How "To Live" part two relates Mao

We returned to “To Live” during the Great Leap Forward. This part of the movie lets us delve even deeper into the life of an average Chinese person under the rule of Mao. This part of the movie shows us more of the social life than before. I think a key part that shows the social life was during dinner in the community kitchen when the son dumped noodles on another kid’s head for bullying his sister. The father then calls the son, and therefore the father, a revolutionary just because he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do. This shows how many people were fearful of being against Mao because if you were you would be severely punished. Chinese people back then basically worshipped Mao and did whatever he said, and Mao said that reactionaries should be punished. Since they are devoted to Mao, people will do whatever it takes not to become a reactionary, such as disrupt the community kitchen. Another important scene is when school kids come to tell the mother that the son needs to go to school to help smelt steel. This showed me a surprising insight into life during that time period; that even the kids were worked so hard until they didn’t even have the energy to stay awake. This then leads to the death of the son because he was asleep against a wall when a truck crashed into it and killed him. We stopped at the scene were Fugui and his wife are mourning the death of their son and refused all sorts of help, such as money, from the man who killed their child.