This year marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution. Yuwen Wu offers her own recollection and assessment

I was in primary school when the Cultural Revolution started. At first it seemed to be a never-ending street party - schools were out, teachers were criticised, street names were changed to AntiRevisionist Avenue or China Avenue, walls were painted with Chairman Mao's quotations and everybody was wearing a Mao badge. There were mass meetings to denounce the land-owners, rich peasants, reactionaries, bad elements in society and rightists, with lots of arm-raising and slogan shouting.

On the street where I lived, high-heeled shoes and jewellery hung from doorways as evidence of bourgeois living. But before long, the harsh reality started to sink in. One day, some Red Guards rushed to a neighbour's apartment, dragged the piano professor out and forced him to kneel down and confess his crimes - presumably why he enjoyed Western music so much. He was sent to the labour camp. One of his students moved into his empty flat and played sad tunes on the piano. He had just lost both of his parents: his mother, a headmistress in a primary school, was beaten to death by the Red Guards; his father, forced to accompany her, jumped to her defence and was also beaten to death. This was incomprehensible to my young mind - if revolution came down to this, it was very scary.

A nation that does not reflect on its past honestly risks the danger of repeating its own mistakes

As it turned out, Mao Zedong used the Cultural Revolution to get rid of his political enemies, and couldn't care less about who else was dragged down. He believed that "revolution is not a dinner party" and class struggle had to be violent. Through ruthless brainwashing and a feverish personality cult, Mao acquired such god-like status that anybody branded anti-Mao would face anything from summary execution to torture, imprisonment or endless struggle meetings. The Cultural Revolution was the most catastrophic period in modern Chinese history but, 40 years later, there is not a single museum devoted to its study and research inside China, and any discussion of it is tightly controlled. Intellectuals intending to set up a museum were harassed by the authorities; quite a few people contacted by the BBC Chinese service didn't want to talk about their experiences on record.

According to some surveys, 70% to 80% of university students today don't understand much about the Cultural Revolution. Some even regret not being born then and hope for another one. For the present Chinese leadership, debating this history openly might raise questions about the legitimacy of the Communist Party as the sole governing party in China, but a nation that does not reflect on its past honestly risks the danger of repeating its own mistakes. Fortunately, many people both in and outside China refuse to consign the memory of the Cultural Revolution to history. It is high time the leadership caught up with these people.

Yuwen Wu has worked with the BBC Chinese service since 1995. To mark the anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution, the service is broadcasting a series of testimonies and analysis of the Cultural Revolution and its legacy.

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