53 pages • 1 hour read
Anchee MinRed Azalea
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Pages 45-110Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Pages 45-63 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses a false accusation of sexual assault.
At the People’s Square in Shanghai, Anchee meets Comrade Lu, who works at Red Fire Farm and is Commander Yan’s second-in-command. Anchee joins a group of people on a truck and goes to the farm. Together with Lu, Anchee and the rest of the workers sing songs. When Anchee smells the East China Sea, she realizes that she has arrived. Commander Yan Sheng addresses the new arrivals, reminding them of their duties and demanding that they work hard. In her barracks, Anchee meets her other roommates, including Orchid and Little Green. Anchee describes Little Green, who is the granddaughter of an opera singer, as being elegant and pale. Like her grandmother, Little Green also sings well, and Anchee worries about this sign of Little Green’s individuality, foreseeing trouble in Little Green’s audacity and implicitly recalling her own denunciation of Autumn Leaves.
Anchee describes the hard work in the fields and relates how Little Green often stops work to stretch her back, earning the anger of her fellow workers. Later, Little Green’s embroidered underwear is stolen, and Yan attempts to find the culprit. Chastising Little Green, Yan orders her to confess her faults and not to hang her underwear in the window. Anchee then describes Yan, detailing how her peers idolize her strength and work ethic, and she compares Yan to both Lu, whom she describes as a dog, and to Little Green, who fastidiously washes her toenails. Anchee copies Yan’s habits and then attends a military training on orders from the farm’s headquarters.
One night, Anchee must follow Yan and the other members of the platoon on a mission. They discover Little Green lying undressed with a local man whom Anchee recognizes from the market. After they force Little Green to claim that the man sexually assaulted her, he is executed. After this event, Little Green loses interest in her appearance and sings poorly, and Anchee notes that she shows symptoms of mental distress. Treated by the doctors, Little Green leaves the farm for months, only to return months later. She is prescribed medicine that makes her gain weight, and she doesn’t regain interest in her physical appearance.
Part 2, Pages 63-85 Summary
Anchee turns 18. At night, she complains about the mosquitos and about the reeds that grow under her bed and stab her in the back. She describes her body as volatile as she inwardly confesses her desire for men. She remembers girls from middle school who were shamed for such desires, and how Anchee had to sit next to them to model good morals. Anchee realizes that she has changed, but she remembers that she has vowed to stay away from men. She thinks about Little Green, who now seems lost in her own mind.
While Anchee begins to resent Yan, she follows her one day and sees Yan capturing venomous water snakes and putting them into jars. As soon as the rain stops, they return to planting rice shoots, and Anchee notices that Orchid has her period and is bleeding into the water. Anchee helps Orchid to complete her share of the work; she also asks Orchid why she didn’t try to miss work. Orchid responds that she is modeling Lu’s behavior, for the second-in-command always works through her period. As the rain starts, they work quickly to finish late that night. A meeting is called as they leave the water, and Yan and Lu criticize Orchid’s work, noting that it will have to be redone. They ask for the person responsible to step forward, and, as Anchee prepares to do so, Yan tells them that the person responsible can fix their mistake.
Anchee returns to the mud to replant and sleeps in place after working in the night. After Orchid confesses that Anchee helped her, Yan makes Anchee leader of Platoon Four, and Anchee changes barracks to stay with Yan and the other platoon leaders. She and Yan share a bunk, and Anchee notices that Lu hates Yan. Lu, who is the daughter of a revolutionary murdered by Nationalist fighters, keeps a skull of another martyr with her as a talisman and brooks no breaking of rules, written or unwritten. Lu and Yan both helped to found the Red Guards.
Lu keeps a record of events at the farm in her red notebook and makes dunce caps for people to wear at the meetings when they say or do something wrong. Anchee begins to fear her. Meanwhile, Little Green doesn’t improve, and they write letters to Little Green’s grandmother, trying to imitate Little Green’s writing style. The grandmother writes the authorities when she realizes that she has been receiving letters from someone else. At this point, Yan writes to her and explains the truth. While Yan continues to catch snakes, Anchee continues to follow her. Little Green doesn’t improve and starts to eat inedible objects such as stones.
Part 2, Pages 86-110 Summary
One day, Anchee goes to the nearby brick factory after dark and hears music. Yan tickles her from behind, and Anchee realizes that Yan was playing the erhu, a two-stringed instrument. Yan and Anchee talk about their families, and Yan tells Anchee that her parents were textile workers and her mother had nine children. Yan tells Anchee that she has played the erhu since she was a child, for both her parents liked folk music. She recounts that she was one of the original Red Guards who marched to Tiananmen Square in 1966 when the Cultural Revolution began; at the time, she was also invited to watch a revolutionary opera written by Jiang Ching, also known as Madam Mao. Yan and Anchee banter back and forth as they walk back to the barracks, quoting Mao’s books to each other. When Lu grows suspicious of Anchee and critiques her loss of purity, Anchee realizes the true extent of Lu’s power, for the second-in-command can easily ruin Anchee by filing false reports.
