As Mr. Cao approached adolescence, political tensions in China were escalating, culminating in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Schools were closed for several years.

Image Credit... China Children's Press & Publication Group

The young Mr. Cao traveled the country as part of the dachuanlian, a movement in which young activists were encouraged to meet and spread the message of revolution. But as the student groups known as the Red Guards rampaged, wreaking havoc on the lives of intellectuals, officials and others, Mr. Cao said he was one of many students who held back.

“I was only 12 or 13 at the time, so we didn’t do much,” he said. “We weren’t violent.”

“All we did was wear red armbands and write dazibao,” he added, referring to the “big-character posters” that spread political messages during the period.

Before long, though, Mr. Cao returned to Jiangsu and resumed his classes. As part of the larger upheaval, some of the top Chinese language and literature teachers in nearby Suzhou and Wuxi had been sent to work at his rural school.

As a result, he said, “The Cultural Revolution years were the best education I received.”

Later, as the movement was winding down, he enrolled at Peking University, where he is now a professor of Chinese language and literature. He published his first short story for children in the late 1970s and has not stopped writing since. By his own count, his publications number more than 100 works: novels, academic texts, short stories, essay collections and picture books.

The chaotic years of the Cultural Revolution form the backdrop for many of his stories. His 2005 book “Bronze and Sunflower,” for example, concerns the friendship of a girl, Sunflower, who follows her father from the city to the countryside, where he has been sent to do hard labor, and Bronze, a boy unable to speak whose parents are impoverished villagers.