Search - Red Scarf Girl : A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution

Great book for young adults. Takes you outside of your daily life to experience a TRUE story of a girl growing up in the middle of major cultural change.

Red Scarf Girl is a disturbing account of one girl and her family's experiences during the Cultural Revolution of China during the sixties. It's amazing how we look at our world. I remember watching documentaries of the hippies, anti-war demonstrations, psychedelic drugs and “free love” that seemed to personify American and European culture during the 1960's. It's strange to think that at the same time on the other side of the world, another group of people were experiencing a very different reality and culture.

Red Scarf Girl is the real-life account of Ji Li Jiang. Ji Li was a smart, motivated, academic achiever who totally embraced the cultural revolution. . She proudly wore her red scarf and carried around her little red book of Mao Ze-Dong's sayings to show her support of the revolution. Like others her age, she believed that China was in a new age. Anything old or traditional had to be erased or destroyed. This meant that many families had to be deposed of. “Black family” was the name given to any family that belonged to the old order of things: landowners, anyone with money or had servants. In order to rid the “New China” of these backward old ways, these wealthy, educated families were turned out of their homes and sent to “re education” camps or labor farms. The people or mobs that turned them out then looted their houses. These mobs were primarily comprised of young people who worshiped Mao Ze-Dong. They believed that they were serving China by ridding her of these “bad” remnants of the past.

Jiang goes on to relate her growing horror of the movement that takes away any value of life or respect even for one's own family members. Eventually this revolution comes to her own doorstep where her dad is taken away to be "re educated".

This is an invaluable book to read to study the "group think" or "brain washing" as Ji Li calls it, that can go on when people replace worshipping God with worshipping the state.