Son Of The Revolution Essay, Research Paper

The struggles that Liang Heng went through in the story Son of the Revolution during the reign of Mao are an incredible story of loyalty towards political Party versus family. You can slowly see how Liang Heng s absolute loyalty towards Socialism is slowly swayed through personal trauma and strife as he slowly starts to disregard what the Party says and puts him and his family first.

During the time of the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the party urged the masses to speak out and criticize the Party s shortcomings. Liang Heng s mother was originally skeptical about speaking out but after the urging of her superiors, she decided to speak out to please the Party. She said that her Section Head sometimes used crude language and liked to criticize people, that he should give his housekeeper a bed to sleep on instead of making her sleep on the floor, and that sometimes when it came time to give raises, the leaders didn t lead to the masses opinion (page 8). The Hundred Flower Movement then suddenly switched to the Anti-Rightist Movement in which every unit was given quota to find a certain number of rightists to meet and Liang Heng s mother name was a part of her unit quota, she later found out this label was attached to her because of what she had written in The Hundred Flower Campaign. She was sent away for labor reform which was the first division of his family. This incident not on labeled Ling s mother as a rightist but his entire family. Liang Heng s father a firm Party supporter did not believe the Party could be wrong and divorced his wife and forbid his children to see their mother to try and distance themselves from her as much as possible, and clear the family name, as soon as his mother was reformed his parents divorced. Although the family cut off their ties with their mother Liang Heng and his family were permanently labeled as having a rightist mother.

Two years later his father remarried a mathematics teacher named Zhu Zhi-dao. Although they married, she was unable to receive a transfer from her small town of Shuangfeng to the larger city of Changsha; they finally had to resign to living apart from each other.

The next movement which Liang Heng s loyalty towards his family versus the Party was tested was the Cultural Revolution. Mao criticized leaders from the Central down to the local levels, accusing them of suppressing Revolutionaries and juggling black and white (page 44). During this movement, Liang Heng s father was accused of being a Capitalist newsman, opposing the Party and Socialism, opposing the revolution and using his position as a way to propagandize the Capitalist news viewpoints. Now both of Liang Heng s parents names were tarnished and this would hang over his head and make it very difficult for him to get an education, a good job along with making him an outcast among his friends and peers.

Shortly after his father received the label of a Capitalist, the Red Guards started to form a group primarily of young students, which Mao endorsed to help enforce the Cultural Revolution. Again, Liang Heng faced another horrible conflict in his life. Liang Heng s sister Liang Fang was actively involved with the Red Guard s trying to carry out Mao s wishes at the same time Liang Heng s house was subject to a search raid by the Red Guard s due to his fathers standing as a Capitalist and a stinking intellectual. Although they were there to find anything that would be considered Feudalist-Capitalist-Revisionist items they also beat Liang Heng s father, stole his salary for that month and their transistor radio. Soon the Red Guard s and the revolution started to get out of control and different bands of the Red Guards were fighting among themselves, Mao finally had call in the army to stifle the revolution that was now spiraling wildly out of control.

At about the same time cadres with problems like Liang Heng s father were offered the opportunity to attend a Chairman Mao Thought Study Class, which he could be remolded and possibly liberated. Father was overjoyed when he heard about this plan, for he was still convinced that he had committed no serious crime and was the victim of misunderstanding (page 139). His father left for his reform training soon after the announcement that Liang Heng and his two sisters at home alone to take care of themselves.

During his fathers reform Mao ordered a new directive. One of their main tasks was to put into effect Chairman Mao s call for lower and upper-middle school graduates to go up to the mountains and down to the countryside. They delivered mobilizing reports , saying that the peasants were waiting for the students warmly, that in the countryside fish could be scooped out of the flooded rice fields with a hat and wild turkeys were so numerous that they could be killed with a stick (page 142). Liang Heng s two sisters signed up excitedly to continue their work for the Party and Chairman Mao, this would leave Liang Heng at home alone to take care of himself at the young age of thirteen. The split of his the family is complete; father away at Chairman Mao Thought Study Class, Liang Fang at Jing County, and Liang Wei-ping at the Yuanjiang District near Dongting Lake. During this time Liang Heng joined a gang and learned how to live on the street. A year later Liang Heng s father returned and that put an end to his wandering the streets.

