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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was Yue Daiyun required to do for six months of the year in 1975?

2. Who was Ma Mingzhen?

3. How were students selected for university admission in 1970?

4. What did Yue Daiyun believe the generation she was teaching had that hers lacked?

5. What honorific assignment did Lao Tang receive in 1973?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was Lao Tang's initial impression of Jiang Qing?

2. Why did Yue Daiyun feel optimistic upon her return to Beida in spite of the dismal condition of the campus?

3. Why was Lao Tang uneasy about national recognition of his work with Liang Xiao?

4. What astonished Lao Tang more than evidence of Lin Biao's reactionary viewpoint?

5. Why was the building of permanent housing the most pressing task when Yue Daiyun's group arrived at Liyuzhou?

6. Why was Yue Daiyun stunned and unhappy at the new student orientation at the cadre school?

7. Why did Yue Daiyun find it difficult to teach a course about the struggle between bourgeois and proletarian literary theory?

8. Why was schistosomiasis a danger for those working in rice paddies?

9. Why did a smiling photo of Lao Tang get him in trouble?

10. How was Tang Dan allowed as a child to help the Jinggang Mountain group?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Many of the campaigns described in this book are designated with numbers. These include The Four Clean-Ups, the Three Separations, etc. In your essay, give several examples of these movements and your opinion about why they are numbered in this way.

Essay Topic 2

What differences do you see between the administration of sanctions in China and in other countries? Who determines who is at fault? Who determines the punishment? What effect do those differences have on Yue Daiyun and her family?

Essay Topic 3

A central argument among the shifting power groups in this memoir is the question of whether democracy is a tool to eventually establish communism, or communism is a tool leading to the eventual establishment of democracy. Discuss the meaning and differences between these two points of view.

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