Red Guards Whole Story 268 - 275
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THE RED GUARDS
By Ji-li Jiang
In the following excerpt, Ji-li Jiang is 12 years old, and the Cultural Revolution is underway. At first a loyal follower of Chairman Mao, Ji-li's perspective changes after her late grandfather's status as a wealthy landlord becomes known. Mao's government considers landlords and their families possible enemies of the people. Now classified by the Red Guards as having "suspicious status," the Jiang family lives in fear.
The Cultural Revolution was a chaotic mass movement in the People’s Republic of China. Mao Zedong launched it in 1966, claiming that elitists were undermining the government and Chinese society.
The red guards were people who came into your house and take prize possessions if you were rich. They were mostly female.
The Red guards were a group of teenagers (mostly female) that were in the Chinese army. They would use neighborhood parties to help them find any signs of wealthiness. If you are on the black list, you may be at risk of the red guards coming into your house and searching through all of your drawers, cabinets, etc. to find anything that signified wealthiness, such as jewelry, money, fur coats, or pictures with expensive items.
This connects to me because we are in the age range.
The Cultural Revolution was a mass movement That a Ruler Mao Zedong launched in 1966.n He wanted to make every person that lived there be equal to everybody else
The Red Guards were teenagers that worked in the military. They were legally aloud to come into anybody’s house and take all there priceless/valuable ideas out of your house such as money, fur coats,jewelry, and pictures
ji-li-jiang is the author
this paragraph connects to paragraph one because it describes the main idea
the author and the main character are connections
Hello!
Red Guards
Mom got home from work that evening looking nervous. She whispered to Dad and Grandma, and as soon as we finished dinner, she told us to go outside and play.
The connection is in paragraph 4 Mom was nervous, and in paragraph 64 the red guards came which is why Mom was nervous.
Paragraphs 4 & 12 are connected because they talk about sending the kids outside so their parents could burn the old fourfolds such as pictures.
Hello!
Hello!
Their mom tells them to go outside and play because they needed to talk
about the cultural revolution, and they did not want the kids to hear them because if the red guards came to search their house, the kids may tell them about anything they had that signified wealthiness.
the connection of paragraph 64 and 4 is that in paragraph 4 mom is nervous than in 64 it tells you why mom is so nervous. she is nervous because the red guards are coming.
When they told the kids to go outside and play it might have been because they needed to talk about burning the fourolds and the red guards
When they told the kids to go outside and play it might have been because they needed to talk about burning the fourolds and the red guards
"We have something to take care of," she said. I knew this had something to do with the Cultural Revolution. I wished she would just say so. We were too old to be fooled like little children. But I didn't say anything and went outside with the others. O
Hello!
When Ji-li’s mother told her and the other children to go outside, she knew it had something to do with the Cultural Revolution. Her mom asking her to go outside was a symbol to her that her mother father and grandma were going to talk about the Cultural Revolution.
what does the O mean?
When it was nearly dark, Ji-yun and I went back home, leaving Ji-yong with his friends.
10 As we entered the apartment, I smelled smoke, acrid and choking. I looked around in alarm. But Grandma was sitting alone in the main room, showing no sign of worry.
a strong or unpleasant smell
having an irritatingly strong and unpleasant taste or smell.
!Acrid
It means an unpleasant taste or smell.
something that reminded you of who was in charge before the cultural revolution, such as old customs,old culture, old habits, old ideas
Hello!
The definition of acrid is a weird taste or smell. You can smell smokey if you have been in the smoke and it is attached to your clothing, so it makes the person smell like it.
Hello!
maybe you smell sick
a weird smell or taste
what does the word acrid mean?
What does acrid mean
When it said that she walked in and chocked from the smell it was caused and showed because of when they talked about the pictures and how the red guards cant see it
why was the smell of the smoke so bad and they couldn’t breathe.
what does acrid mean
She didn’t have a choice to be okay with it or not because if she said something hat the red guards didn’t like they can kill her,or take her away from her family.So really didn’t have choice.
