Red Scarf Girl

Red Scarf Girl is a memoir written by Ji-Li Jiang about her childhood in China during the Cultural Revolution in 1966-1968.

Ji-Li Jiang as a young girl.

As a young girl, Ji-Li was always successful and determined in school and goals. Her family was better off than many of her neighbors, but humble in comparison to the affluent families in Shanghai. Her father worked as a stage actor and her mother in a health care clinic; she had a brother and sister, grandmother, and live-in housekeeper named Song Po-po. Ji-Li's life was joyful and happy, and it seemed that she had the whole world in her hands.

When the Proletarian Cultural Revolution started when Ji-Li was age twelve, her whole world turned upside down. Now instead of her determination and talents mattering to her peers, her "black" family status was the factor that controlled her and her family's status in the "New China". The new leader of China, Mao Zengdong, was praised as a god, and China followed his ways of supporting The People, at the expense of the "exploiting" families of the Four Olds.

This is the story of how her class status determined her future throughout the Revolution, her experiences, and her reactions to the new formation of China through communist government ideals.