Lesson Plan: Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards

Ron Gochez, Maya Angelou Community High School

Rationale
This lesson plan will be used in my 10 th grade World History course when I cover the Chinese
Revolution in the context of the Cold War. I will also use in my US History class when I discuss
the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960-70’s. In the US History course I will make the connection
between the Black Power and Yellow Power Movements of that era and explain how they were
influenced by the Chinese Revolution in general and the Cultural Revolution in particular.

Skill and content objectives

The students will have to be able to work in small groups, research, use technology to develop a
Powerpoint Presentation that they will present in front of our class.
The students will have a clear understanding of the social/political reasons why many young
people participated in the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s-70’s. They will also
understand how those events influenced other movements around the world, including inside
of the United States.

Central Question: Why did Chinese youth get involved in the Cultural Revolution

Materials: Documents A-D, Cultural Revolution Timeline, Video, Chinese revolutionary songs,
Powerpoint/pictures

Introduction: I will refresh the student’s memories about the Chinese Revolution and
Chairman Mao. I will let them know that I will be teaching them about the role of youth in the
Cultural Revolution that took place in China from 1966 to 1976. I am going to focus on the Red
Guards, the youth brigades that were loyal to Chairman Mao and who played a key role in the
Cultural Revolution.

Powerpoint/Pictures
Project PPT slide 1. Tell students this photograph was taken in February 1967. It shows Red
Guards displaying leaders of “Anti-Revolutionary Groups.”

Ask students what they see in the image. 

What are the Red Guards doing? (Answer: Harassing or punishing people.) 
What are the punishments? (Answer: Wearing dunce caps; handled with force.) 
Where are they being punished? (Answer: In public, in front of a large crowd.)
Explain to students that many of the people targeted by Red Guards during the Cultural
Revolution were teachers and professors.
Project PPT slide 2. Explain that this is a propaganda poster from the Cultural Revolution and
ask students what they see in the image:

What objects are in the foreground? (Answer: Religious icons, literature, film reels. If you look
very closely you see “USA” on one of the books.)

What might these symbolize? (Answer: Old traditions -- religion, literature, capitalism, and
imperialism.)
What is happening to these objects or symbols? (Answer: The Red Guards are destroying them.)
Whose picture is on the flag? (Answer: Mao Zedong.) 
How are the Red Guards depicted? (Answer: They are depicted as valiant.
They are shown as leading a multitude of people for their cause.)

Project PPT slide 3 and 4. Explain that these pictures are from the 1960’s in San Francisco and
Oakland, CA. Ask students what they see in the image:

Who’s picture is hanging on the offices of the Black Panthers? (Answer: Mao Zedong.) 
Why do you think that they supported the ideas of Chairman Mao?
Could African-Americans learn from the struggle in China? Explain.
===============================================================

Explain: Today we’re going to look at a number of documents and I will ask the students, “Why
did Chinese youth join the Cultural Revolution?”

I will give the students some time to answer verbally in the class and I will allow for a few
different ideas to emerge. Ideally, there will be different answers given.

3. Pass out the timeline and read through it with the class. Highlight the following points in the
timeline:

What were Mao’s goals for the Cultural Revolution? What were some of the outcomes of the
Cultural Revolution? Based on the timeline, why might teenagers have supported the Cultural
Revolution?

4. Handout Documents A and B and GuidingQuestions. I will have the students read the
documents and answer the questions groups of four. The idea is to generate conversation in
the small groups so that they try to figure things out together.

5. Review student answers.

6. Handout Documents C and D.

Discuss: Both documents are excerpts from memoirs written long after the Cultural Revolution.
How might the fact that these are memoirs produced long after the event shape how we read
them?

7. Have students answer Guiding Questions for Documents C and D. Review student answers.

8. Individual work either in class or for homework: Have students write a paragraph that
answers the central historical question using evidence from the documents.
 
Document A: Mao’s “Little Red Book”

Mao’s “Little Red Book” is a collection of Mao Tse-Tung’s quotations that were used as a source
of inspiration and guidance for members of the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. These
are two excerpts from the book.

The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of
vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope
is placed in you. The world belongs to you. China’s future belongs to you.
Mao, 1957

We must help all our young people to understand that ours is still a very poor country, that we
cannot change this situation radically in a short time, and that only through the united efforts of
our younger generation and all our people, working with their own hands, can China be made
strong and prosperous within a period of several decades. The establishment of our socialist
system has opened the road leading to the ideal society of the future, but to translate this ideal
into reality needs hard work.
Mao, 1957
 
Source: Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. 1964
======================================================= 

Document B: Red Guard Song

Patriotic songs and slogans were common characteristics of the Cultural Revolution. This song
was written by the People’s Liberation Army Songs Editorial Department sometime around
1967.
 
