Born Red; A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution

Gao, Yuan

ISBN 10: 0804713693 / ISBN 13: 9780804713696

Published by Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1989

About this Item

xxxii, [2], 380, [2] pages. Includes Foreword by William A. Joseph, and Preface. Topics covered include The Hold of History; Learning to Be Red and Expert; The Thirty-Six Stratagems; Hidden Messages; Ox Ghost and Snake Spirits; Winds and Waves; The Degenerate and the Worn Shoe; The Red, the Black, and the In-Between; Smashing the Four Olds; Cleaning Our Own Nest; Picking Up the Pieces; Rebels and Royalists; Going to See the Great Helmsman; Sending Off the Monsters; Defending the Mountain Devil; The Carpenter-Spy; Reply from a Socialist-Roader; On the Road; Rocks Down the Well; A Long March, by Hook or Crook; Spring Festival Visitors; The Capless Official; Smears and Skirmishes; Spring Buds; Arrival of the Cadets; The Grand Alliance; Uncommon Laughter; Victory Fish; The First Martyr; Summons by Subterfuge; Storming the Enemy Stronghold; Spies in the Marketplace; Family Skeletons; Playing with Fire; The Obstinacy of Truth; On the Run; From Victors to Vanquished; Living in Limbo; Class Brothers Take Revenge; The Radiance of the Setting Sun; Three Loyalties and Four Boundless Loves; Hostage for a Hobby; The Twelve-Force Typhoon; The Irretrievable Past; The Way Out; Postscript. Also includes Biographical Notes and Glossary. Born Red is an artistically wrought personal account, written very much from inside the experience of the years 1966-69. Gao relates how students-turned-Red Guards held mass rallies against "capitalist-roader' teachers and administrators, marching them through the streets and driving some of them to suicide. Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution is an autobiography of Gao Yuan (born 1952) and his recollection of experiences during the Cultural Revolution in China. The foreword was written by William Joseph. At the time Gao Yuan was a post-graduate student at Stanford University. Stanley Rosen of the Journal of Asian Studies said that the book was aimed at audiences broader than just specialists in China. Rosen said that the book "does not provide enough chronological detail or related political information to anchor the general reader in the larger milieu" but that the foreword, which he called "admirable", "fills in most of these gaps". Lucian W. Pye, author of a book review for The China Quarterly, wrote that Born Red "is a step-by-step, blow-by-blow account of how a bright Chinese middle-school student went about "making revolution," the name Red Guards gave their blend of high jinks and vicious cruelty." He argued that the book "is another big nail in the coffin of the once popular theory that the Cultural Revolution was a consciousness raising, idealism inspiring movement". The primary setting is Yizhen Number One Middle School in Yizhen, a county seat in Hebei. Because of its location, the central government of the People's Republic of China has indirect influence in the events documented in the book. After the military takes control of the town, Red Guards torture members of rival factions to death. Jonathan Unger, a book reviewer for The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, wrote that this was "more horrific than anything ever recounted to me during interviews with former Red Guards from Canton." The book is a recreation of a diary of Gao Jianhua, who later changed his given name to "Yuan", spanning 1966 to early 1969. According to Gao Yuan's testimony, originally the Red Guards had a noble goal in ending corruption but the movement deteriorated. At first the students at the school of Gao Jianhua (now Gao Yuan) gain the power to attack their teachers and leave school when they were not supposed to. In one portion of the story, the students, now free from school, travel around China, often while having no money. In the absence of the school's discipline, the students begin to turn on one another. Pye wrote that the "playfulness" of the movement decays into a "wanderlust of street-smart, child delinquents" who abuse others and kill defenseless people. Ultimately, out of Gao Jianhua's class of.

Seller Inventory # 81354

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Born Red; A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution
• Publisher: Stanford University Press, Stanford, California
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804713693
• ISBN 13: 9780804713696
• Binding: Trade paperback
• Edition: Unknown printing.
• Condition: Very good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Torture

About this title

Synopsis

Born Red is an artistically wrought personal account, written very much from inside the experience, of the years 1966-1969, when the author was a young teenager at middle school. It was in the middle schools that much of the fury of the Cultural Revolution and Red Guard movement was spent, and Gao was caught up in very dramatic events, which he recounts as he understood them at the time. Gao's father was a county political official who was in and out of trouble during those years, and the intense interplay between father and son and the differing perceptions and impact of the Cultural Revolution for the two generations provide both an unusual perspective and some extraordinary moving moments. He also makes deft use of traditional mythology and proverbial wisdom to link, sometimes ironically, past and present. Gao relates in vivid fashion how students-turned-Red Guards held mass rallies against 'capitalist roader' teachers and administrators, marching them through the streets to the accompaniment of chants and jeers and driving some of them to suicide. Eventually the students divided into two factions, and school and town became armed camps. Gao tells of the exhilaration that he and his comrades experienced at their initial victories, of their deepening disillusionment as they utter defeat as the tumultuous first phase of the Cultural Revolution came to a close. The portraits of the persons to whom Gao introduces us - classmates, teachers, family members - gain weight and density as the story unfolds, so that in the end we see how they all became victims of the dynamics of a mass movement out of control.

From the Back Cover

“In Born Red, Gao Youan, a former Red Guard . . . tells us what it was like to be one of Mao’s children in a provincial town four hours by train south of Peking. It is a terrible story, demonstrating that Mao and his crazed coterie were able to cripplee Chinese society for ten years, as well as cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, because they had plenty of help from the masses.”—Politics
“Gao’s moving account, which is surprisingly even-handed, viividly captures the pervasive sense of fear and uncertainty that washed over China during the tumultuous period from 1966-1969.”—Houston Chronicle