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Cultural Revolution Lesson

Cultural Revolution Lesson

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China’s Cultural Revolution

Cultural Revolution Lesson Plan

Central Historical Question:
Why did Chinese youth get swept up in the Cultural Revolution?


• Cultural Revolution PowerPoint
• Cultural Revolution Timeline
• Cultural Revolution Documents A-D

Plan of Instruction:

1. Introduction: Today we are going to study the Cultural Revolution in China, which
occurred between 1966 and 1976. In particular, we’re going to look at a group of
youth called the Red Guards who were responsible for much of the violence and
abuse of the Cultural Revolution.

2. Project PPT slide 1.
Tell students this photograph was taken in February 1967. It shows Red Guards
displaying leaders of “Anti-Revolutionary Groups.”

Ask students what they see in the image.
• What are the Red Guards doing? (Answer: Harassing or punishing
• What are the punishments? (Answer: Wearing dunce caps; handled with
• Where are they being punished? (Answer: In public, in front of a large

Explain to students that many of the people targeted by Red Guards during the
Cultural Revolution were teachers and professors.

Project PPT slide 2.
Explain that this is a propaganda poster from the Cultural Revolution and ask
students what they see in the image:
• What objects are in the foreground? (Answer: Religious icons, literature,
film reels. If you look very closely you see “USA” on one of the books.)
• What might these symbolize? (Answer: Old traditions -- religion, literature,
capitalism, and imperialism.)
• What is happening to these objects or symbols? (Answer: The Red
Guards are destroying them.)
• Whose picture is on the flag? (Answer: Mao Zedong.)
• How are the Red Guards depicted? (Answer: They are depicted as valiant.
They are shown as leading a multitude of people for their cause.)

China’s Cultural Revolution

Explain: Today we’re going to look at a number of documents and ask, “Why did
Chinese youth get swept up in the Cultural Revolution?”

Elicit students’ hypotheses to the central historical question. Most will say that
the teenagers were probably intoxicated with power. Others might say that they
were brainwashed. If these two hypotheses emerge, highlight them and use
them to frame the discussion as it continues throughout the lesson.

3. Pass out the timeline and read through it with the class. Highlight the following
points in the timeline:
• What were Mao’s goals for the Cultural Revolution?
• What were some of the outcomes of the Cultural Revolution?
• Based on the timeline, why might teenagers have supported the
Cultural Revolution?

4. Hand out Documents A and B and Guiding Questions. Have students read
documents and answer questions in pairs.

5. Review student answers.

6. Hand out Documents C and D.

Discuss: Both documents are excerpts from memoirs written long after the
Cultural Revolution. How might the fact that these are memoirs produced long
after the event shape how we read them?

7. Have students answer Guiding Questions for Documents C and D. Review
student answers.

8. Individual work either in class or for homework: Have students write a paragraph
that answers the central historical question using evidence from the documents.

Tse-Tung, M. (1964). Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.
Beijing: Government of the People’s Republic of China.

People’s Liberation Army Songs Editorial Department. (1967?). We are Chairman
Mao’s red guards. Beijing: Government of the People’s Republic of China.

Yang, R. (1998). Spider eaters. Berkeley, CA: UC Press.
Cao, F. (2005). Under the red sun. In Stanford Program on International and
Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), China’s cultural revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.

China’s Cultural Revolution

Timeline – Cultural Revolution

In an effort to return China to its communist roots, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
turned to the youth of the country to help start the “Cultural Revolution.”
Mao called on young people to take down leading intellectuals, party
leaders, and their own parents. These teenagers came together to form the
Red Guards.

October 1949: Mao declared victory in the Communist revolution and
established the People’s Republic of China.
May 1966: Articles in the state controlled papers introduced the
idea of a “Cultural Revolution.”
Red Guard groups, made up of Chinese youth,
emerged throughout China.
Aug. 1966: Mao officially launched the “Cultural Revolution” with a
speech at the Chinese Communist Party.
Oct. 1966: Mao called for the Red Guards to destroy the “Four
Jan. 1967: Red Guards achieved the overthrow of provincial party
committee officials and replaced them with radicals.
Feb. 1967: Top-level Communist Party officials called for an end of
the Cultural Revolution, but Mao continued to support it.
Summer 1967: Mao replaced pre-Cultural Revolution party officials with
radicals who supported the revolution.
1968: On Mao’s orders, the Red Guards were broken up in the
“rustification movement,” where individual teenagers
were “sent down” to villages throughout China to “learn
from the peasants.”
April 1969: Mao declared “victory” of the Cultural Revolution and
supported Lin Biao as his new successor.

China’s Cultural Revolution

Document A: Mao’s “Little Red Book”
Mao’s “Little Red Book” is a collection of Mao Tse-Tung’s quotations that were
used as a source of inspiration and guidance for members of the Red Guard
during the Cultural Revolution. These are two excerpts from the book.

The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.
Mao, 1957

prosperous within a period of several decades. The establishment of our
Mao, 1957

Source: Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. 1964

China’s Cultural Revolution

Document B: Red Guard Song
Patriotic songs and slogans were common characteristics of the Cultural Revolution.
This song was written by the People’s Liberation Army Songs Editorial Department
sometime around 1967.

Red Guards, Red Guards.
Burning with revolutionary zeal,
Tested by the storm of class struggle,
Tempered for battle our hearts are red,
Standing firm, direction clear, our vigor for revolution strong,
We follow the party with full devotion,
We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards.

