by Cook, James A. ,Goldstein, Joshua,Johnson, Matthew D. ,Schmalzer, Sigrid
Figure 13.1 Red Guards attack provincial governor Li Fanwu. This photograph, by photojournalist Li Zhensheng, appears in his celebrated English-language book Red-Color News Soldier (London: Phaedon, 2003) and a web exhibit by the same name, and has toured museums throughout Europe and North America. It also appears in a popular U.S. textbook on modern Chinese history, Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1999, plate between p. 662 and p. 663). Such images dominate representations of the Cultural Revolution for Western audiences and produce a very one-sided understanding of what the Cultural Revolution meant and how people experienced it.
China’s public memory of sent-down youth underwent an abrupt shift in the 1980s. As scholar Qin Liyan explains, “Disillusioned with post-Cultural Revolution urban life, the site of their previous suffering (rural China) now appeared to former sent-down youth as a paradise.” The countryside was then imagined by former sent-down youth to be “wholesome, peaceful, and uplifting” in contrast to the “bewildering, corrupting, and empty” urban life they later faced.4 It was at this moment, in 1983, that the novella Snow Storm Tonight by Liang Xiaosheng came to the scene and instantly attracted public attention with its uplifting optimism. It not only won a government-sponsored award, but was also broadcast on national radio, adapted into a TV miniseries, and “anthologized in high school textbooks as a model of thematic correctness and artistic perfection.”5 This novel, together with similar works produced by other former sent-down youth, helped construct a new image of sent-down youth as heroes and heroines.
Photographs played a crucial role in shaping the new public image of sent-down youth and their rural experiences. The early 1990s witnessed numerous photo exhibits honoring sent-down youth, which in many cities sparked a craze for “the culture of sent-down youth.” In 1991, following an extremely successful 1990 Beijing photo exhibition honoring former sent-down youth in Heilongjiang Province, a group of Chengdu former sent-downers put together a photo display in the Sichuan Provincial Museum to celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of their departure for Yunnan.6 The chief organizers were former sent-down youth who had held high positions in the countryside as “sent-down youth cadres.” After serious discussion, they decided to set the tone of the show with the uplifting title, “Having No Regret for Their Lost Youth.” Quoting from the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, they chose the subtitle, “All suffering will be left behind, and the past will become a beautiful memory.”7 The photographs they selected appeared to confirm the truth of such “beautiful memories,” as shown in Figure 13.2.
In this image, former sent-down youth are presented as cheerful young men and women, physically strong and healthy, their labor light and easy to shoulder. With smiles on their faces, they look happy and satisfied, merrily contributing to Chinese socialism. Moreover, the photograph suggests that their ideals and political conscience give meaning to their labor. The caption reads, “Youth is beautiful only when dedicated to the people; life is brilliant only when sacrificed to the revolution.” With such ideals, what regrets should sent-down youth have? Clearly, images like this celebrate the official values of the Cultural Revolution, namely, unconditional sacrifice, loyalty, and collectivity. In fact, just as in Figure 13.2, many of the exhibition’s photos originated in widely circulated pictorials published during the Cultural Revolution era. Ever since the beginning of the Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside movement, great numbers of pictorials, art books, and film documentaries celebrated the lives of sent-down youth. Moreover, every single battalion, regiment, and division in the Yunnan Construction Corps supported a propaganda team that actively produced many laudatory propaganda photos of sent-down youth. According to former sent-down youth and amateur historian Xie Guangzhi, despite the food deficiency in Yunnan, every propaganda team was equipped with a camera and rolls of film.8 This also explains the disproportionally large number of “happy” pictures of sent-down youth at a time when cameras were too expensive for almost any ordinary person to own: propaganda teams would produce only happy photographs, and few others had the means to produce any photographs at all.
