Son of the Revolution

Son of the Revolution (1983), written by Liang Heng with his wife, Judith Shapiro, is a memoir of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and is both the story of Liang’s own coming-of-age and a chronicle of China’s political and cultural upheaval following the Communist Party’s rise to power in the mid-1900s.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain references to violence and death by suicide.

Liang Heng is born in Changsha, a large city in central China, in 1954, five years after Chairman Mao established the Communist People’s Republic of China. He has two elder sisters, Liang Fang and Liang Wei-ping, and his parents are both Communist Party hopefuls with distinguished jobs. When Liang is only a few years old, his mother is branded a “Rightist” for criticizing the Party and is sent away for labor reform. Liang’s father, hoping to distance his family from the damaging “Rightist” association, divorces his wife and forbids his children from seeing her. Despite his efforts, Liang and his sisters are still denied opportunities and bullied in school as the children of a “Rightist” parent.

In 1966, when Liang is twelve, the Cultural Revolution begins, and his family is once again facing upheaval. One group of citizens after another falls victim to political criticism. Liang’s father is among those condemned as “Reactionary Capitalist stinking intellectual” (51), and since his father has always believed in Chairman Mao and upheld Party principles, he’s heartbroken. Father loses his job and has to undergo a “traveling struggle,” where he’s forced to march through the streets, wearing signs listing his crimes. The Revolutionary Red Guards invade Liang’s home and burn all his father’s books; meanwhile Liang Fang, a fervent Party hopeful, has become a Red Guard herself.

As the son of a supposed capitalist sympathizer, Liang is beaten up by other children. Despite his family’s persecution, Liang often supports the Party and is loyal it. When his neighbor, Peng Ming, invites him to take part in a New Long March—a movement where young people recreate the routes the Red Army traveled during the Chinese Civil War—Liang participates enthusiastically.

Following the March, Liang goes to Peking to stay with Peng Ming at the Central Institute of Music. During his months in Peking, Liang is impressed by Peng Ming’s Revolutionary fervor; he also witnesses the public criticism of a musician and the rape of a female Red Guard, events that reveal the dark side of the Revolution.

In autumn of 1967, Liang’s father must attend a “Thought Study” program to reform his political views, while his sisters become part of a movement to send Educated Youth to the countryside, to live with peasants. As a result, 13-year-old Liang is left alone and falls in with the local “hoodlums” (151), practically living on the streets. Finally, Father is granted leave to return home on weekends, and Liang resumes his studies. 

Along with many other cadres, or civil servants who work on behalf of the Community Party, Father is ordered to move to the countryside, undergoing more re-education while teaching Communist principles to the peasants. Father, Liang, and Liang’s stepmother, Zhu Zhi-dao, move to Changling County.There, Father and Liang are appalled by the severe poverty of the peasants and find their presence is resented as a further strain on limited resources. However, Father’s dedication to teaching the peasants soon wins them over, and the locals take Father “deeply [...] into their hearts” (180). Liang is allowed to attend middle school, but as the son of an intellectual, he’s ostracized by the peasant students. He discovers a storeroom of pre-Revolutionary books and becomes an avid reader and writer.

Eventually, Liang becomes a basketball star at his new upper middle school and is invited to work at the Changsha Shale Oil Factory and play on the factory basketball team. While working, Liang yearns for romantic attachment, and after a few brief relationships, he develops a more serious bond with Little Gao, a young train conductor he meets on a factory-sponsored trip to Shanghai. Liang’s relationship with Little Gao progresses steadily, until he meets her high-ranking father, who disapproves of Liang’s political status, and the lovers gradually drift apart. In 1976, Chairman Mao dies and college entrance examinations reopen; Liang applies for and is accepted by the Hunan Teachers’ College, where he studies Chinese language and literature. At the college, Liang meets a young American teacher, Judy Shapiro, and falls in love.

Judy and Liang want to marry, but they face opposition from the college’s vice-dean, which Judy overcomes by writing to political leader Deng Xiaoping. With his approval—as well as the support of Liang’s own family, who appreciate Judy’s unpretentious intelligence—the two are married. Liang finishes college and prepares to move to the United States with Judy, where he will attend graduate school. Liang reflects that only by sharing the truth of what happened during the Cultural Revolution, as he’s done in his memoir, can the Chinese people ensure the atrocities of the Revolution never take place again.