'Essay on “The Red Scarf Girl” by Ji Li Jiang\r'

'â€Å"The trigger-happy scarf Girl” â€Å" some friends have asked me why, after(prenominal) totally I went through, I did non hate president monoamine oxidase and the pagan Revolution in those years. The answer is simple: we were exclusively brainwashed. ”p. 276 The book â€Å"The Red Scarf Girl” is a register written by informant Ji Li Jiang telling what it was handle to grow up during the Great Proletarian ethnical Revolution, winning place in mainland mainland China from 1965 to 1968.During this period, a political leader named monoamine oxidase Zedong convinced(p)(p) the slew of China that the â€Å" cardinal olds”, or the old slip charge of China, were wrong and that the barely when way for their country to move off was to completely revamp their beliefs and ship canal of life; basically cr fulfill a whole new socialisation for the Chinese. By ways of agony as well as basically brainwashing the mint into thinking whatever he said was true, finis chair monoamine oxidase atomic number 53 handedly shaped China’s culture by removing all anti- communistic beliefs.During the first interrupt of this book, little things that Ji Li Jiang witnesses and says hints that head Mao was forcing budge onto the citizenry of China. For example, in chapter 2, Ji Li helps destroy a sign for the Great successfulness Market, saying that names like this are tetrad olds. galore(postnominal) other words and phrases such(prenominal) as â€Å"fortune” and â€Å" clean-handed” were excessively considered four olds, and were non to be used. But this was on the nose the first step of chairwoman Mao’s plan.He also convinced his workers, called â€Å"the red guards”, to in public humiliate volume for confused anti-Communist acts. These public humiliations got more than and more violent as time went on; in the line of descent of the Cultural Revolution, pot were chiefly humiliate d for their clothing. On rascal 30, a man’s clothing is cut unconnected slice he is stand up in the middle of a street because the tight blow and pointed blank space he wore were considered four olds; â€Å"…tight pants and pointed shoes are what the Western middle class admire.For us proletarians, they are neither uncorrupted looking nor contented” said the Red vindication preforming this act. But as the floor progresses, people are obligate to wear dunce caps and signs with appalling messages written well-nigh them approximately their neck. They were then paraded roughly while people yelled abysmally mean things at them, sometimes even throwing things. M either people were interact this way because of their, or some whiz in their family’s occupation; if you or anyone in your family was a landlord, you would definitely be treated this way.Landlords were believed to be â€Å" dense welps”, meaning that they were evil people, becaus e they would pull in ones horns land from the poor if they did not pay their taxes, and also oftentimes were wealthy enough to support housekeepers. Many teachers were also treated harshly if the Red Guards had any reason to believe that they were direction their students anti-communist ideas. The people of China did not think twice about this behavior, however, because Chairman Mao had convinced them that people like this should be treated harshly. To us Chairman Mao was god. He controlled everything we read, everything we heard, and everything we intentional in school. We believed everything he said. Naturally, we knew only good things about Chairman Mao and The Cultural Revolution. Anything painful had to be the fault of others. Mao was blameless. ” (p. 276) Certain people were treated even more severely. debate meetings (gatherings within the workplace where people were publicly humiliated) were very jet and often used corporal violence to correct people.During on e struggle meeting, a womanhood is beaten and agonistic to heighten the chimney of a grind as a punishment, for she was believed to be a teacher thrust anti-communist beliefs on her students. Ji Li Jiang’s father is forced to partake in these effortless because he was believed to be conspiring against the communist party. Even if The Red Guards did not have substantial cause to torture these people, they had full permission to anyway infra the cause of Chairman Mao. â€Å"When I started to save up this book, I asked An Yi’s fuck off if she had hated Mao when she was forced to climb the factory chimney. I didn’t hate him’ she told me. ‘I believed that the Cultural Revolution was requirement to prevent revisionism and capitalism from taking over China. I knew that I was wronged, but mistakes happen under any system. If the country was break away for the movement that persecuted me, I was clam up in favor of it. It was only after Maoâ⠂¬â„¢s death that I knew I was deceived. ” For Ji Li Jiang, it was not until her father was tortured that she cognize that the Cultural Revolution may not have been gravid as it sounded. Before then, Ji Li Jiang actively participated in these events.So did all of her siblings and classmates. They all believed whole heartedly that Chairman Mao was doing this for the good of the people. Before the Cultural Revolution, people had big ceremonies for their ancestors, and for the Chinese revolutionary Year. They believed in many superstitions, such as not draw the floor on mod Year’s solar day as to not sweep out the god of wealth, and eating spring rolls to â€Å"roll in the money”. race were not ridiculed because they were wealthy; wealth was look up to and people strived for it. People calm stamps and other valuable things and misgiving for them with all their hearts.They kept photographs of themselves and their family members. They wore heart clothes on peculiar(prenominal) occasions, and the elderly kept intricately decorated trunks containing all their families heirlooms and passed them d birth from generation to generation. People were allowed to hire housekeepers to help them around the house and with taking care of their children. But during the Cultural Revolution, none of these things were allowed. They were all considered four olds, and people’s houses were searched and pillaged to string sure that none of these things were difference on.Years after the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao was proven wicked of unleashing this chaos onto the people of China purely to protect his own political position. â€Å"It was only after Mao’s death in 1976 that people woke up. We ultimately learned that the whole Cultural Revolution had been part of a power struggle at the highest levels of the Party. Our leader had taken good of our trust and loyalty to command the whole country. This is the most frighten lesson of the Cultural Revolution: without a sound legal system, a small group or even a single person can take control of an entire country. This is as true now as it was then. ”\r\n'