Life In The C.R.

By: Lucille H Cao

My mother’s name is Yumei Du; she was born in 1954. She is 55 years old now. She experienced the Cultural Revolution. (The Great Cultural Revolution refers to the May 1966 to October 1976 by MAO launched and leadership in China the political movement. Its development process is divided into three stages. ) when she was 12 years old. It began in May 1966. The C.R. lasted for 10 years so it was also called 10-year- Cultural Revolution. She was in school when the C.R. began. However, during the C.R. she had to drop out of school. At that time, lots of people said studying was useless. Almost all the schools closed down. Only Political lessons were taught and teachers taught the new Political views. (The new Political views called "broken capitalism” refers to break old ideas and old culture, old customs, old habits.)

At first she felt scared because many lessons had stopped except Political lessons. Soon after she dropped out of school, she was so sad and she never went to school any more. It was a pity. During the C.R. people who had studied in high school or college were caught and showed in the public. The students in the school were influenced by the wrong thoughts and they tore their books. Many students said bad words to their teachers.

My mother’s mother was a teacher. After the started of the Cultural Revolution, she resigned from the work but she was still afraid of to be caught as a “rightist.” When the Cultural Revolution ended, many of her mother’s colleagues did not come back.

After the war, the university entrance exam system began but nobody went to college because they were still scared of Cultural Revolution. After two or three years, Chinese education began to go back to normal. 

During the C.R. lots of famous people were caught and died in the prisons. Writers and poets were "Rightist." This meant they had to go to the country and do a lot of hard work. At that time, all of China was incomplete.

My mother thinks the C.R. was incorrect. Because the C.R. caused a lot of problems and it can’t measure by money. China lost many talents and made their lost many talents and made their technology increase slowly.