Chapter 10 Summary and Analysis

Yue Daiyun's family moves to a house on the outskirts of the campus. They share the house with the family of another professor who had been declared a reactionary. The factionalism intensifies and there is fighting in the countryside near the end of 1968. Many students are doing whatever they want in different parts of the country. Chairman Mao keeps calling for unity and the reopening of the universities. Lao Tang and others sign a poster supporting Jinggang Mountain. The support of this group is considered essential to the reopening of the university.

Both factions say that they will work together but each expects the other to concede and so the situation continues to deteriorate. Lao Yuanping leads an attack on an Earth faction building with fire bombs in which twenty-one people are killed. Tang Dan, who is fifteen, says that she...