Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Chinese/Cultural Revolution

"A few words about re-education: towards the end of 1968, the Great Helmsman of China's Revolution, Chairman Mao, launched a campaign that would leave the country profoundly altered. The universities were closed and all the 'young intellectuals,' meaning boys and girls who had graduated from high school, were sent to the countryside to be 're-educated by the poor peasants.'... Between the ages of twelve and fourteen we had been obliged to wait for the Cultural Revolution to calm down before the school reopened. And when we were finally able to enroll we were in for a bitter disappointment: mathematics had been scrapped from the curriculum, as had physics and chemistry."
Sijie, Dai. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Trans. Ina Rilke. New York: Anchor Books, 2002. Print. Pages 6-7.

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