2012年12月28日星期五

彭博社:红色家庭被美国同化,投票给奥巴马

宋任穷将军的8个子女有5个居住在美国,其中三个女儿已经是美国公民,其中一个儿子也拿到了美国绿卡。美国——中国人眼中"美丽的国家"--吸引了很多中共元老的后代,宋任穷家族就是其中一个极佳的示范。

原文:U.S. Family of Mao's General Assimilates, Votes for Obama
作者:彭博新闻社
日期:12/27/2012
""志愿者翻译并校对

这个穿着豹纹拖鞋来开门的中年中国女子站在门口为让客人等待而道歉,据她说她正在锻炼身体。两只迷你小狗像一双拖鞋一样趴在她的脚上。
这个砖瓦结构的房子有一个精心修剪的草坪,灌木丛很好的把她家和邻居区分开来。这是一幢位于在密歇根州安娜堡市郊外的富人区普通的豪宅,和周围的建筑没什么两样。
她就是宋昭昭,发型简洁,举止文静,现在是密歇根大学医院的一名护士,年薪大约82000美元。她和她的美国先生Alan住在这栋房子里,她先生为福特汽车工作。
尽管她看起来是个普通的美国中产阶级,但是你不能用普通来形容她,别的什么都可以:她和她的兄弟姐妹是位于中国顶层的贵族。
他们的父亲(宋任穷)曾追随毛泽东一起闹革命,在1968年失宠 以前一直是中共的高级官员。宋昭昭十几岁的时候她的父母被下放到中国北部的一家农场,她和她 的父母一起住在那里的一个土坯房里。1976年毛泽东死后,宋任穷将军回到了国家领导层,他也被认为是中共"八老"之一。"八老"是指拯救中国经济于崩溃 边缘的八个人。

美国公民
宋任穷将军的8个子女有5个居住在美国,其中三个女儿已经是美国公民,其中一个儿子也拿到了美国绿卡。美国——中国人眼中"美丽的国家"--吸引了很多中共元老的后代,宋任穷家族就是其中一个极佳的示范。
宋昭昭兄妹在美国发现了机会,不光是教育子女和自我教育的机会,他们说,还包括商业机会以及远离文化大革命造成的混乱以及受迫害的机会。他们在这里的生活和 在中国的完全不同,在这里他们可以隐姓埋名过简单的生活,讽刺的是在这里他们的生活更接近他们的父辈为之奋斗的为人民大众谋福利务以及平均主义价值观。在很多事情上他们兄妹的选择都和别的红色家族截然相反,那些人在接受了常青藤教育以及华尔街的培训后都在追求着各种特权。
宋昭昭的大哥宋克荒,一年要到美国两次和位于加利福尼亚州欧文市的家人在一起。宋克荒说有一些和他背景类似的太子党攫取财富和权力,全然忘了他们的根在哪里,他对此感到很难过。
打补丁的裤子

"
在毛泽东时代由于严格管制根本没有什么特权,"宋克荒在谈起上世纪五十年代到六十年代他还在上学的时候说道,"在那个时候我们都比谁裤子上的补丁多,我们觉得补丁越多就越光荣。"
就在上个月,中国共 产党经过密室会议讨论决定了十年一度的权力转移,公布了新的领导班子。宋昭昭说她就是在那个时候第二次投了奥巴马的票。
作为宋家(第二代)最年轻的孩子,她很明显对于记者到安娜堡市来采访她感到不舒服。她很谦和地花了几分钟回答记者的问题。她说她父亲并没有告诉他们该做什么(不该做什么)。

"
父亲让我们自己做决定,"昭昭说,"他想让我们选择自己的生活。"

