Page 78 - 普台之星01

國三丁 李聿涵

Afterthought--Red Scarf Girl

This book entirely represented the past of the author herself while she was in China
during the Cultural Revolution that happened in 1966. As a little girl in the age of
twelve, she was trusting and loving, life was perfect to her until this revolution had
been brought up. As it was written in the book, Mao-Ze-Dong was deified to the people
by the communist party, telling their people about all, and only the great things he had
done or his contributions to their beloved country, China. Anything that was wrong had
nothing to do with him. Mao was flawless. To the people of China, Chairman Mao was
like a God.

Of what I’ve heard, the Cultural Revolution revealed that Mao had brought up this
chaos in order to protect his own political power, but the situation had lost control, and
even Mao couldn’t take lead of the Red Guards.It was after Mao’s death that people
finally woke up. But the Cultural Revolution had already done a serious damage to
the society. For example, the Black Whelps, an insulting term for a child of a family
belonging to any one of the “Five Black Categories”, were sent to rural areas to remold
themselves as a proletarian. They were forced to work as farmers, or sent to work in
factories. But after all these years, we could see that these punishments didn’t work
out as they were meant to be. Lots of people suffered a great loss of their childhood;
moreover, they had to stop schooling then, which means they lost their opportunity to
get educated.

The author has also pointed out that many of her American friends asked her why
after all these sufferings and sacrifices she did not hate Mao. She replied,” We were
all brainwashed.” To me this sentence has got a great deep sorrow within it. Mao
controlled everything they read, everything they heard, and everything they learned.
And no one was allowed to criticize the government, so eventually, people have only
heard the good about Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Even some of the people who
have been punished believed that they deserved the punishments, and still hoped that
the punishment they took could really make China better. We can see how deep the
government has influenced on the people’s mind.

After reading this book, I felt relieved that I am now living in a free country, without
any kind of threat after anything I’m speaking out, reading, or writing.

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