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Little green : growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution
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Summary
I was born in a small city near the East Sea,
when the Great Cultural Revolution began.
My name is Little Green,
my country Zhong Guo, the Middle Kingdom.
When I was ten years old,
our leader had died and the revolution ended.
And this is how I remember it.
When Chun Yu was born in a small city in China, she was born into a country in revolution. The streets were filled with roaming Red Guards, the walls were covered with slogans, and reeducation meetings were held in all workplaces. Every family faced danger and humiliation, even the youngest children.
Shortly after Chun's birth, her beloved father was sent to a peasant village in the countryside to be reeducated in the ways of Chairman Mao. Chun and her brother stayed behind with their mother, who taught in a country middle school where Mao's Little Red Book was a part of every child's education. Chun Yu's young life was witness to a country in turmoil, struggle, and revolution -- the only life she knew.
This first-person memoir of a child's view of the Chinese Cultural Revolution is a stunning account of a country in crisis and a testimony to the spirit of the individual -- no matter how young or how innocent.
Sample chapter
I was born in a small city near the East Sea, when the Great Cultural Revolution began. My name is Xiao Qing, Little Green, my country Zhong Guo, the Middle Kingdom. When I was ten years old, our leader died and the revolution ended. And this is how I remember it. Beginning Beginning The year was 1966, I was told, five o'clock on a late spring afternoon. Mama had been in labor for eight hours. Baba was pacing up and down in the hall, having just come from a mass political meeting in the city square. The doctor held me up in the air; I was a ten-pound girl, screaming loud with a little red face. Outside the world was changing, a revolution was in the making for my country. Darkening clouds gathering in the sky above, smothering thunders rolling on the horizon afar. Mama sat on Baba's bike, holding me tight in her arms; Baba peddled toward home against the cold night wind. Mama's face was as pale as paper; she caught cold on the way home, during the weakest time after her labor. Little Green Little Green -- Xiao Qing -- was the name they gave me. Qing, the green of tree leaves in early spring, of clear water in a deep pond, my baba said; of beautiful youth, the evergreen of life, my mama said; and of precious jade worn close to the heart, my nainai said. Mama's Name Has a Phoenix Mama still says, telling me the story, luckily for the illness, she escaped the first struggle meeting in the school where she taught just by a day. The beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was announced, people waving red flags on the streets and shouting loud the slogans on their red banners: "Ten Thousand Years Chairman Mao!" "Ten Thousand Years the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution!" Chairman Mao called to the country, "Let's hold the large flags of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and completely expose the reactionary position of those so-called 'academic authorities.'" The school where Mama taught was in the countryside, but there was no escape even there. It was declared to be "a revolutionary battlefield," like many other schools around the country. The day before Mama went back, in the school ceremony hall the Red Guards stood on the stage, the teachers were gathered around the stage, and other students gathered around them. The teachers picked were denounced on the stage, forced down on their knees and beaten in front of the crowd. They were asked to slap their own faces while denouncing themselves aloud until the Red Guards were satisfied. Mama's name has a "phoenix." The only child of our grandma and grandpa, they called her Cheng-Feng, which means "becoming a phoenix." "You have no idea what trouble this could be," Mama told me. "Phoenix is too traditional for the revolution." Some said the old world needed to be destroyed for the new world to come. That's the idea of the revolution I was born into. That summer around the country -- our Middle Kingdom -- so many people died, I was told many years later. An Uncle Teacher Became a Counterrevolutionary Spring 1967 "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution," Chairman Mao said, "is a great revolution that will touch people's souls." A year after the revolution started, Liu Shao-Qi, the other chairman of the country then, besides Chairman Mao, was "downed with" completely. People used to call him respectfully "Our comrade Liu Shao-Qi," but an uncle teacher used these words one day too late. It was his turn to criticize the denounced leader in a struggle meeting. "Our comrade Liu Shao-Qi," he started with. Just as he realized the mistake and turned pale, his head was already forced down. "Down with the counterrevolutionary!" people shouted, throwing their arms up in the air, trembling