There are many things that most people take for granted. Things that people do regularly, daily and even expect to do in the future. These things include eating regularly, having choices in schooling, reading, job choices and future choices, and much more. But what if that information was taken away from you and someone told you what you wanted to eat, where and when to work, what you could read, and dictated your future. Many of these things happened to one degree or another during the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong which began in the late 1960s. This article examines the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie and a book by Michael Schoenhals entitled The Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969. He compares the way the Chinese Cultural Revolution is presented in the two books by looking at how people were re-educated and relocated, what people were able to learn, and the environment people lived in during this period in China . At the beginning of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the book's narrator and his friend Luo are displaced from their past city lives to live in a small village in the mountains that the villagers called "the Phoenix in the Sky." . They were re-educated, transferred to the village and forced to work as villagers and be "re-educated" as poor peasants while working the land. The narrator recounts in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress that during the Chinese Revolution, the universities were closed and that all young intellectuals, or young high school graduates, were sent to the countryside to be "re-educated by the poor peasants". » In the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it is said that "8 million or more students "went to the countryside" before finishing...... middle of paper...... The Chinese seamstress gives an accurate description of things that happened during the Chinese Revolution. Cultural revolution. It shows that young people were re-educated in the villages by poor peasants and that Western-influenced material opposed to Mao and his ideas was considered bad and forbidden. It shows that to re-educate them, they had to do manual work and live in communes. They were removed from their families and what they took for granted. Their lives were no longer in their control, they were told where to live, where to work and what they could and couldn't do. The Chinese Cultural Revolution had a profound impact on the Chinese population in all aspects of life. Men, women and children of all ages were affected. Works Cited Schoenhals, Michael. The Chinese cultural revolution, 1966-1969: not a dinner. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. Print.