At last, father was liberated to become a pheasant. The cadres had made errors, Chairman Mao said, because they had been away from the grass roots too long. Now they were to settle in the countryside for prolonged re-education; at the same time they would help to cut off the tail of Capitalism by bringing Revolutionary knowledge and construction to the most isolated regions of China (page 161). Liang Heng and his father went off to live in Changling County in Hengyang District. This was a new lifestyle to them living in poverty with the pheasants working on a Production Team with only the barest necessities although Liang Heng father and his second wife were able to finally unite since a transfer from her small town to a barren region was readily granted. Although during this time Liang Heng had the opportunity to go back to school and quench his appetite for learning, although he was still a outcast among his peers because of his parents background. During this time, Liang Heng s loyalty to the Party started to sway as he felt the treatment to himself and his family completely unfairly.

Liang Heng was attending upper middle school, found a love for basketball, and soon became an incredible player. His talent was able to get him a good factory job since they wanted such an excellent player in the basketball league of their factory. Liang Heng was such a good player he even had a chance to play for The Provincial Sports Committee and become a professional athlete. He had only one mere formality a political test. He went to meet with the political cadre in charge of the basketball teams although was rejected due to his family s background. He went back to the factory to work and continued to read and study English.

Then in October 1977 came the startling news that entrance examinations were to be held again (page 265)! Liang Heng had the opportunity to go to college and was able to pass the entrance and physical exams. He was the only one from his factory that was accepted. I hoped the classes would be better, but in fact only a small number proved to be of much interest. Most of the time was wasted in memorizing dogma (page 269). Liang Heng soon learned that only a few classes were important putting together his own study plan making him criticized because of his low political performance.

During this time the United States and Chinese relationship strengthened and a Judy Shapiro, a young professor from the United States, allowed teaching at Liang Heng s college. He was required to submit an English essay for a school project and this brought him in contact with Judy Shapiro. Soon they started to meet on a regular basis Judy teaching him about western ways and Liang Heng helping her to understand aspects of China that everyone else had passed over out of the caution of dealings with foreigners and reluctance to speak of those years of privation and pain (page 276). This soon turned into a loving relationship. Soon talk of marriage between the two came about and Judy s cadres advised her Chinese-foreigner marriages received the party’s permission, they were ecstatic but easier said than done. Liang Heng s department leaders were adamant that this marriage should not happen. Liang Heng had not taken Judy to meet his parents and this could be disastrous, as I had not taken Judy to meet my mother. According to custom, I should have introduced to them, but I had been reluctant to frighten mother with the news that I was involved with a foreigner (page 279). He was able to persuade his parents to approve but the college officials found a rule that forbids student marriages, the only possible solution was for Liang Heng to drop out of school. But as a last desperate gesture, Judy wrote an impassion letter to the highest leaders in Peking, including those at the Ministry of Higher Education and the Peking Foreign Expert s Bureau. As an afterthought, we also addressed a copy of the letter to Deng Xia-ping, Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (page 284). Astounded the party approved the marriage and they where marry! They had a very grand wedding arranged by the Foreign Affairs Office and after finishing his education at Hunan Teacher s College. Liang Heng taught middle school for a short time in Zhuzhou before moving with Judy Shapiro to the United States so he could enter graduate school.

One of the most startling things in this book is the absolute destruction and terror China s people and Liang Heng had to live through during the reign of Mao. This time in China s history required you to have absolute loyalty towards the Party and even though the Party is very corrupt and often unfair with self seeking political leaders and Mao a senile, crazy leader leading movements forward that often ruined families and killed millions. Ling Heng s story is one of millions in this time in China. Luckily, there were enough people from this time like Liang Heng who became a free thinker and took risks to change the Party s policies within China.

Work Cited

Liang Heng and Judy Shapiro. Son of the Revolution. Random House. Inc Alferd A. Knopf, 1983.