Mao's Cultural RevolutionDressed in the shabby military uniform that symbolized the revolutionary government of Communist China, Mao Zedong's body still looked mighty, like a giant rock in a gushing river. A huge red flag draped his coffin, like a red sail unfurled on a Chinese junk, illustrating the dualism between traditional China and present-day Communist China that characterized Mao. 1 A river of people flowed as he lay in state during the second week of September 1976. Workers, farmers, soldiers and students, united in grief; brought together by Mao, the helmsman of modern China. 2 He had put together a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem for these ideals and traditional Chinese history. Mao was born on December 26, 1893 in Shao Shan, a village in Hunan province. 3 His family lived in a rural village where for hundreds of years the pattern of daily life had remained essentially intact. 4 Mao's father, the son of a "poor peasant", however, prospered during Mao's childhood and became a wealthy landowner and rice trader. 5 However, Mao's family structure continued to reflect the rigidity of traditional Chinese society. His father, a strict disciplinarian, demanded filial piety. 6 Forced to do agricultural labor and study Chinese classics, Mao was expected to be obedient. On the other hand, Mao recalls that his mother was "generous and understanding". 7 Mao urged his mother to confront his father, but Mao's mother, who believed in many traditional ideas, replied that it was "not the Chinese style." 8 Mao in his interviews with historian Edgar Snow reports how during his childhood he tried to escape this traditional Chinese education by running away from home. The rebellion that Mao claims to have manifested may have physically distanced Mao from his family, but traditional Chinese values ​​were deeply rooted, shaping his political and personal personality. His father's harshness in dealing with opposition, his cunning, his demand for reverence from subordinates, and his ambition were to be seen in the way Mao demanded harmony, order, and reverence as a ruthless dictator. However, Mao was also the kind father figure to the Chinese people, as manifested in the characteristic qualities of Mao's mother: kindness, benevolence, and patriarchal indulgence. The China in which Mao was born was rapidly becoming a shell of its former past..