"Grandma, is there a fire?" we shouted anxiously. "Don't you smell the smoke? "
1. Ji-yun (jé-yün) Ji-yong (jé-yöng): the author's younger sister and brother.
268
"Hush, hush!" Grandma pulled us to her quickly. "It's nothing. They're just burning some pictures." We looked puzzled. "Your mother heard today that photos of people in old-fashioned long gowns and mandarin jackets are considered fourolds.2 So your parents are burning them in the bathroom." o "Can we go watch?" I loved looking at pictures, especially pictures of all those uncles and aunts I had never met.
Mandarin Jacket?
Hello!
The parents burning the pictures is a sign of symbolism because they are nervous because they don’t want to get caught with the pictures and be considered fourolds.
I think this part is important because its showing what the family is doing so the Red Guards doing get them or their family.
Grandma shook her head. I winked at Ji-yun, and we both threw ourselves into her arms, begging and pleading. As always, she gave in, and went to the bathroom door to ask Mom and Dad.
Mom opened the door a crack and let us in.
The bathroom was filled with thick smoke that burned our eyes and made us cough. Dad passed us a glass of water. "We can't open the window any wider," he said. "The neighbors might notice the smoke and report us.
why would people report them for burning pictures
30 Mom and Dad were sitting on small wooden stools. On the floor was a tin washbowl full of ashes and a few pictures disappearing into flames. At Dad's side was a stack of old photo albums, their black covers stained and faded with age. Dad was looking through the albums, page by page, tearing out any pictures that might be fourolds. He put them in a pile next to Mom, who put them into the fire.
The pictures are important because they have all of there aunts and uncles that they don’t know of.
Stack of old photo albums is a symbol because it is a symbol of what they did in their childhood and their old family members that has passed.
Fourolds are old ideas, old customs, old culture, and old habits- these were forbidden in the Cultural Revolution at this time.
I picked up one of the pictures. It was of Dad, sitting on a camel, when he was about six or seven years old. He was wearing a wool hat and pants with suspenders, and he was laughing. Grandma, looking very young and beautiful and wearing a fur coat, was standing beside him.
40 "Mom, this one doesn't have long gowns or anything," Ji-yun said.
"Can't we keep it?”
"The Red Guards might say that only a rich child could ride a camel. And besides, Grandma's wearing a fur coat." She threw it into the fire.
Mom was right, I thought. A picture like that was fourolds.
What does fourold mean?
The flames licked around the edges of the picture. The corners curled up, then turned brown. The brown spread quickly toward the center, swallowing Grandma, then the camel, and finally Dad's woolen hat.
the picture of grandma and the picture of dad not the actual grandma and dad
what does it mean by licked around the edges
The flames “licked” around the edges means that the flames started to go on the sides of the picture continuing to the middle.
Picture after picture was thrown into the fire. Each in turn curled, melted, and disappeared. The ashes in the washbowl grew deeper. Finally
wouldn’t the fire just spread and burn it why would they throw the pictures into the fire
The pictures represented things that the Red Guards didn’t believe in because they represented freedom and no one needed to be treated bad like a slave.
Why were they burning all of those pictures
50 there were no more pictures left. Mom poured the ashes into the toilet and flushed them away.
Won’t their toilet clog.
It doesn’t seem like their toilet would clog, its just ashes of paper.
They flushed the ashes away losing hope and to pray for help and ancient prayers. It symbolized others dead body in the Cultural Revolution and how they wish the war was over.
That night I dreamed that the house was on fire. .
2. mandarin jackets fourolds: Mandarin jackets are fancy jackets with narrow, stand-up collars. They were one of the ”four-olds" - old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits – that were forbidden during the Cultural Revolution.
270
Early in the morning Song Po-po3 rushed upstairs to tell us the news.
