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Signed (student author) � L...- - Signed (faculty advisor) -----

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Thesis title W\ of C1 fa (WHAt; IAJst Elenerz,hCV1 : Tk.t feLllt-DOfMll MD�n-r �Vld (A�Sfes" II 11M.-'''1Vtvct 0 ltt Date C;/-w J 2-0

Use ',:-Libniry ;- : ./' : -' -�:. ' '.">. - : - : " ' -:" . . . Accepted. By: .-+-'-':'-'-"-f:-c""-::-:-....:..;c;..:'--':-:-.,.,--'��"'c-�-,. ' . re�.March 26Jo FORMATION OF A LOST GENERATION:

THE SENT-DOWN MOVEMENT AND THE "THREE OLD CLASSES"

SERENE-LORETTA Y. SHEN

Anne Reinhardt, Advisor

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in History

WILLIAMS COLLEGE

Williamstown, Massachusetts

APRIL 18, 2011

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-- T 11 Contents

Acknowledgements v

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Rustication - "Show Your Red Heart by Going to the Villages" 23

Chapter Two: Back to the Cities 49

Chapter Three: Grappling with the Past and Present - The Zhiqing in New China 71

Conclusion 101

Selected Bibliography 103

iii

T IV Acknowledgments

Professor Reinhardt, your uncanny ability to preemptively soothe all my insecurities, frustrations and worries kept me going through the production of this thesis. Your patience, wisdom and guidance helped me stay confident and inspired my focus on the sent-down generation. I cannot thank you enough.

Professor Bernhardsson, your classes ignited my passion for history and will remain part of my happiest memories of Williams.

Gongi and Popi, you are my inspiration and motivation. Thank you for giving me such a rich family history.

Baba and Mama, your unconditional love, support and willingness to stay up into the early hours of the morning were invaluable. Your insights and help with my Chinese comprehension and translation made this thesis possible.

Meijie, your initial encouragement pushed me to pursue this work. I am so grateful for your confidence in my abilities.

Gordon, your patience, kindness and care got me through the year.

To the rest of my family and friends, you have my sincerest gratitude for indulgence throughout this process.

Introduction

On July 8, 1968, sixteen-year-old Jinmei Yu set out on a three day journey to

begin a new life in Inner Mongolia. Leaving her home city of Tianjin, Yu took a train to

Beijing. From there, she traveled west, past the Great Wall to Inner Mongolia, stopping in

Hohhot and again further westward in Baotou. On a crowded train for the majority of her

travels and without much entertainment, Yu was left to her thoughts, carrying a teaching

from Mencius that would prove especially prescient over the next years of her life.

So it is that whenever Heaven invests a person with great responsibilities, it first tries his resolve, exhausts his muscles and bones, starves his body, leaves him destitute, and confounds his every endeavor. In this way his patience and

endurance are developed, and his weaknesses are overcome. 1

Yu was a willing participant of a larger phenomenon of urban educated youth (zhiqing)

giving up their city residencies to live and labor in the countryside. Yu knew her life from

then on would be difficult, but she believed in Mencius and the idea that her hard work

would lead to a better future for China. In Baotou, Yu transferred to a local slow train,

stopping in each small town before arriving in Wulateqianqi. From Wulateqianqi, Yu

boarded a bus, traveling for four hours on a mud road leading to the Lu Sun commune,

where she would spend the next decade of her life. Five months after Yu left Tianj in, on

December 22, 1968, Chairman Mao formally called on the rest of Yu 's peers to transform

their lives and head "up to the mountains and down to the villages" (shangshan xiaxiang).

This directive then became a governmentmandated program requiring the relocation and

rustication of the entire urban youth population. The result of this movement was the

I David Hinton, trans., Mencius (Washington DC: Counterpoint, 1999), 230.

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------T irrevocable change in up to an estimated 20 million lives.2

The sent-down movement turned many traditional "Chinese" values upside down.

Peasants and cadres became the new teachers; reeducation in the countryside replaced the

vigorous academic competition within the urban centers; the purpose of education was not upward social mobility but permanent integration in the countryside, which to many

seemed to be downward mobility. Instead of aspiring to move into the bustling and

prosperous cities, people were encouraged to give up their material aspirations and lead

simpler lives in the villages. The question of the time was not why so many young

people, barely out of their childhoods, were being separated from their families and sent

to unfamiliar locales. Rather, people were confronted with the choice of taking up the

revolutionary spirit in the countryside or leading an idle and unrewarding life in the city.

As it turnedout, the movement was not successful in population transfer and the zhiqing

did not drastically transform the peasantry's lives for the better. Furthermore, the harsh

living and working conditions did not make life in the countryside any more palatable.

Unfortunately, for many zhiqing, the decision to relocate was irreversible and they would

not have the opportunity to regain their city residency statuses until after the Cultural

Revolution officially ended. By the time most of the zhiqing made it back to the cities,

they had already missed important educational opportunities that would have contributed

to their futures. The zhiqing might have known that they were dedicating their youths to

their country but as it happened, they sacrificed their futures as well. With all this time

squandered in the countryside, it is no wonder that the zhiqing generation is popularly

known as the "lost generation."

2 Laifong Leung, Morning Sun: Interviews with Chinese Writers of the Lost Generation (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), xiii.

2 This thesis is centered around the lives of two zhiqing, Yu Jinmei and Xu

Yunsheng, who entered the movement under very differentcircumstances and now continue to lead completely contrasting existences despite their shared experience in rustication. By investigating three stages of their lives - the sent-down experience itself, the returnto the cities and the end of the movement, and "modem life" in the 1990s - the goal is to come out with a longitudinal study of the zhiqing experience. The effects of the sent-down movement did not cease with the end of the rustication program and the ripple effects from living through and participating in the movement remain relevant in the present. Finally, this study argues that societal forces continue to marginalize the zhiqing and will assess what factors play into the generational label of "lost" and if it is still appropriate.

Sent-down Movement Scholarship

The larger force behind the sent-down movement, the Cultural Revolution transformed all levels of Chinese society - from the power structure of the political elite to relationships between neighbors. A polarizing and socially traumatizing period, the

Cultural Revolution presents an endless number of topics for consideration. One way to classify the diverse scholarship is to take into account the works publication date.3 Earlier works produced immediately following the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s and ,, early 1980s were generally concerned with "state-society relations. 4 Reeling from the exceptional control of the governmentover the Chinese population during the Cultural

Revolution, commentators have pointed out that both Chinese and foreign scholars alike

3 Joseph W. Esherick, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Andrew G. Walder, eds., "The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History: an Introduction," in The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 5. 4 Ibid., 3.

T were interested in examining the role of state power in the upheaval of the last decade.5

Thus, much of the coverage dealt with the political struggles and grievances of various social groups. However, research during this time was constrained by limited access to materials from Mainland China. Most evidence was acquired from "interviews with emigres ...sc attered copies of red guard tabloids, critical wall posters and pamphlets, transcripts of radio broadcasts, and rare issues of local newspapers".6 On the other hand, in recent years new trends have emerged in Cultural Revolution research. Starting in the late 1980s and lasting until now, many works have more reflective on the overall nature of the revolution as well as its lasting effects on Chinese society. This expansion in subject matter is due to the growing number of sources available on the Cultural

Revolution, both from inside and outside of China. From government-released statistics to oral histories to the online forums that record thousands of discussions on the era, the source base on the Cultural Revolution continues to grow.

The immense range of Cultural Revolution scholarship reflects the perpetually growing information base on the era, yet there is a tendency to focus on the political elites of the time. Justifiably, topics such as the cult of Mao, the Gang of Four, the conflict between Mao and Liu Shaoqi and the Lin Biao Incident are prominently represented as essential to understanding the time period. On a broader scheme, the Red

Guards also draw attention due to the violent and controversial overtones associated with their participants. Still, Red Guard status was usually only bestowed upon those with good class backgrounds and a significant portion of youths were excluded. Given the implication of the entire urban youth population in the sent-down movement, the limited

5 Esherick et a!., Th e Chinese Cultural Revolution as History, 3. 6 Ibid.,5.

4 amount of English language specialized studies on the topic reveals an ongoing need to assess the legacy of rustication.

As political tensions following the Cultural Revolution calmed down, there was a proliferation of Chinese writing on the movement.? Former zhiqing were at a greater liberty to honestly recount their experiences and academics felt more comfortable tackling the controversial subject matter. In spite of this developing niche of sent-down scholarship within China, there has been less of an interest in specialized study of the movement outside of the country. As a result, We stern public perception of the movement tends to be overwhelmingly negative.

Historical study of the sent-down movement began with Thomas Bernstein's Up to the Mountains and Down to the Vi llages, published in 1977. Based on "the Chinese media, interviews with former residents, and visitors' reports," Bernsteinwas able to give a tangible definition to the movement by explaining such factors as the motivations behind the movement, how youths were mobilized to participate and the conditions the zhiqing met in the countryside. It is important to note that Bernstein's book was a contemporary study and he treated the movement as unfinished. As such, within the context of his study, the sent-down movement was a "transfer program" with the ultimate goal of resettling the Chinese urban youth population in rural areas. The change in evaluation of the movement as permanent as opposed to temporary is essential to understanding rustication and the attitudes of those affected and addressing this development is crucial in later works.

Bernstein's book ends with comments on the efficacy and sustainability of the

7 For an assessment on the state of Chinese scholarship on the sent-down movement see: Yihong Pan, Te mp ered in the Revolutionary Furnace: China 's Yo uth in the Rustication Movement (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), 5.

·---- T sent-down program. In his concluding chapter, he poses the question of whether or not the Chinese experiment of transferring the urban youth to rural areas can be a "model for the third world."g Bernstein believed the movement to be "a bold, imaginative, and unique response" to the challenge of being a rapidly developing "third world" country.9

Unfortunately, the success of such a program required total submission of individual desires in favor of the national interests - something that is hard to harness, even with the heights of ideological fervor achieved during the Cultural Revolution. Bernstein's own answer to his question was inconclusive as his interest in the overall idea of the movement was clouded by his acknowledgement of the many shortcomings of the transfer program. However, he maintained that addressing the contemporary problems facing urban youths was pressing, and idealistically posited that perhaps drastic action, in this case large-scale population resettlement, was better than no action at all. Bernstein's detailed study of the movement laid the groundwork for future analysis of the zhiqing generation. His book highlights the omnipresent tension between official ideology and societal needs that has carried into the present and represent some of the major themes of sent-down research today.

Closely following Bernstein's work were contemporary studies of the zhiqing's return to the cities. With no previous studies to take into account, these reports were based on personal observations over the period of 1978 to 1980 and continued the tendency to question state authority. The results of the studies challenged any faith in positive views of the sent-down movement by exposing the hardships faced by returning youth and the feelings of alienation and bitternessin the years immediately following the

8 Thomas Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 290. 9 Ibid.

6 end of the movement. These works drew attention to the persistence and exacerbation of pre-rustication issues such as unemployment as well as the difficulty of reintegrating the zhiqing in the modernizing urban centers. Other common themes included the urgent desire to leave the countryside and the largely ineffective governmental measures taken

in response to the growing social unrest. 10 The articles foreshadowed the further disillusionment of the zhiqing generation and like Bernstein's seminal book, they raised many questions that could only be answered with the wealth of information we have today. Many of the forecasts for the future presented in these articles proved to be accurate, serving a launching pad of ideas for present-day investigations into how to assess the unique zhiqing experience. However, they were limited in scope by the lack of general knowledge of the time and could not speak on the movement as a whole.

Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the departure from Maoist values has only increased. Chinese society has continued to commercialize and the idea of success defined by academic and monetary achievement is more popular now than ever. With the stark change in values, the need for additional study of zhiqing life courses since the end of the sent-down movement has become even more apparent. Did the bitterness of the returned youth and their problems with unemployment in the late 1970s and early 1980s cany into the present? How did the zhiqing reconcile their indoctrination in the virtue of self-sacrifice with the individualism needed to blend into "modern" society? Most importantly: how does the zhiqing generation view their own legacy and how have they come to terms with the past? Have their exceptional past experiences changed their status in the present? There is no single answer to these questions as the generation is still active

10 See: Thomas B. Gold, "Back to the City: The Return of Shanghai's Educated Yo uth," China Quarterly 84 (December 1980): 755-770; Anne McLaren, "The Educated Youth Return: The Poster Campaign in Shanghai from November 1978 to March 1979" Australian Journalof Chinese Affairs 2 (July 1979): 1-20.

7 and subject to constant changes in evaluations of their personal and collective identities.

Still, these areas of inquiry are most relevant in current studies of the movement. I I

If Bernstein's book was the most comprehensive study of the zhiqing in the early post-Cultural Revolution period, perhaps Yihong Pan's Tempered in the Revolutionary

Furnace is the most representative of the focus sent-down studies has taken in recent years. Published in 2003, it is part memoir and part historiographical investigation.

Utilizing the existing Chinese documentation of the movement as well as over 60 personally conducted interviews, Pan's book paints a detailed image of the sent-down generation that reads as both a personal reflection and a narrative of surviva!.12 Sensing a pervasive negative perception of the sent-down movement in Western scholarly studies,

Pan 's aim is to "bring to life the story of her generation" whilst demonstrating the diverse range in zhiqing experience and feelings about the movement. 13 She does not deny the suffering she and her fellow zhiqing endured, but stresses that they are a strong generation, capable of drawing meaning and a greater understanding of their country from their unique experiences. Without corningdown definitively on where the sent- down generation stands today, Pan lets the reader decide by providing multiple narratives of unique zhiqing life courses. In addition to explaining the sent-down program as

Bernstein did, Pan is interested in assessing the movement on a broader and personal

level, asking if the movement achieved the governmental goals set for it while placing the

individual zhiqing's sense of success or failure in the foreground as weI!.

11 See: Guobin Yang, "China's Zhiqing Generation: Nostalgia, Identity and Cultural Resistance in the 1990s," Modern China 29, no. 3 (July 2003) for a summary of relevant recent studies. 12 Through connections with two of the authors of the Encyclopedia of China 's Educated Yo uth, Pan learned how to access archives in China, though she was thwarted in her usage due to her status as a foreign academic; Another major work Pan cited was: Huo Mu, Guangrong yu Mengxiang: Zhongguo Zhiqing Ershiwunian Shi [Glories and dreams: The twenty-five year history of china's educated youth] (Chengdu, Sichuan: Chengdu Publishing House, 1992). 13 Pan, Te mpered in the Revolutionary Furnace,3.

8 In accordance with the idea of the evolving nature of analysis on the sent-down movement is the emerging concern with the zhiqings' own assessment of their past. The interest in the zhiqing legacy, which Pan addresses at the end of her book, is a theme that is grappled with frequently in current studies of the movement. From the late 1980s and onwards, publications ranging from scholarly to biographical to fictional illustrate zhiqing self-consciousness and their own pressing desires to understand and validate their

past. 14 Guobin Yang's July 2003 article on the subject is extremely helpful in conceptualizing the generation's grappling with the past. Yang compares 1990s nostalgia to the negative attitudes of the 1970s and 1980s. He asks, "why in the 1990s did the zhiqing generation express nostalgia for a past that it had rejected a decade earlier" before establishing his goal of "systematic analysis of the characteristics, conditions and consequences" in order to explain said nostalgia. Yang hypothesizes that zhiqing nostalgia is not only an indication of a generational "identity crisis" caused by a uneasiness with the present but also a mechanism of dealing with this discomfort.

Nostalgia is "an act of remembering" that entails "public sharing of private experiences" that in tum causes "[reconstruction of] collective identities"- evidence of a large-scale trend of self and group affirmation of experience. Yang's study identifies nostalgia as bringing the sent-down movement back as a focal topic of study and inspires readers to think about the many different forms of expression and concernsof the zhiqing. He issues a reminder that it is common for remembrances of the sent-down experience to change according to contemporary politics and societal concerns. Thus, under the notion that interpretations of the past are contingent on current social status, Yang invites future

14 See: Yang, "China's Zhiqing Generation," 267-296; David J. Davies, "Old Zhiqing Photos: Nostalgia and the 'Spirit' of the Cultural Revolution," China Review 5, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 97- 123.

9 study of the zhiqing generation and their memories as a tool in understanding modem day

China. IS

Amidst the evolution of zhiqing scholarship, a tension in locating the individual within the collective picture emerges. In her analyses of zhiqing literature, Zuoya Cao notes that zhiqing "tend to draw conclusions about their life from a collective point of

view instead of treating their experience as part of individual life . ..Zh iqing never think that it is a personal decision for each member to come to terms with his or her own past ,, life. 16 Pan and Yang both see collective activity going on amongst the zhiqing, whether it is association with a label such as the "Old Three Classes" (laosanjie, urban youth who were in middle school or high school dUlingthe years of 1966, 1967 and 1968), or the attendance of a sent-down movement museum exhibit or the purchase of zhiqing related literature. Still, they also rely heavily on independent accounts of various individuals.

Likewise, this thesis seeks to understand the zhiqing generation collectively without downplaying the importance of individual experience and recollection.

Remembering the Past and Understanding Memory in the Present

In the context of zhiqing studies, the relevant question regarding memory is not related strictly to veracity of people's claims. After all, the process of remembering and the changes that occur over time to one's memory are key to analyzing the zhiqings' dynamic relationship to their past. Instead, the debate is over individual versus group memory. This conflict is addressed in Maurice Halbwachs' theory on collective memory.

Halbwachs believes that memory depends on social environment and concept is useful in

15 For more assessments on zhiqing nostalgia, see: Davies, "Old Zhiqing Photos," 97-123. 16 Zuoya Cao, Out o/the Crucible: Literary Wo rks about the Rusticated Yo uth (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003), 11.

10 understanding the influence of the present on shared zhiqing nostalgia:

We can understand each memory as it occurs in individual thought only if we locate each within the thought of the corresponding group. We cannot properly understand their relative strength and the ways in which they combine within individual thought unless we connect the individual to the various groups of which he is simultaneously a member. 17

Halbwach's containment of personal thoughts within a greater framework of group thought is applicable to Yang's tendency to always analyze individual zhiqing in relation to their generation. Halbwach says that people need societal triggers to "recall, recognize, ,, and localize their memories. 18 In the zhiqings' case, the disconnect between past and present values prompted collective zhiqing yearning for the past, which Yang believes has fostered popular cultural subversion.

In her analysis of personal and national responses to atrocities, Martha Minow takes a different approach toward memory than Halbwachs. Minow emphasizes the past over the present and values the individual's memory just as much as the overall community's. She comments that past oppression can dominate a person's "current human psyche" and whatever trauma the person endured will remain relevant into the present. 19 Thus, Minow writes that "what's needed, then, is not memory but remembering, not retrieval of some intact picture but instead a dynamic process of both ,, tying together and distinguishing fragments of past and present. 20 Minow believes that the act of individual remembering is more than a tool for understanding the past but also one for coming to terms with modem society. In agreement with Minow, this thesis is

17 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. and ed. by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 53. 18 Ibid., 38. 19 Martha Minow, Between Ve ngeance and Forgiveness: Facing History afterGeno cide and Mass Vi olence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 19. 20 Ibid., 120.

--- T mindful that past and present are in constant dialogue and utilizes zhiqing's individual recollections to speak to larger social conditions.

In addition, Minow supports the recognition of every person regardless of their

,, l status of victim or victimizer as a way of "affirming common humanity ? This focus on the richness of the individual experience and what we can draw from it forms the driving force behind this thesis. The concept that the past haunts the future resonates paIticularly with the zhiqing generation in that set-backs during the sent-down movement and

Cultural Revolution have continued to limit present-day opportunities. Also, the extreme political control and corruption of the sent-down period has invariably left an imprint on the generation. They will not forget their pasts, though how they remember their experience often serves as an indication of their current psychological state.

