Rae Yang describes his initiation to the Red Guard by just taking a band and tying it to the arm. At one time when she was sixteen years old, and with other Red Guards peers on a forty- hour train journey to a provincial city south of Beijing, the youth got bored and decided to make tremendous changes on the train. All people onboard who are had carriages to sleep in and were not workers gave up beds to the Red Guard.
At the next train station, Rae shows how people were mistreated by the Red Guard. She gives an example of a woman who is bleeding yet a young girl strokes her. Rae expresses pity towards the woman but due to Maoist, Yang belief that violence was necessary and inevitable to have a revolution.
- Thesis Statement
- Structure and Outline
- Voice and Grammar
- Conclusion
In the next scenes, Rae narrates the shame and pain that teachers went through as pupils and students denounced their teachers (Yang 83). Students who went against the revolution were beaten. The experience of a lady who screamed Rae’s name every time she was hit whereas she was soaked in blood which covered her injuries haunted Yang for many years. The Cultural Revolution was the most painful times of the Chinese people.
The teachers who were openly denounced by students and pupils that they taught must have had a traumatizing experience. The elite group of Chinese was the most affected since, Maoist prohibited them from practicing their professions, they included the religious leaders, doctors, teachers, lawyers, and writers. The beating of citizens without a reason or the harassing of innocent passengers on a train spells the terror that people of China went through. In her statement, Yang says that the things she says during the seven months of intense Cultural Revolution have haunted her for many years.