What was going on when I was born?

After being piled in warehouses around the capital for nearly two decades, many of the looted antiques lining the tables and walls are dusty and scuffed, and some are badly damaged and have hardly any value at all. Yet each day they come, men in fraying wool overcoats and ladies in jackets of padded cotton, searching the chilly classrooms of the Guangming Primary School for heirlooms they had assumed to be permanently lost. Now and then somebody finds a cherished inkstand or a scroll, and others cluster around to share their moment of pleasure. At the outset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Mao Zedong unleashed the youthful fanatics known as Red Guards on a house-to-house rampage against ''feudal dregs'' from China's past, and anybody with antiques or valuables was deemed fair game.

Vietnamese troops routed Khmer Rouge rebels from the last of their bases in western Cambodia today, according to Thai military officers. The Vietnamese were also reported to have set fire to the Khmer Rouge's showcase camp at Phum Thmei, which had served as a capital for the Cambodian rebel coalition led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. The coalition holds the country's United Nations seat, and Phum Thmei was used to receive foreign ambassadors. The Khmer Rouge base of Phnom Malai was also reported to have fallen.

Seven members of a family, including six children, were killed today when a fire swept up the stairway of their two- story clapboard house here and trapped them in two upstairs bedrooms, fire officials said. Two other people were injured, one seriously, in the blaze, which broke out in the early morning as three generations of the Shedrick family were sleeping in the house. Five of the dead, who ranged from 9 months to 20 years of age, were found huddled under one bed in the front upstairs bedroom of the white Cape Cod house, according to Jack Miller, the assistant chief of the Wyandanch Volunteer Fire Department, Worst Residential Fire Chief Miller, who lives nearby and was the first firefighter at the scene, said a sixth victim had been found at the bedroom window and the seventh in the rear bedroom of the upper floor. He said the blaze - which broke out at the home of Jeanette and John Shedrick while 14 members of their family were asleep inside - caused the worst loss of life ever in a residential fire on Long Island.

Some of the credentials attributed to the Cuomo administration's nominee to oversee economic development are at variance with the facts of his career. When Governor Cuomo announced the nomination last November, to the joint positions of Director of Economic Development and Commissioner of Commerce, he described his choice, John C. Michaelson, as ''a financial adviser to the Vatican.'' Biographical information - furnished by Mr. Michaelson and released by the administration - also said he was a partner and a principal in the investment banking concern of Drexel Burnham Lambert New York Inc. Mr. Michaelson said yesterday that he had not been an adviser to the Vatican but a low-ranking associate in a London-based investment banking concern that ''was doing financial advisory work for the Vatican.'' And, according to a spokesman for Drexel Burnham, Mr. Michaelson was not a partner but one of 30 vice presidents. Officials in the Cuomo administration said that they had received the biographical information from Mr. Michaelson and that at least some of it was checked by the state police in a routine investigation. The administration could not provide a detailed resume for Mr. Michaelson.

The Administration said today that Syria had played ''a positive role'' in the case of an abducted American journalist who gained his freedom after 11 months of captivity in eastern Lebanon. A senior State Department official said he believed that the journalist had been permitted to escape and that the Syrians might have played a role. Going to unusual lengths to praise the Syrians, who in the past have been castigated by the Administration for purportedly aiding or at least tacitly supporting terrorists, a State Department spokesman said, ''The Syrians have played a positive role, which we have expressed our appreciation over.'' The 52-year-old journalist, Jeremy Levin, the Beirut bureau chief for Cable News Network, arrived tonight in Frankfurt, where he was reunited with his wife, Lucille.

The president of the International Chess Federation halted the five-month-old championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov today and ordered that a new one begin in September. The action was taken despite protests by both players that they wanted to continue. The competition, which after 48 contests stands at 5-3 in favor of Mr. Karpov, with 40 draws, has broken countless records. The federation president, Florencio Campomanes, said his decision was prompted by his conclusion that the match ''has exhausted the physical if not the psychological resources'' of the participants and others connected with the match.

Governor Cuomo called on the Democratic Party today to reaffirm the principles that he said had governed the United States for nearly five decades. ''They've proven their worth in practice,'' he said. ''From 1932 to 1980, they worked for a whole nation.'' In a speech that he brought to Yale University as a Chubb Fellow, the Governor said that despite the defeat President Reagan administered to the Democrats last year, the party should return to the principles that prevailed until Mr. Reagan became President.

Delegates from firehouses across the city yesterday overwhelmingly rejected a municipal labor contract drawn up by Mayor Koch and the union leadership. Mr. Koch immediately called for binding arbitration for all city workers. Several hours later, Arvid Anderson, the city's labor arbiter, said he expected the city's request for arbitration to be approved. Contracts for most city workers expired last June. The union delegates rejected the proposed three-year contract by a vote of 327 to 50, amid charges that it called for too many concessions by the firefighters and offered too few gains.

In some of the poorest, toughest sections of Kingston, the police rarely venture out of their stations in groups of less than four. They carry automatic weapons, and they keep their fingers close to the trigger. ''All of us are armed and expect to be shot at when we step out the gates,'' said Superintendent Jasper Martin. ''And all of us return the fire.''

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia left Washington today to return home after a five day visit.

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