Red Scarf Girl

I was born on Chinese New Year.

Carefully, my parents chose my name: Ji-li, meaning lucky and beautiful. They hoped I would be the happiest girl in the world.

I was happy because I was always loved and respected. I was proud because I was able to excel and always expected to succeed. I was trusting, too. I never doubted what I was told: “Heaven and earth are great, but greater still is the kindness of the Communist Party; father and mother are dear, but dearer still is Chairman Mao.”

Song Po-po told us that our extended family used to occupy two whole buildings, ten rooms all together. “Then they all moved away, and only your family and your Fourth Aunt’s family were left. Your family only has one room now. It’s just too bad.” She shook her head sadly.

But I didn’t feel that way at all. I loved our top floor room. […] Our room was ten times as big as many of my classmates’ homes, and a hundred times brighter. Best of all, we had a private bathroom, a full-sized room with a sink, a toilet, and a tub. It was almost as large as some families’ entire homes. Many did not have a bathroom at all, or even a flush toilet, and very few had a full-size bathroom that they did not have to share with other families.

“My father’s class status…?” I did not see what Du Hai meant at first. “You mean what did my grandfather do? I don’t know. I only know that he died when my father was seven.”

There was a trace of a grin on Du Hai’s face. He stood up lazily and faced the class.

“I know what her grandfather was.” He paused dramatically, sweeping his eyes across the class. “He was a—LANDLORD.”

“Landlord!” The whole class erupted.

“What’s more, her father is a—RIGHTIST.”

“Rightist!” the class was in pandemonium.

I was numb. Landlord! One of the bloodsuckers who exploited the farmers! The number-one enemies, the worst of the “Five Black Categories,” even worse than criminals, or counterrevolutionaries! My grandfather? And Dad, a rightist? One of the reactionary intellectuals who attacked the Party and socialism? No, I could not believe it.

“It seems terrible to just cut them all up. Why don’t we just give them to the theater or to the Red Guards?” Ji-yun held a gown up in front of her. She was imagining what it would be like to wear it, I knew.

“The theater doesn’t need them, and it’s too late to turn them in now. The Red Guards would say that we were hiding them and waiting for New China to fall. Besides, even if we did turn them in, the Red Guards would just burn them anyway.” Grandma looked at me and shook her head as she picked up her scissors. “I just couldn’t bear to sell them,” she said sadly. “Even when your father was in college and we needed the money.” She picked up a lovely gold-patterned robe and said softly, “This was a government official’s uniform. I remember my grandfather wearing it.”

I sat on our usual bench […] staring at the fleecy white clouds. […]

In the three months since the Cultural Revolution had started, changes had been so constant that I often felt lost. One day the Conservative faction were revolutionaries that defended Chairman Mao’s ideas; the next day, the opposite Rebel faction became the heroes of the Cultural Revolution. I heard that even Chairman of the Nation Liu Shao-qi and General Secretary Deng Xiao-ping were having problems. […]

I wondered what I would be doing if I had been born into a red family […] I hated my grandfather [… but] I did know if I could hate Grandma if she was officially classed as a landlord’s wife. The harder I tried to figure things out, the more confused I felt. I wished I had been born into a red family so I could do my revolutionary duties without worrying.

One by one I picked up all the clothes, folded them, and put them away. I picked up one of Dad’s white shirts and suddenly flushed with embarrassment and anger. My sanitary belt! It was lying on the floor, not even covered by its blue plastic bag. […]

This, of all things, was private. It was a girl’s secret. I never even let Dad or Ji-yong see it. […] Now one of those Red Guards, probably a boy, had looked at it—had held it! I felt as if I had been stripped naked in public.

[…] Wasn’t a home a private place? A place where the family could feel secure? How could strangers come through and search through our secrets? If Grandpa was a landlord, they could confiscate all his things. But I was not a landlord. Why did they have to search through my things?

I had just read an article in the paper. It told of a “historical counterrevolutionary,” who, as a local official before Liberation had killed two Communist guerrillas. The paper explained that because he had confessed and had a positive attitude, he was pardoned. Meanwhile, an “active counterrevolutionary” was convicted of slandering the Red Guards. He refused to confess and was imprisoned.

So this was their policy of psychological pressure. No wonder Uncle Fan thought he should confess to something he had not done. Had he confessed to listening to foreign broadcasts? If he had, why hadn’t he been treated with leniency? Why had he been detained? I could not figure it out.

“You saw your father. He is being remolded through labor. We have evidence that he has committed a serious counterrevolutionary crime.” He paused and fixed me with his eyes. “But he is very stubborn and refuses to confess. And your mother. Humph. She’s another despicable thing!”

“She’s not a thing, she’s a human being,” I wanted to scream, but I knew that I should not provoke him. He could have me arrested, he could never let me see Dad again, he could beat Dad…. I stared at the table.

“You are different from your parents. You were born and raised in New China. You are a child of Chairman Mao. You can choose your own destiny: You can make a clean break with your parents and follow Chairman Mao, and have a bright future; or you can follow your parents and then…you will not come to a good end.”

The woman from the theater spoke. “It’s really not such a hard thing to do. The key is your class stance. The daughter of our former Party Secretary resolved to make a clean break with her mother. When she went onstage to condemn her mother, she actually slapped her face. Of course, we don’t mean that you have to slap your father’s face. The point is that as long as you have the correct class stance, it will be easy to testify.” Her voice grated on my ears.

“There is something you can do to prove you are truly Chairman Mao’s child.” Thin-Face spoke again. “I am sure you can tell us some things your father said and did that showed his landlord and rightist mentality.” I stared at the table, but I could feel his eyes boring into me. “What can you tell us?”

The letter complained about the situation in the theater. The faction in power, the Rebels, did whatever they wanted, ignoring the policy directives from the Central Committee of the Party, the letter said. They treated people with nonpolitical problems, like Aunt Wu, as class enemies, and they had humiliated her, shaving half her head in a yin-yang hairdo. They frequently beat their prisoners and had already beaten two to death. They even recorded the screams and moans of the prisoners being tortured, and played the tapes to frighten other prisoners under interrogation.

“We urgently hope,” the letter concluded, “that the Municipal Party Committee will investigate this situation and correct it before it is too late.” The letter was signed, “The Revolutionary Masses.”

The cry jerked out before I knew it. […] “I will take care of both of them. I promise.” As soon as I said it, I realized that I had made my promise to them—to everyone in my family—long ago. I had promised during the days that Grandma and I had hidden in the park; I had promised when I had not testified against Dad; I had promised when I had hidden the letter. I would never do anything to hurt my family, and I would do everything I could to take care of them. My family was too precious to forget and too rare to replace.