Click on the points below to learn more about Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China
Published between 1964 and 1976, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, is a book of seleted statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong. Widely distributed during The Cultural Revolution, it has become the second most printed book in history. Often printed in small sizes that were easily carried, it became commonly known in the West as the Little Red Book.
Formed in 1966, the Red Guards were a group of militant university and high school students that organized into paramilitary entities as part of the Cultural Revolution. Created under the advocacy of the Chinese Communist Party in order to help Mao Zedong silence those with "intellectual elitism", such as school teachers, administration, and local party leaders.
High school and college students known as the Red Guard wave copies of Chairman Mao Zedong's Little Red Book during a march in Beijing in 1966.
"You can paint anything you like here in America," Zhang said. Artists from all over the world come here. When they come here, they want to stay here and realize their dreams. The Constitution protects everybody’s rights. You work hard, and you have opportunities."
Zhang was 12 years old when Mao Zedong launched China’s devastating Cultural Revolution May 16, 1966.
Schools were closed. Zhang’s parents, who had been university professors, were sent out to work as farm laborers, and millions of people were tortured and imprisoned.
"Lots of people starved to death, many were tortured to death, some writers and artists suicided themselves," Zhang recalled. "Mao inflicted mass horror, more of it on his own people than anyone else. The Cultural Revolution was just a disaster for China."
But Zhang, who started drawing at the age of 6 and had an art tutor in elementary school, didn’t waste the free time.
"We had nothing to do, but I never stopped the study of art on my own. It was a passion," he said.