I found my fourth brother Cunsang as soon as we'd finished. "How is it going?" he asked.

"It's boring! I hate it!" I replied.

"Join the tribe. Why did you think I wanted you to make chaos when my teacher came to our house that time?" He was reminding me of the time we received the broomstick beating from our dia.

"How can you understand the writing? It all looks like grass to me," I said.

He burst into laughter. "That's what I thought the first few weeks. It will get better, I promise."

I didn't believe him. "What's the use of learning words anyway?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied honestly.

I followed him to my fifth brother's classroom on the opposite side of the school-ground and found Cunfar in the middle of a pile of bodies, wrestling each other onto the ground.

"How was your first lesson, scholar?" he teased breathlessly, as he dusted off the dirt.

"All agony, no fun," I replied.

"The maths is even more fun!" Cunsang gave a wicked smile.

"Can't be worse than Chinese," I said.

"Just wait!" he replied, as the bell rang for the next class.

I had prepared myself for the worst in our maths class, but to my surprise the numbers were more bearable than the grass-like Chinese writing. But even so, numbers represented nothing to me and I still preferred to dream of running wild outside and playing games with my friends.

The journey to and from school was much more interesting than the study itself. Besides stopping at the sandy bank to wrestle and play horse fights, we occasionally detoured to a local butcher shop that only killed pigs. The heart-piercing screams of the pigs were horrible. We would watch as our own pigs, with their legs tied, were carried away to be killed for meat. The pigs always seemed to know what was about to happen to them: they would refuse to eat, even if given better food. I would hear their desperate screams and would press my hands hard against my ears and run away to hide rather than witness this unbearable scene. The thought of our own happy pigs being sliced up by the butcher always made my stomach churn.

I wasn't the best student in my year, but I did earn enough votes among my classmates to become one of the first Little Red Scarf Guards in our class. We wore a triangular red scarf around our necks, and for this honour we had to qualify in Mao's "Three Goods": good study, good work and good health.

I didn't learn much academic stuff at all during my time at school, except the many propaganda phrases and songs, and many of those I didn't even understand. I learnt how to write simplified versions of the Chinese characters and some basic maths equations but I really only lived for the two weekly sports classes. I was good at the sporting stuff. We had rope-hopping, and track-and- field which was mainly running, and by the second half of our second year Teacher Song had selected Yang Ping as the captain of our class and me as the vice-captain.

By this time I was ten years old and the campaign to "Learn Lei Feng" had started in all the local schools. Our textbooks were full of Lei Feng's inspiring stories. He was a humble soldier who did many kind deeds. He helped the disadvantaged and especially the elderly, not for personal glory but because, he wanted to be a faithful and humble soldier of Mao's. Lei Feng's diary showed how devoted he was to Mao's ideals. Extracts from his diary were published and included in our textbooks. Everyone of all ages in China was encouraged to learn from him. Everyone wanted to be a "Living Lei Feng". We learned a song that encouraged us to "pick up the screw by the roadside and give it to the police", to contribute to our great country in any way, from the smallest contribution, such as the little screw, to the great sacrifices of one's life, like Lei Feng himself.

One day a student from our school found a coin on the road and gave it to his teacher. He was instantly praised by the headmaster as a model student. His action was what Lei Feng would have done. From then on, much money was found by students by the roadside and the headmaster's money jar quickly filled up, until one day a parent complained that his child had taken all their savings and given them to her teacher.

For a brief period some students stopped attending school or were late for classes because they said they were helping the elderly and the needy just like Lei Feng. But they were just being lazy, and the teachers soon found out. A moral, a "tonic story", for these students was told in our classes:

One day, Lei Feng was late for his military activity because he was carrying home an elderly lady with bound feet. The head of his army unit criticised him without knowing the real reason behind his tardiness. Lei Feng apologised and wrote in his diary that he should be able to do kind things for the needy as well as carrying out the normal required activities.

After this, the school demanded that all kind deeds should be conducted outside school hours.

I, like many of my classmates, wanted to be a hero like Lei Feng. The things he did deeply moved me. His spirit of "forgetting himself to help others" was my living motto. Some classmates and I often went to veterans' homes to help them sweep their yards or carry water from the wells. We even picked up horse droppings from the street and took them to the fields as fertiliser. We needed to do at least one kind deed each day and write it down in our diaries. I thought maybe someone would read my diary after I'd died and realise I'd done even more kind things than Lei Feng. Then I would be a hero too! But I was only ten years old. I didn't think of it as another propaganda campaign to secure our loyalty to Mao and his communist state.

During those school years of mine, the central government released Mao's newest propaganda campaigns one after another. Our regular classes were constantly disrupted and we were ordered to study Mao's latest magical words by heart. Often our school organised rallies when we would march around the villages playing drums, cymbals and other instruments, carrying gigantic pictures of Chairman Mao and waving red flags. Everyone carried Mao's Red Book, and we marched with pride and honour. I felt so happy to be one of Mao's Little Red Scarf Guards. Once I was chosen to lead the shouting of the political slogans. When we passed our village, I glanced around and saw my niang and my fourth aunt standing in the middle of the crowd. I shouted at the top of my voice then. "Long, long live Chairman Mao!" Other leaders shouted at the same time. Different sections of our class followed different leaders. It was completely chaotic, but we all wanted our mothers to see and hear us.

"Niang, did you hear me?!" I asked her when I came home that day.

"How could I hear you? It was like a zoo out there!" she replied.

One day at school, during lunchtime, some shocking news about Mao's chosen successor came through our village's loudspeakers. Vice-Chairman Lin Biao's plane had been shot down over Mongolia. It was October 1971. Lin Biao had been trying to flee to the Soviet Union when his evil motives were discovered. There was speculation that the plane he was on contained many top-secret documents. The most nerve-racking speculation was that there were factions of the military loyal to Lin Biao who could be attempting a coup to topple Mao's government.

As young boys we were told how close Lin Biao was to Chairman Mao, how devoted and trustworthy he was to Mao's political cause. After all, he had written the foreword in Mao's Red Book. Lin Biao was said to have always had the Red Book in his hand.

When we returned to our school that afternoon, all scheduled classes were suspended. We were summoned to the school-ground. Two speakers were set up by the headmaster's office. With microphone in hand, the headmaster read out a document from the central government. Lin Biao had been planning a major coup for a number of years and Chairman Mao had narrowly escaped several assassination attempts. How fortunate it was that our great leader was safe and that we would still be able to enjoy our sun, our rain and our daily oxygen! We must study harder to strengthen our resolve so we, the next generation of communist young guards, could carry the communist red flag forward.