As a child my idea of the West was that it was a miasma of poverty and misery, like that of the homeless "Little Match Girl" in the Hans Christian Andersen story. When I was in the boarding nursery and did not want to finish my food, the teacher would say, "Think of all the starving children in the capitalist world!"
There are several interesting facets to this passage from the book. The first is the revelation that children all over the world are basically raised the same way; East and West alike, the picky child is reminded of those less fortunate, and urged to finish their food because children in other far flung corners of the world are going to bed hungry.
However, the other interesting thing to note here is the young age at which the Chinese brainwashing machine begins its work. As a young child in a nursery setting, the author was already being conditioned to believe that life under Communism was greatly better than life in a capitalist country, and being told that whilst capitalist countries were poverty stricken and wanting for much, they themselves, thanks to their Communist leaders, wanted for nothing. This shows the way in which propaganda was used to insidiously instil loyalty to the government without question.
They verbally attacked each other with Mao's quotations, making cynical use of his guru-like elusiveness - it was easy to select a quotation of Mao's to suit any situation, or even both sides of the same argument.
The trouble with philosophy is that it can draw several completely different logical implications from the same argument. As the author points out here, it can even contradict itself. Because Mao's dictates laid down rules and laws about how his people were to live, and there was no deviation from this, he was also quite vague, with the intention that any situation could be resolved by complete adherence to his word. Her observation also demonstrates that people's only frame of reference was Mao. They did not have any other arguments or sources for anything because they had all been removed during the Cultural Revolution, thereby making Mao's the only voice that was heard.
