Red Azalea

“We often ran out of food by the end of the month. We would turn into starving animals.”

Remembering her meager childhood under Communist rule, Anchee compares her brother and sisters to “wild” animals. She notes that they seem to lose their humanity at the end of the month, when food becomes scarce, as she describes their animalistic desires.

“She said that we were her spring.”

This quotation references Autumn Leaves and how she characterizes her students. As Anchee thinks about Secretary Chain’s accusations, she remembers Autumn Leaves’s dedication. The imagery in this line connects the youth of the students—“spring”—to her age and name, while also expressing how she prepares the future by educating them.

“He said he knew I would be a sharp spear for the Party.”

After Secretary Chain convinces Anchee to denounce her teacher, he reflects on her future as a weapon for Party ideals. Comparing her to a spear, his judgment also foreshadows her eventual demotion and loss at the hands of Cheering Spear’s manipulations in Part 3.

“I saw my name blotted out by a red stamp. The red stamp, the symbol of authority. That afternoon I felt like a bare egg laid on a rock.”

In this quotation, Anchee describes her assignment to Red Fire Farm, which necessitates the loss of her residency in Shanghai. As she looks at her family’s resident registration book, Anchee describes herself as a “creature” without family. Her comparison of herself to a “bare egg” echoes her memories of Big Beard’s plight when she was a child, and her desolation and loss of identity in this moment also foreshadows the struggles she will undergo as she gradually becomes disillusioned by the Cultural Revolution and seeks to escape it entirely by emigrating to the United States.

“My family stood in front of me, as if taking a dull picture. It was a picture of sadness, a picture of never the same.”

As Anchee prepares to leave for the farm, she imagines her family as a picture. Expecting never to join them again in Shanghai, Anchee creates this metaphor of a sad family portrait to allude to the destruction of familial bonds caused by the Cultural Revolution.

“I do not expect her to show elephant’s tusks. But Yan was supposed to be an elephant. She is supposed to have ivory instead of jigsaw-patterned dog teeth.”

As Little Green washes her nails, she criticizes Yan, pointing to her disappointment in Yan’s leadership. Little Green hopes that Yan will be a noble leader and compares her to an elephant whose tusks would be dangerous but still elegant. Little Green pointedly highlights Yan’s viciousness, comparing her to a dog through images of sharp teeth.

“The body demanded to break away from its ruler, the mind. It was angry. It drove me to where I did not want to go: I had begun having thoughts about men.”

As Anchee reaches sexual maturity, she imagines her body and soul as split entities, with the body rebelling in its desires. Anticipating Anchee’s discussion of her mind and soul as separate when she becomes the set clerk, this split between body and mind also foreshadows her characterization of Yan, her future sexual partner, as her ruler.

“There were sounds of groping. It reminded of vampires in graves chewing human bodies.”

In the barracks with the other leaders, Anchee hears bodies and physical contact. She compares these sounds to vampires who consume bodies to live, and this image highlights how the revolution likewise consumes itself.

“She didn’t understand the world around her, the world where the murderers go on living while the innocents die like weeds.”

As Yan confesses her complicity in the crimes for which Little Green has been punished, she also comes to terms with the revolution’s failed promises. She compares the costs of this revolution and its human casualties to her work on the farm—linking her work weeding to the destruction of blameless people by rigid rules.

“We took turns in carrying Little Green. Little Green slept like a dead pig on our backs. She looked hopeless.”

After Little Green experiences mental distress, Anchee and Yan carry her to the hospital. Imagining her as a dead pig, Anchee sees her as an animal consumed by the farm, and this image emphasizes the workers’ utter lack and agency and individuality as they, just like a farm’s animals are metaphorically “slaughtered” in the name of upholding Party ideals.

“She said that she knew all I had been telling her about Leopard was lies. She said, Your hands are too small to cover the sky. You made me into a fool.”

Anchee continues to deliver letters to Leopard, and she continues to write them for Yan in the first place. Although he doesn’t respond to these missives, Anchee attempts to spare Yan’s feelings by pretending that he reacts and shows his emotion. Later upbraiding Anchee for her dishonesty, Yan imagines the truth of Leopard’s disinterest as obvious and large as the sky.

“You’ve got termites fully packed in your head. You have no clean beams or studs in the house of your mind. They were eaten up a long time ago. And now your termites are hungry, they are climbing out from your eyes, earholes, noseholes, and asshole to eat up other people’s houses.”

Lu criticizes Yan for her dereliction of duty and compares their teaching to wood and construction, arguing that beams should be solid before they’re joined. Yan responds with her own imagery, continuing to use the metaphor of a house to call attention to Lu as a source of infestation with pests that will destroy their construction and infect others.

