Comparison Of The Great Leap Forward And Cultural Revolution

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The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were revolutions in China that contradicted each other. They were two major events and program that China set in motion during the 1950s and 1960s to help China become the world’s super power country. They were programs set in motion by Mao Zedong after 1949. In the movie, “To Live,” you can see that there were many hidden messages that imply the hard times during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Fugui’s two children were killed because of the two events. Youqing, his son, was killed because of the hardships that the youth went through during the time of Great Leap Forward, while Fengxia, his daughter, died when she was giving birth to her first son because there was a lack of …show more content…
The Cultural Revolution was a way for China to preserve the Communist ideology. This was referred to as the dark times of China and it involved arresting people that show hints of capitalist and traditional values. Although this was a “dark” time of China but there are always two side to this story. In Some of Us, it showed many positive sides during the time of the Cultural Revolution. One key element that existed during this time is the lack of gender discrimination for the youth. Although the female in the family still did the chores and cook dinner, the youth had gender equality. In the book, many authors describe their youth as they were treated the same as the boys in their class. They took the same classes and the same extracurricular activities. When they viewed the older women taking on the family roles, they say that is against the revolution and the youth should not be like them. Another thing Cultural revolution created was an indifference environment for urban and rural youths. When we hear people coming from a rural area, we will have the stereotype of them being low income and do not have the right sources of education. In the Cultural revolution they destroyed that, in one story, Zhiqing made two best friends when she was working on the farm. They were from the rural environment but Zhiqing did not see a difference between them. They would always say …show more content…
Before watching the movie and reading Some of Us, I never paid attention to the events of China when I learned about them. I realized that although both campaigns killed many people, there are many sides to the story. Some think that it was a way to enforce the communist power, while some believe it helped China catch up to other nations. Some of Us helped us see the brighter side of the Cultural Revolution, it was a time of short-term youth gender equality and equality between the rural and urban families. This opened my interests to research more about the two campaigns and ask my family about their personal experiences. I learned to never trust only one side of the story and always look for a different perspective to have a more holistic view of the

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