Questioning is Key

Although after completing Zhu Xiao Di's Thirty Years in a Red House I feel more aware of what I don’t know than I have throughout most of this course, I feel with even more certainty that reading this book has lessened that ignorance. Yes, I'd also been in the dark about much of the history we've encountered thus far, but I feel most ill-informed about the stories of China's history. 

Thus, I am grateful for Di's ability to tell the story of his life in China and of the political, social, and cultural issues surrounding that life while maintaining his determination to reveal the lack of logic and reason behind many of the decisions that were made by those in power. He is determined to chase his questions until he finds at least the beginning form of an answer. And he dissects the psychological causes and effects of this history. 

As he narrates his story, he reveals many "ironies of history," stacking up more and more evidence that there were few logical reasons for the country and its people to be living the way they were. It would have been enough to read of the impoverished conditions he lived in, of the camps his parents were sent to, the terror of the education system. But Di recounts much more, and necessarily so. His story would not be his story if it were not inextricably bound to the story of China and its government; in writing one, he must write the other. 

He does an immense job of bringing us closer to an understanding of why and how, psychologically, so many people would choose to follow communism, or choose to join certain waves of political groups. To us Westerners, it seems impossible to understand how a people could choose to be a part of a group that led to the country's misery, but Di's book helps us to understand the complexities (many of which are psychological) behind these issues. The following passage exemplifies his ability to clarify a people's thought process: "Yes, communism had such appeal that it seemed easy to understand!" he writes. "Anyone would believe that he understood communism while actually confusing the ideal with reality" (105).

I was similarly impressed by his ability to track the changes occurring in the people—in the country as a whole—throughout years and decades (and throughout the book). Though there are many of these moments to choose from, one that I recall particularly well is one in which he discusses learning English, and listening to the radio to do so. "My father found out what I was doing, but he didn't stop me. He just asked me to be careful," Di writes. "When I heard some interesting news related to China, I would tell my father and he seemed to be interested, too. Now it was more than just learning English. The society was gradually reopening to the outside world" (134). 

Interested as I was in reading of the impact that learning English had on Di and his country, I was perhaps even more interested in the explicit distinctions he makes for his Western audience. He writes of the difference between democracy and communism in a way that I'd never read before and in a way that helped me view these political terms with a new, important understanding. "Most Westerners thought of Communism and democracy as mutually exclusive systems, but in China, democracy had once been embraced by the communists, and democracy was both a method and a part of their goal" (201). After reading this, I realized that my inability to understand what these terms actually meant had been stopping me from truly understanding the problems within them and their roles (past and present) in different countries.

I was moved by his attempt to find an answer or cure to the “social disease” that plagues China, particularly by his interactions with his students. In the scene where he uses Shakespeare to plant questions in his students’ minds, where he admits that he doesn’t even have the answers himself, I found myself thinking how important this work (his work) is. Asking people to question what they believe and why they believe it; asking people to find the point where logic seems to have been set aside: this questioning is key to change, and it seems that if nothing more Di has begun a line of questioning that is integral to change in China, in communism, and in the countless situations that have and continue to lead to atrocities.