Blood Red Sunset
By: Ma Bo

This memoir of Ma Bo’s sent shock waves throughout China when it was published and was even first banned by the Communist Government. This passionate story paints a clear picture for what the Great Chinese Cultural Revolution was really like. Many Chinese living today can attest to similar if not identical ordeals as expressed in Ma Bo’s story. The toils of being a young Red Guard in inner China were experienced by many if not millions. The horrors and atrocities were wide spread throughout the country, not just in Inner Mongolia. The experiences illustrated in Blood Red Sunset uniquely belong to Ma Bo’s entire generation of mislead Chinese. As expressed in the books dedication the Cultural Revolution …show more content…

The authorities and elders they once would have respected and admired were under attack by the young mislead yet educated Red Guards. All with the Communists Party’s or more specifically the Gang of Four and Mao Zedong’s blessing. Irrational thought and actions were excited by the Red Guard almost every day. Besides just persecuting the local party leaders and land or business owners because they were so called capitalist Chinese under the Maoist principle of class struggle, but regular peasants who kept to themselves and were the very base of the Communist Party became under attack as well. Ma Bo even admits to answering Mao’s call to revolution by playing an extensive role in their suffering. Through fulfilling Mao’s class struggle theories he was a brutal abuser of the people when as a member of the Red Guard attempted to reeducate the so called class enemies. This type of experience describes the lives of hundreds of thousands of supposedly educated youth and how they answered the call to go out and make revolution by Chairman Mao and the Gang of Four. After this experience of being an idealistic and brutal abuser of the people of Inner Mongolia Ma Bo goes through a very painful disillusionment with his revolutionary ideals when he is betrayed by his best friend and squad leader Lei Xia after a seemingly careless critique made by Ma Bo about Jiang Qing who was a major Communist Party leader. After being falsely accused and unfairly tried as a