ABSTRACT
At the inception of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Chengzhi was a student at Qinghua Middle School in Beijing. He was an activist and the first to call himself a "Red Guard" (hongweibing) when writing his own "small character posters. " The term was subsequently adopted by his schoolmates and then by the Cultural Revolution student movement. 1 Like many of his generation Zhang was a fervent disciple of Mao and Mao Thought. Pictures of him studying Mao's works can be found in the pages of official propaganda publications of the time.
