The Cultural Revolution
China’s leader who launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, and whose quotations students were expected to study and recite.
Who is Chairman Mao Ze-dong?
The narrator of the memoir — a top student who is twelve years old when the Cultural Revolution begins.
Who is Ji-li Jiang?
Ji-li’s younger brother and younger sister, who share the family’s crowded apartment.
Who are Ji-yong and Ji-yun?
The large coastal city where Ji-li’s family lives.
What is Shanghai?
Red Scarf Girl belongs to this genre: a true account of one stretch of the author’s own life.
What is a memoir?
The campaign that ordered people to wipe out old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits.
What is “Destroy the Four Olds”?
The teacher who puts Ji-li’s name forward for the exhibition and tells her she can rise above her family background.
Who is Teacher Zhang?
The family’s longtime housekeeper, who helped raise Ji-li and her siblings.
Who is Song Po-po?
The year the Cultural Revolution began — the year Ji-li turns twelve.
1966
Because Ji-li tells her own story using “I,” the book uses this point of view.
What is first person?
Student groups who enforced revolutionary rules, searched homes, and publicly accused teachers and neighbors.
Who are the Red Guards?
The leader of the school Revolutionary Committee, who opens the meeting with a speech on the revolutionary situation.
Who is Chairman Jin?
Ji-li’s closest friend, who shares her fears as the Cultural Revolution reaches their school.
Who is An Yi?
The capital city where Chairman Mao reviewed the Red Guards, and where students traveled by train to see him.
What is Beijing?
A conclusion a reader draws by combining text evidence with what they already know.
What is an inference?
Handwritten posters called da-zi-bao served this public purpose during the Cultural Revolution.
What is accusing or criticizing people in public?
The student leader seated on the stage who speaks on behalf of the Red Guard Committee — and who had earlier asked Ji-li to join the propaganda group.
Who is Chang Hong?
Ji-li’s father works at one of these — a job that later makes him a target
What is a theater (he is an actor)?
The year the Communists took power and founded the People’s Republic of China — the event the book calls “Liberation.”
What is 1949?
Ji-li’s struggle between wanting to follow Chairman Mao and wanting to protect her family is this kind of conflict.
What is internal conflict (character vs. self)?
Landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists together made up this condemned list.
What are the Five Black Categories?
The two classmates who made fun of Ji-li's background and were the new leaders in the school.
Who are Yin Lan-lan and Du Hai?
The family member whose past as a landlord gives the Jiangs their “black” class status.
Who is her grandfather?
The year the Cultural Revolution ended, following Chairman Mao’s death.
1976
A short retelling of a text’s most important ideas, in your own words, with no opinions and no minor details.
What is a summary?