Son of the Revolution

In Son of the Revolution, Liang Heng reveals the personal impact of the Cultural Revolution on his early life and that of his family. While the focus is on an individual, Liang's autobiography examines the effects of the Cultural Revolution and its various historical movements on China as a nation through the eyes of an urban male born and bred to be one of Chairman Mao's "good little children." Like many other youngsters, Liang initially uncritically worshipped Mao and in effect was brainwashed by his early environment that rewarded blind obedience and conformity. The problem was that the rules of his society kept changing, and one day's hero was the next day's traitor, or counterrevolutionary. This was true for Liang's mother and father, and the suffering and turmoil undergone by his parents -- that left him on his own by age 13 -- became the impetus for Liang's political awakening that takes the form of questioning the goals and motives of the rulers of the People's Republic of China. Detained for questioning by the authorities at age 15 in connection with the May Sixteenth Conspiracy (in which he played no part), he begins to seriously question the political power structure of his country.

Why should two good people like my parents be forced

to divorce each other? Why should Liang Fang (his sister)

raise a machine gun against her fellow teenagers? Why

did the peasants fear the cadres so terribly if they were

representatives of our great Communist Party? Why were

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