Jin-ming pulled up grass only for a few days. His Iron Wrought Brotherhood could not bear to see him suffer.

But he had been classified as a 'sympathizer with class enemies," and was never sent on any more raids, which suited him fine. He soon embarked on a journey with his brotherhood sight-seeing all over the country, taking in China 's rivers and mountains, but, unlike most Red Guards, Jin-ming never made the pilgrimage to Peking to see Mao. He did not come home until the end of,966.

My sister Xiao-hong, at fifteen, was a founding member of the Red Guards at her school. But she was only one among hundreds, as the school was crammed with officials' children, many of them competing to be active. She hated and feared the atmosphere of militancy and violence so much that she was soon on the verge of a nervous collapse.

She came home to ask my parents for help at the beginning of September, only to find they were not there: my father was in detention and my mother had gone to Peking. My grandmother's anxiety made her even more scared, so she returned to her school. She volunteered to help 'guard' the school library, which had been ransacked and sealed, like the one at my school. She spent her days and nights reading, devouring all the forbidden fruits she could. It was this that held her together. In mid-September, she set out on a long tour around the country with her friends and like Jin-ming she did not come home until the end of the year.

My brother Xiao-her was almost twelve, and was at the same key primary school I had attended. When the Red Guards were formed in the middle schools, Xiao-her and his friends were eager to join. To them the Red Guards meant freedom to live away from home, staying up all night, and power over adults. They went to my school and begged to be allowed into the Red Guards. To get rid of them, one Red Guard said off-handedly, "You can form the First Army Division of Unit 4969." So Xiao-her became the head of the Propaganda Department of a troop of twenty boys, all the others being 'commander," 'chief of staff," and so on. There were no privates.

Xiao-her joined in hitting teachers twice. One of the victims was a sports teacher, who had been condemned as a 'bad element." Some girls of Xiao-her's age had accused the teacher of touching their breasts and thighs during gym lessons. So the boys set upon him, not least to impress the girls. The other teacher was the moral tutor. As corporal punishment was banned in schools, she would complain to the parents, who would beat their sons.

One day, the boys set out on a house raid, and were assigned to go to a household which was rumored to be that of an ex-Kuomintang family. They did not know what exactly they were supposed to do there. Their heads had been filled with vague notions of finding something like a diary saying how the family longed for Chiang Kai-shek's comeback and hated the Communist Party.

The family had five sons, all well-built and tough looking They stood by the door, arms akimbo, and looked down at the boys with their most intimidating stares. Only one boy attempted to tiptoe in. One of the sons picked him up by the scruff of his neck and threw him out with one hand. This put an end to any further such 'revolutionary actions' by Xiao-her's 'division."

So, in the second week of October, while Xiao-her was living at his school and enjoying his freedom, Jin-ming and my sister were away traveling, and my mother and grandmother were in Peking, I was alone at home when one day, without warning, my father appeared on the doorstep.

It was an eerily quiet homecoming. My father was a changed person. He was abstracted and sunk deep in thought, and did not say where he had been or what had been happening to him. I listened to him pacing his room through sleepless nights, too frightened and worried to sleep myself. Two days later, to my tremendous relief, my mother returned from Peking with my grandmother and Xiao-fang.

My mother immediately went to my father's deparunent and handed Tao Zhu's letter to a deputy director. Straight away, my father was sent to a health clinic. My mother was allowed to go with him."

I went there to see them. It was a lovely place in the country, bordered on two sides by a beautiful green brook.

My father had a suite with a sitting room in which there was a row of empty bookshelves, a bedroom with a large double bed, and a bathroom with shiny white files. Outside his balcony, several osmanthus trees spread an intoxicating scent. When the breeze blew, tiny golden blossoms floated softly down to the grass less earth.

Both my parents seemed peaceful. My mother told me they went fishing in the brook every day. I felt they were safe, so I told them I was planning to leave for Peking to see Chairman Mao. I had longed to make this trip, like almost everybody else. But I had not gone because I felt I should be around to give my parents support.

Making the pilgrimage to Peking was very much encouraged and food, accommodations, and transport were all free. But it was not organized. I left Chengdu two days later with the five other girls from the reception office. As the train whistled north, my feelings were a mixture of excitement and nagging disquiet about my father. Outside the window, on the Chengdu Plain, some rice fields had been harvested, and squares of black soil shone among the gold, forming a rich patchwork. The countryside had been only marginally affected by the upheavals, in spite of repeated instigations by the Cultural Revolution Authority led by Mme Mao. Mao wanted the population fed so that they could 'make revolution," so he did not give his wife his full backing. The peasants knew that if they got involved and stopped producing food, they would be the first to starve, as they had learned in the famine only a few years before. The cottages among the green bamboo groves seemed as peaceful and idyllic as ever. The wind gently swayed the lingering smoke to form a crown over the graceful bamboo tips and the concealed chimneys. It was less than five months since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, but my world had changed completely. I gazed out at the quiet beauty of the plain, and let a wistful mood envelop me. Fortunately, I did not have to worry about being criticized for being 'nostalgic," which was considered bourgeois, as none of the other girls had an accusing turn of mind. With them, I felt I could relax.

The prosperous Chengdu Plain soon gave way to low hills. The snowy mountains of west Sichuan glistened in the distance. Before very long we were traveling in and out of the tunnels through the towering Qjn Mountains, the wild range that cuts Sichuan off from the north of China.

With Tibet to the west, the hazardous Yangtze Gorges to the east, and the southern neighbors considered barbarians, Sichuan had always been rather self-contained, and the Sichuanese were known for their independent spirit. Mao had been concerned about their legendary inclination to seek some margin of independence, and had always made sure the province was in the firm grip of Peking.

After the Qjn Mountains, the scenery became dramatically different. The soft greenness gave way to harsh yellow earth, and the thatched cottages of the Chengdu Plain were replaced by rows of dry mud cave-huts. It was in caves like these that my father had spent five years as a young man.

We were only a hundred miles from Yan'an, where Mao had set up his headquarters after the Long March. It was there that my father dreamed his youthful dreams and became a devoted Communist. Thinking of him, my eyes became moist.

The journey took two days and a night. The attendants came to talk to us often and told us how envious they were that we would be seeing Chairman Mao soon.

At Peking Station huge slogans welcomed us as "Chairman Mao's guests." It was after midnight, yet the square in front of the station was lit up like daytime. Searchlights swept through the thousands and thousands of young people, all wearing red armbands and speaking often mutually unintelligible dialects. They were talking, shouting, giggling, and quarreling against the background of a gigantic chunk of stolid Soviet-style architecture the station itself. The only Chinese features were the pastiche pavilion like roofs on the two clock towers at each end.