The intertwining of memory, experience and the modern world are at the foundation of this study. By classifying the zhiqing experience as ongoing while separating it into three segments, the past and present are in constant conversation and points of generational conversions and diversions are identified. Consequently, the following topics will come into play throughout this work: the influence of CUlTent satisfaction with life on reminiscence of the movement, changes in remembrance over specific periods of time and zhiqing feelings of dislocation over changes in societal values. Related to these topics are the themes of justification, disillusionment, redemption and abandonment. The study of memory and nostalgia has revealed a reoccurring dichotomy between positive and negative impressions of the sent-down movement, implying that the contrast in interpretation of the past has led to the persistence of social divides amongst the zhiqing today.

21 Minow, Between Ve ngeance and Forgiveness, 146.

12 Seeking the Sent-down Experience: Sources and Methods

My own interest in the sent-down movement was born out of ignorance. With a general fascination with the Cultural Revolution and the various movements associated with it, I aimed to come out of my summer research in China with a greater understanding of the process of reeducation, or the process of reversing deeply ingrained personal principles. As an outsider looking in, I felt incredulous and almost helpless in trying to understand how rational people could condone the level of governmental mind control that occurred throughout the revolution. In my mind, reeducation was associated with a host of negative images: brainwashing, propaganda, censorship, and rustication.

Rustication seemed especially harsh as it combined the psychological torture of forced exile with the physical burden of manual labor.

I began my investigation with my youngest granduncle, Yu Chengqing, who I knew encountered numerous hardships during the Cultural Revolution. Classified as a counterrevolutionary, he was subject to public struggle sessions (Pidou) and beatings before being sent to jail on suspicions that he was communicating with his older brother, my grandfather, a fighter pilot for the Kuomintang. My grandfather had lost contact with his family after he left the country in 1949 and in a time when communication with the outside world was virtually nonexistent, the idea that my granduncle's contemporaries would believe that he was a spy seems ludicrous yet such was the climate of false accusations and injustice. While my granduncle was imprisoned, his wife and new born son went to the countryside to weather out the storm. In the countryside, my grandaunt faced less persecution as the wife of an accused counterrevolutionary and she was able to

leave her son with another woman when she was out in the fields. Though her stint in the

T countryside only lasted the eight month length of her husband's incarceration, what my grandaunt experienced was part of a broader movement of urban "black elements" - people with bad class backgrounds or blemished political records - being reeducated through rustication. Still, this type of rustication was not intended as a tool for population redistribution as the sent-down movement was for the zhiqing.

Looking further into forced rustication, or the act of resettling from an urban area into the countryside under political pressure, I soon discovered the sent-down movement.

This movement, which has remained unique to China, seemed to take the government's propensity for population control to the next level as it mandated that millions of urban youth radically and permanently change their lives. My curiosity in the sent-down movement piqued, I continued to ask people that I met, mostly through my parents' connections, if they knew anyone with experience with or knowledge of the movement.

Over dinner one night, I met Xu Liang and his wife Chu Dandan. As conversation turned to my research, they both exclaimed that I should talk to their parents. In their view, both

sets of parents seemed to have innumerable amounts of things to say, as most people nearing or past the retirement age do, regarding their personal experiences as sent-down

youth. Chu offered that perhaps one of them could even explain the movement to me.

Over tea a few weeks later, I met with Xu Liang's parents. As his father Xu Yunsheng

explained his views on the Cultural Revolution and the origins of the sent-down

movement, I was struck by his candid but jovial attitude. Xu's eagerness to engage in my

questions for him made our following conversations rife with detailed information about

his sent-down experience, forming one of the two narratives that guide this thesis.

Upon returningto the states, I had not yet found someone that would serve as a

14 good foil to Xu. I felt that my next source should be around the same age as Xu and part of the laosanjie, as this would provide some consistency in the way my subjects experienced the movement. The laosanjie were the pioneers of the movement in that they were one of the earliest groups to travel to the countryside. They were also the group rusticated during or immediately after the height of the Red Guard hysteria. However, I hypothesized that to gain a fuller picture of the movement I would need a contrasting view to Xu's experience. Aware of the influence of political position dming the Cultural

Revolution, I decided that at the very least I needed someone with a different class background and possibly socioeconomic status. Xu was bornin Chengdu in 1952 into a good working class background family. When the Cultural Revolution began and the schools closed he had only completed one year of middle school and in 1966, at the premature age of 14, he excitedly joined the rustication movement and traveled to

Xichang with his classmates. As a last consideration, I speculated that since Xu had voluntarily gone to countryside, I should find someone who was forced to go as surely this would guarantee a difference in the person's relationship to the movement. None of my other interviewees from China fulfilled all these requirements - most were too old and others came from too similar backgrounds to Xu.

Fortunately, I had a couple of sources left unchecked in my aunts Yu Pingmei and

Yu Jinmei. Their father, Yu Chengzao, was the older brother of my grandfather. As this relationship hurt my youngest granduncle, it also tainted the political records of

Chengzao's entire family and they soon found their lives completely unsettled. When the

Cultural Revolution began, Pingmei was 18, had just graduated from high school and was prepating for the university entrance exam. Jinmei was 15 and had just completed her

-- T second year of middle school. Despite Pingmei's older age, Jinmei actually went to the countryside a year earlier in 1968. Like Xu, Jinmei was willingly rusticated, though under different circumstances. Facing bleak prospects of education and employment and witnessing the increasing public criticism of her father, Yu volunteered to permanently relocate to Inner Mongolia. Under political pressure the following year, Pingmei was forced to join the sent-down movement the next year. I ultimately chose to focus on

Jinmei as a counterpoint to Xu as their closer age range put them in a relatable context.

The Yu sisters' family background and upbringing placed them at a completely different level of Chinese society than Xu. In addition, while Pingmei was ready to go to college

Xu was barely entering his teens. This inevitable gulf in maturity level combined with their diametric family situations made it blatantly obvious that the two would have had completely opposing attitudes toward the sent-down movement.

As mentioned, the Yu and Xu families had little in common. Xu's father was a welder in a factory and the family lived in housing provided by his work unit. Though his father had a stable job, the family was by no means financially prosperous. A rambunctious and active child growing up, Xu fondly remembers taking every chance possible to play with other kids. Xu did not consider himself a particularly studious child, and he scored average grades. In contrast, Chengzao was the chief engineer of the factory

that produced China's first black and white television set. Chengzao's success as an engineer meant that his income was greater than average and it afforded the Yu s a comfortable lifestyle. The family lived in a modernized apartment with a housekeeper

and during the food shortages of the Great Leap Forward, the Yus were allocated extra rations due to Chengzao's leading position in the technological field. The Yu parents were

16 both highly educated and expected the same levels of academic achievement from their children. Though Jinmei remembers her childhood as easy and relaxed, in recalling her past, Yu talked not of socializing and playing but of being the first in her class at the top middle school in Tianjin, Yaohua Middle School. This focus on education would stay with her for life. With the onset of the Cultural Revolution, the Yu 's soon lost all the benefits they had enjoyed and Chengzao was demoted to the position of principal at a technological school. Conversely, Xu's life remained the same. As the Red Guards targeted the Yu family, the Xu's were left untouched and they were bystanders to the political ruckus. Without the sent-down movement, Xu and Jinmei might never have had anything in common.

Xu Yunsheng and Yu Jinmei's stories are the baseline of this thesis. As individuals, their stories are case studies of the sent-down movement. The documentation of their lives up to the present provides us with a firsthand look at experiences, conclusions and recollections of the movement. The many opposing elements they each represent - good versus bad class background, worker versus academic, low versus high economic status - provide nuances for study. Their dissimilar childhoods brought them to the same adolescence experience, which in tum diverged once again into two very distinct life courses. Xu was sent-down to a rural village for three years without major disturbance. Upon return to the city in 197 1, he entered the urban workforce where he worked in a factory until his retirement. Yu was sent-down to a commune in Inner

Mongolia for ten years before being allowed to move back to Tianjin in 1978. Instead of entering the workforce, Yu took the university entrance exam and enrolled in Ti anjin

University that same year. In 1984, Yu immigrated to the U.S. for graduate school. Since

17 then, Yu has remained in the U.S. as a software engineer.

The products of my interviews with Xu and Yu are two oral hist0l1es. The use of oral histories inevitably raises questions of objectivity and reliability of the interviewees.

Reliance on individual reflection raises concernsof faulty recollections distorting the truth of "what actually happened". Peter Zarrow warns that readers must be "conscious of the ideological formations - above all, the narrated journeyfrom slavery to freedom"

22 inherent in oral histories and memoirs. Still, it is precisely the link between subjective experience and the ensuing "ideological formations" that appeals to this thesis. As

Alessandro Portelli states:

Oral sources are credible but with a different credibility. The importance of oral testimony may lie not in its adherence to fact, but rather in its departure from it, as imagination, symbolism, and desire emerge. Therefore, there are no 'false' oral sources. Once we have checked their factual credibility with all the established criteria of philological criticism and factual verification which are required by all types of sources anyway, the diversity of oral history consists in the fact that 'wrong' statements are still psychologically 'true,' and that this truth may be equally as important as factually reliable accounts.23

The unpredictability of what Xu and Yu were to tell me over the course of nine to ten months forced me to continually reassess my judgment of the sent-down movement and

4 its 1egacy? As a rule, I began by giving them free reign to discuss any topic pertaining to the Cultural Revolution, though they knew that I was interested in their memories of the sent-down movement. From there the discussion flowed with my periodical interjections for clarifying purposes. As I familiarized myself with their lives, I was able to ask more pointed questions about their past experiences and their present lives.

22 Peter ZaITOW, "Meanings of China's Cultural Revolution: Memoirs of Exile," positions 7, no.l (Spring 1999): 185. 23 Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, eds, Th e Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 68. 24 My interviews with Xu began in the summer of 2010 and continued sporadically until April, 2011. My interviews with Yu started in September 2010 and have also continued on and off untilApri l, 20 11.

18 The focus on only two case studies may cast doubt on representativeness and relevance of the overall work but the vast Chinese population prevents any historian from being able to definitively say that their study is comprehensive of every single person. By looking at the experiences of certain people in detail, one can gamer a sense of various issues that are relevant to the rest of the population. Moreover, by using Xu and Yu 's testimonies, two more voices are empowered. In conversation with each other, Xu and

Yu 's stories demonstrate the variety of ways in which the movement ultimately took shape in people's lives. Their experiences help to answer questions regarding the workings of the sent-down movement. For example, they address the relationship between class background and experience throughout all stages of rustication and the coping mechanisms needed to survive the harsh nature of the process. Xu and Yu 's expressions fit into the overall zhiqing collective memory and the way they related their stories are an example of zhiqing to publicly coming to terms with the sent-down movement. During our interviews, they engaged in a type of stream of consciousness in which they would carefully recount their experiences before spelling out what they found pertinent in their current lives. In every conversation we had, both Xu and Yu provided fresh remembrances or interpretations of memories that bolstered the intricacy of their stories. The purpose of articulating their stories in this thesis is not to create a paradigm of the zhiqing experience. Rather, their stories and legacies illuminate the multidimensionality of broader zhiqing collective expressions and narratives.

Nevertheless, to provide perspective and "factual verification," other collections of interviews as well as memoirs such as Rae Yang's Sp ider Eaters are referenced in order to better represent the variety of zhiqing experiences in the countryside. Though

- - T memoirs and short interviews raise the same aforementioned foundational questions as

Xu and Yu 's oral histories, these sources will function as a way to triangulate, challenge or confirm what Xu and Yu describe. As such, selections came largely from works that present different personalities to Xu and Yu . Lastly, to provide perspective on the times, I incorporated contemporary reports ranging from newspaper articles to academic studies.

Despite the fact that journalistic and scholastic endeavors are supposed to be objecti ve and impartial, these sources are not immune to bias. As Bernsteinnotes, the caveat to use of Chinese news sources is that they are subject to censorship and follow the official governmentnarra tive. For example, articles from the People 's Daily published in the late

1960s and early 1970s were written with the purpose of inspiring people to join and support the movement.25 Even so, these sources help fit individual experiences into the larger collective picture and provide access to contemporary societal debates regarding the movement.

Structure

This thesis is split into three chapters, each covering a separate period of time.

The first chapter describes how the urban youth were drawn into the movement, the actual sent-down experience, the growing disillusionment with the rustication program and the subsequent movement away from the countryside. As zhiqing idealism and enthusiasm transformed into dissatisfaction, their sense of futile sacrifice and loss deepened. The chapter presents concrete experiences that will help readers contextualize responses to the movement. For the zhiqing, the years in the countryside were the years

of their adolescence - their formative years which they gave up for the state. How the zhiqing later dealt with the sent-down experience shapes the rest of the thesis.

25 Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Vi llages, 13.

20 The second chapter covers the end of the sent-down movement and the years that directly followed (around 1978 to 1985). As the Cultural Revolution drew to a close, the popularity and justification for the continuation of the sent-down movement increasingly waned. Through continued coverage of the stories from section one as well as contemporary scholarly studies on the sent-down movement this chapter analyzes the immediate reaction of the zhiqing to the movement and their readjustment to city life. For

Xu and Yu this meant focusing on their work and they were both comparatively lucky to have acclimated to city life so quickly. For the zhiqing as a whole, as participants in a failed movement, this is where the title of the "lost" generation really came into play as the opportunities missed due to rustication were glaring in the scramble to reintegrate.

The fi nal chapter will span a broader period of time, the 1990s to the present. The reason for this large span of time is that the 1990s initiated the drastic changes seen in

China today. During this time, Xu and Yu moved away from their zhiqing pasts. The most important factor in Xu's life was now his job while Yu physically removed herself from

China and went to study abroad. For the zhiqing that faced struggles in readapting to city life in the early 1980s, the 1990s were no more forgiving. As seen through the various narratives presented in Yarong Jiang and David Ashley's Mao 's Children in the New

China, the new economic goals of the period allowed some entrepreneurial types to

achieve great wealth but for most, especially the previously disenfranchised, it seemed as

if society was abandoning them once again. Newfound economic modernity highlighted

huge shifts in societal values, as people enthusiastically embraced the material culture.

For the zhiqing, this was another rejection of their past idealism and their pledge to

sacrifice their own worldly desires for the countryside. The latter half of the chapter

--- T addresses the legacies of the sent-down movement and generation. Xu and Yu offer their final thoughts on their own experiences and how the sent-down movement does or does not retain a prominent part in their new lives. Meanwhile the culture of generational

understanding and nostalgia of the past that emerged in the 1990s is analyzed to illustrate

the ongoing conflicts the zhiqing continue to harbor with the past.

Given all these factors and varied opinions, the initial questions of what makes a

"lost generation" and whether or not the sent-down generation was a "lost" come to the

fore. This study deals with the dramatic lives of the zhiqing. While analysis begins with

their lives in the countryside under the sent-down movement, this thesis argues that the

past pervades into the present. Finally, the zhiqing generation is unique in its weathering

of continued subjugation and to accept their status as content with or rehabilitated from

the past would be akin to denying them their voice further.

22 Chapter One: Rustication - "Show Yo ur Red Heart by Going to the Villagesm

"We wanted to help the peasants. We wanted to bring some fre sh knowledge there. During that time we were still very innocent and thought we could do something. We had a better life than the poor farmers and we thought we could bring some knowledge and new things to them. We 2 thought that we could do something in the poor countryside. We were still young." - Yu Jinmei

"When we were going, we were going as a whole class [of students] so it was not a big deal. When we were leaving, we did not think of anything except to answer the call of Chairman Mao. Even if you did not want to go, you could not stay. Only upon arrival in the countryside did we realize what a bitter life and heavy workload it was. Before we went we did not even think much 3 about it." - Xu Yunsheng

As the Cultural Revolution engulfed China, millions of urban youth found themselves drawn to the countryside. From an outside perspective, giving up one's life to live a life of poverty and manual labor seems counterintuitive but many youths held idealistic and romanticized attitudes that fell in line with the Communist Party's encouragement of self-sacrifice. The greatest act of patriotism was to dedicate one's life to the nation and one method of doing so was through rustication. As a result, the sent- down movement became a movement of large-scale population transfer, permanently affecting the lives of the current generation of Chinese in the fifty to sixty year old age range and their offspring. This chapter will describe the moments leading up to the acceleration of the sent-down movement as well as the reality of the experience itself. All educated youths qualified and were compelled to participate in the sent-down movement.

As case studies of the movement, Xu and Yu represent two contrasting constituencies. Xu was considered part of the revolutionary working class and went to the countryside as

I Laifong Leung, MorningSun: Interviews with Chinese Writers of the Lost Generation (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1994), xxiii. 2 Jinmei Yu, in discussion with the author, September 20 10. 3 Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, July 20 10.

. --- T part of a larger group. Yu 's family was considered intellectual and counterrevolutionary and thus went to the countryside under tenser circumstances. Despite the differences in their life courses, the sent-down movement has indefinitely affected both of their lives.

To go to the countryside was not simply a short stint and window into the hard life of the peasantry. Rather, it became a drastic life change that influenced people for the rest of

their lives whether they "grew roots" and stayed in the countryside or left to go back to

the cities.

On August 8, 1966 the governmentreleased the "Decision of the Central

Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerningthe Great Proletarian Cultural

Revolution," a document containing sixteen points that promised to guide the masses

toward a "deeper and more extensive stage" of socialist revolution.4 Coming at the heels

of the dramatic purge of Vice Chairman and President Liu Shaoqi, the nation was soon

engulfed in clashing and often violent acts in the name of revolution. From middle

schools to colleges, students like Xu and Yu were told to forget what they had learned in

school and to gain "revolutionary experience" outside of the classroom.

Those in good political standing were eligible to become Red Guards, the soldiers

blazing the revolutionary trail. The Red Guards began as a group of middle school

students but quickly evolved into a nationwide movement after receiving public support

from Mao. The Red Guards were entrusted with the cause of eliminating the "four olds":

old thoughts, old culture, old customs and old habits. On one end of the spectrum,

methods of reform included holding mass meetings, writing big character posters and

distributing pamphlets. On the other, methods were more extreme and ranged from

4 Foreign Broadcast Information Service, "Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning theGreat Proletarian Cultural Revolution" Foreign Languages Press, 1966.

24 property confiscation to execution. According to Xu, "at the time, we were all Red

Guards. If we qualified to be a Red Guard, we had to be a Red Guard. If your family background was good and you were not a Red Guard, you had made a mistake."s Those less fortunate were subject to interrogation and criticism at any point. Yu 's uncle was an official in the KMT government, causing her entire extended family to have a marred political record. "[Due] to our relationship with the KMT, our family background was bad," she said. "This actually was a private matter ...but now everyone knew so people would just come to our home and try to grab everything and destroy everything. Even our diaries, even my diary not just my parents, they just grabbed everything".6 Yu 's experience was far from an aberration. In Beijing, during the months of August and

September of 1968 alone 33,695 families were 100ted.7

The Red Guards growing power and continued "assault on society" became known as the "Red Terror" and for two years the terror persisted.8 "There were a lot of debates on the street," Xu said. "For example, a person would disagree with the big character poster written by another. I remember clearly that someone had written

'Maoism' (.=t�*.1:.x.) instead of 'Maoist thought' (-==B�*}�\), and another person

opposed him ...The one who lost the argument had to admit to their crime, not just a ,, mistake. 9 No argument was too trivial to be addressed and people accused of counterrevolution were subject to harsh punishment. Yu vividly remembers when her father held a family meeting to warn his children about the future. He knew that he could

5 Xu Yu nsheng, in discussion with the author, July 2010. 6 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, September 2010. 7 Roderick Macfarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao 's Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 117. 8 Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao, Tu rbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution (University of Hawaii Press: 1996), 81. 9 Xu, discussion.

T not escape this round of persecution so he told his family, "never believe them if people tell you that I committed suicide. I would never commit suicide because I believe I did not do anything wrong. No matter what happens, the Communist Party has to clear my ,, name eventually. 10 Arguments and denunciations were not restricted between Red

Guards and perceived counterrevolutionaries. Amidst the chaos of all their activities, Red

Guard factionalism became a problem for the authorities as groups were getting

increasingly harder to control. Starting in February 1967 and going through 1968, the

People's Liberation Army began to suppress the Red Guards. This reversal in government

support left a huge population of restless and defiant students whose political power and

purpose were now denied. Whereas students were once encouraged to challenge anything

they saw fit to in the name of revolution, they were now being silenced. It was under

these circumstances of passion, chaos and changing power dynamics that Xu and Yu

found themselves headed the countryside.

