The Grateful Students In the short story “A Decade”, Ha Jin further enforces the power and control the government had on everything. The story is told in the perspective of girl who left her village then came back years later in which she recalls her time in school there. More specifically her time with a teacher named Wenli, a shy, soft spoken, innocent teacher who seemingly was not fit to teach under a Communist government. First, she is ridiculed for her singing, then she is publicly shunned for her intimate relationship with a fellow teacher, but the incident that brought her all the way down, was her attempt to teach the class what a metaphor was. She did this by referring to the statement Chairman Mao in which he expressed that americans and russians were dirt. As she explained this was not the case for they were humans as everyone is it all went downhill as the narrator stated, “How dare she change Chairman Mao’s meaning! How could we trust such a teacher?” (Jin, Pg. 204) This in turn causes an uproar amongst the school which causes Wenli to be sent to the countryside. She comes back a monster of a woman compared to who she was. When the narrator sees her teacher in her present cruel self she states, “...similar to how I had felt when my first boyfriend left me for another girl.” (Jin, Pg. 207) This statement allows the reader to have the narrator's real feeling for she witnesses a woman far from the woman she had known only to question herself in a “what have did I
The Memoir Spider Eaters by Rae Yang is her personal account of her life during the Maoist revolution. In addition, she reminisces about her trials and tribulations during her active participation in the culture revolution and the great North Wilderness. Her family also had various misfortunes due to these changing ideological beliefs spread by the revolution. This memoir illustrates in great detail what Yang experienced under communist rule. Spider Eaters opened up a door to a young girl and her families struggle to be good Samaritans under communist rule and their final disillusionment of the revolution they whole heartedly believed in. Yang and her family struggled with the vast ideological changes during the Maoist Revolution, in turn,
Bob Fu conveys clearly the inexorable control that Communist leaders in China have over their people. For example, after Fu and his friends participated in the Tiananmen Square protests, Fu was coerced, day in day out, to write a confession of his purported misdeeds against China and her people as a “counterrevolutionary” (79-82, 85, 87).
When Jan Wong first arrived in China, she was filled with the complete belief that China’s totalitarianism way of government was the best way of governing, and that no other way would do. While natives smiled behind false expressions, she failed to realize the true extent of the miserable lives under the Maoist regime until she herself experienced the injustices faced by the Chinese citizens. In Red China Blues, author Jan Wong writes of her experiences during her life in China and after, and how her whole journey led to the realization of the harsh reality that Maoism really was. As Wong learned more and more about the truth behind the totalitarian government, her own experiences helped her to transform
In Jan Wong’s entrancing expose Red China Blues, she details her plight to take part in a system of “harmony and perfection” (12) that was Maoist China. Wong discloses her trials and tribulations over a course of three decades that sees her searching for her roots and her transformation of ideologies that span over two distinctive forms of Communist governments. This tale is so enticing in due part to the events the author encountered that radically changed her very existence and more importantly, her personal quest for self-discovery.
The autobiography, Mao’s Last Dancer written by Li Cunxin, is effective in raising awareness of the injustice the Chinese people experienced during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution and later communist policies in China. When Li’s parents got married in 1946, they were not living in poverty. However, when the Japanese invaded China during WWII and forced all the civilians into communes, Mao then kept these communes and the Li family lost their wealth—they faced injustice and marginalisation. The Chinese population were marginalised by Mao’s use of communist principles and propaganda. They were forced into believing Mao’s views—that the West (Capitalist countries) were filthy and bad, while China was good. Li’s visit to America was an eye-opener.
