Brainwashing started at 6:30am daily

During the peak of the Cultural Revolution, I would be woken up by the rapid whistles at 6:30 in the morning. We would hurriedly get up and queue up to enter into the 2m by 6m entry hall for a morning prayer: saying three times “long live Chairman Mao” and then bowing three times to Mao’s portrait on both walls. There were 24 families and a total of about 80 residents, but every time the hall could only have two dozen people praying back-to-back.