Imagine that you’re a journalist who was assigned to investigate the involvement and conditions of a certain social group in the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In the following decade, you travelled across the entire China to learn about the situations on the spot. Now the Cultural Revolution has just ended. You needed to write a report (minimum 2000 words, maximum 3000 words) to conclude your mission.
Please choose from one of the three groups: students (sent-down youth), workers and peasants, to write a concluding report for your press. Your report should follow a chronological order with dates if possible and use examples. Please ONLY use examples from the textbook by Frank Dikotter (which I attached) PLEASE DO NOT USE OUTSIDE SOURCES. For key factual examples, you MUST use in-text citations. The citations should use the following format: (author last name or the title of readings, page number), for instance, (Dikotter, 19).
The report should address the following questions:
a) How did the group you investigated experience major events and changes during the Cultural Revolution such as the Red Guard movement, the factional warfare, the Cleansing campaigns, the Mao cult, Lin Biao incident, Commemoration of Zhou Enlai, the death of Mao, the arrest of Gang of Four, etc.
b) What were their attitudes towards the Revolution and Mao? How might it have changed over time during the decade of the Cultural Revolution?
c) How did people of the group you investigated respond and indeed cope with volatile political environments and shifting policies to survive or even live a meaningful life?
Please notice diversity of experience and responses among people of the same social group across time and space, for example, people with different family background, class classification, educational levels, place of origin, etc.
The final essay should be a coherent report, meaning that bullet-point style or piling up evidence without thoughtful structure will not earn you high marks. You may refer to The New Yorker Magazine for a style guidance (https://www.newyorker.com/tag/cultural-revolution ).