Mao is a Rotten Egg

I enjoyed reading Chairman Mao is a Rotten Egg because it shows the relationship between parents and children and parents and the government under Mao Tse-tung. The mother in the story was very concerned with what she thought her child said because it had potential to jeopardize her relationship or right standing with the government. If her child, Ching-Ching, was a counterrevolutionary, there was a possibility that he would have been killed or at the least had his statement on record for the rest of his life. You can also see how other parents reacted to what they thought their children said. For example, Tung-Tung was in trouble later on in the story because his father thought that he had said something against Chairman Mao. The story also lets us know what Tung-Tung rarely cried, so for his father to become very angry about his statement more than if he had lied or done something else he knew he wasn’t supposed to do, their regard for Chairman Mao must be incredibly high. Chen Jo-hsi, according to the Time article, wrote about situations that could have happened in China during that time period. I think it is important because while there was no literature produced out of China under Tse-tung, those who read these stories and who live in China can relate to these situations. However, I think it would be difficult for me to live in a place where I have to be a little more loyal to my government than to my own