Red Scarf Girl

Ji-li lives with her parents, grandmother, and younger brother and sister in a converted brownstone in Shanghai. Though it is clear that every one of her family members is important to her, Ji-li is most connected to her grandmother, to whom she dedicates the book, and whose street sweeping at the end of the narrative provides the backdrop for Ji-li’s most important insight into what kind of person she wants to be. Even though her grandmother is the only one of her family members who really knew her grandfather—the landlord who is the cause of their “black” status—Ji-li’s parents bear the brunt of her anger about their family’s situation, while Ji-li has a difficult time even imagining her grandmother as a “landlord’s wife.”

Each of the adults in Ji-li’s home, even including their housekeeper, Song Po-po, serves as a positive role model for her. Grandma’s example is the one most central to Ji-li’s academic and moral development. Ji-li relates how her grandmother graduated from high school “in 1914, a time when very few girls went to school at all,” and how “she had helped to found Xin Er Primary School […] and become its vice principal” (14). Ji-li’s own academic excellence is reflected in these key pieces of her grandmother’s biography. But Grandma also provides an important moral example for Ji-li, expressing sympathy for those who are being persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, thus providing Ji-li with some confirmation for her own feelings of empathy.

Ji-li’s father is also a role model for her academic pursuits, and his love of reading is reflected in her own. Her mother once told her that “she had her three children in three years because she wanted to finish the duty of having babies sooner, so she could devote herself wholeheartedly to the revolution” (14). The zeal behind this kind of commitment to the cause is clearly reflected in Ji-li’s own enthusiasm for being a “red scarf girl.” And Song Po-po’s example of continuing to help out the Jiang family, even though she is no longer being paid and might be persecuted for the association, reminds Ji-li that sacrifice can be a virtue borne of a generous kind of love.

An Yi is Ji-li’s closest friend, so much so that much of what happens to An Yi’s family affects Ji-li almost as if it were her own. She calls An Yi’s grandmother “Grandma” and attends her funeral after she commits suicide. They also have similar experiences with their families’ class statuses: Ji-li’s father is detained, and An Yi’s mother is harassed and persecuted. In many ways, An Yi provides a mirror for Ji-li, and also a safe haven when there seems to be no one else in school she can trust.

Ji-li also makes new friends at junior high school. Lin-lin and Chang Hong seem to be opposites: Lin-lin is quiet and shy and tells Ji-li that her family’s home has also been searched. Like An Yi, Lin-lin seems to be someone Ji-li can trust with her family’s secrets. Chang Hong, on the other hand, is everything Ji-li wishes she could be—from a “red” family and a member of the Red Guard Committee at school. Even so, the girls bond with one another as if they have no political differences, and Chang Hong shows sincere concern for Ji-li even after she has been dismissed in disgrace from the Class Education Exhibition.

Finally, although Ji-li and Bai Shan do not become close friends, it is clear that he considers himself her friend—someone who wants to support her to be successful in whatever she does—which makes it that much sadder that Ji-li feels that her class status prevents them from becoming closer.