"
狡兔三窟"
傅士卓(Joseph Fewsmith),波士顿大学的一名研究中国政治精英的教授,他说,在1966年到1976年间的文化大革命期间使政治混乱达到了中共建国以来的顶点,很多家庭都遭受了监禁、下放以及羞辱。
彭博社研究表明,接受访谈的103位红色后人及他们的配偶,都在美国居住、工作或者学习过,其中有三分之一就读过位于马萨诸塞州为精英人士准备的预备班,进过常青藤学校,在纽约如摩根斯坦利之类的公司实习过。
傅士卓引用一个中国的成语说:"(他们懂得)狡兔三窟(的道理),他们会让自己的资产配置多样化,接受高等教育以保证在有任何意外发生的时候他们有条后路。"
文革期间,宋任穷家庭的处境很不妙,在那个十年中,为了避免对毛泽东的权威造成不利影响,很多红色家庭都被监禁,或者被下放到偏远的地方。
文革开始的时候宋昭昭才11岁。不久就她哥哥,宋克荒就被宣布为反革命,也因此被北京清华大学的同学批斗。
毫无信任
宋珍珍,宋任穷的三女儿,目前居住在旧金山,在接受电话访问时正在骑者自行车,她说"我恨死文革了,所有人都是骗子,你不能相信任何人。你说了什么话有人转身就去告发。"
他们的二姐宋彬彬是文革期间最有名的红卫兵——由崇拜毛泽东的学生组成,她曾在19668月的天安门集会上把红卫兵的臂章别在毛泽东的胳膊上。她也被毛泽东赐名"要武"
就在那个月,宋彬彬所在的女子精英学校(师大女附中——译注)的红卫兵杀害了一名教师,宋彬彬也参与其中。

处理历史问题
宋彬彬在文革结束后过了几年就去了美国,在波士顿地区安了家并在毕业后成了婚 ,她的爱人是一位美国公民。根据学校和州的记录显示,拿到麻省理工的博士学位后,她到了马萨诸塞州的Commonwealth公司,在该公司的环保部门下从事空气评估工作。
她把她的儿子Jin Yan送去菲利普安多弗中学(Philips Academy Andover),这是一家久负盛名的学校,该校的校训是Non Sibi,意思是"不以自我为中心"。之后他去了斯坦福大学。
稍微多说点财富的话题。《波士顿先驱报》根据州公共记录法发布了一份"你工作缴纳的税金"数据库,据数据库记录知道宋彬彬一年从马萨诸塞州拿到18000美元多点的养老金。
在美国呆了三十多年后,现如今已经65岁的宋彬彬十年前回到了中国开始处理她的历史问题。在今年发表的一篇文章中她为自己辩解说她曾经制止过针对她老师的攻击。
"现在我认识到,这种对生命的集体性漠视也是发生悲剧的重要原因,"她写道,"我更期望我们的民族、我们的国家永远不要再发生那样的动乱和悲剧。"(译注:直接引用中文原文;另推荐阅读《流氓式辩解——从宋彬彬到宋要武》)

旧金山
在她的先生于2011年过世以后,她接手了位于北京的科技公司Copia。我们向该公司发出请求希望能采访一下宋彬彬女士,她没有任何回复。
居住在旧金山金门公园附近著名的斜街的宋珍珍当年决定远走海外。
在中国时她才十几岁,她说她努力接受教育。因为文革,她没有上高中,而是被下放到了东南部的一个农场。她仍然进了海滨城市福州的一所大学并毕业。后来她继续在北京求学,学习计算机以及卫星图像处理。
也是在福州她遇到了自己的先生陈方,此人是陈云的儿子。陈云是八十年代早期中国的最高经济决策人。和欧洲的贵族一样,这两个中国的顶层家族通过联姻联系到了一起。不过这段婚姻没有持续多久。
一到美国,宋珍 珍就决定要留下来。

"善有善报"
"我只想做我自己,我不需要察言观色让别人告诉我我该说什么不该说什么,"她说,"我在文革中经历过(那样的日子)。"
过去20年她是在旧金山海湾度过的,从科技行业跳槽去了私营公司,曾服务于美国国际集团(AIG)。现在她创立了自己的电子商务初创公司,聚焦于在线支付。
现在她和一个美国人同居,他们是在一次跳舞的时候认识的,现在她已经开始研修佛教。她说:"我相信善有善报。"
他们的大哥宋克荒是一名中共党员,在欧文市宋克荒和妻子儿子拥有价值95万美元的家,他的妻子儿子都是美国公民。宋克荒目前在中国南部的广东省,在电话采访中他说他也拿到了美国绿卡,拥有美国永久居住权。

67
岁的宋克荒和陈元,陈云的另外一个 儿子也是现任的中国国家开发银行董事长,一起上的北京四中,一所精英学校。宋克荒说他们的父亲在家庭灌输这样一种理念,不要炫耀家庭背景。他父亲死于2005年。