at this new discovery. The uncle teacher slapped his own face, calling himself one who "deserves to die." He carried the label ever since I remembered. A Dream A dream was the first thing I ever remembered. Mama was holding me in her arms, snakes hanging from a big hollow tree, wolves and hyenas running on the ground. Mama was standing among these things, holding me tight in her arms. Go Up to the Mountains and Go Down to the Country 1968 I have a brother two years older, who I called Gege. Mama told me that until the year I was two years old and Gege was four, the three of us had lived and traveled between our home in the city where Baba worked and the country school where Mama taught. The city, like everywhere in the country, had been deep in revolution. The streets were filled with roaming Red Guards, struggle meetings were held in every work unit, and counterrevolutionaries were "downed with" every day. A time of unpredictable changes, a city of unrest. Chairman Mao called to the whole country: "Go up to the mountains and go down to the country, to receive reeducation from poor and lower-middle-class peasants." Baba was sent down from the city to labor in a May Seventh Cadre School in the countryside. We lost our home in the city. My gege and I stayed with Mama in the country school after Baba was gone. Country The Country Middle School We lived in a long one-story house facing south in the country middle school. It had gray-blue tiles on the roof with a brick wall of the same color. Eleven other teachers' families lived in the same building. Eight of the families had children; there were twelve of us altogether. A river ran in front of the house. Past the full-moon gate to the west of the house, a brick bridge crossed the river. On the other side of the river was the school where Mama taught. Between the house and the river was a long stretch of garden. Right along the bank was the short bamboo bush where wild red berries grew underneath. Closer to the house were flowers mixed with vegetables: daisy, tomato, and eggplant, rose, pepper, and radish, all between rows of cucumber frames. Although Gege and I were too young to go to school, our baba was sent away, and our mama worked all the time, we had many friends to play with. We sometimes would sit in a circle and sing, "Look, look, and look for a friend. Find a good friend, give a salute, shake a hand, you are my good friend." Our nannies, young girls and grandmas from the nearby villages, would be clapping hands, laughing and singing along with their country accents. The river was running and murmuring slowly by, fish boats floating and wandering on the water, red dragonflies dancing and gathering like dusk clouds. Rice fields around our house turned from green to golden yellow, rose bushes along the river bloomed and withered, months of spring and summer passed. At these times, for us children, the revolution seemed to be far away. People Called Mama Beauty Lu People called Mama Beauty Lu. Lu is her last name and she was a born beauty. Her face had a smooth oval shape. Her short black hair glowed under the sun. Her skin had a light olive color. Under her eyebrows like willow leaves, her eyes were bright and clear as the sky. In them I never saw a trace of fear or doubt. When Night Fell "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution must be carried on to the end," Chairman Mao said, and "The class struggle shall never be forgotten." After the political meetings and teaching during the day, every night Mama had to go back to work. The party wanted her to study Mao's Little Red Book. When night fell, all of the children were locked up at home. To save energy, no lights were left on for any of us. Mama would get Gege and me to bed; we heard her walking to the door, pulling the string attached to the lightbulb; then in darkness, we could hear the sound of her putting the lock on the door. It was too early to fall asleep, so we would call to each other, checking if the other was asleep. Our friend Maomao was four years old and lived right next door. Being left alone all by herself, she cried loud every night, with such a bright voice, angry, stubborn, and sad. The whole building of locked-up children listened to Maomao's cries night after night. Sometimes in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of Mama unlocking the door. I heard her come inside, sit down on a wooden bench in the kitchen, and sigh alone in the quietness of the night. A Parade in the Middle of the Night One night, deep in our sleep, we were startled by a loud cry outside. "Get up, all the teachers and staff. We just got a new indication from the Party and Chairman Mao. Get up, let's form a parade to celebrate. Quick! Quick!" There were footsteps outside the door, and a flashlight shone through our window. "Old heaven!" Mama mumbled, getting up. She scrambled to change to her day clothes. I sat up on my bed, dizzy, confused, and still half dreaming. "Mama," I cried, and Gege called too. "Go back to sleep. It's not morning yet. Mama will be back soon," she whispered. We heard doors opening and footsteps hurrying. Mama