“The invisible battle between Lu and us was as tough as the frozen salty brown mud.”

As tensions worsen between Lu and Yan and Anchee, Anchee compares them to the winter environment that surrounds the farm itself. They can’t farm or improve the land while it’s frozen, and, likewise, the relationship between Lu and Yan deteriorates.

“The tractor began to pull away as the Chief pronounced his sentence: To make a clean field, one must pull up weeds by the roots.”

As the Chief finds Lu and Yan together in a compromising position, he uses agricultural imagery to describe their transgressions. The use of weeds echoes Yan’s earlier tie of weeds to innocents, implying that, even if he doesn’t know, Lu has been set up. While she’s guilty of other crimes, in this case, she’s innocent.

“Father was proud of me being chosen, but was not optimistic about my soaring stardom. He said to me, One is crushed harder when one climbs high.”

As Anchee moves to Shanghai to begin her film training, her father, beaten down by the revolution, worries. He argues that Anchee faces more danger and pain the more visible she becomes, referencing the cyclical fall of important figures in the revolution.

“Finally, she turned and looked at me. She looked at me but showed that she was not interested. It was a pair of rival’s eyes. There was an unfriendliness behind the friendly face.”

Once Anchee moves to Shanghai and arrives at the film studio, she meets the other girls. Cheering Spear becomes her main competition, which this first impression anticipates. By showing her true face and feelings, Anchee suggests that Cheering Spear only acts and performs.

“The room become deadly quiet. In the dark I realized that it was a lion’s den I had entered. The darkness silenced a roaring cry. The coldness of thoughts froze me. I could hear the sound of my dream’s spine breaking.”

As Anchee begins to train, she realizes that the environment has become toxic and competitive. Like Red Fire Farm, the studio contains hidden dangers and spies, symbolized by her metaphor of the lion’s den. Anchee has entered an even more dangerous space, and she realizes, as Cheering Spear kills a cricket, that her dream, now personified, will be killed by Cheering Spear.

“She said, I am Soviet Wong’s student. I am what she made of me. I am the soil and she is the cow who cultivates me. I am her harvest.”

As Soviet Wong and Cheering Spear grow close, Cheering Spear flatters the old teacher and former actor. She degrades herself in an agricultural metaphor, suggesting that Cheering Spear owes her abilities to Soviet Wong.

“Yan and I learned from nature and did the best we knew how in regard to our needs. The river of her youth overflowed its bank when she was not allowed to have a man to love.”

After Anchee asks her mother about love, she responds dismissively that Anchee need only follow the guide of nature. Recognizing that she loves Yan, and that love would be considered unnatural, Anchee responds with a metaphor comparing Yan’s desires to a flood, which can’t be avoided, and which suggests their love has been natural.

“She said, As always, you know me better than the worms in my intestine.”

After Yan buys a pair of red underwear without consulting Anchee, they talk about Yan’s love for the color red. As Yan realizes that Anchee knows her reasoning and desires, she compares her to parasites feeding off Yan. This metaphor suggests the power differential in the relationship, which Anchee will later articulate. Ultimately, it becomes clear that Anchee loves Yan more than Yan loves her.

“We did not want to realize that we had been holding on to something, a dead past that could no longer prosper. We were rice shoots that had been pulled out of the mud. We lay, roots exposed.”

After Yan and Anchee realize that their relationship has ended, Anchee describes their past as dead. Comparing them to rice shoots, she refers to the genesis of their relationship, as Yan redid Orchid’s and Anchee’s planting. They are no longer rooted together.

“The soulless body went to mop the floors and the bodiless soul went to the realm of vague hopes. A few times the body and soul joined momentarily when I felt the mop become a machine gun. As I mopped with it, it fired.”

Demoted to the menial position of set clerk, Anchee describes her mind and body as separate entities, with the body forced to clean up and the mind filled with ambitions and dreams. As a coping strategy, this split allows Anchee to bury her anger—when her mind and body occasionally rejoin, her anger becomes free, and she imagines her mop as a revolutionary weapon.

“He waited for my answer. He did not know that he was loading bullets in my gun. I smelled the smoke even before I pulled the trigger. I hesitated, then said that I’d had an affair but it was not with a man.”

Anchee uses metaphors of weapons several times in Part 3, as she nurses the anger from her failed and frustrated ambition. Knowing that her confession about Yan will defeat the Supervisor, she imagines her admission to be as lethal as a bullet. Her violent metaphors recall her youth, as she dreamed of killing her enemies and those of the revolution.