All the neighbors were saying that a knife had been found in the communal4 garbage bin. The Neighborhood Dictatorship Group had declared this to be an illegal weapon, so the entire bin had been searched and some incompletely burned pictures found. In one of them they recognized my Fourth Aunt.5 Because my Fourth Uncle had fled to
Hong Kong right before Liberation, her family was on the Neighborhood
60 party Committee's list of black families.6 The weapon was automatically associated with the pictures, and that was enough for Six-Fingers7 to report to the powerful Neighborhood Party Committee.8
I don’t get what a “black” family is when there was no black people in China.
Dictatorship?
What is a black family?
Who is six fingers
All day we were terrified. Grandma and the three of us went to the park immediately after breakfast. This time none of us wanted to play. We just sat together on Grandma's bench.
"Will the Red Guards come?" Ji-yun asked.
"Maybe they will, sweetie," Grandma answered. "We just don't know."
She took out her knitting. I tried to to do the same, but I kept finding myself staring into space with no idea of where I was in the pattern. Ji-yun
70 and Ji-yong ran off to play but always came back to the bench after a few minutes. At four o'clock Grandma sent me to see if anything was happening at home.
I cautiously walked into the alley, alert for anything unusual, but there was no sound of drums or gongs or noise at all.
The mop was still on the balcony.9 I looked into our lane.
There were no trucks.
Everything seemed calm, and I told Grandma it was safe to go home.
A gong is an East and Southeast Asian musical percussion instrument that takes the form of a flat, circular metal disc which is hit with a mallet.
Hello!
Many people think that the mop is a symbol, but it’s not. The mop was basically a code back then. If the mop was on your balcony, that meant that it was safe to go home and enter that house. If the mop was NOT on the balcony, that meant that the home was NOT safe to enter and that the Red Guards were inside or near.
Mom and Dad both came home earlier than usual. Dinner was short and nearly silent. Soon after dinner we turned the lights off and got into bed, hoping that the day would end peacefully after all. I lay for a long
80 while without sleeping but finally drifted into a restless doze. When I heard pounding on the door downstairs, I was not sure whether it was real or a dream.
It was real.
I heard my cousin You-mei ask bravely, "Who's there?"
- Song PO-po (song pö-pÖ): Jiang family's downstairs neighbor, friend, and former housekeeper.
- communal: used by everyone in the building.
- Fourth Aunt: Ji-li Jiang's aunt. "Fourth" means the fourth child born to the parents.
- Because my. . . black families: The author's uncle had gone to Hong Kong (at that time independent from China) just before Chairman Mao established his government. Because of this, the Communist Party officers in charge of the neighborhood listed the family as opponents of Communism.
- Six-Fingers: the nickname for Mr. Ni, chairman of the Neighborhood Dictatorship Group, who had six fingers on one of his hands.
- Neighborhood Party Committee: the Communist Party officers in charge of a neighborhood.
- The mop . . . balcony: a signal used by the Jiangs to indicate to family members returning home that the Red Guards were not in the house.
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Six-Fingers's voice replied, "The Red Guards. They're here to search your house. Open up!"
They rushed into Fourth Aunt's apartment downstairs.
At first we could not hear much. Then we heard more: doors slamming, a cry from Hua-hua,10 crash after crash of dishes breaking 90 overhead, and the indistinct voices of the Red Guards.
By this time we were all awake, but no one turned on a light or said anything. We all lay and held our breaths and listened, trying to determine what was going on downstairs. No one even dared to turn over. My whole body was tense. Every sound from my Fourth Aunt's room made me stiffen with dread.
Thirty minutes passed, then an hour. In spite of the fear I began to feel sleepy again.
I was jolted awake by shouts and thunderous knocks. Someone was shouting Dad's name. "Jiang Xi-reng!!! Get up! Jiang Xi-reng! "
Why were they knocking so hard on the door
Hello!
-
- Hua-hua (hwä-hwä): You-mei's daughter; Fourth Aunt's granddaughter.
- Jiang Xi-reng (jyäng shé-réng): Ji-li's father, like other people in China, is called by his surname first.