rushed out but quickly rushed back. She grabbed her Little Red Book and hurried out again. It sounded like a group had formed in front of our house. Someone started shouting slogans outside: "Ten Thousand Years Chairman Mao. Ten Thousand Years the Great Cultural Revolution! Ten Thousand, Ten Thousand, and Ten Ten Thousand!" And the rest of the people followed with sleepy voices. Through our window I could see shadows of hands holding and waving the Little Red Books. Maomao started crying next door again, her voice louder and brighter than the slogan shouting. "Wake up! Show your respect to our Party and Chairman Mao!" the slogan leader taunted the parade group. My heart trembled and I woke up completely, hoping he was not yelling at my mama. Then the group started marching toward west. The shouting grew weaker as they marched away. After a long time Mama came back, dragging her steps. She shut the door behind her and said to herself, "We all must be crazy!" Mama told us later that they had marched through the rice fields in the darkness to the nearby town, where there was a single street -- the only street around that they could march on, and so it would be called a parade. Their slogans echoed on the empty dark street, where everyone was asleep and no lights were on. They went back and forth on the same street for a whole hour. Nobody came out to watch the "parade." "People," each time Mama told the story she would sigh and laugh, "all must be crazy then." Uncle Xie and the Enemy Station Uncle Xie lived three doors to our left. He was a chemistry teacher sent down from Shanghai, leaving his wife and three children behind. He had a strange habit of turning his radio on loud, so loud that the whole building could hear it; soon we no longer needed our own radio. He left his door open whenever his radio was on, even during the coldest winter days. One day Mama and I were passing by and Uncle Xie had his radio blasting toward the door with an army song broadcasted: "Forward, forward, forward! Our army is facing toward the sun, their feet stepping on our grand motherland!" Mama said hello and asked curiously why he always had the volume so high. Uncle Xie smiled and said: "If everyone listens to the radio with me, who can say that I am listening to the enemy station?" Some years later Mama told me that Uncle Xie was born in a capitalist's family. When he was young, he studied in Japan as a chemical engineer and came back to New China to serve his motherland, but only to become the kind most suspected to be a spy. Nainai Came to Take Care of Us Spring 1969 My dear grandma, my mama's mama, our waipo, who we called Nainai, came to take care of all of us. So did many other grandparents. My grandpa, our waigong, died a long time ago, many years before I was born. Nainai lived alone in the country, close to her own baba and mama. She was a petite little woman who never stopped being busy. Cooking, washing, sewing, and gardening kept her busy all day long. A Sphere of Light Every day at six o'clock, Mama came back to have dinner with us, before she rushed back to her political studies in her school. At night things were quiet. Nainai sat down under the dim yellow lamp, sighing with great relief. She liked smoking tobacco in a brass water pipe, with water bubbling and smoke surrounding her face. Gege and I leaned next to her; I loved the scent of tobacco and cooking on her clothes. Often the electricity went out, an oil lamp was all we had -- the light glowing only in a sphere -- beyond that, it was pure darkness. I played the game of walking into the dark with my eyes wide open. At first I couldn't see anything; my heart felt like it stopped beating for a second. There was a temptation to turn back to the light. But I stayed in the dark longer, and the world started to take shape again. Somewhere in the darkness, I thought, Mama must be under another sphere of light with Mao's Red Book in her hand. Baba was too far away; we couldn't imagine what his life was like and whether he had a sphere of light too. We Saw Baba Only Twice a Year Chairman Mao said, "All the bad things in the world started from not laboring." Baba lived in a May Seventh Cadre School, where he was being reeducated. The cadre school could only be reached by boat -- sometimes just a wooden boat, slowly moved by a long bamboo stick. It took a whole day each way. We saw Baba only twice a year, in the summertime and Chinese New Year. After not seeing him for a long time, it felt so strange to call him "Baba" again. The cadre school was a big farm with all sorts of grown-ups from the cities. Intellectuals or people from wealthy families, and also some people who stood "on the wrong side" during the revolution. Some of the grown-ups couldn't tell wheat from weed; Chairman Mao thought it was good for them to know. Those people were all sent to the country to labor in the field and to learn the life of the peasants who were exploited in the "evil old society." There was little I could remember about Baba. When I was old enough to remember things, he had already learned to work in the field. To the