Origins of the Sent-down Movement

The practice of urban youths resettling in the countryside began during the 1950s

but momentum reached its height after Mao's December 1968 directive in the People 's

Daily stating:

There is a need for the educated youth to go to the countryside to receive reeducation from the poor lower and middle peasants. We must persuade the urban cadres and others to send their offspring who are junior and senior middle school and university graduates to the countryside. Let's have a mobilization. Comrades of various villages ought to welcome them. 1 1

10 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, September 2010. 1 1 Yan, Tu rbulent Decade, 279.

26 Between 1968 and 1978, an estimated 16,230,000 urban youth were sent-down and the state spent over a hundred billion RMB on the movement. 12 Youths were sent to villages, state farms and military farms. Geographically, in relation to their urban residencies, youths could go anywhere from a suburb within their province to the further, less cultivated border regions such as Heilongjiang and Xinjiang. 13 Due to the high population densities of big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, interprovincial travel was more common as not all youths could be accommodated close to home. People's experiences varied greatly depending on their placement due to factors such as ability to visit home and the wealth and living conditions of settlements.

For the government,rustication provided the answer to a plethora of problems including urban growth and unemployment, Red Guard induced instability, ideological transformation and a need for rural development. Of particular note is the attempt to change the values and aspirations of the urban population by bridging three great differences: town and country, worker and peasant and manual and mental labor.

Traditional academic achievement was associated with higher social status. A better

education held the promise of "elite" career paths and pushed people away from blue-

collar work and the peasantry. For people in the country, education could lead to

migration and eventual settlement in urban areas. The permanent settlement of urban

youths in the countryside not only curbed these ambitions but prevented "status

transmission" in which youths could gain advantages from their parents' social position. 14

Ironically, it remained common for the youth's to utilize their parents' cadre backgrounds

to obtain preferential sent-down placement or to leave the countryside throughout the

12 Yan , Tu rbulent Decade, 279. 13 Macfarquhar, Mao 's Last Revolution, 25 1. 14 Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages, 6.

T Cultural Revolution. 15 The changes in educational values and the sent-down movement were meant to cultivate a generation of "revolutionary successors" that would preserve

Mao's policies and serve the common good instead of seeking personal comfort. Indeed, for the urban youths who volunteered to go to the countryside, rustication was logical.

Patriotism and revolutionary idealism were the norm and people truly believed in the movement. 16 Moreover, people were taught from a young age that going to country life was glorious and pure and to remain in the city while others embraced the peasantry was shameful and counterrevolutionary. Other factors that influenced people to go to the countryside included frustration with the lack of work in the cities, peer pressure, pure curiosity and romanticized beliefs about peasant life, and the hope of building a better

poli tical record.17

For Xu and Yu , peer influence was a dominant factor in their decisions to go to the countryside. In Xu's case, his entire middle school class was assigned to the same

commune in Xi Chang so the decision to go to the countryside was made for him and he

went with the support of a large group. On the other hand, out of Yu 's middle school class, only two people volunteered to go and one of them was Yu . Yu 's decision was based on her admiration for older students she had seen leave as well as her own family

situation. Her father was imprisoned and her mother's actions were closely monitored and

she knew that each household had to send down at least one child. If she volunteered to

go, perhaps she could save her family from some trouble while emulating the older

15 For an account of a student renouncing using the "back door" to get into college, see: Peter Seybolt, Th e Rustication of Urban Yo uth in China (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1975), 131-134. 16 Many of the authors in Leung's Morning Sun recall their idealistic sentiment prior to leaving for the countryside, and this attitude is echoed by Xu and Yu . 17 Leung, Morning Sun, xxiii.

28 students she observed. 18 Rae Yang, a zhiqing and author of the memoir Sp ider Eaters, had an idealistic vision of the countryside.

In my mind it was a mysterious and exciting place. Vast stretch of virgin land. Boundless pine forest on snowy mountains. Log cabins. Campfires. Hunting and skiing. Wild animals. Hidden enemies. Spies sneaked across the border from the Soviet Union at night. Combat of life and death.19

In fact, the thought of staying in the city was extremely unappealing to Yang as city life meant menial work, lack of stimulation and mediocrity. "The jobs awaiting [people who stayed in the city] were not glorious: mending shoes, fixing bikes, cleaning streets, selling soybean milk and fried dough, things like that. And the co-workers in such work unites were mostly illiterate old men and women, the typical "petty city dwellers" ...Th is was the future I had dreaded".20 Since those who were educated typically went to the country, as an ambitious young girl and former Red Guard with nothing to do, volunteering to go to the "Great Northern Wilderness" wasa logical choice. For Yang and her peers, being

sent-down was something to be proud of. It was a heroic act that cemented their positions

in the overall Cultural Revolution.

Life in the Countryside

Whatever their motivations for going, the youths were soon faced with the bitter

conditions of country life. "When the zhiqing went to the countryside they did not know

how to do anything," Xu said. "They had never plowed the fields, they never carried ,, water, they did not how to use farming tooIS. 21 Yu , who had experience doing manual

labor from the summers she and her classmates spent in the suburbs doing farm work,

18 As it turned out, the Yu family's bad class background made it so that every zhiqing in the house had to be sent-down. 19 Rae Yang, Sp ider Eaters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 159. 20 Ibid. 21 Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, July 20 10.

T was well aware of that she was going into a life of bitter work. Still, she found that life in

Inner Mongolia would show her greater levels of hardship with each day. For example, she was not prepared for the pervasive mosquitoes of the countryside. Yu described her first week in the country in which she experienced so many mosquito bites that every part of her body that was not covered became extremely swollen and painful. When she went to the doctor, he prescribed a red water to relieve the skin that left a red tinge. Now, Yu is able to laugh when she thinks of the new physical appearance she acquired of a puffy and bright red face but at the time, she remembers feeling acute misery. Since there was not much to combat the mosquitoes, it took three years before the youths naturally developed immunity to the bites. A more permanent problem that Yu faced until she was able to

leave the countryside was starvation, a universal hardship for all sent-down zhiqing.

Members of her commune had to survive on less than 20 pounds of grain a month, which was not enough given the heavy labor work they were performing. When they petitioned the governmentfor more food, all they received were soybeans that did not provide much

nourishment. "We were really hungry and there was no oil, no vegetables, no meat, no

nothing and only a few grains though that was not enough. We had really hard labor work

so we really suffered starvation. But we still survived."22 There was no real solution to the

starvation. Rather, people simply got used to the feeling.

Xu's initial experience differed from Yu 's. Each youth from his company was sent

to live with a peasant family to begin with and until the harvest festival, the youth's

continued to receive rations from the government, which they shared with their host

families. After this initial period, the peasants had no profitable incentive to keep the

zhiqing around and Xu and his counterparts moved out of the peasant's homes and into a

22 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, September 2010.

30 communal living space and began to experience starvation. At this point, they had to receive food from the communal supply as the rest of the peasants did. This created problems for everyone in the village as there was less food to distribute to each household. In Xu's estimation, each youth wound up with about seven ounces of rice per day. The youth were in charge of planting their own vegetables and cutting down grass

and wood for fuel. Meat became lUxury only enjoyed twice a year. In order to combat the lack of food, Xu had several more options than Yu . First, he was sent 10 Yu an a month from his parents, a small fortune at the time. He spent this money on soy sauce, salt,

vegetables and cigarettes. On a collective level, the production team had the option of

buying the food they produced for the governmentba ck. As a last resort, Xu and his

fe llow zhiqing would do the "bumper harvest dance," which was code for stealing

vegetables from the peasants.

For both Xu and Yu , the starvation was exacerbated by the rigorous schedule of

their daily labor work. The work day generally began before sumise and would only end

when the sun went down. Xu described his typical day:

The production team leader did not have a clock or watch; he relied on experience and watched the moon, sun and stars to keep track of time. When he blew his whistle, we began to labor. When he blew his whistle again, we would finish. In one day we would eat two meals. The first meal was at around 10:00 AM. We would go out to labor, come back, make food, eat and then go out to labor again until noon, when we would rest for half an hour. Then we would go out to work again until around 4:00 PM, when we would have our second meal. After that, we would have a night shift. We would work until it was dark and we could not see, then we would finish.23

23 Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, July 2010.

---- - T Due to the climate of Xi Chang, there was no "slack season" for farming so the only days

that Xu could get off were days of torrential downpour?4 Also, Xu and Yu 's living conditions did not provide solace from their work. After moving out of the peasant's

homes, Xu and his classmates lived together in a cowshed that had three walls added onto

it. Their living space was around 50 to 60 square meters and half was used to sleep in

while the other half was used for cooking. The sleeping space consisted of four layers of

mud bricks and four wooden boards. Each youth had three boards, some hay, a straw mat

and a thin blanket as a bed. Yu lived in a similar communal space that the zhiqing made

out of mud and straw. Manual labor dominated the zhiqing's lives, leaving them with

limited time to pursue other interests.

The Zhiqing and the Peasants

Throughout their stays in the countryside, Xu and Yu had different experiences

with the peasants. In theory, the peasants were supposed to take the zhiqing under their

wings and help them adapt to the countryside. In return, the zhiqing were to introduce

technological improvements that would help improve farming conditions. In reality, the

peasant-zhiqing relationship was usually contingent on how much the zhiqing could

contribute to the village labor force.25 Zhiqing arrival meant less land and food for the

peasants to use personally, so in order to rectify this loss, the zhiqing had to make positive

contributions to the community. Otherwise, the zhiqing became an additional burden. Xu

saw this change in attitude when the peasants from his commune realized that the sent-

down youth were consuming more than they produced. "People thought that zhiqing

would be farm hands but it turnsout that due to many reasons they were not good

24 Some regions in the North experienced "slack seasons" when it snowed and the fields could not be cultivated. 25 Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages, 132.

32 workers. So they started to have resentment and slowly the conflict grew. In the end, their ,, attitude toward the zhiqing changed. 26 The food in Xu's commune was distributed evenly per household but each zhiqing counted as his or her own unit. Meanwhile even large families of peasants still counted as one household. Thus, in Xu's community, each additional zhiqing meant less food for the existing peasant population and the zhiqing actually received more food from the communal pot per person than the peasants did.

Consequently, relations were tense. Moreover, the "bumper harvest dance" certainly did not help the image of Xu and his fellow zhiqing.

In Yu 's case, relations with the peasants were pleasant. On her commune, in

addition to being farm hands, the zhiqing also taught the locals activities unrelated to

farming such as reading music. Yu 's bond with the peasants was a good one and she even

brought one of the peasant girls to tour Beijing and Tianjin, taking photos and personally

developing them for the girl to keep after her trip. "We really had good relationships with

the peasants," she said. "Because I stayed there for so I became friends with many ,, generations of people in the country. 27 Rae Yang also had a positive relationship with the

peasants in her village. Though she initially expected them to carry the same

revolutionary fervor she did and be enthusiastic about class struggle, she soon realized

that they were simple and kind people intent on making sure the students from Beijing

were comfortable. The discrepancy between the Party's projected image of a struggling

and oppressed peasantry and the content and friendly people that Yang encountered

pushed her toward political apathy. Whereas she might have previously spumed the

26 Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, July 20 10. 27 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, September 2010.

T special attention they paid her, she now enjoyed their sympathy.28 The zhiqing in Yang's village interacted frequently with the villagers, much of the time in a leisurely context.

Yang writes of how the zhiqing developed a taste for baijiu, a potent type of alcohol, from the peasants and takes pride in the fact that she starred alongside other peasant youth in a play the zhiqing staged to entertain the local villagers.29 Aside from the pleasant peasantry, Yang also witnessed corruption in the village Party structure through the "local emperor" Zhao who had a reputation of rewarding those loyal to him while making life difficult for others.30 Zhiqing experience with the local populations varied greatly and feelings could range anywhere from fear to friendship.

As part of the Old Three Classes, Xu and Yu were amongst the first groups of youths to travel to the countryside following Mao's directive. The harsh conditions that

Xu and Yu lived under were cause for discontent amongst the zhiqing and their families.

In 1973, in response to reports that zhiqing were dissatisfied in the country, the government launched a campaign to improve the sent-down experience and encourage continued migration to the countryside.31 One method was to reaffirm the ideological value in going to the countryside. That same year the state-sponsored Peking People 's

Press released a book of case studies on how to achieve ideal integration of the youths in the country. This work is valuable because it provides insight into the lifestyle that the governmenttried to portray to the public. According to this volume, the ideal commune entailed a peasant population that was welcoming and enthusiastic about the incoming zhiqing. In one case, the peasantry worked to build houses out of brick, glass and tile for

28 Yang, Spider Eaters, 167. 29 Ibid., 180-18I. 30 Ibid., 188. 3 1 Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Vi llages, 143.

34 the urban youths that would eventually allow them to settle down and accommodate the new families they started in the villages, directly contradicting Xu and Yu 's experiences of sharing a room with many other people.32 In another successful commune, the locals demonstrated their concernfor the youths by checking in several times a year and helping them with cooking, planting in the garden, firewood collection and cleaning.33 The rough reality of everyday life of the zhiqing was largely glossed over in favor of touting the training of youths so that they could become "progressive elements." Although these attempts to mollify the zhiqing may have been effective in some cases and were made with good intentions, in the end, to fully improve the lives of every sent-down youth turned outto be too great of a task to achieve.34

Beyond Manual Labor: Xu and Yu in their Free Time

Life in the country still had to have its distractions. In Yu 's case, this came in the

form of her intense desire to learn. Yu had followed older students in the country and thus

felt that she had less knowledge than most of the people in her group. After half a year in

the countryside, she decided to teach herself. "After [work] I just used the oil light to

teach myself. Since many people were high school students, if I had a question I could

ask them. So I taught myself geometry, then I moved to physics .. .I learneda lot of other ,, things and eventually I even taught myself calculus. 35 When Yu found that her desire to

learn exceeded the knowledge of her peers she wrote to her father for help, receiving a

reply around twenty days later containing the solution to her calculus problem. In fact,

her father eventually sent her a solution manual he created by answering every single

32 Seybolt, Rustication of Urban Yo uth, 22. 33 Ibid., 37. 34 For more details about the various remedial measures pursued, see: Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Vi llages, 143-17l. 35 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, September 20 10.

-- - r problem out of her brother's old calculus textbooks from college. Yu even capitalized on the lack of radio interference in the remote countryside and built her own radio so that she could tune into the program American Vo ice, which provided English language instruction. Xu also remembers a yearningto learn. "We were only in our teens, less than twenty years old, and we had a very strong desire for knowledge. We would read any

book. Books were hard to find, so once we found one everybody read it and then passed

it on to the next production team."36 Beyond political education and government approved reading material, the zhiqing had to rely on their own resources to get by.

Outside of farm work, Xu's life was distinctly more mischievous than Yu 's. Due

to the close proximity of his village to a town center, he and the other male zhiqing on his production team were able to spend time loitering in the streets with the townspeople.

However, this led to trouble and while Xu was away on a sick leave in Chengdu, his

friends got involved in regional factionalism.

They were daring and mingled with the locals, drinking and eating with them and becoming part of them in no time. Pretty soon they got involved with the factional fighting and became part of the local political struggle. When the armed fighting broke out, the local faction they joined was defeated and so they ran and because we hung out with the losing faction [my friends] had to run too or be beaten. Everyone from our group ran back to Chengdu. At the time they ran for 70 li [35 km] in one go, with people chasing them with guns. They were running for their lives. This was in June 1969, not long after we were sent down and right after I went away [on sick leave]. My classmates told me I was lucky that I left early because otherwise I would have died there.37

This incident allowed Xu to extend his stay in Chengdu, "living the good life," to four

months. While Yu 's rustication was marked by long periods of isolation from her family,

Xu had the luxury of returning home for holidays or because of sickness. This difference

is critical in considering the character of each of their sent-down experiences.

36 Xu Yu nsheng, in discussion with the author, July 20 10. 37 Xu, in discussion with the author, December 2010.

36 Yo ung Love, or the Lack Thereof: The Zhiqing, Romance and Sex

One of the quintessential markers of the adolescent period is the discovery of bodily changes and feelings of attraction to other people. Changes in the body such as the emergence of acne, the growth of pubic hair and the beginning of menstruation draw attention to the body's natural maturation. Anchee Min, Rae Yang and Yihong Pan all document the ignorance young girls had in regard to their periods: Pan learned about her period from her classmates;38 Yang did not realize what her period was and the first time ,, she got it was "scared to death ;39 Min's friend Orchid was too embarrassed to ask what her period was when she discovered it and gave herself an infection by putting unclean cloth in her pants.40 Under Communist teaching, sex education was viltually nonexistent and youths were clueless as to what bodily changes meant.

The Party's orthodox education produced a generation of youth with unique attitudes toward sex and love. "In those days we did not pursue love; we pursued political progressiveness." "My first love? It was Mao Zedong." In their adolescence many believed that love for the opposite sex was dirty; even interest in the opposite sex was an unhealthy, shameful, petty bourgeois feeling, and it was a hindrance to academic study and one's devotion to the Party.41

What the youth did know was that pursuit of love was seen as selfish and

counterrevolutionary and their ignorance was often not rectified until much later in their

adult lives. Lu Xin, an interviewee in Mao 's Children in the New China, recounts that she

did not know how women became pregnant until her mother explained it to her when she

was 28 years old, after she returned from the countryside and was already married.42

38 Yihong Pan, Te mpered in the Revolutionary Furnace: China 's Yo uth in the Rustication Movement (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), 182. 39 Yang, Sp ider Eaters, 196. 40 Anchee Min, Red Azalea (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), 7l. 4 1 Pan, Te mpered in the Revolutionary Furnace, 183. 42 Yarong Jiang and David Ashley, Mao 's Children in the New China: Vo ices fro m the Red Guard Generation (London: Routledge, 2000), 15.

T Lu Xin considers her time in the countryside emotionally stagnating, as she was totally oblivious of her own sexuality and emotions. However, Rae Yang actually discovered what was sex was in the countryside, albeit from an unexpected source.

As a Red Guard, Yang had learnedthat sex only caused trouble.

When revolutionaries fell in love, the loved with their hearts. They didn't even touch hands ...At the time it never occurred to me to ask: if our revolutionary parents had nothing to do with sex, where did we come from? In fact, I was too ignorant about human reproduction even to raise such a question ...Bu t I knew from Aunty's stories, the books I read and the news that it had caused women to commit suicide and men to be executed or locked up in prison for ten, fifteen, twenty years. Recently it had also caused many officials to fall from people's esteem. So I sincerely wished I'd never have anything to do with it.43

In the village, Yang began work on a pig farm where she was in charge of identifying

sows in heat, making sure that the sows and boars mated, and that piglets were born

properly and had a teat to suck. Thus Yang learned about the realities of sex and

pregnancy not from her family or schooling, but through animals copulating.

In the countryside, love and marriage were problematized. With the potentially

explosive mixture of a large youthful population, idleness, and restricted communities the

question of relationships, romance and sex was inevitable. Yet the zhiqing, whether by

their own determination or not, could not always act on these impulses. Government

policy set the marriage age for women at twenty-three and men at twenty-five in the

countryside and relations before marriage were forbidden.44 Moreover, marriage status

itself could mean blocked university admission and assignment to urban jobs and

marrying a peasant meant giving up one's city residency for good.45 Zhiqing marriage in

43 Yang, Sp ider Eaters, 136. 44 Pan, Te mpered in the Revo[utionmy Furnace,186. 45 Ibid.

38 the countryside never became the norm and reached its height in 1979 at 15.3 percent.46

Of course, there were happy cases of zhiqing settling with people in the villages or zhiqing finding love amongst themselves but to calTY out a relationship during this time came with significant detractions.

