She is used to having the freedom of possessing the items she desired as long as they could be afforded, having lived a very comfortable life before the start of the Cultural Revolution. All things considered, Ling, with the mind-set of a child, has trouble grasping the significance of the political and economic changes of the Cultural Revolution.
In the middle of the novel, as tragedy begins to strike her family, Ling's ignorance gradually dissipates and starts to develop the important traits to help support her family. On Ling's first day of school, she wore a flower patterned dress to school and is teased for being a land lord. Consequently, to avoid the laughter, she begins to dress in more modest clothing, but it is ineffective. Despite her attempt to appear more low-key her classmates mocked her by jeering, "The little landlord is pretending to be working class" (61). In this segment of the novel, Ling was in high spirits on her first day of school and decided to dress well, but her clothes (and hair) become a label of her high status in society before the Culture Revolution. She becomes subjected to vicious torment as her classmates accuse her of being a 'bourgeois,' a degrading name for the rich and well-educated of China. .
Ling begins to realize that Chinese intellectuals, including her family, are disliked by Chairman Mao Zedong, therefore, unpopular among the working class of China, the majority of the population. Furthermore, after the arrest of her father, Ling and her mother struggle to survive as the Red Guards continued to persecute her family and friends, limiting their resources. She starts to take on the responsibility of running the house to help support her and her mother. As numerous responsibilities began to bear down on Ling's mother, she confided in her daughter: "Listen carefully You are almost twelve now, and you need to learn to do these chores in case I am gone-"(151-152).