This memoir of Ma Bo’s sent shock waves throughout China when it was published and was even first banned by the Communist Government. This passionate story paints a clear picture for what the Great Chinese Cultural Revolution was really like. Many Chinese living today can attest to similar if not identical ordeals as expressed in Ma Bo’s story. The toils of being a young Red Guard in inner China were experienced by many if not millions. The horrors and atrocities were wide spread throughout the country, not just in Inner Mongolia. The experiences illustrated in Blood Red Sunset uniquely belong to Ma Bo’s entire generation of mislead Chinese. As expressed in the books dedication the Cultural Revolution
As the story goes along, Ji-li is verbally attacked due to her class status in the Cultural Revolution. Ji-li begins to doubt the kindness of the Communist Party. “‘If he hadn’t been a landlord, none of this would have
The setting is in Muji, China during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. The leader of the communist party at the time is Chairman Mao and ruled based on a Marxist model by the story mentioning the concrete statue of him in the center of the square. The author states that “the Cultural Revolution was over already, and recently the Party has been propagating the idea that all citizens were
The eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Wolfgang van Goethe is quoted as saying: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”. If Goethe, who died in the early 1800s, could have looked forward a hundred and twenty years to Mao Zedong’s Communist China, he would have doubtless seen his words ring painfully true. Mao’s dynastic rule survived on elimination of any thought deemed contrary to his own. Those who dared to speak out were dealt with swiftly and severely. Yet some people did not believe they were free, and were willing to do risk everything to subvert Mao’s manufactured culture. “The Mao Button”, “Black Walls”, and “Dogshit Food” are short stories that criticize the
The Cultural Revolution was a time of much confusion in china. The memoir Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang illustrates the chaos of that time. Ji-li’s experiences during this time period led to her point of view changing. Ji-li starts the Cultural Revolution full of progressive thoughts, but this quickly turns to confusion, and leads to an important choice, something that impacts the rest of her life.
A third narrative thread is created by stringing together the stories of young Chinese students, both men and women. Their optimistic visions of the future contrast poignantly with the stories of Chen Mengjia and Polat, who expose more of the dark side of China especially the Cultural Revolution. Chen Mengjia committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution. Hessler (2006) interviews an old man about the issue of personal responsibility and political activism and reveals the deeply conflicted nature
The book is a written as conversational memoir between two women, Ye Weili and Ma Xiaodong about their experience during the first three decades of Mao’s era. The two women had gone through almost similar position and situations in their life, faced equivalent hardships, their approach or attitude towards those experiences in a completely different manner. This book is meticulous in its historical detail, making it a standout among similar memoirs of twentieth-century China. It also tries to add another dimension of the general perspective of historic events. The events are described in a chronological sequence and with the right amount of proper relevant information so the reader can understand the conversation.
Described as utopian in nature, the Chinese culture is often in pursuit for the perfect individual, a harmonious and structured society where the citizens as a whole create the ideal culture. In a collection of short stories entitled The Bridegroom, author Ha Jin documents this aspect of reality in homeland China. Primarily for the purposes of instruction and satirical verse, Ha Jin, shows how people are trying to find themselves in a society that focuses on the ‘whole’ of the country rather than the individual. He is able to interconnect this theme of individualism through four major stories in the book while presenting ‘Chineseness’ or satire of fictional verse as a way to focus on the changes throughout China
In The Red Scarf Girl, the author Ji-Li, Ji-Li talks about her life growing up in China during the time of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. As a young smart and talented girl, Ji-Li gets invited to audition for the Liberation Army Dance group, but unfortunately, Ji-Li is not able to audition because her family was very wealthy. Chairman Mao proposes to get rid of the Four Olds which triggers the Cultural Revolution. Ji-Li’s life turns completely upside down; she no longer can go to her school, people make fun of her because her grandpa was a landowner, and her dad gets arrested. Mao believed in communism and Ji-Li’s family did not fall under an ideal communist family. Ji-Li supports the ideas of the Cultural Revolution, but when the government requests for her to testify against her
Now that I had entered the palace, I was disappointed. All the classes except for mathematics were completely uninteresting. We had no textbooks, only hastily compiled mimeographed handouts. English class was a bore. Politics class was actually just the familiar Communist Party history. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology had been replaced by Fundamentals of Industry and Agriculture, because of Chairman Mao’s instruction to “combine education with practical experience.” (pg. 333 on