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Intro
In May of 1966, Ji-li Jiang has a charmed life. She excels in school, she loves her family (Mom, Dad, younger brother Ji-yong, younger sister Ji-yun, and Grandma), she lives in a big apartment, and she looks forward to a bright future at a competitive junior high school and beyond. When Chairman Mao announces the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Ji-li initially feels relief—she trusts Mao and the Chinese Communist Party without reservations and believes that they want to protect her and others from bad ideology like the Four Olds, and from bad people like those who belong to the Five Black Categories. But then she learns that her family has a black class status because her grandfather was a landlord and Dad has been accused of rightist views. Her red, working-class classmates begin to bully and torment her and her relatives.
Ji-li struggles through the end of the school year. But the summer brings more anxiety than relief. Red Guard revolutionaries prowl the streets, attacking and criticizing anyone who doesn’t conform to their idea of communist purity. Ji-li watches as they raid the houses of her neighbors, and she grows increasingly uncomfortable over the violence and abuse to which the revolutionaries subject their victims. Her best friend An Yi’s grandmother later dies by suicide out of fear and despair. When Red Guards raid Ji-li’s Fourth Aunt’s home, they also raid the Jiangs’ apartment “in passing,” taking many treasured possessions with them.
Ji-yong and Ji-yun go back to school in the fall, but Ji-li must wait an entire year for the chaos to settle enough for junior high schools to reopen. She enters junior high full of hope. She still likes school, and her new classmates don’t know about her black class status, giving her a chance to prove herself on her own merits. Her academic excellence leads to positive recognition, and Teacher Zhang and Chairman Jin invite her to participate in the school’s prestigious Class Education Exhibition. Ji-li jumps at the opportunity to participate, thinking this might help her to overcome her bad class status.
But then, Thin-Face and other members of the theater where Dad works detain him on suspicion of harboring rightist views. Soon after, a newspaper article comes out accusing the Jiangs of hoarding wealth and abusing working-class people before the Communist Revolution. Mom and Ji-li experience increasing pressure to testify against Dad at a struggle meeting. In so-called “study sessions,” Thin-Face encourages Ji-li to disown her parents. When Ji-li refuses to capitulate to his pressure, Chairman Jin kicks her out of the Exhibition.
Despite her family’s political troubles, Ji-li unexpectedly finds that she has a dependable friend in Chang Hong, a Red Guard and true believer who wants to help Ji-li rehabilitate herself—but who never suggests that she turn on her family. At Hong’s suggestion, Ji-li volunteers to go to the country for her volunteer labor assignment rather than staying in Shanghai over the summer, where she could help with family responsibilities. Though Ji-li falls ill in the country, she’s determined to stick out her time—that is, until Thin-Face calls her back to the city to undergo more pressure to turn on Dad.
Soon after Ji-li returns home, Mom and family friend Uncle Tian write a letter to the Municipal Party Committee complaining about Thin-Face’s abuse of power. But he ransacks the house before they can send it, and he discovers the letter despite Ji-li’s attempt to hide it. Afterward, he forces Mom and Grandma to publicly admit their status as landlords’ wives, officially cementing the family’s black status. Dad is sent to the country to do punitive labor, Mom tries to support the family on her income while Ji-li takes on more responsibilities, and Grandma must sweep the neighborhood streets each day, exposing her to humiliation and abuse.
In an epilogue, Ji-li looks back at her experiences during the Cultural Revolution, concluding that at the time she never gave up her faith in Mao or the Party because their propaganda brainwashed her—and almost everyone else. She only began to understand her experiences many years later. Although Dad’s name was cleared in 1980, the family continued to face limited opportunities, leading Ji-li, her parents, and her siblings all to emigrate to the United States.