Perhaps the most famous account of love, sexuality and restriction in the countryside is Anchee Min's Red Azalea. It is clear from Min's memoir that she came out of the sent-down movement with a distinct sense of victimhood and this complex spills into her writing. Though an autobiographical account, Min's work is emotionally charged

and her descriptions of sex and scandal on the farm have a sensationalist tone. Far from a balanced work, Min's wliting projects an overwhelmingly negative image of rustication.

Despite this, her nalTative provides a unique point of view and story that plays into the

larger picture zhiqing romantic relations on the farms and speaks to the theme of zhiqing

repression and de-sexualization.

Min describes being sent-down at the age of seventeen experiencing forbidden

love while figuring out her natural desire for intimate human connection. On the farm,

Min sees her friend persecuted for being with a man. Later on, she too feels her sexuality

repressed. Little Green, Min's friend, has an undeniable girlishness that she does not

subdue, a risky move in the controlled environment of the farm.

Her fingers were thin and fine. She spread pig shit as if she were organizing jewelry. She walked gracefully, like a willow in a soft breeze. Her long braids swayed on her back ...She was daring. Dared to decorate her beauty. She decorated her braids with colorful strings while the rest of us tied our braids with brown rubber bands. Her femininity mocked us. I watched her and sensed the danger in her boldness .. watched Little Green. Her beauty. I wanted to tie my braids with .! colorful strings every day. But I did not have the guts to show contempt for the rules. I had always been good .. scorned my own desire to display my youth. A ,!

46 Pan, Te mpered in the Revolutionary Furnace, 196.

T nasty desire, I told myself a hundred times. I was seventeen and a half. I admired Little Green's gutS.47

Drawing attention to one's femininity and highlighting the difference in gender was considered rule breaking and "bad" behavior. Good Communists were to be concerned with making revolution and to be concernedwith something as superficial as one's own good looks was reactionary. Min disapproved of Little Green but was envious of her

deviation. While others were ashamed or unaware of their bodies, Little Green drew pleasure from hers.

Little Green's "bad behavior" eventually led to her downfall when she is caught

with her lover. At this point Min knows that Little Green has met her ruin.

A good female comrade was supposed to devote al l her energy, her youth, to the revolution; she was not permitted even to think about a man until her late twenties, when marriage would be considered. I thought about the consequences that Little Green had to bear if she were caught. I could see her future ruined right here. She would be abandoned by society and her family disgraced.48

Instead of being privately chastised, the farm leadership CYan) rounded up the people on

the farm to surround Little Green and her lover while they were in each other's embrace.

The two are surprised and terrorized with the light of thirty flashlights on them suddenly.

Little Green's lover is then beaten while Little Green is taken to undergo "intensive mind

rebrushing."49 Their punishment does not end there and Little Green is forced to condemn

her lover as a rapist, and he is sentenced to execution.

Following her lover's execution, Little Green becomes mentally unstable. Among

many other things, she stops bathing, does not put any effort into her appearance as she

previously did, bothers her roommates with late night off key renditions of old operas,

47 Min, Red Azalea, 51-52. 48 Min, Red Azalea, 58-59. 49 Ibid.,60.

40 and throws all their shoes in the river.50 After months of this type of behavior, Little

Green is sent to Shanghai for medical evaluation and madness is diagnosed as a nervous breakdown. Upon return from the hospital, in a scene reminiscent of One Flew over the

Cuckoo 's Nest, Little Green is so loaded up on drugs that she becomes a lifeless body, ,, sitting "quietly most of the day staring in one direction. 51 Later on, Little Green drowns in a canal. Though the story of Little Green is dramatic, it illustrates the restricted nature of love and personal feeling on the farm. During a time when youth were supposed to be discovering themselves and their feelings for others, they were faced instead with the

stifling rigidity of following the Party line.

Min's own experience with sex is guarded. She is troubled by her inherent sexual

desires and does not feel that she can share her needs with her roommates.

The body demanded to break away from its ruler, the mind. It was angry. It drove me to where I did not want to go: I had begun having thoughts about men. I dreamed of being touched by many hands. I was disgusted with myself...I could feel a monster growing insider, a monster of desire. It grew bigger each day, pushing my other organs aside. I was defenseless. I could see no way OUt.52

Min's innate desire for human affection is soon manifest through her relationship with a

woman, Yan. Yan, the Party secretary, is universally admired on the farm, and becomes

an object of worship for Min. This admiration fuels Min's efforts to befriend Yan and

their friendship eventually becomes a sexual relationship. Both Min and Yan have had

prior encounters with the male sex. While she was in the city, Min was groped by a

fellow Red Guard but did not protest; it felt good.53 Min and Yan 's romantic relationship

actually starts over Min helping Yan write a letter describing her affections to a male on

50 Min, Red Azalea, 61. 5 1 Ibid., 62. 52 Ibid.,64. 53 Ibid., 100.

T the farm, Leopard. Min then becomes Yan 's messenger to Leopard and delivers all of

Yan 's letters to him. Min and Yan share a bed at night under the pretense of being cold.

As their connection grows so does their sexual attraction and they begin to have sex.54

Their sexual relationship, though satisfying, puts them in danger and they draw suspicion from Yan 's antagonist, Lu.

The next dawn I was awakened by an unfamiliar breath on my face .. .I was horrified: it was Lu. She was in our net watching us. My heart screamed. I tried to stay in control. I closed my eyes, pretending that I was still sleeping. I began to tremble. If Lu lifted the blankets, Yan and I would be exposed naked. Lu could have us arrested immediately.55

Like Little Green and her lover, Yan and Min risked arrest and punishment despite their

innocent relationship and attraction. Yan and Min's love story does not end happily as

Min eventually returns to the city. Red Azalea is a narrative that expresses the extreme repression of zhiqing emotions under Maoism in the countryside. Instead of rejecting her

views just because they are exaggerated, one might think about Min's memoir as a semi-

fictionalized account, with overstatements working as a tool for emphasis on themes the

author finds particularly important.

Love in the countryside was not always so tortured and complicated and both Yu

and Xu had limited experience with ideas of relationships and sex. For Yu , there was little romance on the farm and she only mentioned one zhiqing in her production team that

married the commune tractor driver. Yu thought it a good match because the tractor driver

was more educated than the rest of the villagers and the girl's mother was originally from

the countryside. Unlike most other zhiqing maniages, the couple stayed together even

after the Cultural Revolution when it was common for couples to divorce so that they

54 Min, Red Azalea, 128-1 29. 55 Ibid., 132.

42 could go back to the cities. On an everyday level, Yu and the rest of the girls in her production team did deal with the catcalling and harassment of the local men but Yu attributes this to the lack of other acti vities for men to do.

When we came to there we really did not feel comfortable... The local men talked a lot. People gossiped, for example about a girl who had an illegal sexual relationship with a married man. There was a lot of that kind of thing, talking at least but did not see this [actually] happening ...Because we were very strong, they could not do anything to us. But still, every time we sat on the horse and cart to go to the fi eld, they would talk and joke and say all that sexual stuff to us. At the time, we felt so uncomfortable and we really hated when they talked about that. Everything they talked about was related to sexual relations ...The other [villagers] called them "mao lu," which meant donkey, an ass; this was a very bad word. We were told that every man in the village was a donkey. Good or bad they were all donkeys. But they had nothing to entertain them, not even a radio or the newspaper, nothing. Besides eating, sleeping and working, what could they do? Maybe they just enjoyed those kinds of things.56

Yu and her fe llow zhiqing felt strong and secure. Although attention from the local men

was largely unwanted and made the girls uncomfortable, Yu did not hold it against the

villagers. Still, separate from her own relatively trouble free experience, Yu knew of

greater struggles other sent-down women faced. Either through word of mouth or from

reading zhiqing articles when she returned to Tianjin, Yu was aware of the rape and

sexual assault others less fortunate than she had experienced.

In her study, Pan lists sexual assault and rape as one of the "problems in the

leadership" of the rustication program and presents statistics of rape in various counties.57

On top of the honific nature of the sexual violation of female zhiqing, Pan's report

emphasizes the psychological consequence of these incidents on the youth and she

records the victims' thoughts of suicide and dealings with abortion and pregnancy.

Deepening the injustice facing these zhiqing was the ineffective legal process that more

56 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, April 201 1. 57 Pan, Te mpered in the RevolutionaryFurnace, 141-143.

-- T often than not absolved perpetrators of responsibility. Within this environment of violation and helplessness, it is a wonder that the zhiqing generation could still maintain confidence in their leadership in the years to come.

In Xu's case, romance and sex were nonexistent due to his younger age and he lived an innocent existence in this regard in the countryside. The group he was sent-down with ranged from sixteen to eighteen years of age whereas the official marriage age was twenty-five. As such, love, sex and marriage were nonissues though he did see older zhiqing getting married. "When I was in the countryside I was still a bit young so I did not 'talk love' (tan lian ai). If we were dating underage we would be laughed at so we ,, didn't have that kind of business. Unlike now, people can start dating in junior high! 58 It seems that Xu was not concernedwith the possibility of getting involved with the other sex, even if just casually. At the time, as typical amongst teenagers, he was more worried about possible teasing from his friends. The huge discrepancy in zhiqing understanding of love and sex in the countryside is indicative of larger inconsistencies in the sent-down experience that are relevant in considering memory and assessment of the movement.

Also, as seen through Yu , even if people did not directly experience sexual violation, they were still affected by it; these wrongs conttibuted to the collective sense of injustice regarding the zhiqing experience.

Movement Away from the Countryside

After approximately five years of country life, Xu and Yu each experienced a change in their lives. Xu was deemed eligible to leave the countryside to become a factory worker and Yu was nominated to go to college by her production team. Xu left

58 Xu Yu nsheng, in discussion with the author, April 2011.

44 Chengdu for Xichang in 1966 and after three years, the peasants began to approve zhiqing for factory hires as the students in Xu's commune were considered to be well- trained and learnedenough. Those with better behavior were the first to go. In 1971, Xu went back to the city. Yu left Tianjin for Wulateqianqi in 1968. In 1972, colleges resumed admissions and Yu 's production team was allowed to nominate one candidate each year.

In 1973, they nominated Yu to go to university in a city in Inner Mongolia. Unfortunately for Yu , her bad background came back to haunt her and the leader of her production team was told never to recommend her again as it would be a "waste" and her connection to the KMT would prevent her from an acceptance at any college. This disappointment sparked Yu 's first depression. "Even before when my father was put in jail, my mother

lost her freedom, and I was told [that I had] anti-revolutionary thoughts because they found my diary I was [still] never depressed," she said. ''I'm not a sad person but that was the first depression in my life. I felt so disappointed because I worked so hard to learn so ,, much knowledge. 59 This rejection made Yu briefly resign herself to her fate of settling in

the country, but she quickly changed her mind.

At this point, Yu decided that her best option was to work as hard as she could to

regain her city residency status as she felt no security living life as a laborer.

I could not do something by myself to help the country. My life had no future, no hope. When we were young we still could do hard labor but when we became old what [would] happen to us? We had no medical insurance. What [would] happen when we became sick? .. .I thought, this country is so poor, it was worth it for me to sacrifice myself. I could not sacrifice myself. If I left the countryside, that time I knew I could not go to college. But I still thought that I could learn by myself. . .I wanted to leave there and at least go to some city and become a plant worker ... At least then I would have a city residence card, food coupons and medical insurance. If I taught myself this much knowledge, maybe I could still do some

59 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, September 20 10.

-- " , technology work. That time I still hoped. Of course I did not want to stay in the countryside for my life.60

Eventually, Yu would go back to the city, but not through her own actions. Over the next few years, Yu 's life continued as it had been since she got to Inner Mongolia. In 1975, her parents had the opportunity to select one of their children to go back to the city. Yu volunteered to stay in Wulateqianqi so that her sister could go horneinstead. She reasoned that since her sister was older it was more urgent that she return first. In 1977,

Yu 's sister got married, changing her status as the returned youth as she was now part of her own household. Given this, Yu 's mother applied to have Yu return and after utilizing as many connections as she could through the "back door" she got Yu 's residency card back. Yu returned to Tianjin March 1978, 10 years after starting her rustication journey.

Like Xu and Yu , most sent-down youth returnedto the cities. Those with powerful cadre parents could use their connections to go horne. Many zhiqing followed Xu's path and after the mandatory period of two years in the countryside looked to be hired by a factory. Others were like Yu and used the "back door" to return horne. Some who could not bear country life even tried to escape back to the cities, though if they were caught they were sent back to their cornrnunes.61 Ultimately, the government's lofty goals were not fulfilled. For the most part, the zhiqing maintained their desire to live in the city and succeeded in returning. Leung Laifong spoke to dozens of people to compile her collection of interviews with zhiqing authors and explains that there was a gradual "loss of hope."62 As Yu experienced, life in the countryside did not change and it was hard to maintain a positive attitude that would make life bearable so it was only natural that

60 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, September 20 10. 61 Many of Bernstein's sources are zhiqing that escaped to Hong Kong. 62 Leung, MorningSun, xiii.

46 people began to yearn for their old lives. In late 1978 and the spring of 1979, mass public discontent was manifested through rallies demanding that the government allow the zhiqing regain their residencies and return to the cities.63 Finally, in late 1979, the governmentdecreed that the zhiqing could return if they had not married or become integral parts of their village local government. Leung writes that following this decree, ,, those left in the country "made an exodus back to the city, as if escaping from hell. 64 Of

course, life in the cities had not stayed stagnant and the returned youths soon found that

their struggles were far from over.

Xu and Yu serve as good examples of contrasting life courses that converged

before splitting offin vastly different directions. Before rustication, Yu had a comfortable

childhood but lived through political uncertainty during the beginning of Cultural

Revolution. In contrast, Xu came from a working class background and followed a

revolutionary wave of students to the countryside. The sent-down experience varied from

person to person and there was no way to predict the quality of life a person might have

had in the countryside. Still, the common experience of being uprooted from the cities

and sent away for "revolutionary experience" remains a rallying point for the zhiqing. No

matter where they came from or where they are now, the zhiqing share knowledge of the

peasantry and have lived through extreme hardship. How the zhiqing dealt with the

circumstances leading up to their rustication and the actual sent-down experience would

shape the rest of their lives.

63 M'S . . . L eung, aming un, XXVlll. 64 Ibid.,xxix.

------. -- T 48 Chapter Two: Back to the Cities

As seen through Xu and Yu 's contrasting histories, the sent-down experience did not have a set duration, but rather varied from person to person. Depending on his or her situation, a zhiqing could spend two to over ten years in the countryside. Officially, the movement also had no definitive ending point. I With the death of Chairman Mao on

September 9, 1976 and the arrest and fall of the Gang of Four in October of the same year, the Cultural Revolution came to an end. Despite the abandonment of Mao's radical policies and the restructuring of power within the Communist Party, the sent-down movement persisted. While most cities had slowed down their rustication programs, a sizable population of zhiqing was still in the countryside, unable to return. In 1978, with the economically minded Deng Xiaoping at the height of Communist Party power, the central governmentseemed to be moving away from support of the rustication programs.

In March, Deng "commented" that rustication would not ultimately fi x the country's employment problems? Later on in the year, Deng's Vice Premier Li Xiannian questioned , the use of rustication in "narrowing the three major differences.' 3 Still, the zhiqing did not just quietly bide their time until the government presented them with more options and many of them had even begun questioning the movement earlier on, before the end of the Cultural Revolution.4 From the end of 1978 to 1979, disaffected zhiqing gathered in

Shanghai to advocate return to the cities, causing disruption and the provoking the ire of the authorities. By 1980, the majority of zhiqing had left the countryside and returned

I In terms of the broader movement, the years of 1978 to 1980 are extremely important as dW'ing this time the youth finally took it upon themselves to advocate the end of the rustication program. 2 Yihong Pan, Te mpered in the Revolutionary Furnace: China 's Yo uth in the Rustication Movement (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), 53. 3 Ibid., 54. 4 See: Rae Yang, Sp ider Eaters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 263; Pan, Te mpered in the Revolutionary Furnace, 81-82 & 155-160.

---- , home and in September the central government ended the rustication program. As with the end of the Cultural Revolution, the end of the movement did not automatically solve all the problems of the zhiqing. The zhiqing's dedication to their country as well as personal motivation are evident through the zeal in which they participated in the sent- down movement. Given this precocious and idealistic population, what kind of aspirations did they have comingout of the movement? How did they survive in a society that was largely abandoning the revolutionary radicalism they grey up with in favor of economic modernization? Older but not necessari ly academically wiser, many youths found themselves faced with more problems than they had when they left the city.

Employment, living space, and educational opportunities were scarce. The way in which people concluded their sent-down experience is inextricably linked to their perception of the overall movement. Furthermore, the struggles they now faced only served to widen their dissatisfaction with rustication while foreshadowing the continuing conflict between state authority and the zhiqing population's individual needs and desires.

Early Return and Easy Readjustment: Xu

Most sent-down scholarship and literature rightly focuses on the societal ills caused by the sent-down movement.s However, as a zhiqing who returnedrelati vely early to the city, Xu's story demonstrates a fluid transition back into city life that was typical of many people of a working class background. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Xu's opportunity to go home came through one of the rounds of factory hirings of zhiqing in the countryside. He notes that though factory hirings became frequent after three years in the countryside, politics remained influential. The peasant's view that life in the city was

5 For example, afterthe Cultural Revolution, an emerging genre of zhiqing writings on their troubled experiences was dubbed "scar literature." Also, Anne McLaren and Thomas Gold's contemporary studies on life and societal ills post-rustication and Cultural Revolution are covered later on in the chapter.

50 better caused them to demand that the factories hire peasants alongside the zhiqing, albeit in much smaller numbers. If the factories refused, the county would prevent them from hiring anyone at al1.6 Of course, a youth's standing with the production team weighed heavily on his or her future. "When they started to hire people to the factories, a few people left our production team ...because of good behavior and good relations with the production leaders. The rest of us stayed behind but there were changes and everyone wanted to act better and be the next to return to the cities. The production team was very ,, powerful, they had the say of whether you could leave or not. 7 Gone were the days of youthful play in the streets of the town center. With the possibility of return dangling in front of them, the zhiqing in Xu's production team knew that they needed to shape up or risk getting stranded in the countryside.

While the zhiqing attitude in Xu's community towards adapting to peasant life and manual labor was unenthusiastic in the beginning of their rustication, the realization that their roots need not be settled permanently prompted the zhiqing to think more strategically about their actions.

Later on, people grew to realize ...that if you behaved well you could go back to the city. So to us, rustication became something of an interim period. It was not like when we left and we did not know we could go back to the city. In those days we thought, "who cares? We might as well go be farmers now. After all, there are so many people going. It's not like I'm the only one.8

This attitude toward the movement transformed it from a lifelong commitment into an obstacle that the youths wanted overcome as quickly as possible. Besides working harder in the fields, some of Xu's classmates decided to separate themselves from the larger group of zhiqing boys in their group, which had garnered a rowdy reputation, by moving

6 Xu Yu nsheng, in discussion with the author, July 20 10. 7 Ibid. S Ibid.

-- T out of the cow shed and back in with the peasants. Xu himself did not try to overtly differentiate himself, but as the production team's behavior improved as a whole so did

Xu's and he made sure to do what was required of him.

Three years into Xu's rustication, factories began to hire zhiqing out the countryside. In 1971, Xu was hired back to Chengdu through his father's work unit. The

work unit happened to have openings and so they went to the countryside to hire people,

specifically sending someone to Xi Chang to recruit Xu. Thus, Xu was able to join the

same unit as his father.9 As Xu's production team raised no objections to his leaving, Xu

returned to Chengdu on October 21. Xu was neither the first nor the last to leave his

production team, but he was lucky that he had a connection to a good work unit through

his father.

Xu describes his return to the city as easy and very much welcomed. As Xu had

not been gone long and had opportunities to visit home over the course of his rustication,

there was no need for reintegration into city life. "When we returned to the city, we felt

like we were finally home ...Adapti ng to the countryside with the peasants was not easy

but coming back the adjustment was fast. We felt like we were city people that had gone

to the countryside and not stayed for very long, just two to three years or on the longer

side four to five years."IO In fact, the first feeling that Xu felt upon return was not

emotional but physical: his insatiable appetite.