Red Guards, Red Guards. Burning with revolutionary zeal, Tested by the storm of class struggle,
Tempered for battle our hearts are red, Standing firm, direction clear, our vigor for revolution
strong, We follow the party with full devotion, We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards.

Red Guards, Red Guards. We want to be the successors to Communism. The revolutionary red
banner passes on from generation to generation, We want to try on the glorious tradition.
Loving the country, loving the people, loving the collective, loving to work. Connecting with the
workers and the peasants, We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards.
============================================= 
 
Document C: At the Center of the Storm
Rae Yang was a young girl in the spring of 1966, when she became a part of the Red Guards
during the Cultural Revolution. In 1997, she published a memoir retelling the story of her life
and her family in China throughout the political turmoil of the 1950s through the 1980s. In this
excerpt she writes about her early experience in the Red Guards.

When the Cultural Revolution broke out in late May 1966, I felt like the legendary monkey Sun
Wukong, freed from the dungeon that had held him under a huge mountain for five hundred
years. It was Chairman Mao who set us free by allowing us to rebel against authorities. As a
student, the first authority I wanted to rebel against was Teacher Lin, our homeroom teacher. A
big part of her duty was to make sure that we behaved and thought correctly.

Now the time had come for the underdogs to speak up, to seek justice! Immediately I took up a
brush pen, dipped it in black ink and wrote a long dazibao. Using some of the rhetorical devices
Teacher Lin had taught us, I accused her of lacking proletarian feeling toward her students, of
treating them as her enemies, of being high-handed, and of suppressing different opinions. My
classmates supported me by signing their names to it. Next, we took the dazibao to Teacher
Lin’s home nearby and pasted it on the wall of her bedroom for her to read carefully day and
night. This, of course, was not personal revenge. It was answering Chairman Mao’s call to
combat the revisionist educational line.

Within a few days, dazibao written by students, teachers, administrators, workers, and
librarians, were popping up everywhere like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Secrets dark
and dirty were exposed. Every day we made shocking discoveries. The sacred halo around the
teachers’ heads that dated back two thousand five hundred years to the time of Confucius
disappeared. Now teachers must learn a few things from their students. Parents would be
taught by their kids instead of vice versa, as Chairman Mao pointed out. Government officials
would have to wash their ears to listen to the ordinary people....

Source: Rae Young, Spider Eaters: A Memoir, 1997.

 
Vocabulary
dazibao –propaganda posters written to denounce counter-revolutionaries
 
high-handed– bossy
proletarian –working class
revisionist—in this case, someone opposing Mao’s position                  
=======================================================
 
Document D: Under the Red Sun Memoir
Under the Red Sun is a memoir written by Fan Cao about her experiences during the Cultural
Revolution published in 2005. Here is an excerpt from the memoir.
I was a 7th grader when the Great Cultural Revolution broke out. Growing up in the
“New China” we were fed with revolutionary ideas bathed in the red sunlight of Mao. We
worshiped Mao the same way pious Christians worship their God, and we were completely
devoted to him. I, myself, really believed that we were working for a paradise on earth, and we
were going to save the entire world. How glorious it was to have the great destiny of liberating
all humanity! In fact, we did not even understand what revolution was and how other people in
the world really lived...

I was not allowed to join the Red Guards simply because my grandparents were rich before the
communists took away their land, and my parents were considered “intellectuals,” which
automatically made them anti-revolutionists regardless of the fact that they had been following
Mao’s idealism since their early adulthood. As members of the university faculty, my parents
were obviously in trouble. I, of course, was guilty by association. Only a 13-year-old girl, I
became a target of the revolution. After that, I lost all my friends and lived in perpetual fear for
several years. Despite this unbearable life, I did not dare challenge my belief in the revolution.
Instead, I wondered if it might be my parents who had done something wrong. I wrote a
dazibao denouncing them to show my loyalty to Mao. My naivety deeply wounded the feelings
between my parents and me.

As I grew up, I slowly learned the truth behind the so-called “revolution.” I also realized that my
family and I were relatively lucky compared with hundreds and thousands of innocent people
who died in the endless political movements. I am very remorseful, and I still feel shaken as I
think back on what happened during the Cultural Revolution.

Source: Fan Cao, Under the Red Sun, 2005

=========================================

Questions from the readings/handouts;

Document A:
1. (Sourcing) What do you believe was the purpose of Mao’s Little Red Book in China?
2. Why does Mao believe that young people are important to China’s future? List
examples.
3. If you were a youth in China at the time, how would you feel when you read about
Mao’s thoughts on young people?
4. How do you think our government today thinks about Black and Latino youth? Compare
and contrast.