Yan and Anchee continue to meet at the brick factory, while Yan plays the erhu. They discuss men, and Yan tells Anchee that her mother raised her to hate men. Anchee expresses her anger at Yan for shaming Little Green. Remorseful, Yan tells Anchee that she is in love with Leopard Lee, a fellow commander on a different farm. Anchee recommends The Second-Time Handshake, a book she took from Little Green’s suitcase, and Yan eagerly reads it. Yan confesses after they hunt for more snakes that she’s trying to catch one hundred venomous snakes because she is convinced that they will cure Little Green. Later, Yan asks Anchee to rewrite a letter that she has composed for Leopard Lee, and Anchee does. As winter sets in, Anchee complains of the cold, and Lu chastises her for complaining, telling her to sleep together with Yan. Yan reads the revised letter to Leopard.
Part 2, Pages 45-110 Analysis
Part 2 centers on Anchee’s life at Red Fire Farm and addresses the contradictions she faces as she questions the consequences of losing one’s humanity and identity. Forced to act as a peasant and give up her residency in Shanghai and struggling with her contradictory feelings of love and resentment for Yan, Anchee demonstrates how profoundly the propaganda of the class struggle can weaponize interpersonal relationships. As these revolutionary ideas clash with personal feelings, Anchee realizes the very high costs she is paying in The Pursuit of Freedom, for the revolution’s version of freedom is an illusory one. As a bridge between her belief in the Party, which is highlighted in Part 1, and her demoralized state in Part 3, Part 2 focuses on Identity, Resilience, and Oppression in the Cultural Revolution as it examines the complex interactions of the women at Red Fire Farm.
In an example of The Pervasive Reach of Mao’s Propaganda, Yan, as the commander of the Red Fire Farm, preaches against individual identity and self-care, instead inviting her newest peasants “to break out of the small world of […] personal concerns to be part of an operation on such a grand scale” (48). As Yan’s characterization becomes more complicated, however, this claim begins to ring hollow, for the leader of the farm clearly struggles with her own personal issues. Such concerns surface unexpectedly as she grows close to Anchee and loses contact with Little Green. Before she is systematically demoralized, Little Green also presents a challenge to this revolutionary way of thinking, for even as a peasant on the farm, she makes it a point to maintain her fastidious approach to her appearance and persists in wearing colorful, delicate underwear: an unusual habit in a society obsessed with erasing individuality. Accordingly, Anchee immediately recognizes the “danger in [Little Green’s] boldness,” as she “[dares] to decorate her beauty” (51). The effect that Little Green’s beauty has on the platoon is particularly problematic, for her visible signs of individuality undermine Yan’s operation by proving that it cannot fully suppress the expression of personal identity. Anchee highlights the underlying power of this realization when she admits, “Little Green upset me. She upset the room, the platoon and the company. We could not help looking at her […] that creature full of bourgeois allure” (52). Thus, through her singing of operas, her fastidious approach to her own appearance, and her fondness for fine clothing, Little Green embodies the very threat that the Cultural Revolution seeks to confront and eliminate.
The costs for this confrontation turn out to be higher than Yan or Anchee can imagine. When they force Little Green to accuse her lover of rape, he is executed, and Little Green essentially dies with him as she becomes implicated in the system of rumor and false charges that Anchee describes as being ever-present during the Cultural Revolution. Faced with guilt over the man’s death, Little Green retreats inward, losing all interest in her beauty and ceasing to display the quirks of individuality that had previously marked her as dangerous. No longer a danger to the group, she remains only a danger to herself as her mental health steadily deteriorates.
Because the downfall of Little Green echoes Anchee’s betrayal of Autumn Leaves in much more violent ways, Little Green’s forced confession introduces a new sense of distance between Yan and Anchee despite their mutual attraction. As Little Green experiences increasing symptoms of mental illness, Anchee finally begins to realize that true fidelity to the Party demands the dehumanization of the self. Confronted with the consequences of Little Green’s symptoms, Anchee decides that “Yan [is] no longer worth [her] respect” (69); however, Anchee still feels drawn to Yan’s hidden humanity. Yan, she discovers, feels remorse over Little Green’s downfall and impacted mental state, and this guilt drives her to collect venomous snakes on the strength of the superstition that finding 100 of them will somehow cure Little Green. As both Yan and Anchee continue to evolve, their growing willingness to view people as complex individuals serves as an implicit condemnation of the principles upon which the Cultural Revolution is based. Accordingly, rather than perceiving Yan through her social role alone, Anchee comes to see her as an individual.
Anchee’s more nuanced view of Yan contrasts with the single-minded attitude portrayed by Lu, the other important figure at the farm. Using her power as Yan’s second-in-command, Lu attempts to sabotage Yan at every turn, convinced that the commander harbors thoughts and desires that are incompatible with Mao’s revolutionary ideals. As Yan confesses her desire for Leopard to Anchee, Lu begins to critique Yan. Lu, recording everyone’s mistakes in a red notebook, highlights “Yan’s incorrectness whenever possible” and declares that Yan is “too soft on brain reformation, too loose on the company’s budget, too impatient in conducting the company’s Mao study seminar” (80). While Lu acts correctly by Mao’s standards, her strict fidelity to his revolutionary principles does not endear her to Anchee, who views her as someone with “a fixed mind. A mind full of dead thoughts” (78). As she transitions from fearing Little Green’s individuality to embracing all of Yan’s various foibles, Anchee demonstrates the steady transformation of her character: a transformation that quickens as her love affair with Yan materializes in the second half of Part 2.