When I first got back from the village, the first thing I felt was that I could eat my fi ll. I could eat as much rice as I wanted. At the time I was 19 years old, not even 20 and that was the age when you could eat the most. In the morning I could eat half a kilo, at lunch time I could eat half a kilo, at night I could eat a quarter of a

9 As seen later in the chapter, it was a common practice for parents to give up their jobs so that their children could take their place, but in this case Xu and his father were able to work simultaneously in the same unit. 10 Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, July 20 10.

52 kilo. In one day I would eat 1.25 kilos of staple foods. I ate like this every day for two months. When I came back from the countryside, I was 1.7 meters tall and weighed not even 50 kg. After two months of eating I reached over 65 kg. At the time, I really could eat. When we were in the countryside, we were so starved. When we came back, we ate like there was no tomorrow. II

Despite his happy return home, Xu did not have much time to rest and reported for work at the factory immediately, as did the rest of his employed classmates.

Xu had a comparatively desirable factory job, as his work unit was supervised by the state and he received a higher monthly pay than most others.

When we first started our wage was twenty kuai a month.12 For apprentices, the wage was normally seventeen or eighteen kuai a month. It was seventeen kuai for town and district work units, and for provincial work units the standard wage was eighteen kuai. We worked for a unit that belonged the central government, which the state directly oversaw. At the time, people really envied us .. .They would say, "Aiya! You earn so much money, two to three kuai more than us!" I earnedthi s wage for three years and then I was promoted to a regular worker and started to make 39.5 kuai, whereas regular workers in other units still earned two kuai less.13

Xu worked at the same factory until retirement. He started as an apprentice level locksmith and moved onto regular worker status. Although his title was that of locksmith, due to the smaller size of his work unit, he worked on a number of tasks ranging from fi xing mechanical parts to electric welding. Later in the 1980s he moved out of the workshop into a better environment, working in supplies and sales for the factory until retirement. The pause and deficiency in his education notwithstanding, Xu was able to slowly better himself through the factory career path and in a way, his post-rustication life was one of upward mobility.

Xu's experience, though seemingly unremarkable, was actually quite privileged.

II Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, July 2010. 1 2 At the time, the exchange rate was about one USD to two RMB, so this was the equivalent of ten USD per month. Living expenses were normally provided for by the state through the work units but food could still cost up to ten RMB a month. 13 Xu, discussion.

-- T Xu was able to fly under the radar throughout the Cultural Revolution, following each movement while avoiding controversy. As such, when he finally had the chance to resume his previous life in the city, no one raised any objections. Even with the early end of his education, through connections he managed to obtain a well-paid factory job.

Provided that they too stayed out of trouble, most of Xu's fellow zhiqing were able to easily adapt to city life again. One statistic shows that out of 14.9 million zhiqing returning to the city between 1962 and 1979, sixty-one percent were hired into the urban workforce. 14 Still, there were others who did not transition as smoothly back to the city.

Over the course of our conversation, Xu frequently emphasized the misfortune of those

unable to find a job in the city, or even worse, those who were unemployed. When describing the alternatives to being hired back to the city, such as the periods of mass return, his main concern was that they did not guarantee zhiqing jobs. Another method that provided no job security was "out of three pick one." If a family had three siblings sent-down, they could pick one to return. Xu described a hypothetical worst case scenario in which three zhiqing returnedto the city without jobs: one zhiqing returnedthrough

"out of three pick one" while his or her siblings came back dUling one of the periods of mass return. It could take several years to gain employment, so in the meantime the three

youths would be completely reliant on their parents for support. When they did find

work, it would probably be at less desirable small factories known as a "neighborhood

factories", which were the earliest units to close down and caused workers to eventually

live off of social security for the rest of their lives. To Xu, his factory job was his entire

livelihood and a source of satisfaction. He could live independently from his parents

while enjoying extra expenses that social security payments would not cover.

14 Pan, Te mpered in the Revolutionary Furnace, 208.

54 Yu : Te n Years of Rustication Followed by Three Set-backs

The end of Yu 's rustication contrasts drastically with Xu's experience. As described in chapter one, Yu utilized connections and the "back door" in order to get back her city residency card. Moreover, her college life came to define and dominate the years following her return to the city and the end of the sent-down movement. In March 1978, after ten years in Inner Mongolia, Yu returnedto Tianjin with a fierce determination to enter university. In 1977, Yu had participated in the first round of university entrance examinations since the end of the Cultural Revolution. She scored well on the exam and was offered admission to the electronics department of one of the top ten schools in the country. However, the caveat to her admission was that she would lose her Tianjin residency status. She could not return to Tianjin and still enroll in the university because she took the college entrance exam in Inner Mongolia and students had to report from the place of their exams. After graduation, the government usually assigned people to jobs where they came from so she would have been sent back to Inner Mongolia, perhaps without the possibility of transfer. Yu was faced with a dilemma: on the one hand, she had dreamed, often times without hope, for many years of becoming a university student and had not only passed the difficult entrance exam but gotten into a respectable school. On the other hand, she finally had a chance to returnto the city and this opportunity might be hard to come by again. Like Xu and his classmates, Yu had already decided while in the countryside that she needed to returnto the city after realizing that there was no security in a life on the farm as there were no guarantees about what would happen to people after they became too old or weak to perform manual labor. As such, she resolved to take the entrance examinations again for the class entering school in 1978, the last exam that the

55 entire Three Old Classes generation was allowed to take to enter college.

Unfortunately, the university enrollment system increasingly began to favor younger applicants. Though the college entrance exam was now once again based on academic merit, the zhiqing were not given much time to prepare for the exam. The Three

Old Classes really only had two chances to take the test - once in the fall of 1977 and once in the summer of 1978. In 1979, the government barred anyone over the age of twenty-five from taking the exam, with special exceptions for sent-down youth up to the age of thirty. 15 On paper, the special exceptions were meant to help zhiqing who wanted to resume their educations as they were able to bypass the age limit. However, the reality was that the entrance exams were simultaneously getting harder, with more subjects being added. As such, those coming straight out of school were at a greater advantage to pass. For many zhiqing, there was little time between work in the countryside and the return to the urban centers to prepare for these life-altering tests and each year the number of older people taking the tests decreased while those taking the exam straight out of secondary school increased. Yu represents the cohort of zhiqing who, against great odds, were able to resume the educational opportunities they had missed out on a decade earlier.

While Xu's homecoming was marked by his reunion with a full stomach and the start of his working life, upon return, Yu focused solely on studying for the exams in July,

1978. While in Inner Mongolia, Yu had taught herself math and physics, two subjects she enjoyed. However, the entrance exam had five categories: math, physics, Chinese language, politics and chemistry, each worth one hundred points. Yu knew nothing about

15 Mark Sidel, "University Enrollment in the People's Republic of China, 1977-1981: The Examination Model Returns," Comparative Education 18, no. 3 (1982): 261.

56 chemistry so she spent the next three months memorizing as much as she could. Her previous gamble of choosing Tianjin over college admission and her efforts studying paid

off. Yu earnedhigh enough scores to confidently apply to her first choice, Tianjin

University's electronic engineering department and was subsequently accepted as a

student. Yu choice of Tianjin University lay not only in her desire to be near her family but also in her unwillingness to rely on the governmentto dictate her future.

I chose Tianjin University because I felt concernedabout [what would happen] after I graduated from college. At the time, the government assigned work for all college graduates. I chose Tianjin University because my family lived there for many years so we had some connections. When the government assigned me somewhere, if I couldn't stay in Tianjin, I could "go through the back door", at least [in Tianjin] we knew we had somewhere to go, who we could beg and who we could bribe... The Communist Party caused all those problems because of the power, the absolute power and the absolute corruption. 16

This innate distrust of governmentpolicies stemmed from her family's persecution during

the early years of the Cultural Revolution and the discrimination she faced due to her

class background in the countryside and would later lead her to pursue studies abroad.

In the meantime, despite her own personal achievement, Yu still felt that the

system was unfair to her classmates.

We were the lost generation, I know many of my friends wanted to take the examination in 1979 because they were not ready. They lost so many years and they wanted to come back but the governmentdid not allow us to take any more chances. There were only two chances. Yo u know, I will always feel like I belong to that generation. I also sense loss. I got the last chance. I gave up the 1977 chance and succeeded in 1978. But if I failed in 1978 I would have had no way to go to college anymore .. really sense that I took the last chance and succeeded. 17 .!

Indeed, out of a department of 160 students, Yu was one of only four zhiqing that were

part of the Three Old Classes. Most of her classmates were at least seven to eight years

16 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, March 20 ll. 17 Ibid.

--O T younger than she and at most ten years younger. Within the four majors offered in the department, there was only one former zhiqing in each maj or. Sometimes there were even zhiqing older than Yu , as they had been in high school when the Cultural Revolution began while Yu was only in middle school. Because of the large age gap, Yu 's classmates called her and the other zhiqing "lao da jie" (big sister) or "lao da ge" (big brother). Yu was acutely aware that she was much older than the other students, and felt a need to make up for lost time. She had already taught herself calculus and electronic circuits in

Inner Mongolia and by her first year in college began to take classes aimed at higher levels.

In school we all took the same classes but I wanted something more so I researched all the different majors' schedules ... The first year in addition to my own courses I also took computer classes. Nobody else did that, I was the only one. I belonged to the entry class of 1978 but I also took classes [designated] for the class of 1977 of the same major... Of the entire electric department I was the only one who took courses from other majors. I also took classes with the

workers-peas ants-soldier class of 1976 . . took these classes because I wanted to .1 take the examination for entering graduate school by the end of my freshman year, that was my plan.18

Yu believed that she had a good chance at making it into graduate school early because the members of the class of 1976 were mostly of the "workers-peas ants-soldiers" class and the applications from that class year would be less competitive. Before the reinstatement of merit-based exams, college acceptances were based on class background and recommendations from Communist Party cadres. Thus, the students in those classes consisted mainly of workers, peasants and soldiers and in Yu 's view they had less academic training. If she could circumvent the traditional route and get into graduate school, she could save some of the precious time she felt she had lost.

Unfortunately, Yu soon realized that the disappointments related to her sent-down

18 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, March 20 11.

58 life were not over and that her repeated attempts to save time and work harder were foiled by politics. The first of what she coined as the "three disappointing set-backs" of her four college years was the new school regulation that came out her first year in school that students could not take the graduate school exams until their last year in college. Yu was surprised as she felt that the workers-peasants-soldier students were not any more qualified than the rest of the classes below them. Her ambition thwarted, she thought about quitting school so that she could take the graduate exam as a non-student but she ended up deciding it was not worth the risk.19 Yu 's frustration with the workers-peasants- soldiers class was not with the students themselves but with the policy makers and power holders who she believed persisted in only caring for their own needs.

If they allowed the current college students to take the exam, the workers peasants-soldier students would have no chance. Even if we fi nished one year of study we were still better than them. Usually, the normal aged students did not plan to do that but only the older students, the lao san jie did. We already lost too much time in our lives and we just wanted to do something quicker but we were not allowed. If we were allowed we would have been very competitive. The entry class of 1976 did not have the same qualifications in entering college. I mention this because I think that is another reason why I really [later] wanted to go abroad for advanced studies. Chinese policy makers only thought of their own privilege, their own children, their younger generation, not of everyone and not the lao san jie. We were the lost generation and nobody really cared about us ... [our] thoughts, [our] desires, [we] wanted to do something but were always set-back.20

The stalling of Yu 's academic drive only fed her disillusionment with the government and after speaking with relatives based outside of China, she began to consider applying to graduate studies abroad, something she never thought possible while in the countryside.

Yu 's new outlook and life ambition would eventually become a reality, but not before the second set-back of her college years. In 1980, Yu 's third year of college, the

Chinese government began allowing students to study in foreign countries. With the help

19 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, March 201l. 20 Ibid.

--- �r of her relatives already in the U.S., Yu filled out her the necessary registration forms, translated her transcript and collected recommendations in order to submit her applications to two American schools. She had heard of students applying to Lehigh

University and a classmate's mother who was previously a visiting scholar in New York

City recommended that she apply to the City College. If everything panned out, Yu 's plan was to go abroad for graduate school immediately after graduation in 1982. In 1981, Yu

was admitted into both schools' Electrical Engineering masters degree programs. As fate

would have it, just after the news of her acceptances, the governmentpublished another regulation dictating that all college graduates had to work two years for the country

before they were granted a passport to study abroad. Yu actually thought that this policy

was sensible. After all, tuition and living quarters were paid for by the state but as a repeatedly held back zhiqing, she was once again disappointed.

For regular college students this [policy] was reasonable but not for the "lao san jie". We had already spent ten years in the countryside and we worked so hard there. We spent our youth, our best years, in Inner Mongolia. We did work for the country. That was another two years that would delay our opportunities. It was very hard to argue. Of my three disappointments in my college years, this was my second one. I thought I could catch up some time but then [I was faced] with another two year delay.21

It did not matter that Yu gave up her prime years following party policies into the countryside. Her patience tried again and again, Yu was eager to advance but had no

choice but to accept her fate, bide her time and diligently study.

During her fourth and final year of college, Yu was ranked at the top of her class

and found herself presented with an alternative to her plan to study abroad. As it was her

final year in college, the government was beginning to place students in their work

assignments. Out of these assignments, one opening stuck out: to stay at the university to

21 Yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, March 201 1.

60 conduct research in the teaching section. The student selected for this position would also

be sent abroad by the governmenton public expense to study in the U.S. Out of the 160

students in the department, only one person would be chosen for the role. Yu did not

think about the position much until one of her instructors approached her and told her that

the section director Professor Wang, whose wife was also the Party secretary of the EE

department, was going to recommend her for the position. The problem with Yu 's

candidacy though, was that she had already applied to schools at her own expense and in

order to be eligible for the candidacy of the department job she had to give up the offers

from the colleges she had already received. The outcome of this dilemma became the

final set-back of Yu 's college years.

I never talked to Professor Wang because he was an instructor for the graduate students and he never taught us directly. I think he chose me because other instructors in the section also recommended me. I thought that OK, in that case, I would accept. However, eventually that did not happen. I was told later that the Party Committee had to discuss which person to choose and in that meeting ... the [head] Party Secretary was not a professor or someone of with educational background ... He argued against Professor Wang's idea and [after] a very long argument, eventually the Party Secretary won and I was not chosen. The other student that was chosen was a member of the Communist Party and I was never a member of the Communist Party. I'm sure that from an academic view I was the best choice, but because I was not politically qualified I was not chosen.22

In this scenario, Yu went through the all too familiar experience of having her political

background exclude her from an opportunity. To make matters worse, she had already

given up her admission to City College and Lehigh and we left with no set projection for

her future graduate studies. Yu 's four years in college were characterized with hard work,

a drive to make up for "too much time" lost, and disappointment.23 The repeated "set-

backs" that Yu faced were experienced universally by zhiqing college students.

22 yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, March 20 11. 23 Ibid.

- - I Regardless of whether they experienced missed chances to a greater or lesser degree than

Yu , they all gave up years of their lives in harsh rural living conditions only to find this was not enough. They were lucky to have gotten past the barriers blocking most other zhiqing from attending college, but the unceasing appearance of new ban·iers was bound to affect their opinions of the sent-down movement as well as the future of China.

The Zhiqing's Open Opposition to the Sent-down Movement

While Yu was beginning to settle into her studies and Xu was employed as a regular worker, masses of disaffected zhiqing were beginning to openly protest the rustication program. Anne McLaren, an Australian student studying abroad in Shanghai at the time witnessed the zhiqing's demonstrations against the events of the past decade. In particular, she was able to experience the "'Current of Returningto the City', in which thousands of Educated Youth clamoured to return to the city during the democracy poster

campaign of November of 1978 to March of 1979" - an indication of the continuous flow of people wanting to return to the city.24 McLaren's study of the mounting displeasure toward the sent-down movement and the poster campaign that manifested out of this in

Shanghai is a valuable contemporary analysis and firsthand account of the zhiqing's attitude toward the movement. Shanghai is particularly relevant to the end of the sent- down movement as it was the largest urban center and thus had the most zhiqing that were sent away and needed resettlement. When zhiqing from Tianjin and Beijing were resuming their lives in their home cities, many youth from Shanghai were stranded in the countryside.

The poster campaign started in late November of 1978 when posters began

24 Anne McLaren, "The Educated Youth Return: The Poster Campaign in Shanghai from November 1978 to March 1979" Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 2 (July 1979): 1.

62 appearing in Beijing in opposition to Mao's support of the Gang of Four and second

denunciation of Deng Xiaoping in 1976.25 Following this declaration of opposition to the

Maoist era, more and more posters began to appear opening "a Pandora's box of ,, grievances. 26 These public protestations turned into a "forum for democracy" and many

of the leaders of the movement were zhiqilig. Of the many complaints issued against Mao

and the Cultural Revolution, one of the greatest concerns was that there were still zhiqing

who wanted to return to the cities in the countryside. Some even dared to associate the

problems of the zhiqing directly with Mao himself.27 Of course, these openly critical

remarks attracted both supporters and detractors but the very ability of people to speak

out against the government was a marked change in itself. To even be able to shed

negative light on Mao and his legacy, an unthinkable action throughout the Cultural

Revolution, was a signal that the times were rapidly changing.

The zhiqing's unhappiness with being in the countryside for life was a known

problem prior to McLaren's observance of Shanghai's poster campaign. From October 31

to December 10 of 1978, the governmentheld a "National Conference on Educated Youth

Settling in the Countryside." Incidentally, McLaren recorded the first zhiqing rally on

December 10. During the rally, "hundreds" of people assembled outside the Shanghai

official Party Headquarters to express their frustration.

"They chanted slogans such as "We want work!", "We want food!", "Going to the mountains and villages is reactionary !" "We demand human rights!", "Young people working in production groups ["street factories", described later] are ,, exploited. 28

Still, the governmentoff icial in charge pacified the crowd by telling them to wait for the

25 McLaren, "The Educated Youth Return," 4. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid.,6 . 28 Ibid.,8.

- - T results of the party's conference on educated youth and the demonstration ended that same night without altercation. Summaries of the conference and the government's official attitude toward the movement were broadcast a few days later.

The 2nd National Conference on Educated Youth Settling in the Countryside confirmed the Party's faith in the movement and the resettling of urban youth in the countryside. The youth were encouraged to continue striving toward "the four modernizations" in agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology.

They were also reminded to maintain the attitude of prioritizing the masses and state policy over personal interests.29 Furthermore, going to the countryside was listed as one of four options that should be pursued by urban middle school graduates.3D The conference claimed that the movement had successfully achieved some of Mao's original goals and made no indication of major departures from Maoism.

In response to the call of the party and Chairman Mao, masses of educated youth have gone to the countryside and frontier regions ...They have brought general and scientific knowledge to the countryside and become an important force on the agricultural front...Large numbers of outstanding educated youth who have settled in the countryside have been admitted to the Communist Party and the Communist Youth League and been selected for leading bodies at various levels . . Party organizations at all levels, the poor and lower-middle peasants, parents of educated youth and vast numbers of cadres have all done a great deal of work for mobilizing, settling and educating the educated youth in the countryside.31

Nevertheless, the publication of the results of the conference was significant because it acknowledged to the Chinese population the existence of a 'problem' for the zhiqing.32

29 Foreign Broadcast Information Service, "National Conference on Educated Youth in the Countryside Concludes," Peking NCNA Domestic Service,December 13, 1978. 30 FBIS, "National Conference," December 13, 1978. The other three options were "going to schools of higher learning ... going to the frontier areas to support construction, and remaining in mban areas with proper arrangements made for them". 31 FBIS, "National Conference," December 13, 1978. 32 The news was tightly controlled by the government at the time so any information could be kept from the people without much controversy. For example, Lin Biao's death and treason against Mao was kept from the people for months without realization. As Xu recounted, when they finally found out about the Lin Biao

64 Moving on from the affirmations of the movements, the report also discussed the problems facing the sent-down youth. "The main problems are: The principle of "overall arrangements" has not been properly implemented, the allocation of labor forces in urban and rural areas has not been made reasonably by viewing the general situation, many practical problems among educated young in the countryside have not been solved for a long time, and too many educated youth have been placed in some localities, thereby increasing the peasants' burdens.''» The government blamed the past and existing problems of the movement on sabotage perpetrated by Lin Biao and the Gang of Four but the conference report claimed that since their downfall there had been vast improvements nationwide.