谨言慎行
宋家还有一些成员仍然留在了中国,在国有企业中渐渐都身居高位,还成立了自己的公司。宋勤,宋家的长女,在东北经营一家奶制品公司,东北也是他们的父亲管理 过的地方。我们没能联系到她。宋克荒管理一家房地产投资公司,在公司官网上把国开行和保利集团(600048)列为合作伙伴。国开行和保利集团曾经由另外 两位元老邓小平、王震的亲属运营。
33岁的宋米勒(Miller Song)说,宋家的家长宋任穷教导他的后代要谨慎对待他们的关系和权力。
宋任穷在为个人谋利益方面使用他的名号十分严厉,宋米勒说在他还是个孩子的时候就被告知绝对不允许告诉别人他家的背景,以免受到特殊待遇。如果他爷爷开车送他上学,在几条街外他就要下车,就为了不让别的孩子看到汽车,宋米勒如是说。

两种文化
据宋米勒说,只有他最亲近的朋友才知道他和红色江山(中国革命遗产)的关系,——尽管认识他祖父的人都会注意到他在Myspace的页面上有一张照片标题就是"英雄"。
宋米勒说他第一次到美国时12岁,在15岁那年回国完成高中学业然后在加州上的大学。
他在邮件中写道:"中国父母把孩子送到国外求学太正常了,因为他们相信美国可以提供更好的教育。"
从父母那里借了一万美元开了家公司,PatchTogether Inc.,生产塑料玩偶和个性化T恤。他说他为了和父母及朋友更亲近,现在大部分时间都住在中国,这样也方便他和产品代工厂联系。
"我不象那些很小就去美国的孩子那样美国化,同时我也不是很中国化,"他在邮件中写道,"我觉得两种文化对我的影响应该是五五开。"

巴黎名媛成年舞会
尽管宋家已经搬出了中南海大院,自毛主席时代这里就是人民共和国的领导层居住地,他们仍然是那个团体的一部分。据宋克荒和宋米勒说很多家庭的成员都是在一起从小玩到大,比如陈云的后代。
陈云的儿子陈元把他的两个孩子都送到了美国上高中。他的女儿陈晓丹,英文名Sabrina,就职于一家香港的私营企业。2006年在巴黎举办的名媛成年舞会上,她身穿紫红色Oscar de la Renta礼服第一次踏入社交场合。据舞会网站说明,当天来自比利时的卑尔根达埃勒公爵埃杜瓦尔(Count Edouard du Monceau de Bergendal)是她的舞伴。
宋昭昭在位于安娜堡的家中开门的时候,身上穿着睡衣和栗色羊毛背心。她说,在文革之后追随宋珍珍到安娜堡之前,她在在中国学习了护理并参加工作。当时,三姐让她改学经济学。"我不喜欢,"她说。所以她回头接着学习护理。

回国次数渐少
自从父母过世后,她回国的次数日见稀少——长时间空中旅行太难受了,她补充道。她喜欢安娜堡的多元化和这里的文化,她也不知道自己将来还会不会回到中国。
实际上她都不愿意谈论中国。因为看到安娜堡的经济和房地产复苏,因为奥巴马终结了伊拉克战争,她投了奥巴马一票。但被问及中国的政治时,她避而不答。

"
我家教育我绝不能他们的权力或关系来为自己谋利,"她说,"我们只是和其他人一样生活。"

Inline image 1

【宋彬彬(右),宋任穷的女儿,19668月在北京的天安门集会中,把红卫兵袖章钉在毛泽东的胳膊上。图片:Keystone/盖蒂图片社】

Inline image 2
【宋任穷,中共八大元老之一,前右坐者,和他的家人合影,后排左起:宋克荒,曹晓春及宋米勒,宋京波,宋昭昭,宋勤和最右边的宋彬彬及它的儿子Jin Yan,前一排左起:钟月林(宋妻),黄海涛,黄海昕。 1980年摄于北京。来源:由宋米勒提供的家庭合影。】

Inline image 3
【宋任穷(左二),儿子宋克荒(左一),孙子Miller Song(中),妻子钟月林(右二),儿媳曹晓春,摄于1990年。照片由宋米勒提供。】

