China

A Life Full of Mao and It’s Consequences Reading the book Son of the Revolution by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro gives one a better understanding of China’s socialist background. Growing up in Mao Zedong’s China, Liang Heng tells his experiences to the reader in great detail. Having an access to an insider’s experiences, readers can grasp the conditions in which Liang Heng lived in which was constant disruption from Mao Zedong’s campaigns for socialist enthusiasm. Essentially it was necessary to disrupt people’s daily and family lives during the Cultural Revolution since Mao wanted to change the socioeconomic inequality in China. As he said once: A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be refined so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous restrained. A revolution is an insurrection an act of violence by which one class overthrows another. (People’s China p.187) Growing up as a peasant’s son, he has been exposed to poverty and he had a better image for the majority of the population so he turned to the peasants to back him up on this matter. He took land from landowners and distributed them among peasants. Mao’s image of China was very appealing to farmers and peasants which made up about 60% of the population. Having the majority of the population behind him, he was confident that the change was necessary in China. Before his time, intellectuals and officials had more freedom in their life styles, careers, family lives, education choices and hobbies. Being the educated part of population they were able to think and see things for what they’re unlike the peasants. Having educated people in the population was dangerous for him to stay in power so he started the Cultural Revolution to disrupt the lives of educated people in the cities. Left without check they could pose a danger for his future plans as a leader. If the Chinese people had the opportunity to live their lives the way they wished, their lives would have been far more different than living in a socialist chaotic world. Mao came up with wide range of revolutionary ideas to infuse the population with socialist enthusiasm. He knew the best way to do this was to get rid of olds so he came up with a campaign called “Four Olds.” Mao also wanted to fulfill the younger generation with the socialist enthusiasm so he gave the students the task of getting rid of olds by giving them the authority of being Red Guards. Since the younger generation didn’t have knowledge of importance of western studies, arts, religion and music they happily undertook the task. House by house they started to get rid of the western ideas such as textbooks, art, musical instruments, clothes and religious artifacts. While at it, they felt powerful and started hurting people physically as well as psychologically whom houses were being raided. People with the western influenced items were named counterrevolutionaries and marked their names in black which means dishonor and shame. Among these people was Liang Hang’s father Liang Shan who was an intellectual, working for the Hunan Daily newspaper. One night Red Guards raided the Liang family’s house for counterrevolutionary items. They were very demanding and rude to Liang Heng’s father regardless of the age gap. When the Red Guards broke into frenzy in search of items, they had father Liang kneel next to burning piles of books which broke Liang Heng’s heart and he expressed his feelings by saying “ I had never seen him without his dignity, plead with anyone before. I had never seen him without his dignity.” (Son of the Revolution p.73) While getting rid of the western ideas, Red Guards were ordered to get rid of the religious artifacts, temples and symbol of Gods. Leaving nothing behind to look up to but Mao and his thoughts, people became more helpless each day because their hopes were taken away slowly. The people couldn’t do anything to stop this chaos because their family members would have been hurt by their actions. If a family member disobeyed the rules, rest of the family became a target and was labeled as black. When Liang Heng’s sister had to help on “Four Olds” as a Red Guard, she had to destroy the ancient temples and Liang Heng’s father told his daughter “Such precious historical treasures. All those symbols of China’s ancient culture gone in only a few days. You’ve wronged your ancestors.” (Son of the revolution p. 71) Just like the rest of the people who objected of getting rid of the temples, Liang Heng’s father had no choice but to accept it as it is, helplessly. Moreover, Mao had a campaign called One Hundred Flowers. He wanted feedback from high ranking cadres in order to improve the work force. Cadre officials came up with ideas to improve the work flow and the work environment after thinking very hard to please their Chairman Mao. When they responded to this calling they were named counterrevolutionary for criticizing. Liang Heng’s mother was one of the cadres who were named as counterrevolutionary and was sent away to reeducation camp. When this occurred Liang Family was left without a homemaker and a mother. Liang Hang’s father was also forced to divorce his wife in order to keep his position at the Hunan Daily newspaper. Liang Heng explains; Father was actively participating in the Anti-Rightist Movement in his own unit. Father believed in the Party with his whole heart, believed that the party could never make a mistake or hand down a wrong verdict. It was a torturous dilemma; Father’s traditional Confucian sense of family obligation told him to support mother while his political allegiance told him to condemn