Though zhiqing were supposedly being presented with more educational and vocational opportunities, the report maintained the importance of making sure that there were adequate employment opportunities in both the urban areas and the countryside. As the latter option was unappealing to most zhiqing, a point was made to incentivize staying in the countryside. Zhiqing were to be encouraged to stay either through "political honor" and in the name of revolution as under Mao, or increased matelial return- a previously bourgeois and counterrevolutionary idea.34 For example, economic motivators such as not having to give profits to the state for a limited amount of time were advocated for zhiqing who decided to settle. The government also indicated a desire to pay special support to zhiqing farms and teams.35 On a final note, the conference emphasized the importance of

incident, people thought that it made sense, since they had not seen his name in the newspapers for months. Also, while Yu was at Tianjin University, she heard no news of the student protests in Yunnan and Shanghai, and only found out about them when she left the country. 33 FBIS, "National Conference," December 13, 1978. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid.

--' �r all levels of society in addressing the problems facing the educated youths.

From 1978 to 1980, the last years of the sent-down movement, the Communist

Party had not yet repudiated Maoist political goals but the conference implicitly legitimized zhiqing concernswith the movement by publicly and therefore officially recognizing that they existed. However, dissent was only to be accepted in subordination to the existing power structure. Back in Shanghai, the poster campaign and the protests that came along with it were eventually squashed. At the end of January of 1979, hundreds of thousands of zhiqing returnedto the city for their Chinese New Ye ar break.

When large mobs protested from the Party Headquarters to the main railway station, the

People's Militia intervened and forcibly broke up the crowd. From then on the government took on a sternertone with the demonstrators. On March 6, 1979 the Public

Security Bureau formally banned putting up posters and the campaign tapered Off.36 In addressing the poster campaign, McLaren brought up the zhiqing's palpable desire for change and the problems facing the zhiqing in the cities while highlighting the government's tolerating but dismissive attitude toward these factors - all recurring themes for the zhiqing generation. The Second Conference on Educated Yo uth revealed the government's changing stance on rustication that would lead to the end of the program in September, 1980.37

In Thomas Gold's contemporary study of the return of theSha nghai youth in

1980, published after rustication was winding down in December of 1980, he confirms

36 McLaren, "The Educated Youth Return," 14. 37 Many factors played into the end of the movement. For Pan's explanation of the economically unsustainable nature of the program see: Pan, Te mp ered in the Revolutionary Furnace, 54-56. For an analysis of the role the Yunnan student protests and the Sino-Vietnamese War played see: Bin Yang, '''We Want to Go Home!' The Great Petition of the Zh iqing, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, 1978-1979," China Quarterly 198 (June 2009): 401-421.

66 McLaren's portrayal of the unhappy zhiqing. "Now, a decade later, disillusioned, alienated, in dire economic straits, unmarried and abandoned, [the zhiqing] had ridden a ,, "back to the city wind" and were determined to stay. 38 The zhiqing that Gold observed were dissenters from the movement but their ire was not curbed when they returned to the cities as the problems that existed before the sent-down movement remained.

Not surprisingly, unemployment was the most conspicuous social ill of the day.

Many of the horror stories that Xu had witnessed were happening on a larger scale in

Shanghai, the most overpopulated city at the time. The local government tried to implement promote programs such as "substitution" and collective enterprise in order to deal with rising unemployment. Substitution allowed zhiqing to return and take one of their parents' jobs if one of them retired. Rather than alleviating the problem, substitution caused mass early retirement, with over 100,000 substitutions from late 1978 to March

1979.39 Many of the zhiqing entering the work force through this method were unqualified and the governmenteventual ly had to place stricter limits on the program.

Collective enterprise was promoted through special incentives such as tax breaks. Even with governmentint ervention and efforts, the tide of jobless zhiqing was too large to be stemmed and the burden was often placed on the zhiqing's families.

Having lost all chance to study themselves, and having suffered ten years of governmentneglect, they see their city counterparts competing for places within the increasingly elitist education system. Without qualifications, they find no place for themselves in China's emerging modernization programme. Those who returned legally have to rely solely on support from their families and are allowed the meagre grain ration of 12.5 kilogrammes per month. Those who returned illegally must be in even greater difficulties ...Many aged parents in Shanghai have to support both their married children and their grandchildren ...Skil led technicians and professionals retire in order to let their untrained children find a place in their

38 Thomas B. Gold, "Back to the City: The Return of Shanghai's Educated Youth," China Quarterly 84 (December 1980): 755. 39 Gold, "Back to the City," 763.

67 work unit.4o

Another problem related to unemployment was overcrowding. With so many zhiqing unable to support themselves, families found themselves living in insufficient living quarters. "There is a crushing housing shortage in this city of more than 10 million. Cases of five or more adults living in one room of 20 square metres with neither toilet facilities nor running water are quite common."41 Although in traditional Chinese society it was common for many generations of families to live together, in this case, instead of vast compounds people had one bedroom homes.

The idleness caused by unemployment combined with the insufferable housing led to mischief in the streets, a huge problem for a government sensitive to public protest.

People are on the streets all the time just milling around with nowhere to go. There is also a dearth of entertainment and recreational facilities as well as television sets, so people stroll up and down the main streets window-shopping or waiting for something out of the ordinary to occur. In a flash, a mob can seemingly form from nowhere. During Spring Festival time when the many Shanghainese who work outside the city flock home, the streets are literally clogged with pedestrians.42

In order to pacify the restless zhiqing, the governmentor ganized "wholesome" activities with the Communist Yo uth League such as community service and classes to keep the youth occupied. Other options included working in the countryside for a limited time or performing menial tasks for a labor service company. Gold reports that the government also stepped up their job assignment responsibilities to some success, accounting for the employing of 400,000 youth in 1979.43 Xu and Yu 's memories corroborate the government's claims to efficiency in assigning jobs and they do not remember witnessing

40 McLaren, "The Educated Youth Return," 17-18. 4 1 Gold, "Back to the City," 756. 2 4 Ibid. 43 Ibid.,765.

68 Shanghai's level of dysfunction in Chengdu and Tianjin. The end of the sent-down movement was simultaneously a relief and a source of bitterness. During this time, compared to many of their peers, Xu and Yu were in a much better position as they both had stable lives in their home cities.

Implications fo r the future?

Both McLaren and Gold were concerned with the future of China and the role the zhiqing would play in the country's modernization. "This whole generation of young people who will somehow have to be digested within the system is one of the most serious impediments to China's modernization programme and a potentially grave source ,, of disaffection and disruption. 44 Written at the very moment when zhiqing were returningto the cities in large numbers, their studies challenged any faith in positive views of the sent-down movement by exposing the hardships faced by returningyouth and the feelings of alienation and bitterness in the years immediately following the end of the movement.

Gold described returnedzhiqing as "expendable" because their rustication did not provide them with the skill suitable for modernization. "The scientists, cadres and capitalists have valuable experience and talent vital to the success of the Four

Modernizations programme and will receive rehabilitation, recompensation and rewards.

The youth have little to offer that China does not possess in abundance - that is, manpower - and can expect no special favours beyond the rectification of some of the ,, most egregious excesses and injustices. 45 Gold and McLaren are effective in drawing

44 McLaren, "The Educated Youth Return," 18.

45 Gold, "Back to the City," 767.

-�r attention to the persistence and exacerbation of pre-rustication issues such as unemployment as well as the difficulty of reintegration of zhiqing in the modernizing society while relaying the urgent desire to leave the countryside and the largely ineffective governmental measures taken in response to the growing social unrest. For the zhiqing who faced difficulty in returningto and then resettling in the cities, this period become one of continued marginalization and contributed to their overall sense of loss.

Underlying the label of "zhiqing" is an understood experience, a shared familiality with the countryside as well as the rapid changes brought about by the Cultural

Revolution. The experience of being sent-down made someone worthy of the zhiqing title yet after the movement was over, the definition of what constituted the "zhiqing" experience broadened even more. The portrait of the zhiqing post-rustication that

McLaren and Gold paint is one that is lost and without direction. The masses of zhiqing they gave voice to were the ones that did not fit into the cog of an organization, as Yu did in her university and Xu did in his factory. Their articles foreshadowed the further disillusionment of the zhiqing generation and like Bernstein's seminal book, they raise many questions that can only be answered with the wealth of information we have today.

Many of the forecasts for the future presented in these articles proved to be accurate, serving a source of ideas for present-day investigations into how to assess the unique zhiqing life experiences.

70 Chapter Three: Grappling with the Past and Present - The Zhiqing in New China

Just as the zhiqing were settling back into urban life, China began another transformation. The end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 and the shift in political power over the next couple of years away from Mao's designated successor Hua Guofeng to Deng Xiaoping signaled that Chinese society was moving on from the Cultural

Revolution and looking forward to a new era for China. Deng's economic reforms, credited with ushering in an era of prosperity in the 1990s, raised the overall standards of living in China. Ye t these economically "progressive" policies were not universally beneficial and the zhiqing continued to find themselves in the group neglected by the govemment. Furthermore, the rejection of the Cultural Revolution and Maoism meant the embrace of a new set of societal values and priorities that were contrary to what the zhiqing had so passionately supported in the past. As such, these changes led to further

marginalization of the zhiqing, confirming fears that they were "lost" and the govemment

was abandoning them.

At the same time, the zhiqing's increasing dissatisfaction with modem day China

emerged in a culture of nostalgia. Alongside people's own questioning of their identities

and lifestyles, there was a reinvigoration of interest in collective remembering of past

zhiqing experiences. Consequently, the sent-down movement remains relevant in the

present not only as a reminder of previous hardship but as a method of coping with the

present and establishing self-worth for the di sillusioned "lost generation." This chapter

examines the economic reforms' effect on the zhiqing from the 1980s through the 1990s

before addressing the larger issue of how the zhiqing generation assesses their past and

their roles in the present.

71 A New Economic Climate

Under Mao, China followed the Soviet model with "annual and fi ve-year plans, extensive state ownership, central control over prices, and material balance plans that issued specific directives governingthe allocation of major inputs, products, and fi nancial

,,1 fl ows. The soviet model seemed to work well for China during periods of stabilit/ prior to the reform period and China's GNP grew an average of 4.2 percent a year, which was on the higher side for a non-industrialized country.3 Still, the model did take its toll

4 on the Chinese economy. The large scale persecution of intellectuals alongside the closing of universities during the Cultural Revolution left a serious deficiency in the

service industry, quantity was valued over quality resulting in low quality production and

the isolation from the outside world denied China from profitable markets and opportunities for trade.s These deficiencies were felt by the sent-down generation in

many ways. Growing up, they experienced the food shortages and rationing system

associated with the Great Leap Forward; through societal pressure, they were taught to

value the greater good of the masses over the development of their personal qualities;

they experienced the attack on intellectuals through the end of their educations; they were

sent to the countryside to take up manual labor without having prior training of the skills

necessary to be an effective farmer. With Deng's reemergence as a major figure in the

Communist Party and Mao's death, China's economic system began to undergo various

changes that would both offer them opportunity for a better life as well as undermine the

I Loren Brandt and Thomas G. Rawski, eds., China 's Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 4. 2 For example, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are classified as unstable periods. 3 Brandt, China 's Great Economic Transformation, 5. 4 For a history of China's economy leading up to 1978, a more detailed explanation of the deviations that Communist China's plan took from the Soviet model and additional information on the benefits of the Soviet system see: Brandt, China's Great Economic Transformation, 4-8. 5 Brandt, China 's Great Economic Tr ansformation, 5.

72 values they had grown accustomed to through their adolescence.

Starting in 1978, Deng implemented a program for economic reform known as the

Four Modernizations, which were centered around improving agIiculture, industry, national defense and science and technology. Unlike the soviet system, Deng's policy reforms leaned toward a market economy and an "open door" policy toward the . internationalcommuni ty. These reforms were designed to put China on the same level as other developed and industrialized countries and the Chinese population began to feel the benefits of living as part of a modernizing nation. With the de-collectivization of the countryside, agIicultural practices became more efficient, allowing rural populations access to greater resources; the market economy along with the open door policy spurred foreign investment in China while opening up previously unheard of avenues of trade; education was once again a commodity, necessary to social and vocational mobility and students were able to travel abroad to attain greater levels of educational achievement.

The government'sdecision to focus on economic growth and development rather than ideological purity as under Mao, allowed many people who suffered duIing the Cultural

Revolution to regain what they had previously lost and Deng is credited with raising the

6 living standards of 170 million peasants.

From their inception to the present-day, the modernizing and developmental qualities of the economic reforms have been seen as overwhelmingly positive yet they

have not reached the Chinese population comprehensively. Increasing income disparity,

unequal access to resources and the drastic range in quality of life are amongst the many

social ills that have come out of the reform. The Maoist dedication to the masses has

6 Rajee SUfi, ed., "CNN In-Depth Specials - Visions of China - Profiles: Deng Xiaoping," Ti me, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/china.50Jinside.chinaiprofiles/deng.xiaopingl

- ---.r transitioned into the enlargement of the upper rrilddle class and the formation of a

7 "plutocratic ruling class" that utilizes political power to cultivate personal fortune. In the

1990s, while a smaller segment of the population was making gains, the rest were faced with large-scale layoffs and lirrilts to their social welfare. Given the impediments to the zhiqing's educational and vocational attainment after their return in the late 1970s, where the sent-down generation fit in the changing trajectory of the country was ambiguous; not everyone could adjust quickly enough to the post-Cultural Revolution system.

The sent-down experience varied from person to person but no matter the great differences in length, activity and hardship, corrilng out of the countryside was and continues to be a shared identity. Labels such as the "lost generation" and "the 1968ers", the popularity of commemorative events and rustication themed places, and the vast amount of literature by and about the zhiqing, all attest to the binding nature of the sent- down experience. It is impossible to say exactly what percentage of zhiqing benefitted or suffered from the reform era but the end of the rustication movement did signal the break in collective experience, as the zhiqing were no longer "urban youth" participating in "up to the mountains and down to the countryside" and were now embarking on more individualized life courses, as seen through Xu and Yu .

Xu and Yu Move On

Neither exceedingly wealthy nor destitute, Xu fits comfortably within the working class. His early returnfr om the countryside and secure factory job allowed him to benefit from both the existing state system and the new econorrilcrefo rms. Xu kept this factory job through the reform period of the 1980s and 1990s and was able to advance within the

7 Yarong Jiang and David Ashley, Mao 's Children in the New China: Vo ices fr om the Red Guard Generation (London: Routledge, 2000), 8.

74 factory through various positions, retiring in 2007 at the age of fifty-five. Xu considers his life from the start of his job until retirement as stable. "I'd wake up and go to work, get off work, go home and cook. It was like this every day, there was not much change in everyday life. The biggest personal change for me was that I had my own home and my child."g Xu and his wife developed a routine in which they were able to provide for their nuclear family unit. He even started to make more money as the factory's wage policies changed with the new economic plans.

With the economic reform, our income increased. With the income increase, the price of goods also increased but our income increase was faster so we had some extra money. Gradually we could buy a car, a house. That was the benefit of the economic reform. Before our pay was fi xed and there was no bonus. The factory is different now, there are higher benefits and you can have more earnings.Sa lary is not fixed but is influenced by working conditions.9

To have a stable income that allowed for savings and purchase of leisure goods was a definite improvement and newfound luxury and Xu even retired early at the age of 55 rather than 60, as did most others who worked within his industry.

Xu was particularly fortunate compared to most other workers and he saw others struggling with unemployment. He reasoned that since his factory was a government operated factory specializing in the field of geology, it was not as vulnerable to layoffs but in most lines of work layoffs became a source of much anxiety. As he noted, "work units with low efficiency go bankrupt. There are a lot of factories with low efficiency, and there are a lot of unemployed people". A huge part of Xu's existence was his status as an employed worker. He explained that people that were unemployed were called "xiagang."

The prospect of unemployment is daunting in any society but according to Xu, in China it

means more. "Xiagang" is not just a status but an identity. Those who lost their jobs lived

8 Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, March 2011. 9 Ibid.

75 on meager living allowances and had to wait until they were sixty to begin receiving retirement benefits. As such, unemployment - associated with idleness and lack of sufficient resources - defined people's lives.

Xu's daughter-in-law, Chu Dandan, remembers seeing the problem of early and frequent layoffs in her mother's factory and considered it very common. Growing up and

hearing these stories so often, Chu believes this problem to be especially pertinent to the

zhiqing. "Every factory had a lot of people like this. Of these laid off workers, many were

zhiqing before. With huge effort they had finally gotten back to the city only to be laid

IO ten years later. What bad luck�" Even if people were able to bounce back from

rustication and reestablish themselves through the factories, they soon had this comfort

taken away. In an interview with an unemployed former zhiqing, Guobin Yang was struck

by her sense of hopelessness.

Since I was a child, I have never had the feeling that there was no place for me to go ... In February last year, the company where I worked was disbanded. After that, there were days when I woke up in the morning and found I had no place to go. I had never had that kind of feeling ...as if I were riding a bottomless boat. I II fe lt empty in my heart, hollow and empty.

Many zhiqing had diligently waited their entire lives to find some a sense of stability only

to be confronted with more hardship under the economic reform. The government's

continuing lack of concernfor the zhiqing left this aging population feeling a deep sense

of loss.

Besides the static nature of his work life, Xu found that the 1990s brought more

entertainment into his life. Xu found that as time passed and the Cultural Revolution was

further in the past, there was more to do recreationally.

10 Chu Dandan, in discussion with the author, April 20 11. II Unemployed former zhiqing, interview by Guobin Yang, July 24 1999.

76 Cultural life was relatively monotonous until the 1990s and then cultural life became more active. We had television, things were more open, we had karaoke. Compared the beginning of the 1980s when there was nothing. In the 1980s we had very few gatherings, unlike now. In the daytime we worked together and after we just went about our own business. In the 1980s, because there was less entertainment, it was not much fun to get together. Now everyone can get together to play cards, mahjong whereas before it was forbidden and they didn't let us play. 2 In the late 1990s everything was opened, we could go out singing and dancing. 1

Modernization had led to the proliferation of amusements. Though Xu did not see drastic change through the 1980s and 1990s, he did find more ways to entertain himself and enjoy life with these new channels. By and large, Xu is content with his life. He likes living in retirement in Chengdu, the place he grew up in and worked after rustication.

"Life after retirement is happy, it is very easy and leisurely. Chengdu is a very good city, it is very well suited for retirement. I grew up there and am very familiar with this place ,, and really love it. 1 3 Xu acknowledges that others have not fared as well as he has but it seems that in his case, the economic reforms have only brought additional prosperity.

The economic reforms affected everyone. Under the planned economy you could not have, for example, rice was rationed. With the open market, there is no control anymore. As long as you have money you can buy something. There are a lot of goods and a great variety of them. Money and income is increasing so everyone can live better. This is the biggest benefit. The economic reforms were definitely a very good thing.14

In his retirement, Xu plans on spending time with his grandchild and hopes to travel to

America and Taiwan. In sum, Xu is satisfied with retirement, happy with reform and looking forward to the future. However, Xu's overwhelmingly positive experience with the economic reform was not shared by many of his zhiqing peers and they cannot speak to the same level of contentment.

Yu 's experience was also exceptional as she was able to continue her academic

12 Xu, in discussion with the author, March 20 11. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

77 studies and eventually immigrate to the U.S., distancing herself from her hometown and

China. Yu was not in China long enough into the economic reforms to feel their full effects. For her, the most important reform was the open door policy of 1978, which allowed her to get her passport and study abroad. Since leaving for the U.S. to study in

1984, Yu has only been back to China twice. Despite this, she still feels connected other

zhiqing. As she frequently mentions, Yu considers herself part of the "lost generation.".