Figure 13.2 This image originally appeared in a pictorial about the Cultural Revolution. Former sent-down youth Xie Guangzhi remembers offering to put it on display for a 1991 exhibition on sent-down youth held in the Sichuan Provincial Museum in Chengdu. The caption beneath reads “Youth is beautiful only when it is dedicated to the people; Life is bright only when it is dedicated to the revolution; It is a heavy burden and a long journey to become a worthy revolutionary successor; We will move forward following the course directed by Chairman Mao.” Provided by Xie Guangzhi and used with his permission.
Despite the two dominant literatures’ radically different depictions of the experiences of sent-down youth—one as scarring, the other as glorious—more fundamentally they share much common ground. Whether as victims or as loyal followers of Mao, sent-down youth appear in these writings as passive subjects rather than as active agents in their own lives. Even more troubling is that, in both literatures, the narrators are always from the elite. Scar literature is mainly concerned with and written by intellectuals, persecuted officials, and sent-down youth from elite family backgrounds. After the Cultural Revolution, they returned to the center of Chinese politics and culture. The English-language memoirs reveal this yet more clearly: their authors, like Liang Heng and Jung Chang, were able not only to study foreign languages during the Cultural Revolution but also to go abroad to the United States and Europe afterward. Such experiences were privileges far out of reach for most Chinese people. Furthermore, the proponents of the “no-regret” account were fortunate in that they either received recommendations to attend college (and thus left the countryside early), as Liang Xiaosheng did, or held positions of power as sent-down youth cadres in the Construction Corps, as was the case with the organizers of the 1991 Chengdu exhibition. Missing are the voices of the more ordinary sent-down youth.
Lives and Memories of the Ordinary Sent-down Youth
Unlike elites, ordinary sent-down youth had to think first about feeding their bellies and helping their families. Going to Yunnan was not about following the teaching of Chairman Mao or being idealistic. When they wanted to return to the city, their families were not powerful enough to open any “back doors.” Regarding the sent-down youth cadres’ having a “no-regret” attitude as “ridiculous” and condemning the tone of the scar literature as “oversimplified,” the more ordinary sent-down youth have their own unique memories of the past.9
Going to Yunnan
“You could find no way to avoid going to the countryside,” says former sent-down youth Deng Xian. Deng’s family background was politically unfavorable and resisting the movement would have brought much trouble to his family.10 Besides, after graduating from middle school and lingering in Chengdu for a while, he could find no job in the city. Fellow sent-downer Zhang Qingcong recalls, “You could not even get a job sweeping public restrooms in Chengdu.”11 In the mid-1950s, China experienced a baby boom. In the 1970s, these baby boomers grew up and created serious employment pressure. Former sent-down youth Xu Shifu recalls that the state’s response in Chengdu was that “in each household, one out of three children and two out of five children must go to the countryside.” Xu had five siblings. Moving to Yunnan would alleviate the severe food shortage in his home, so Xu felt proud to go.12
Leaving the city was an inevitable fate for these Chengdu middle school graduates. However, they did have one choice, at least. They could go to either a production brigade in the countryside or a construction corps in the Yunnan border region. Organizationally, a construction corps belonged to the People’s Liberation Army. At a time when the army held indisputable authority in China, joining a construction corps offered students enormous glory and prestige—at last they could wear the much coveted green army uniform and even get issued a rifle! Also, students in a construction corps were workers (zhigong) rather than peasants (nongmin), and were gu
aranteed a monthly salary and grain ration. Every month, each student received a rice ration of 38.5 jin (42.4 pounds) and a salary of CN¥ 28.5. At that time, 38.5 jin of rice was a third more than that of a regular middle school student and a salary of CN¥ 28.5 was even higher than that of a skilled worker in a Chinese factory.13
