The Chinese Cultural Revolution

1. 
   Look at the first slide on the PowerPoint.
   

1. 
   What do you see?
   

2. 
   Who looks like they are being targeted?
   

3. 
   What is the punishment?
   

4. 
   Where are they?
   

2. 
   Look at the following timeline and answer the questions below:
   

1. 
   What were Mao’s goals for the Cultural Revolution?
   

2. 
   What were some of the outcomes of the Cultural Revolution?
   

3. 
   Based on the timeline, why might teenagers have supported the
   

In an effort to return China to its communist roots, Chairman Mao Tse-tung

turned to the youth of the country to help start the “Cultural Revolution.”

Mao called on young people to take down leading intellectuals, party

leaders, and their own parents. These teenagers came together to form the

Red Guards.

established the People’s Republic of China.

speech at the Chinese Communist Party.

Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old

ideas.
Jan. 1967: Red Guards achieved the overthrow of provincial party

committee officials and replaced them with radicals.

the Cultural Revolution, but Mao continued to support it.

radicals who supported the revolution.

“rustification movement,” where individual teenagers

were “sent down” to villages throughout China to “learn

from the peasants.”

supported Lin Biao as his new successor.

You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life,

like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed in you.

The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you. Mao, 1957.

poor country, that we cannot change this situation radically in a short time,

and that only through the united efforts of our younger generation and all

our people, working with their own hands, can China be made strong and

prosperous within a period of several decades. The establishment of our

socialist system has opened the road leading to the ideal society of the

future, but to translate this ideal into reality needs hard work.

Mao, 1957

Source: Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. 1964

Document B: Red Guard Song

Patriotic songs and slogans were common characteristics of the Cultural Revolution.

This song was written by the People’s Liberation Army Songs Editorial Department

sometime around 1967.
Red Guards, Red Guards.

Burning with revolutionary zeal,

Tested by the storm of class struggle,

Tempered for battle our hearts are red,

Standing firm, direction clear, our vigor for revolution strong,

We follow the party with full devotion,

We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards.

Red Guards, Red Guards.

We want to be the successors to Communism.

The revolutionary red banner passes on from generation to generation,

We want to try on the glorious tradition.

Loving the country, loving the people, loving the collective, loving to work.

Connecting with the workers and the peasants,

We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards.

1. 
   What was the purpose of Mao’s Little Red Book?
   

2. 
   (Close Reading) What are two reasons that Mao thought young people were important
   

3. How might a young person living in 1964 have felt upon reading these quotes?

1. 
   Who wrote the song? Why do you think the song was written?
   

2. 
   What is the main message of the song?
   

3. 
   Why might a young person in 1966 want to sing this song?
   

monkey Sun Wukong, freed from the dungeon that had held him under a huge mountain

for five hundred years. It was Chairman Mao who set us free by allowing us to rebel

against authorities. As a student, the first authority I wanted to rebel against was

Teacher Lin, our homeroom teacher. A big part of her duty was to make sure that we

behaved and thought correctly. Now the time had come for the underdogs to speak up, to seek justice! Immediately I took up a brush pen, dipped it in black ink and wrote a long dazibao. Using some of the rhetorical devices Teacher Lin had taught us, I accused her of lacking proletarian feeling toward her students, of treating them as her enemies, of being high-handed, and of suppressing different opinions. My classmates supported me by signing their names to it. Next, we took the dazibao to Teacher Lin’s home nearby and pasted it on the wall of her bedroom for her to read carefully day and night. This, of course, was not personal revenge. It was answering Chairman Mao’s call to combat the revisionist educational line.

Within a few days, dazibao written by students, teachers, administrators, workers, and

librarians, were popping up everywhere like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Secrets

dark and dirty were exposed. Every day we made shocking discoveries. The sacred

halo around the teachers’ heads that dated back two thousand five hundred years to the

time of Confucius disappeared. Now teachers must learn a few things from their

students. Parents would be taught by their kids instead of vice versa, as Chairman Mao

pointed out. Government officials would have to wash their ears to listen to the ordinary

people….
Source: Rae Young, Spider Eaters: A Memoir, 1997.

dazibao –propaganda posters written to denounce counter-revolutionaries

high-handed– bossy

proletarian –working class

revisionist—in this case, someone opposing Mao’s position

Document D: Under the Red Sun Memoir
Under the Red Sun is a memoir written by Fan Cao about her experiences during the

Cultural Revolution published in 2005. Here is an excerpt from the memoir.
I was a 7th grader when the Great Cultural Revolution broke out.

Growing up in the “New China” we were fed with revolutionary ideas bathed

in the red sunlight of Mao. We worshiped Mao the same way pious

Christians worship their God, and we were completely devoted to him. I,

myself, really believed that we were working for a paradise on earth, and

we were going to save the entire world. How glorious it was to have the

great destiny of liberating all humanity! In fact, we did not even understand

what revolution was and how other people in the world really lived…

I was not allowed to join the Red Guards simply because my

grandparents were rich before the communists took away their land, and

my parents were considered “intellectuals,” which automatically made them

anti-revolutionists regardless of the fact that they had been following Mao’s

idealism since their early adulthood. As members of the university faculty,

my parents were obviously in trouble. I, of course, was guilty by

association. Only a 13-year-old girl, I became a target of the revolution.

After that, I lost all my friends and lived in perpetual fear for several years.

Despite this unbearable life, I did not dare challenge my belief in the

revolution. Instead, I wondered if it might be my parents who had done

something wrong. I wrote a dazibao denouncing them to show my loyalty to

Mao. My naivety deeply wounded the feelings between my parents and me.

As I grew up, I slowly learned the truth behind the so-called

“revolution.” I also realized that my family and I were relatively lucky

compared with hundreds and thousands of innocent people who died in the

endless political movements. I am very remorseful, and I still feel shaken as

I think back on what happened during the Cultural Revolution.

Source: Fan Cao, Under the Red Sun, 2005

Memoirs: Documents C and D

1. 
   (Sourcing) How are Documents C and D similar types of sources?
   

2. 
   (Sourcing) Do you find these accounts reliable? Why or why not? Explain using evidence from the documents.
   

3. (Close reading) Rae Yang (Doc. C) and Fan Cau (Doc. D) both wrote dazibao. Yang

denounced her teacher and Fan denounced her parents. Explain one way that their

actions were similar and one way that their actions differed.

4. (Context) According to these two documents, what are some reasons why young people

joined the Red Guards?