Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution is an autobiography of Gao Yuan (, born 1952) and his recollection of experiences during the Cultural Revolution in China. Stanford University Press is the publisher. The foreword was written by William Joseph. At the time Gao Yuan was a post-graduate student at Stanford University.
Stanley Rosen of the Journal of Asian Studies said that the book was aimed at audiences broader than just specialists in China. Rosen said that the book "does not provide enough chronological detail or related political information to anchor the general reader in the larger milieu" but that the foreword, which he called "admirable", "fills in most of these gaps".
Lucian W. Pye, author of a book review for The China Quarterly, wrote that Born Red "is a step-by-step, blow-by-blow account of how a bright Chinese middle-school student went about "making revolution," the name Red Guards gave their blend of high jinks and vicious cruelty." He argued that the book "is another big nail in the coffin of the once popular theory that the Cultural Revolution was a consciousness raising, idealism inspiring movement".
Structure
Within the book, author Gao Yuan changed the names of all of the local place names. He also changed all of the names of his classmates because they "all, innocent or guilty, were caught up in a movement beyond anyone's ability to control".
The primary setting is Yizhen Number One Middle School in Yizhen, a county seat in Hebei. Because of its location, the central government of the People's Republic of China has indirect influence in the events documented in the book. After the military takes control of the town, Red Guards torture members of rival factions to death. Jonathan Unger, a book reviewer for The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, wrote that this was "more horrific than anything ever recounted to me during interviews with former Red Guards from Canton."
Story
The book is a recreation of a diary of Gao Jianhua, who later changed his given name to "Yuan", spanning 1966 to early 1969. According to Gao Yuan's testimony, originally the Red Guards had a noble goal in ending corruption but the movement deteriorated. At first the students at the school of Gao Jianhua (now Gao Yuan) gain the power to attack their teachers and leave school when they were not supposed to. In one portion of the story, the students, now free from school, travel around China, often while having no money. In the absence of the school's discipline, the students begin to turn on one another. Pye wrote that the "playfulness" of the movement decays into a "wanderlust of street-smart, child delinquents" who abuse others and kill defenseless people. Ultimately, out of Gao Jianhua's class of 50 students, over 6 were killed due to injuries, murder, or suicide. Almost that number of the almost 200 teachers at Gao Jianhua's school died.
At the end, according to the book, the perpetrators of the killings were expelled from the Communist Party. According to Timothy Tung, a book reviewer for The New York Times, the perpetrators "were let off easily". The postscript stated that one of the leaders became a wealthy capitalist and had asked Gao Yuan to return to China "soon or you'll be left behind!"
Tung concluded that "This book is the most detailed account of those difficult years I have read. Have the horrors been exaggerated? The book was written from memory and reads like a novel. One cannot help questioning the accuracy of some of the details. But incredible as the events may seem, they are believable."
Characters
Many children growing up at the time of the Cultural Revolution had names that were meant to be revolutionary, so names included Jianhua (construct China), Weihua (safeguard China), Fanxiu (anti-revisionist), Kangmei (resist the United States), and Yuanchao (aid Korea).