Abstract
This paper discusses Rae Yang's memoir - "The Spider Eaters". The paper explains that the books is the story of a classless person who came of age during the Cultural Revolution and who obviously worked hard to present her experiences in a direct and emotional manner. The paper explains that Yang's volume covers the decades between 1950 and 1980 and clearly illustrates the cruelty that Yang came to see all around her though a committed communist and Red Guard. The paper also shows how Yang's memoir points to Mao as a very aware person, a megalomaniac in Communist clothing who had no care as to the degree of cruelty that was inflicted through an entire society, or how this experience might shape future Chinese society and politics. In conclusion, the paper shows that Mao and the Chinese Cultural Revolution destroyed the Chinese who might have had much to offer the socialist experiment, drove great wedges between people and accustomed the Chinese once again to conditions of great fear.

From the Paper
"Mao's regime could be, just as the Red Guard she came to recognize as brutal, a movement quickly dissolving into anarchy, a kind of gang warfare, till the Red Army intervened. This is an interesting revelation given that one is so often instructed that Mao was not aware of the abuses inflicted on many Chinese during the Cultural Revolution, that the Red Army had somehow taken over or carried out what he had not intended. Yang's memoir points to Mao as a very aware person, a megalomaniac in Communist clothing who had no care as to the degree of cruelty that was inflicted through an entire society, or how this experience might shape future Chinese society and politics. Yang's volume covers the decades between 1950 and her 1980. Shortly after, Yang left for the United States where she made her career."

Tags:Chinese, Cultural, Revolution, Mao, Communist, Red, Guard

Abstract
This paper gives a critical review of Rae Yang's memoir "The Spider Eaters." According to the paper, this work is in some ways typical of much literature addressing events during the Cultural Revolution. The author was a member of a generation consumed by youth brigades and the Red Guards at the same time as the Cultural Revolution harmed her family. She described the conflicts of ideology and humanity years later, as a professor of Chinese literature in the U.S.

From the Paper
" Rae Yang's volume addressing the Cultural Revolution is part of a range of offerings by different persons caught up in a frightening time in the early People's Republic of China (PRC). To a degree, works such as The Spider Eaters feed a Western market of people curious as to what did occur in the PRC between 1966 and 1976, a time of isolation from the West but known incidents of extreme repression. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) featured divided social groups in technocrats and educated persons charged with administering the new state, before Mao's effort to prop himself up..."

Tags:yang rae, spider eaters, prc, cult rev

Abstract
This paper takes a look at Rae Yang's "The Spider Eaters - a Memoir", a book addressing the Cultural Revolution from the perspective of a person who was caught up in a frightening time in the early People's Republic of China (PRC).The paper considers the book a disturbing reflection on the youth of the Red Guard and the vicious sort of fascism created by Chairman Mao. It concludes that the book is well written and informative.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Maoism and Youth
Divisions
Conclusion

From the Paper
"Yang writes in a way that is immediate and also indicating that her days in the Red Guard were far away, a dream somehow, and as much of the volume moves back and forth between the present and the past and with anecdotes to do with her childhood and family adding to a surreal and very personal explanation of a frightening time and different people's reactions to it. A chapter "A Strange Gift from the Pig Farm" refers to her habit of waking at 3 a.m. that remained after she was placed in the Manchurian countryside just as millions of other young people to finish high school were sent for menial labour away from the cities. She had had to waken at 3 a.m. to perform part of her assigned work and the habit remained, years later. (pp. 1-2) So much forgetting a disturbing time, or the person she had become, as 3 a.m. waking in America showed that some things could not be washed away. The inability to reconcile what Maoism preached, what happened, and came into view as very wrong with the CCP movement produced despair later and a wish to die which took time to overcome. Rae Yang embarked on graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts. She graduated from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1981 and in the U.S., completed her M.A. in 1985 and her Ph.D. in 1991, obtaining a post at Dickinson College where she specializes in pre-modern and modern Chinese literature."

Tags:China cultural revolution communism Chinese, red army, red guard mao maoism

Abstract
This paper provides an overview of Rae Yang's "Spider Eaters," a political and social memoir of the life of a young Chinese woman during the Chinese cultural revolution. The paper shows that Yang's memoir is of her youth torn between two worlds, that of her loyalty to the Communist Party, and that of her parents and friends.

From the Paper
"The narrative technique utilized in the book is that of first person. Continuously moving from past to present and from dream to reality this technique helps to convey the vast complexity of life in China, as well as the richness, confusion, and struggle of Yang's inner-self. For example, her dreams act as a soliloquy as they illustrate to the reader Yang's conflicted feelings as it shows her naive and tormented side."

