Red Scarf Girl

During winter vacation, Fan Wen-chong, one of Ji-li’s father’s friends, arrives at their door, late at night, bruised and bloody. Fan tells her parents that he “confessed” to listening to foreign radio broadcasts to avoid a more severe punishment. Three days later, he is detained, and the family is even more on edge, worrying that Ji-li’s father might not come home from work one night: He is being pressured at work to “confess,” but he does not know to what.

The day before the Chinese New Year, it happens: Ji-I’s father does not come home. The family spends a sober New Year waiting in vain for him to return. The next morning, Ji-li’s mother is ill, and she sends Ji-li out to call their friend, Uncle Tian, to ask him about her dad. Uncle Tian can only tell her that her father has been accused of establishing counterrevolutionary ties and listening to foreign radio and that he has refused to confess, before he has to abruptly hang up. It is Ji-li’s 14th birthday that day, but there is no celebration.

Later, Ji-li’s mother is called into her workplace even though she is still ill. Ji-li goes with her, and though she waits outside the office, she can hear some of the meeting, in which her mother’s co-workers pressure her to confess what she knows about her husband’s supposed crimes. She refuses, and Ji-li takes her home.

After Ji-li’s father has spent a week in detainment, Ji-li is sent to her father’s workplace with some clothes and toiletries. She asks to see her father and is taken by the foreman to see him—through a window. He is working outside in the cold, being “remolded through labor” (189). The man offers Ji-li the opportunity to inform on her parents, but she refuses and runs home.

After winter break has finished, Ji-li stays home from school to help her mother and grandmother cope in her father’s absence. One day, Lin-lin comes to see her—to drop off her math book and tell her about a meeting at school she should attend. They talk about Ji-li’s sewing skills and their mothers’ respective illnesses. Then Ji-yong comes in with Grandma, who asks him about his visit to see his father, which did not go well. Lin-lin abruptly gets up to leave, but as she goes, Ji-li opens up to her about her father and explains that he has been detained. Lin-lin responds, “‘I understand. Our house was searched too’” (194).

Ji-li goes to the meeting the next day, which is about a Class Education Exhibition that will represent the school at the Communist Party Birthday in July. Ji-li believes there must be a mistake because the students have been chosen for their “academic and political excellence” (195), and she knows she is not considered a politically excellent student. She goes to ask her teacher about it, and he tells her that it is not a mistake and that she can “overcome her family background” (198) and be an “educable child” (198). Convinced by her teacher’s encouragement and hopeful again, Ji-li agrees to participate in the Class Education Exhibition.

The students who have been chosen are divided into two groups—one group of girls and one group of boys. The boys, led by Bai Shan, do an ink drawing, and the girls decide to create the image of Chairman Mao out of thousands of dyed millet grains. The project takes many hours; they work on it through the night, and Ji-li and Chang Hong bond when Ji-li admits to envying Chang Hong’s class status and Chang Hong tells Ji-li about her brother’s epilepsy.

In May, the charge against Ji-li’s father for listening to foreign radio is dropped after it is revealed that his friend, Uncle Zhu, had lied about listening to foreign radio in an attempt to improve his own situation. Dad comes home after three months of detainment, but it is only to pick up clothes. He is escorted by two guards and cannot tell his family why he cannot stay with them or when he will return.

A week later, Ji-li’s mother is visited by two people who tell her about an article in the paper about the “Half-City Jiangs,” so named because the “Jiangs were a big landlord family in Nanjing that owned over thirty-three hundred acres of land and lots of businesses” (210). The two visitors are looking for information about these cousins of Ji-li’s. Upon hearing this news, Ji-li tells her mother that she hates her family and walks out.

She refuses to speak to her mother for days and even goes to the police station to change her name—to get rid of the name Jiang—but runs away when she realizes it would mean breaking ties with her parents. When she gets home, she hears her grandmother arguing with Song Po-po, who has not stopped doing things for the family, even though she is no longer employed by them and even though they are in trouble as a “black” family. This makes Ji-li realize her own selfishness. She hugs Song Po-po and goes upstairs to make up with her mother.

At the Class Education Exhibition preview, Ji-li tells a story about an evil landlord that brings everyone, including herself, to tears. An Yi and Lin-lin are listening outside the window and congratulate her on her success. She is also praised by Chairman Jin. Everything is going well, despite Ji-li’s fears about being exposed as the granddaughter of a landlord. However, a few days later, she is called to the school office to meet with her teachers and the foreman from her father’s work, whom she calls Thin-Face and who once again pressures her to break with her “black” family and testify against her father. Ji-li has nothing bad to say about her father and will not lie. They tell her to think about her decision and threaten to hold more “study sessions,” ones that include her brother and sister.

The next morning, after a sleepless night, Ji-li goes to the Exhibition. As she is entering the building, Bai Shan warns her to “‘Brace [her]self’” (228), and she is quickly confronted by Chairman Jin, who announces in front of everyone that she is being replaced because of her “political situation” (228). Bai Shan tries to pass her dictionary to her as she runs out, but she leaves it and him behind.

Ji-li decides to work with the rice harvest and replanting to atone for her political “ties.” Chang Hong convinces Ji-li to do her summer labor in the country rather than at a city factory because it is a better political choice—even though Ji-li wanted to stay close to home in case her family needed her. The conditions are grueling and Ji-li can barely keep up with her work. Bai Shan tries to help her one night after she cuts her leg with her sickle, but she refuses his help, afraid of the rumors and criticism that would start if he were seen helping her.

Sometime later, Ji-li wakes up sick one morning but goes to work at threshing anyway. By noon she faints and has a dream that she is in a classroom and everyone there has on “white gowns with hoods that left only two black holes for the eyes” (241). They all stare at her, and she runs away through a yellow desert, where she is confronted by a “giant Bai Shan” (241) who laughs at her. When she wakes up, Chang Hong is there to tell her that she must go back home so that she can begin study sessions with Thin-Face and his comrades.