SNOW FALLING IN SPRING

When Li was 12 years old, the Chinese Cultural Revolution began and changed life in that nation. For Li and her family, the peaceful situation, in which several generations of the family lived together in harmony, changed precipitously. Mao’s revolution destroyed family customs and life. Members of educated, comfortable families who lacked political influence (like Li’s) were forced into reeducation according to Communist principles. Her father was sent to a Labor Camp and she went to boarding schools some distance from Beijing. Her education was thorough but strict. The Red Guards controlled life, destroying her father’s valuable library, forcing false confessions, denouncing people and punishing them in public—a dictatorship of thugs. Told in the first person, the narrative will enable readers to sympathize with Li and feel relief when she leaves to study at Swarthmore College after ten years of education in China. Combined with The Diary of Ma Yan (2005), readers can begin to know about education and life in modern China. (chronology, glossary) (Nonfiction. 12-16)