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100 Dad went to the door. "What do you want? "
Why would he say that to the red guards?(it sounds mean)
"Open up! " Six-Fingers shouted. "This is a search in passing! The Red
Guards are going to search your home in passing."
what does passing mean.
why did they have to come in? Why didn’t they believe Jiang Xi-reng?
They don’t believe him because they really don’t believe anyone when it comes to hearing valuables in someones house so they check the house anyways.
We often asked somebody to buy something in passing or get information in passing, but I had never heard of searching a house in passing.
Dad opened the door.
The first one in was Six-Fingers, wearing an undershirt and dirty blue shorts and flip-flops. Behind him were about a dozen teenaged Red Guards. Though the weather was still quite warm, they all wore tightly belted army uniforms. Their leader was a zealous, loud-voiced girl with
Zealous?
110 short hair and large eyes.
"What's your relationship with the Jiangs living downstairs?" the girl yelled, her hand aggressively on her hip.
"He is her brother-in-law," Six-Fingers answered before Dad could open his mouth.”
"Oh, so you're a close relative," she said, as if she only now realized that. Leniency for confession, severity for resistance! Hand over your weapons now, or we will be forced to search the house." She stood up straight and stared at Dad.
Leniency?
what does leniency mean?
what does Leniency mean?
"What weapons?" Dad asked calmly. "We have no—"
120 "Search!" She cut Dad off with a shouted order and shoved him aside. At the wave of her arm the Red Guards behind her stormed in. Without speaking to each other, they split into three groups and charged toward our drawers, cabinets, and chests. The floor was instantly strewn with their contents.
They demanded that Mom and Dad open anything that was locked, while we children sat on our beds, staring in paralyzed fascination. To my surprise, it was not as frightening as I had imagined through the weeks of waiting. Only Little White1 was panicked by the crowd and the noise.
She scurried among the open chests until she was kicked by a Red Guard.
130 Then she ran up into the attic and did not come down.
I watched one boy going through the wardrobe. He took each piece of clothing off its hanger and threw it onto the floor behind him. He went carefully through a drawer and unrolled the neatly paired socks, tossing them over his shoulder one by one.
I turned my head and saw another boy opening my desk drawer. He swept his hand through it and jumbled everything together before removing the drawer and turning it upside down on the floor. Before he could examine the contents, another one called him away to help move a chest.
- Little White – The family cat
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140 All my treasures were scattered on the floor. The butterfly fell out of its glass box; one wing was crushed under a bottle of glass beads. My collection of candy wrappers had fallen out of their notebook and were crumpled under my stamp album.
the butterfly shows symbolization as freedom
The butterfly is a symbol because it has been with Ji-li Jiang since back in the day and it showed their freedom.
the birds wing breaking is a symbol of loosing freedom like the butterfly lost flight
Her candy were important because she had so many of her favorite candy so she can remember her favorite candy’s as a kid.
The candy wrappers could have meant that the wrappers were like a cage or something stopping them from doing things. That means that the people during the cultural revolution couldn’t do everything they wanted.
My stamp album! It had been a birthday gift from Grandma when I started school, and it was my dearest treasure. For six years I had been getting canceled stamps from my friends, carefully soaking them to get every bit of envelope paper off. I had collected them one by one until I had complete sets. I had even bought some inexpensive sets with my own allowance. I loved my collection, even though I knew I should not. With
One connection was the stamp book because during the cultural revolution the Red Guards didn’t like people to have things from other countries. Also,the stamp collection took six years to make.
I chose the stamp Album because it was a gift from her grandma with stamps from all around the world
The stamp album is a symbol and is important because it had stamps from all around the world and they weren’t allowed to travel.
One connection in the story that leads to a bigger concept is Ji-li Jiang’s stamp collection. This is a connection because the stamp collection was very important to her and she risked her life to save the stamp album. She has been working on this stamp album for six years, and that stamp album was what made her get up from her bed to protect it from the Red Guards.
