was assigned to manage academic affairs for the newly established Central Institute of Socialism and the family experienced the hardships of the Great Chinese Famine. Writing in his memoir, City Gate, Open Up, Bei Dao describes his memory of that period:Hunger gradually devoured our lives. Dropsy became commonplace. Everyone's usual greeting to each other changed from "Have you eaten yet" to "Have you gotten dropsy yet," then the pant legs were pulled up and each used their fingers to test the other's degree of illness.Like many Chinese youth, Bei Dao joined the Young Pioneers of China. He attended Beijing Middle School No. 13, where his teachers praised his writing. He then tested into the elite Beijing No. 4 High School. However, he was unable to graduate: in 1966, when Bei Dao was sixteen, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, which closed the school. (In 2011, upon receiving an honorary doctorate from Brown University, Bei Dao remarked that it was the first degree he had ever received.) Cultural Revolution Having not been selected for induction into the People's Liberation Army, Bei Dao spent the first two years of the Cultural Revolution immersed in political activities as a member of a Red Guard faction based at his high school. Initially, he created posters denouncing his former teachers. He led a group of teenagers in publicly shaming a neighbor, forcibly shaving the man's head in the street and briefly imprisoning him. He moved into a dormitory at his high school, which became a hub for revolutionary activity, hosting various committees and "struggle sessions". The students there formed a commune composed of two Red Guard factions dedicated to promoting the ideals of the revolution, for which Bei Dao assisted in disseminating propaganda. On a regional tour in 1966, he and his fellow Red Guard members helped bring an end to a siege of the Anting train station by anti-Maoist protestors, an incident that gave rise to the Shanghai People's Commune. Later, during the "Down to the Countryside" movement, he joined delegations to observe education efforts outside Beijing. In 1967, the Communist Party of China officially disavowed the Red Guards due to their frequently violent tactics and disruptive effect on the national economy, and by the following year had largely succeeded in dismantling the movement. Bei Dao, like many former Red Guard members, was assigned to "re-education through labor". Beginning in 1969, he spent the