Born Red; A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution

Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1989. Unknown printing. Trade paperback. Very good. 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 50 students, over 6 were killed due to injuries, murder, or suicide. Almost that number of the almost 200 teachers at Gao Jianhua's school died. At the end, according to the book, the perpetrators of the killings were expelled from the Communist Party. According to Timothy Tung, a book reviewer for The New York Times, the perpetrators "were let off easily".[9] The postscript stated that one of the leaders became a wealthy capitalist and had asked Gao Yuan to return to China "soon or you'll be left behind!" Tung concluded that "This book is the most detailed account of those difficult years I have read. Have the horrors been exaggerated? The book was written from memory and reads like a novel. One cannot help questioning the accuracy of some of the details. But incredible as the events may seem, they are believable."