Red Guards, Red Guards.
We want to be the successors to Communism.
The revolutionary red banner passes on from generation to generation,
We want to try on the glorious tradition.
Loving the country, loving the people, loving the collective, loving to work.
Connecting with the workers and the peasants,
We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards.

China’s Cultural Revolution

Document C: At the Center of the Storm
Rae Yang was a young girl in the spring of 1966, when she became a part of the Red
Guards during the Cultural Revolution. In 1997, she published a memoir retelling the
story of her life and her family in China throughout the political turmoil of the 1950s
through the 1980s. In this excerpt she writes about her early experience in the Red
When the Cultural Revolution broke out in late May 1966, I felt like the legendary
monkey Sun Wukong, freed from the dungeon that had held him under a huge mountain
for five hundred years. It was Chairman Mao who set us free by allowing us to rebel
against authorities. As a student, the first authority I wanted to rebel against was
Teacher Lin, our homeroom teacher. A big part of her duty was to make sure that we
behaved and thought correctly.

Now the time had come for the underdogs to speak up, to seek justice! Immediately I
took up a brush pen, dipped it in black ink and wrote a long dazibao. Using some of the
rhetorical devices Teacher Lin had taught us, I accused her of lacking proletarian feeling
toward her students, of treating them as her enemies, of being high-handed, and of
suppressing different opinions. My classmates supported me by signing their names to
it. Next, we took the dazibao to Teacher Lin’s home nearby and pasted it on the wall of
her bedroom for her to read carefully day and night. This, of course, was not personal
revenge. It was answering Chairman Mao’s call to combat the revisionist educational

Within a few days, dazibao written by students, teachers, administrators, workers, and
librarians, were popping up everywhere like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Secrets
dark and dirty were exposed. Every day we made shocking discoveries. The sacred
halo around the teachers’ heads that dated back two thousand five hundred years to the
time of Confucius disappeared. Now teachers must learn a few things from their
students. Parents would be taught by their kids instead of vice versa, as Chairman Mao
pointed out. Government officials would have to wash their ears to listen to the ordinary

Source: Rae Young, Spider Eaters: A Memoir, 1997.


dazibao –propaganda posters written to denounce counter-revolutionaries
high-handed– bossy
proletarian –working class
revisionist—in this case, someone opposing Mao’s position

China’s Cultural Revolution

Document D: Under the Red Sun Memoir
Under the Red Sun is a memoir written by Fan Cao about her experiences during the
Cultural Revolution published in 2005. Here is an excerpt from the memoir.

I was a 7
grader when the Great Cultural Revolution broke out.
Growing up in the “New China” we were fed with revolutionary ideas bathed
in the red sunlight of Mao. We worshiped Mao the same way pious
Christians worship their God, and we were completely devoted to him. I,
myself, really believed that we were working for a paradise on earth, and
we were going to save the entire world. How glorious it was to have the
great destiny of liberating all humanity! In fact, we did not even understand
what revolution was and how other people in the world really lived!

I was not allowed to join the Red Guards simply because my
grandparents were rich before the communists took away their land, and
my parents were considered “intellectuals,” which automatically made them
anti-revolutionists regardless of the fact that they had been following Mao’s
idealism since their early adulthood. As members of the university faculty,
my parents were obviously in trouble. I, of course, was guilty by
association. Only a 13-year-old girl, I became a target of the revolution.
After that, I lost all my friends and lived in perpetual fear for several years.
Despite this unbearable life, I did not dare challenge my belief in the
revolution. Instead, I wondered if it might be my parents who had done
something wrong. I wrote a dazibao denouncing them to show my loyalty to
Mao. My naivety deeply wounded the feelings between my parents and me.

As I grew up, I slowly learned the truth behind the so-called
“revolution.” I also realized that my family and I were relatively lucky
compared with hundreds and thousands of innocent people who died in the
endless political movements. I am very remorseful, and I still feel shaken as
I think back on what happened during the Cultural Revolution.

Source: Fan Cao, Under the Red Sun, 2005

China’s Cultural Revolution

Why did Chinese youth support the Cultural Revolution?

Document A – Mao’s Little Red Book

1. (Sourcing) What was the purpose of Mao’s Little Red Book?

2. (Close Reading) What are two reasons that Mao thought young people were important
to China’s future?

3. How might a young person living in 1964 have felt upon reading these quotes?

Document B – Red Guard Song

1. (Sourcing) Who wrote the song? Why do you think the song was written?

2. (Close reading) What is the main message of the song?

3. Why might a young person in 1966 want to sing this song?

China’s Cultural Revolution

Memoirs: Documents C and D

1. (Sourcing) How are Documents C and D similar types of sources?

2. (Sourcing) Do you find these accounts reliable? Why or why not? Explain using evidence
from the documents.

3. (Close reading) Rae Yang (Doc. C) and Fan Cau (Doc. D) both wrote dazibao. Yang
denounced her teacher and Fan denounced her parents. Explain one way that their
actions were similar and one way that their actions differed.

4. (Context) According to these two documents, what are some reasons why young people
joined the Red Guards?

China’s Cultural Revolution

Use evidence from the documents and the timeline to answer the overall question:

Why did Chinese youth get swept up in the Cultural Revolution?

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