Red Scarf Girl

Red Scarf Girl

by

Ji-li Jiang

Red Scarf Girl: Chapter 14: The Class Education Exhibit Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Ji-li feels very nervous on the day of the Class Education Exhibit preview, during which school and district leaders will evaluate the students’ projects and speeches. She knows that she faces additional scrutiny after the Workers’ Revolt article about the Jiang family. Nevertheless, she makes it through her speech about the horrors of old China and the abuses that landlords like Liu Wen-cai carried out. She tells the story of a blind grandfather who fell so far in debt to Liu that Liu forced him to sell his granddaughter into slavery. At relevant parts of her speech, Ji-li—nearly in tears herself—points to statues portraying the weeping grandfather and granddaughter. The evaluators listening to her impassioned performance are in tears, too.
Liu Wen-cai is a historical Chinese landowner who died in 1949 just before the Communist Party takeover. During the Cultural Revolution, he became the archetypical evil landlord, and stories about his deeds were widely published as propaganda. As such, most were likely false or exaggerated. The upsetting story Ji-li tells helps to explain why her society reviles landlords. But it also contrasts sharply with the story Dad told about his own infirm father and his relatively impoverished childhood. Looking at specific, true stories undermines the power of the propaganda—but Ji-li wants so desperately to belong that she cannot see the disconnect in this moment.
Themes
Conformity vs. Loyalty Theme Icon
Class, Power, and Justice Theme Icon
The Power of Propaganda  Theme Icon
Quotes
As the evaluators move on to the next booth, Ji-li hears An Yi and Sun Lin-lin calling her name from outside the hall. They wanted to see her speech but were not allowed in, so they listened through an open window. They enthusiastically congratulate her on doing a terrific job. The return of the evaluators and school Revolutionary Committee Chairman Jin interrupts the girls’ conversation. Ji-li has been dreading this moment. She thinks he will expose her as a landlord’s granddaughter, publicly humiliate her, and expel her from the exhibition. Instead, he congratulates her on her moving performance and asks her to help the other students improve theirs. As they move on to the next booth, Ji-li sinks into a chair, exhilarated—and surprised—by the praise.
While Ji-li appreciates the support from her friends, it matters little when weighed against the official praise or censure she will receive from Chairman Jin, the highest Party authority at the school. She expects him to judge her on her class status, and when he doesn’t, Ji-li takes it as a sign that her hard work and effort matter more than her landlord ancestors. But readers should remember that this hasn’t been generally true in her experience thus far. Moreover, Thin-Face and Teacher Zhang have emphasized the idea of being an ‘educable’ child—one capable of being remolded to conform with Party ideology—and of a clean break with her family. These messages suggest that just criticizing landlords in a speech is a good first step towards rehabilitating her class status but will not be enough on its own.
Themes
Conformity vs. Loyalty Theme Icon
Class, Power, and Justice Theme Icon
Hard Work and Success Theme Icon
But a few days later, the Revolutionary Committee calls Ji-li to the office for a study session with some of the members of Dad’s work unit. She expected something like this, but she thought it would happen at home, not at school where her classmates and teachers would find out about it. In the office, she finds Thin-Face, a woman she doesn’t recognize, and Teacher Zhang. Teacher Zhang encourages her with his kind eyes. Thin-Face explains that Dad has serious problems. In addition to coming from a landlord family, he refuses to confess the “serious mistakes” he made during the Antirightist Movement. Thin-Face reminds Ji-li that they will still consider her an educable child if she makes a “clean break” from her black family. They want her to testify against Dad at his upcoming struggle meeting.
Although Chairman Jin praised Ji-li’s presentation, the “study sessions”—really, in the way Ji-li describes them, reeducation or indoctrination sessions—tell her directly what she must do to rehabilitate her class status. She must prove that she holds Mao and the Party dearer than her own mother and father by testifying against Dad. Although the book doesn’t yet specify the nature of Dad’s so-called mistakes, they happened in another period, like the Cultural Revolution, in which the Party purged itself of dissenters. Just as the concepts like Black Categories and Four Olds continually shift to include more and more people now, the charge of “rightist” then was also poorly defined in ways that invited abuse.
Themes
Conformity vs. Loyalty Theme Icon
Class, Power, and Justice Theme Icon
As Ji-li tries to imagine herself on a stage, condemning Dad, the woman from the theater explains that testifying is easy if a person has the right “class stance.” She tells Ji-li that when theater’s former Party Secretary was denounced, her daughter went so far as to slap her while making her own “clean break.” Thin-Face tells Ji-li that she can also prove herself to be Chairman Mao’s child if she tells them things Dad said or did at home that betrayed his “landlord and rightist mentality.” Weakly at first, then with conviction, Ji-li testifies that her father never said anything critical of Chairman Mao or the Party. Thin-Face narrows his eyes. He tells Ji-li that if she does not choose to make a clean break, she—and Ji-yong and Ji-yun—will face many more “study sessions” like this one. 
Like many of the terms used to signify who’s in and who’s out of power (red, black, bourgeois, rightist) “class stance” is loosely defined, allowing people to interpret it in ways that suit their purposes. For Thin-Face and the woman from the theater, it signifies conformity with the Party and a universal condemnation of anyone associated—no matter how tangentially—with any Black Category. They want Ji-li to show allegiance to the Party and to her own class over loyalty to her landlord-class father. But, following Dad’s example, Ji-li refuses to make a false report or confession. She insists that Dad has done nothing to earn his current punishment, other than be born to the wrong family.
Themes
Conformity vs. Loyalty Theme Icon
Quotes
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After Thin-Face and the woman leave the office, promising to return for Ji-li’s statement soon, she runs from the school in a blind panic. She hides herself in a narrow passageway between the school building and the schoolyard wall, feeling like a trapped animal. That night, she cannot sleep. But the exhibition is the next day, so she rubs her eyes and dashes to school. Bai Shan stands just outside the doorway of the exhibition hall, and as she rushes past him, he quietly warns her to brace herself. Inside, Chairman Jin informs her that the Revolutionary Committee can no longer let her participate in the exhibition due to her political situation. Coldly, he dismisses her. Ashamed, she rushes from the hall, ignoring Bai Shan’s attempt to speak to her.
Ji-li believed that she could work hard and prove her revolutionary spirit by doing everything—short of turning on her family—right. Now she learns that that is the only thing she can do to rehabilitate herself, to prove that her loyalties to Mao and the Party outweigh her loyalty to the family whom she loves. Readers may have seen this coming in the increasing pressure from Thin-Face and in Teacher Zhang’s pointed encouragement to prove that she’s an educable child. But Ji-li, blinded in part by her faith in her own hard work and in part by her faith in the Party, cannot accept this truth until Chairman Jin makes it official. As long as she sides with her family, she will be considered as black as them.
Themes
Conformity vs. Loyalty Theme Icon
Class, Power, and Justice Theme Icon
Hard Work and Success Theme Icon