Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Red Fire
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1952
WEBSITE: http://www.weiyangchao.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Chinese
Lives in both San Francisco and Beijing.
RESEARCHER NOTES: N/A DID NOT INCLUDE AUTHRO BUZZ REF: NO REAL INFO–DP
PERSONAL
Born 1952, Guangzhou, China.
EDUCATION:University of California, Berkeley, master’s degree, Ph.D.; also attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Worked as a translator and tour guide in China; founded a Chinese e-business and internet company, serving as chairman/CEO for sixteen years.
WRITINGS
Also author of books and articles in Chinese focusing on technology and culture.
SIDELIGHTS
Wei Yang Chao was born in Guangzhou, a sprawling port city on the Pearl River and northwest of Hong Kong. He moved with his family to Beijing in 1965, just before the start of China’s Cultural Revolution, a sociopolitical movement that lasted from 1966 until 1976. The movement’s goal was to preserve Communist ideology. Chao would later come to the United States to receive his doctorate and also studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He eventually founded an innovate technology business in China. Chao went on to become a writer, publishing articles and books in China. His first book in English, Red Fire: Growing Up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, is Chao’s memoir about his youth during an era of violence and chaos propagated by the Cultural Revolution.
Chao’s memoir recounts how his family was attacked and humiliated by rebels. Much of China’s educational system was also under attack, with teachers being beaten and leading to Chao’s own education being upended. Chao was initially attracted to the movement and its ideals. He relates that on August 18, 1966, he joined in a rally in Tiananmen Square called for by China’s leader Mao Zedong. “Chao recalls tears streaming down his face and feeling ecstatic when he saw Mao after he waded into Tienanmen Square’s massive crowds,” wrote Tim Gebhart in a review for Seattlepi.com. According to Chao, it was Mao’s endorsement of the Red Guards that led to zealots intent on destroying the Chinese customs, culture, and ideas of old.
Chao eventually became put off by the violence that followed the rally over the years. At one point he saw a teacher’s head totally shaved as a form of punishment, but he questioned whether or not he should be bothered by this. Chao’s questioning, however, continued when his parents soon became suspected of being counterrevolutionaries. The suspicions were based on his father’s being educated in journalism in the United States and his mother’s being a member of a landowning family. Eventually, Chao’s parents and sister were sent to work in the countryside as part of a reeducation program, while Chao was sent off to live in a different village. Chao, however, was peaceful by nature and also thoughtful and emotional, traits that led him to form opinions that strongly objected to the Cultural Revolution.
Chao “vividly focuses on his mind and heart during a time in China when such personal cultivation could get one killed,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor, who went on to call Red Fire “a deeply satisfying book that recalls the horrors of Mao’s rule.” A contributor to A Progressive on the Prairie remarked that Red Fire “is a lucid account of a family and country caught in the throes of revolutionary fervor.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Chao, Wei Yang. Red Fire: Growing Up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Avant Press (United States), 2016.
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2017, review of Red Fire.
ONLINE
A Progressive on the Prarie, https://prairieprogressive.com/ (July 4, 2017), review of Red Fire.
Seattlepi.com, https://www.seattlepi.com/ (July 2, 2017), Tim Gebhart, review of Red Fire.
Wei Yang Chao Facebook Page, https://www.facebook.com/ (May 7, 2018).
Wei Yang Chao Website, www.WeiYangChao.com (May 7, 2018).
Wei Yang Chao
Dear Librarians,
In the 50 years since the Chinese Cultural Revolution few personal accounts have been published. I was a young teen in May of 1966, newly arrived in Beijing, the epicenter of the revolution. This historical memoir, RED FIRE, offers the first intimate account from someone who lived through these events and survived. It tells a riveting story: how rebels attacked my family, upended my education, and sent me out into a country changed by violence and radical ideology.
"...an unforgettable historical testimony...a literary gift to help recover a lost but living world." Jasmin Darznik, author of The Good Daughter, a New York Times Bestseller
Wei Yang Chao
www.WeiYangChao.com
Wei Yang Chao was born in Guangzhou in southeastern China and moved with his family to Beijing in 1965, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. In the aftermath he worked as a translator and tour guide, speaking Mandarin, Cantonese and English. In 1981 he came to America to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received both his Master's and Ph.D. degrees. He later obtained engineering training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pursuing a career in innovative business technology, he founded one of China's "Top 100" e-Business and Internet companies and served as Chairman/CEO for sixteen years. He now lives in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Beijing, working to promote cultural understanding and exchange between China and the United States. He is the author of many books and articles in Chinese on the topics of technology and culture. Red Fire is his first major publication in English.
Print Marked Items
Chao, Wei Yang: RED FIRE
Kirkus Reviews.
