IN 1966, CHAIRMAN MAO ZEDONG launched the “Cultural Revolution” to rid China of all lingering “rightist” elements after 17 years of his Communist rule. The shock troops who initially carried it out were mainly teenagers—including girls as young as 13—known as the Red Guards. They burned religious symbols, confiscated “bourgeois” possessions (basically any nice things) and in many cases beat their own supposedly treacherous teachers with clubs, sometimes to death.
People accused of unsound views were forced to make public confessions while painfully tied up, wearing dunces’ caps and with heavy placards around their necks
