Son of the Revolution

“I was finding out how life worked. As Chairman Mao said, everyone had his own class position, and human relationships were class relationships that could not be transcended. There was no room for a personal life outside the one assigned to you by the Party, and the Party’s values had to govern your private life or you would be punished like Uncle Yan and Mother. The Party had made us strangers to the woman who loved us more than anyone else in the whole world. It didn’t make sense, but it was reality.”

This quote introduces the theme of the destruction of family relationships in Communist China. The fact that the Party “assign[s]” relationships to Chinese citizens indicates that the separation and destruction of families is deliberate, a tactic to ensure the Chinese remain loyal to the Party above all else. Anyone who chooses personal relationships over the Party—as Uncle Yan does,when he defends Mother—is “punished” as a result.

“[Liang Fang] confessed her weakness in going to see her Capitalist mother, and her determination to overcome such tendencies, saying she hated herself for their past contact. She even said she wanted to renounce all family ties and let the Party be her true father and mother, because only then could she become a true Revolutionary and work for the glory of Socialism.

“I felt sad when I read these things. I could understand why she hated our mother, since sometimes I felt that way too. But I wondered whether she hadn’t gone too far. How could the Party be her parents? No matter what I felt during the day, I still dreamed at night of our lives when we were all together before the divorce. Could anything change that? I was afraid that I too might be led to cut off the last of my feelings to try to achieve an impossible goal; soon I too would be of age to join the League.”

Young Liang realizes just how great a sacrifice the Party requires for its members. To become a “true Revolutionary,” Liang’s sister has to deny her most basic human emotions, including love for her parents. Even at a young age, Liang isn’t sure he’s willing to make a similar sacrifice, an early indication of his later rejection of Party doctrine.

“The bright paper posters floating about me had become walls of iron, the unknown sandaled feet glimpsed beyond them those of enemies. Everything was backwards, distorted, corrupted, insane. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or if my life at home was a dream. I hugged myself, pinching my arms, but I didn’t wake up. I closed my eyes and opened them but the words were still there. My Revolutionary father was an enemy. My father whose dream it was to join the Party was a Capitalist. How had things been ruined? Why had he ruined things? I didn’t know where to put my misery and my hatred. I would never trust my perception of reality again.”

When Liang’s father, a man as loyal to the Communist Party as anyone Liang knows, is branded a capitalist, Liang’s trust in political doctrine is shaken for the first time. Liang’s black-and-white worldview—communism is good, and capitalism is evil—now contains disturbing shades of gray, as he realizes the Party can’t always be believed. Liang has difficulty accepting these moral ambiguities and instead searches for someone to blame, a place to “put [his]misery.” But he can’t unlearn what he now knows, and his “reality” will never be the same.

“Then the short fat man came back and spoke. ‘The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has made a good start in our unit, but for it to be the mass movement it should be, everyone must participate, and family members mustn’t lag behind. We must launch a great Revolutionary competition to see who can have the deepest feeling for Chairman Mao, who can have the greatest political awareness, who can be most active in the movement, who can hold the firmest political position.’”

This quote reveals how the Cultural Revolution’s leaders pit citizens against one another, making politics a “competition” where people are encouraged to turn on others for personal gain. This strategy keeps citizens divided and powerless, questioning one another rather than the government itself. For Liang, this tactic means he’s forced to criticize his own father—as the speaker says, “family members mustn’t lag behind.”

“This Cultural Revolution was getting more complicated. It was hard to keep track of who was right and who wrong. ‘One day you’re black and then you’re red and then you’re black again,’ [Father] said. ‘Children, whatever you do please remember to be careful what you say. Never give your opinion on anything, even if you’re asked directly. Just believe Chairman Mao’s words, they’re the only thing that seems to be reliable anymore.’”

Politics in Communist China have lost all semblance of black and white, right and wrong, and instead have become a reflection of shifting power struggles with no concern for actual morality. In this “modern society,” thinking for oneself and having opinions can prove deadly. Only Chairman Mao’s words remain “reliable,” emphasizing the fact that Mao is a godlike figure in this troubled society.

“Suddenly [Father] let out a loud sob and fell to his knees before me, embracing my legs. ‘My son, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. It’s all because of your damned father. I’ve hurt you so, you must hate me.’

