I couldnt tell because of the makeup, but was that Xiao Si admiring the jewelry near the end? And why did the communist group walk in the big room with the mirror and banner and what did they hand him? Basically I am wondering exactly what that scene was about.
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You can slowly see Xiao Si ride a "bell curve" with his revolutionary ferver: he goes from feeling a little unsure to being in awe of and loving it to starting to doubt it to finally visibly giving up during the persecution of the acting troupe. In the end, he is playing with the jewelry that was taken away from Dieyi and singing an oddly appropriate passage about the "Han forces" surrounding him. Nobody is quite sure what the Red Guard hands the obviously-defected Xiao Si at the very end, but it's most likely a summons, considering the CCP was handing them out like candy at that time period.
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I don't even think he defected. Stealing the concubine part from his master seems to have been his primary motivation all along. I see more of a sick triumph in the persecution scene and the jewel scene. His "comrades" saw his weakness and had him arrested. A recurring theme in revolutions is that revolutionaries are killed by their own revolution. Like Danton in the French revolution, Trotzky in the Russian revolution, etc. As Danton says in Buechner's play on the French Revolution:
"The revolution is like Saturn: It devours its own children."
I respectively disagree. You can clearly see how upset he is with Dieyi's treatment during the trial. He pities him and seems to regret dragging Dieyi in to it. His playing with the jewelry and singing sadly is, to me, his realization that the revolution he supported will destroy this beautiful culture he was once a part of.
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NO, the Red Guard did not give him a summons. wtf? How can you say no one is quite sure what was handed to him?? Anyone who knows anything about the history of China could tell you! It was obviously Chairman Mao's Little Red Book (which everyone in China had - handed out like candy as you say) that explained the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. Pretty clear that the Red Guard accepted him. You totally missed the point of that scene.
And how did Xiao Si "obviously defect"???? For one thing, if you went against the Party you did not live. You did NOT "defect" and he certainly wouldn't have been able to be sitting under a Party banner playing with jewelry. He was a die-hard Communist from day one and reported against the people who raised him. It wasn't until after the Cultural Revolution that he would have seen the error of his ways like most Red Guards did in real life. He did not "visibly give up" during the persecution of the troupe and I fail to understand how you could think this. At the time he thought they all deserved it. The ONLY reaction we saw of him was when Douzi was outed as a homosexual. He was disgusted by that - not by the persecution. When Juxian runs out to get the sword from the fire HE IS CHEERING! He did not pity Douzi - he was disgusted by him. We did NOT see the bell curve of his revolutionary fervor because in this movie we did not see his fervor diminish one bit.
The people you idolize wouldn't like you.