Inline image 4
【宋米勒,宋任穷的孙子,一张没有表明日期的照片。来源:宋米勒】
欲联系彭博社本报道职员: 纽约Dune Lawrence 邮箱dlawrence6@bloomberg.net; 北京Michael Forsythe邮箱 mforsythe@bloomberg.net
联系本报道编辑: Neil Western邮箱 nwestern@bloomberg.net; Peter Hirschberg 邮箱phirschberg@bloomberg.net; Ben Richardson邮箱brichardson8@bloomberg.net; Melissa Pozsgay邮箱 mpozsgay@bloomberg.net; Amanda Bennett邮箱 abennett6@bloomberg.net
 【原文】

U.S. Family of Mao’s General Assimilates, Votes for Obama



The middle-aged Chinese woman who answers the door apologizes for the wait as she stands in the entryway, sporting leopard-print slippers. She’s been exercising, she says. Two tiny dogs, fuzzy like the slippers, yap at her feet.

The brick home has a well-tended lawn, a few shrubs dividing it from the neighbors. It’s a generous property, almost indistinguishable from the rest in this suburban development in Ann ArborMichigan.
Song Binbin and Mao Zedong
Song Binbin, right, daughter of Song Renqiong, pins the armband of the Red Guards on Mao Zedong at a Tiananmen Square rally in Beijing in August 1966. Source: Keystone/Getty Images
Song Renqiong, one of the "Eight Immortals" of the Communist Party, seated right, with members of his family, back row from left: Song Kehuang, Cao Xiaochun holding Miller Song, Song Jingbo, Song Zhaozhao, Song Qin, and Song Binbin, far right, holding Jin Yan; front row from left: Zhong Yuelin, Huang Haitao, and Huang Haixin, seen here in Beijing, c. 1980. Source: Family Photo via Miller Song
Song Renqiong, second left, with son Song Kehuang, left, grandson Miller Song, center, wife Zhong Yuelin, second right, and daughter-in-law Cao Xiaochun, in Beijing, c. 1990. Source: Family Photo via Miller Song
Miller Song
Miller Song, grandson of Song Renqiong, seen here in an undated photograph. Source: Photo supplied by Miller Song
Song Zhaozhao has a practical haircut and a quiet demeanor. A nurse at the University of Michigan’s hospital, she earns about $82,000 a year. She shares the house with her American husband, Alan, who used to work for Ford Motor Co.
Despite the trappings of middle-class America, she is anything but ordinary: She and her siblings are the closest thing Chinahas to aristocracy.
Their father fought together with Mao Zedong in the Chinese revolution and was a top official until he fell from favor in 1968. Zhaozhao spent her teenage years with her parents in internal exile, sharing a mud-brick house on a labor farm in northern China. After Mao’s death in 1976, General Song Renqiong returned to the nation’s leadership, and is considered one of the “Eight Immortals” of the Communist Party who revived the shattered economy and society.

U.S. Citizens

At least five of the general’s eight children have lived in the U.S., with three daughters becoming citizens and a son obtaining his green card. Their family is the most extreme example of the pull that the U.S. -- “beautiful country” in Chinese -- has on the Immortals’ descendants. The fortunes, family ties and business interests of 103 people, the Immortals’ direct descendants and their spouses, were mapped by Bloomberg News in a survey published today.
The siblings found opportunity in the U.S., not just to educate their children and themselves, they say, but to start businesses and leave behind the chaos and trauma of the Cultural Revolution. In the country held up as the antithesis of China’s ideals, they could lead anonymous and simple lives that adhered, ironically, more closely to the values of public service and egalitarianism espoused by their Communist parents. Their choices in many cases contrast with those of some other Immortal families, who pursued lives of privilege after Ivy-League educations and Wall Street training.
Zhaozhao’s eldest brother, Song Kehuang, who spends time in the U.S. twice a year at his family home in Irvine, California, says he regrets the fact that the wealth and power of the princeling class made some of his counterparts forget their roots.

