University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses March 2016 A Tale of “Ku” (Bitter) V.S. “Tian” (Sweet): Understanding China's “Yiku Sitian” Movement in the 1960s and 1970s from the Perspective of Cultural Discourse Analysis Xinmei Ge University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Ge, Xinmei, "A Tale of “Ku” (Bitter) V.S. “Tian” (Sweet): Understanding China's “Yiku Sitian” Movement in the 1960s and 1970s from the Perspective of Cultural Discourse Analysis" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 573. https://doi.org/10.7275/7904288.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/573 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. 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A TALE OF “KU” (BITTER) V.S. “TIAN” (SWEET): UNDERSTANDING CHINA’S “YIKU SITIAN” MOVEMENT IN THE 1960S AND 1970S FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS A Dissertation Presented by XINMEI GE Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2016 Department of Communication © Copyright by Xinmei Ge 2016 All rights reversed A TALE OF “KU” (BITTER) V.S. “TIAN” (SWEET): UNDERSTANDING CHINA’S “YIKU SITIAN” MOVEMENT IN THE 1960S AND 1970S FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS A Dissertation Presented by XINMEI GE Approved as to content and style by: _______________________________________ Donal Carbaugh, Chair _______________________________________ Benjamin Bailey, Member _______________________________________ Zhongwei Shen, Member _________________________________________ Erica Scharrer, Department Head Department of Communication ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As I begin to write the acknowledgements and think of my advisor, Professor Donal Carbaugh, I couldn’t help the tears that keep rolling down my face, because I would never be able to accomplish this task without his guidance, encouragement, support, trust, and understanding to me over the many years in the past. He has set the best role model of a scholar for me with his outstanding theoretical and practical contributions to the ethnography of communication studies and with his gentleness, kindness, and humbleness. He is always there ready to address any of my questions, even when he is away for conferences or for vacations. He has the keenest insight to understand my research project and put forward suggestions that are right to the point albeit the language barrier. He cheered me up and cheered me on for any bit of the progress that I painstakingly made while attending to all the other obligations in life as a daughter, a wife, and a mother of three young children. Words cannot express enough all my gratitude and appreciation to him as a mentor, a scholar, a colleague, and a lifelong friend. I want to thank the other members of my committee, Professor Benjamin Bailey and Professor Zhongwei Shen. I had worked as a teaching assistant for Professor Bailey before and was truly impressed by his excellent scholarship in his teaching and research areas in language, culture, and social identities. Professor Shen is a prominent Chinese scholar with research interests in mechanism of sound change, Chinese historical phonology, early history of Mandarin seen from ancient Altaic scripts, and Chinese dialectology. I am truly blessed by their superb expertise and warm, encouraging personalities. iv I want to thank faculties, colleagues, and staffs, at the Department of Communication here. Professors Carolyn Anderson, Briankle Chang, Leda Cooks, Vernon Cronen, Jarice Hanson, Michael Morgan, Erica Sharrer; friends and colleagues David Boromisza-Habashi, John Chetro-Szivos, Elizabeth Fullon, Li Gu, Liliya Karimova, Sunny Lie,Keming Lin, Zixu Liu, Eric Morgan, Istaban De Rio, Lisa Rudnick, Max Saito, Michelle Scollo, Lin Shi, Ching Sung, Cindy Suopis, Rebecca Townsend; and staff members Debbie Madigan, Kathy Ready, Susan Dreyer, and April Tidlund have all showed their support and encouragement to me in their own ways throughout the past years. I want to thank Sharon Domier, the East Asian Studies Librarian at UMass Du Bois library. She is the one maintaining subscriptions to databases in East Asian Studies. I have been frequently using Oriprobe Info Services which allows access to the online archive of the Chinese newspaper, People’s Daily, where I got the majority of the data for my dissertation research. She always responded to my emails of inquiries regarding access to Oriprobe in a timely manner. The ILL (Interlibrary Loan) service here has also helped me tremendously by searching for and digitally delivering papers I requested very quickly. During the editing stage, Elisa Campbell from OIT went out of her way and helped me significantly by solving all the problems occurred