Document B:
1. What do you think was the political objective of this song? Did it work? Why or
whatnot?
 2. What is the main message of the song?
3. Would you want to sing this song if you lived in that time period in China? Why or why
not?
Document C and D:
1. What are some similarities between documents C and D.
2. Do you find these accounts reliable? Explain using evidence from the documents.
3. Rae Yang (Doc. C) and Fan Cau (Doc. D) both wrote dazibao. Yang denounced her
teacher and Fan denounced her parents. Explain one way in which their actions were
similar and another way in which they were different.
4. According to Docs C and D, what were some reasons why young people joined the Red
Guards?
5. Would you have joined? Why or why not?

TIMELINE: Cultural Revolution

Adapted from timeline at:
http://people.hofstra.edu/alan_j_singer/CoursePacks/ChinasGreatProletarianCulturalRevolutio
n.pdf
September, 1965. Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong supports idea of a “Cultural Revolution” at a
party Central Committee. Lin Biao urges students to return to the basic principles of the revolutionary
movement ,and youth are encouraged to openly criticize revisionists within the Chinese Communist
Party.

April 18, 1966. An editorial in the Liberation Army Daily issues call for “Cultural Revolution.”

April 30, 1966. Prime Minister Zhou Enlai officially endorses “Cultural Revolution” to wipe out

“bourgeois ideology in the academic, educational, and journalistic fields, in art, literature, and

all other fields of culture.”

May 16, 1966. The ruling Politburo decides that the Cultural Revolution must attack bourgeois

elements in the Chinese Communist Party and the government.

June, 1966. Purges began in the Communist Party, the press and universities.

June 13, 1966. Universities and schools closed indefinitely.

August 18, 1966, Mao announces support for the Red Guard or “hong wei bing,” people in their teens
and 20s who supported the shake-ups within the Communist Party and China.

August, 1966. Red Guards campaign against the “Four Olds” (ideas, culture, customs and habits).
Street names were changed, books were burned and temples closed. Red Guards travel around the
country attacking local authorities as “capitalist roaders” and are joined by factory workers.

September, 1966. “Quotations from Chairman Mao” is published for the general public.

Fall, 1966. Schools remain closed. Youth report their teachers, leaders and parents. Liu Shaoqi

and Deng Xiaoping, major party leaders, are purged.

February, 1967. Red Guard ordered to return home from the countryside. Schools reopen. The

Army takes control over Beijing.

February 23, 1967. An editorial in Red Flag charges Red Guard with attacking all authority without
exception.

May 17-June 16, 1967. Party Central Committee places severe limits on protests.

July, 1967. Universities reopen.

July, 1968. Mao signals an end to the extreme radical phase of the Cultural Revolution.

October, 1968. Liu Shao-chi, an opponent of Mao, is expelled from the party. Cultural Revolution

is officially over.

December, 1968. Mao wants to send educated urban youth to the countryside for re-education by

peasants.

April, 1969. The Chinese Communist Party convened its Ninth Party Congress. Lin Biao is named as
Mao’s successor.

September 13, 1971. Lin Biao dies in a plane crash and is denounced as a counter-revolutionary.

September 9, 1976. Mao Zedong dies.

October 6, 1976. Jiang Qing and three other Cultural Revolution leaders, the “Gang of Four,” are

arrested. They are blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and sentenced to prison

for “anti-party” activities.

February, 1976. With the death of Zhou Enlai, Hua Guofeng is named new chair of the Communist Party.

August, 1977. Hua Guofeng declares the Cultural Revolution officially ended with the arrest of the Gang
of Four.

1978. The Communist Party repudiates the Cultural Revolution.

Music:
I will use these songs during the lesson so the students can listen to the songs that were influential in
that time period. I will ask them if there are any artists or songs today that would influence them to
become involved politically.

Communist Young Pioneers (Chinese Communist youth song)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJbxuvyF-Gs

Red Star Shining: a Cultural Revolution song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecb6Ww0HARM&list=PLETUXbGoUPb-D0qxaoti-
7zf5IamRn1BI&index=2

Sun Rises Shining Everywhere: a Cultural Revolution song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJaWIegMyTA&list=PLETUXbGoUPb-D0qxaoti-
7zf5IamRn1BI&index=1

Film: I will show clips of this video on the first day of the lesson and I will encourage them to watch it
on their own as a group.

Mao Zedong and China's Cultural Revolution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnhS8YtgURM

Class trips: Our school is in the red so we would not be able to get any funding for class trips. The
only way that could happen was if we got outside funding to pay for the expenses.

Culminating Projects:
The students will be responsible for putting together a Powerpoint Presentation (12 slides minimum)
about the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution. They will have to give a group presentation (5-10
minutes). The PPT will include pictures and will also explain some of the reasons why young people
joined the Red Guards. They will also have to share some of the problems that are associated with the
Red Guards such as violent attacks, damage to their own families…etc.

At the end of the presentation, they will individually have to explain why they would or would not have
joined the Red Guards if they were the same age in China in the 1960-70’s.

Adapted from https://sheg.stanford.edu/chinas-cultural-revolution