Red Flower of China: An Autobiography

By Zhai Zhenhua

"The Cultural Revolution had transformed me into a devil," writes Zhai. In 1966, at age 15, she led a Red Guard brigade that tortured Chinese citizens branded counterrevolutionaries. She beat innocent people to death and had others exiled; her squad raided homes and murdered people. Now a professor of engineering in British Columbia, Zhai expresses remorse and guilt rather perfunctorily, and her cool confession is tinged with rationalizations. She blames the flourishing of her "evil, barbaric side" on her blind faith in Chairman Mao. Her fervor gave way to bitter disillusionment when she herself was banished to the countryside in 1969 to do three years of hard labor and be "re-educated" by peasants. This is a grisly account of how political brainwashing can induce converts to commit monstrous acts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9781569479254

Reviews for Red Flower of China

[theampersand · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I can't say I knew very much at all about China's Cultural Revolution before picking this one up. Readers looking to understand this phenomenon from a historical perspective should probably look elsewhere: "Red Flower of China" isn't a history , it's a personal narrative, almost a sort of chronicle. The author doesn't really make moral judgments about her participation in the events she describes here, and doesn't really question the motivations for the actions she took. But these limitations might be the reason I found "Red Flower of China" interesting: it's a Chinese history from a purely Chinese perspective and a straightforward account of what it's like to grow up in a society where individualism and personal freedom are criticized instead of lauded. The author didn't know much about the West when she was young and had little curiosity about it. She's a pure product of China's communist system. For all its faults, "Red Flower of China" provides an revealing insider's account of what it was like to grow up under China's communist system in the middle of the twentieth century. What it lacks in profundity it makes up for in immediacy. Reading this book, you the sense that the rigid feudal system that Chinese Communism was supposed to overthrow had changed little: most people had little control over their lives, a rigidly defined party hierarchy defined people's existence, people's family histories often determined their futures, loyalty and obedience to authority were valued above all else, and graft, clientelism, and nepotism were commonplace. Rural peasants lived lives defined by unimaginable poverty and ceaseless work. Zhenhua's young life is punctuated by endless government initiatives, campaigns, slogans, and initiatives. Some of these slogans and philosophies seem to have drilled right into the brain almost since birth It's not surprising, then that questioning the party line and reconciling the corruption she witnesses with the political beliefs that had been inculcated in her since childhood causes her a great deal of emotional anguish. Her ability to recognize the contradictions and unfulfilled promises of the system in which she lives are, in a sense, an essential part of her moving into adulthood. And the author did grow up fast: there's a lot of trauma packed into a short time period here By the time she was eighteen, the author had denounced her teachers, beaten her neighbors, abandoned her studies, spent two years doing backbreaking labor side by side with Chinese peasants both in fields and in factories, and managed to find herself a place at a university. "Red Flower of China" sometimes plays out as a kind of real-life Dickensian nightmare in which the young rebel wholesale against the elders and recklessly smash the system to bits. While the author doesn't really examine her reasons for participating in the events she describes, she's quite aware of the social and psychological damage they caused to an entire generation of Chinese young people. I can't really recommend this book to readers with a general interest in Chinese history, but readers with a specific interest in this period, or those who like unusual memoirs, may get a lot out of it. I'll finish this review up with a warning: the Open Road Media e-book copy that I read is absolutely overflowing with OCR and formatting errors. If you're bothered by this sort of thing, find a paper copy.