her. In the end, his commitment to the Party won out, and he denounced her. He believed that was the only course that could save the family from ruin. (Son of the Revolution p. 9) As it can be seen above, people like Liang Family had no option than to obey norms of Mao and abandon a family member for the sake of the whole family. Besides the separation of families and ruining the old customs and traditions, Red Guards were given permission to travel across the country and this was called the “Exchange of Experiences.” The students were able to travel by busses and trains free of charge and because of the crowd some choose to walk to the sites. This also became a way to experience Red Army’s Long March which was thirty years before the exchange of experiences as they fought against the Guerilla wars against the Kuomintang. This event affected the academic lives of children since they all wanted to travel to show how honoring and revolutionary they’ve become, answering Mao’s call of “exchange of experiences.” Cultural Revolution became a great revolution that touched people’s daily lives and youth’s valuable time of education. The students became ill while traveling and meningitis broke out so at one point, Chairman Mao had to call this event off as more and more students were suffering on the road. However, student’s health and disruption of education became known as catastrophe for Chinese nation when students were not spending time at school. Eventually this gave students hardships when they were trying to become college students which were to occur after Mao’s death. Struggle, criticism and rebellion became the daily routine of Chinese people’s lives. Everyone was watching out for a counterrevolutionary event from one another and by bringing out counterrevolutionaries some felt safer by turning in their neighbors, teachers, friend and family. As Mao stated; “There is no wrong in revolution; it is right to rebel.” (Son of the Revolution p. 45) In Mao’s China, people routinely joked about someone in the newspaper whom being referred to as “they dug somebody else up today.” (Son of the Revolution p.45) Along with the rest of the population, Liang Heng felt excited about Cultural Revolution and hoped to help in this matter. (Son of the Revolution p.45) One day his friend Little Li walked in and encouraged him to write up posters about counterrevolutionary people that they knew about. Little Li and Liang Heng criticized their teachers in school and thought what they did was wonderful since criticizing and rebelling was good in the eyes of their Chairman Mao. However, Liang Shan, father of Liang Heng didn’t like this idea and made him apologize to his teachers. Within few days, Liang Heng’s classmates criticized Liang Shan and named him a capitalist bloodsucker. This made Liang family very upset and left them vulnerable to bully neighbors and Liang Heng was being picked on either in school or on the streets. Liang Heng’s classmates not only hurt Liang Heng physically but also destroyed the windows of his house. Chairman Mao affected not just the adult’s lives but also the lives of youth and children growing up in fear and meaningless competition. Unfortunately, their acts brought them no where near revolutionary individuals eventhough Mao tried to create a socialist society where everyone would be equal. Regardless of Mao’s image, the society had a wide range of classes among people of different backgrounds such as intellectuals which were looked down upon, army officers which were held up high, and peasants which were to be used as tools of means to learn how to live and work. Never ending, Mao had another revolutionary idea to infuse the youth with social enthusiasm. He decided to send the youth to the country side to learn from peasants. Looking back, Liang Hang’s parents were sent to reeducation, and now his sisters were being sent to the countryside to participate in Cultural Revolution at the same time. What little family left for Liang Hang, he had to turn to streets to get accompanied since his family was scattered across the country. “At thirteen, I couldn’t make myself stay indoors and read the works of Chairman Mao…All the violence had numbed me and I didn’t care if I never participated in the Revolution again. My family had sacrificed so much for it but it had given us nothing in return.” (Son of the Revolution p.148) At the age of thirteen, Liang Heng started living in the streets unlike the children in most of the world. Did Chairman Mao succeed in breaking up the families to reeducate them in the countryside' In answer to this “We’d drink and fight among ourselves, seven or eight of us in a small room, not angry but using full strength because we loved the comforting pain and wine bottles…and light cigarettes” (Son of the Revolution p.149) It was perhaps normal for Chairman Mao to leave young kids lonely and exposed to things that are very dangerous. After all, he only thought about the socialist enthusiasm. After seeing too many casualties, people in China learned to obey the rules. Chairman Mao educated his people with fear which seems to have work very well for the families who live with their loved ones and wouldn’t dare to see them get hurt. Once named as black and counterrevolutionary there is no gaining old positions back without going through so many hardships and consequences. When people were afraid they weren’t able to think beyond their fear. On top of it all, an insufficient economy created famine during the Cultural Revolution and the backyard industry. Mao wanted to introduce people with socialist reform, so he wanted to industrialize the country