Editing Openai/693af22c-95ec-8008-9486-f714a282fa64 (section)

=== The line “In his eyes, Yuerong was a rare beauty… But he would never dare harbor improper thoughts about her” should be read through two overlapping lenses: ===

===== On paper, cadres were to be ascetic, self-disciplined, and immune to “bourgeois sexual corruption.” In reality, the camp hierarchy placed women inmates in extremely vulnerable positions. Cadres’ desires existed, but only certain desires were legible or permissible in political language. =====

===== By labeling Yuerong a 特殊案件 (“special case”), the authorities deliberately place her under a personalized surveillance regime. Captain Du is the instrument of that regime. =====
His admiration for her beauty becomes politically dangerous for him, even more than for her: any trace of “improper thought” (不正当念头) could be construed as:
* a breach of cadre discipline,
* political degeneration,
* or even evidence of a “counterrevolutionary tendency.”

Thus his fear is not merely moral: it is structural.

In many labor-camp memoirs—including those from Tuanhe, Masanjia, Qinghe, and Jiabiangou—you see this pattern: the cadre is expected to maintain a façade of absolute political purpose even when placed in situations suffused with gendered tension, humiliation, and asymmetry of power.