(July 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Chao, Wei Yang RED FIRE Avant Press (Indie Nonfiction) $16.90 3, 2 ISBN: 978-0-9981960-1-5
A debut memoir centers on a teenager grappling with the dictates of the Cultural Revolution. Wei Yang
Chao was age 13 in 1966 Beijing when Mao incited China's youth to enforce the ideals of the Cultural
Revolution. Self-appointed bands of children and young adults publicly humiliated and beat teachers and
other citizens during public "struggle sessions." Chao was drawn in by his middle school classmates' fervor
but repelled by their violence against others. Even so, he doubted himself, as when he saw a female teacher
whose head was shaved as punishment: "I questioned whether I should even allow myself to dwell on such
questions." Then Chao's parents came under suspicion. His father was a U.S.-educated journalist and his
mother belonged to a family of landowners, which in the view of Mao's Communist regime made them both
counterrevolutionaries and the boy's father a spy. The radicals subjected the family to a public "struggle
session," beating and demoralizing the narrator's parents. His parents, along with his young sister, were
transported to the countryside to be "re-educated," while Chao was sent to live in a cave in a different
village. The very qualities that had become forbidden and a threat to Mao--individual thought and emotion--
ultimately saved the narrator. The extensive use of secondary sources in a section at the book's beginning
blurs the line between memoir and reporting. But for the most part, the author vividly focuses on his mind
and heart during a time in China when such personal cultivation could get one killed. The facts of the
Cultural Revolution are not new, but Chao's articulation of his inner and outer responses to the movement
remains striking. As he mentally struggles to rid himself of sentimentality and commit to Mao's cause, he
remembers how the revolutionaries destroyed his gentle mother's shoes and wonders: "What...was so wrong
about Mother's small, simple wish to wear high-heeled shoes?" The arc of this engrossing journey should
transport readers to China, turning them into eyewitnesses to these turbulent events. A deeply satisfying
book that recalls the horrors of Mao's rule.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Chao, Wei Yang: RED FIRE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497199428/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=35ae62c6.
Accessed 26 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497199428
Book Review: "Red Fire: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution" by Wei Yang Chao
By Tim Gebhart, BLOGCRITICS.ORG Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, July 2, 2017
Red Fire
Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Wei Yang Chao
Avant Press, 334 pages
In celebrating the Fourth of July, Americans are essentially commemorating a successful revolution, one viewed as an inspiration. Yet even failed revolutions can decisively transform a people's history. It's incontrovertible that China's Cultural Revolution is in that category.
The "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" Mao initiated in 1966 - actually prompted by an internecine power struggle - wouldn't really end until after his death in 10 years later. The extent of the damage caused China during that time is incalculable. We've gained insight into the Cultural Revolution's economic, cultural and personal costs as, over the years, memoirs of those caught up in it have become almost a genre unto themselves. One of the most recent is Wei Yang Chao's Red Fire: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Like many of its predecessors, such as Red-Color News Soldier and Red Scarf Girl, it makes for compelling - and stupefying - reading.
Chao and his family moved Beijing in 1965. When the Cultural Revolution was declared the following year, he was 13. Perhaps because of that the first several chapters of Red Fire provide as much a historical perspective as a personal one. Yet Chao would witness several significant events in the transformation of the Chinese political and social landscape that year.
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Among other things, he details going to see the first big-character poster. This and other posters were huge sheets of paper with revolutionary slogans that were posted in public places. The first appeared at Peking University in late May 1966. They were a method of debate dominated by what would become the Red Guard. As "an ocean" of posters saturated the country and attacked not only ideas but individuals, the Red Guard began physically attacking those they viewed as "revisionists," i.e., older generations. Public humiliation and beatings became common as the posters achieved a status where, Chao says, "they could end a career, if not a life."
On August 18, 1966, a 14-year-old Chao was among the nearly one million college and high school students who crammed into Tienanmen Square for a rally called by Mao for the "Proletariat Cultural Revolution." Red Fire reviews the rally, at which Mao endorsed the Red Guards. In so doing he essentially released millions of zealots intent on destroying what would later be called "the Four Olds": old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas.
Chao recalls tears streaming down his face and feeling ecstatic when he saw Mao after he waded into Tienanmen Square's massive crowds. He attributes those feelings and the students' fervor to the Chinese education system, which he says "fashioned China's youth into die-hard revolutionaries."
The education we received in those years left no room for us to question what we were learning. None. Your only option was to ingest what you were given and to believe everything you were told. Anything short of total credulity marked you as being against the revolutionary cause.
Violence erupted throughout the country. Chao admits joining in on the Red Guard's chants, slogans and rituals. He also attended "struggle sessions" in which teachers and others were severely beaten, some fatally. He claims he "looked away" at the the latter and drew a line at personal violence and destruction. Yet in 1968 he would personally experience what the Red Guard was doing.
Two immutable things brought the Cultural Revolution to Chao's front door. His father, a journalist, had attended college and graduate school in the U.S. That, of course, made him a spy. His mother came from a landowning family and landowners were one of the Red Guard's "black five categories." In April 1968, his parents were subjected to a public struggle session in their own home. Chao and his sister were forced to watch as their parents were beaten and humiliated. Within a year, Chao's parents and sister were sent into the countryside for "re-education." He, meanwhile, would be sent to do farm work in a different village, where he shared a cave residence with another man.