and began to propose a five year plan. In the five year plan, workers were expected to only produce what is asked of them for about five years. Interestingly, Mao wanted to industrialize the country by steel making. People were very excited to improve their country so they began to help this movement by turning every metal they owned into steel to a point where farmers turned their tools into steel. This was known as Great Leap Forward. Eventually farmers failed to farm enough to fill their quotas and this created a very large famine across the country leaving people of China hungry. On top of the fear, people became hungry and couldn’t think of anything else but food. “Many of the old people and almost all the children I knew had the “water swelling disease,” dropsy. Our bodies puffed up and wouldn’t recede, and we walked lifelessly to school and arrived exhausted…It was a game for me to poke Nai Nai’s cheek and leave a whole that would fill up again only very slowly like dough.” (Son of the Revolution p.17) Unsurprisingly, Nai Nai, Liang Heng’s grandmother died of famine because she used to give her share of food to her grandchildren. Mao kept the population very busy with all sorts of events for the Cultural Revolution. Youth being Red Guards or taking part in Youth League Party, parents constantly working on socialist movements, families never had enough time to spend together because of being scattered all around. Mao had communes in the towns which was a collective meal gathering. Families no longer ate together, but ate in town halls with neighbors and everyone else in the town. Communes also became a way of keeping an eye on each other for counterrevolutionary activities enforcing Mao and Mao thoughts at all times. Furthermore, Mao was seen as the God in China. Everyone had to talk his talk and walk his walk including other party members in the government. Without this in hand, everyone was in danger of being labeled as black, counterrevolutionary or capitalist. Children at very young age learned to please Chairman Mao rather than their parents. Liang Hang’s nurse in child-care center would say, “You’re not Chairman Mao’s good little boy; you haven’t upheld Revolutionary Discipline. You can stay in there until you think things over…When the nurses told me the next day that Chairman Mao had forgiven me, I was the happiest child in the world.” (Son of the Revolution p. 6, 7) Children were exposed to Cultural Revolution in the early years of their lives and learned to live by Chairman’s rules. As it can be seen, Chairman Mao was everywhere, in the minds and souls of young children and adults who constantly read and say Chairman Mao’s words. When everywhere is full of Mao’s image and thought, people have no room to do or say other things since they will be punished greatly for thinking anything other than Mao thought. In addition to being punished for criticizing in a wrong matter according to Mao, there were very few things people did to avoid consequences. People who knew how to read and write were luckier than those who had to attend to hear Chairman Mao’s thoughts from others, since they were able to sit and study on their own whenever they wished. In a community where people constantly search one another for counterrevolutionary ideas, it was the safest way to use Chairman Mao’s thoughts. Since it wasn’t appropriate to say the same things over and over again people had to keep up with their study of Chairman Mao’s recent works. Liang Shan always encouraged his son Liang Heng to study his works in order to protect himself and his family from harm. The Cultural Revolution was a power struggle in which Mao fought to recapture his political failures which has occurred on so many platforms during his term as a president, ultimately until his death. Chairman Mao had to stay in control and by disrupting people’s daily lives; he kept the eyes off of his wrong doings because people were so busy living in a chaotic world where everyone was confused. Especially the peasants had a little understanding of Mao’s idea of economy. When Liang family was sent to the countryside, Liang Shan was asked by peasants: “We don’t understand. Why is raising chickens and ducks rotten Capitalism' How can we buy oil and salt if we don’t sell eggs'...Maybe you can write a letter to Chairman Mao”(Son of the Revolution p.182) Liang Shan simply answered him by saying “My countrymen. I’ve been around trouble for many years, but I’ve never been able to do anything about it.” (Son of the Revolution p.183) Let along peasants who can’t read to understand Chairman Mao’s way of thinking, an intellectual who is able to comprehend better didn’t have an understanding of Chairman Mao’s thoughts either, since he wasn’t able to provide the peasants with a satisfying answer. It was simply out of the picture to question Chairman Mao and his rules. It was either do or suffer consequences. All in all, we can clearly see why Mao Zedong disrupted the daily lives of people and especially the lives of intellectuals who are repository of bourgeoisie with feudal values. Leaving population with uneducated generation with hunger, fear, worry of tomorrow, no one had the luxury to think to overthrow Chairman Mao. Cultural Revolution was a way to stay in power for Mao and from the long years of his term as a president, one can see how successful he was by managing of staying in power no matter what situation arises. A revolution is an act of violence by which one class overthrows another was Mao’s exact words and from my understanding he has established overthrowing everyone else in order to stay in power, stay in control.