RED FLOWER OF CHINA by Zhia...

RED FLOWER OF CHINA by Zhia Zenhua (Soho Press: $13; 245 pp.). As a young teen-ager, Zhia Zenhua joined the newly formed Red Guards, hoping to prove her patriotism and devotion to Chairman Mao. As she took part in the violence that marked the opening stages of the Cultural Revolution, she realized she and her comrades were being used as pawns in a high-level power struggle; removed from her unit for insufficient zeal, she witnessed the havoc the Red Guards loosed on the country she dreamed of improving. Her youth and health were wasted when she was sent to the remote countryside to be “re-educated” by the peasants. The years spent in what amounted to chattel slavery revealed the corruption that flourished in China’s ostensibly egalitarian government. The bitter eloquence of Zenhua’s testimony provides a chilling reminder of the dangers of blind devotion to any ideology.