Abstract
In a memoir about his experiences during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) campaign, Liang Xiaosheng, a former Red Guard, describes what he calls “one of the most frantic scenes ever to occur in human history.” On November 3, 1966, he and “tens of thousands of” other Red Guards from all over the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “shouted, yelled, and cried” in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. They rushed and crowded there to see Mao, who would “inspect” (jianyue) them from atop the Tiananmen Gate: Thousands upon thousands of Red Guards converged into a sea of people, twisting and turning in Tiananmen Square, becoming a huge maelstrom as in a deep sea. Each person was like a tiny rock, being turned and swirled in a gigantic whirlpool, neither rising nor sinking. Whichever way one should turn to face Tiananmen Gate was completely beyond one’s control, as he or she was being forced to spin around and around in the vortex.1
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