“I put my arms around his shoulders, holding him. His coarse blue jacket felt strong and reassuring, but the man inside was shaking. We both wept for a long time. It was as if we were weeping out all the sorrow and pain accumulated since he had first been attacked. At one point, he looked up and said, ‘My son, you must believe me. Your father is not a bad man. Someday all of this will be straightened out and we can have normal lives again.’

“I answered, ‘Father, I don’t blame you. You are still my good father, my kind father.’ I didn’t care about my problems anymore. I saw for the first time that what we were going through must be a thousand times worse for him than it was for me.”

This marks an important moment in young Liang’s psychological growth, as for the first time he sees his father as a separate person with his own pain and suffering. Liang’s ability to empathize with his father, rather than blame him,hints at the integrity and compassion Liang will develop as he matures.

“The classrooms were all boarded shut, and signs hung on the doors reading FEUDALISM-CAPITALIST-REVISIONIST. Pianos had been pulled out into the corridors and sealed shut with the stamps of the Red Guards, and broken desks and chairs lay about everywhere. Sheet music of classical European composers was scattered all over the floors, some of it in charred remnants, and from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall, sometimes more than ten layers thick, were the words of struggle and criticism. The existing walls weren’t enough for all these words, and additional bamboo partitions had been erected all over the grounds of the institute, slicing flowerbeds in two and blocking alleyways between dormitories.”

This description of the Peking Institute of Music illustrates the destruction of culture, art, and learning in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. Art from non-communist cultures, like the sheet music from European composers, is obliterated, and entire centers of learning are dismantled as the students turn to making revolution.

“[Peng Ming] stopped writing and looked at me sharply. Then he put down his brush and began to talk with me. I think it was the first time he had seen me as anything more than a child. ‘I want to exercise myself,’ he said. ‘I want to collect experience. Supporting the Great Cultural Revolution is a great chance for us young people to develop ourselves.’

“I thought to myself that in a way that was what I was doing, too, since the struggles in Peking really had nothing to do with me. And I thought too that I should try to understand more about what was going on around me.”

Peng Ming, Liang’s idol, inspires him to “try to understand more about what was going on around [him],” an effort that will shape his development throughout the memoir. Unlike many others of his generation, Liang truly tries to make sense of his country’s politics; he observes and asks questions,rather than blindly accepting dogma. The emphasis Liang places on thinking critically becomes an important theme in the memoir.

“I went to unlock the door for Liu Shi-kun. When everyone else had left, I handed him the cup of water before he had a chance to ask for it. After he had drunk it down, he asked to be taken to the bathroom. He trembled all over as he walked, and his urine was a queer dark yellow. I felt funny as I led him back, thinking about how Father was criticized, but I tried to push my thoughts away. When they came to take him away he thanked me, in a soft weary voice.

“Later, whenever I saw him sweeping the floors and cleaning the toilets I felt embarrassed and tried to avoid him. It was almost as if there were something personal between us.”

Liang’s sense of compassion, fostered by his relationship with his father, forces him to view a political outcast as a fellow human being. Liang tries to condemn the prisoner like the other revolutionaries do, in order to “push” his sympathetic “thoughts away,“but he is unable to do so. Liang’s sense of empathy will continue to shape his actions.

“When the train whistle sounded, my friends seemed torn between their desire to do something and their desire to catch the train. I suppose it was their inability to think of a single way to help that pushed the balance in favor of selfishness, and we left [the rape victim]. I don’t think there was a single one of them who didn’t feel guilty, though. As we pulled out of the station Little Peng said the girl would never have the face to go home again and would probably kill herself. A boy said over and over again, ‘They couldn’t be real Red Guards.’ We hardly spoke at all the rest of the way to Changsha.

“This incident made such a deep impression on me that it changed me in some fundamental way. I became much more aware of others in trouble, as if always trying to atone for that first failure to help.”

Liang feels such deep guilt over not helping the rape victim that for the rest of his life his awareness of other’s suffering,and his sense of obligation to help,grow stronger. Because of this incident, Liang possesses a level of empathy that sets him apart from many of his fellow citizens. In addition, Liang condemns his passivity and that of his companions’; by the end of the memoir, Liang has illustrated that such passivity contributed to the overall devastation of the Cultural Revolution, as people ignored the suffering of others in favor of saving themselves.

“It looked to me as though this revenge-taking had gotten out of control, but there was no way to put on the brakes. As horrible as the Red Guards’ treatment of Father had been, I could understand it because he had made errors and it was Party policy that he be criticized. But this kind of violence was more than I could stomach, and it seemed so illogical. The fortunes of the different factions were in the hands of others, and the Rebels who were doing the beating today might themselves be beaten tomorrow. It was as if someone were playing games with us all, but there was no time to figure it out, the play was too dramatic, the action was happening too fast, and too much information was missing.”

At this point, the Cultural Revolution has strayed from its original purpose and become a violent fight between different rebel factions, all of them thirsting for power and with no higher morals or purpose. Liang has lost faith in a government that does nothing to stop this violence, but instead encourages it by “playing games with us all.” Liang also says that “too much information was missing,” and as a result, he becomes a seeker of knowledge, trying to understand what brought his country to a point of such nonsensical, “illogical” violence.

“But the real issue was the apportionment of power, the power to run the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in all of Hunan Province.Hundreds of thousands of Hunanese workers and students found themselves caught up in a battle for very confused goals, with our wise and beloved Chairman Mao at the center of the conflict. It was during this gory climax that people began to realize that the Cultural Revolution would never make sense.”

The Cultural Revolution is no longer about establishing a great new China, but about power and who wields it. The fight for power can be destructive for all the ordinary people “caught up” in the center of it; in this case, it leads to a “gory climax” and the loss of many innocent lives. While Liang refers to the “wise and beloved” Chairman Mao here, the context suggests that Liang no longer holds such respect for Mao, as Mao himself is the orchestrator of a movement that “would never make sense.”

“Our footsteps spoke out what our voices could not, that the family ties of a lifetime were now about to be stretched to their outer limits. In these final moments together, we thought over everything the family should have been but was not, of all the happy futures we had envisaged that were now the shattered dreams of the past. Now Father was like a prisoner and Liang Fang about to become a peasant. How unlike anything either of them had imagined for themselves! How Liang Fang had wanted to go to college, how Father had wanted to join the Party and go to the top of his profession. How I needed a family! The peasant house tucked into their clusters of trees looked so protected and homelike, almost a mockery of what we needed so much but could not have.”

This quotation encapsulates one of the major themes of the memoir: the destruction of family relationships amid the political upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Liang has already lost his mother and father, both criticized as capitalist sympathizers and separated from their children; now,his sisters are about to embark on new lives in rural China. However, this quote emphasizes not only the physical separation of the family unit—a situation that occurred all over China—but emotional destruction as well. The Cultural Revolution has denied Liang’s family any chance to achieve their “dreams”—the parents’ career aspirations have been dashed, and the children can’t even attend school, much less pursue interests of their own—and the family has little hope left for the future.

“‘Sometimes it’s even worse if you try to believe in it all. So many fools give thanks for getting shit thrown in their faces. Don’t be duped like them, Tall Fellow. The more you believe, the more you’ve lost and the more of a sucker you are.’

“His words made me think of Father. Although I didn’t say anything, I still thought it was good that his beliefs were so strong, that he was so patient. If Father’s convictions were any less, he might well kill himself like Pockmark Liu’s wife, and I wasn’t ready to look at death as freedom. I felt confused, but comforted myself with the thought that most people were like my father and there were only a handful like the old man in the bunk below.”

This quote presents two different perspectives on the Cultural Revolution: the complete cynicism of Pockmark Liu, and the blind belief of Liang’s father. Father’s “conviction” is actually a form of self-preservation, as it keeps him from succumbing to despair. Liang doesn’t share his father’s unwavering belief, yet he’s not as nihilistic as Liu, either. Liang must find a middle ground between these two viewpoints in order to process the tragedies of the revolution and move forward.

“[Father] was a little sad though, as he discovered the depth of the peasants’ day-to-day misery. Theirs was a poverty he had only touched upon as a reporter; he had been shielded from it by being shepherded from place to place by cadres who treated him as an honored guest. It was a cruel reality, very different from the one he had envisaged as he read documents and newspapers in the comfort of his office. Where was the liberation from suffering the Revolution had advertised so proudly?”

The country dwellers face a particularly difficult plight during the Cultural Revolution. While the revolution is intended to liberate the working class, in actuality the peasants are required to deliver quotas of their crops to the government and receive no salary, and thus live with crushing poverty and hunger. City dwellers like Father can barely conceive of the full extent of rural poverty, emphasizing the divide between urban intellectuals and peasants.

“Even today, I want to cry when I think about that life, how I wriggled down between the rows, nearly burying myself, and scrabbled in the earth with my fingers until I felt a hard tuber. Fear and barking dogs made me greedy: I wiped off as much dirt as I could and devoured the potatoes raw, right then, as I lay there on my stomach with the clinging earth grinding like metal in my teeth, the pulp tough, juicy, and bittersweet, creating revolutions in my belly. [...]

“Our classmates brought back words from their Production Teams that there was an infestation of wild pigs around that year. In a sense, I reflected sadly, they were right.”

Liang experiences extreme hunger while attending middle school in the countryside, receiving only about three bowls of rice a day. In addition to physical hunger, Liang’s stealing and “devour[ing]” sweet potatoes evoke a sense of desperation. Completely removed from their normal lives by the mandates of the Cultural Revolution, Liang and his friends have become “greedy” and animalistic, like “wild pigs.” In addition, the animal metaphor illustrates the strain Liang and his fellow city dwellers place on the peasant community: these young city boys are like wild animals eating the peasants’ crops, literally consuming the people’s already scarce resources.

“What I found most astonishing about all this was not the explosive scene Liang Wei-ping had described, for I had had many fights of my own with the peasant children. It was rather that my timid, conservative sister had engaged in such things, and bravely, and that she seemed to take her behavior for granted. She had her regrets, of course, as I did every time I fought or stole sweet potatoes; she told me never to tell Father or Liang Fang, who had written saying that her older group’s relationship with the peasants was excellent. ‘How could Chairman Mao say that the countryside was a great land where we Educated Youths would have glorious successes?’ Liang Wei-ping wondered. ‘I’m only afraid that when I go back I’ll be sucked into that terrifying whirlpool once again.’”

The movement to send Educated Youth to the countryside leads to violence and resentment between city and country dwellers. The Cultural Revolution and its policies have forced even the most “timid, conservative” young people to become violent; the revolution has destroyed an entire generation, robbing them of the chance to become thriving individuals.

“My life changed completely. I read with a passion I had felt for nothing else, keeping a diary about everything. The world of the imagination opened to me; I had new dreams and ambitions. My fellow thieves and I held discussions on literature and even began to write poetry, meeting on the windy riverbank but never feeling cold. We were a small literary society of fifteen-year-olds.”

A “passion” for literature and knowledge saves Liang’s life. Liang has been floundering, drinking, and stealing, with little purpose to his life; the power of words gives Liang new perspectives and “ambitions,” encouraging him to think critically and ultimately leading him to attend college and become a writer.

“Why should two good people like my parents be forced to divorce each other? Why should Liang Fang raise a machine gun against her fellow teenagers? Why did the peasants fear the cadres so terribly if they were representatives of our great Communist Party? Why were people so determined to make me and Peng Ming look like counterrevolutionaries when we wanted only to make a contribution to our country? Why had the Revolution given us all so little when we had sacrificed everything for it?

“That night, I resolved that I would seek the answers to those questions. If I was to live, it would no longer be numbly and aimlessly. I would live bravely. I would not be like Father, denying the facts and fooling himself, nor like Pockmark Liu, disillusioned and cynical. I would go to prison, but I would study so that I could understand why my country had produced such tragedies.”

This quote marks a turning point in Liang’s personal development. Believing he’s about to be sent to jail, he’s contemplating suicide; instead, he resolves to live on and endeavor to truly understand the Cultural Revolution. Only by examining why Communist China “produced some tragedies” can Liang change things and ensure these atrocities never occur again. He will continue this search for knowledge throughout the remainder of the memoir.