Yu also keeps up with current events in China and has definite opinions on where she

believes the country stands. Between leaving China and going abroad, Yu worked the

mandatory two years in China in a factory. After being denied the teaching assistant

research opportunity at Tianjin University, Yu purposefully chose a factory with people

that knew her father so that she could use these connections later if she had trouble

obtaining her passport to go to America. Within the factory she worked in a coveted

position at the newly opened computer center as it was highly suited toward the skills she

learnedin college.

When I first came to this factory, China had not had computer centers. Everybody wanted to [work] in that place. My college thesis was on computer aided design for electronic circuits so I fit that position. Every time in my life, before I came to this [factory], anything I thought I deserved to get I never got but this time I had no problems. I was assigned to that computer center because my education fi t the posIt..IOn . 15

Yu was finally experiencing somewhat of a merit-based system. She felt that she had

been placed according to her talent in a position that many university educated people

would want yet she also knew that because of her connections nobody would oppose her

appointment.

Yu was further reminded of the nepotism and importance of political position

15 Yu , in discussion with the author. March 20 11.

78 when she was nominated to take an examination with the Chinese electronic industry department. If she passed, she would qualify for the opportunity to study abroad at the public's expense. Only one person from the factory was allowed to take the exam and Yu once again felt that she was the most qualified as she had worked extensively with the engineers to design circuits for computer programs and published her college thesis in an electronic industry magazine. However, since Yu was already planning on studying abroad at her own expense, she thought she could recommend her friend to take her place. "I had a very good friend and her English was much better than mine and we always tried to talk with each other and practice with broken English. She knew that I had a chance to take the examination and she was envious so I thought that if I go abroad to ,, study by myself, with the support [of relatives], why waste this quota [on me]? ]6 When she went to the Human Resources department to make this suggestion, she was told that she was the most academically qualified for the position but that they already had a list of people to offer the opportunity to if she declined. The next person on the list was a university graduate but more importantly, was a Communist party member.

This time I was not beaten by a member of the Communist Party. I don't think [I was first] was because I had published an article. I think the most important reason was that all those factory directors or chief engineers supported me ... In my last two years in China, my connections affected me so that I did not have problems .. think that no matter what happens in China, without any connections, '! you will have many many problems and you will not get what you think you

deserve to get. 17

Although Yu was satisfied with her position and the work she was doing during her two year tenure at the factory, she continued to feel that corruption was a dominant factor in

Chinese society. Aside from seeing others use unfair advantages to get ahead, she also felt

16 Yu, in discussion with the author, March 2011. 17 Ibid.

79 that she needed to situate herself strategically in a place where she could benefit from having connections even though her skills alone should have been enough.

Following the end of her two year work period, Yu went to the U.S. to attend The

City College of New York. True to form, Yu tried to save as much time as possible and a year later she began her first job on November 1 S\ 1985, before she was even finished with her master's program. Had she been younger, Yu is positive she would have continued her studies and obtained a PhD but as in China but she felt a sense of being older than her peers and the need to start her working life. "After I got my masters degree

I thought about either continuing to study to get my PhD degree or to work. If I were even several years younger, not too much younger, I'm sure I would have continued my ,, studies but was already 34 years 0Id. 1 8 Before graduation, Yu received two offers from I companies willing to sponsor her green card application, making staying in the U.S. a viable long term option. In 1992, Yu applied to work at Hewlett Packard, which she recalls had been consistently ranked as a good company to work for by its employees.

Since then, Yu has worked in the same environment, moving from Hewlett Packard after the company segmentation to Agilent Technology and through another split to Philips, where she works today.19

Yu now considers the U.S. her home and has settled here for life. Many factors

have contributed to her growing attachment. First, her aversion to importance placed on political background in the Chinese system strongly influenced her life in America.

"Since I came to this country, as long as I worked hard, I could speed up a lot of things for myself. In China, no matter how hard I worked, the policies always set me back ... [In

1 8 Yu, in discussion with the author, March 20 11. 19 Hewlett Packard split to Agilent (same group, different name) and then Agilent sold their medical equipment department to Philips.

80 ,, America] I finished school quick and I got my job quick. 2o She felt that the U.S. had a true merit-based system as within a year of her being in the country, she had already accomplished getting a job. Throughout her tenure in the research department that she works in, Yu has felt secure. With the economic crises of the past few years, Yu has maintained her confidence in her job even with major layoffs in 2009, outsourcing of factory production and seeing people in higher positions than her being let go. "Even though we had some layoffs threatened, since I believe in God, I don't WOlTY too much. I ,, always trust God ...Even with major layoffs in 2008 and 2009 I was never really scared. 21

The CUlTentconcern withAmerican decline and the rise of China does not influence Yu and her strong religious faith and confidence in the American system have convinced her of her desire permanently reside in America.

Yu has also had an overwhelmingly positive reception from the people that sUlToundher, another contrast she sees with the motherland and a reason for her affinity for the U.S. over China.

In China, I don't know, we have problems trusting each other or whatever.. .In this country, even only with my first year and a half of experience, I really felt so comfortable with all these people ...Not only my relatives but [all American] people, I think because this country is based on Christian values, all those moral [values].I feel [comfortable] with my relatives, my friends, my church, my coworkers, my neighbors, my volunteer coworker. Everywhere I feel that it is the ?? best place that I can expecC--

In all aspects of her life, it seems that Yu feels a sense of comfort and belonging. From work to her neighborhood to her church to the hospice where she volunteers, Yu greatly appreciates the natural camaraderie that exists in the various communities she inhabits.

She related a story in which she came home to a fully plowed driveway after a big

20 Yu, in discussion with the author, March 20 11. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid.

-T snowstorm when she went out of town. "The last time I went to New York City there was a big snow storm. When I came back [to Andover, Massachusetts], can you believe it? All my driveway, even my walkway to my door was cleaned by my neighbor and also some kids.'.23 To Yu , this was a perfect demonstration of the goodwill that exists between

people naturally in the U.S. that she did not see in China. On the other hand, Yu remembers telling her friends back in China about her volunteer work and seeing that

they did not understand the concept of philanthropy from their response.

I told them that I'm taking care of old people and what do you think they said to me? They said, "Oh, you can accumulate some points so that when you are old you will have some people to serve you". They think that volunteer work is that way... But I told them "volunteering is volunteering, it has nothing to do with returns!" It's a different society, you know? Really!24

To some extent Yu does not see change from the selfish tendencies and survival of the

fittest mentality that was so common during the Cultural Revolution and this colors her

view of modem day China. The welcoming atmosphere she has felt throughout her life in

the U.S. is certainly a far cry from the hardship and criticism her own native people put

her through in the not so distant past.

Indeed, the legacy of the Cultural Revolution and all the movements that form the

history of the CCP only served to strengthen Yu 's decision to stay in the U.S.

At least for my children, for later generations, there is peace in this country. Yo u know in China we have too many movements. Since I was born, one movement was continued by another one. It was never really settled. Also, there's a lot of corruption and no matter how hard I worked there were always a lot of setbacks ... Nothings perfect but if I had to choose I would still choose America now.25

Yu has worked in the same place for 19 years, and still lives in the town where she raised

her 20 year old son. From her personal to work life, Yu feels a sense of stability that

23 Yu, in discussion with the author, March 20 1l. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

82 contrasts with the turbulence of her life in China. Moreover, Yu suggests that even if

China is a different place than what she saw before, she is fully committed to living her life out in America. As already established, Yu was part of a minority of zhiqing who were able to resume their studies in the universities but she was also part of an even smaller population that was able to go abroad. Yihong Pan was also part of this minority as she went to Canada to study for her Ph.D. and emphasizes that it was difficult to obtain permission to study outside of China.

The Zhiqing in New China

In many ways, Xu and Yu have fared extremely well since rustication and overall they both express satisfaction with the status quo. Nevertheless, the prevalence of studies on the sent-down generation's adjustment to post-Cultural Revolution life signals a concern with the role of zhiqing in China's new society. The move from Maoist ideals to economic forward thinking signified an abandoning of the ascetic way of life the zhiqing were brought up to live. The Four Modernizations explicitly called for the reinstatement of intellectuals and academics as necessities to China's development. No longer considered counterrevolutionary or bourgeois, these professions once again became of the highest prestige. The zhiqing, the urban "educated" youth who ended up giving up their academic advancement for the sake of the country, were once again set at a disadvantage.

In thinking about the sent-down generation and how they moved on from their experiences, it is imperative to consider the drastic economic, societal and ideological changes that came with the end of this tumultuous period.

As with his study on the return of the Shanghai zhiqing, Thomas Gold's December

1985 study, "After Comradeship: Personal Relations in China Since the Cultural

Ir Revolution," is an early study that illustrates the concern with changes in values from the

Cultural Revolution as people were trying to adapt to economic modernization.

The economic disarray caused by the CR brought about a shortage of necessary goods and services, to say nothing of consumer goods and luxury items. Under leftist influence, the leadership strove to eliminate all remnant bourgeois tendencies within individuals and to build a structure of strict surveillance and asceticism to ensure this ... As a result, it became necessary to seek irregular channels to acquire a wide range of goods and services from food, clothing and bicycles to housing, medical care, residence permits and permission to marry.26

It is telling that within the first decade of the post-Cultural revolution period, Gold was already beginning to see questionable transformations in social values. The Chinese population was not given much time to recover from the tumultuous social disruption of the Cultural Revolution and because the zhiqing had grown up during this time, the changes in the 1980s and 1990s were especially critical for them.

Gold's early study, taken into consideration as a precursor to Yarong Jiang and

David Ashley's book Mao's Children in the New China, provides a broad view of post-

Cultural Revolution China life. While Gold's study aims to document changes in personal relations, Jiang and Ashley's book focuses more on people's recollections of how they

coped with societal change.

Deng's reforms mean different things to different people; but one thing is clear: in China, the Communist Party is no longer an immediate or vital part of people's everyday life. In this sense, at least, the Mao era truly is dead and buried. This is the context within which our interviewees tell their stOlies. As one of them explains, these narratives are less about the past than about the problems of living in the present. Indeed, through the experience of a generation the stories that follow express impoitant links between the period of our subjects' youth and the stunning transformation of contemporary China in an era of commodifiction, privatization, and uneven development that many now see as the triumph of capitalism in China.27

26 Thomas B. Gold, "After Comradeship: Personal Relations in China since the Cultural Revolution," China Quarterly 104 (1985): 667-668. 27 Jiang, Mao 's Children, 9.

84 So how did the Three Old Classes adjust to this change? How did they transition from the

"Cult of Mao" to everyday life? Do they now reject the Mao era or rejoice in it? Jiang and Ashley conceived of the book in 1994 while in Shanghai as they felt they were experiencing "perhaps the most dramatic economic revolution of the twentieth century" and "a great wave of remembering the past" as wel1.28 In their study of Shanghainese members of the "three old classes", Jiang and Ashley solicited the reminiscences of 25 people about their experiences during the Cultural Revolution and through to the 1990s.

What we wished to explore was how members of the Red Guard generation perceive and cope with the consequences of the economic and social reforms that have transfOlmed China and reshaped their lives since the late 1970s. We also hoped to learn how members of this generation reconcile their present situation with the quite different experiences of and values espoused during their youth.29

Jiang and Ashley provide narratives that add to the diverse matlix of zhiqing stories of coping with the disconnect between the past and the present. They focus specifically on people that identify with the "old three classes" and Red Guard cohort and their opinions of their present situations. They acknowledge that everyone is unique but emphasize the important overarching theme of going from widespread indoctrination in Maoism to

Deng's reforms. On the other hand, Gold's study narrows in on the topic of changes in social values and covers all levels of early 1980s urban society. On a conceptual level, his argument that friendship and comradeship have been replaced with instrumentalism and commoditization is useful in considering how the zhiqing population had to adapt and rework their ways of thinking in order to survive in modem China.3D Together, these

28 Jiang, Mao 's Children, l. 29 . . lbid ,3 30 Gold, "After Comradeship," 673. Gold defines friendship as "a particularistic tie, where individuals do not treat each other equally, but rather have special friends in whom they can confide and to whom they can turn to help" and comradeship as a more egalitarian way of dealing with others.

85 sources provide alternativesto Xu and Yu 's experiences and express the diverse life courses of the sent-down generation through the 1980s, 1990s and to the present.

New Society, New Values

Instrumentalism implies that actions are not performed out of good will and behind each act is an expectation of a reciprocated favor that benefits both parties.

Perhaps best illustrated in Yu's friends' conception of her volunteer work, the instrumentalist attitude was clear in their assumption that her care for the elderly now

would ensure her own future care. Related to instrumentalism is guanxi, or the amount of favor and "social investment" one holds with other members of society.3] As Gold explains it, "successful guanxi" necessitates connections at all levels, so that favors can

be wrought in any circumstance.32 To Gold, the preference for guanxi based transactions

over regulated and traditional forms of attainment signals moral and legal decay. In the

post-Cultural Revolution China, it was easier to achieve goals "through the backdoor"

and any attempts to go the righteous route were futile and nai"ve. Widely noted in the

media and echoed in Yu 's experience with setbacks in college and her decision to enter a

factory where she had connections, instrumentalism was universally employed and was

not so much a vice as a necessity for social mobility. Still, this did not mean that people

felt that the system was perfect and the line between what is a harmless competitive edge

and unfair advantage is sometimes hard to discern. Even today, corruption continues to be

a major social ill in China and it is one of the reasons why Yu has little desire to move

back to China.

31 Gold, "After Comradeship," 660. 32 Ibid., 661.

86 Lin Juan,33 one of the interviewees in Mao 's Children, functions as a good example of someone who has both gained and lost from the new instrumentalist system.

Originally from a rich family, Lin's family background was classified as bad dUling the

Cultural Revolution. As such, from a young age she had to be politically adept in order to get by. Trying to survive in spite of her class label, Lin followed class "role models" to the Heilongjiang as part of the sent-down movement. When the college entrance exams were reinstated, Lin passed after two tries and was able to attend Northeast Normal

University to study Chinese literature and language. Post-graduation in 1986, Lin was assigned to work as an editor at women's magazine, becoming a self-proclaimed "expert" on Chinese women's issues. She considers herself quite successful.

Over the last five years my life has changed dramatically. I've shown I can adjust to a rapidly changing environment. I'm the kind of person who can't stand to be left behind. I look for opportunities and grab them. Compared to many others I'm shrewd and business-minded. I'm catching up with the world. But the real masters

are the members 0 the young generation. They have clear, material goals and they'll use whatever means are necessary to achieve them.34

Lin makes 3,000 yuan a month and because she is unmarried and does not have to

SUppOIt any family members, she can afford a nice lifestyle while saving money for the future.

Lin has benefited from the dubious business practices that have sprung up under the new economic climate. Her position as a magazine editor allows her to receive

"under-the-table kickbacks" of ten percent commission from every advertisement. She mentions that initially she was concernedwith "wrong versus right" but now considers

33 Pseudonym. 34 Jiang, Mao 's Children, 148.

- T , this type of thinking "Slow. ,35 Lin's attitude is practical, if she were to get caught up in the details of ethics and righteousness she would not be satisfied with her income and would be missing out on opportunities that other people were eager to exploit. Still; her participation in the guanxi driven business world has its drawbacks and she lacks real personal relationships.

I'm neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with China. People should try to make the best out of a situation. There's no point bitching. If you want to know what I think might be missing from my life I'd say it's probably the lack of one friend on whom I can depend. Everyone today wants something from you. So, naturally, the same principle governs my relations with others.36

Lin's life is dictated by her work and personal freedom. For the most part, she does not

need to answer to anyone else and can instead focus most of her attention on what makes

her happy.

However, she sometimes gets the feeling that she might not have it all. During a

visit to Heilongjiang, Lin met up with the one zhiqing from her group that had stayed in

the village. Lin assumed that her friend's living situation would be inferior to her own but

instead found herself exposed to the benefits of her friend's lifestyle.

Before I went to her house I warnedmyself to be tactful. I was expecting her to be unhappy. Much to my surprise, she seemed quite content. I'm much more successful than she is but she'd prepared presents for me. I was quite touched. She has a wonderful husband and a daughter who's getting ready to go to university. She laughs a lot. When I left her home I felt a bit jealous. And, suddently, I didn't feel quite so sure of myself.37

It seems that while Lin's self-reliant attitude has helped her function in modem China and

afforded her a comfortable life, she has pangs of regret at the consequences of living such

35 Jiang, Mao 's Children, 149. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid.

88 a singular life.

Xu Yaoming,38 another interviewee in Mao's Children, has a similar attitude to

Lin. A former sent-down youth, he is now a manager at an herbal medicine trading company. For Xu Yaoming, the major changes occurred in the 1990s and that is when he began to see the emphasis on money and guanxi. "There's little ambiguity in society today. Money is everything ...I f you want to keep your job you must swim with the others.

Just about every transaction in my business involves some form of bribery or favoritism. ,, People no longer think in terms of whether something's right or wrong. 39. Xu Yaoming believes that most people in China are hard workers and have good intentions and the unpleasant aspect of trading is just part of the reality of business.

Commoditization, or the rise of materialism, is directly connected to the economic reforms though the downside of greater buying power is the larger role of money in social relations. This is not to say that money was not vital prior to the Cultural Revolution but as Deng famously said "poverty is not socialism" and following the Cultural Revolution emphasis was placed on eradicating poverty and not promoting ethical values.4o

Especially in Xu's case, economic freedom was not tied into questions of moral decline but instead it meant the ability to make major purchases such as a house and car and a wider variety of recreational activities to punctuate an otherwise very uneventful work life. Still, Gold's reporting on the change in values reveals a concernfor the deteriorating meaning of human relations. Just as the reader gets a sense of Lin's loneliness from her narrative, Gold notes that people were beginning to treat marriage and divorce differently,

38 Pseudonym. 39 Jiang, Mao 's Children, 16l. 40 Deng Xiaoping, "To Uphold Socialism We Must Eliminate Poverty," April 26, 1987, hup:llenglish.peopledail y.com.cnldengxp/voI3/textlc 1720.html

T with economic factors coming into play with both situations. Also, the burgeoning industry for lawyers and legal advice regarding money and propeliy issues indicated an obsession with material possessions.41

For Wu Shanren, also one of Jiang and Ashley's interviewees, economic gains have both provided material possessions and psychological burden. Wu, a private businessman, was not sent-down though he was part of the "three old classes". As the only son in his family, his mother elected to have his two sisters go to the countryside while Wu stayed in the city to work in a factory. After the Cultural Revolution, Wu did not resume his studies and directly entered the workforce as an illustrator for a newspaper. Wu was ambivalent about the political changes happening in this period but felt constrained by the lack of economic opportunities presented by his educational background. "What was my reaction when the "Gang of Four" was overthrown? Neither happy nor sad. I was tired of the endless turmoil and deeply despised politics ...After Mao died, people like me with no educational qualifications were simply dropped into the

,,42 garbage bin. Unstimulated in his profession, Wu decided to quit his job and take a chance on a private venture. Wu now owns his own companies, has a house worth

$600,000 USD and travels in a chauffeuredLe xus. Wu's attainment of these material goods gives him a sense of accomplishment but also fuels insecurities of maintaining his lifestyle.

Am I happy, and enjoying my new life? No, I'm exhausted. I built up this fortune with my bare hands. I was a nobody-with no money and no support from the government. All they did was certify my business. Now I have to pay "fraternal duty" to the bureaucrats. When you enter such a relationship you never get free of it. I must keep my business going to pay all my expenses. It's an endless, stressful life ...The biggest change is that I feel nervous and uncertain all the time. Every

41 Gold, "After Comradeship," 664. 42 Jiang, Mao s Children, 22.

90 morningI wake up in a sort of panic, knowing I have to deal with lots of things alone. I keep looking for some relief. It's like a rock rolling down the mountain; it keeps rolling down. You can't stop it. I'll never escape.43

Even with all the material markers of success, Wu is not at peace and his prosperity has turned outto be a burden. As many others in his generation, Wu's true satisfaction comes from his son. The succeeding generation is unbridled by the past and has been groomed to function in the merciless present and thus are in the best position to better China.

