"When I first saw a Red Guard remove her canvas belt to beat her victim and...his clothes tear and blood appear on his skin, I was afraid. I was not the most bloodthirsty person in the world....However, I was a Red Guard leader and a member of my school's Revolutionary Committee....If by beating these people....I could prove my valour in the class struggle, I would do it. Thus, when that Red Guard left off, I removed my belt and learned to beat like her....After a few beatings, I no longer needed to rehearse the rationale behind them. My heart hardened and l became used to the blood. I waved my belt like an automaton and whipped with an empty mind....The Cultural Revolution had transformed me into a devil." So writes Zhai Zhenhua in Red Flower of China, a brutally honest portrait of the Cultural Revolution, as told by someone who was not only a witness to this dramatic period of history, but was also a participant in it. Zhai Zhenhua was born in 1951, two years after the Communist Party took over China. Her parents were revolutionary supporters of Chairman Mao, and she was schooled in political correctness and party loyalty. But 1966 brought the Cultural Revolution, and fifteen-year-old Zhenhua was swept up by the events taking place around her. She joined the Red Guard, led raids on homes, and cold-bloodedly beat her fellow citizens. Soon, however, the Red Guard also fell into disfavour. Zhai was purged and sent to one of the most destitute regions of China to do back-breaking work and be re-educated before becoming one of a handful of students selected to attend university. Zhai Zhenhua does not minimize her role in the excesses of the times. Red Flower of China is an intensely personal account of her eventful early life and of acts which still torture her conscience.

Red Flower of China: An Autobiography

Zhenhua, Zhai

Literature & Fiction

Soho Pr Inc

"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.

Soho Press

Red Flower of China : An Autobiography

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Turnerbooks

Red Flower of China

Lester Pub Ltd

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