Ji-Li Jiang was born in Shanghai, China, in 1954. She grew up with one brother and one sister. All three children were born one year apart, so they remained close into adulthood. Her father was an actor in the Shanghai Children's Theatre, and he and her mother met through their acting careers. They were also revolutionaries who believed in the new communist China. Jiang and her family, including her father's mother, all lived together in one large room of a house that used to be occupied by their extended family. The house was on a quiet alley in Shanghai, and Jiang remembers being very happy there with her family, neighbors and friends, until the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966.

Red Scarf Girl concerns the first two years of this massive political campaign as she Red Scarf Girl with Connections, 2001 The Magical Monkey...