Country Spring 1969-1970 Nainai missed her own baba, mama, brothers, and sisters who still lived in her village, where the house and the fields needed to be tended, where she was a production team member in the People's commune. She brought Gege and me to the country to visit -- sometimes both or one of us at a time. We lived in an old house she and our waigong had built many years ago. It became a home for us all. The House Like every old Chinese house, Nainai's house faced south. We lived in the west chamber, where Nainai had her old red wooden wedding bed with trees, flowers, and ancient beauties carved on the red wood frame. When springtime came, the ground thawed, softening, moistening underfoot. We left the door open, to the warm wind and the swallows it brought from the south. They made a nest on our long beam and stayed for the whole spring, busy carrying grass and worms in for their new babies, who made little noises in the nest above our heads. Taiye and Taitai Nainai's baba, who we called Taiye, and her mama, who we called Taitai, lived close by to the west in a small house on a meandering creek that connected to our pond. The River, Riverbank, and Graveyard Beyond the field behind our house was a long riverbank lined with Chinese scholar trees heavy with white flowers in the spring and early summer. Beyond the riverbank with the trees was a river called the Ocean River, running to the East Sea and the grand ocean far away. Behind the riverbank and along the water was a long long graveyard field where everyone's ancestors were buried, where Mama's baba, our waigong, was buried. Snow white geese with red beaks, crossing the green water in a long line, hurdled idly by a farmer on a little boat with a small red flag. Thin black dragonflies flew by, gliding, and lingering ever so lightly among the green grass and graves, with wings like half-transparent black veils. Ghost dragonflies, the villagers called them. The Lotus Pond We had a pond to the west of our house. Midsummer in the country, lotus bloomed in the pond. Pink, white, and rosy flowers standing among round big green leaves, waving and reflecting colors on the water, like beauties wearing jade in the wind, next to the humble water chestnuts shyly presenting little moon-white flowers. The pond was full of scent, floating through the air far beyond. A wooden bathtub moving in the water was my little boat for the summer, where I napped in the afternoon and played with my friends, under the lotus and in the chorus of cicadas. People's Commune The system in the countryside was a People's commune. Under each commune were the production teams. One village was one production team. Nainai was made a member of the team, which she reported to every morning, and where they assigned her work through the day. She came back for morning, lunch, and afternoon breaks. From the house I could see her working in the field, bending over to weed the field, stretching up to wipe off sweat. Breakfast with Taiye and Taitai Every house in the village had a loudspeaker installed by the production team. In the morning about five o'clock the loudspeaker in Nainai's bedroom would start to play "The East Is Red." "The east is red, the sun is rising. A person named Mao Ze-Dong has been born in China, he seeks happiness for the people, he is the great savior of the people." Then Nainai got up first and cooked breakfast in the kitchen. A little later she would wake me up as the loudspeaker echoed through our home broadcasting commune news: "Under leadership of Chairman Mao and the Party, the situation in the country is great! So many and so many tons of summer season rice and cotton were produced, it was double the expected production. When production is good, we do not forget about class struggle; every production team is studying Marxism and the thoughts of Chairman Mao." Sometimes Nainai would ask me to invite Taiye and Taitai for breakfast, especially if it was a warmer day, so they would not catch morning cold on their way. The morning air was so fresh, I started running fast on the small dirt road. Endless rice fields beside the road, changing color during seasons -- from tender to dark green in the summer, from dark green to golden yellow in the autumn. Brushing against sesame plants and long weeds, with morning dew splashing all over, soon I would be in front of their house, calling Taiye and Taitai to come to the breakfast. As I was running back ahead of them, Taiye and Taitai followed behind me. Taiye had a long white beard that he often let me braid. It waved in the morning breeze next to Taitai's white hair. The gray-blue smoke was thinning from the chimney on Nainai's house. We knew breakfast must be ready -- rice soup, steamed buns, and pickles, and maybe also a few boiled eggs with shells still hot to warm my hands. Taiye and Taitai would ask Nainai about her day before and her day ahead; Nainai answered describing work in the fields. The loudspeaker of the radio would keep on talking, but after a while we didn't hear it anymore. Snowy Night Winter 1969 Tian Lai During the winter when I was four, there were