Guards. The time had come to try diplomacy. ''Please, Red Guards! Believe me, I'm not opposed to you. But remember, these things were not made by members of the capitalist class; they were made by the workers of a bygone age. I beg you to take them to the Shanghai Museum. You can consult their experts.'' A girl said, ''The Shanghai Museum is closed. The experts there are being investigated. Some of them are also class enemies. In any case, they are intellectuals. The capitalist class nourishes the intellectuals, so they belong to the same side. Now we are going to destroy the capitalist class, so naturally the intellectuals are to be destroyed too.'' Getting really desperate, I said, ''Don't you realize all these things are extremely valuable? You can sell them in Hong Kong for a large sum of money. You will be able to finance your world revolution with that money.'' Perhaps, being an older person, the teacher felt some sense of responsibility. She asked me, ''Are you sure your collection is valuable? How much would you say it is worth?'' ''As a rough estimate, at least a million yuan (($500,000 at the 1966 exchange rate)),'' I told her. The Red Guards were impressed. The teacher was by now anxious to save the treasures, but she was afraid to put herself in the wrong with the Red Guards. They all went to the dining room to confer.
AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE
