Son of the Revolution

In 1960, when Liang is almost seven, hunger and poverty overtake China as the rivers overflow and crops fail. The Great Leap Forward, a period of industrialization in China, is partially responsible for the famine. Nai Nai often gives her food to her grandchildren, and in the second year of these “hard times,” she dies (17). Father, who is working too much to care for his children, looks for a new wife and almost settles on a Mrs. Yao. Then, in 1962, Chiang Kai-shek, the exiled former leader of China, reportedly plans to launch an attack. Anyone who can leave is evacuated from urban areas, so Liang and his siblings go to stay with Mother’s aunt in the countryside, but the close contact between Mother and Father during the trip destroys Father’s relationship with Mrs. Yao.

Liang spends the summer with Waipo, her sister, and his uncle Hou, where he gets a taste of peasant life—a home “much dirtier” (21) than their city apartment. Days are spent collecting firewood and playing with the peasant children. The countryside is also a land of superstitions, with spirit figurines and burning incense, “old traditions” (23) that the city dwellers have abandoned in the new Communist regime. A ghost supposedly haunts the area around Uncle Hou’s home, and the local children impersonate the ghost to play tricks on one another. This culminates in a tense encounter during a neighbor’s funeral, when Liang is ambushed by what he believes is “a real ghost” but is actually the neighbor child, Little Fellow Yan (26). Liang is so angry that, “like a mad bull,” (27), he knocks over the display of funeral offerings, and Waipo fiercely reprimands him. 

In September, news arrives that Kai-shek isn’t invading, and Liang and his siblings return home to find Father’s mood “had gotten worse” (28). When Mrs. Yao leaves him for good, he becomes obsessed with “cut[ting] all ties” with Mother, even ordering Liang’s sister to write a report denouncing Mother (29). Liang laments: “The Party had made us strangers to the woman who loved us more than anyone else in the whole world” (29).

When Liang is 9 years old, his father marries Zhu Zhi-dao, a recently-divorced teacher from the countryside whom Father met while reporting for his newspaper. Despite a festive wedding ceremony, the new couple finds themselves caught up in bureaucracy that prevents Auntie, as Liang calls her, from moving to Changsha, and Liang sees his new auntie only rarely. The house remains “lonely as ever,” and Liang is still ridiculed as a Rightist’s son, his mother “dog[ging] [his] footsteps like a black shadow” (35).

At his new primary school, Liang has a teacher whose husband was also branded a Rightist, and the teacher thus takes pity on him. She asks the other students to train Liang to become a Young Pioneer, and Liang promises to buy the student officers a new soccer ball, using the trick of “buying influence” (35). He is initiated into the Young Pioneers even though the soccer ball never materializes.

With his grades rising, Liang is asked to edit the school’s newspaper, and he becomes a passionate reader. He develops schemes to earn money for books, such as pushing carts up a hill for a low wage and collecting empty toothpaste tubes. Liang’s new school is also closer to his eldest sister’s middle school. Admiring the “brilliantly intelligent” Liang Fang, he visits her at school “like a faithful little dog,” even though she mostly ignores him (37). Liang sees firsthand how hard his sister works to join the Communist Youth League, keeping her grades impeccable and always taking on “some unpleasant task” (37), and he reads her notebook, where she confesses her hope to sever all family bonds and “let the Party be her true father and mother” (38). Liang wonders if his sister is going too far and resolves that for his own Party aspirations, “there must be an easier way” (38). Liang chooses the inferior No. 3 Middle School over No. 1, hoping there will be “less political competition” (39).

At the age of 12, in 1966, Liang graduates from primary school as murmurs of a “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” fill Changsha (41). Just two weeks after graduating, Liang and his classmates are called back to school for “political study” (40). They are urged to write compositions against the “Three-family Village,” a group of writers who have questioned Party ideals.

Liang feels a “great responsibility to the Party” (42) and is eager to take part in this new Cultural Revolution, which progresses from “simmering” to a “boil” on July 16, 1966, the day Chairman Mao swims in the Yangtze River (43). The chairman’s great swim becomes a metaphor for his strong policies and is met with celebration, followed by his indictment of leaders who have been “suppressing Revolutionaries” (44). Soon, all of Changsha becomes a “circus of posters” denouncing those with Capitalist tendencies (44). Caught up in the fervor, Liang and his classmates create a newspaper condemning their teachers for crimes such as wearing high heels or perfume, but when Father discovers what Liang has done, he berates Liang for disrespecting his teachers. Reminding Liang that “the purpose of this movement is to ferret out our enemies, not to attack our friends,” Father orders his son to apologize to his teachers, and Liang is surprised to find that each one graciously accepts his apology (49).

Liang and his friends organize a Criticize Revisionism Struggle Team to continue their revolutionary efforts and are even given an office by the Hunan Daily. Yet just a day later, Liang and a few others find that the rest of the boys have left their team, as they don’t want to be associated with “sons of Reactionary Capitalist stinking intellectuals” (51). Perplexed, Liang hurries to the Hunan Daily headquarters, which is now so packed with political posters that“you had to push posters aside like hanging curtains” to get through (52). Liang sees at least ten posters of his father, “each as tall as a man,” accusing him of writing articles and poetry that undermine the Party (53). Liang and his friends retreat to their team office, each “equally miserable,” but by dinnertime they’re kicked out (54).

At home, Liang asks his father if the accusations are true, but Father won’t answer and keeps repeating “you should always believe the Party and Chairman Mao” (56). Liang’s sisters are so angry they’re about to leave and go live at school when a loudspeaker sounds outside, telling everyone to tune in to the Red radio station. The radio broadcast lays out “Sixteen Articles” concerning the Cultural Revolution and implies,to the family’s great relief, that crimes like Father’s won’t be too harshly punished (58). The articles make a distinction between those who are truly anti-Party and those, like Father, who support the Party but have made errors.

Liang Fang says she still wants to live at school, not out of anger but just “for convenience” when taking part in the Revolution (58). From that point on, she’s “always off making Revolution somewhere,” never really living at home again (59).

The morning after the “Sixteen Articles” are broadcast, Father leaves for work, and two members of the Party’s Work Team arrive at Liang’s home. They tell him he can help his father “recognize his faults” (62) by writing a paper entitled “Expose and Criticize My Father Liang Shan” (63) and delivering it to their office. 

Liang feels he can’t criticize his father when he “[knows] how loyal” Father is, but the next day, all family members of newspaper employees are ordered to meet in the Hunan Daily auditorium with the Work Team (63). They are told “everyone must participate” in this Cultural Revolution and warn that those who haven’t written materials about their families will be publicly shamed (64). That night, Liang tells Father—who has spent the day writing his own “self-criticisms” (65)—what happened, and Father orders him to write something immediately. Father adds that “there are too many things in this world that are hard to make sense out of” (66), implying that his stalwart faith in the Party has begun to waver (66).

As the Cultural Revolution continues, students form Red Guard units, and Liang Fang becomes a member. Representatives of the first Red Guard group from Peking arrive in Changsha, bringing a hint of the “new breed of terrorism” the Red Guards will usher in: the guards beat a young boy whose grandfather was a landlord, nearly killing him, and the action is hailed as “Revolutionary heroism” (68).

The Red Guards first campaign is to destroy the “‘Four Olds’—old thought, old customs, old culture, and old morals” (68). When Liang Fang visits and speaks proudly about destroying ancient monuments and temples, Liang wonders what Waipo will do, since she believes in lighting incense at the temples. Father laments the loss of these “precious historical treasures” (71).

The Red Guard begins conducting raids at night, searching homes for any “anti-Party material,” and soon target Liang’s family (70). A group of seven or eight, some men, some boys, arrive late at night, and when Father denies having any “capitalist” items, the searchers kick and berate him. It is the first time Liang has seen his father “without his dignity,” and Liang and Liang Wei-ping watch in terror as the Red Guards confiscate clothing and burn the family’s books (73). They later learn the guards have also stolen Father’s monthly salary.

When Liang Fang visits, she “swear[s]” that she’d never act so violently, and explains that the Red Guards have split into two factions: a more conservative one and her choice, the “real Rebel group,” which is going after Party leaders themselves (75). Father is worried that the Revolution is growing “complicated,” and after Liang Fang leaves, he warns his other children never to give opinions—an important “lesson in self-protection” (76).

The next day, members of the Red Guard Rebels take over the Hunan Daily offices, and the veteran newspapermen, including Father, leave. The day “mark[s] the end of his newspaper career” (77). The main targets of the Revolution shift from intellectuals to “Party powerholders,” and the people must watch demonstrations like the “traveling struggle,” where Party leaders are forced to march through the streets, tied together, wearing hats and signs listing their crimes (77). Father is part of one march, although, as a “less important” intellectual, he carries a paper sign, rather than a wooden one (77).

At the end of the march, each of the intellectuals, including Father, are forced to recite one of Chairman Mao’s essays and are humiliated if they stumble. After an initial hesitation, Father recites his essay without a hitch. As the demonstration continues, the Capitalist Roaders are strung up and forced to dangle by their arms from the ceiling. Eventually Liang can't bear to watch the proceedings and sneaks out.

Back at home, Liang Wei-ping recounts seeing a KMT spy on her way to be executed. Father overhears and tells her if she had witnessed his own “traveling struggle,” she “might not have found it so entertaining” (80).