America. This was a magical name on the eastern coast of the province of Fujian, where both of my parents were born. My parents grew up during the Cultural Revolution, a movement initiated by Mao Zedong’s belief that his Communist Party was shunting him aside and propelling the country in the wrong, inegalitarian direction. Mao attempted to reassert his authority over the Chinese masses by enforcing his ideology. He mobilized the Red Guards, paramilitary groups of students, to destroy the Four Olds—old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. Gangs of teenagers in bright, red armbands and green military uniforms roamed the city streets, attacking anything that was suspected of being bourgeois or feudal. They publicly humiliated, beat, and in some cases, murdered innocent civilians, intellectuals, party officials, and teachers. With this bloodshed, Mao ultimately hoped to create a new society where there was no opposition against him and no gap between urban and rural, and laborers and intellectuals.
Fortunately, my parents were farmers living far from the cities where the Red Guards lurked. However, my parents were nonetheless affected. The Cultural Revolution crippled the economy, killed millions and thrust China into a decade of
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Chua recounts her adventures in raising her two daughters Sophia and Louisa the "Chinese way.” Her strict parenting methods is her way of preventing the inevitable family decline that inflicts immigrant families, where immigrant parents arrive in America, and sacrificially and tirelessly work to provide every opportunity to the children, who repay their debt to their parents by becoming high-achieving doctors and lawyers. However, the next generation of kids are raised with the Western ideas of self-actualization, and eventually, disregard generations of hard work to become idealistic