Tags:Red, Guard, revolution

From the Paper
"In Rae Young's Spider Eaters, the conflict between freewill and determinism is encapsulated in her dramatic life. Growing up in the oppressive environment of revolutionary China, Young's ability to exercise her freedom and individuality was limited by the rules and regulations of the Communist Party. Unlike a democratic society, people had to speak and act in conformity with the Communist Party or risk losing their lives and their families in Young's depiction of revolutionary China. As a na've Red Guard, Young believed that she had liberated herself from the oppression of her teachers. She thought that she had the freedom to control her life and the lives of others. However, after witnessing the violence and the injustice of the Cultural Revolution, Young realized that she was caught up in a vicious campaign that spiral..."

Tags:BOOK, REVIEWS

Abstract
This paper examines how, when the Second World War ended, the nations of the USSR and China formed a bond based in common interests for power and other advancements. It discusses how history was formed and developed by the agreements the two nations made, and one of those agreements was that Stalin was going to share the secrets of nuclear technology with Mao in return for several things, including military agreements, possible provocation of the U.S., and other favors. It looks at how Mao faithfully followed his end of the agreement and how Stalin backed out, promoting Mao to believe the USSR was working toward victimizing China, and with this belief, he ordered his technology experts to devote their time to the development of nuclear technology. It analyzes how, because of the broken trust between Stalin and Mao, China has become a formidable opponent in the field of nuclear technology.

From the Paper
"Mao's belief that his country was a victim became strengthened when Stalin refused to comply with the earlier promise to share information. At that time Mao decided Stalin was becoming a threat to China as he held nuclear technology secrets. In the mind of Mao there was only one reason that his former ally would suddenly change his mind about sharing the agreed upon information and that was so the USSR could become a power over China and a serious threat to the future of the nation. When Stalin backed out of his word Mao believed Stalin was actually planning to become a threat to China and this was one of the motivating factors behind Mao's decision to pursue the development of nuclear technology."

Tags:stalin, mao, weapons, of, mass, destruction, energy

Abstract
In this article, the writer discusses Mao's and Simmel's views on identity. The writer contends that they both agree that identity is shaped by contradiction.

From the Paper
"Both Georg Simmel and Mao Tse Tung believed that the root of identity lay in contradiction. Simmel's stranger's identity is born from the contradiction that he represents being simultaneously within and without society. Although he is not part of the society, his very identity depends on that fact and he views the established group with freshened eyes. Mao for his part also believed that identity was rooted in contradiction. For Mao this contradiction, given the proper conditions, could juxtapose itself just as the proletariat given the right circumstances ... "

Tags:mao, simmel, contradiction

Abstract
This undergraduate level paper is an exploration of the life of Mao Zedong. It focuses on his political leadership in China, his origins, and the nature of his rule. It concludes that, in the overall view, Mao's charisma was no match for his failures as a leader, which left China as little more than a barely industrialized Third World nation.

Abstract
This paper analyzes three articles that relate to issues in contemporary China. It specifically examines "Rebuilding the Party's Normative Authority: China's Socialist Spiritual Civilization Campaign. Problems of Post-Communism" by Feng Chen, "Dilemmas of Thought Work in Fin de Siecle China" by D. C. Lynch and "Economic Reform and Ideological Decay: the Decline of Ideology, in Riding the Tiger - the Politics of Economic Reform in Post-Mao China" by Gordon White.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Reform and Ideology
Lynch on 'Thought Work'
Gordon White and Riding the Tiger
Feng Chen
Conclusion

From the Paper
"When studied after Lynch's paper and White's early 1990s summary, Feng Chen's work seem on target. He shows the Party's intellectuals and ideologists inventing work for themselves according to 'human interest' topics such as crime, removing unwholesome influences, bringing on patriotic education for the young - and these do point to some sort of socialist function. Ironically, the CCP is to run the Chinese state whose shifts to capitalism bring social problems and work towards correcting the social problems created. Feng Chen's discussion is effective in the irony of the CCP being unable to make a "normative order" according to socialism when nearly all else it pursues is so geared to capitalism. (41) An alert reader too will see that none of this matters because the Chinese show in different ways that, first and foremost, they want the benefits of capitalism. It seems like the CCP can have its moralizing intellectual and ideological "role" if it wants, because the Chinese want to be employed and have buying power. Also, they see the clear failings of capitalism as pursued by an archaic Party in millions of visibly poor people and the migrant worker population that is mentioned by others as a strong defect of the present system. If a reader follows the Chinese press, he or she can begin to think like an everyday Chinese who does not expect accuracy from the state media, does expect to be given some message of what it means to be a Chinese citizen, how China will be "great" of course, and as Feng Chen added, some instruction to do as the Party suggests. (33)"

Tags:white tiger, authority CCP