The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was initiated by Mao Tse Dung and lasted 10 years, from 1966-1976. At that time Professor Tai was a young middle school teacher. The main force of the CR was young students. Their main weapon was big character posters, which were used to expose the thoughts and mistakes of enemies. The first big character poster appeared at Beijing University, and it attacked former General Party Secretary Deng Xiaoping.

It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, on May 16, 1966, who alleged that "liberal bourgeois" elements were permeating the party and society at large, and wanted to restore Capitalism. He insisted that these elements be removed through post-revolutionary class struggle by mobilizing the thoughts and actions of China's youth, who formed Red Guards groups around the country. The movement subsequently spread into the military, urban workers, and the party leadership itself. Although Mao himself officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, today it is widely believed that the power struggles and political instability between 1969 and the arrest of the Gang of Four as well as the death of Mao in 1976 were also part of the Revolution.

After Mao's death, the forces within Communist Party of China that were antagonistic to the Cultural Revolution gained prominence. The political, economic, and educational reforms associated with the Cultural Revolution were terminated. The Cultural Revolution has been treated officially as a negative phenomenon ever since. The people involved in instituting the policies of the Cultural Revolution were persecuted. In its official historical judgment of the Cultural Revolution in 1981, the Party assigned chief responsibility to Mao Zedong, but also laid significant blame on Lin Biao and the Gang of Four (most prominently its leader, Jiang Qing) for causing its worst excesses.

Mao Zedong (1893-1976) was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party and one of the founders of the People's Republic of China. In the early 1960s, several of Mao's major policies proved to be failures. The "Hundred Flowers" movement and the "Great Leap Forward" were disasters. While there was not open criticism of Chairman Mao, there emerged a more progressive element in the Chinese government calling for a moderate approach to economic development and reform in Chinese society. Ma himself felt that the goals of the communist revolution had not yet been met. He was frustrated by the inequality between the rural and urban populations and was concerned about the influence of the privileged intellectual class. To purge the "bourgeois" elements from government (the moderates) and society (the intellectuals) Mao initiated the GreatProletarian Cultural Revolution.

Chairman Mao wanted to destroy the "four olds" of Chinese society. These included "old ideas", old culture", "old customs" and "old habits". These were replaced by the new guiding philosophy of Mao Zedong Thought. Mao's quotations and ideas were published in the famous "Little Red Book". Mao himself became a cult figure, with his picture being shown on posters, plates, vases, buttons, flags, and even clocks. This personality cult was fanned by Lin Biao, the head of the Peoples Liberation Army and Mao's chosen successor, and by Mao's wife Jiang Qing, one of the infamous Gang of Four.

The army of the Cultural Revolution was millions of students, called the Red Guards. They went around criticizing or destroying all things "old" including temples, books, art, teachers, schools, intellectuals, their parents and museums. The country was in chaos with different Red Guard factions fighting one another. The second phase of the Cultural Revolution called for the urban youth to go into the countryside and work among the peasants and study "Mao Thought"
The effects of the Cultural Revolution in China were extensive and almost all negative. The number of destroyed temples, works of art, books etc. all irreplaceable were extensive. Schools were closed for several years, and when open the students studied mainly "Mao Thought". In addition to the education system, the economy also suffered, as there was no foreign investment or commerce, as this was also criticized as being "bourgeois" and anti-Chinese.

A "cult of personality" was most evident around Chairman Mao. As mentioned above, political thought was now "Mao Thought". The words of Chairman Mao were found in the "Little Red Book:" Mao's influence was seen in all areas of Chinese society, even in the type of clothes that people wore. As far s styles of clothing there were none. Everyone wore a "Mao jacket" and "Mao cap". Originally only the soldiers of the Peoples Liberation Army wore this cap, with the shiny red star of the communist party. However its' popularity grew to where the Mao cap was almost universally worn by the Chinese Army and Chinese public alike.

Bian Zhongyun was born in 1916 in Wuwei County, Anhui Province. In the spring of 1938, she moved to Changsha city in Hunan Province due to the relocation of the Wuhu Girls High School she attended, and she joined the Battlefield Service Group. Bian then enrolled in the Department of Economics of Yanching University (later merged into Peking University) before transferring to Cheeloo University.

