    22

    22

    fo

    ignored Chairman Mao.  The more the Red Guards attacked that

    foundation, the more the bureaucratic resistance to the Glorious

    Chairman crumbled.14

    The Red Guards did not let their enthusiasm stop there.  Urged on

    by Mao's speeches, they went on a campaign against "The Four

    Olds"--the remnants of pre-revolutionary style.  The students pulled

    down store signs, renamed streets, slit the cloth legs of anyone wearing

    tight pants, stopped women in the town gates to cut off their braids,

    pulled down ancient monuments, broke into homes, and smashed

    everything that carried the hated aura of tradition.

    Then the Red Guards turned on each other.  It started as a debate

    over the true Maoist line.  But behind the argument about Mao's thought

    was another issue.

    Class warfare is a central concept of Maoism.  As a result, each

    citizen of Mao's China was categorized according to the class from

    which his parents or grandparents came.  If your family in the distant

    past had belonged to an unacceptable social category, you were a pariah.

    What was acceptable?  The poor peasants and soldiers.  Middle peasants

    and intellectuals were beneath contempt.  Upper peasants, capitalists or

    landlords were utterly beyond the pale.  Just to keep things straight, the

    descendants of these hated social strata were sometimes forced to wear

    black armbands with white letters broadcasting their status.

    In Gao Yuan's school, one student declared categorically that only

    those whose class background was "pure," those whose parents had

    come from the Red Categories--poor peasants and soldiers--should be

    allowed in the Red Guard.  And what of the children whose parents

    came from the Black Categories--middle-class peasants, wealthy

    peasants, landlords and capitalists?  Said the snobbish student, keep

    them out.   A parent's class has nothing to do with children, protested

    Gao Yuan.  "All our classmates were born and brought up under the

    five-star red flag.  We all have a socialist education."  Not true, snarled

    the boy determined to keep the Red Guard an exclusive club.  "A dragon

      undation of support for the bureaucratic powers who not long ago had

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