Images played a critical role in helping students make up their minds. Many young people believed what they saw in state-produced documentaries and pictorials: working on a construction corps in Yunnan was sublime (Figure 13.3, see website). Stories they heard from recruiters reinforced these tempting images. As a corps cadre spun the tale: “Yunnan is a place where you carry bananas on your head and step on pineapples wherever you go.”14 To a student who dreamed of “having an apple all to himself,” Yunnan threw an irresistible lure.15 After the successful propaganda campaign, the state soon began sending students to Yunnan. In 1971, from April to July, large groups of Chengdu middle school graduates filled the trains running along the Chengdu-Kunming line. When the train started down the track, many sobbed. But their sorrow did not last long. As soon as the train left suburban Chengdu, it became “a sea of cheerfulness.” After all, they were just teenagers, bursting with expectations.16 High-spirited students rushed toward the unknown, far-away land. Even though going to Yunnan was not an entirely free choice, they still felt considerable thrill and enthusiasm. And Yunnan was waiting for them . . .17
Life in Yunnan
It took seven days before they finally arrived at Mengding Farm in Gengma County, Lincang Prefecture of Yunnan Province. As they traveled, they noticed that “the roads were getting worse—from rails, to paved streets, and at last dirt roads”—and “the vehicles were getting smaller—from trains, to trucks, and in some places horse carts.”18 These sent-down youth were rather dumbfounded upon seeing their new home. Having regarded themselves as “construction corps soldiers,” many had imagined that they would be living in tidy “two-story military dormitories, equipped with electric lights and telephones.” Instead they faced one-story bungalows made of earthen bricks, only kerosene lights for illumination, and no telephones.19 Even more disappointing was that they did not see many PLA soldiers; rather, those who welcomed them were farm workers who “wore shorts, stood barefoot, and waved their hands.”20
After a lighthearted first week, the heavy manual labor started and the students’ excitement quickly evaporated. Their job was to plant rubber trees and drain rubber sap. But before they could begin planting, they first had to strip the hills of vegetation (pifang) and carve out level terraces. For many sent-downers, pifang was the exhausting job they got after their arrival. Xu Shifu vividly remembers that to encourage hard work, cadres of Xu’s company created a slogan, “Fighting in the Red May.” The month of May was marked by several important revolutionary anniversaries, so students dared not slack off. Xu recalls, “We were competing with each other and worked so hard . . . After an entire month of tree-cutting, our bodies looked deformed and our bones felt disjointed.” However, after May, the cadres just created a new slogan, “Struggling in June and July.”21
The sun shines brutally in the high altitudes of the Yunnan Plateau. With insufficient water to drink while working, many sent-downers fainted in the field.22 Zhang Qingcong remembers, “We had determined to embrace the hardship and be a “piece of kindling” [in the revolutionary fire]; however, embracing that hardship was merely a lofty ideal. When we faced the actual difficulties, we were paralyzed and did not know how to react.”23 The grueling manual labor was never recorded in any propaganda photographs, nor was the pain of constant hunger. Once they started working in the field, they found that 38.5 jin of rice was far from enough because they had almost no meat to eat with it. On average, they each received a meager diet of 0.2 jin of meat every month. Faced with such mundane problems, their revolutionary enthusiasm vanished. Yunnan was beautiful, yet its beauty was outweighed by the pain sent-down youth suffered. The constant hunger made some of them lose their principles: they started to steal chickens belonging to farm workers. Xu Shifu created a jingle to summarize their situation of that time: “Isn’t it hard? Let’s steal a chicken and boil it. Isn’t it tiring? Let’s blanket our heads and take a nap.”24 Some even stopped thinking that stealing chickens was wrong. Feeling collectively exiled, these young men and women had to try their best to deal with life on their own.25
As these sent-down youth strove to obtain physical necessities, they also tried to enrich their cultural lives. However, most nights their time was occupied by tedious political classes. Many felt suffocated. Zhang Qingcong remembers, “On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, there were meetings organized to study Mao Zedong thought and Marxism-Leninism; and on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and sometimes Saturdays, there were special meetings for Communist Party and Youth League members.” And there were other boring meetings to endure. “First, the company leader coached sent-down youth on the new central directives and discussed issues regarding our own company. After he was finished, the platoon chief spoke; then the general affairs officer. After the officer’s lengthy report on logistical matters, it was already nine or ten o’clock at night and we were all yawning, bored to death.” Whenever he sat through a political meeting, Zhang felt his “youth was murdered” and his “life foolishly consumed.”26 To live through such absurdity, sent-down youth had to find other things that made sense of life.