after I applied the dissertation template to my draft and transforming it to its current beautiful appearance to meet all the requirements from Graduate School about style and format. To all of them goes my heartfelt appreciation. I want to thank brothers and sisters from Amherst Chinese Christian Church and Chinese Bible Church of Greater Lowell. Brother Weimin Chen and Sister Zhaorong Liu, v Pastor James Chung and Mrs. Jean Chung, Brother Wingyiu Ho and Sister Manying Wu, Brother Yuh-Fang Hsiao and Sister Shuchen Kuo, Brother Li-Kuang Huang and Sister Chifan Li, Brother Lu Ji and Sister Fang Liu, Brother Ruifeng Li and Sister Zhongzhen Li, Brother Bing Liang and Sister Ellen Yan, Pastor Gene Liu and Mrs. Jeanette Liu, Pastor Henry Lu and Mrs. Ling Lu, Sister Yenchun Mao, Brother Yi Sun and Sister Yifan Tu, “Grandpa” Charile Wang and “Grandma” May Wang, Brother Shijin Wang and Sister Guiyan Qu, Pastor Yuqing Wang and Mrs. Fengqiu Zhang, Brother Baoshan Xing and Sister Tingjuan Song, Brother Zhengrong Zhu and Sister Xiaowen Liu are just a few among all that I want to name and give thanks to. What’s more, Sisters Xiaoyan Li, Sally Teague, Meng Shiou Shieh, and Brother Lie Wang are my “off-campus dissertation committee members” to whom I emailed at the same time whenever I updated my advisor to report progress. I couldn’t forget how, during all the past years, my church brothers and sisters supported our family, which grew from two to three, to four, and then to five members, with persistent prayers, encouraging words, genuine love, and concrete helps. They cared particularly about my dissertation writing and reached out in various ways to help me – some devoted time to discuss and brainstorm with me about my research topic; some helped me proofreading chapters I finished; some offered childcare so I could work more on my dissertation; and some sent me emails regularly as a gentle token of reminders… and all of them lifted me up faithfully and consistently in their prayers. Through them I came to see what it means to be a family in Christ. I want to thank my parents and my two sisters for their deep love, care and financial help to me far away from China. Xin Ge, my oldest sister, lives close to our elderly parents and has been taking good care of them without any complaints in all the vi years; Sheng Ge, my older sister, who is an esteemed nutritionist in Shanghai and a professor at the Medical School associated with Shanghai Jiaotong University, who has access to all the major digital academic databases in China, helped me retrieve full texts for all the Chinese theses, dissertations, and journal articles that I need and emailed them to me with no delay. Without her I would not be able to have access to some of the most important references that I used in my dissertation. My family is dear to my heart and is one of the most important reasons that keep me focused on my goal in the past years. I want to thank my husband, Guoshu Yuan, and our daughters, Christine, Isabelle, and Marina, for going through all the past years with me, praying for my dissertation before each meal, and helping me in their own ways. The kids have been counting the days this summer, and patiently waiting for the time that Mommy finishes her dissertation and can play with them again, and I couldn’t wait to have more time with them, to read the Bible together, to sing together, to take a walk together, to laugh together, to enjoy their childhood together, as much as we can. Many other friends, such as Vanessa Blais, have generously helped me by giving their time, thoughts and encouragement on my dissertation project. It is simply not possible for me to thank them all here. But I will cherish deep down in my heart all the hands they gave me that have brought me to the very end of this long journey, that have made a “mission impossible” possible. Any inadequacies of this dissertation are mine, which I hope can be improved in the future, when the learning process continues in life. vii ABSTRACT A TALE OF “KU” (BITTER) V.S. “TIAN” (SWEET): UNDERSTANDING CHINA’S “YIKU SITIAN” MOVEMENT IN THE 1960S AND 1970S FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS February 2016 XINMEI GE B.A., BEIJING INTERNATIONAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY M.A., BEIJING UNIVERSITY PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Donal Carbaugh “Yiku sitian” is a political movement prevalent in P. R. China in the 1960s and 1970s. It means, literally, to “recall bitterness” and to “reflect on sweetness”. It identifies a particular type of social practice commonly enacted publicly and privately for people to recall how “bitter” life was in “jiu shehui” (the old society) and how “sweet” life was in “xin shehui” (the new society).