Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party

Ying Chang Compestine’s debut young-adult historical novel, Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party (2007), follows a young Chinese girl fighting for survival during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Nine-year-old Ling Chang lives in 1970s China. Her parents are both doctors, which means they belong to the Chinese upper classes. This doesn’t bode well for Ling, because it is six years into the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Communism has taken over the country, and upper-class families are persecuted relentlessly. For Ling, it is a terrifying time.

Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party opens in 1972 and ends in 1976. During this period, young people rebel against upper- and middle-class influences, fighting for revolution and freedom. Although Ling’s family means no harm and helps the community, they are powerless against this revolutionary tide. Ling can only watch as her family’s future disintegrates before their eyes.



A strange man moves in with the Ling family. Comrade Li works under Chairman Mao, the orchestrator of the communist movement in China and the subsequent Cultural Revolution. The family’s every movement is carefully watched and scrutinized.

Ling’s father loves listening to American radio channels. He corresponds frequently with American doctors by airmail, and he teaches Ling English. Forbidden activities in 1970s China, rule breakers face severe penalties. Ling’s father, however, doesn’t want to give up his liberties. He doesn’t want his family bullied into submission by a tyrannical regime. Instead, he hatches a plan.

Although Comrade Li moves in with them, he lives in a separate room. While Comrade Li is locked away in his room, Ling’s family listens to the radio at a very low volume. They huddle under blankets for extra protection, just in case Comrade Li walks in on them. They find ways to sneak letters out to their American friends. Ling admires her father’s spirit and her mother’s determination.



It is not easy for Ling, who must attend school with working-class children. They pick on her, call her ugly names, and pull her long hair because long hair is a symbol of wealth. Not wanting to upset her parents, she doesn’t tell them what she endures at school. She faces the bullying all on her own, strengthening her own feelings against the regime.

One day, Comrade Li demands that they hang a picture of Mao on the wall to prove their loyalty to the regime. The family agrees, not wanting to attract his suspicion. Ling even offers to help Comrade Li with errands and domestic tasks because she wants him to favor her. Everything the family does is an elaborately constructed ruse.

Things go from bad to worse when hostile neighbors claim the family is bourgeois sympathizers. Ling’s mother keeps her job, but her father must work as a hospital janitor for minimum wage. He endures daily abuse and ridicule—the hospital’s top surgeon is now a low-ranking member of staff. Meanwhile, Comrade Li arrests other neighbors for rebelling against Mao. Ling knows she will never see them again.



Ling knows that her own family hangs together by a thread. Still enduring daily name-calling and bullying, she doesn’t tell anyone. However, a classmate Gao tries to cut her hair off one day, and she attacks him. No one sees the incident, so she does not face punishment. Still, she knows school is not safe for her anymore and she does not want to go back.

Later, her father finds a writer who almost drowned. He tried to kill himself because of the revolution. Despising Mao, he writes anti-revolutionary pamphlets. Ling doesn’t want trouble, but she helps her father resuscitate the man. However, guards arrest the writer and her father for anti-revolutionary actions.

Ling feels that she can’t survive without her father around. She can’t stop worrying about him. To make matters worse, her mother works all the time, and so she is stuck in the house alone with Comrade Li. She decides to escape one night to go looking for her father. She finds out that the officers are making him operate on a communist. Ling can’t take it anymore; she’s sick of bowing down to this regime.



Ling breaks into the compound; guards arrest her and throw her in jail. She catches head lice in jail and must cut off her hair. Ling is heartbroken; this feels like a defeat. However, Mao dies shortly after this incident, leaving the regime’s fate bleak. Ling’s father is released, and the family is reunited once more. Order returns to China, and Ling is hopeful about the future.

Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party received numerous prestigious award nominations, and critics praised it for its portrayal of communist China and the havoc wrought upon the upper classes. Recognized in America as an authority on Chinese culture and cuisine, Compestine writes Chinese cookbooks for adults and picture books for small children.