Another quality Gold recorded that resonates with Yu 's feelings is the "us and them" mentality or people's inclination to isolate themselves within their various social groups.44 In the 1980s, two major institutional factors lay behind this tendency. First, the hukou system prevented people from relocating and getting to know different parts of the country and drew a firm line between the urban and rural population. Second, the work unit (danwei) system, which often provided amenities from housing to hospitals, naturally segregated people into smaller communities. Gold posited that the limited mobility led to fewer organically formed relationships, as people were accustomed to only knowing peers in forced environments. According to Gold, the other consequence of the "us and them" dilemma was the lack of empathy amongst countrymen. "The cut- throat competition for a seat on a bus, the anarchic manner of operating vehicles, the increase in the Clime rate, and the notoriously indifferent-to-surly service in stores are examples of how people relate to one another in impersonal or anonymous situations".45

The aggressive environment that Gold described is something that Yu distinctly does not feel in America. Though the hukou and danwei systems are less influential today, in the

43 Jiang, Mao 's Children, 23 & 25. 44 For example: families, work groups, schools and other "particularistic ties". 45 Gold, "After Comradeship," 665.

91 context of the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, it makes sense that people of all levels of society were putting every effort into reattaining what they felt was rightfully theirs. However, it is ironic that the collective nature of the early CCP years had fallen to the wayside.

Remembering the Past: Zhiqing Nostalgia in the 1990s

A key phenomenon of the 1990s was the emergence of zhiqing nostalgia. In the

1980s people were more focused on rebuilding their lives in the city, rendering their time in the countryside fi gments of the past. The 1990s brought out a sense of generational yearningfor the past, as public memorializations were popularized there was an outpouring of zhiqing related media. Implicit in this remembering is the continuing dialogue between past and present for the zhiqing. Through the experiences of Xu and the subjects in Mao 's China, one can observe a shift in attitude between the 1980s and 1990s as the heightened awareness of economic importance brought about a yearning for the past. Guobin Yang's study on "Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural Resistance in the 1990s" highlights this theme and questions why nostalgia emerged when so many zhiqing were

46 previously eager to escape their rustication. While Mao 's Children generally classifies the Three Old Classes as the Red Guard generation and does not seek to assign different meanings to the various segments of the Cultural Revolution, Yang specifically focuses on the sent-down experience as the source of nostalgia. Yang cites a "social phenomena" surrounding the sent-down movement in the 1990s manifested through the proliferation of published and informal zhiqing writings, the popularity of internetforums and museums commemorating the sent-down movement, the emergence of rustication themed

46 Guobin Yang, "China's Zhiqing Generation: Nostalgia, Identity and Cultmal Resistance in the 1990s," Modern China 29, no. 3 (July 2003): 269.

92 restaurants, and the organization of trips back to the villages. Yang underlines the disturbing nature of societal transformation and sees zhiqing nostalgia as a coping mechanism.

The zhiqing generation finds itself again in the vortex of social change and in renewed struggles against disruptions of identity - hence also agairtst the social forces that destabilize identities. In these struggles, the past becomes a vital source for coping with the present. The nostalgic experience emotionally Connects the generation to its past and compels them to articulate their generational experience in narrative form. At the same time, nostalgia also contrasts a past to which positive emotions are ascribed with a present lacking in humane warmth, thus serving as a critique of that present. In this way, nostalgia becomes a cultural movement, under no central control, to validate identities and challenge the values of commercialism in contemporary Chinese society.47

Tracing zhiqing nostalgia and how people express their past experiences helps facilitate understanding of how the Chinese state and culture continue to influence the sent-down generation.

Yihong Pan returnedto the city in 1974 after being accepted into university from the countryside.48 In 1978 she was working as a teacher but took the graduate school exam for a masters in economic history and began school again soon after. By 1981, she had graduated from school and was working in Beijing. Pan writes that beginning in 1974 her life had revolved around school so much that by the late 1970s, her life in the ,, countryside seemed "far away. 49 Pan's returnhome meant starting an entirely new chapter in her life, but she found herself looking back occasionally.

The decade was also a time of major changes for me. I began to work in Beijing after attaining a master's degree in 1981. While I was busy with work and life, memories of those zhiqing days never left me. Often I dreamed that I was back in the countryside, sometimes on the farm of the Yellow River, sometimes in the village, where my fellow zhiqing and peasants were still laboring. Many of my interviewees also had recurring dreams of the countryside. Some shared an

47 Yang, "China's Zhiqing Generation," 276. 48 Pan, Te mp ered in the Revolutionary Furnace, 204. 49 Ibid.,22 1.

-- - T extremely simHar theme - in the dreams they were back there, and in the dreams they were hoping to leave. The trarped feeling and desperation were so disturbing that the dreams were nightmares.5

Pan was at once unpleasantly reminded of her bitter country life while being drawn to the

idea of returning to see her village. She did not yearn for her old life but was curious about the place she had left behind. This combination of feelings persisted even when she

went abroad to Canada to study for her Ph.D.

When I left, the memories of my zhiqing days went with me. One winter day, as I was sitting in my student dormitory in that foreign land, reading a book on Chinese history, I looked out of the window at the snow-covered trees and land, China's countryside came back again. The urge to go back there came over me. I never really missed those zhiqing days. I just wanted to see the land, the land which was fast changing, and to understand the history I had been through.51

Pan could not help but try to reevaluate her own experience, especially as China was in

the midst of a transformation in the 1980s and 1990s.

While Pan's retrospection began in the early 1980s because of her early return

home, many of her peers were just getting out of the countryside at the time. As a result,

in the 1990s after the zhiqing had resettled in the cities for almost a decade, a similar

soul-searching that Pan experienced began to occur on a collective level. Even though

they all live abroad, the writers in Some of Us, all Chinese women who went to the U.S.

to study for their graduate degrees also experienced the wave of nostalgia.52 Much like

the zhiqing Yang described, these women were working subversively in order to

challenge the mainstream. Their nostalgia for the past was brought on by their

frustrations with the dominant Western perceptions of the Maoist Era. For the women of

50 Pan, Te mp ered in the Revolutionary Furnace, 240. 51 Ibid., 24 1. 52 Xueping Zhong, Wang Zheng, and Bai Di, eds. Some of Us: Chinese Wo men Growing up in the Mao Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001); Some of Us is a collection of autobiographical nalTatives.

94 Some of Us, inspiration to publically share their experiences came from their objection to the "China bashing" they witnessed in their classrooms. As they felt their pasts being unfairly maligned, they came together to produce a work that aimed to "'enrich and complicate' the existing understanding of that era but also to open further discussion of the Mao era, and by extension its relationship to China's century-long quest for

,,53 modemity. In the process, they reached out to other Chinese women currently living in the who grew up under Maoism and received ample encouragement for their project u.s. from their peers. While they were not necessarily revisiting their sent-down experiences, the Some of Us writers that are part of the Three Old Classes still draw from their zhiqing identity.

For Wang Zheng, a former sent-down youth, the part of her zhiqing identity that she most reveres is not rustication but the "qingnian (youthful) ideal of gender

,,54 equality. For Naihua Zhang, the nostalgia does come from her sent-down experience, which was essentially positive. Zhang considers the village she was sent-down to her ,, "home away from home. 55 Zhang seems to have an inverse relationship to the movement compared to her peers. As she was leaving for her village in northeast China, she felt

"doubt and hopelessness" but when the sent-down movement was winding down and

Zhang found herself drawn back to the city for educational opportunities, she left the ,, countryside with "a sense of nostalgia and guilt. 56 Over the course of her eight year sent- down experience, Zhang developed a deep friendship with two village girls, making her association with the time period one of pure camaraderie and closeness between fri ends.

53 Zhong, Some of Us, xvii. 54 Ibid.,52. 55 Ibid.,2. 56 Ibid.,5 & 24.

-- - T Now that she is raising her daughter in the U.S., Zhang wants to bring her daughter back to the village so that she might understand part of her mother's identity. The Some of Us cases are examples of the permanence of generational identity. Despite the distinct takes people have regarding the movement, they still fi nd ways to invoke their past shared identi ties.

The same is true for Xu and Yu . Although they opposing experiences in the countryside, both Xu and Yu hold an attachment to their time in the countryside. Beyond learninghow to live in a rural environment and perform manual labor, the sent-down experience has become part of Xu and Yu's characters. On the surface, Xu felt as if he was part of the government'spla n to end urban strife and that his life was definitely changed due to the end of his schooling and thus the lirrliting of his vocational opportunities.

It was not a matter of whether [being sent-down] was useful or not. The country was solving a problem [and] my life was definitely changed. If there had been no Cultural Revolution and we had continued to go to school, I would not be who I am now. If the factory had not hired me while I was in the countryside, I would not be where I am now but why predict what has not happened?57

Most importantly for Xu, he learnedhow to weather life's difficulties and does not regret

participating in the movement. Xu came out of rustication with the feeling of having

gained something, even if what was gained remains intangible.

It was an experience. We learnedhow to survive under harsh circumstances. This was the most precious. I often say, people like [my children] who have not gone through this kind of hardship, are rrlissing something. If you want me to pinpoint what I have learned,I rrlight not be able to tell you. At most, I can say I learned peasant work, but that was of no use. However, I feel that this experience is an asset. I do not regret it. Although I suffered dUling three yearsin the countryside - I was often hungry; there were times when I was so hungry I cried; I would be sick in bed and nobody would care; I do not regret my time there.58

57 Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, July 2010. 58 Ibid.

96 Xu's nostalgia for the past is not tainted by dissatisfaction with the present as he never rejected rustication in the first place. He has always viewed it as a natural part in the overall trajectory of his life albeit one of the more critical and transformative segments.

"It was an experience of a lifetime and it is deeply engraved in us. When you become old or pass your mid-life, you begin to remember the times when you were young, the most important times in your life so the [sent-down period] is remembered a 10t."s9 Xu has visited Xi Chang twice and considers the act of going back to village a nostalgic act.

The place you were sent-down becomes your second home so after the 1990s a lot of people went back to see where they were sent down. I have gone back twice to visit our production team and where I lived. It's a type of yeaming for the past. Many people have gone back to where they were sent-down. It has a sentimental link, a place you cannot forget.6o

Due to the intense nature of rustication, Xu formed an attachment to his village, deeming it his second home. As part of a larger population of sent-down youth, Xu's experience was further solidified as part of the life course for an entire generation.

Similar to Xu, Yu appreciates the personal strength she built during her time in the countryside. She also believes that the zhiqing were able to introduce new ideas that had not permeated to the countryside from urban areas.

I went through a tough situation and brought up my self-confidence and self discipline. I think that there still were some good things [that came out of the movement]. For example, the city youth brought a new world to the poor countryside. So even now, people that have gone back to the villages see that it is much better [and] the villagers tell us that if we didn't come, they would not know a lot of new things ...We brought them an idea of civilization at least. They wanted to know what the outside world was. That was a good thing.61

However, instead of forming a warm attachment to the movement, Yu considers herself

59 Xu Yunsheng, in discussion with the author, March 2010. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid.

T one of the survivors of a destructive policy. She has warm memories of the villagers she spent a decade with and is happy that she was able to positively contribute to their lives.

She also maintains friendships with her fellow sent-down students. Nevertheless, when looking back Yu expresses disapproval of the rustication program itself.

I disagree with the movement and I'm a survivor. I feel grateful that at least I survived but this entire generation really sacrificed. At a very young age we lost our schooling, then we lost our parents because we were sent far away... Not many people from my generation had the opportunity to go to college.62

Yu objected most to the loss of free will and the helplessness people felt within the confines of the movement. The restrictions Yu felt in addition to the lack of support she saw after returning to the city continue to disappoint her to this day.

The worst thing is that we had no democracy. We had no choice ... People did not want to go but they were forced to go. After [we went to the countryside], the government did not take any responsibility to help our generation, our people. Only our parents tried to go "through back door" to help their kids come back to the city... Thi s was very sad for the entire generation so I totally disagree [with the movement].63

While Xu participated in the nostalgic movements on the 1990s and visited his village twice, Yu has not been a part of the collective remembrance. Yu frequently refers to

herself as part of the "lost generation" but she has naturally distanced her from her former

peers. Even more, Yu believes that she "left" her generation in 1978 when she got into

college. "Since 1978, I left my generation actually. [Now in the U.S.] I am sUlTounded by

people of different backgrounds. I still miss my generation but that's fine. I'm used to ,, being a little different from the people around me. 64 From the point that she became part

of the minority of students who were able to weather the sent-down movement and make

it into university, Yu feels that she forfeited part of her status as one of the "lost". Also, as

62 yu Jinmei, in discussion with the author, March 2010. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid.

98 Yu is completely content with her life in the U.S., she feels a distance from her past identity. Yet, Yu is currently working on recording her life story in writing and this summer will be reuniting with her Three Old Classes peers from Yao Hua Middle School to travel to Europe. It seems that the vacillation Yu experiences in identifying her own social affiliations are dependent on the environment that she finds herself inhabiting but beneath this, her innate attachment to her zhiqing identity and Chinese heritage is what continuously brings her back to retrospection of her life in China.

99 100 Conclusion: Letting Bygones be Bygones?

The zhiqing were fated to be revolutionary. Born soon after the inception of the

People's Republic of China, they held revolutionary heroes in the highest regard and aspired to reach similar heights. When they finally had their chance to be true revolutionaries as the young leaders of the Cultural Revolution, they did not hesitate to dedicate their lives to promoting the Communist Party's cause. Political apathy was a sin and the more radical one's thoughts were the better. As Red Guards they were gi ven free rein to engage each other in political debate, question their elders, and dismantle establishments as they saw as fit. When the governmentdeemed their behavior too extreme, they were reprimanded and restrained. The sent-down movement gave them their chance at redemption. Especially for those who had been unable to join the ranks of the Red Guards, this was the moment to shine. The sent-down experience was wide ranging and the zhiqing identity is riddled with subtle differences. Still, the emotionally trying and physically demanding nature of the rustication process has become a large part of its legacy. The shared hardship of the zhiqing experience is something that binds them to this day and remains focal point in their generational identity.

As the Cultural Revolution came to a close, the country almost immediately changed its trajectory and economic dominance replaced political and social purity and egalitalianism as the rallying point for the Chinese population. The zhiqing, most just

coming back from the countryside, barely had time to react before being thrust into this unfamiliar one-way path. Since their return to the cities, the sent-down generation has had little time to recuperate their past idealism. With the outpouring of nostalgia in the

1990s, one might have expected a greater explosion of zhiqing activism and collective

101

- - T endeavors. After all, they were supposed be learned in the ways of rebellion. The sent

down generation has undeniably sacrificed for China and the "greater good," why not join together now to try and reclaim some of their past glory? Or at the very least ensure

that history commemorates their sacrifice through some sort of permanent nationwide

remembrance? The zhiqing generation seems almost complacent. In his retirement, Xu's

life has fallen into a routine and he is content living a simple life; Yu has decided to settle

outside of her motherland and does not see herself going back to China in the future;

Most of the interviewees in Mao 's Children in the New China, though not completely

satisfied with their lives, would rather just operate within the status quo instead of trying

to resurrect the part of the past that is related to their nostalgia. Perhaps this lack of action

is not apathy but a disinterest in political movements after enduring so many trials during

the Cultural Revolution.

The question of zhiqing activism is one for future study. While this thesis focused

largely on zhiqing past experience and the resulting introspection and retrospection, it

would be interesting to study the ways in which the zhiqing have aggressively taken their

lives into their own hands. By looking at published zhiqing writings in China, a possible

tool for social engagement, or surveying former zhiqing who have made it into economic

or political prosperity in the present, one might be able to draw more conclusions on

exactly what the legacy of the zhiqing encompasses. As for now, the zhiqing generation

has place their unfulfilled hopes on future generations. Without considering how they

might still reach peaks in their own lives, their legacy stays stagnant, perhaps truly as a

lost generation. As such it seems that they have left their radical selves in the past in

favor of "letting bygones be bygones."

102 Selected Bibliography

Published Primary Works: Memoirs

Gao, Yu an . Born Red: a Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987.

Ma, Bo. Blood Red Sunset: a Memoir of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. New York: Vi king, 1995.

Min, Anchee. Red Azalea . New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. Yang, Rae. Sp ider Eaters: A Memoir. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPr ess, 1997.

Interviews by the Author

Jinmei Yu , September 2010 - April 2011.

Yunsheng Xu, July 2010 - April 2011.

Secondary Works: Books

Bernstein,Thomas P. Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages: The Transfe r of Yo uth from Urban to Rural China. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977.

Brandt, Loren, and Thomas G. Rawski, eds. China's Great Economic Transformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Cao, Zuoya. Out of the Crucible: Literary Wo rks about the Rusticated Yo uth. Lanham, Lexington Books, 2003. rvID: Feng, Jicai. Vo ices from the Whirlwind: an Oral History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. New York: Pantheon, 1991.

Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory.Tran slated and edited by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Jiang, Yarong, and David Ashley. Mao 's Children in the New China: Vo ices from the Red Guard Generation. London: Routledge, 2000. Leung, Laifong. Morning Sun: Interviews with Chinese Writers of the Lost Generation. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. MacFarquhar, Roderick, and Michael Schoenhals. Mao's Last Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Minow, Martha. Between Ve ngeance and Forgiveness: Facing History aft er Genocide and Mass Vi olence. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.

103

... -- - - 'r Pan, Yihong. Tempered in the RevolutionaryFurnace: China's Yo uth in the Rustication Movement. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003. Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, eds. The Oral HistoryReader . London: Routledge, 1998. Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Refo rm China. Edited by Ching Kwan Lee and Guobin Yang. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2007. Seybolt, Peter. The Rustication of Urban Yo uth in China. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1975.

Schoenhals, Michael. China 's Cultural Revolution, Not a Dinner Party. 1966-1969: Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History. Edited by Joseph W. Esherick, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Andrew G. Walder. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Xinxin, Zhang, and Ye , Sang. Chinese Lives. Edited by W.J.F. Jenner and Delia Davin. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987. Zhong, Xueping, Zheng Wang, and Bai Di, eds. Some of Us: Chinese Wo men Growing up in the Mao Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

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Gold, Thomas B. "Back to the City: The Return of Shanghai's Educated Yo uth." China Quarterly 84 (December 1980): 755-770.

--- . "After Comradeship: Personal Relations in China since the Cultural Revolution." The China Quarterly 104 (1985): 657-75.

Harding, Harry. "Reappraising the Cultural Revolution." Wilson Quarterly 4, no. 4 (1980): 132-41.

Kong, Shuyu. "Swan and Spider Eater in Problematic Memoirs of Cultural Revolution ." Positions 7, no. 1 (1999): 239-52.

McLaren, Anne. "The Educated Youth Return: The Poster Campaign in Shanghai from November 1978 to March 1979." Australian Journalof Chinese Affairs 2 (July 1979): 1-20.

Sidel, Mark. "University Enrollment in the People's Republic of China, 1977-1981: The Examination Model Returns." Comparative Education 18, no. 3 (1982): 257-269.

104 Treiman, Donald J., and Zhong Deng. "The Impact of the Cultural Revolution on Trends in Educational Attainment in the People's Republic of China." American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 2 (1997): 39 1-428.

Wang, Q. E. "Encountering the World: China and Its Other(s) in Historical Narratives, 1949-89." Journalof Wo rld History 14, no. 3 (2003): 327-58.

Wu, Yu xiao. "Cultural Capital, The State, and Educational Inequality in China, 1949- 1996." Sociological Perspectives 1, no. 1 (2008): 201-27.

Yang, Bin, "'We Want to Go Home !' The Great Petition of the Zhiqing, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, 1978-1979." China Quarterly 198 (June 2009): 401-42 1.

Yang, Guobing. "China's Zhiqing Generation: Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural Resistance in the 1990s." Modern China 29, no. 3 (2003): 267-96.

Zarrow, Peter. "Meanings of China's Cultural Revolution: Memoirs of Exile." Positions 7.1 (1999): 165-9 1.

105

- - T