Here Gao Yuan provides a personal account of the political insanity of China's Cultural Revolution, which he was swept up into as a teenager. Chairman Mao's instructions to the youths of the countryside to ferret out those who weren't "revolutionary" or "pure" enough quickly lead to the real-life "Lord of the Flies" scenario that we can see in this book. Now I'm certainly no expert on Chinese history, but Mao's attempt to lead the people to a glorious revolution through the elimination of so-called enemies hardly made the population stronger and ready to move forward to his glorious communist future. This would require teamwork and cooperation among all people. Instead the Cultural Revolution made everyone suspicious of everyone else, as people were desperate to prove how righteous they were by ferreting out class enemies. If you couldn't find any enemies, you just made them up. Whoever was the loudest and most violent won the battle, and proof went out the window.

Gao Yuan was swept up in this insanity, and in the beginning of his narrative he enjoyed proving his revolutionary zeal by "outing" the teachers at his school who supposedly were not righteous or revolutionary enough, and participated in destroying many of their careers. But Gao stopped having so much fun when the lives of his friends, his family, and finally himself were destroyed. Instead of the unified force of revolutionary youth that Mao envisioned, the logical outcome was the disintegration of the youth movement into smaller and smaller factions, who merely used Mao's instructions as an excuse to bully each other and consolidate power. Gao is not afraid to admit to his own evil acts, such as when he participated in the beating of a teenage girl, pulled a meat cleaver on his own father, or when he helped destroy a hospital, all because he was lead to believe that his politics were more righteous than everyone else's. He then watches helplessly as the countryside descends into factionalism and anarchy. Some parts of this book are quite alarming, as the youths digress into torture and warfare, and many of Gao's friends are severely injured or killed in the factional fighting.

One interesting side effect of this book is Gao's descriptions of the personality cult Chairman Mao built around himself, and how he bullied the people into worshipping him as a supreme deity. This man succeeded in making a billion people think he was a god. That's an interesting study in politics and sociology.

"Born Red" is not a broad historical account of the Cultural Revolution, but the autobiography of a man who was a young student in an elite "middle school" at the outset of this tumultuous and destructive period of recent Chinese history. The students were urged to ferret out "counter-revolutionaries" and given almost free reign over their decisions and punitive actions. I agree with the prior reviewer that this book brings to mind a real "Lord of the Flies," and would add to that the Salem Witch Trials.

Although their actions were encouraged, at the outset, by their teachers, the students quickly turned their attentions to their instructors and "found" counter-revolutionary, "bourgeouis" and other improper behavior. Nearly all the teachers were branded, even after the Communist party instructed the students that most teachers should be considered good or "relatively good." When the students ran out of teachers and local petty officials to attack, they turned on each other, forming alliances which accused their opponents of non-revolutionary behavior. The mounting violence and resulting chaos are, on a certain level, surreal. The author's "postscript," while brief, ties the account to the present with its description of the "where they are now" of his friends, and enemies, during this time.

This amazing tale is seen through the eyes of the child the author was at the time, rather than through the filter of adult wisdom and judgement. That is what gives this terrifying and funny book its power.

As a fourteen year-old boy Gao Yuan attended a boarding school that became caught up in the wildness of the Cultural Revolution. He experienced the foolishness of the children and their terrible violence as they turned on each other. At the same time his father was being pilloried at home.

This is a great yarn about a surreal world, as well as an important historical document.

The wisdom of the East made practical and easily digestable for the West. No matter what barriers you find in life, one finds a concise approach here. Excellent