only Nainai and me staying in the old house. A few days before Chinese New Year, we were looking at the moon one night. It had a foggy ring around it, like the smoke from Nainai's tobacco water pipe. Nainai said thoughtfully, "Spring fog, wild wind. Winter fog, white snow. White snow promises a prosperous year." We stood by the open door as she spoke. I smell the rich soil of the earth. The next morning the whole sky was covered by a large cloud, thick and heavy like a gray quilt. By the time night was falling, goose-feather snow was falling from the sky. After dinner Nainai said that she wanted to see her younger brother, who lived on the other side of our pond. She put a pair of red-and-yellow tiger shoes on my feet and a red silk cape with a hood on my shoulders. She lit an oil lamp and put it in my hand, then lifted me from a bench onto her back. She blew out the oil lamp on the table, closed the wood doors behind us, and started walking toward the pond, carrying me on her back. The air was fresh, the snow still falling. Winter fields under the snow stretched endlessly into the night. Nainai stopped walking for a second, pausing to listen to something. The lamp waved gently and stopped in my hand. I heard, for a long second, the snowflakes falling from the sky, delicate, gentle: a little whisper as each one passed by my ear, landing ever so lightly on my shoulder. Perhaps this was Tian Lai, the sound from heaven that old folks in the village spoke of. "Only a lucky one would hear, and perhaps, only once in a whole lifetime," Nainai told me. "Mengjiang Nu" That winter I stayed with Nainai for the New Year. Mama took Gege to visit Baba. Nainai had two sisters. During every New Year they came to visit their baba, mama, sister, and brothers. Since our house had the most room, they always stayed with us, until the first full moon of the year. Late in the winter, before the spring, the fields were still frozen and quiet. A few firecrackers went off here and there, echoing in the crisp air near and far. We went around to visit relatives and neighbors every day for lunch and dinner. The rest of the time we stayed at home, gathered around lit bronze hand and foot warmers. I had my own little hand warmer where I roasted peanuts and broad beans. When I heard the popping sound and smelled the roasted scent, I knew they were ready to be eaten. Nainai sat by the table with her sisters, brewing a pot of hot tea. Cracking sunflower seeds and eating small crispy fried dough, they were sharing old stories they remembered. They giggled with sparkling eyes, as if they were young girls. They talked about songs they knew, songs I had never heard before. Holding my hand warmer, I sat among them. The first time I heard Nainai sing, she sang a song called "Mengjiang Nu," a story from two thousand years ago about a young girl whose husband was sent far away from home to build the Great Wall in the north for the emperor. He died while she was on a journey to find him. It went like this, beginning in January: "In January the new spring, every home lighting red lanterns, husbands and wives reuniting, Mengjiang Nu's husband building the Great Wall. In February warm outside, swallows come to the south. All of them in pairs, in couples, Mengjiang Nu is alone without her husband. In March the Qing Ming festival, every family visiting ancestors' graves, Mengjiang Nu's family graves deserted. In April busy caring for silk worms, Mengjiang Nu collecting mulberry leaves to feed the worms. The basket hanging on the tree, a handful of tears, a handful of leaves. In May the beautiful sun, every family busy in the field. Others planting young rice seedlings, Mengjiang Nu's field full of weeds. In June so very hot, mosquitoes and bugs flying and biting. I'd rather have thousands of bloody bites on myself, please spare my husband Wan Xiliang. In July autumn wind cold, every family sewing new clothes, only Mengjiang Nu's clothes old and worn. In August the wild goose door open, frost under feet of single swallows, Mengjiang Nu as sad as the single swallow, love birds forced to separate. In September daisies blooming yellow, scent of daisy wine fills the vat. Others' wine, couples drink together, Mengjiang Nu is all alone. In October north wind blowing, reed catkins flying in the air. The weather cold and bitter in the Great Wall, how could Mengjiang Nu's husband survive at all? In November the snow flowers blooming, Mengjiang Nu reunited with her husband in a dream. Walking thousands of miles to bring him winter clothes, where is my love, my dear husband? In December busy for the New Year, every family sacrificing pigs and sheep, Mengjiang Nu is watching her mourning room full of white." Nainai's voice wandering in the air up around the beam and down to my ears, just like when she spoke -- not too high and not too low, and not in a hurry at all. Her sisters joined her here and there. As she was singing, Nainai was looking through the open wooden door, into the field stretching far away. I saw my nainai being Mengjiang Nu herself, with her long black hair in a shiny long braid, standing alone in