Ji- Li is loyal, successful, and naïve.
Though Ji-Li’s naivety simply enhances her involvement in the Cultural Revolution, it is her constant loyalty towards her family that perseveres her throughout her childhood; nevertheless, without her previous devotion towards Chairman Mao, she would have never become the successful person she is today.
Throughout the Cultural Revolution, Ji-Li Jiang endeavors to balance her loyalty to her family and Chairman Mao, the leader of the Communist Party. Everyone advises her to become an educable child, a child who is devoted to Chairman Mao and has rejected his/ her ‘black family. Attempting to persuade her, Thin Face tells her she is, "different from [her] parents. [He tells her] [She was] born in New China. [She]can choose [her] own…show more content… Despite the numerous tribulations she encounters, Ji-Li is determined to keep her family together. However, when a news article is released, exposing her grandfather, who was a wealthy landlord, she feels deceived by her own family. Thinking her efforts to overcome her family’s political background had been wasted, she shouts, “’I hate landlords. I hate this landlord family’” (211). At the time, landlords were despised throughout the community; in addition to living a bourgeois, capitalist lifestyle, they were considered, according to the Communist Party, the worst enemies of Communism and therefore, the worst enemies of the common people. Furthermore, landlords would exploit people, thus going against the Communist ideology that all means of production are owned by the community and used for the good of all its members. As the Cultural Revolution begins, Ji-Li’s bright future starts to crumble apart; her dreams and accomplishments are being torn away from her one by one. Nevertheless, she realizes that friends will come and go, but her family will always support and love her; only
