He was once a factory worker

1969 might have been one of the most challenging years for Deng Xiaoping. An odd truth about Deng Xiaoping is that after being discovered during the Cultural Revolution, he was imprisoned in a kindergarten and had to work at a tractor repair shop. Additionally, he was moved to Jiangxi province and held under house arrest in Beijing for two years. Mao believed that Deng and Liu's reformist economic strategies might result in the return of capitalism and the end of the Chinese Revolution. Due to these and other factors, Mao started the Cultural Revolution in 1966, when Deng lost support and had to resign from all of his positions.

He and his family were targeted by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution when they had Deng Pufang, Deng Xiaoping's eldest son, imprisoned. In 1968, after being tortured and pushed out of a four-story building, Deng Pufang became a paraplegic. Deng Xiaoping was assigned to work as a regular employee at the Xinjian County Tractor Factory in rural Jiangxi Province in October 1969. Deng wrote in his leisure time during his four years there. Although on a lower scale than President Liu Shaoqi, he was nationwide purging.

For a long time, Mao had claimed that Deng's suffering was an act of kindness on his part to keep him alive. Deng's son, on the other hand, was not as fortunate. He seemed to have attempted to escape the Red Guards by falling from a window and crippling himself.