“Father said good-bye to me that night. For a long time he lay on his bed without saying anything. Then he took out a yellowed collection of his poems and stories from the bottom of a wooden box. I had never known that anything had been saved the night of the search raid. Father gave these to me to keep, saying, ‘In our society you can’t choose your occupation freely. As your father, I know you have a talent for literature. Even though the writing profession is a dangerous one, I still want you to follow that road.’ He swallowed. ‘I’m sure you’ll find the factory a rich source of material.’

“These words saddened me even as they encouraged me. I saw that Father himself had given up. I looked one last time at the beloved face, the broad forehead lined with defeat, the sparkling eyes dulled behind thicker and thicker glasses. I said, ‘Father, no matter where I go and what I become, I will never find a better teacher than you. I won’t disappoint you.’”

Despite some rough moments caused by Father’s disgraced position and Liang’s rebelliousness, Father and Liang have finally reached a place of mutual understanding and respect, as Liang vows to continue his father’s legacy. Writing is both “dangerous” and powerful—a way to question authority and affect real change—and Liang chooses to follow this challenging path.

“Still the same old phrases! They burst in my brain like thunder. I had heard them too many times in my eighteen years. Everywhere I went, the same terrifying shadows followed me. All my suppressed rage exploded at once: Iwas on my feet, spitting onto the cement in front of the man’s huge desk, slamming the door behind me with a crash that echoed throughout the building and reached other political offices and other arrogant army men deciding the fates of other miserable creatures with no court of appeal. I pushed rudely past the coaches huddled outside waiting for news, and ran out of the big main gate toward the Martyrs’ Park. In the wildest part of the park near the north gate, I threw myself down by a dead thicket, protected from the gaze of the world.

“I could have killed that army man, and all the rest of those ‘Revolutionaries’ who had thrown my dreams back in my face in pieces. I also hated myself, though, for being so foolish as to think that I could pass a political test. I had forgotten too easily that I had long ago been branded an outsider forever.”

When Liang realizes his political past will bar him from becoming a member of the Provincial Sports Committee basketball team, his years of repressed frustration finally explode into rage. While Liang berates himself for his foolishness, “think[ing] [he]could pass a political test,” he also transcends his political background. Rather than allowing the committee to pass down a judgment, Liang walks out, choosing to pursue other options instead of beating ona door that’s closed to him forever. New opportunities, rather than old disappointments, will define Liang’s life as the memoir continues.

“I walked along Changan Road, one of the busiest avenues in Peking. As I was buffeted by the crowds, I realized that I had been lonely during most of my visit. Even my fellow worker’s family didn’t really welcome outsiders, especially outsiders with a family history like mine. The basic relationships between people had become twisted. They had lost all warmth, and loyalty no longer counted for anything. People had turned against Peng Ming and forgotten him, so how could I expect my own friends to treat me any better? It seemed society no longer had any place for people of principle. With these black thoughts running through my mind I caught a bus to the train station and bought a ticket back to Changsha.”

The Cultural Revolution has destroyed human relationships and even a sense of basic decency, as the violence and betrayals of the time lead citizens to choose self-preservation over helping others. Such self-preservation can be damaging—it has led to a bleak, hopeless society. Liang turns to compassion and empathy to save himself and others, and such compassion becomes a major theme of the memoir.

“Instinctively, I knew that if I could make her understand me, I would win her. So I shared my past with her in great detail, omitting nothing. She was so moved by my story that she wrote it all down, evening after evening, until she had two notebooks full. As she listened and wept with me, I felt her feelings and respect growing, and at the same time my wounds seemed gradually to dry up and heal, my self-hatred and self-pity decreasing and my burden becoming light. I discovered a playful, happy part of myself that had been buried since the Cultural Revolution, when I had first learned to be tough and reticent. [...] For the first time, the words Little Gao had said to me seemed true: I was a human being, and I had the right to be loved.”

Liang’s honest portrayal of his own experience wins him Judy’s love, while also allowing him to process and overcome the pain he’s experienced. The quote also foretells the writing of Liang’s memoir, which he will do with Judy as coauthor, just as she writes down his story here. After taking this first step of sharing his past with Judy, Liang will go on to share it with the entire world.