Patched Pants

“Chairman Mao’s strictness made sure there were basically no special privileges,” he says of his Beijing school days in the 1950s and 1960s. “Back then we compared the patches on our pants. The more patches we had, the more honorable we felt.”
As China’s Communist Party was anointing new leaders last month in a once-in-a-decade transition decided behind closed doors, Zhaozhao says she voted for U.S. President Barack Obama for a second time.
The youngest Song child, she is clearly uncomfortable that a reporter has come to find her in Ann Arbor. She relents enough to spend a few minutes answering questions. She says their father didn’t tell them what to do.
“He let us make our own decisions,” Zhaozhao says. “He wanted us to choose our own life.”

‘Clever Rabbit’

For families that lived at the pinnacle of the turbulent politics of Communist China’s beginnings, experiencing imprisonment, banishment and humiliation during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, the U.S. offered an insurance policy, says Joseph Fewsmith, a professor at Boston University who studies China’s political elite.
About a third of the Immortals’ 103 descendants and their spouses lived, worked or studied in the U.S., attending elite Massachusetts prep schools and Ivy League universities and learning skills at the likes of Morgan Stanley (MS) in New York, the Bloomberg study showed.
“The clever rabbit has three holes,” Fewsmith says, quoting a Chinese proverb. “They can diversify their assets, get an education and ensure themselves an exit strategy if anything goes wrong.”
Things went badly wrong for the Songs during the Cultural Revolution, a decade when most of the Immortals were imprisoned or sent to remote parts of the country where they couldn’t pose a threat to Mao’s power.
Zhaozhao was 11 when the Cultural Revolution began. Her brother, Kehuang, was later denounced as a counter-revolutionary and hounded by classmates at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

No Trust

“I totally hated it,” Zhenzhen, a middle sister who lives in San Francisco, says in a telephone interview, taking the call while riding her bike. “Everybody was a liar -- you just couldn’t trust anybody. You say something and people turn around and report it.”
Their older sister, Binbin, became one of the most recognizable faces of the Red Guards -- the troops of students who worshipped Mao -- after pinning the group’s armband on Mao himself at a Tiananmen Square rally in August 1966. She earned a nickname from the chairman: Yaowu, meaning “be militant.”
That month, Red Guards at her elite girls’ school killed a teacher, with some accounts holding Binbin responsible.

Addressing History

Binbin left China a few years after the Cultural Revolution was over, settling in the Boston area with her husband, a U.S. citizen, as graduate students. After receiving a Ph.D. from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, she went to work for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the air assessment branch of its Department of Environmental Protection, according to school and state records.
She sent her son, Jin Yan, to Phillips Academy Andover, a prestigious school whose motto is Non Sibi, or Not for Self. He then went on to Stanford University.
Little else speaks of wealth. She receives a pension from Massachusetts of a little more than $18,000 a year, according to the Boston Herald’s “Your tax dollars at work” database of records released under the state’s public records law.
After more than 30 years in the U.S., Binbin, now 65, returned to China in the past decade, and has begun to address her history. In an essay published this year, she defended herself, saying she tried to stop the attack on her teacher.
“I now realize that this collective disregard for life is an important reason for the tragedy,” she wrote. “I hope that our nation, our country, will never again go through such turmoil and tragedy.”

San Francisco

Binbin didn’t respond to an interview request made through her Beijing-based technology company, Copia, which she took over following the death of her U.S.-born Chinese husband in 2011.
Zhenzhen, who lives on one of San Francisco’s famously steep streets near Golden Gate Park, was determined to go abroad.
As a teenager in China, she says she worked to catch up on her education. She didn’t get a high-school degree because of the Cultural Revolution, when she was sent to be a farm worker in the southeast. She still managed to graduate from college in the coastal city of Fuzhou. She went on to graduate school in Beijing, studying computers and how to process satellite images.
It was in Fuzhou that she had met her husband, Chen Fang, the son of Chen Yun, China’s top economic official in the early 1980s. Like aristocrats in Europe, two of the country’s leading families were joined by marriage. It didn’t last.
Once in the U.S., Zhenzhen decided she wanted to stay.

