The Methods of the Chinese Revolution

From reading the excerpts on pages 766 and 769 of the textbook, I get the impression that both situations are reflections of a greater theme of the Cultural Revolution- that of the tearing down of the old order (social hierarchy and history) in order to give the new order a place to grow and room to flourish. Although the situations (one about peasants overthrowing their leaders; the other about students destroying artifacts) appear on the surface to be distinctly unrelated, they share the same undercurrent mentioned above.

Indeed, it makes sense that the old order must go in order for the new to live. The old order of China was highly hierarchical in nature- a stark contrast from the one-for-all-and-all-for-one ideal of the Communism that was to take its place. In order for everyone to be equal, the leaders, the gentry, and the rest of the priveledged members of the old society would have to relinquish their advantages and step down to the level of everyone else.

Not only were the two situations about physically destroying the old order (peasants slapping the leaders, and the Red Guard smashing artifacts), but they were about changing the mental state of the people as well. As the textbook said in the first excerpt, "The blow jarred the ragged crowd. It was as if an electric spark had tensed every muscle. Not in living memory had any peasant ever struck an official.". The day after, the peasants were ready to go "press charges" and beat the official to a pulp. As they say, to win people, you have to win mind, body, and soul- all three of them.

The Cold War

I chose to interview my mom about her impressions of the Cold War. To summarize: She was pretty young (born in 1967) during the Cold War, and therefore had little impression of it. She did say that she believed Nixon's 1972 visit to China greatly helped ease relations between China and the US at the time, and helped pave the way for China to become what it is today. Because there was so much internal turmoil occuring in China as my mom was growing up, she said people of her age paid relatively little attention to the Cold War, preferring to turn their concentration on events such as the Tiananmen Square protests. One of her most vivid memories during that time was of my uncle- her younger brother by about 5 years. He was a college student at the time, and had gone to protest in the Square (although a few months before the famed "Massacre"), and she could remember worrying the entire day about him.

My mom's memories of the Cold War probably weren't helped by the fact that she emigrated to Canada around 1990.

The predominant tone of the conversation was one of detachment or confused sentimentality (if that makes sense).

Reflecting on Cold Wars

I talked to my mom about the cold war.  From what she said it seems like she had an interesting view of it because she was a child while it was going on, and got to watch it resolve itself.  It seems like the things that she remembers from her childhood is basically the epitome of the cold war.  As a child she had a very simplistic view of the russians and thought of them as evil and threatening.  Overall she saw them as bad people, but once they became a capitalist country under Gorbachev, people began to see them in an unbiased light and realized that they weren't terrible people at all.  My mom also remembers the whole race to space and to the moon as a big part of the cold war.  This is probably because its one of the few things, that weren't political, where Russia and America seemed like direct enemies.  Also my dad when he butted in towards the end of my interview, said that he felt Regan took credit for "tearing down the wall" even though it was Gorbachev who was the one who was trying to turn russia into a capitalist country, and as a result, there wouldnt need to be a divide in germany.

An Oil Rush?

I think that it is very interesting to note that the book and a lot of people said that it wasn't necessarily a good thing for there to not be a huge population around the oil because of course that means that only a few people get all of the money, had there been a lot of people around the oil areas in the different valleys that it appears in, then  I think that almost a Gold Rush would have happened because a lot of people would all be digging around different spots, looking for the prized oil.  There would certainly be repercussions from this causing the price to shoot up as more people have less oil each, and then down as they tried to outbid each other.  There would also be problems over who owns what oil, the quality of land because of all of the collecting, as well as some oil probably being wasted (and being used up) as someone finds it unexpectedly and it spouts u  p on them unexpectedly.  One good thing that would have happened though was that it might have boosted the economy a little in the area, as all of the people need food, shelter, and supplies. 

 (Yes I finally caught up! (and sorry for not writing a lot on the map, being probably the last one to write on this didn't leave me a lot of options))

Ends to a Mean

I may be completely wrong here, and you can call me on it if I am, but to me it seems as if there are different "ends" in relation to the same goal (if that makes any sense) that are being met in these two instances.  Yes, they are both coming in a time when China is being reformed; out with the old and in with the new, seems to be a consistent theme for both of these cases but the different instances seem to be different ways of getting rid of the old and in with the new.

In the first excerpt, changes had already been made in terms of land distribution, and it seemed that the people were being turned against the old powers/older landlords.  These people had been an important official for some time, and as you could see, nobody wanted to strike the person at first.  With more prodding though, one after another rose up to be able to take down the official thus thrusting the area into a new age, with new different powers.

In the second example, the Red Guards are revolting against the old, by also destroying everything old, but this time, more in the form of things, and laws that were being held in the house.  To me it seemed as if they seemed to have the air of "Oh of course we can do this," as they made it clear that they were revolting.  

In both cases, there didn't seem to be any opposing force to these two groups destroying the old order. What little resistance for the second example was in the example of saying that it was against the Constitution, but that was quickly put down by saying that there was no Constitution anymore, as the person should be able to see from the revolt.  

I say ends to a mean because it seems like there is already an, at least partially, reformed China, and that these two events happened because there was a change going on.  So even though these were helping the change along, there was already a change in the making, which was probably what caused these events in the first place.

Memories of the Witch-Hunts

Me: What is your first memory of the Cold War? When did it intrude upon your life?

Dad: My first memory of the Cold War was when hearing about the Communist witch-hunts sponsored by senator Joseph McCarthy. He would bring people in front of the House UN-American Activities Committee and grill them to find Russian sympathizers in the US, and discover people in the US who had communist ideals. I saw newsreels of the hearings. It was frightening. Investigating threats of subversion or propaganda

Me: Did they torture them?

Dad: No, just investigations in a courtroom.

Me: Did they condemn any of the people you saw on the tapes?

Dad: Some of the people lost their jobs, and were publicly humiliated. Some people were black listed even though many of them were not communists. To me it was a form of domestic terrorism. He accused people of pro-soviet subversion and propaganda.

Me: Any racial profiling involved?

Dad: I was too young to understand it. Those hearings were in front of the press and the whole world was watching people being accused of being anti-American.

Me: What kind of emotions were involved?

Dad: Constant rivalry. Everyone was afraid they were going to bomb us, or that we would bomb them. It got so bad that anyone who believed in liberal politics could be accused of being a soviet communist. We were basically at war with another country even though we weren’t at war, or at least trying to avert a war.

Note: After talking to my dad, I did a little research of my own, and discovered that Joseph McCarthy had no direct involvement with the anti-communist investigations. It was actually chaired by John W. McCormack, Samuel Dickstein, and Martin Dies Jr.

Cold War....BRRRRR

When I interviewed my mom, she did not know exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned the Cold War. On the other hand, my dad said he knew what it was and that it was going on, but he didn't really care so much at the time since he was a teenager. He said that Romania wasn't part of the Cold War but since the Romanian government was communist, the government sided with Russia. My father, however,  said that he  liked American government and despised  communism. An interesting thing he told me was that he remembered there being a radio station that was called "The Voice of America" and that it  was illegal  to listen to this station and those that did listen to it, were sent to jail (If someone told the cops) since it completely talked smack about communism.