'Answering Chairman Mao's call'.

• Position: PAIRING A PRIMARY & SECONDARY SOURCE - Mao Zedong - Excerpt

At the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution, millions of Chinese young people took up Mao Zedong's call to combat old customs, culture, ideas, and habits. The youths wore green uniforms with red armbands and became known as the Red Guards. They held marches, wrote pieces of propaganda called dazibao (DAH-zee-bao), and attacked authority figures they saw as too traditional, including their own teachers and family members. Below is an excerpt from a memoir by Rae Yang, who became a Red Guard in the spring of 1966. Read her recollection along with the Upfront article about the Cultural Revolution, then answer the questions at the bottom of this page.

Excerpt from Spider Eaters: A Memoir by Rae Yang

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 500 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 [criticism in big characters]. Using some of the rhetorical devices Teacher Lin had taught us, I accused her of lacking proletarian * feelings toward her students, of treating them as her enemies, of being high-handed, and suppressing different opinions. When I finished and showed it to my classmates, they 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...