The Red Scarf Girl Chapter Summary

Have you read or heard of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. It’s a difficult period in Chinese history, and was a massive upheaval launched by Chinese leader Mao Zedong to renew the spirit of revolution in China. The book “The Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Chinese Revolution” in which the author is Ji-li Jiang, talks about this major event in Chinese history and tells the story of one girl's struggle to keep her family together during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Ji-li changed many times in different sections of the book. One of the main events that changed her the most was during class when one of her classmates revealed her class status because she first felt that she should have never existed and that she had never had a grandfather

Ji-li doesn’t really know of course and so Du Hai says that her grandfather is a landlord and that Ji-li’s father is a rightist. Ji-li is flabbergasted and runs out of the classroom, feeling embarrassed and humiliated she goes home. In the book it says, “I could say nothing now. Through my tears I could see everyone staring at me. I wished I had never been born. I pushed the desk out of my way and ran out of the classroom.” This shows that she felt as if she isn’t welcome and accepted and she wishes that she had never existed so that this embarrassing moment would have never happened to her. But this is so much more different than the beginning of the book where Ji-li was very happy and grateful for everything she had. In the text it says that “I was happy because I was always loved and respected. I was proud because I was able to excel and always expected to achieve. I was trusting too.” So this means that this event had affected Ji-li in a very serious, and unhappy way. All in all, this shows that Ji-li was very happy in the beginning of the book, but she suddenly changed because she learned that her grandfather is a landlord and that her father is a rightist, so she was very