The Missouri Reader Vol. 36, Issue 2 | Page 33

Red Land, Yellow River: A Story from
the Cultural Revolution (Written
and illustrated by Ange Zhang,
2004, Douglas & McIntyre)

Ange Zhang (pronounced On-Gay Jahng)'s peaceful
world was shattered when his father, a well-known
writer and a high-ranking Communist Party official,
was arrested like a criminal at the beginning of the
Cultural Revolution. Desperate to be like everyone
else, as a teenager Ange joined the Red Guard. Later,
when Mao disbanded the Red Guard, Ange was sent to
a village far from home, where he spent three years
learning to be a farmer. Eventually, he was reunited
with his mother in a labor camp, where he worked in a
factory that made erasers to go on the ends of pencils.
In 1977, with the Cultural Revolution over, Ange
was accepted into the highly competitive Central
Academy of Drama to study theatre and design.
Twelve years later, as the Tiananmen Square Massacre
unfolded, Ange was working as a visiting set designer
at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada. In
the aftermath, the Canadian government offered
asylum to Chinese visitors, and Ange accepted. He
currently works in Toronto as a theatre designer,
cartoon animator, and children’s book illustrator.
Red land, Yellow River (2004) focuses on a threeyear period in Ange’s own life-story. Born in a period
that was characterized by a long string of madly fervent
and traumatic political campaigns, Ange found it
difficult to distance his childhood from the bloody
rampage and riots of the Cultural Revolution. When
Chairman Mao unleashed his campaign and the Red
Guards infiltrated his school in 1966, Ange felt only
pride, because both of his parents were high-ranking
officials in the Communist Party, and had helped bring
Mao to power. His father was a famous writer, best

known for composing the lyrics to "The Yellow River
Cantata," a set of popular songs of Chinese patriotism.
But before long, Ange witnessed his father’s
public humiliation as an intellectual and
counterrevolutionary, and observed upheavals in
family life, schools, and Chinese communities. Ange
was surrounded by overwhelming episodes of chaos:
his home ransacked by the Red Guards; his father’s
antique Ming vases and paintings destroyed; and the
family books locked away. His family was ostracized
from their Chinese community. In simple yet direct
prose, Ange describes how these injustices and unfair
treatment did nothing to dampen his revolutionary
fervor for Mao’s cause:
“I didn’t know why all this was happening and
no one would explain it me. It seemed no one knew.
I was ashamed and angry. I recited Chairman
Mao’s quotations over and over, even though I did
not understand much. To show the Red Guards
that I was as loyal to Chairman Mao as anyone
else, I even changed my name from Ange to Weige,
which meant to safeguard the revolution….But
things kept happening to remind me that I was not
like the others” (p. 14-15).
To his mother’s horror, Ange formed his own
one-person unit of the Guard, shaving his head and
arming himself against other rebel factions. He was
desperate to fit into the zealous revolutionary student
movement. “All I wanted was to be just like the other
kids,” he recalls, “to wear the olive green uniform
with the red armband.”
Eventually, he discovered his father’s hidden
books, locked in bookcases sealed with paper strips
bearing the Red Guard’s emblem. Ange took the
hinges off the bookcase door to keep the locks and
seals intact. Day after day he visited his father’s bookfilled study, reading banned books by Victor Hugo,
©The Missouri Reader, 36 (2) p. 32