Author recounts cultural revolution in China

Throughout her childhood, Ji-Li Jiang idolized the man responsible for a disastrous period in Chinese history known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Like many Chinese people her age, Jiang said she was brainwashed into believing the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda about the Revolution, and revered Chairman Mao Zedong more than her own parents.

"I believed everything he said," the 54-year-old author said Thursday during a student assembly at Lake Zurich Middle School South. "We were brainwashed because we could not have information other than what the government told us."

Students, teachers and school staff have been reading Jiang's autobiography "Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution", about her middle school years in China during Zedong's rise to power.

The book reveals her family's struggle amid the national chaos as the Cultural Revolution was launched in 1966, when Jiang was 12.

The decade-long revolution attempted to stem the tide of capitalism and restore China to its socialist roots. The movement grew militant, suppressing freedoms and stifling intellectual thought. It promoted sacrificing individuality for collective good, under the guise of eliminating social class.

"I really didn't realize that these things happened so recently," said eighth-grader Anastasia Iakiviak, 14, of Lake Zurich. "I thought like Hitler, that whole thing was the end of reigning leaders. I couldn't believe that everybody worshipped a man so deeply."

Jiang said she hoped students would learn the importance of having access to information and questioning government actions from reading her book.

"I learned a lesson from the Cultural Revolution -- leaders are human beings," she said. "You should never blindly trust a leader. We give leaders power, and it's our duty to make sure they don't abuse that power."

Eighth-grader Gretchen Schmeisser, 14, of Deer Park said she could understand how children like Jiang obediently accepted what authority figures told them.

"It just comes with being young and you just believe everything adults tell you," she said.

Jiang's book was the school's first community reading project, similar to what Ela Area Public Library, Chicago and other towns have done.

Getting Jiang to speak to students was a coup for the school's parent-teacher organization. She is the first international author to visit the school, said Jack Van Noord, sixth-grade mathematics and social studies teacher.

"It's just to bring our study of world cultures to life, to get it out of the textbook and into the classroom," he said. "We wanted to tie together history, literature and current events."