The Missouri Reader Vol. 36, Issue 2 | Page 30

GROWING UP IN RED CHINA: REPRESENTATION OF THE
CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION IN CHILDREN’S
PICTURE BOOKS
Lina Sun and Kathryn Pole, Ph.D.
Since 1978, when the Republic of China began
implementing reforms in its economic and emigration
policies, an increasing number of Chinese immigrants
have entered North America. While most of them
entered as students and visiting scholars, many of them
eventually, after years of acculturation, acquire
citizenship or legal resident status. They establish
families, and have children who enter the school
system. Books that reveal episodes of history can help
children who are separated from their heritage form
authentic cultural identities (Hefflin & Barksdale-Ladd,
2001). These books also allow all children, Chinese or
not, to understand and appreciate the heritage and
culture of others (Al-Hazza & Bucher, 2008).
Many people in the growing community of adult
immigrants from China were born during the 1950s
and the 1960s, and experienced one of the most
significant political events in China’s contemporary
history—the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
(1966-1976). The Cultural Revolution limited the
freedom of people all over China for over 10 years. In
this violent and sweeping revolutionary transfiguration,
multifaceted social forces, tensions, and conflicts
created chaos in the lives of everyday Chinese citizens.
Museums, temples, churches, colleges and
universities were dismantled, and public art was
replaced with life-size portraits and plaster busts of
Chairman Mao. Houses of people thought to be
counterrevolutionary were pillaged. Personal

collections of classical books, correspondence,
stamps, photo albums, and even flowers, were
confiscated, burned, and destroyed. Anything and
everything conflicting with Mao’s teachings were
condemned. Intellectuals, writers, party rulers,
experts in all fields, well-to-do farmers, landlords,
gentry, and business owners, along with anyone who
had the slightest relationship with foreign countries,
were labeled as “bad elements” or “the five black
categories of people.” They were forced to wear
dunce caps and had heavy cement placards hung by
thin iron wires around their necks. They were

Lina Sun is a doctoral student in the
Department of Education at Saint Louis
University, where she specializes in secondlanguage acquisition and children’s
literature. Before coming to the U.S. for
doctoral studies, she was a university
lecturer and researcher in The Republic of
China. She is a nationally certified educator
of Chinese as a Foreign Language, and has
several years of teaching experience in
Chinese universities.
Kathryn Pole, Ph.D., is a member of the
Literacy Studies faculty at the University of
Texas at Arlington. Her research interests
weave critical literacy, teacher decisionmaking, education policy, and socially just
forms of schooling. She teaches courses in
literacy, children’s literature, and research
methods.

publicly vilified and mercilessly beaten by the Red
©The Missouri Reader, 36 (2) p. 29