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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did the criminal activities of Lin Liguo and the defection of Lin Biao teach Yue Dainyun?

2. What did Yue Daiyun believe the generation she was teaching had that hers lacked?

3. What shocked Yue Daiyun upon her return to Beida?

4. What was Yue Daiyun's first work assignment in Liyuzhou after their housing was constructed?

5. Where did Yue Daiyun teach during 1973?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why were admission examinations eliminated from the requirements for university entrance in 1970?

2. What tragedy took place in Hanzhong on a branch campus for the study of applied physics?

3. What were the most emphatic new directives from Chairman Mao as the conflicts escalated?

4. What was Liang Xiao? What was its purpose?

5. How was Tang Dan allowed as a child to help the Jinggang Mountain group?

6. How did the disputes between factions at the university resemble civil war?

7. What difficulties did Tang Dan encounter during her time with the military?

8. What did the student Red Guards at Beida dispute about Nie Yuanzi's policies?

9. How did nine-year-old Tang Shuan help the Jinggang Mountain group?

10. Why did Yue Daiyun feel optimistic upon her return to Beida in spite of the dismal condition of the campus?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

During the time that is portrayed in this memoir, military and police power were placed in the hands of committees and groups - sometimes self-appointed, as the student groups were. In your essay, discuss the results of these shifts in power.

Essay Topic 2

During Yue Daiyun's time as a professor of literature during the Cultural Revolution, it was criminal to glorify "middle characters" in fiction. Middle characters are ordinary people with flaws as well as good characteristics. Analyze and evaluate the purpose for this decision and its effect on readers, according to Yue Daiyun.

Essay Topic 3

At some points, it was considered a criminal activity to feel pity or compassion for anyone who had been established as an enemy of the state. Analyze the purpose and results of this attitude toward kindness for wrongdoers.

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