“Returning Home Robed in Embroidered Silk” and the Cultural Revolution By comparing the Future Direction of the Party readings with Chang’s Chapter 8, what becomes apparent is the idea that the Party wants total control over its members’ lives, their thoughts, and their feelings. This is especially seen in Chapter 8 of Wild Swans, when Chang’s father and mother return to the father’s childhood home. The father is so happy to be back and his family is excited to see him—but they are also nervous because he was now a Communist official and they had all heard such bad things about Communism. The Communists wanted to root out all the old traditions; they wanted to liberate the daughter-in-law from the old traditions, for example—and so a great deal of attention was paid to Chang’s mother to see how she would react to her mother-in-law; whether she would kowtow as was the traditional style or whether she would act like the mother-in-law’s equal, as was the expectation of the Communist doctrine. The mother, aware of the traditional expectation and wanting to appear pleasant and accommodating to her new mother-in-law, bowed in the traditional manner and everyone in the family was relieved. Chang’s father allowed her to do this, partly because he felt bad about the miscarriage she had suffered, and partly to keep the peace at a time when so much fear was circulating about the Communists. However, he would not be so accommodating later on, when Chang’s mother would beg him to spare the life of the chieftain who had helped to save her from the Broadsword Brigade. The chieftain was executed for being a member of the Brigade in spite of the fact that he had saved the lives of some of the Communists by warning them in advance of the Brigade’s approach. The mother never forgave the father for this—and it was a sign of the basic conflict at the heart of Communism: the conflict between the needs of the heart and the unyielding arguments of the head. The mother represented the heart; the father the head. The Party sought to crush the former according to Mao’s plan for the Future Direction—or at least the Party sought to compel the heart to be totally subservient to Party doctrines.

The conflict was not easy to solve. When Chang’s grandmother arrived to look after Chang’s mother, the former began selling her jewelry in order to buy food at the market so that the mother could have good meals to eat, as it was a traditional belief in China that pregnant women should eat well. However, in a land that was starving and where just a bagful of rice was viewed as precious, the mother’s eating of good food was viewed as “bourgeois,” as Chang notes (154). This act of being “bourgeois” was exactly what Chairman Mao would identify as the reason for why Communism was not succeeding. Too many people were retaining bourgeois characteristics. In reality, it was just people being people—being decent to one another. The grandmother was looking after the mother’s health: it had nothing to do with...

The grandmother did not care if she were poor by the end of it—she was going to look after her daughter as well as she could. It was the same with the mother trying to save the life of the chieftain: it was not wrong of her to do so—she was thankful for the man’s act, even if he had done so out of a degree of self-interest. It was this degree of self-interest that Chang’s father saw—and only this—and that is why was firm on the execution of the chieftain. This was the same type of firmness that Mao was calling for in terms of the Future Direction of the Cultural Revolution: the Communists could not afford to be lax any longer. They must be firm and cut out all weakness. For example, just because a woman was pregnant was no reason she should not be sent out on missions in order to advance the aims of the Communist Party.
Chang’s father also chaffed at the arrival of his own mother-in-law. Being a liberated member of the Communist Party, he believed he had no need or moral imperative to kowtow to her—and the fact that she wanted to treat his wife tenderly while he wanted to remind his wife that she was a member of the Party first and foremost and a wife and pregnant mother only second showed the differences between the head and the heart again and the main reason that the Communist Party was hated and feared by so many in the rural communities. One could understand the motivation of the Broadsword Brigade—even though they were just as cruel in their assassinations—for example, when the raped and killed the niece of Chang’s father out of revenge.

In this manner, the hatred of both camps fueled one another. The hatred of the Communist Party (the head) for the weakness and tenderness of the heart (the people and their need to be “spoiled” from time to time) fueled the hatred of the Broadsword Brigade and other groups like them; and vice versa. They were two antagonistic parties, in the middle was the heart being stomped on repeatedly. Mao called this heart and its needs and weaknesses evidence that those who followed the heart were capitalists and should be rooted out: only the Communist Party knew the proper way to take care of the people, to ensure that everyone had food—that was how Mao saw it. And if one disagreed, as did Deng Xiaoping, pressure was applied to get that individual to change his mind—as happened in the case of Xiaoping, whose self-criticism reads like an abject exercise in self-abnegation and prostrate humiliation before a powerful overlord who will almost certainly kill if not flattered appropriately.

Throughout Chapter 8, it is evident that the father has bought into the cult of Mao and wants to see Communism succeed. It is also evident that the mother is realizing the realities of life and the complexities of human interaction, the need for tradition, and the role that kindness and a little respect can go in ensuring happiness and peace. Even though she identifies as a Communist, the mother is perfectly happy…