N ear the end of third grade, my twin daughters, Ariel and Natasha, officially joined the Young Pioneers of China . This organisation is under the auspices of the Chinese Communist party, and members are between the ages of six and 14. In order to become a Young Pioneer at Chengdu Experimental primary school, the public institution my daughters attended in the south-western Chinese city, there was no application, no interview and no ceremony.
Parents were not consulted or informed. The twins simply came home one afternoon wearing Young Pioneer pins on their right breasts. The pins featured a gold star, a red torch and the name of the organisation – Zhongguo Shaoxiandui – in gold Chinese characters.
Ariel and Natasha told me and my wife, Leslie, that from now on they would be required to wear the pins on Mondays, when Chengdu Experimental held its weekly flag-raising ceremony, as well as on other special occasions. Young Pioneers also wore red scarves that were knotted at the neck. According to the organisation’s constitution, the scarves are red because they represent the blood that was sacrificed by the martyrs of the 1949 Communist Revolution.
When I first lived in China, in the mid-1990s, schoolchildren had to be selected to become Young Pioneers, and red scarves were a mark of kids who were politically favoured. But by the time I moved back to the country, in 2019, membership had become compulsory at most schools, including Chengdu Experimental. Unlike the pins, red.