Red Scarf Girl
#6 - Risk Taking Researcher
Throughout chapter one and two, the name Chairman Mao was mentioned a few times. So I asked myself, who is he? What did he do? Why is his name mentioned many times over and over? Does he have something to do with the author of this book?
After reading articles, podcasts, and essays, I discovered that Chairman Mao is another name for Mao Zedong.
Mao Zedong, also known as Mao Tse-tung and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese Communist and the founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he governed as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976. He died from Parkinson's disease. He was 82 years old.
By discovering this, I realize that the person that wrote this book liked Mao because they keep saying great things about him like "Mao Zedong, our beloved leader." Pg. 17 "Mao Zedong, is our faith." Pg.46
An interesting fact about him is that Part of Mao's comeback in the Cultural Revolution was fueled by a small red book of his sayings. It was called the "Little Red Book" and was made available to everyone around China.
Mao was born the son of a peasant farmer on December 26, 1893 in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, China. He attended the local school until he turned 13 when he went to work full time on the family's farm.
In 1911 Mao joined the Revolution Army and fought against the Qing Dynasty. After that he went back to school. He also worked as a librarian.
Stefano,
ReplyDeleteI thought it was very interesting what you chose to research about. I can connect to you because always that Mao's name was mentioned in the book, I asked myself, "Who is this guy?", but the only thing is that I never thought that this guy could actually be someone real. Now that I am thinking back to when I read what the Harvard students wrote about this book, I remembered they said this book was about what happened to the author, and her family. It was great to read you post because it made me think further into what characters could actually be from real life. I think that there are some parts of the book, now and then, that are made up to make the story just a little more interesting, but that most of it is the truth, based on real facts.