Chinese Cultural Revolution, which was started by Mao Tse-tung in 1966 and did not conclude until after his death in 1976, is referred to officially by the current government of China as haojie; as GAO Mobo notes that "haojie is ambiguous because it can be a modern term for 'holocaust' or a traditional term to mean 'great calamity' or 'catastrophe'." (Gao 15). To some extent, those who lived through the Chinese Cultural Revolution, such as my grandparents, are uncomfortable with discussion of the effects. As a small child, I had often wondered what happened in China in the 1960s and 1970s that my grandparents refused to discuss it, or discuss their lives before emigration, first to Taiwan, then to America. But this was just one of the peculiarities of my "F.O.B." ("Fresh Off the Boat") grandparents, to use a term that sometimes recurs in Chinese-American conversations -- for example, they were also scared of the medical field, and scared of working in it. So even though they emphasized the greater availability of education in America, when my older cousin first enrolled in medical school, my grandparents did not live up to the "Tiger Mother" stereotype of pride over such an achievement -- they instead seemed panicky. What I learned I would eventually learn from my parents, who still spoke carefully and in the most guarded of terms, but demonstrates the way in which a large-scale historical event like Mao's Cultural Revolution could affect the lives of ordinary people.
My grandparents had been young party functionaries in 1966, newly moved to Beijing from Zhongdian, and thus were more likely to be on the side of Mao's reforms than on the side of the entrenched elites. But did they then take part in abuses during that period? The customary view of the Chinese...
For my grandparents, the chief effect was personal and familial -- the effects of Mao Tse-tung's personality could literally be felt within the Cultural Revolution at large, but also within the confines of my grandparents' small Beijing apartment in the years before emigration. My grandparents were part of a generation which felt that the Cultural Revolution was a good idea, and responded enthusiastically. Turning to the Cambridge History of China for this time period, Whyte's article on urban life in the People's Republic of China notes a shift in this time period, among precisely the new urbanites in this period like my grandparents:
For many urban young people this was an exhilarating time, at least initially. Instead of being locked into a tight competition to try and secure future opportunities in the urban job hierarchy, they found themselves called to act on a larger and more important stage as the vanguards in a new revolution. Although most were uncertain and even frightened at first and somewhat dubious about the "crimes" committed by their own teachers and Party leaders, many soon found the rewards of activism exciting. No longer required to study long hours and submit to school disciplinary rules, they played out their new role by traveling around the country, parading in front of national leaders, viewing places they had always wanted to see, and engaging in…
