Ji-Li Jiang
Chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 +Epilogue
Risk Taking Researcher
Something that came to mind while I read the book "Red Scarf Girl" was a question, which perhaps some of you have already thought of it, but I decided to dig into it in order to find an answer to it. So basically, my question is the following: What would happen if you were a foreigner residing in China during the Cultural Revolution? Naturally, I Ecosia searched (Ecosia is a search engine that plants a tree in the Amazon after every search) the question and found and article on BBC News titled, "Growing up a foreigner during Mao's Cultural Revolution".
The article is about a man named Paul Crook, whose parents met in China and if you haven't read this article yet, I highly encourage you to, because it gives you another point of view of what it was like in those dark times. Anyways, this man lived through many similar situations Ji-li did, for example, his father was detained for allegedly being a spy and a few weeks after he was, Paul's mother was too. However, based on what I read, I believe that foreigners were treated slightly more kindly because the article stated: "[...] so we could deliver reading material to him or food that he liked." This reminded me of when Ji-li went to visit her father and they didn't let her bring food to him, different from Paul's situation. Not to mention that the article also stated that, "[...] My parents where never physically abused during the time they were locked up." While when Ji-li went to visit her father, scars painted his face, thanks to how he was beat.
I chose the image above because it shows foreigners like Paul Crook in China and I'd like to guess that this is a foreign family because they all appear to have the same shade of hair and skin tone. Moving on, my conclusion based on what I found was that while Crook's parents seemed to have been treated in a kinder way compared to Ji-li's father, that didn't make his life any easier than hers.
Link to the article HERE
Link to the article HERE
Gabi,
ReplyDeleteI loved how your reflection was so deep and critical thinking. Firstly, I took a look at the article and saw how, specially, people that look completely different, like Paul Crook are better treated. I can connect this article's topic with my mom's trip to China. When my mom went to China, she was more of the center of attention because people wanted to take pictures with her and wanted her to do all these things that normally famous/special people do. In my opinion, this was because she looked like a 100% foreigner. In detail, she had blonde hair, she had American clothing brands, she had jewelry, etc. I think that Chinese people look at foreigners differently because they stand out.