the open field, looking far away, waiting for my waigong to come back, from whatever Great Wall and emperor he had left for. Seasons changed around her year after year, and she was still waiting there. A Long Rest 1970 Just after the spring festival, Taiye became very ill. A bed was set up in his oldest son's home in the large living room, the center of everything. The bed was set close to the floor so he could move to the ground easily. But he lay there quietly, most of the time with his eyes shut, as if he needed a long rest. Nainai came whenever she had a break from the field, helping Taitai to take care of Taiye. She sat by him on a wooden bench, with a bowl of porridge or soup in her hand. She gave the food to Taiye by the spoonful. He took a few spoonfuls each time, then shook his head slowly from one side to the other. She put the bowl down and wiped his white beard carefully with a wet warm towel. Summer came slowly that year. Nainai's garden was full of green. One afternoon Nainai picked up a small watermelon, and we went to see Taiye with the melon. She cut the melon and said to me, "Half for you and half for Taiye." Then she gave me half the melon and a spoon. I held it in my hand like a rice bowl, and went to sit by Taiye. "Taiye," I called. He opened his eyes slowly, as if waking up from a dream. When he saw me sitting there, a faint smile came to his face, as if from somewhere far away. I scooped the red melon, and gave it to him. He drank the juice and slowly chewed on the melon. It was a hot late summer day and the melon seemed to soothe him. Nainai was sitting at the table in the middle of the big empty room. Taiye couldn't really see her from his bed, but I saw her wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. Autumn came, and the days were getting cooler. One afternoon I was in front of the house playing with my friends. Suddenly all the adults looked serious, and they told us to stop running and not to make any noise. Then I heard crying like singing from the house. It was my taitai, the wife of Taiye, and my nainai, the oldest daughter of Taiye. Nainai was telling Taiye something: "My dear father, without you how do you expect us to manage? How tough your heart is, to leave us like this. Ever since I was a child, you have been there for me." Then I listened to Taitai and everyone else, each of them singing their own stories. I'd heard this kind of singing by women in the country funerals, where men usually cried silently. Then I knew Taiye must have died. In the country a funeral was called a white ceremony. We had a white ceremony for Taiye that night. They put him in a wooden coffin, in the courtyard under the moonlight. I went over to look at my taiye; he was sleeping peacefully with his white beard resting on his chest. The neighbors all came over for the white ceremony banquet. Each of them brought home a rice bowl for good luck. The next morning they carried him, crossing the golden wheat field of autumn behind our house, and buried him under the Ocean River bank, alongside my waigong. A big sailboat with a tall white canvas sail passed by soundlessly in front of my eyes. I wondered if Waigong and Taiye were on the boat, going somewhere else. Perhaps they are going to the ocean, where the river is running toward. Perhaps they are going to cross the ocean, where lies the unknown land. Will I go there one day? Will they all come to visit me on a big sailboat? Little Sister Was Born October 1970 After Taiye passed away, Nainai and I returned to the country school where Gege and Mama were. Baba was still in the cadre school. Mama told me a baby was coming, her belly was like a small mountain. Every morning before going to work, Mama went to the river to wash our clothes. Gege and I followed her. When we came back, Mama had a basket of washed clothes in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. "Aiya! You shouldn't carry heavy things," the neighbor aunties and uncles cried as they saw her, trying to carry the basket and bucket for her. But she walked fast, shaking her head "no" and thanking them. One morning, after we came back from the river, Mama didn't go to work. A midwife from the nearby town rushed into our apartment with two other teacher aunties. Gege and I were kept outside. After a short while we heard a baby crying. Our meimei -- my little sister -- was born. When Gege and I were allowed back home, the midwife and the two other aunties were taking care of Mama in her room. In the living room Nainai was wrapping the baby in a red cloth. She gently tied the cloth around her and hooked the wrap onto an old steelyard made of red wood and yellow bronze. Moving the sliding weight carefully to balance, "Six jin," she announced. I smiled to myself, knowing that I was still the biggest baby born to the family. But my little sister was born the quickest. "All that clothes washing and water carrying did it," Mama said. Since the baby was the third child, we called her Sansan, Little Three. Baba could not come to see the new baby. She cried often day and night. "More than you and your gege ever did," Mama told