Process Paper
Why did I come up with the idea to write about this subject?

In August 1966, with the enthusiastic support of Mao Zedong, the "Red Guards" quickly developed from a group of middle school students to a Cultural Revolution organization in every school in the country. School violence started with the rise of the Red Guard movement. A large number of teachers and staff were arrested in the "ghost and snake team" and were subjected to so-called "struggle" by Red Guard students, in fact they were beaten and insulted. A group of educators were beaten to death at the so-called "struggle meeting". Not only middle school teachers were beaten to death by their students, but elementary school teachers were also beaten to death by their students. This is an atrocity that has never happened in the two thousand years since China established its own school. Under the guidance of the leaders of the Cultural Revolution, school violence spread outside the school. Red Guard students walked out of schools to ransack homes and beat peaceful urban residents. While burning books and smashing cultural relics, a large number of so-called "ghosts and snake spirits" were killed, and a large number of people were swept out of the cities and deported to the countryside. Some of these deported people were beaten to death on the road before reaching their destination, some died of hunger and disease soon after arriving at their destination, and some committed suicide because they could not survive there. And most of my family members were involved in this dispute. As a result, they dropped their studies and were wronged. I am a student who has never experienced these things, but when I heard these stories, I felt hopeless and humiliated. Out of emotion, choose this subject.

Essay
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution, was a national political movement in the history of the People's Republic of China, which took place in mainland China from May 16, 1966 to October 6, 1976. According to estimates by different scholars, the number of abnormal deaths in mainland China caused by the ten-year Cultural Revolution ranged from about 2 million to 20 million. So far, some issues of the Cultural Revolution and the evaluation of Mao Zedong are still highly controversial around the world, and the CCP has not completely liquidated the Cultural Revolution, and at the same time restricted reflection, so that the legacy of the Cultural Revolution has also been criticized. Modern Chinese Maoists and New Leftists believe that the Cultural Revolution was artificially demonized after the reform and opening up, while liberals believe that Mao Zedong should bear the main responsibility for the consequences of the Cultural Revolution. (See Appendix A)

The Interview

My grandmother, a native of Shanghai, was sent to the Great Northern Wilderness as an educated youth when she was in junior high school, and returned to the city after the Cultural Revolution. My grandmother loved literary creation all her life, but due to the reasons of the times, she had nowhere to display her talents, and she was reduced to a factory worker all her life.
Q: How were you called to go to the countryside?
A: At that time, the cadres came to pick up new students, and the director of the Educated Youth Office was a middle-aged woman. They sat on the rostrum of the school playground and spoke in turn. I was only in junior high school at that time. I was about 13 years old. I felt that I could do things for the country, but I was deceived by their impassioned words. I stole my family's household registration booklet, spent five cents to cancel my Shanghai household registration, got a migration certificate, and joined the team of going to the countryside.

Q: What was life like then? Is life difficult?

A: After entering the village, we were arranged to work in an old kiln at the west end of the village. After we got acquainted with each other, we soon started working in the fields together with the farmers. Seeing that I was young and tall, the captain arranged light work for me. The farmers there are simple and kind, and live a life of working at sunrise and resting at sunset. But I soon discovered that they had a hard life. The main manifestations are no money to spend and not enough food to eat. Their only source of cash is selling eggs. But they are also very cautious, because some people say that selling eggs is capitalism. The main customers they sell eggs are us educated youths. There was no light at night, and we wanted to read a book secretly, so we took an ink bottle cap and made a simple kerosene lamp. Unexpectedly, the cap of the ink bottle is made of plastic, and if it burns, the black smoke that fills the room will choke to death. I have worked in Heilongjiang for three years. Although it is very hard, I have a good relationship with the villagers. The conditions in the countryside are indeed bad, and it is difficult to even have a full stomach. When we first came, although the villagers were unable to give us special treatment, everyone treated me very well. I had potato porridge back then, and a girl there kept hiding her own potatoes in my bowl, preferring not to eat them herself than leave me hungry. It's just that I can't contact her after returning to the city.

Q: Has anything happened that impressed you?

A: There are two things that impress me so far during my jumping in the queue. One was in June 1969. Together with the farmers, the educated youths in the team had to rush to harvest summer grains such as wheat, and plant autumn grains such as transplanting rice seedlings. They were too tired to bear it. I remember the first time I went to the wheat field four or five miles away from the village to carry wheat sheaves. At that time, I was only a little over 1.6 meters tall and weighed only 80 kilograms. There was no meat on my shoulders. "Dan" made my shoulders red and swollen, and I couldn't rest in the middle, so I just gritted my teeth and persisted. Another thing is to send the village's public grain to the national grain depot. I held a sack containing nearly 200 kilograms of rice from my back with both hands, and walked along a wooden board about 50 centimeters wide and 10 centimeters thick, step by step towards the 10-meter-high granary. From time to time, my legs flicked and became weak, and I might fall off the board at any time. Now that I think about it, I'm a little scared.

Summary

History has proved that the "Cultural Revolution" was not a revolution or social progress in any sense, but a civil strife that brought serious disasters to the party, the country and the people of all ethnic groups. This disaster is all-round, it involves politics, economy, thought, culture and other aspects. First of all, Mao Zedong, who launched and led the "Cultural Revolution", used the so-called "theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat" to make unrealistic miscalculations of the domestic class situation and the political situation of the party and the country. On theoretical and policy issues, right and wrong have been confused, and two types of contradictions of different natures have been confused. Secondly, the mistakes of the party leaders were taken advantage of by the counter-revolutionary groups and a handful of speculators, careerists, and conspirators, and pushed them to extremes, thus causing serious confusion, destruction, and retrogression to the cause of socialism in the party and the country.

However, because of unwise decision-making by leaders. The educated youths delayed their studies and careers in the difficult and backward rural areas, wasted their youth, and lost their best years. In areas such as Yunnan and the Great Northern Wilderness, incidents of educated youth being persecuted and even... At the same time, in the late twentieth century, there was a generational division of scientific and academic personnel in China, which was also one of the evil results of educated youth going to the countryside. In the end, more than 99 percent of the educated youths returned to the cities, negating the movement with their actions. It is such a movement that affects the fate of countless people, but it only takes up one page in the second volume of "The History of the Communist Party of China". The book pointed out: "Ten million educated young people went to the countryside and frontiers, experienced training, got in touch with production practices, increased their talents, and made contributions to the development and revitalization of the underdeveloped areas of the motherland." However, the book also admits: "Lost the opportunity to receive school education in youth, causing a fault in the generation of talents, and bringing long-term harm to the country's modernization."

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Appendix A
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Appendix B
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

history.com/topics/asian-history/cultural-revolution

multimedia.scmp.com/cultural-revolution/
Bibliography
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