Chapter+Summaries

**Chapter Summaries**


 * Liberation Army Dancer/Destroy the Four Olds/Writing Da-Zi-Bao**

During the first chapter, a Liberation Army woman came and asked Jiang Ji-Li to come with her to see how flexible she was. Ji-Li does an amazing backbend and demonstrates good flexibility. The Liberation army woman asked Ji-Li and some of Ji-Li’s classroom peers to go to a dance training class. However, Ji-Li’s parents did not approve. Her parents told her that she wouldn’t be able to compete because they knew of her bad family history, but they did not tell her at this time. Ji-Li had to tell her best friend and her teacher that she wouldn’t be able to compete in the flexibility class. She then felt like she could not accomplish as much because of her family history. Because of this, was very depressed. In chapter two, a number of events take place. These events are centered on the four olds and replacing them with the four news. At the beginning of the chapter, Jiang-Ji-Li and others witness the breaking of the Great Prosperity Market. After that, Ji-Li and her friends are trying to think of new names from stores that contain four olds. Some examples are changing a store name from “The Innocent Child Toy Shop” to the “Red Child Toy Shop”. They are expressing their interest in the Cultural Revolution and showing their support. Then as Ji-Li was walking home, she spotted some student inspectors who find a western styled clothed man. The inspectors humiliated him, and tore his pants. Then latter she got into a conversation or debate with her and An-Yi against Du-Hai and Yin-Fan. She learned that teachers weren’t to be respected anymore. In Chapter 3, all of the classes were suspended in Ji-Li’s school. Then the only thing they did in her school was write big posters called Da-zi-baos. Those posters criticized the educational system. To prove their points they hung them everywhere. Ji-Li wasn’t sure what to put on her Da-zi-bao because she was still in shock about how her educational system was wrong.


 * The Red Successors/Graduation/The Sound of Drums and Gongs**


 * The Propaganda Wall/A Search in Passing/Fate**


 * Junior High at Last/Locked Up/An Educable Child**

In these three chapters, Junior High School at Last, Locked Up, and An Educable Child, Ji-li started junior high school where she begins to learn English from her teacher Zhang Xin. Many of Ji-li’s classes were replaced with classes that Chairman Mao believed would fulfill his quote “to combine education with practical experience. Therefore, teachers tired of teaching these subjects and one day, when Teacher Zhang said that it would be a study hall, Bai Shan asks to study at home, showing the independence of the students. Also, on New Year’s Eve, her father was locked up. Lin-lin came to Ji-li house, where Ji-li confided to her that her father was been detained. Lastly, Ji-li was picked as a guide at the exhibition.


 * Half-City Jiangs/The Class Education Exhibition/The Rice Harvest**

In these chapters, Ji-li’s life is drastically altered when she finds that a story has been published in the newspaper about her family. When she reads the story, she finds that it is about her relatives that were landlords. They were so rich that China called them the half city Jiangs because they owned so much property. When her classmates read the story, they torment her. She is so miserable that she goes to an office so that she can change her name. However, when she imagines breaking the news to her mother, she cannot do it. Eventually, she gets into a fight with her mother, and they do not speak to each other. Ji-li’s mother falls ill, and Ji-li is asked to criticize her father to make a clean break with her Black family. Nevertheless, she is unable to show her revolutionary spirit by doing this, so she is sent off to the country to work in the fields. Ji-li is surprised at how hard the work is, and she falls ill and faints into a tool. She gets a gash in her knee because of the disaster and is eventually sent home again to her depressed family.

In the chapter The Incriminating Letter, Uncle Tian and Ji-Li’s mom have a secret conversation in the bathroom. Ji-Li overheard them talking about a letter hidden in her mom’s room. The next morning Ji-Li’s mom discusses the letter with her. The letter was about a group of people who went out and tortured people. Her mom tells Ji-Li to hide the letter from the Red Guards or the group of people who torture others. She decided to hide it under the ashes of Little White’s litter box. The Red Guards held their family hostage and forced them to tell. Since Ji-Li didn’t tell them in first place where it was hidden, they slapped her Grandma. They made grandma a sweeper. She had to sleep the alley 2 times every day.
 * The Incriminating Letter/Sweeping**


 * Epilogue**