QUESTION TWO: POLITICS.

In 1949, when Mao Zedong achieved victory as Chairman, the “New China” was
established. This New China aimed to reaffirm China’s power internationally under the guidance
of Chairman Mao and the principles of Maoism. As it was portrayed to Chinese citizens, in this
new society all of the people would “enjoy freedom, equality, and happiness” (33). Communism
was believed to be the pathway needed to bring paradise upon the nation of China. In this society
people would be selfless and have unlimited access to the things they needed. More importantly,
worries were to be set aside, as there would never be a shortage of anything. People buzzed at the
idea of this ideal future, working tirelessly in hopes that someday they would partake in it. This
energized era would become known as the Great Leap Forward.

The energy from the Great Leap Forward was soon funneled into campaigns that were
made palatable to students like Rae Yang. One such campaign centered on eliminating the “four
pests” (54). For three days, Yang and her peers sat atop the school buildings banging iron pots
and basins. Through this unified action they deterred the sparrows, one of the four pests, from
being able to land anywhere. Ultimately, these sparrows would die within a matter of days out of
pure exhaustion. While the campaign had successfully led to the sparrows succumbing to their
exhaustion, Yang noted that other birds that were beneficial had fallen as well. The determination
behind this movement taught that this loss “ …was a necessary sacrifice sometimes one had to
make for the revolution. Compared with communism, our paradise on earth, the death of some
birds was a small price to pay” (54), an ideology that did not fade heading into 1959.

Ending the Great Leap Forward in 1959, widespread famine struck China. This brought
about the introduction of ration coupons, which quickly became necessary for survival for those
who resided in cities. Money became essentially worthless with the introduction of these
coupons. It is important to note that city governments were in charge of distributing said coupons
to households in correspondence with their hukou. Peasants, who did not have a city hukou, did
not receive any ration coupons and were expected to provide for themselves, as well as the
government. According to Yang, these coupons stripped “ …freedom from ordinary people and
put power into the hands of some officials…” (58), yet this went largely overlooked as deep
hunger set in. The people were no longer focused on their freedom or communism as the
“Three-Year Natural Calamity” was underway. Having been previously under the guise that
communism would endlessly provide for the needs of all the people, the ideal world so many had
dreamt began showing signs of underlying flaws. As the food rationing system became
increasingly plagued with greed, lack of supervision, and morality, people became extremely
distrustful of one another. Despite circumstances looking seemingly bleak in Beijing, the people
were easily deceived by fabricated lies regarding the famine— partly because Beijing had more
generous rations than any other city (62). When Chairman Mao announced no one had died of
starvation during the famine Yang, like many others, took his word for it as she had not
witnessed any deaths herself.
 The deep distrust that sprouted during the Three-Year Natural Calamity only propelled
rhetoric about class struggles in China. Capitalists became the scapegoat of this new revolution
as a wave of “class consciousness” made its way among the elite. In theory, this concept was
meant to eliminate the major gaps between classes and “purify” China— proving that the “old
society” was long gone (95).​​Therefore, Yang and her peers felt exhilarated by the outbreak of
the Cultural Revolution. The youth was empowered by their newfound freedom to express their
opinion and pushback against authorities. Quickly, however, this power was abused by students
as teachers became the main targets. Students at Yang’s school went as far as beating their own
teachers, with one dying as a result. But just as the campaigns had demonstrated, a few beneficial
birds had to fall as well for the sake of revolution.

The time had come to wholeheartedly purify China according to Mao. This meant the
Red Guards, a coalition primarily of educated, higher-society students, were tasked with
breaking the ways of the past. That is when the “four olds” arose, consisting of “old ideas, old
culture, old customs, and old habits” (124), inciting raids into restaurants and homes to eradicate
such things. Banded together in coordinated attire, the Red Guards were feared by the people.
The people’s fear emboldened the youthful Red Guards as they confronted what they believed to
be issues perpetuated by class struggles. When the Red Guards questioned potential capitalists
and anti-Communists, they were met with honesty. Although those being questioned could have
lied about their class and family background, they instead told the truth— which they paid the
price for (134).

As the Red Guards traveled throughout China serving what they deemed as “justice,”
they ended up sowing false hopes among peasants. In one province in particular, Yang and the
Red Guards tried to promote communism among the people. Their approach entailed the local
government buying out all of the businesses owned by private business owners and farmers. By
adopting this form of government, it would secure the people consistent and irrevocable wages
(142). While the people were ready to support this initiative, the municipal government informed
the Red Guards that their proposal was not even remotely possible due to a lack of financial
support. Despite this fundamental issue, the Red Guards were so enamored by being perceived as
a legitimate authority that they moved on to the next place before ensuring their proposition was
properly enforced. Enforcement would become a major fault of the Cultural Revolution as the
realities of the revolution settled in.

When Yang was sent to do hard labor alongside peasants she began to lose her faith in
Mao’s vision. As hypocrisy, contradiction, and falsehoods seeped into the forefront of Yang’s
world, she began to question everything she knew. For starters, she discovered that peasants paid
no mind to “class struggles” unlike Yang and her peers had been told. Additionally, gender
inequality in laboring was still prevalent in many ways, markedly in the subjectiveness of the
“iron rice bowl” that was so highly touted in Maoism (169). Between wages and culture,
women’s equality was merely a myth. Doubts only grew when it was unveiled that Mao had lied
about no civilians starving to death during the famine.

Yang was not the only one silently questioning Chairman Mao, as his hand-selected
vice-commander in chief, Lin Biao, had attempted to assassinate him. This event called into
question the real motives of the Cultural Revolution and whether or not it was an infectious
power struggle (217). If this tumultuous time was really rooted in a power struggle, then the
people had become the pawns of dishonest politicians. Once the educated youth felt betrayed, as
many had been cornered into moving to the countryside under false pretenses, their journeys as
revolutionaries succinctly wrapped up. As though they had never villainized elitism and
generational power, many of the educated youth in labor villages used their connections to
escape back to their old lives. When Yang eventually made her own escape years later, this came
with the realization that the people had been lied to— this was not a class struggle between
peasants or capitalists at all but, rather, between the Communist Party officials and everyday
Chinese citizens (263). This realization was supported by the discovery that, while its population
had grown quite a bit, Beijing had made little to no room for the “talented kids or the poor
peasants” that the Cultural Revolution had sought to include (206).

People ultimately lost faith in Mao’s vision because the promises of freedom, equality,
and happiness fell through entirely. No matter how loyal one was to the Party, anything could be
molded into a counterrevolutionary act. The Party itself was very malleable on an array of its
stances, doubling back or down on them to maintain control over the people. This meant that
unless someone was a high-ranking official, any sort of power they gained during the Revolution
was extremely fragile. As a consequence of this, once someone was singled out for being
allegedly unaligned with Mao’s vision, they would fall to the lowest ranks of society. The
people’s faith in Mao also noticeably disintegrated when people of all social classes ended up
side-by-side in labor villages. Working under strenuous conditions, the people recognized that
there was no obvious conflict among one another, but instead a collective disdain for the
government officials. The once-enthusiastic supporters of Mao’s vision had placed immense trust
in their government and sacrificed years of their lives, their status, their health, and their hukou
to further the revolution. Despite promises of a nation where “The people are the masters of the
country” (51), the government did not hesitate to abandon the very people it was supposed to
serve— treating them no differently than the fallen birds or the pigs on the farm.