Before
reading Balzac and the Little Chinese
Seamstress, I did not know much about Mao and the Cultural Revolution. In fact, all I had known about Mao was from a
card game called “Mao” that my friends and I used to play, a variant of Uno in
which the winner of each round gets to choose and enforce a secret rule for the
next round which only he knows. The name
of this game is trying to get at the arbitrary nature of Mao’s rule, and the
fact that he would constantly make up illogical rules without telling his
people, and then punish citizens for unwittingly breaking those rules.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress gave
me insight into the truth of what it was like to grow up during the Cultural
Revolution in China and to be a part of Mao’s reeducation initiative. Not only have I learned about the hard work
and suffering associated with reeducation in China, but also about it’s
ironical aspects. Mao wanted city kids
to learn traditional ways and to separate them from modern culture, but in
reality, his reeducation initiative ended up doing quite the opposite in many
ways. Though the children who were being
reeducated were forced to do hard labor and experienced suffering, they were
exposed to primitive traditions of the illiterate rural villagers – not the
idealized version of traditionalism Mao had pictured. Also, the city children brought much of their
modern culture with them to the villages, spreading Western songs, ideas, and
traditions among the rural people. This
was exactly the opposite of what Mao intended.
Reading
historical fiction gives me a window into the minds of realistic characters who
experienced history. Historical fiction authors
describe how these characters think and feel, as well as giving important historical
context. On the other hand, a true
historical account may teach me something about history, but would not give me
the same level of vivid understanding about what it was really like to live in
that time period.