Zhang Qingcong found that meaning in art. Using pens, pencils, and scissors, he avidly recorded the beauty around him. In creating a world of his own, his life became meaningful. He looked forward to Sundays when he could go out and draw or make paper-cuts of the landscape of Yunnan, his sent-down friends, and what he saw as the unpretentious beauty of the Dai and Wa minority people (Figure 13.4).27 Serene and peaceful, real and touchable, creating these images offered Zhang immense consolation and happiness. In sharp contrast to the forever correct didactic propaganda pictures, these images finally provided him with something full of personal feeling and offered him a hideaway to relax and be himself. It was in Yunnan that Zhang developed his own view on art: “Art is the truthful recording of the beauty of nature and the attempt to present it in melodic strokes.” He then realized how “awful” his previous works were, when he had “simply mimicked the images from those Cultural Revolution posters.”28
Of course, not everyone was as lucky as Zhang in having artistic talent. But another sent-downer, Yang Quan, tells me, “We all need to learn to appreciate the beauty and pleasure of life so that we can live through the unlivable.” This, he says, “is human nature.” Yang loved to look at the Dai village nearby and its special architecture. “The Dai’s two-story bamboo house feels so light . . . . Every day at sunset, I would watch the cooking smoke curling up over the bamboo house and listen to the sounds of life.” 29 For Yang Quan, contemplating these beautiful scenes was the highlight of his day. Yang also brings my attention to the basketball hoops that were nearly “ubiquitous in every battalion.” “As long as there was a small patch of flat ground, we would construct a wooden basketball hoop and play basketball.”30 Sent-downers tried to experience joy whenever and wherever they could. Against the backdrop of political absurdity, they creatively fought against dull routines and pursued a life they found meaningful.
Figure 13.4 Paper-cut by sent-down youth Zhang Qingcong depicting a group of Wa nationality women dancing. Reproduced with permission of the artist.
Going Back to the City
Beginning in 1973, the desire to return home spread like a contagion among sent-down youth in Yunnan.31 With the political shifts following the fall of Lin Biao in 1971, a large number of imprisoned cadres were released and gradually returned to power. Children of these cadres were able to exercise their political leverage and started to go back to the cities. In 1973 alone, using either formal or informal methods, a total of 4711 sent-down youth left Yunnan farms. Also in the early 1970s, Chinese colleges resumed operation, but personal recommendation became the only avenue for entr
ance. Of course, this benefited the children of party cadres the most. As Deng Xian observes, “Starting from 1973, the reopening of the city severely stratified us sent-down youth. After that, we totally lost our enthusiasm for labor.” People asked, “Why do you get to return? Why are you going to college, while I have to stay? Didn’t I work much harder?” Coming from a politically “bad” family background, Deng Xian had no chance to go to college. Quotas were reserved only for those from politically “good” families.32 Deng felt abysmal agony, fury, desperation, and a sense of inexorable doom. Zhang Qingcong watched his well-connected dorm mates departing one after another, leaving more and more empty beds. He admits, “I really envied those cadres’ children.” Now, with so many people having broken their pledge to “settle at the Yunnan border forever,” it all seemed like a kind of bitter joke. Zhang remembers, “Life at that point was like a banquet abruptly finished, a dream cruelly awakened.”33
After 1973, the relationships among sent-down youth deteriorated drastically. Being recommended to college was a life-changing privilege. But to be recommended, besides coming from a good family background, one also had to be on good terms with the corps leaders. Because the recommendation quota was as slim as one percent, competition for the leaders’ favoritism was ruthless.34 The unpredictable future and insurmountable gap between city and countryside crushed many budding romances. Many people learned to control their feelings. “Because I would never want to raise a child in such a place, I held back my emotions and decided not to have a boyfriend,” says Chen Lijun. In fact, Chen had fallen deeply in love with someone, and was still tearful when talking about it thirty years later.35