me, rocking Sansan gently back and forth in her arms. On the Bridge to Mama's School After Sansan was born, for a while we all stayed together in the country middle school -- except Baba, who was far away. Nainai stayed home to take care of Sansan. Mama was called back to school. There were two political groups in Mama's school: the "rebels" who wanted to "down with" everything and the "emperor protectors" who wanted to "down with" only some things. Mama didn't belong to either of them, which made her life difficult. The head of the rebellion group was a young sports teacher. Born into a family of three generations of peasants, he proclaimed his roots were the most revolutionary of all. Mama told me that after the Cultural Revolution began, instead of teaching, this man held struggle meetings, calling teachers onto the stage and deciding their fate according to his wishes. He also organized a propaganda team. With red bands on their arms they performed "loyalty dances" to Chairman Mao every day. They threw one arm up to Mao's picture; with the other arm they held Mao's Little Red Book pressed against their chests. I couldn't help thinking that the head of the rebellion group looked like a puppet, not a man. Like many teachers in the school, my mama avoided him as much as she could. One day after classes were over, I was waiting for Mama on the bridge while playing with my friends. Mama came with some other teachers. The rebellion group leader passed by Mama and sneered her name, which means "becoming a phoenix." He said, "I guess your dead rich father was hoping you would become a phoenix. We received documents from your hometown. Your background needs to be checked again; there are suspicious things going on here. Given the family you are from, you could have counterrevolutionary motives." My heart jumped to my throat. I didn't understand what he was saying, but I sensed that my mama was in trouble. But Mama seemed to have been prepared for this. She turned to face him. "Comrade Li," she replied, "I have been reading Chairman Mao's Red Book. I am sure, being the rebellion group leader, you study very hard too. Could you point out on which page our great leader said the poorer you are, the more revolutionary you are?" There was silence in the crowd. Everyone was looking at him. They knew that except for carrying and waving the Red Book during slogan shouting, this man had not read much at all. Mama then continued calmly, "If you cannot answer the question about the Chairman's Red Book, it's hard to say that you are more revolutionary than the rest of us." He flushed and yelled angrily, "What is your attitude toward the revolution?" No one had embarrassed him like this before. Mama replied, "I don't have any attitude. But these people were once your teachers. They have taught you how to read and bought you books when you could not afford them. If you have not lost your conscience, think about what you have done to them. Did Chairman Mao tell you to destroy their lives? You are probably the one that is blackening the revolution." His face now looked like a purple pig liver on a butcher's bench. "We will inform your husband's work unit; you could be a counterrevolutionary couple together!" Mama had fire in her eyes. Before anyone had time to react, she gave Li a big slap right on his face. The two uncle teachers standing next to Li quickly grabbed him by his arms, reciting loudly a quotation from Chairman Mao, "No armed struggle, only literal struggle!" Li yelled and screamed like a wild dog. So many admiring eyes around Mama, she took my hand and said, "Mama will explain things when you grow up." Her eyes were as clear as the sky again. I was scared for the things she was to explain, and suddenly was afraid to grow up, but my heart was soaring to the sky, full of admiration for my mama. We walked out of the crowd toward home and never looked back. Copyright © 2005 by Chun Yu Excerpted from Little Green: Growing up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Chun Yu All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Subjects
- Subject Headings A:
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- Yu, Chun, 1966-Yu, Chun, 1966->Juvenile literature
- Yu, Chun, 1966-
- ChinaChina>HistoryChina>History>Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976China>History>Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976>Personal narrativesChina>History>Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976>Personal narratives>Juvenile literature
- ChinaChina>HistoryChina>History>Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976China>History>Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976>Personal narratives
- ChinaChina>Social life and customsChina>Social life and customs>1949-1976
- Yu, Chun, 1966-Yu, Chun, 1966-
Other details
- Description: 112 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
- Published: New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, c2005.
- Language: English
- Notes: "A Paula Wiseman book."
- ISBN: 0689869436
- OCLC Number: 54455353
- Other Identifiers: LCCN: 2003027433
9780689869433