Son of the Revolution

Son of the Revolution, an autobiographical novel by Liang Heng, shows the Cultural Revolution and other Communists Campaigns in context with how the Chinese people dealt with a Mao Communist China. Liang Heng was born in 1954 in Changsha, Central China, five years after China’s Communist Revolution. Liang Heng had parents that were considered intellectuals. His Father was a newspaper reporter and his mom was a cadre with the local police. A cadre is a militant high ranking officer like person. Liang Heng is the youngest child with two older sisters with his oldest sister being in the Red Guard for some time. Liang Heng’s mother had distant family that left for Taiwan at the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. This would put a dirty stigma and social view on Liang Heng’s family for most of their lives. During the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Liang Heng’s mother was labeled a rightist because she was “asked” (forced) to say things that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were doing wrong (kind of like teacher evaluations) but it was all a dirty trick. After his mother was labeled a rightist, Liang Heng’s father separated from his mother before she went to be reeducated. When she returned home, Liang Heng’s father divorced her and forbid his children from seeing her to try and distance the family from being labeled a rightist. This would not work, as Liang Heng’s father would later be labeled as an intellectual and Liang Heng was given the stigma of an intellectual’s son, which, contrary to how it sounds, was not a good thing. Liang Heng loses his grandmother to famine during the Great Leap Forward. During the Cultural Revolution, Liang Heng’s family is split up and sent to the countryside. Liang Heng would eventually joi...

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...also sent to the countryside. They were told it was so they could learn from the peasants and teach them too but the main reason was that it saved the government money because they didn’t have to put them on an urban payroll or find them married housing. As Mao’s health started to deteriorate, China started allowing the outside world in and in 1972, Nixon came to China. In 1973, many officials were reinstated in high up jobs, like Deng Xiaoping. Three million people were finally “rehabilitated” in 1978 and had their revisionist and rightist label renounced. The urban youth who had jumped to help Mao were now at the bottom of the totem pole and were sent to the countryside where they were treated badly. The people who were denunciated lost a lot of trust in the people around them and were continually upset and hurt years later. In September of 1978, Mao Zedong died.