Personal Experiences

Gui Lee's Personal Experience:

After researching about the cultural Revolution, I got an opportunity to interview a person who got to experience what the Cultural Revolution was. She was a school teacher, until the Cultural Revolution was launched and all the school teachers were replaced by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. After being replaced she became the janitor of the school She continued to work as a janitor throughought the duration of the Cultural Revolution, because if she told people she was a school teacher the Red Guards would have most likely would have transferred to a communal farm.
Note: There is no personal opinions on the Cultural Revolution from the interviewee.


Jiang Ji Li's Personal Experience:

Jiang Ji Li was a very smart kid in school, had excellent grades and was well liked among her teachers. She had many hopes for a bright future, such as attending a prestigious college in China, however when the Cultural Revolution was launched by chairman Mao, her world started to crumble. It all started when a someone from the Central Liberation Army Arts Academy wanted to test her flexibility and asked her how high can she lift her leg, then asked her to bend backwards as far as she could. She successfully did since she studied martial arts since the second grade, so she was invited to audition for the Central Liberation Army Arts Academy. However the auditions were hyper competitive and were hard to get into, and impossible to get into if you didn't have a high class status. Which Jiang Ji Li's family did not have. Since she wasn't able to audition some classmates found out about her terrible class status. Shortly after this situation, chairman Mao launched a campaign "Destroy the Fourolds", which was a campaign that promoted getting rid of old ideas, culture, and habits. The fourolds was considered harmful to the modern socialist society. Which her parents did not agree with that campaign, since they had different political backgrounds. Having a different political background was strongly looked down upon during the Cultural Revolution. Fourold stores were taken down and replaced with a red flags indicating government property. As of for schools, teachers were removed and replaced by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Students were forced to paint da-zi-baos (大字報) about teachers at the school. Da-zi-baos were posters used to insult and criticize, and humiliate people. Students were forced to hang them up around school and bourgeois homes. Bourgeois people were considered people who liked living the luxurious life of a capitalist. From Jiang Ji Li's experience she talked about how she remembered having to go to her aunts house with a group of kids to hang up a da-zi-bao on her door and force her to read her insult out loud. A day later a da-zi-bao went up about her relationship between a teacher. The da-zi-bao quoted “let’s look at the relationship between Ke Cheng Li and his favorite student Jiang Ji Li. Ke Cheng Li doesn’t like working class kids he only likes rich kids. He Jiang Ji Li the teacher assistant for math and gave her the higher grades and also let her win all the math contests and awarded her a lot of note books. We have a question to ask, what is the relationship between them after all?”. The humiliation was so bad that Jiang Ji Li got sick and had to stay home for awhile. However by the time she went back to school class resumed but instead of learning the standard, math, science, english, they had to learn documents and directives created by chairman Mao. By This time Red guards were everywhere after the Central Committee announced that Red guards could travel for free to other provinces to establish revolutionary ties with other Red Guards. 10 people from each class would be elected for that opportunity. Jiang Ji Li was on that election until she was asked for her class status and a classmate yelled out that her grandfather was a landlord and her dad was a rightist. Which being a landlord was looked down upon during that time because they were known for exploiting people who didn’t pay the rent; which was a crime. From then on she was humiliated by the classmates who were elected as red guards. Always having a target on her back by the red guards, her family became under attention for being disloyal to chairman Mao for having a different political view, her dad eventually was detained and under lots of struggle meetings. Jiang Ji Li was pressured into saying her dad was a rightist but she refused so the Red Guards destroyed their property, and took away almost all their things, and threatened them. The red guards shared this family situation with her entire class. Encouraged to clean up the family situation she acquiescently did summer labor.
Nothing was revealed on whatever happened to her parents, and grandparents during the rest of the duration of the Cultural Revolution.