Was the cultural revolution a success in Red Scarf Girl?

Ji-li did not consider the Cultural
Revolution a success because she felt alienated and isolated by the constrictive social
and political regulation.

Born in 1954,
Ji-li grew up during China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution.  She wrote Red
Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Chinese Cultural Revolution to share her story. 
She suffered from losing almost everything that mattered to her.  She lost the chance to
be educated when the schools stopped teaching. 

Her family
was targeted.  The hardest part for Ji-li was the treatment of her parents, including
trying to get her to denounce her father because she was an
actor.

His
students and other actors used to defer to him so respectfully.  Where was his dignity
and authority now? (p.
174)

Ji-li feels as though
her family has been broken by the experience.  She knows that they were not bad people,
and had done nothing wrong.  From her family’s perspective, the Chinese Cultural
Revolution did not produce a better China.