Writing Da-Zi-Bao, The Red Successors

Writing Da-Zi-Bao was pretty much about the education system coming to an end. The student's are told to write Da-Zi-Bao, which are pretty much just critques of every uncommunist thing a person does, about all of their school teachers. The children posted their Da-Zi-Bao's all over the school on large papers with red ink. Some of the students who couldn't come up with their own criticism of teachers even copied newspapers, which to me showed how influenced by the government the media was and how it carried through to the kids. Ji-Li had trouble coming up with mean things to say about her teacher which, morally, I thought was good, but otherwise seemed like it could get her into trouble. I felt really bad for Ji-Li when she had to go with the group to give her Aunt Xi-wen a Da-Zi-Bao. I also felt really bad for Ji-Li whenever she found the Da-Zi-Boa written about her. It sounded pretty ridiculous, and showed that the kids who wrote it really weren't the most intelligent students, which is why communism seemed to appeal to them.

I thought Da-Zi-Bao sounded pretty harsh, and felt bad for all of the innocent people who were victims of them. Mao Zedong was incredibly paranoid, and I'm pretty sure the main character Ji-Li seemed to be slowly catching on to that, even though she did go along with everything. So far from this book, I've learned that going against anything in Communist China led to intense public humiliation. They really knew how to use the peer pressure tactic to get people to do what they wanted.

I was glad when Ji-li's parents let her stay home from school. I thought it was weird that the kids were even going to school when they didn't have classes anymore, but a lot of them probably wanted to be involved with what was going on. After I read on a little bit more, I realized I was right when the book mentioned the students wanting to be Red Guards. Since the children were younger they became Red Successors. I was happy for Ji-li whenever the rain washed away all of the da-zi-bao's. I thought it was very strange that even after the incidents with the da-zi-bao's Ji-li still was excited by the revolution. Ji-li wasn't elected to become a Red Successor because her grandfather was a landlord. I thought it was interesting that they took backgrounds so seriously, when it wasn't any of the child's faults and clearly Ji-li agreed with the new ideas.

I'm starting to become more and more alarmed by the strong political views of the children. A lot of teenagers now don't even know what's going on with politics or the government, let alone grade school students.