The Selfish Leader

The Headman in the Little Chinese Seamstress played a very important role in the community, but especially to Ma and Luo. The headman was in charge of the village and he is in charge of sending them for re-education far away from their normal homes and cities. His ultimate boss is Mao Zedong, who is Chinas leader and came up with the plan and idea to re-educate Chinese young children for a new China. However, the headman of Ma and Luo’s village enforces it. Mao’s red guards also enforced his plan along with the headman in each village.
The headman is very arrogant person and mean, he doesn’t care what Ma or Luo think of Mao’s plan or his decision to send them to the country side for re-education. The headman doesn’t seem to realize what the re-education consists of and could care less about what will happen to them if he sends them there. At one point, the headman even blackmailed Luo to fix his teeth so that he wouldn’t send Ma to jail which just shows his real character and sneaky personality.
This relates to when Mao came up with the plan and although it was for the better, he really didn’t take in consideration how much work and mental pain the kids would have to go through sending them away from their home or town for an extended amount of time to be re-educated. He brought reform out west to increase his political power and capture more of the western side of china. Blackmail was common, and strict crimes were taken very seriously in Ma and Luos society, but the leaders of each town were very strict and didn’t care much of what people thought since it was a hard place to be in a Chinese reforming government.