150 the start of the Cultural Revolution all the stamp shops were closed down, because stamp collecting was considered bourgeois. Now I just knew something terrible was going to happen to it.
what does bourgeois?
I looked at the Red Guards. They were still busy moving the chest. I slipped off the bed and tiptoed across the room. If I could hide it before they saw me . . . I stooped down and reached for the book.
"Hey, what are you doing?" a voice demanded. I spun around in alarm.
It was the Red Guard leader.
I didn't do anything," I said guiltily, my eyes straying toward the stamp album.
160 "A stamp album." She picked it up. "Is this yours?"
Hello!
Hello!
I nodded fearfully.
"You've got a lot of fourolds for a kid," she sneered as she flipped through it. "Foreign stamps too," she remarked. "You little xenophile." 14 "I . . . I'm not . . ." I blushed as I fumbled for words.
Xenophile?
Hello!
what does xenophile mean?
Hello!
The girl looked at Ji-yong and Ji-yun, who were still sitting on their beds, watching, and she turned to another Red Guard. "Get the kids into the bathroom so they don't get in the way of the revolution." She threw the stamp album casually into the bag of things to be confiscated and went back downstairs. She didn't even look at me.
170 Inside the bathroom we could still hear the banging of furniture and the shouting of the Red Guards. Ji-yun lay with her head in my lap, quietly sobbing, and Ji-yong sat in silence.
After a long time the noise died down. Dad opened the bathroom door, and we fearfully came out.
The apartment was a mess. The middle of the floor was strewn with the contents of the overturned chests and drawers. Half of the clothes had been taken away. The rest were scattered on the floor along with some old
- bourgeois (bör-zhwä'): related to members of the middle class—that is, to people like merchants or professionals. Those labeled bourgeois were considered suspicious by the Communist Party.
- xenophile (zén'e-fil'): person who loves foreigners and foreign objects.
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copper coins. The chests themselves had been thrown on top of each other when the Red Guards decided to check the walls for holes where weapons
180 could be hidden. Grandma's German clock lay upside down on the floor with the little door on its back torn off.
I looked for my things. The wing of the butterfly had been completely knocked off the body. The bottle holding the glass beads had smashed, and beads were rolling all over the floor. The trampled candy wrappers looked like trash.
There was a connection between Ji-Li and her butterfly. She felt like her freedom was taken away from her, just like the butterfly.
Hello!
Hello!
why is it wrappers and not rappers
And the stamp album was gone forever.
275
Interview with Ji-li Jiang
Why did you write Red Scarf Girl for young people instead of adults?
In 1984 1 moved to the States. The first year, I lived with an American family. They were very interested in my life in China. Using my limited English, I shared some of my stories with them. One day they gave me a present, a book, The Diary of Anne Frank. Inside they wrote: "In the hope that one day we will read the diary of Ji-li Jiange" Of course, I was very moved by the story, and also, I was inspired to write my own story through a little girl's eyes, instead of as an adult looking back. Honestly speaking, I didn't target my readers before I wrote it, but I am glad it turned out to be a children's book. I used to be a teacher in China. If my book has an impact on the kids who read it, I will feel most rewarded.
Why did you leave China?
After the Cultural Revolution, things didn't change much. Rigid policies and restrictions kept me from achieving my dream: to enter the Shanghai Drama Institute. I was not allowed to audition. When the universities re-opened, I passed the exam, but 1 because of my family's political situation, I was only accepted into a less prestigious university. After frustration upon frustration, when America opened the door to students from China, I decided to go to the United States. At that time, my only option was to go overseas and study in America.
Ji-li means "lucky and beautiful," a name your parents carefully selected for you. Do you consider yourself lucky?
Yes, I consider myself quite lucky.
Despite everything I experienced in China, I have never lacked for love from my family, my friends, and also God. After surviving the Cultural Revolution, I find myself more sensitive to the beauty of nature and the human spirit. I am grateful for having my mind in peace, grateful to have experienced other cultures and lifestyles, and especially grateful that I have been able to do something meaningful and enjoyable to me.
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