The personal stories allow Red Fire to portray the human effects of the Cultural Revolution. This is also true when he talks of going to historic sites he loved and seeing the destruction wrought by the Red Guards' attack on their own history and culture. Chao's detailing of the birth and initial development of the Red Guard movement and the Cultural Revolution, though, seems held at more of a distance.
Moreover, the story largely stops after we learn of Chao and his family returning to Beijing. Thus, readers get no perspective on how they and their nation mended the wounds and how long it may have taken. Likewise, there's no discussion of any ramifications of the Cultural Revolution on 21st century China. Despite that, this is a lucid account of a family and country caught in the throes of revolutionary fervor.
Book Review: Red Fire by Wei Yang Chao
While the American Revolution is central to the Fourth of July, America also seemed to encounter a revolutionary temperament in 1968. We weren’t alone; revolution also seemed to be in the air in Europe. Even the counterculture symbol The Beatles would record their first politically explicit song, “Revolution.” Yet you’ve got to wonder how much support there is for your revolution when John Lennon writes, “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.”
Lennon’s attitude may have changed later but there’s little doubt the excesses of China’s then two-year-old Cultural Revolution were disturbing many worldwide. Although the violence eventually receded, the Cultural Revolution — in reality prompted by an internecine power struggle — wouldn’t really end until after Mao’s death in 1976.
The extent of the damage caused China is incalculable. We’ve gained insight into the Cultural Revolution’s economic, cultural and personal costs as, over the years, memoirs of those caught up in it have become almost a genre unto themselves. One of the most recent is Wei Yang Chao’s Red Fire: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Like many of its predecessors, such as Red-Color News Soldier and Red Scarf Girl, it makes for compelling — and stupefying — reading.
Chao and his family moved Beijing in 1965. When the Cultural Revolution was declared the following year, he was 13. Perhaps because of that the first several chapters of Red Fire provide as much a historical perspective as a personal one. Yet Chao would witness several significant events in the transformation of the Chinese political and social landscape that year.
Among other things, he details going to see the first big-character poster. This and other posters were huge sheets of paper with revolutionary slogans that were posted in public places. The first appeared at Peking University in late May 1966. They were a method of debate dominated by what would become the Red Guard. As “an ocean” of posters saturated the country and attacked not only ideas but individuals, the Red Guard began physically attacking those they viewed as “revisionists,” i.e., older generations. Public humiliation and beatings became common as the posters achieved a status where, Chao says, “they could end a career, if not a life.”
On August 18, 1966, a 14-year-old Chao was among the nearly one million college and high school students who crammed into Tienanmen Square for a rally called by Mao for the “Proletariat Cultural Revolution.” Red Fire reviews the rally, at which Mao endorsed the Red Guards. In so doing he essentially released millions of zealots intent on destroying what would later be called “the Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas.
Chao recalls tears streaming down his face and feeling ecstatic when he saw Mao after he waded into Tiananmen Square’s massive crowds. He attributes those feelings and the students’ fervor to the Chinese education system, which he says “fashioned China’s youth into die-hard revolutionaries.”
The education we received in those years left no room for us to question what we were learning. None. Your only option was to ingest what you were given and to believe everything you were told. Anything short of total credulity marked you as being against the revolutionary cause.
Violence erupted throughout the country. Chao admits joining in on the Red Guard’s chants, slogans and rituals. He also attended “struggle sessions” in which teachers and others were severely beaten, some fatally. He claims he “looked away” at the the latter and drew a line at personal violence and destruction. Yet in 1968 he would personally experience what the Red Guard was doing.
Two immutable things brought the Cultural Revolution to Chao’s front door. His father, a journalist, had attended college and graduate school in the U.S. That, of course, made him a spy. His mother came from a landowning family and landowners were one of the Red Guard’s “black five categories.” In April 1968, his parents were subjected to a public struggle session in their own home. Chao and his sister were forced to watch as their parents were beaten and humiliated. Within a year, Chao’s parents and sister were sent into the countryside for “re-education.” He, meanwhile, would be sent to do farm work in a different village, where he shared a cave residence with another man.
The personal stories allow Red Fire to portray the human effects of the Cultural Revolution. This is also true when he talks of going to historic sites he loved and seeing the destruction wrought by the Red Guards’ attack on their own history and culture. Chao’s detailing of the birth and initial development of the Red Guard movement and the Cultural Revolution, though, seems held at more of a distance. Moreover, the story largely stops after we learn of Chao and his family returning to Beijing. Thus, readers get no perspective on how they and their nation mended the wounds and how long it may have taken. Likewise, there’s no discussion of any ramifications of the Cultural Revolution on 21st century China. Despite that, this is a lucid account of a family and country caught in the throes of revolutionary fervor.
Nothing makes you grow up faster than pure misery.