China Red Azalea Anchee Min Plucked from the barren fields of a communal farm to star in Madame Mao's latest film, Anchee Min saw both sides of life in communist China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Her story begins in Shanghai, where her family is forced into progressively smaller and meaner housing and her schooldays are spent as a member of the Red Guard, spouting the words of Chairman Mao. When she denounces her favorite teacher as a reactionary, endangering both her job and her life, Min is rewarded with a move to an agrarian collective, Red Fire Farm, near the China Sea. Toiling in a state of near starvation and forbidden to mix with the opposite sex, Min falls in love with Yan, her female squad leader. Watching her comrades toil for no reason and die as a result, she begins to question her devotion to Mao, a disillusionment that only deepens when she travels to Beijing to audition for a role in Red Azalea, one of his wife's propaganda films. When production is cut short by Mao's death, Min does odd jobs at the movie studio, contracting tuberculosis along the way, until a fellow actress, who has emigrated to America, urges her to follow suit. Min's coming-of-age story is also history lesson, a tale of inner strength and courage at a time and place where submission and conformity rule.