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Witness History, Witness History, Surviving re-education in China’s Cultural Revolution

Witness History

Witness History

Surviving re-education in China’s Cultural Revolution

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March 19, 2024

10 minutes

Available for over a year

In 1968, Jingyu Li and her parents were among hundreds of thousands of Chinese people sent to labour camps during Mao Zedong’s so-called cultural revolution.

The aim was to re-educate those not thought to be committed to Chairman’s Mao drive to preserve and purify communism in China.

Jingyu’s parents – both college professors - were put to work among the rice and cattle fields, and made to study the works of Chairman Mao. Fearful for their daughter’s safety, they disguised six-year-old Jingyu as a boy.

Over the next six years, the family were sent to four different camps. Not everyone could cope, as Jingyu tells Jane Wilkinson.

(Photo: Reading Mao's little red book in 1968. Credit: Pictures from History/Getty Images)