53 pages • 1 hour read
Anchee MinRed Azalea
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Red Azalea
Red Azalea, the heroine of Jiang Ching’s film, represents both the struggle for identity and its erasure during the Cultural Revolution. According to the Supervisor, Red Azalea serves as an exemplar for the revolution itself, functioning as a heroine who will connect with every peasant, worker, and soldier to the cause. For Red Azalea to have this profound a reach, her own identity must be universal and easily understood, and the changes that Jiang Ching and the Supervisor require in the script and subsequent reshooting of the film dilute Red Azalea’s personal identity, making her character a vehicle for Chairman Mao’s cult of personality. Red Azalea conveys the importance of acting and performance to the Cultural Revolution, for not only does the film extol the value of workers to the revolution, but it also highlights the Party’s tendency to assign roles to people, making some actors, some workers, and some peasants.
Big Beard
Big Beard, a hen that the young Anchee tries to kill, symbolizes the pursuit of freedom during the Cultural Revolution, embodying the desire to flee oppression and live beyond the confines of cages. Her gruesome death brings Anchee’s family no pleasure or food, as Big Beard illustrates the uselessness of Mao’s revolutionary violence. The bird’s name links it to the materials and texts that bolster the class struggle that animates the Cultural Revolution, as the chicken itself is nicknamed after Karl Marx. Initially, Anchee attempts to kill the chicken so that her family can eat. Instinctively, the bird bites Anchee but fails to escape. Big Beard, like Anchee later, tries to pursue her own freedom but is thwarted by outside controls of her own agency.
Big Beard avoids death temporarily, as she lays eggs with much effort. Becoming productive increases her value, and like the workers during the Cultural Revolution that Anchee describes, her ability to contribute makes her continuing existence possible. Productivity can’t serve as an adequate substitute for freedom, however, for the Party committee in the neighborhood bans pets and animals in homes. Foreshadowing Anchee’s betrayal of Autumn Leaves and Yan’s capture of Little Green, Anchee’s attempt to kill Little Beard a second time highlights how important freedom remains, as Big Beard, feeling unencumbered by danger or the confines of a cage, plays in the yard right before Anchee kills her. Horrified by her agonizing death, Anchee and her family can’t bring themselves to eat her, and the futility of this oppression becomes clear, for even the bird’s death serves no useful purpose for Anchee’s family. Eaten by their neighbor, “Big Beard had become a handful of bones lying in a garbage can in the corner” (25), and Anchee remains as hungry as ever.
Mao’s Writings
Mao’s power becomes greater than his own physical presence, in part because of The Pervasive Reach of Mao’s Propaganda. This propaganda depends on his writings and their study and memorization by teachers, party officials, and other workers. Serving as a physical symbol of his propaganda, his writings become the basis for education and the textbooks that Anchee reads in school. As citations of his Little Red Book, among other works, pepper Red Azalea, Anchee illustrates her knowledge of his work, remembering quotations just as well as she recalls the names of her parents and siblings. Anchee’s mastery of Mao’s texts proves advantageous, for she gains influence and position because she is “able to recite the Little Red Book” (15). Originally published in 1964, this book collected Mao’s quotations from speeches and other writings and, in Red Azalea, familiarity with the book offers safety, at least temporarily.
During Anchee’s first conversation with Yan, the two women bond over their shared knowledge of the Little Red Book, as their encyclopedic familiarity with Mao’s writings creates a connection between them. As they quiz each other, answering with the number of the edition or the page number of a quotation, Anchee and Yan grow close. However, because this relationship is built upon the women’s initial adherence to these books and the propaganda they extol, their mutual bond cannot survive the corrosive effects that this propaganda eventually has on their lives. Anchee and Yan have memorized Mao’s writings, but so has Lu, and she deploys her own knowledge of Mao’s propaganda to isolate Yan. Attacking Yan implicitly, Lu “ordered everyone to recite Mao’s poem with her and pay attention to its latent meaning” (148). Without explicitly accusing Yan, Lu manages to criticize her, knowing that a group of workers indoctrinated with Mao’s writings will abandon Yan. Even after Anchee leaves Red Fire Farm, Mao’s texts follow her, and she and the other actors must study these materials. While they work to produce Jiang Ching’s films (further propaganda to advance the class struggle), they continue to face The Pervasive Reach of Mao’s Propaganda.