‘Good Karma’

“I just wanted to be truly who I am, I don’t need to watch what I can say and what I cannot say,” she says. “I went through that in the Cultural Revolution.”
She has spent much of the past 20 years in the San Francisco Bay area, moving from the technology sector to private equity and working at companies including American International Group Inc. (AIG) Now she’s creating a startup in e-commerce that’s focused on online payments.
She lives with an American she met at a dance and has studied Buddhism. “I believe in good karma,” she says.
Their brother, Song Kehuang, a Chinese Communist Party member, owns the $950,000 home in Irvine with his wife and son Miller, who are both American citizens. Kehuang holds a green card, conferring permanent residency in the U.S., he says in a telephone interview from southern China’s Guangdong province.
Kehuang, 67, went to Beijing’s elite No. 4 High School with Chen Yuan, another son of Chen Yun who’s now chairman of China Development Bank Corp. Kehuang says their father, who died in 2005, instilled in the family a mindset that they should never flaunt their family background.

Be Guarded

Some members of the Song family did stay in China, moving up the ranks of state-owned enterprises and setting up private companies. Song Qin, the oldest sister, ran a dairy company in northeastern China, the area their father once oversaw. She couldn’t be reached for comment. Kehuang himself heads a real- estate investment company that listed on its website China Development Bank and China Poly Group (600048) -- once run by relatives of ImmortalsDeng Xiaoping and Wang Zhen -- as partners.
The family patriarch, Song Renqiong, taught his offspring to be guarded about their connections and privilege, according to grandson Miller Song, 33.
His grandfather was “very strict” about not using his name for personal gain, and Miller was taught as a child in China never to tell others about his family background, he says, in order to avoid special treatment. If his grandfather gave him a ride to school, Miller says he got out a few blocks away, so the other children wouldn’t see the car.

Two Cultures

Only his closest childhood friends knew his link to China’s revolutionary legacy, according to Miller -- though anyone who recognizes his grandfather would notice a photograph of him under the title “heroes” on Miller’s MySpace page.
Miller Song says he first came to the U.S. for a year when he was 12, and returned at 15 to complete high school and college in California.
“It’s very common for Chinese parents to send their kids overseas for school because they believe that the U.S. offers better education,” he said in an e-mail.
He started a U.S. company, PatchTogether Inc., making plastic statuettes and custom T-shirts, with $10,000 borrowed from his parents. He says he lives mostly in China, to be closer to family and friends and to the factories that make PatchTogether’s products.
“I am not very Americanized as some of the kids that went in their earlier age and at the same time, I am not very Chinese either,” he said in the e-mail. “I think I am pretty even, 50-50 between the two cultures.”

Paris Debutante

Though the Song family moved out of the walled Zhongnanhai compound in central Beijing that has served as home to the leaders of the People’s Republic starting with Chairman Mao, they remain part of a community. Families that grew up together include the descendants of Chen Yun, Kehuang and Miller say.
Chen Yun’s son, Chen Yuan, sent both of his children to study in the U.S. beginning in high school. His daughter, Chen Xiaodan, also known as Sabrina, works at a private equity firm inHong Kong. She was a debutante at the 2006 Bal des Debutantes in Paris, wearing a plum Oscar de la Renta gown. Count Edouard du Monceau de Bergendal from Belgium was her partner at the dance, according to the ball’s website.
When Zhaozhao answers the door in Ann Arbor, she’s wearing pajamas and a maroon fleece vest.
After the Cultural Revolution, she studied nursing and worked in China, she says, before following Zhenzhen to Ann Arbor. There, her sister urged her to study economics. “I didn’t like it,” she says, and so she went back to nursing.

Infrequent Visits

Since her parents passed away, her visits to China are infrequent -- discouraged by the long plane ride, she adds. She likes the diversity and culture in Ann Arbor, and doesn’t know if she’ll ever move back to China.
In fact, she resists talking about China. She voted for Obama because she saw the economy and the housing market rebounding in Ann Arbor, and because he ended the war in Iraq. But ask about Chinese politics and she evades the question.
“I was taught by my family never use their power or connections to do things for ourselves,” she says. “We’re just living in life as every other person.”
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Dune Lawrence in New York atdlawrence6@bloomberg.net; Michael Forsythe in Beijing at mforsythe@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Neil Western at nwestern@bloomberg.net; Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net; Ben Richardson atbrichardson8@bloomberg.net; Melissa Pozsgay at mpozsgay@bloomberg.net; Amanda Bennett at abennett6@bloomberg.net

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