Son of the Revolution

Zhu Zhi-dao is finally cleared of counterrevolutionary charges and allowed to return to her teaching job. A few months later, Father is allowed to leave the countryside because of his poor health, so in February 1971, when Liang is nearly seventeen, he and his father join Zhu Zhi-dao in Shangshua.

Father, Liang, and his stepmother live in two rooms on the second floor of the Chairman Mao Thought Propaganda Station, where Father also works. Father devotes himself to his new job “like a crazy man,” writing propaganda plays and speeches and running a magazine (211). Meanwhile, Liang finds his own “route to glory: basketball” (211). The Cultural Revolution is now prioritizing “culture for the masses” (211), including sports. Liang, just under six feet tall, is quickly drafted onto the team in his new upper middle school. 

Over the next year, Liang grows to six-foot-one and becomes Team Captain, devoting all his time and energy to “overcoming the limitations of [his] own body” in the name of the sport (212). In 1972, when Liang is eighteen, he plays an interdistrict meet north of Changsha, and a coach from the Provincial Sports Committee wants to recruit him. He returns home with a promise the committee will contact him soon.