he was a small , compact , extremely athletic man who had fought in the south with the communists in 1948 , been imprisoned as an intellectual who refused to deny his background during the cultural revolution ( one of his children had died of starvation while he was in confinement because his wife had been taken way suddenly one night by a band of young red guards and nobody knew the baby was still in the empty house ) , and who now was still a member of the party and still believed in working indefatigably for the betterment of the people .