The Red Guards piled the books and paintings and burned them. Terrified of severe punishment, the old man handed over his collection of books and paintings before those young people, including his own grandsons, would find them. One of the first targets was Lishui’s grandfather’s house. Their first step was to search people’s houses and confiscate any property that fit any of these broad categories it could be a traditional painting, or a table. One day, the Red Guards received a “high command” that they should clean away all the “Four Olds” - old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. His younger siblings did not need to attend school. There was less work to do at Lishui’s village production team, because so much time was spent on political activities. “It’s like being pushed by a flood,” he said. There was also an intitial attraction to the position. He soon joined them, for reasons he could not articulate clearly. Not long after, Lishui told me, he found that almost every young person around him had become a Red Guard. “What’s that?” Wang’s young brothers and sisters asked. One night not long after the announcement, when Lishui’s father was putting on a shadow play under candlelight for his younger children, Lishui’s heard the sound of drum, gongs, and voices, chanting, “Down with the landlords and their bastards!” Meanwhile, the last several years have seen a wave of public and in-person apologies from individuals who used to be Red Guards, the young enforcers of Mao’s insane vision.) (In June 1981, the party passed the “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China,” which described the Cultural Revolution as a “mistake.” That was the closest the party has ever come to apologizing. Most confusing to me is the fact that my kind and honest uncle says he doesn’t regret a single thing he did - not even today, when the Cultural Revolution is widely acknowledged both outside and within China as a massive historical mistake. The more I think about Lishui, the more I am confused by the fact that he was a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution, a movement from 1966-1976 led by then-ruler Mao Zedong that caused great upheaval and pain among China’s people. They are a group of counterrevolutionary revisionists and they are waiting for the right moment to seize power.” He told me he heard a government announcement on the village loudspeaker: “Some representatives of the Bourgeoisie have creeped into our party, our government, our military, and our cultural departments. Lishui’s story began in in May 1966, when he was 18 years old. I also spoke with other family members about their recollections of Lishui and the Cultural Revolution that shaped him. Meanwhile, the last several years have seen a wave of public and in-person apologies from individuals who used to be Red Guards, the young enforcers of Mao’s insane vision.)įor this article, I spoke with Lishui about his experience as a Red Guard on two occasions, once in April and once in November 2015. (In June 1981, the party passed the “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China,” which described the Cultural Revolution as a "mistake." That was the closest the party has ever come to apologizing. Whenever people talk about Lishui, my mother’s older brother, they always say: “Lishui is a nice guy, honest, always in a good mood.” As a young child, when I heard him coming to visit, I would rush out of the house, climb onto his shoulders, and pull his ears. Lishui is the nickname for my uncle, a farmer who has lived all his life in the suburbs of Tianjin, a big city in northeastern China.
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