The same thing applies to Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. The “Re-Education” policy of Communist China caused the narrator and Luo to be sent to the village side of Phoenix Mountain and instigated their want to read the banned, Western books. When the narrator says, “ we often discussed this between us…. speculating wildly what books that might be among them (Page 50),” shows us the mystery fuels the ambition to read these books. This Cultural Revolution was instigated in order to purge the “impure” elements of Chinese which included any form of Western influence. Once the narrator and Luo obtain these Western books, they experienced the possibilities inherent in freedom as the narrator puts it, “But Jean-Christophe, with his fierce