In 1941, Bian joined the Communist Party and moved into the Party's area with her husband Wang Jinyao. During the Liberation War, Bian worked in the editorial department of People's Daily for Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and He'nan Provinces. She participated in setting up the Northern China News Bureau for the paper from June 1948. She was one of the few female editors during the wartime.

After the establishment of the new China, Bian was invited by her comrades to teach at the Affiliated Girls High School of Beijing Normal University. She began teaching Chinese Literature and Politics, and she was later promoted to the positions of teaching supervisor, then Deputy Secretary of Party Branch in School, then Party Branch Secretary, and then Vice Principal. In 1966, before the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, she had worked in the school for 17 years and was a mother of four children.

On June 1, 1966, three students put up a big-character poster on campus, staging a serious political attack against the school leadership. On June 3rd, a group that represented the party was sent into the school. “Revolution” swept swiftly across the campus. Some students posted big-character posters on the front door of Bian's house. A poster on Bian's bedroom door said “Fucking listen up, You, dog-like feudalistic tyrant and venomous Bian: If you ever dare to swagger around and bully the working people, we will pull out your doggy tendon, cut off your doggy head! Dare you even think about staging a comeback, we will kill your offspring, extinct your family line and crush you into pieces.”

On June 23rd, the party representatives convened a school assembly to criticize and denounce Bian. Bian was pushed up to a platform and was humiliated mentally and physically. After the assembly, Bian wrote to party leaders asking for protection. In the letter, she declared support for the Cultural Revolution and requested to be free from violence. She wrote, “Under explosive indignation of the public, I was tortured for four, five hours. Wearing a tall hat, forcing to kneel down with head bowed (actually, a 90 degree bow), I was beaten, kicked and pinched. My hands were tied behind my back with ropes. Students poked my backbones with two military training rifles. They stuffed filthy dirt into my mouth and smeared it onto my face. They also spat on my body and in my face.”

On the afternoon of August 5th, the Red Guards of the school held a “mass denigration gathering”. Five school heads including Bian were taken to the school's sports field. The Red Guards cut their hair off, splitting ink on their bodies, and putting tall hats on them and hanging signs around their necks saying “Gang of Counter-revolutionary”, “Representative of Three Evils”. They first were forced to kneel down in line to receive public condemnation before parading down the street banging on metal dustpans and shouting repeatedly, “I am a cow monster, a snake demon.” Finally the Red Guards forced them to carry buckets of sand. When Bian was too weak to carry the sand after hours of torture, the Red Guards swarmed in and beat her down to the ground with fists and sticks. They then dragged her all the way to a dormitory building, leaving blood stains all over the white walls in the corridor.

The torture and humiliation continued for more than two hours. By 5 pm, Bian, who had received the harshest torture, had already lost her consciousness, as well as bladder and bowel control. She passed out on the staircase. Still, a swarm of female Red Guards encircled her, kicked her, threw rubbish on her and shouted, “Stop pretending!”

When the denigration gathering eventually came to its end, people from the “Cultural Revolution Organizing Committee” made a call to the city government for further instructions. They were instructed to ask school janitors to carry Bian to the Post Office Hospital across the campus. By then, Bian was covered with wounds; her eyes slightly opened, and her pupils were already dilated. It was still bright outside; one of the Red Guards thought that it would give the school “a bad reputation” to expose Bian's condition to the public. Therefore they covered her body with big-character posters and put a broom atop to hold the posters. It was already 7 pm by the time Bian arrived at the hospital, hours after she had died. Bian was the first educator in Beijing to become a victim of the Cultural Revolution.

The next day, in attempt to shun responsibility, the Red Guards of the Affiliated Girls High School demanded an autopsy and doctors' statement that she died of heart attack, not torture. Wang Jinyao, Bian's husband, rejected the request for he could not let her to be ruthlessly cut open after such a tragic death. In the end, under the pressure of the head of the Red Guards, it was written “Cause of Death: Unknown” in her death certificate issued by the hospital. Wang Jinyao secretly took photos of his wife at the morgue and documented the torture she endured. He mourned for years, and later he worked to bring justice in her case.

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