Family life effected by the Cultural Revolution in in the po

Meilan, marrying below herself with the villagers remarking “a beauty loves a scholar indeed” (Jin 2), she decided to take the route of most women in the years immediately after Mao Tse-tung’s death, as a house wife. While she accomplishes a housewife�

During the Course of the novel, Shao Bin portrays the very type of person that started the Cultural Revolution in the 1940’s, yet he is persecuted for this. Meilan, towards the beginning of the novel, wanted to play by the government’s rules, but changed her feelings about this until the end when she encourages Bin to continue his political conquest for justice. This new role of women in the new society Meilan took on very well, but the role of Shanshan to be the only legacy of Bin and Meilan has yet to be fulfilled at the novel’s end. The impact of the Cultural Revolution on family and society is still an unfinished story while China moves itself further away from those revolutionary days, and closer to the future.

ShanShan, the Shao’s only son due to the mandatory one child policy, is two years old and Bin’s major motivation behind getting a new apartment. The one child policy was brought about when Mao, during the Cultural Revolution, began seeing the population problem developing, and created this, along with many other policies, to curb the population. James E. Ethridge says in his book about the one child policy, “’The one couple, one child’ program is the symbolic centerpiece of the current population control campaign, and the aspect which almost alone represents Chinese population control to foreigners” (Ethridge 62). This policy made every child an only child, therefore making every parent pushing their child to be the best, that child being the only opportunity to pass on the family’s name. This type of paternalism is seen even today in America with the Chinese being the highest scoring minority on the SAT. If In the Pond were to continue after it ended, this pushing of Shanshan to achieve a higher level of education would be very prevalent.

Although the post-Mao era that In the Pond is set in is a relatively innovative time for the Chinese, the repercussions from the Cultural Revolution are still prevalent in the book. The revolut

Some topics in this essay:
Cultural Revolution, Revolution Pond, World Literature, Shao Bin, James Ethridge, United America, Mao Tse-tung’s, Bin Meilan, Bin Bin, SAT Pond, cultural revolution, shao bin, child policy, cultural revolution pond, child child, pond set, beginning novel, world literature, post-mao era, jin 2, population control, china’s cultural revolution,