When Xi Jinping was 13 years old, Red Guards detained him in the Party Central School.
They accused him of being a counter-revolutionary.
In one of those struggle and criticism sessions common during the Cultural Revolution, they presented him to a drooling crowd.
Friederike Böge
Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.
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At such meetings, the victims were often put on iron hats weighing several pounds.
Even today's head of state and party had to wear such a “hat”.
His mother was also on the stage.
She was forced to join the mob's down-jinping calls.
One evening the boy stole past his guards and ran home to ask his mother for food.
Fearing that this could endanger the whole family, she filed a report against him.
At least that's how a family friend later described it.
Xi Jinping, like millions of other Chinese, was a victim of the orgies of violence that Mao's intrigues unleashed in the 1960s.
Nevertheless, today's head of state and party has ensured that Mao is glorified again as it has not been for decades.
Xi Jinping presented himself in a gray Mao suit at his speech at the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party this week.
The propaganda show on Tiananmen Square was reminiscent of the Maoist mass riots of the past.
The transfiguration of Mao's crimes was even more visible at the gala in the National Stadium in Beijing.
The father was the target of a purge
Xi Jinping didn't just redefine history.
He has also copied many of the methods from the time of the Cultural Revolution that he himself suffered from.
The cult of personality, denunciation, self-criticism sessions, endless repetition of phrases for the purpose of brainwashing.
How does that fit together?
A former teacher said of young Jinping, her student, that he was viewed and treated as a class enemy because of his parents.
Xi Zhongxun's father was a senior party official.
However, when the son was nine years old, the father was the target of a purge.
The reason: He had approved the publication of a biographical novel, which the suspicious Mao viewed as an attempt to rehabilitate an opponent.
Xi Zhongxun was sent to a rural tractor factory as a worker, was severely mistreated several times, and was later detained.
He didn't see his children again until 15 years later.
His fall also made children a target for violent assault.
Mao had incited the youth to storm all authorities.
Students attacked their teachers, children their parents, and hooligans attacked anyone who was accused of being an enemy of the people.
One of Xi Jinping's sisters could no longer endure the attacks.
She committed suicide.
Pilgrimage site for red tourists
When Jinping was 15 years old, Mao decided to send the whipped up urban youth to the peasants in the countryside.
That affected 17 million young people.
For six years, Xi Jinping lived in harsh, poor conditions in a den in Liangjiahe Village, Shaanxi Province.